My most recent attempt at gaming on Windows 7 met with an unfortunate result.

Recently I tried to run Mirror’s Edge on Windows 7, and I ran into the same problem that many have experienced.  The game installs fine and runs fine, but there is no sound during the animated cut scenes.

Some people have fixed the problem by installing the OpenAL drivers, but unfortunately this did not fix the situation for me.

Therefore I am able to run the game, but I can not hear the story that’s revealed during the movies.

In what is certainly a related issue, if I play the BIK movies through the official player outside of the game I experience the same result.  The movie plays, but there is no audio.

Granted, the cut scenes in the games do have sub titles, but that hardly makes up for it.

See you folks later.

Technorati Tags: Windows 7, Windows, Microsoft, Microsoft Windows

So, my diary entries are coming less frequently now. I’m sure that you’ve all noticed this. The reason for that is, frankly, it’s all become quite boring.

In a good way, though, because nothing is breaking, nothing is crashing. Aside from the minor issues mentioned in my previous posts, everything’s working.

I’m not complaining.

What I’m doing now is sitting here trying to think of something to write because it’s been awhile since I’ve updated everyone on Windows 7 itself. Thing is, I have nothing to write about.

I suppose that’s going to have to be today’s post: Nothing to report. All’s well; everything’s okay here.

Have any requests? Any opinions from a non-reporter, non-technology-site user about anything in particular that you want to know about? Ask away. All about Windows 7, of course. Please no love life questions.

See you folks next post. I’ll see what I can dredge up to write about, but hopefully I won’t have anything to say at all next time, either.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Windows 7, Microsoft Windows 7, Windows

In this article, the terms “memory” and “RAM” are used interchangeably; they both mean the same thing.

This evening I’ve been running Microsoft Windows 7 with 2 GBs of RAM, as I promised, though I am late in getting this report written.  I apologize for that.

Typical PC Usage:

All of my common programs are running.  I have not made any exceptions to my behavior.

Typical PC usage has been unaffected by reducing the system memory to 2 GBs.  Windows 7 has managed this well, and honestly I had forgotten that I had removed two sticks of memory from my computer.  The boot time did not seem any longer than usual, but perhaps I wasn’t paying enough attention to notice (on the other hand, it didn’t increase boot time long enough to force me to notice).

Browsing the folders on my computer did access the page file (the cache on the hard drive) a bit more frequently, and I may have noticed a very minute occasional pause when accessing more heavily populated folders.

Browsing the web using Firefox and making heavy use of multiple tabs did not create any noticeable slow down in Firefox.

Opening a large GIF file did have a slight pause, but opening a PDF file in Foxit Reader did not have any noticeable decrease in speed.

Opening an 86 MB self-extracting archive was quick and simple, and moving the same 86 MB file to the recycle bin was equally hitch-free.

In general, such daily mundane tasks such as browsing the web, checking email, opening / saving / closing files and the like were not significantly affected by reducing Windows 7 to 2 GBs of memory.

Multimedia Playback

Playback of a normal definition video file off of the hard drive was as smooth as it was with 4 GBs of RAM.

Playing a 1080p high definition video file off of the hard drive was also as smooth (and as beautiful) as ever.

Streaming video files off of the web went flawlessly.  You should have no problems watching Youtube or Hulu when using 2 GBs of memory in Windows 7.

Streaming high definition went without any problems, as well.

Generally speaking, multimedia worked flawlessly.

Gaming

Game play was affected, though it will probably be doable.

Mass Effect had some graphical artifacts that I had not previously noticed.  I didn’t catch any screen shots of it because they flashed by far too quickly for me to get a shot.  It was uncommon, but certainly noticeable.  Game play in this test consisted of some fire fights, dialogue, and general running about.

Above:  Mass Effect’s Resource Usage

World of Warcraft surprised me.  Frankly I expected it to have no problems; I almost didn’t bother loading it to test it.  The reality is that it certainly was effected.  WoW in Windows 7 with 2 GBs of RAM experienced an increase in the amount of swapping.  The length of each access would best be described as a “burst”.  They were not exactly constant, of course, but they were frequent.  Game play in this test consisted of swimming around, quickly moving the camera, moving quickly between “above” and “below” water, and fighting mobs as well as some general running around.

Above:  World of Warcraft’s Resource Usage

Bottom Line:  Gaming appears to feel the decrease to 2 GBs of RAM the most, and, generally speaking, I would recommend that gamers aspire to 4 GBs of memory for their Windows 7 gaming needs.  Everything else seems to work quite well enough with 2 GBs of memory.

It’s now about 1:38 AM so it’s time for me to get to bed.  I hope that this post has been useful to some of you, and I wish you all a good night.

Technorati Tags: Windows 7, Micrsoft, Microsoft Windows 7, Gaming, Games

Good news this time, folks.

Mass Effect runs perfectly fine on Windows 7 – well, next to perfectly fine.  It did crash the first time that I ran it, but I haven’t had a problem with it since.

I run Mass Effect on Windows 7 at 1680×1050 with all options maxed (with cinema effect disabled because I personally dislike that visual effect).  In the Catalyst control panel I have Anti-aliasing set to 4x and anisotropic filtering set to 16x, and Adaptive Anti-aliasing enabled.

I ran the game until meeting the first character at the dig site and finished off a few geth around that area.

While I won’t be playing entirely through the game again, I haven’t had a single hitch during game play up to this point.

In all, Mass Effect runs nice and smooth under Microsoft Windows 7.

Technorati Tags: Mass Effect, Windows 7, Microsoft Windows 7

As promised, I installed Knights of The Old Republic on Windows 7.  The game’s installation went fine and its icon appeared in the Games browser accessible from the Start menu.

Unfortunately, KOTOR will not run.  I ran it as administrator but this would not fix the problem.  It simply “stops responding” as soon as the screen resolution changes.  The game was patched via the launcher.

Before being too disappointed, please keep in mind that I am also running beta ATi drivers.  I can not be certain that this problem is specifically an issue with Windows 7 or if it is caused by the beta drivers – or a combination of these factors.

I do apologize for not getting around to testing the system with 2 GBs of RAM.  It’s a little frustrating for both of us, but hopefully I’ll have a report for that by tomorrow along with my experiences about the improved UAC.

Feel free to keep sending in your requests (either on here or at MMORPG.com) and I will see if I can accommodate them.

An aside, according to posts at MMORPG.com, Warhammer Online runs very well on Windows 7.

I’m also considering testing some of those F2P MMOs, but would that be worth our time?  Are they popular enough?  I honestly don’t know if readers would be interested in that, or if they are then which game(s) I should test.

See you soon!

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Windows 7, Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Windows, Win 7, KOTOR

This is a slightly more technical post that can be skipped by most.

Just FYI to those who run a VPN.  I managed to remember my PPTP login details and my PC has been connected to my VPN for maybe a few hours now.  All is working fine.  (OpenVPN still isn’t installed correctly but I probably won’t spend any significant amount of time on it unless requested)

Note:  I make several references to “Windows.old”.  What is this?  When I installed Windows 7 I did not completely format the hard drive.  Instead, I allowed Windows 7 to backup my old files.  Everything from Windows Vista (including the Program Files folders, Documents, and everything from the Users folder) were moved into a new folder called Windows.old.

The second day of using Windows 7 Beta as my only O/S has passed, and already it feels like I’ve settled in.  Granted, I have yet to use some of its new interesting features such as Libraries [Info @ Arstechnica], but at this point I’ve grown accustomed to its new UI.

There have been a couple of minor issues.  The most annoying was that Skype routinely closed on its own.  At first I thought that this was because I was using the Skype that resided in Windows.old, but Windows 7 soon informed me that there was a known conflict with the program.  Thankfully it also pointed me to the download of Skype’s most recent beta version [get that here].  That’s worked without problems.

A friend of mine also found an older version of Skype that’s working fine on his Windows 7 installation, but that too crashed / closed on me.

The second minor issue is that I could not get Skype to install into the correct Program Files (x86) directory.  It always installs into Windows.old.  I suspect that this is because I originally ran it from that location and now Windows 7 probably has some registry entries that associates Skype with that location – that’s just a guess though, of course.

A third minor issue is that I had a phantom microphone “installed” in Control Panel – Sounds.  This caused a brief issue with Skype, which insisted on using the phantom microphone regardless of which mic I told it to use from within the Skype options.  Simply disabling the nonexistent mic in the control panel fixed the problem.

Application Compatibility

The issue with Skype is uncommon.  I run Firefox (with an assortment of add ons), Thunderbird, and Filezilla with no issues.  I have your standard browser plugins, I run Winamp to listen to music, and I’ve watched an assortment of video files.  All of this has been as it should be.

However, I have not been able to install OpenVPN, which is something of an annoyance for me because I can not remember my VPN’s PPTP login details.  This is my fault entirely for being a forgetful goof.  The OpenVPN issue is with the TAP32 driver; unfortunately, right-clicking and selecting “Run As Administrator” when installing OpenVPN does not solve the problem, so until I can get this running I may not be able to use my VPN service.

Still, as frustrating as this may be for me personally, Skype and OpenVPN are only two programs out of a wide range of every day applications.  The rest of which have, thus far, worked without problems.

The second day did not see a repeat of the BSoD.  Knock on wood and crossing fingers, I’m hoping that such a thing will be rare.

Microsoft Office:  I do own a copy of Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007.  I’m not in any hurry to install it, but I can do so sooner rather than later if my readers are interested.  However – and I apologize for this – I do not have access to any other versions of Office.

Boot Times & Speed

Technical:  Read my DxDiag.txt file (click here) to see my system hardware.  Gamers should pay particularly close attention to the information in that file.

I’m sure that if you’re reading this post then you have also read other information about Windows 7.  My experience (thus far) agrees with what is commonly written elsewhere.

Keeping in mind that I had been using Windows Vista since its launch day, Windows 7 by comparison almost feels like I’ve gone back to Windows XP in terms of speed.

The boot time is faster than Windows Vista, though I can’t say that it’s phenomenally faster.  You’ll most likely notice the improvement at first and then you’ll quickly grow accustomed to it.

The real speed increase is found in actually using your system.  The speed of the O/S is impressive.  For example, task switching out of a game is, literally, instantaneous.  I press alt-tab and the desktop appears, ready to be used, more-or-less the instant that I press the keys on the keyboard.  I actually blinked in surprise that first time that I saw this.  Seriously.

Using other applications is generally fast and frustration free.  The stuff just runs.

All in all, Windows 7 seems to make considerably better use of my computer’s hardware.

Gaming

Thus far the only gaming that I have personally done is run World of Warcraft, which works flawlessly.  Of note, I run WoW from Windows.old.  There was no need to reinstall and there were no patches required.

A pal of mine who also runs Windows 7 has been playing Far Cry 2, and from what he says that has been running surprisingly well. He basically made a gaming day out of FC 2 on Windows 7.

Coming soon:  I will install Fall Out 3 and Mass Effect to see how they run.  I may also be able to find my Knights of The Old Republic discs too, if anyone is interested in how a slightly older game runs on Windows 7.

Themes

Themes in Windows 7 are pretty cool.  What I describe may sound like something that becomes annoying after awhile, but honestly the transition is so smooth that I rarely notice that it’s happened.

What am I talking about?

Themes in Windows 7 is what desktop backgrounds used to be.  Apparently Microsoft plans on changing the name to Styles.  I don’t feel like the name change is required, but I understand why they would rename it.

In Windows 7, the location where you used to change desktop backgrounds is now a theme selector.  Here is a screen shot:

I used MS Paint to draw the green arrow.  More on that in a second.

You’ll see that these themes look like a slide show of windows, and that’s exactly what they are.  Your desktop background (and, perhaps, the color of your taskbar) will transition from one appearance to the next.  If you think that this would get old after awhile then you may be judging too quickly.

Why?  For one, the transition is so smooth that I frequently fail to realize that it’s occurred.  The change is done very smoothly.  There are no harsh or sudden changes.

Second, it’s very customizable, and that brings us back to the green arrow.  See where it’s pointing?  Clicking that takes you to this screen:

Notice the check marks in the corners of the photos here.  This is how you select which photos are used as your desktop background.  Adding and removing photos to a theme is very simple.  What I do not know how to adjust (and maybe it’s not possible right now?) is the color of the taskbar in relation to the photo.

You’ll also notice that it’s set to change the look every 30 minutes.  This is the default setting.  You can set this to anywhere from every 10 seconds to every one (1) day.  So if you want it to change every few seconds, or every few minutes, or every few hours then you can do that.

See You Soon

This is a fairly long post already so I’ll wrap this up for today.  Time willing I’ll be back tomorrow with another post talking about Windows 7.

See you soon.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft, Windows 7, Windows, Microsoft Windows

Quick update: I’m currently having a conversation on Skype and it’s working great in Windows 7. Previous versions of Skype would not work, but this beta (click here) works perfectly with Windows 7.

Like many, I am now running the Beta version of Microsoft’s new operating system, Windows 7. Windows 7 is the successor to Windows Vista, and Microsoft hopes to have fixed the majority of complaints that people have had with Vista.

A little about my background: I bought Windows Vista at its release, so I was a very early adopter. This means that if you have read about problems with Vista then it’s likely that I have experienced them. It was an extremely frustrating experience, and the frustration lasted for a considerable amount of time. Vista did eventually begin running smoothly, for the most part, with some minor technical hiccups here and there.

Back to today: Now I am running Windows 7 as my computer’s operating system. Yes, that’s right: I’ve completely removed Windows Vista from my machine. How long will this last? We’ll have to wait and see. This morning begins only the second day on which I have ran Windows 7.

My plan is to keep a regular diary of my experience with Microsoft Windows 7, and if my first day is anything to go by, then I’m in for a significantly better experience!

So far, all programs run correctly, I have had no problem with sound, my video is working correctly (I spent about a half an hour playing World of Warcraft with zero problems and I’ve watched videos and movies on the web), and I have simply had no big problems with hardware thus far. None. Zip.. Nada!

The problems that I have had is:

• Windows 7 did blue screen on me once yesterday. The error message was “RFD File System”.
• My U3 thumb drive works, but Roboform does not remember my password, so I must re-enter it each time that it tries to fill in web page forms.

That’s all that I remember. Certainly the blue screen is a concern, but I am keeping in mind that this is a beta release. This is not the commercial release of Windows 7, it is a test release. Therefore problems are expected.

So far, Microsoft Windows 7 is performing leaps and bounds both smoother and faster than Vista could ever dream of. In fact, I will go so far as to say that in its beta state, Windows 7 is running better than Vista ever ran on my computer.

If you’re still running Windows XP, the answer – so far – appears to be “Yes, Windows 7 is better. It’s a little different, but it’s better.”

We’ll see how things go. Keep checking back to read experiences with what is probably going to be your computer’s next operating system. I will make sure to have pictures in future diary entries.

Wish me luck!

Technorati Tags: Windows 7, Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft, Windows