NaughtySpawn

Posts Tagged ‘OS’

My endeavors with Ubuntu have been very favorable. In fact, I’ve gotten apps to install that I never thought would work. First, using Wine 1.1.40 and PlayOnLinux I got Notepad++ running. A small accomplishment, but Notepad++ is a fantastic editor. Then I moved onto something more impressive and got Digsby to install and connect correctly. It installed without incident and let me connect to Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail. Not bad at all.

Then came the Uber test. Using PlayOnLinux I actually got Office 2007 to install and run. I was able to use Word and OneNote within Ubuntu. Word seemed to run flawlessly, while OneNote had some issues at shutdown. It seems to crash on exit, which is noted on the WineHQ site, but it doesn’t seem to lose any data. I’m note sure I would actually use Office in this configuration, VirtualBox seems safer, but it was one heck of an experiment and incredibly interesting to get it working.

I’m starting to get the hang of Ubuntu. By no means am I versed in it’s workings, but I’ve been able to install a ton of useful software and it seems there’s plenty of ways to get some old Windows app to run on it as well. Again, VirtualBox seems the smarter bet, but as I get more comfortable with the platform I become more convinced that I will be replacing Windows 7 in the not too distant future.

Not only is Windows frustrating when I’m trying to use it, but it’s equally annoying when I try to make it go away. Sleep mode just doesn’t seem to work for me. About every third time I put the machine into Sleep mode it completely crashes or it hangs and never shuts down. When it does crash it goes for a full on "Blue Screen". If it doesn’t Blue Screen it disables the monitors and then hangs on exit and I have to force the machine off. Since I can’t see anything it doesn’t give me much choice in the matter.

I now shut down all the apps before I put it to sleep so I don’t lose anything I’m working on. Windows 7 seems to have issues galore with Sleep mode (just look it up in Google); can’t control the network when it comes out of sleep and now most of the time I can’t get the thing to sleep without it crashing. It’s stupid garbage like this that just infuriates me. My Dell Dimension with XP goes into and comes out of Sleep mode dozens of times a week without issue.

Nice work Microsoft, way to improve on your previous OS.

This is just one example of the many problems I’ve been facing with Windows 7 and why it infuriates me. Things that used to work under XP without incident, don’t work under the "new and improved" OS.

I recently bought a Dell Inspiron 630 to replace an older Dell Dimension 5150. The Inspiron is an AMD Athlon II X4 chipset since I didn’t want to go with Intel this time around. Instead of using the onboard video I installed an Nvidia 8500GT PCIe video card and an Nvidia 6200 PCI card. I have two monitors plugged into the 8500GT card and one into the 6200 card for a total of three monitors across two video cards.

The funny thing, the system and Windows both recognize the cards. The drivers are installed and updated. And, when Windows initially starts it can see both cards and puts a display across all three. On the surface everything looks fine.

Until I start arranging windows. Within a minute or two of trying to use this configuration all three screen will lockup and it looks like the entire machine is hung. However, most of the time I can press Ctrl-Alt-Delete, lock the machine, log back in, and the video will respond again (at least on the main monitor, the video on the other two is completely locked and unusable). This usually gives me enough time to get to Control Panel and disable the 6200 video card. Once that card is disabled, everything works fine. I can drag and drop across monitors without issue and it doesn’t lock up. As soon as I enable the card, the problem comes right back.

As I mentioned, the drivers are updated and they use the same driver download. Windows doesn’t show any conflicts or errors in Device Manager. And since it can power that card and monitor it appears everything is fine. But alas, it simply can’t use it correctly.

Under Windows XP these same cards in this same configuration worked correctly. It just baffles me that Windows has a handle on the card to begin with then fumbles all over itself.

Is this a problem with Windows and dual video cards or is this some hate between an AMD mother/chipset combination and Nvidia? I’ve noticed hundreds of articles about problems with Windows 7 and multiple video cards and no one seems to have a solution. Since multiple monitors is extremely common, and multiple video cards is just as common I can’t see why Windows 7 can’t make this work. I’ve seen all sorts of comments about buying two identical cards, but Win7 isn’t worth $100 bucks to me, it’s certainly not worth me spending a few hundred more on video cards just to get it to do something an older version could handle.

Anyone else running into something like that? For the time being, I guess I’m just SOL and this is another problem with the latest and greatest Microsoft has to offer.