TinLizzie

Hello out there. First, I have to say even though I joined this group to get some tech help, you guys rock! It's really cool to see (read) really intelligent people doing stuff they love. It's awesome and your enthusiasm comes thru for sure in what you all post about. Plus the fact that you're concerned about world issues and actually trying to do something! Too cool.

That being said, I have a couple questions I hope someone can help me with. I have an old laptop system (see my profile for specs) and I recently upgraded to Vista (shhh, don't tell) which I actually think is performing better than XP with a few exceptions (another shhh!) -- I was a Vista hater until I got a bad virus and couldn't fix it and decided to reformat my hd and change my OS.

First, I was looking at the ATI modder info. Can I mod my video card to perform better or is my system to old to mess with? Would like to upgrade, but not possible as I have one of those systems where the Vcard is attached to cpu or somethin like that (or so I think--I haven't disassembled my system to look!) Any advice here would be greatly appreciated.

Second, I had some problems getting sound to work in Vista. It was ok when first installed, but then I upgraded to Vista SP1 and my computer sounded like it was posessed afterward! Lots of grunts, squeaks and garbled sounds coming out when I tried to play cd or dvd's. So I uninstalled the SP and now it's working ok. Again I'm asking if I can udate a driver or even bios to get the most out of what I've got, and make sure my system is performing at max capability.

I will warn you, I know just enough to be dangerous! But I've always pretty much been able to correct my mistakes when I make them. I also will tell you that HP (my laptop brand) is not supporting the Vista upgrade so unless I want to revert back to XP SP2, I'm not getting any support from my manufacturer on this.

Thanks in advance for the help. I will admit I've always wanted to build my own PC for graphics. As an illustrator, digital is gaining ground and it would be cool to build a custom system someday. Maybe with your-all's help I'll be brave enough and knowledgable enough in the future to try!

So thanks!
Liz

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kris23

hey liz....

first of all...... i must admit im rather surprised that drivers even exist for vista with that laptop!

other than the VGA drivers.... are you looking for any other drivers?

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TinLizzie

Hey Kris,
Yeah, audio drivers if they exist, but I'm not sure it's even worth messing with. Everything's working passably now, so not sure I want to screw it up by trying to update what's not updateable if that makes sense. I thought about installing bigger hard drive, and new DVD-RW but by the time I pay for all that I could probably buy a new laptop!

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kris23

i was looking at the GPU drivers, and actually..... its the Radeon IGP 345M

its not quite a GPU but a chipset that can put out video as well as control the CPU, and RAM

whatever drivers you have really are just what you can get...

what are the drivers anyway?

as for the sound, ill get on it...... since you said it DID work, have you tried reinstalling the sound drivers?

the system in general probably should be put to rest, but as you are trying to get vista on it..... why not complete that before you buy/build a new system?

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kris23

ok i couldnt find anything, have you tried getting vista to search for drivers automatically? sometimes that works

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TinLizzie

So, look for the Radeon IGP 345M driver for video?
My sound card driver is the Vista generic driver.
If worse comes to worse, I have the system restore cd's and I can always take it back to what it was initially. All the XP drivers are on there. I even burned a CD for SP2. I started having trouble with it when I upgraded from SP2 to SP3 on XP. Then I got the virus and it totally crashed. So I reformatted the HD and installed Vista.

Yeah, I was surprised Vista works at all on here. But I have it installed and I like the UI. (being a visual person) but some of my hardware isn't compatible with it. Hence the search for drivers, etc.

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TinLizzie

BTW Vista isn't any smarter than I am as far as finding drivers! lol

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kris23

lol well to get vista to look for drivers open the Control Panel and go into the Device Manager....

chances are that youll see a couple question marks or exclamation points.....

those are what need drivers.... you probably knew that already

anyways, click them and go and click the driver tab then click update driver....

lastly, click Search Automatically for Driver software and wait a few minutes....

you may get lucky!

XP had this feature but it seems to work better in vista.

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TinLizzie

Thanks so much for all your help. The only item in my Device manager showing a problem is the WAN miniport (SSTP) I'm not really even sure what that is, but it's under Network Adapters.

I tried searching for drivers using Vista's online support but no luck. I get an error message:
"Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)

Click 'Check for solutions' to send data about this device to Microsoft and to see if there is a solution available."

And when I go online it says no drivers found. It doesn't seem to be affecting anything I'm doing tho. So I say ignore it and maybe it will go away?!?!? haha

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TinLizzie

Weird. Cause vista says all but the miniport device drivers are up to date!

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GigaWatt

i would recomend to switch back to XP SP2, i think it should run better on that lap top of yours, why keep torchering the poor thing, hahahahah . just kidding, but seriusly, i think you should consider going back to SP2, its the most stable edition of all the XP editions, SP3 prooved to be unstable, in most cases, and cause problems with hardware, software... you name it... .

but are you really, really shure that you want to run that thing under Vista?

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kris23

im not sure if thats just a regular ethernet port or not, you have an internet connection correct?

if you dont need whatever it is, just right-click it in the device manager and disable it..... so the notifications will stop

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BlueMak

Eh, what is the brand and model of the laptop in question?

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This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

kris23

HP ZE4547WM it seems....

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TinLizzie

Yep, HP. Yeah, I will probably go back to XP SP2 eventually. You guys know where I can download some desktop stuff to make it LOOK like vista? LOL I thinks the miniport is my ethernet port. I'm wireless to internet so don't need it right now, but sure do want all my parts to be workin right so that means go back to the old OS. I mainly use the laptop for internet and sometimes for digital artwork.

Thanks for all your help Kris & you too, Blue

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TinLizzie

OH! and let us not forget Giga! Thanks too.

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Phenomenal Woman, that's me!
I am a woman, phenomenally.

kris23

lol no prob, and yea... sucks vista couldnt be 100% installed but i guess thats alright....


XP is still good

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BlueMak

You can use Windowblinds, but nothing as good as the genuine thing.

It might be time for you to upgrade.

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

Mousey

I've seen WAN Miniports on a lot of laptop's, new and old. As far as i know it's more of a software thing than a hardwire thing. AOL Used to use em and i think they just stuck about.
Try disabling it in the Device Manager (using Kris's method to access it) and see what happens. It might not do anything but it could possibly save you a bit of battery

If your audio disappeared when you installed Vista chances are the drivers went kaput with it so your best bet is to go to the Lappy manufacturer's website and have a poke about for your model, that should turn up some audio drivers. Just follow the .EXE's instructions and any "Found new Hardware" prompts and you should have audio again after a restart (or sometimes before )

Vista is very good with onboard stuff for most people, the onboard Wifi on my motherboard didnt' seem to work until recently when vista decided to hunt down some drivers for it. My audio worked straight off as did my e-SATA and rear-SATA ports.

It might be worth investing in a new system for vista, depending on how content you are with your current one

Edit - oh, and as for making XP look like Vista... http://www.windowsxlive.net/vista-tr...welcome-center
Enjoy (Much better than BlueMak's suggestion of WindowBlinds, it's a full transformation pack)

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GigaWatt

thanks for the mention, but i think kris, blue and mousey did most of the work (since i'm not really into Vista and i don't even run it under my system so... ).

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TinLizzie

Thanks all. I am looking for a new laptop, but actually I am hoping for a Mac (sharp intake of breath) because it IS industry standard for graphics (sorry all you PC'ers out there!) BUT...I'm open to any help and/or suggestions in BUILDING my own system for graphic art??? If I could build a desktop system for what I'd pay for a Macbook, I would consider it especially knowing that I could upgrade my own stuff when it becomes obsolete. I have been using my laptop sporadically for graphics, and it does just fine as it is, but it's getting a little tired.

Has anyone got info on building a PC but installing a MAC OS? Now that they use intel chips, it would work, right? You guys rock btw.

Liz

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Mousey

They may be the industry standard, but the price you pay for your taskbar to be permanently stuck up at the top, and for everything to be white is ridiculous. You could build your own system of much better spec and still have money left over the buy the entire Adobe Creative Suite. And besides the software for both platforms is 100% identical, and there's more plugins/brushes/presets ect. available for windows. So why not just stay with windows?

If you look at my sig and avatar you can see i'm into graphics (mouseyman.deviantart.com as well if you don't believe me) and i've used a mac briefly for photoshop. And i can tell you that i absolutely hated it, Photoshop felt laggy and sluggish compared to how it does on my own rig with Vista. And the read/write times were long enough to literally walk out of the shop, go get a coffee from across the way, come back again and set it down before it opened a 1024x768 JPG.

I use Adobe Photoshop CS3 (CS4 has multi-threading and GPU Support but i'm waiting for kinks to get worked out first), Adobe Illustrator CS3, ImageReady CS3 when i'm desperate to get my slices pixel-perfect, Cinema4D Release 10, Adobe Dreamweaver CS3, Adobe Flash CS3 and occasionaly when i'm bored i do some stick figure stuff in Pivot.
The software on the OS X platform is more expensive, and exactly the same as the windows counter parts minus the GUI which is pretty much the same anyway despite the fonts and buttons which you can change in windows anyway. And as i said in my last paragraph, they don't perform any better imo.

Yes i'm a dirty apple hater, even holding an ipod in my hand makes me cringe let alone use a mac.
Sorry but that's just how i see things.
Or you could alternatively install XP and make it look like OS X with flyakiteOS (Google it)

Edit - to actually answer the question lol, it is possible to install OS X on non apple hardware but it's known as a hackintosh, driver support is usually very poor and it's also somewhat illegal because OS X is only supposed to be installed on apple hardware (Another thing i hate about apple, they don't share their software unlike microsoft who allowed apple to develop bootcamp for windows.)

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kris23

yup..... illegal so we cant really help you there....

but vista with an adobe suite is pretty good too.....

whens adobe CS4 coming out? or is it out already? i hear its 64 bit native, sure to kill macs

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Mousey

I think it's out already, apparently Adobe have incorporated GPU Load Balancing or something flashy named like that. Basically your Graphics Card will take the brunt of big images now apparently. Sounds like a cool idea but i'm waiting and lurking around on support forums for any problems that creep up
And yeah, enhanced 64bit support now apparently

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TinLizzie

You know I was afraid you all would make a great argument for staying with a PC and now you've gone and done it! DARN YOU!!! lol yeah, I have a hard time justifying a mac purchase 50% higher than PC when I've been using a pc for all my graphics thus far.

So, Mousey, did you build your own, or purchase one and mod it? And no, I wasn't aware that pc running mac OS was illegal. Thanks for that info, all! We wouldn't want to break any rules now, would we? That's not a possibility with what I'm running now anyhoo!!

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I am a woman, phenomenally.

Callandor

If you decide to build your own PC or for future reference look no further than the only guide you'll ever need, DH's step by step guide to building a rig by our very own Peter "Who_Knows" Gracar and edited by none other than Allan "Zardon" Campbell himself that's stickied right at the top of the Driverheaven Guides forum. Just poke around a little here on DH and you'll turn up gold at every turn.

Hope everything goes well with your new lappy/PC endeavour.

DH Guide: Building a PC (Step by Step guide)

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GigaWatt

what...? a macbook...? i don't even dare to whisper the words, too expencive and too little to gain form it .

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It's not schisophrenia... it's just a voice in my head...

Mousey

Nah my machine's a home build, it's more satisfying than buying a pre-built if you ask me And it's not really modded since the idea of taking a drill or saw to my case scares the living daylights out of me, slicing through vital support points and all that
I've just got crap loads of UV Light on it and more cables than you can shake a stick at tucked behind the mobo tray
And you should thank us lol, we just saved you a LOT of money not buying a mac

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kris23

if you need a system build for a particular purpose, just give me a budget and ill get to work!

my ability to budget and design did get me to be a moderator after all....

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TinLizzie

Yes, Thank you for saving me all that money that I will now spend on neon and more expensive upgrades! No, seriously, thanks for the help you-all! And I looked at the sticky at the top of the forum a while ago, Callendor... it was that topic that got me to sign up for this group in the first place, because it really helped me to see that you guys know what the heck you're talking about!

Now...while I have been working around computers for a long time, and am fairly knowlegeable I can't help but be more than a little nervous about purchasing a whole lot of separate parts and thinking I can put them together into a viable system ...how much help are you guys offering here? Do you really think I can do this? The most advanced thing I've ever done is replace my own RAM! <-----total newbie!!!

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Phenomenal Woman, that's me!
I am a woman, phenomenally.