In 12-13 years Microsoft has released seven operating systems. Win95, 98, 98SE, ME, 2000, XP, Vista…not including the various flavours for home, office, work or whatever. In all cases they released an OS that was full of holes, and bad code. Prior to getting a completely stable product they moved on to release yet another buggy OS. Microsoft makes it’s money by delivering a bad product to the consumer and yet people still defend their crap. Go figure.
Maybe a mod could clean up in here? I did not mean to contribute to the general chaos of the thread - just thought maybe we could help the OP without suggesting he completely rearrange his computer.
Apparently you assume I thought you were directing that at me? You know where assuming gets you. I was speaking in general. Again, as you said, your not helping the O.P…moving on now.
OP, if you’d care to try to resolve your issues with XTrkCAD and Vista feel free to shoot me a PM. I have it working on my setup and can maybe help you figure out what’s going wrong.
If you’d rather replace your OS then you can chat with the folks on this thread.
Cheers,
M
Not that this will solve your problem, but I had to download XtrakCad a couple times to get a file that would install properly. The proper d/l installed flawlessly on Dells running ME, XP, and Vista.
Did it not install, or not run properly AFTER the install?
There are several things you can try
If the problem is in the installer, make sure you are logged in as administrator. Then right click on the installer and select under the properties, “Run as administrator”
If the problem is in the program, right click the Xtrak program and from the properties, run in Win XP compatibility mode and as administrator.
We always blamed user/program problems on “The Nut Loose Behind the Keyboard”
And if you think Vista is a nightmare to navigate, you should see the ^&*! Microsoft is trying to push coders into using. Complete and total resource hogs with huge amounts of overhead. No wonder Vista really needs 2 Gigs of memory to run well.
If installing doesn’t work, I usually try first disabling antivirus software (after making sure machine is clean) and then turning back on after the install is done.
That said, Windows Vista does have some issues, and with several versions out there, this may be a problem with just some Vista computers.
I have also experienced problems installing software when it turned out a memory chip was going bad (only showed up when fully utilized).
Run Vista in XP/2000 compatibility mode using the Program Compatibility Wizard when installing/using software that was originally designed for XP/2000. Click on the Help and Support icon on your start menu for details about Program Compatibility Wizard.
Microsoft is scheduled to release service pack 1 for Vista in the very near future. You could install SP1 and then try to install Xtrak again in the default Vista mode.
At the same time they release SP1 for Vista, Microsoft will release SP3 for XP. So even venerable “old” XP still requires updates. Operating systems evolve over time and service packs are released to improve their functionality.
All I can say about vista is i always wanted a computer with 1gig ram to run as slow as win95 did with 8 mb ram. Yea right. Oh and another thing win 95 was 50 mb on the hard drive win98 was just over 200mb, wix xp 2gig without the 1.8gig service pack 2. So we think vista will be just as fast as xp when its almost 8gig on the drive hogging memory and phoning home all the time saying yep im legit. Thanks but ill stick with xp pro. Joe
PS all the bigger corporate IT guys i run into wont even dream of upgrading because it is so bad.
Geez. I knew Vista was disliked but I didn’t expect to generate this. Sorry!
That said, there are a couple of useful tips in the thread which I can try in a couple of days. If I have any luck, I"ll report back on a new thread to try to help out the next lucky buyer of a budget vista laptop.
One responder asked if the it was the installation or the program that failed. To clarify, the system spontaneously aborted the installation about 2/3 of the way through. The makes me suspect the program control “feature”, and I’m glad to know how to shut it down. FWIW the AV is McAfee, and that’s sometimes a crapshoot as well. I do take comfort from three or four posters who installed Xtrak on vista, no problem.
Try reposting this on the XtrkCad Yahoo Users’s Group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/XTrkCad/?yguid=229245731). There have been reports of problems installing on some Vista systems, but not all. Most have been able to overcome their problems with the help of the group. Since the focus of the group is using and improving XtrkCad, there is no arguing about which OS works better, or doesn’t.
Unfortunately, I can’t help more directly because I personally chose to remain with older hardware and XP. But I’ve installed Vista systems for friends in the past 6 months, and most of the early bugs seem to have been worked out. But none of them were model railroaders, so I still have no personal experience with XtrkCad on Vista.
XtrkCad sure seems worth the effort to install and learn (I’m still barely proficient), as compared to the more limited Atlas RTS.
