Windows 7
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Windows 7 Ultimate on a netbook?
The "starter" version is the one for netbooks.As Pete pointed out, I ran the sys requirements test before even daring to buy Windows 7, and I'm confident that I'll eventually solve the problems I'm experiencing. Yes, Ubuntu seems to magically recognize everything without needing drivers, but then again SketchUp can't run on Ubuntu.
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@solo said:
I can tell by your tone that you had a preexisting hatred for anything Microsoft to begin with, must be a karma thing then.
I would never use the word hate.
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Ok, people, I have finished backing up all the stuff in my data drive. I backed up this year's projects twice, just in case. Now I'll switch to 7 and format the data drive. Let's see how this goes...
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@ecuadorian said:
Ok, people, I have finished backing up all the stuff in my data drive. I backed up this year's projects twice, just in case. Now I'll switch to 7 and format the data drive. Let's see how this goes...
a new install on my quad core cpu computer was quite painless, and faster than vista 64.
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Small update:
After formatting it in Windows 7, the hard drive now works perfectly from both XP and 7. I'm currently copying again all my stuff to the drive.
I'm also faced with some decisions: Which RAR program should I install? Which media player should I use? For media player, I decided to forgo the native one and install VLC instead. After the VLC install finished, I double-clicked on a movie to open it, and... Zap! my second Windows 7 Blue Screen Of Death. I guess in 7 you always have to restart after installing something new, so I'll try to keep that in mind.
UPDATE: I keep getting Blue Screens every time I try to access screen options or open a video with VLC, so I guess the nvidia driver provided by MS via Windows update is buggy. I'll try installing the one from nvidia's page. Oh, and the keyboard mapping is wrong, I'll have to solve that soon.
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Miguel, Were you able to identify the issue? Why both OS can see the drive only after reformatting?
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No idea. When I check the drive properties there is no difference at all. It was, and still is, formatted in NTFS, with indexing activated, and without encryption or compression activated. Sounds pretty absurd, I know.
Now, about my current BSOD problem, I went to NVIDIA's site and used the automatic driver detection tool. Paf! Another Blue Screen of Death. After restarting, I manually located the driver and I'm downloading it now. Let's see how this turns out. At least I now know it's related to the graphics card... the same one that works perfectly in XP.
UPDATE: It seems I'm not the only one. There are more than 100k results for: geforce "windows 7" BSOD.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=geforce+%22windows+7%22+BSOD&aq=f&oq=&aqi= -
How about the Win7 driver. Any chance that on the previous install of Win7 that the wrong driver was selected for the second drive? Would be nice to know, but don't need to mess with it when working, sometimes "kicking the tires" makes things better:-)
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I have no previous Win7 install.
Now, returning to my BSOD problems in Windows 7, I have just downloaded the correct driver directly from nvidia's site and tried to install it. More BSOD.
I think I'll just continue working on XP for the time being until Microsoft solves their problems with nvidia. Ironically, the upgrade advisor said nothing about the graphics card.UPDATE: I changed my mind and decided not to give up so soon, so I entered the BIOS and changed a setting from its default value. It's working now!
I'll try to write down what I changed and post it later.ANOTHER UPDATE: So I installed SketchUp and tried to open it. BSOD again. While in Error-free mode, I installed the drivers I downloaded from the nvidia site. Now Windows 7 goes BSOD on start. Now I really give up, at least for today.
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After following the instructions in the windows 7 upgrade adviser I upgraded windows vista ultimate to windows 7. So far no issues. Sketchup and AutoCAD are working fine. I will need to get a new twilight license as that License is OS specific
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Thanks for the reminder, Phil. I did check that all my hardware was compatible before venturing into 7, and I've just checked again and everything should just work. Thye only warning I saw is that my GeForce 9600GT, which is fairly new, can't run Aero, but it IS listed as compatible with Windows 7.
UPDATE: After seemingly infinite restarts, Blue Screens, driver install/unistall sequences, visits to support sites, BIOS manipulations and even a couple of bad thoughts ("I should get a Mac"), I think I finally nailed the problem: The Windows 7 theme I was using was not compatible with my graphics card... or so it seems. I was using the "Windows Classic" theme. Now I'm on the "Windows 7 Basic" theme and I've been able to run an HD video tutorial on VLC, and run SketchUp 7 without any more Blue Screen problems. Weird. Both themes seem to ahve no Aero, so I don't see the problem. Sounds stupid, but I've used even more stupid solutions to my PC problems in the past. And I certainly do NOT want to retest with the other theme to see if I get BSOD's again.
Still, keep your eyes open for more episodes of "2009 - A Windows 7 Odyssey".
(Thanks to Mac owners for not poking fun at me on this thread.)
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@ecuadorian said:
Small update:
After formatting it in Windows 7, the hard drive now works perfectly from both XP and 7. I'm currently copying again all my stuff to the drive.
I'm also faced with some decisions: Which RAR program should I install? Which media player should I use? For media player, I decided to forgo the native one and install VLC instead. After the VLC install finished, I double-clicked on a movie to open it, and... Zap! my second Windows 7 Blue Screen Of Death. I guess in 7 you always have to restart after installing something new, so I'll try to keep that in mind.
UPDATE: I keep getting Blue Screens every time I try to access screen options or open a video with VLC, so I guess the nvidia driver provided by MS via Windows update is buggy. I'll try installing the one from nvidia's page. Oh, and the keyboard mapping is wrong, I'll have to solve that soon.
VLC do have some serious Win 7 issues. So far Media Player Classic Home Cinema, seems to work fine with Win7 64bit.
For archive, 7-Zip is my favourite. It do have a 64 bit version.
nVidia divers are always best to download from nvidia (there might be some beta divers too to solve some particular problems). Have to say you have got really strange problems with nVidia. Have you made a search if there generally some issues with that display card and Win 7, just to eliminate that the display card is not broken. -
Miguel, about BSOD, do you have also a on-board display adapter? If so, make sure that it's not enabled.
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Another thing about windows 7. My toolbar haven't gone crazy YET! Yes I have been adding plugins so go figure.
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My beef is that the menus don't scroll in Sketchup- I have so many extensions that they need to scroll to fit on my tiny 17" monitor, but they don't scroll automatically; i have to click a down or up arrow to get to my off-screen extensions.
Worse yet, i can't change the Win7 system font size to my liking- they only let you go down to a 9 pt font!!! i want 7 or even 6 pts. and the DPI control doesn't help either! I need a registry hack for something i could do natively in XP and Vista. -
Thank you for your concern, Pentti. I'm not experiencing any more problems. As I said, the problem was that I had chosen the "classic windows" theme, and apparently no one tested it during the beta phase.
I'm now using the default theme with zero problems. Sounds weird, but with computers nothing can be too weird.So the problem was not VLC. Actually, it's working perfectly fine. When I ran the upgrade advisor from XP VLC even had a certificate of compatibility:
My Intel motherboard has no onboard video. I rely solely on my GeForce 9600GT, which the same upgrade advisor lists as compatible with Windows 7 and which nvidia's site lists as recommended for Windows 7.
Thank you for your recommendation of 7zip, I was thinking of ditching WinRAR for something lighter.
I searched all over the Net for people with problems with several nvidia cards and Windows 7, and there are hundreds of thousands of results with BSOD problems. They must have chosen the same Windows theme as I did.
EDIT: I finally found the correct Keyboard setting. It's "España - Internacional". The reason why it was failing before was that Windows now has a "default keyboard setting" option, so it kept changing to the default every time I switched to another program.
Now I've killed all settings except the one that actually works. -
Looks like latest VLC has fixed the Windows 7 issues.
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Now that I remember, something else I did right before my BSOD problems started was install a new graphics driver from Windows Update. Now I've gotten rid of it and I'm using the one that came with Windows 7, without upgrading it. Perhaps the new driver is buggy.
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OK, guys, yet another update.
Some more experimentation revealed that indeed the driver that Windows Update downloaded and the one downloaded directly from NVIDIA are both buggy and cause BSOD problems. So I had to use the vanilla one that comes with Windows 7. I had no problems, but SketchUp viewport performance was very poor, especially when activating Aero.
Then, while searching for something else in my drawers, I found the disc that came with the graphics card, installed the Vista 64-bit driver (worked fine in Win7), and now I have superb SketchUp viewport performance and Aero.
Duh!
However, some things are still not working. Namely, Motiva software, which is GPU-heavy. I'll keep XP for the time being but now I'm ready to start working in Windows 7.
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Did you try this beta driver?
http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7_winvista_64bit_195.39_beta.htmlIncludes over 200 bug fixes. Refer to the release notes on the documentation tab for information about the key bug fixes in this release.
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