Moving to Vista x64 - a few things ...

Billzz

Billzz

Billzz

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11 Dec 2003
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297
Hi all

I'm finally going to take the plunge and install Vista x64 in the next day or two - I currently use XP Pro (32 bit). I use my machine for work (as well as play) so I wanted to run a few things by you guys before I go ahead ...

Machine specs:

* E6600 Core2Duo 2.4 (not overclocked)
* Abit AW9D-MAX motherboard
* 4gig Geil RAM
* 8800GTS 640mb

The apps I mainly use are as follows:

* Adobe CS3 suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, After Effects, Premiere mainly)
* Autodesk Maya (this has a 64-bit version so should be fine).
* VMware Workstation 6 - for sandbox creation and websurfing etc - to try and keep my host machine as clean as possible. I use this a lot - its always loaded! Any issues with Vista x64 that people are aware of?
* Eset Smart Security (64 bit version so again should be fine).
* Spybot seach and destroy, ccleaner - the usual housekeeping apps.
* iTunes - I see Apple have just released a 64bit installer, so this should be fine.

Hopefully that should all be ok. Just a few more things about how you chaps have your Vista setup:

* Superfetch - is this actually useful or not? Opinion seems divided, I'm tempted just to leave it on and see what happens.
* Indexing - I really don't need all my drives indexed - how do you go about turning this off?
* UAC - this just seems an annoyance - is it worth leaving this on?

Any other tweaks/apps you guys would recommend to keep things running ticketyboo?

Thanks - I know these questions have probably been asked a thousand times, but this is a big step for me - first 64 bit OS and like I say I make a living from this, so I want to get it right!
 
Back up everything important before you start. Consider dual booting, at least to start with. You don't want to find that something important for work refuses to work.

Like you I'm upgrading to Vista x64, probably this evening. I have a dissertation in progress on my machine and I'm not messing about. As well as the usual backups on an external hard drive I've got an old hard drive with my working XP SP2 cloned waiting in the wings should it all go awry.
 
Thanks for the advice guys. I'm planning to install Vista on another hard disc altogether, so yeah will dual boot for a while, seems like a sensible move.
 
SuperFetch: very useful especially for CS3 as thats a mighty application
Indexing: Right click on the partition and theres a tick box for indexing (like Windows XP)
VMWare: will run perfectly, no problems to report

Sadly not aware of the other utilities as I never use them but should be fine.



M.
 
badbob said:
UAC asks you to confirm pretty much anything, and it's bloody annoying. Disable it.

System restore eats up HD space like no tomorrow so I'd disable that.
Click to expand...

Don't disable UAC, download Tweak UAC and put it in quiet mode.

If you don't want system restore to take up too much space, set a limit to the amount of HDD space it can use. But I wouldn't disable it completely.

Burnsy
 
I have UAC on mine and it's very quiet (unless I've disabled it by accident - muhaha) seriously it's not too bad but can get annoying.


M.
 
m4cc45 said:
I have UAC on mine and it's very quiet (unless I've disabled it by accident - muhaha) seriously it's not too bad but can get annoying.
M.
Click to expand...

Once it remembers a lot of your choice, it will quieten down a lot

It just requires a bit of patience for the first week or so :)

Burnsy
 
I prefer the functionality of having it on and hassling me rather than having it off and compromising on security. UAC will be brilliant with the updated Active Directory model as well making group policies so much more granular.

In all honesty I can't remember the last time I was asked a UAC request but that's because I now have the system setup the way I want it to be.


M.
 
Thanks everyone for the advice, much appreciated.

One last question: the default account setup by Vista is an admin account, once I have Vista setup how I like it (installed updates, apps etc) is it a good idea to create another 'User' account to use as my main account? Only going back to the 'admin' account when I need to add apps or updates? Will this provide a greater layer of security?
 
Billzz said:
Thanks everyone for the advice, much appreciated.

One last question: the default account setup by Vista is an admin account, once I have Vista setup how I like it (installed updates, apps etc) is it a good idea to create another 'User' account to use as my main account? Only going back to the 'admin' account when I need to add apps or updates? Will this provide a greater layer of security?
Click to expand...

That is a good idea however "silent" mode of UAC doesn't work on non-Administrator accounts. So whenever you want to do an administrative action a UAC prompt would appear and instead of just clicking "Continue" you would need to authenticate with an account that has Administrator privileges.

For most people this would be too annoying. However as someone who appears to be relatively clued up about security it may suit you just fine.

It is certainly a better level of security than what any anti-malware program provides.

In general, UAC is annoying as hell during the first week that you get the PC. But after that it rarely bothers you once or twice a week. Not worth splitting hairs over IMO.
 
Regarding System Restore, you can quite easily reduce the amount of disk space that is allocated for System Restore.

To recover some of that System Restore disk space, start up Vista's command line with administrative rights, and type, vssadmin list shadowstorage to see the current allocation. To change it, use:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=[drive]: /for=[drive]: /maxsize=[size]

So this is an example:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=C: /for=C: /maxsize=2GB

This will limit the System Restore's drive footprint to 2GB, also remember though this limits how far back it can store points, so do so carefully.
 
I installed Vista 64 last night on a seperate hard disc and now dual booting without problems. Everything went without a hitch. Interestingly, 64 bit Maya rendered a complex scene 30 secs quicker than XP (which took about 2 mins). Though some of this extra speed could be down to the extra RAM available.

Overall, very chuffed and haven't run into half of the horror stories people moan about - everything seems very smooth too me, and the aero UI looks cool.

Thanks again for all the advice chaps. :)
 
Likewise, my installation has been relatively trouble free so far. Having a spot of bother getting it to remember my NAS password though.
 
Billzz said:
* Superfetch - is this actually useful or not? Opinion seems divided, I'm tempted just to leave it on and see what happens.
* Indexing - I really don't need all my drives indexed - how do you go about turning this off?
* UAC - this just seems an annoyance - is it worth leaving this on?
Click to expand...


All those applications run fine 'ere :)

Superfetch = the dogs imo :) so yeah leave it on
Indexing - start > tpye index.. > open it up and just remove everything from "to be indexed" list.
UAC = put it in quiet mode and it should be just fine (although its disabled here)
 
I found a workaround for my NAS password issue. Seems Home (XP and Vista) editions of windows don't like remembering network passwords unless they're the same as your login details. I had the same problem getting my old XP media centre laptop to remember the password and now I know why.

Added a password to my user account and it's fine.

Strangely Vista takes a long time to detect the NAS (a lacie ethernet mini) over USB but it spots the ethernet pretty much straight away.
 
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