Microsoft: Set your systems for Vista

ZDnet ^ | May 18, 2006 | Ina Fried

[Mr. Blonde]

On Thursday, the company kicked off a campaign aimed at helping customers prepare for the new operating system, which is set for a mainstream launch in January. As expected, Microsoft gave details of two programs. The "Vista-capable" program allows machines that meet a minimum set of requirements to tout themselves as able to run the new Windows. Computer makers who meet higher requirements will be able to tout their machines as "Premium Ready," indicating the PCs are able to take advantage of higher-end features, such as Vista's Aero graphics. "There's really no reason to wait until the launch of Windows Vista to start shopping for a PC that can deliver a great Windows Vista experience or to start thinking about upgrading your current PC to windows Vista," product manager Greg Amrofell said in a telephone interview. Microsoft also launched on Thursday a "Get Ready" Web site, which includes an Upgrade Advisor tool to help people determine just how Vista-ready an existing PC is. The downloadable program is designed to tell people which features and versions of Vista their PC is able to run, thereby abstracting some of the complex requirements of Vista. For example, Aero graphics require a certain amount of memory bandwidth--a measurement of PC performance that few people are likely to know about in their machine. The advisor tool will simply say whether a PC will work out or not, rather than focus on specific requirements. That way, customers "don't have to spend time in the footnotes of complex system requirements," said Mike Burk, the PR Manager, Windows Client. That said, Microsoft did publish official minimum requirements for Vista on Thursday, largely matching the Vista-capable specifications. Systems need an 800 MHz processor, 512MB of memory, a 20GB hard drive with 15GB of free space and a CD-ROM drive. That guarantees access to Vista's core features, but not Aero and other premium features. To be classified as Vista-capable, a computer needs an 800MHz processor, 512MB of memory and a DirectX 9-capable graphics card. Premium Ready machines need a 1GHz processor, 128MB of graphics memory, 1GB of system memory, a 40GB hard drive and an internal or external DVD-ROM drive. While Microsoft has provided some clarity on checking a PC for Vista, it's not a straightforward process, said Michael Cherry, an analyst at market research firm Directions on Microsoft. "I don't understand why it has to be this complex," he said. "Why can't this be written up on a one-page piece of paper in a manner that you don't have to be an electrical engineer to understand?" Most shipping PCs should be Vista-capable, Microsoft said. For example, all systems introduced by Dell this year are Vista-capable. The majority of Dell's Vista-capable machines will support Aero graphics and more than three-fourths of its models can be configured to run the fancier graphics. Dell is also offering 17 custom-configured systems that are designed to support Aero. "Our sense is that the vast majority of PCs do meet the requirements for the Vista-capable logo," Amrofell said. As for Premium Ready, he said that "a good number of PCs do meet the bar, and that's going to grow over the next few months." The marketing programs and upgrade tool are designed to ease some of the uncertainty around Vista well ahead of the back-to-school and holiday shopping seasons, the two biggest PC selling times of the year. Vista had long been expected to arrive by the 2006 holidays, but Microsoft said in March that it would not arrive on store shelves until January. Kevin Johnson, head of the business unit that includes Windows, said in an interview with CNET News.com this week that Microsoft is likely to have some kind of discount or upgrade program to help those who buy a PC this holiday season upgrade to Vista. "Yeah, there's likely to be something," Johnson said, without giving specifics.

[dennisw]

Where did you get the proc/MB? I need to build a server with something like that. Just need a 3 year old board/chip with built in graphics.
__________________________

I got my EPOX motherboard here. https://www.epoxstore.com/Products.asp?CType=1&CID=1004

Bought two refurbished *EP-8RDA3+ Socket A* and they work great. No onboard graphics on them. I see Intel and Nforce2 boards there with on board graphics.

Nice board with on-board graphics you can use older 300watt power supply with. No P4 12 volt plug needed:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813138234


You can get cheap (50$) used Athlon XP on Ebay. Get one with a heat sink. By mistake I have overheated Athlons and never been able to destroy them.
http://search-completed.ebay.com/search/search.dll?GetResult&so=Show+Items&saprchi=&sacat=3671&sofocus=so&fis=2&saprclo=&ftrv=1&from=R10&satitle=athlon+heat sink&sargn=-1&ftrt=1&fsop=3&catref=C12&sbrftog=1

Also I have an Athlon XP 1800 with heatsink I can sell. The fan is 60mm so it makes more noise than heat sink w/ 80mm fan



Or go to TigerDirect for cheapo CeleronD (all above 2.5Ghz) that you have to put in for a rebate.
On the CelronD at TigerDirect just be sure you get the right one for your Socket 478 or Socket 775 motherboard. 478 is older so cheaper motherboards

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Category/category_cpu.asp

https://www.epoxstore.com/

https://www.epoxstore.com/Products.asp?CType=1&CID=1004

[cinives]

My favorite OS.

[for-q-clinton]

That's a turn off. A hidden BSOD is a restart, just as if you'd hit a hard reset button.

It's clear you don't know what you're talking about. A BSOD is not created when you reset your machine.

[for-q-clinton]

Vista will actually be MS-DOS v13.0.

That would be wrong. It's more like NT 6 or 7 depending if you make XP a .5 rev. something

[zeugma]

That's a turn off. A hidden BSOD is a restart, just as if you'd hit a hard reset button.

It's clear you don't know what you're talking about. A BSOD is not created when you reset your machine.

I believe he was making an analogy. A "hidden BSOD" is like you hit a hard reset button. There is a setting under XP that can be set so that instead of displaying a BSOD, when a catastrophic fault occurs, the computer just reboots. It's not like many people actually write down the codes the BSOD displays. 

I can see this being of value to many people, who aren't particularly interested in the output of the dump  a BSOD generates. For myself, when I have a kernel panic, I'd rather know about it. Since I haven't had one in ages, (since I don't do MS-Windows) I guess it's a fairly moot point.

[antiRepublicrat]

It's clear you don't know what you're talking about. A BSOD is not created when you reset your machine.

No, that makes it clear you don't know what you're talking about. It's the other way around. Spontaneous restarts (not shutdowns caused by heat) are BSODs that have been trapped by the system, which restarts itself instead of displaying a BSOD.

System Properties, Advanced, Startup and Recovery settings, System failure, uncheck "Automatically restart" to bring back the BSOD. If your setting in this is to do a complete memory dump, you may have noticed that the system was unresponsive before the restart.

[antiRepublicrat]

Not so fast. Looks like MicroSoft has, once again, stolen another company's intellectual property. What a shock:

My first reaction was "Ugh, not another stupid software patent lawsuit." But no! It's Microsoft that may have patented Symantec's disclosed trade secrets. That's pretty low.

[thinkthenpost]

I am thinking I may buy a new machine just prior to the Vista release so I can have fairly latest greatest, but not be saddled with all the DRM stuff on the way with Vista. Thoughts anyone?

[Mr. Blonde]

The newest version of Mac OSX is supposed to debut in August. And will of course be on their latest hardware which will run XP also if you want it to.

[for-q-clinton]

Spontaneous restarts (not shutdowns caused by heat) are BSODs that have been trapped by the system, which restarts itself instead of displaying a BSOD.

This is just flat out wrong. A BSOD is nothing more than a high-level info of a kernel mode crash in the OS. Reseting the machine by killing the power, CPU melting down, hitting the reset button is not a BSOD as it's not an OS crash and the OS can't capture it. But if you still think you're correct. Send me a dump file of a machine that had it's power zapped....guess what it doesn't exist, but if you can somehow find one let me know as you must be in fantasy land.

[for-q-clinton]

His analogy is flawed though as there is no dump file. A hidden BSOD would still create a dump file.

[for-q-clinton]

Actually we can test his theory. Configure your XP machine not to reboot on crash. And then pull the plug.

Next check for the dump file.

[zeugma]

if I had an XP box, I'd try it. Fortunately though, I no longer have to do windows. :-)

[for-q-clinton]

I can see why you no longer do windows...No offense...but if one things they'll get a dump file when killing the power...well I guess Windows may be a bit too complex for them.

[Echo Talon]

Athlon XP 2500+ processor is hardly slower than the 3000+/939 Athlons. You can run 64 bit OS and PCIE graphics cards, other than that there is no advantage

Multimedia instructions Athlon XP 2500+ 3DNow™ and MMX™

Multimedia instructions Athlon 64 3000+ MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, 3DNOW! Professional

64 bit Support: Yes
Hyper-Transport Support: Yes
L1 Cache: 64KB+64KB
L2 Cache: 512KB
1.35-1.4Volts...
Socket 939 not old socket A

[zeugma]

No offense taken, but I still think we're all talking past each others here. My original butting in was concerning the fact that it appeared to me that an analogy had been presented, comparing the BSOD to a power off. In many ways this is true, i.e., your work isn't saved, the system can very well be placed in an inconsistant state in both applications and the OS itself if something was in the process of being changed when the BSOD occurred. I wasn't claiming, nor I believe was antiRepublicrat claiming that a system could somehow write out data (a dump or whatever) when power had been pulled from a box.

I was merely saying that the two things could very well be similar in the end result. (i.e., your system could be in an inconsistant state because no orderly shutdown occurred) The same thing happens on unix systems when you have a kernel panic. In the same way that windows can flush out dump information when it BSODs, with a Unix system, you can set traps to dump information when you have a kernel panic. You can also set it to automatically reboot on a panic. Personally, I don't think this is generally a good idea at all, so I don't use this feature, but in some situations it is probably appropos. 

[Echo Talon]

The same thing happens on unix systems when you have a kernel panic.

I hate that kernel panic! LOL, only happens when I overclock to much... :)

[antiRepublicrat]

Reseting the machine by killing the power, CPU melting down, hitting the reset button is not a BSOD

The CPU melting will not result in a restart, and killing the power or hitting reset is not spontaneous.

Basic fact: When your Windows box suddenly restarts for no apparent reason (you didn't do it, no app purposely shut down the system like after an update, there wasn't a brown-out), it is because XP has trapped a system error that would have normally shown on your screen as a BSOD. Instead, XP writes a dump to the disk (if you've opted for that), and restarts. Thus the spontaneous restarts I referred to.

With this new knowledge, you should be able to understand my comment about the dump. Windows writes the dump before it restarts (it's right there in the settings), so setting it for a full memory dump will result in an extended period of system inavailability and disk access before the spontaneous restart. Setting it for no dump will result in an instant system restart.

You can disable this option where I showed you. Then you will see the BSOD in the case of a system crash, because the system will not automatically restart.

[for-q-clinton]

zeugman,
what you're saying makes perfect sense I believe we are in sync. In regards to antiReplublicrat...he's just wrong. He still claims CPU "melting" isn't the same as losing power.

Well I know for a fact that an overheated CPU will halt the system like a powerloss as I have a Toshiba laptop that gets too hot and it just kills the power to save the machine. If your PC hits a specific temp it will just shutdown (depending on the BIOS...but must have a halt threshold set).

[antiRepublicrat]

In regards to antiReplublicrat...he's just wrong. He still claims CPU "melting" isn't the same as losing power.

Are you going GE on me? You can't read the simple statement?

Your CPU melting is a known reason for shutdown. Losing power is a known reason for shutdown (and sometimes restart).

Your XP box suddenly restarting for no apparent reason means a system error happened and it restarted instead of showing a BSOD. Unless you want to get into semantics, you had a BSOD, it just didn't show.

This is a KNOWN FACT, and is supported by a KNOWN WINDOWS SETTING. What is your problem?