Vista RC2 Released

[spherrod]

Seems to be working well so far - only just got it installed along with Office but coping well so far with daily work

 

[Bozo Galora]

yes, 5744 has been pulled
and not a minute too soon - RTM to OEM's in 5 more days
they may open it again, but I doubt it.
FWIW: never interrupt a vista download, if it goes away, so does your opportunity to reconnect

 

[stash]

and not a minute too soon - RTM to OEM's in 5 more days

Not quite.

 

[smp]

Download worked for me

 

[Bozo Galora]

Originally posted by: stash

and not a minute too soon - RTM to OEM's in 5 more days

Not quite.

yeah, I got a bit carried away (LOL) - "official RTM" is 5 days (Oct 15), but actual ship to OEM's is ~ 2-3 weeks

Vista in the home stretch: RC2 roundup
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/107476.asp

Windows Vista Release Candidate 2, which was made available starting late last week, will be the last test version issued publicly before Microsoft ships the new operating system, according to the company.

In his message to Vista testers, Windows exec Jim Allchin said the company is "just around the corner" from releasing the product to manufacturing. But Microsoft isn't yet giving firm dates for the business or retail releases. Announcing RC2, the company repeated that it "continues to target Windows Vista availability for volume license customers in November 2006 and general availability in January 2007, although the final delivery will be based on quality."

In a note to clients this morning, Goldman Sachs analyst Rick Sherlund called the RC2 release "further encouraging news that Microsoft may indeed be able to deliver Vista by its target date of the end of January 2007."

Mary Jo Foley reports on the early RC2 feedback on her All About Microsoft blog: "Is it ready to be released to manufacturing in a matter of 'days'? Microsoft officials say yes; testers say ? mostly."

The New York Times reports on the Vista testing process in this story today. Slashdot readers dissect the situation in the comments to this related post.

And Robert McLaws reports, based on an interview with Allchin, that the company has a surprise up its sleeve for the final Windows Vista version -- something outside testers apparently haven't yet seen. Writes McLaws: "After this, Microsoft is changing the Product Keys, and will be checking in some User Experience code that they've been sitting on so they can still surprise the market."

 

[Genx87]

One interesting development for me. The OS fails to install office 2003 patches from Windows Update. It will start the process and never get past the first patch.

 

[Codewiz]

RC2 is the first install I have done since Beta1. I was so disappointed with beta1 that I refrained from installing any more betas. RC2 is pretty freakin sweet IMO. Everything has worked like I expected except for an obvious piece of hardware. My old Hercules Game Theater XP. I haven't been able to use it since I moved to 64bit XP.

 

[Shawn]

Originally posted by: Bozo Galora

Originally posted by: stash

and not a minute too soon - RTM to OEM's in 5 more days

Not quite.

yeah, I got a bit carried away (LOL) - "official RTM" is 5 days (Oct 15), but actual ship to OEM's is ~ 2-3 weeks

Vista in the home stretch: RC2 roundup
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/107476.asp

Windows Vista Release Candidate 2, which was made available starting late last week, will be the last test version issued publicly before Microsoft ships the new operating system, according to the company.

In his message to Vista testers, Windows exec Jim Allchin said the company is "just around the corner" from releasing the product to manufacturing. But Microsoft isn't yet giving firm dates for the business or retail releases. Announcing RC2, the company repeated that it "continues to target Windows Vista availability for volume license customers in November 2006 and general availability in January 2007, although the final delivery will be based on quality."

In a note to clients this morning, Goldman Sachs analyst Rick Sherlund called the RC2 release "further encouraging news that Microsoft may indeed be able to deliver Vista by its target date of the end of January 2007."

Mary Jo Foley reports on the early RC2 feedback on her All About Microsoft blog: "Is it ready to be released to manufacturing in a matter of 'days'? Microsoft officials say yes; testers say ? mostly."

The New York Times reports on the Vista testing process in this story today. Slashdot readers dissect the situation in the comments to this related post.

And Robert McLaws reports, based on an interview with Allchin, that the company has a surprise up its sleeve for the final Windows Vista version -- something outside testers apparently haven't yet seen. Writes McLaws: "After this, Microsoft is changing the Product Keys, and will be checking in some User Experience code that they've been sitting on so they can still surprise the market."

they better fix the damn power management before issues before they release the final version or i won't be buying it. my monitor doesn't even go into low power mode with RC2.

 

[FreakyGuy]

I found out that Vista doesn't let you use Region Free DVD Drives. I had to revert back to OEM firmware for my DVD drives.

 

[flexy]

Originally posted by: Bozo Galora
yes, 5744 has been pulled
and not a minute too soon - RTM to OEM's in 5 more days
they may open it again, but I doubt it.
FWIW: never interrupt a vista download, if it goes away, so does your opportunity to reconnect

i mean..it's sad..i had bad experiences using that ^%%!@ akamai downlaod manager....makes you wonder when you let it run over night and the next day it's still sitting at 1% Same w/ a d/l manager like leechget which only pulls 365MB off a 3GB file.

So i had to d/l vista w/ bittorrent like i am doing w@rez or something

 

[flexy]

biggest problem still..ATI TRAY TOOLS...for so many reasons. First, the ATI drivers w/ CCC really use way too much resources....and i cant get my monitor displaying my 1360x1024 at 85hz....i am certain i had it right with RC1 5728 and it works on XP too.
I would need ATT for overclocking, 3d-settiings and the refresh rates BAD.

Audigy 2 drivers....another thing i really need...otherwise the OS is all nice and good, but i need sound and a proper display.

Problem is really NOT the OS but rather some 3rd party apps and drivers which i consider mandatory on my system. Sigh.

 

[Bozo Galora]

The hilarious thing is that MS says they are now down to 570 bugs.
Of course, the missing word in that sentence is "KNOWN", as in "known bugs"
Obviously, when the O/S goes retail to the public at large, that number will go up to 63,454,897 - lol

 

[Sunner]

Just a little FYI to the people who wondered about Audigy's and X-Fi's, I got my X-Fi working with no trouble at all, just downloaded drivers and installed.
Running the i386 version by the way.

Didn't run it for too long, too much of a hassle for no real benefit, all this "user friendly" and security stuff is really going too far and getting on my nerves.
They should make a "Windows Vista Yes-I-Have-Some-Sort-Of-Idea-WTF-I'm-Doing Edition" without all that.

 

[porcorosso]

"They should make a "Windows Vista Yes-I-Have-Some-Sort-Of-Idea-WTF-I'm-Doing Edition" without all that."

Exactly how I felt. Installing it and getting the hardware and software I use to work was complicated ONLY by the hand-holding and the "here-let-me-do-that-for-you" behavior of the OS and its installation routine. It appears that most of my "learning curve" on this OS is going to be figuring out where they hid stuff that didn't really need to be hidden -- and certainly not hidden from someone who's trying to admin the box.

Shucks.

One thing, though -- it is kind of purdy.

 

[BehindEnemyLines]

FYI - You can use the Local Policy and Services to edit some of the not needed features such as UAC, Security Center, Defender....etc.

It should then operate less user confirmation. Everything seems smoother without the "Continue", "Yes", etc.

 

[SynthDude2001]

The world must be coming to an end - Creative actually released new Vista drivers for the Audigy series today, signed too. So no more "Press F8 at every boot to disable the driver integrity check" BS if you're on Vista x64

I just installed them myself and am about to reboot to test...

(Just thought I'd give a heads-up to anyone using an Audigy card under Vista, especially the x64 version)

Edit: Sound works now on a normal boot (without disabling the signed driver check), OpenAL/5.1 sound in games works great too. I'm pleasantly surprised.

Small note - setting sound to 5.1 in the Windows speaker setup doesn't actually seem to change anything (no sound out of rear speakers), however using the included Creative Audio Console app to set 5.1 does it perfectly. The individual speaker levels in Playback Devices/Speakers properties (the Windows control panel) now work too, while they didn't for me before (and this is important as my rear speakers are quite a bit further from my listening position than my front ones are). Overall, :thumbsup:

 

[Pabster]

Originally posted by: flexy
biggest problem still..ATI TRAY TOOLS...for so many reasons. First, the ATI drivers w/ CCC really use way too much resources....and i cant get my monitor displaying my 1360x1024 at 85hz....i am certain i had it right with RC1 5728 and it works on XP too.
I would need ATT for overclocking, 3d-settiings and the refresh rates BAD.

Audigy 2 drivers....another thing i really need...otherwise the OS is all nice and good, but i need sound and a proper display.

Problem is really NOT the OS but rather some 3rd party apps and drivers which i consider mandatory on my system. Sigh.

Give it a few months. All of this will be ironed out.

Remember that the consumer rollout of Vista won't occur until January 2007.

FWIW 5744 has installed without a hitch on several machines (including laptops) with only a sparse device or two here and there unsupported due to driver issues.

 

[porcorosso]

Yeah, that stuff didn't bother me much at all. I actually didn't mind the warnings and confirmation dialogs, and I played with the features of UAC as a limited user, too. What bugged me more was when the installation procedure and the OS itself made decisions and just told me about them, without providing a way of correcting those decisions until after the fact. Like, for instance, when I want to do a clean install that's exactly what I want to do. I don't want all of my previous Windows files saved in a folder -- especially since they won't ever be useful to me anyway. I think that's a weird, weird default for an installation process. I understand saving the data, even though I would prefer to use my backups. But this method sticks them solidly in the way and has the installation process dodge their location on the drive. For all I know MS has done its homework on this and it doesn't result in more scattering of the OS files than a true clean installation. But I just prefer to be told UP FRONT what is going to happen instead of being told what is happening after I no longer have a choice in the matter.

I think the interface is really pretty good. I was trying it on a couple of workstations with 256 MB video subsystems and a couple of gigs of RAM apiece. Wonder what it'll look like on my Panasonic R3. Heh.