Cujo

only ddr i have lying around are all 512mb sticks.

it's fair to compare the two based on size. ati and nvidia are HUGE compared to creative. not to mention sound cards are much cheaper than video cards. i know creative drivers are generally horrible but expecting them to support a product 5 years old when newer better products can be had for less than 100 bucks might be a bit unreasonable. edit - glad you're happy with your new x-fi.

in fairness you kind of doubled your problem by going from xp 32bit to windows 7 64bit. also, who needs a tv tuner when most of the best shows on tv are available for free download on many public torrent sites. the cd issue could be an incompatibility between the drive and the operating system or any number of things. at 30 bucks a drive i find they don't last all that long. zd, i got my sound drivers from the creative site so i don't have any other link for you and their site is working just fine for me as of right now. you have an audigy anyway though right? that sound card came out 6 years ago. ati and nvidia don't support their cards much past 3 or 4 years. i don't think you can realistically expect creative (a much smaller company) to support their products that long. that said, the drivers you had working in vista should work just fine in 7. the same way most windows 2000 drivers worked just fine in xp.

afaik, ram access is random. coincidentally that's what the r in ram stands for... depending on your chipset you'll want the same amount of ram per channel. so you'll not want to divide it the way you're planning. i would just stick with 4gb anyhow. ram is cheap enough now that if you really need more than 4gb just buy another matched set.

my x-fi platinum is working just fine with the latest stock creative drivers for vista. i just extract the files and then install from device manager.

i just extract the iso with winrar and install right now. there should be a working daemon tools before too long. i've burnt fine so far but i've only tried two discs. ya, chrome doesn't work but i don't use it anyway. plus, remember chrome is still beta so beta + beta usually = fail.

windows 32bit system will not see OR USE any more than 4gb of ram. a 32bit operating system simply can't access more than 4gb. therefore, it will in no way benefit you having more than 4gb of ram in a 32bit system. finally found a good link explaining the whole situation once and for all: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000811.html i'm sure i've said the above several times. can we sticky that somewhere so mis-information stops being spread once and for all?

which is depressing as that was my first one. every ff moving forward now has to measure up.

there's a way to get it using ms downloader as well so you can pause and re-start it.

241 views and only 10 people coming. this isn't starting out well.

Utilizes both cores? Cujo plays the crap out of his videos <MachoMan>YEAH!</MachoMan> Oh and Ring, I would always use a driver cleaner to remove old GPU drivers before installing new ones, once you get the process down it's a piece of cake i love when i wake up and questions asked of me are already answer. thanks mo!

media player home cinema here. vlc doesn't do multi threading (i don't think).

I'm not interested in the Beta simply to be a part of the discussion - I would really like to replace Vista with Windows 7 if it really is that much better. If I still had a secondary (gaming) computer, I would be installing it on that right now. Since I only have one and it is vital to my work, I'm hesitant to do it. IF this was a release copy, I would buy a copy right now and install, but the beta transition sounds like something I don't want to mess with on my primary computer. I will be at the front of the line for a legit copy once they are released though. worst case you'd just re-install windows 7 when the release copy comes out. this release is as good as final to me. certainly compared to vista.

i would buy two copies of windows 7 today if it was available. actually 3. one for my work laptop.

I used the default drivers for everything except what I listed above. I used the custom Creative drivers to fix my sound issues with my sound and I installed the Vista ATI drivers so I could use the ATI driver control panel. Let me add that the sound issues I also had in Vista. Creative never intends to update drivers for slightly older sound cards for Vista or Windows 7. They intentionally cripple features and force you to buy a new sound card. i'm using the ati windows 7 beta drivers. control panel works, overdrive works, in fact nothing really doesn't work. for x-fi sound i'm just using the latest vista drivers but i installed manually in device manager. everything works perfectly in css and watching vids or listening to music. haven't tried optical out yet but i don't use it on this comp anyway right now. oh and my scanner is working just fine with vista drivers again installed manually in device manager. the only drivers i don't have installed are the smbus drivers and i'm just going to wait til intel releases new ones. alt-tabbing from css is INSTANT and tabbing back in takes about 2 seconds. can i add i haven't had a single driver crash or really any crash aside from the hl2 crash that always happens. this windows 7 release might as well be final. i'm still waiting for the first problem at this point. if they delay it til christmas next year i'll be upset. as far as i'm concerned this could be released in a couple months and people would be happier with it than they ever were with vista.

what in the world are you talking about? What new features are being disable? If it is the funny task bar and slick UI animation, I set it to classic to disable so I don't have to look at them. So these beta versions are going to be disabled on August 1st I hear... I see this as a great marketing ploy to get you hooked in and comfortable and then 8 months later make you enter your credit card for a couple hundred bucks or you won't get your data back.. It's a brilliant scheme. In all honesty, Windows XP works exactly the same as this. All I want is a desktop, taskbar, mouse and to be able to execute programs written for the NT kernel.. Both of them offer this. I care less about UI eye-candy. The only plus I see to using this is that it can see more RAM. I also dislike having the minimize all windows on the far right... they put it on the left for XP.. which I've been using for 8 years and then decide to put it on the right. Bravo... you know you're actually making your computer slower by doing this? with aeroglass you're using video card resources to move windows around but if you turn it off you're back using cpu power. aero simply makes better use of your overall system. also, many new features involve aeroglass running. such as when you hover over a window at the bottom it hides all other windows so you can see it. very cool feature imho. also, why would you even need to click that little quicklaunch icon to minimize all windows. a power user such as yourself surely knows about windows + d... and for those complaints about lack of quicklaunch, the taskbar is basically the same thing, only better. think apple when you look at this. it's a very cool feature that i use all the time.

what does that mean? you can "ink" in the captured area? no more print screen. snip allows you to select an area of the screen and save as a pic. default is png which is cool. one click, highlight, save as. it's that easy. works similar to cropping in picasa in that the desktop fades and the area you select shows in full colour.

kinda breezed through most of the comments and i'll just post some thoughts now. this release is more stable than vista. it's easily as fast as xp. those worried about switching from vista or xp shouldn't be. i've seen no reason not to switch and no reason to go back to either. support will only get better. the best part is it's free. xfi drivers are working perfectly by simply installing from device manager. using the latest dec. 17th release btw. i've got it installed on a separate raptor drive. i would never upgrade and dual boot is mostly foreign to me. not sure about the antivirus list but nod32 is working perfectly. as far as what else i like in 7. the snip tool is AWESOME! used it several times now. the window organization at the bottom is similar to mac but i think a step above. the system recognized my multi monitor by default. all i had to do was swap sides. i've left uac on at this point as it hardly ever intrudes and when it does it's just one click to pass it. aeroglass doesn't disappear during gaming meaning alt-tabs are seamless. at this point the only thing not working is my scanner but i haven't tried much yet. also daemon tools isn't working but i expect that won't be for long.

windows 7 is my new primary os. now that i have sound working i will not be going back ever.

can we get the in game ads up?

100% here plus bringing at least one friend.

i've had good luck with recuva.

my 19" at native res 1280x1024 will do 75hz but my 24" at 1920x1200 will not. it varies by monitor but i've yet to see anything larger than a 19" supporting more than 60hz at max/native res.

i'd love a better turnout this year. let's get this show on the road! anything i can do to help? i've already got at least 1 friend lined up to bring with me.

at your max/native res you will likely only be able to do 60hz. if you drop the resolution it will let you change it to 75. either way, i'll pay you a million dollars if you can honestly say you notice a difference. i was a big fan of 100hz back when i used crt and i can tell the difference between 85 and 100 on a crt. on an lcd the difference just isn't there. i've been using 60hz now for as long as i used 100 before and my eyes are fine with little to no eye strain after hours of gaming.