Unofficial Tex Murphy

Well, Microsoft's Vista woes have continued this morning after the official release of Vista Service Pack 1.

Made available to the public less than 10 hours ago, the long awaited patch for Windows Vista began finding its way onto users' update screens. I myself was lucky enough to nab it as soon as it came out (I was in the middle of updating the system at the time).

However, many sources have posted articles stating the official word from Microsoft is that the Service Pack has been taken offline after only a matter of hours as a result of installation issues.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/0 ... 5&from=rss

Apparently a pre-requisite installation required for SP1 (update number KB937287) has been causing problems on many Vista machines, resulting in an endless boot loop (shut down, reboot, shut down, reboot), and in some cases, causing total boot failure once SP1 attempts to install. However, microsoft says that even though this incident has been isolated to a small amount of machines, they saw best to remove it until these kinks were ironed out, thus preventing Windows Update from automatically applying the Service Pack.

Interestingly, I had some issues with installing the update myself. After running windows Update from Vista, I started to install SP1 when two more updates popped up and tried to cut in line (one was the pre-requisite, no surprise. The other was an MS Office 2007 update). When they both tried to install (at the same time for some reason, instead of in order) it locked up the system.... a couple of reboots later I was able to put SP1 on hold, install the other updates, reboot again, and then put on SP1 flawlessly. Vista is now running quite well with SP1 installed, so I was one of the lucky ones to actually get it working when it was available.

Microsoft has not yet announced when it will re-release a fixed version of the Service Pack installer, but sources say it should be a matter of days (maybe weeks).

After using Vista for the first time over the past few days, it's no where near as bad as I thought it would be... it's just a shame MS cannot seem to do anything bloody right... and for the world's largest software company to also be the worlds most unreliable, it's scary!

-Cub. =o)

Everything after Windows 98 has just been a glossy re-badging of what they have already released. NT seems to be the most stable and secure in their product range. It is a shame that it doesn't support gaming. Then there's the ill-fated and long forgotten ME. XP does a decent job, but I'm not convinced to cross over to VISTA just yet. One thing that really annoys me is the lack of reverse compatability with some games. I have a stack of games that worked fine on ME but they refuse to work on XP. I've heard these issues are only worsened with VISTA. I'm going to wait for the second edition before I sign up for it.

Unfortunately Joel, XP was the beginning of the end for the old Dos apps. Now Vista has completely dropped 16-bit support all together (they had a little bit in XP), and it's only going to continue like this.

Dos is dead my friend... welcome to the wonderful world of 64-bit technology.

-Cub. =o)

DOS IS NOT DEAD!!!! I still have my computer with Window 98 in the garage...I shall keep DOS on life support until the new DOS revolution comes and covers me with a warm blanket...whoa..ok, that was wrong...

You can, however, find "Brand New" machines with the older technology on eBay and other places... Computers running Windows 3.1 or even computer not running windows at all, going all the way back to just Dos...

These computers are decently cheap usually too... I've seen them on eBay for under $100 dollars...
Here's one for example...
http://cgi.ebay.com/Vintage-Gateway-200 ... dZViewItem

I've considered getting an old computer or 2 just to play those older games that required things that they don't give us anymore in these newer ones... I just don't have anywhere to set up that many computers... lol I have my main one, then I have my son's and then there's the laptop... I would need to build another room just for Gaming...
hmmm, that's not a bad thought, build another room, just put Gaming Computers and the Playstation and Xbox and stuff in there... hmmm, not sure if the wife will go for this though...

I still have an old Pentium III running Win 98 that I use to play the Dos games, and Tex Games... but I see no use trying to get them working on my main computer.

-Cub. =o)

While I have not gotten all the old classics I would like to work on my XP system, I have actually been pleasantly content as well as surprised over the past four years at how much my XP laptop has done for me. I admit I'm not the big gamer that I really used to be in years past, and maybe this has something to do with it, but using XP has not really been an inconvenience for me. Nearly every DOS game I want to play these days I have conveniently setup in DosBox or VDM Sound on my laptop. The more modern games seem to run on my computer fairly well with just a little bit of coaxing at worst. I will be graduating from college within the year, and at that time, I will probably purchase a new desktop once I complete my big move and start my career. I'm sure I'll probably be stuck with Vista at that time, but I'll just see how that goes. I'm sure I'll keep my laptop (or another older computer around) for backups and those "gaming" moments.

Dosbox solves my XP woes

I haven't gotten around to Installing DosBox yet...

So it's really that user friendly, huh??? I just never feel like I have the time to go through all the setups...

DosBox + Apple Mac = No worries

That's been my experience so far.

lol

I don't have Apple... I have XP...

I have run into a problem, but I'm searching the board before I go dumping my troubles on the Boards... ;}

Joel wrote:Everything after Windows 98 has just been a glossy re-badging of what they have already released. NT seems to be the most stable and secure in their product range. It is a shame that it doesn't support gaming. Then there's the ill-fated and long forgotten ME. XP does a decent job, but I'm not convinced to cross over to VISTA just yet. One thing that really annoys me is the lack of reverse compatability with some games. I have a stack of games that worked fine on ME but they refuse to work on XP. I've heard these issues are only worsened with VISTA. I'm going to wait for the second edition before I sign up for it.

When you really think about it, DOS has been dead since (circa) Window's 98 because that's when I recall the initial issues of DOS only games began to have problems. I'm actually quite amazed that even after 13 years since Windows 95 was introduced we can still manage to run the DOS games on XP. So i'm really not surprised to hear that VISTA places the final nail in the coffin for us DOS gamers. But, as expressed in this thread by somebody else, it's only a matter of building what is now considered a primative computer (should the hardware be available) and obtaining a copy of Windows 95 or 98. But I think from here on in, all we can rely on is re-issues and updated versions from the artists themselves, a possibility which is getting thinner which each year.

I reiterate, for the most part, PC gaming is dead, hence my decision in 2006 to cross over to console gaming. As far as I can see, the most worthwhile titles since Half Life 2 are Bioshock and Crysis. The only PC game I'm still hanging for is Duke Nukem Forever.