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Freedom Left Me A Voicemail
My Love/Hate Relationship With Windows
JUST A HEADS UP! Â This is a long post. Â Go get a water or something before continuing.
As some of you, who follow me on Twitter have seen, I posted an opinion about Microsoft last night:
Yes, it was a but much but here is what my past seven days has been like. Â I’ve been dying to try out Windows 7 since I’m still running on XP on my gaming machine and was looking forward to having a Windows box thats just as useful as my Mac. Â The only thing holding me back is my saved games through Steam. Â Even then I didn’t really care too much, I just wanted to finish playing Fallout: New Vegas before I formatted because I didn’t want to go through backing up a bunch of files.
SUNDAY:
Anyway I beat the game, yay for me, and I feel comfortable formatting everything and starting fresh. I didn’t backup my drive, nothing I couldn’t reinstall was on there and I had nothing important to save.  I throw the disk in, do a complete format and install from disk and everything is working fine.  The installation completes and it’s time to boot into Windows for the first time.  It’s starts loading Windows and I get this:
So I restart, I restart agan, and again. Â I start in Safe Mode…which didn’t work because I needed to go through my first boot normally to complete the installation. Â I was suck and very annoyed. Â I figure it’s something with my graphics card so I start Googling “Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT No Signal Windows 7” and I get a lot of angry forum posts back on other people complaining about the same thing. Â 3 hours later I’ve had it with reading through them all. Â People complaining about the same thing and none of them had answers all while Nvidia and Microsoft say the card is certified and compatible with Windows 7. Â So I’m stuck and I’m done for the night.
MONDAY:
Bring my computer into work. Â I try reinstalling Windows in my down time, still no dice. Â @APIguy gives me a hand and opens up one of our Mac Pro’s in the office and hands me a Nvidia 9600 graphics card, which was the only one in the office that fist since I have PCIX slots. Â (Nerd Speak) Â Bam, windows loads fine, I can complete my setup and get my first look into Windows 7. Â I boot in safe mode and reinstall my drivers then shut down and swap the cards back out. Â Boot normally and again….no signal. Â WTF. Â I boot into safemode with my 9800 and it works. Â I try reinstalling the drivers. Â I download driver cleaner to wipe the old drivers out. Â Nothing…no signal. Â So I boot with both graphics cards. Â And the 9600 from the other mac works! Â And Windows 7 recognizes there are two cards in the box and gives me the option to plug in up to three monitors. Â WOOO! Â If it only f*cking worked! Â Later that night, another 4 hours going through forums and digging for info. Â I found one topic that helped. Â Apparently Windows overrides the installed drivers when it’s thinks theirs are better. Â It was a how-to on stopping windows from auto installing it’s own drivers when new devices are plugged in. Â oooOOHHHHhhh Windows you son of a bitch. Â I boot in safe mode, shut off that “feature” and boot Windows normally and voila, Windows 7 Boots on my graphics card. Â YAAAAAAYYY! Â I download some updates and install Steam and start bringing my games down. Â 1 hour later I try launching Left 4 Dead 2………Sorry, the program has crashed. What??…okay how about Team Fortress 2………crash. Â WTF?? Â I reinstall graphics drivers update the computer…..crash, crash, crash. Â I’m done with 7. Â I’m done for tonight. Â Time for bed.
TUESDAY:
Boot into Windows….launch L4D2…Crash….shutdown.
WEDNESDAY:
Got My XP DVD. Â Boot from disk and I start installing:
An hour later I get into Windows. Â Home sweet home. Â I start installing my network and system drivers. and of course spend another two hours installing updates:
Everything is updated and it’s time to restart…..and then I get….no signal.
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU……..
20 Minutes later….
Okay. Â I start digging for old drivers. Â Clearly something is wrong with Nvidia playing nicely with windows. Â So I boot in safe mode, find the archived drivers on the Nvidia website and catch an old driver from 2009 and reinstall the old drivers. Â Holy Crap it works again. Â I finally download Steam again and an hour later have L4D2 installed. Â And to my amazement….
I got to play. Â I’m now back where I started and I have my gaming PC back. Â In the end it took me 11 hours over three days to find out Windows doesn’t play nice with my graphics cards Windows 7 Drivers. Â I’ll be doing more testing later on another partition but for now I’m sticking with XP. Â So, all versions of windows seem to be having problems with the 260.99 version Nvidia Drivers. Â I had installed the 197.45 version drivers and those seem to be working okay. Â Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to game.