Unplayably slow on Vista?

[WraithLord]

I have work experience with Vista and my recommendation is to wait at least two to three years before upgrading to it. I know I won't be touching it until 2k9 which is when MS will stop support for win-XP. Maybe its just me, but I'd rather err on the side of safety, especially as I consider w2k to be the best MS OS to date.

[Rasit]

Saxon said:
This is mildly off topic, but can anyone tell me why I (basic internet, a few games, basic Excel and Word user) would have any desire to shift to Vista?

None, the only advantage is DirectX 10 (no games will be using it exclusively for a few years) and some better security, but you will have to put up with some very frequent and annoying security popups.

The downside is a lot of untested new code and much higher computer demands (unless you disable aero and things like it).

[Cor]

I am running Vista and it works wonderfully now. I had a problem with dominions 3, but it was my ATI video card (it did not support OpenGL and was clocking 1 frame per second). I downloaded the latest driver and it works very well now.

If you are running an ATI card make sure you have the latest drivers.

[Andrew_Gross]

Rasit said:
Strange, it works perfectly on my vista development machine. I know some issues can be resolved if you disable aero.

I'll give that a try tonight.

[Olive]

I just moved to Vista and dominions 3 seems to work fine.

[Sir_Dr_D]

I got a new computer recently, that came with Vista and I had no problems with it. Vista has a completely different look and feel to if from previous version of windows, so it takes some getting use to. But once you get used to it, I think it is a better O.S. (user interface wise.)

My main annoyance hasn't been speed. Vista tends to save files in its own location. So instead of finding your saved game files in c:\program files\dominions3\savedgame, vista saves it in your profile section in a real wierd path, {profile name}/AppData/Local/VirtualStore/Program Files/Dominions 3/Savedgames. This made playing PBEM games annoying until I got used to it.

[Rasit]

Darrel said:My main annoyance hasn't been speed. Vista tends to save files in its own location. So instead of finding your saved game files in c:\program files\dominions3\savedgame, vista saves it in your profile section in a real wierd path, {profile name}/AppData/Local/VirtualStore/Program Files/Dominions 3/Savedgames. This made playing PBEM games annoying until I got used to it.

That happens since you have installed the game under "program files". Since so many software kept trying to write to a folder that they should not have write access to Microsoft made it so anything being written to "program files" ends up in %profile name%/AppData/Local/VirtualStore/Program Files/[normal folder path].

This way they did not break all the old "malfunctioning" applications but you can still benefit from the increased security you get as running as a restricted user.

[Gandalf Parker]

Saxon said:
This is mildly off topic, but can anyone tell me why I (basic internet, a few games, basic Excel and Word user) would have any desire to shift to Vista?

Basically I think there is no reason for you to switch.

But that doesnt make Vista a bad idea. Vista is apparently an effort by Microsoft to move forward. It abandons much of its support for older windows versions, and adds many excellent programming hooks.

Eventually when programmers make use of the hooks it will create better programs and games to run on Vista. But for now it kindof sucks. It doesnt support whats available to us now. Every company needs to get new drivers out for video cards, sound cards, scanners, cameras, etc etc. And anything written for previous windows is apparently going to, at MOST, achieve the same performance but probably not better.

So until every driver and program gets a Vista version.. no I dont see alot of reason for anyone who isnt a guru to want to jump on Vista. IMHO
Gandalf Parker

[Sir_Dr_D]

Rasit said:

That happens since you have installed the game under "program files". Since so many software kept trying to write to a folder that they should not have write access to Microsoft made it so anything being written to "program files" ends up in %profile name%/AppData/Local/VirtualStore/Program Files/[normal folder path].

This way they did not break all the old "malfunctioning" applications but you can still benefit from the increased security you get as running as a restricted user.

Ah! Thats what the term 'compatibility files' meant. Is there a place Vista recommends to save games like this other then program files then?

[Olive]

Yeah, I've discovered that. Sometimes I notice mp games have returned 1 turn back . And the AppData/Local/VirtualStore/Program Files/Dominions 3/Savedgames only contains a dom3config file and nothing else, seems like .trn files are restored to a previous state.

Why did MS change good old program files, there was absolutely no reason for that ? But I don't think it's a folder problem, I copied the .trn by hand in the directory, and they were replaced by an older version. Maybe is it a service restoring "illegaly" changed files in the program folder ?

Don't know. But as Dom3 doesn't need to be in the program files, I'll move it elsewhere to see if it solves the problem.

It's in such cases that I'm happy to keep my mp mails.