Thanks for the info, Jim. I am about to purchase a new PC and
they all come with Vista pre-installed nowadays. I was wondering
if DX4WIN would work on the Vista OS or if I would only be able
to use it on my present WINXP based PC I am now using (and will
keep using for ham applications only)
___
Alan Zack
Amateur Radio Station K7ACZ
Official USCG Auxiliary Comm Station
Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
Delta Rocket Quality Engineer, The Boeing Company, Retired
Aviation Chief Warrant Officer, U.S. Coast Guard, Retired
- Original Message -
From: Jim Reisert AD1C [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: dx4win@mailman.qth.net
Sent: Monday, August 06, 2007 3:35 PM
Subject: [Dx4win] DX4WIN 7.03 is running on Windows Vista
Hi Folks,
Late last week, I received my copy of Windows Vista Ultimate
64-bit and I
installed it this weekend. I purchased the OEM version (for
installation on a
new machine) instead of trying to upgrade my existing Windows XP
installation.
I was curious how my existing programs would work with it. Note
that while
Windows XP came on a CD (~ 650 MB), Vista comes on a DVD (~ 4.7
GB). But I
digress...
I have a homebrew computer with an Intel Core 2 Quad processor
(Q6600), 4GB of
RAM, an NVIDIA 8600 GTS video card and a Creative Audigy 4 sound
card. Another
reason for wanting to try Vista was that 32-bit operating systems
can't see all
of that 4GB of memory. Even though they support a 32-bit (4GB)
address space,
some of that address space is taken up by hardware. The
motherboard/BIOS has
the capability to remap that 4th GB of memory above the 32-bit
address space,
but older operating systems still can't see/use it.
Anyway, the installation of Vista went fine, and I was fortunate
that my
wireless networking device, video and sound cards all had
downloadable 64-bit
Vista drivers. I was especially worried about the wireless
networking, since
everything else kind of depended on my having a network! I still
have a few
driver issues but no show-stoppers.
As far as software, my main applications like Eudora Mail and
Quicken are OK.
I can no longer install my Microsoft Visual .NET software, it's
too old (2002).
I downloaded a free express version of Visual C++ from
Microsoft, but I am
having some trouble converting my existing projects (file
permission problems
mostly). Also, my Unix-like Cygwin environment is a little
unstable, this is
the environment I use to maintain the country files, etc.
Having said all this, I was able to get DX4WIN 7.03 installed and
running. I
installed the program as a user (myself). Every time I started
the program, I
got a warning about the vichw11 driver. So I ran DX4WIN as an
Administrator
instead (right-click on the program icon and choose Run as
Administrator) and
it was able to copy that driver into the Vista driver directory.
Now the
program starts without errors (even as a user).
I can manipulate my log and connect to packet (Telnet). I can't
test radios or
other interfaces because I am currently off-the-air. Also, I
don't have any
real COM ports, just a microHAM (USB) interface, which does not
have Vista
driver support (yet).
Vista does not seem any slower or faster than Windows XP, even
though I'm
running the fancy Aero graphics desktop. Some things are in a
different
place, Add/Remove Programs is now just Programs something.
User Account
Control (which warns you when installing/running/uninstalling
programs) is a
little annoying, but no so much that I need to turn it off. I'd
say the
biggest problems are driver and application support. Some
program icons just
disappear out of the system notification area on the taskbar.
It's not always
obvious whether the program is still running or not. I hope most
of these
issues are resolved in the coming year. Intel is slowly killing
off their
32-bit processors, so software developers will have to move into
the 21st
century sooner or later.
I hope this report helps someone. I'm happy to try to answer
(non-hardware-specific) Vista questions off-reflector.
73 - Jim AD1C
--
Jim Reisert AD1C, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.ad1c.us
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