Read only-UAC, and DX10

First my apologies last night for hijacking someone elses thread. Being frustrated with vista is enough to ....well you get the picture.

After doing a bit of homework and finding literally thousands of posts scatterd across the web, and having a very annoying hang up call with an intern at MS,
I suppose I am chasing a moot point, however here's the deal.

I run a small lighting and sound company. I have 8 different computers configured for different things as far as shows are concerned. Just built 2 biostar TA780g rigs with ati dual x850 cards. AMD4600x2 for a cpu, ram at 4gig. Vista 32 "ultimate" sp1.

These are to replace some older socket a stuff and none of them do games but we DO extensive 3d video displays at theaters, live band venues and so on. Too many problems with intel, nvidia and our apps, so we are all amd / ati here.

Yesterday while managing some fresh mp3 rips with a program called Tagscanner, which I have used for years, got a bsod, and when everything came back all was well except that Vista changed everything to read only.

we are talking about over 300,000 assorted mp3's,music video files, Karaoke cdg files, and xml lighting scene files that i can no longer do anything with spread across four harddrives. since the software apps we use make extensive use of the write-rewrite xmls constantly,now two of our apps lockup on startup.

I would not even be here except that the 780g chipset and nvidia geforce 8 and up require dx10 to function at full potential.

So my questions:
1. Does anyone know anything about regaining control over disc management properties in vista?

2. ive heard rumors that there are ways of getting dx10 to run on xp, and it's still in its experimental stages. ANY GOOD info on that would be welcome- two sites i hit last night got me some nice trojans. But if it is real, I am sooooo back to xp it aint funny. 12 years on the road with computeres and only had one dead show in all that time that was computer related. in the past two weeks we have had six cause of vista. the lost shows cost me more than both computers and both "ultimate" packages and the software combined X2!

3. the flying- self managing UAC- is it ever REALLY disabled? tried three different things to get rid of that piece of ----, work.

Seems vista would be a wonderful os if we could just controll it ourselves. Thes have to be rock solid, everytime they run. our business depends on it.

We tried 5 different mobos, and 15 different dual video cards before we came on this combination and so far its the only thing close to delivering what we need. Intel and nvidia didnt even come close. they had the speed but couldent stand road life and nvidia dont play well going to composite from svid and that is a must since almost 99% of the venues break to video DA's from a composite or svid line. Also- Ive contacted out app vendors, we are not the only ones with this problem and there seems to be no known cure...YET.

I'd rather start with a pound of napalm......! THAT would be a show.lol.

Any ideas are welcome. thanks y'all. MJS

Hi madmanjohn,

First I would check the Windows Event Logs to try and see why things are in read only mode. To check the event logs do the following:
Click Start then Right Click on My Computer and choose Manage. Click on Event Viewer > Windows logs. Usually the logs I look at are System/Application.

Second I do not know about Windows XP and direct X 10. I searched and was unable to verify that Direct X 10 is even for download. Just saw 9.0c + from MS website.

Third the only way I know to rip out the UAC is with a free program called Vlite. vLite - Windows Vista configuration tool is the website. I have done this myself and i can confirm no existence of UAC exists on my PC.

I am hoping the logs can give you an indication of why the crash occured and why things are in read only mode. Please let us know.

Raj

Thanks for your reply-

first the log indicated an application hang- other than that all is well. had already been there. i should of mentioned that in the first note. i was moving files from the music folder to the drive where they stay at when it happened.

As for dx 10, there is a way to extract dx 10 from sp1. i was reading about it last night and when i went to the site to read further about it, i got attacked by antispy 2009/hijack start menu trojans on my office computer. thank god for norton ghost and avg.

it takes some reg editing but i feel safer doing regedit in xp than vista.

right now I am off to the site you reccomended and i will keep you posted of what i find out.

I hate to say this but the security in vista is a bit over the top. we still should be able to have some control over what we do with our own equipment.
According to a post i read in another forum last night from someone who had attended a MS seminar, they feel that no app should have full control over the OS, for any reason. so vista was designed to reduce an app's control if it felt it had gained too much power or real estate so to speak.

it's pretty looking, but as far as i am concerned, that is where it stops. unfortunately for us, is none of the software we use to do what we need to do at our shows have been written for any of the apple or linux family.

Ive never run a mac, but it has me wondering right now.

Ill be back.....

Hi madmanjohn,
Take a look at this. Maybe you can log in as the real built in adminstrator and get access to the files?

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/67567-administrator-account.html?ltr=A

If you right click on one of the mp3 and go to properties is the check box checked for "read-only"?

Raj

Hi mate, I can not understand why you changed to vista. Do not get me wrong, it is good. You run a very specialised business so if I was you I would go for a company like matrox. They have alot of specialist hardware and software solutions. This is not something that is a normal thred. If you need more info see there website.

As far as UAC goes I did the same as Raj and removed it with vlite, so can't really help with that.

As far as DX 10 on XP, unless you know someone that is going to completely re-write the drivers forget it. Also any DX 10 on XP at the moment will be all emulation. There was one guy that was trying it (anyone remember the snake-oil company known as the Alky Project?), but he has since run anyway with his tail between his legs (and the $50 he scammed from anyone that was foolish enough at the time to send it to him). This is a year old,

Beyond3D - Will Direct3D 10 ever come to Windows XP?

but things never did change from then. Basically comes down to you want/need DX 10 you have to run Vista.

Im waiting on a download so i thought i would explain.

Big reason- cost vs technology. The first computer we put this system together with was a Mach speed venom, which is the Nvidia GEforce 6 chipset. it was actually built for different reasons, but when the new video software came out, we knew we could not run it in an old socket a cause of the loading speed for the video files. so we tried it in the machspeed, and other than a video card issue, it was fine. so after some experimenting, the matching nvidia dual card came out and a radeon x700 went in its place, mind you- everyone said this combination would not work.

it is our most reliable system next to an old socket a biostar m7vig 400 running an athlon xp 2800 barton core.

Problem is that mobo is no longer avaiable or id have ten of em. the other problem was the constant fight between the nvidia mobo video driver, and the ati card. it would give you nag screens just cause it could but it always and still does run.

On paper, i built that rig and put it in a antek nsk4400 case which is all we use cause of the ventilation for around 500.00 usd. that was with the amd 4600x2 and 2 gig of 800mhz ram. not bad eh?

so everyone that saw the new system wanted it in thier venue, so we needed more of them so i tried several combinations. mind you, i had a couple more 4600's and some more 800mhz ram on hand so i tried the ecs black 8200. this is a nvidia board and as a computer it was all it was told to be- however- the IDT audio was extremely unstable, and fought badly with our cmedia auzentech cards. so it went back. we have been an all amd shop since the socket a came out. back then intel used to freeze for something to do in a normal day, so for kicke i tried a q6600 on a gigabit technology board. it was supposed to be all that and a bag of chips.

20 minutes into its first show it froze, after a reboot it did it again in ten. we finished the show with the machspeed. so it went back- the other thing is- its getting harder and harder to find video cards that will break to svideo and composite and the rest of the real world dont have spiffy hdmi's in its bars pubs and nightclubs. the only reliable cards have been ati for that, so we tried the 780 and 790, and we had several biostars down thru the years that were not the fastest truck in the race, but always broght the money home, so we tried this one.
As a computer its nothing short of awesome- granted it needs a quad sitting in it and 1066mhz ram but it does ok, but only in vista. its easily twice as fast in vista as it is in xp.

the initial score before we made the neccesary changes was a 5.9 after service pack 1. unfortunately our softwre requires us to be in performance mode with all power settings at max.

during a show- it is running 4 desktops. 3 for the operator and one for the stage or public screens, sometime 2 and 2. at this point it will be running7 active applications plus itself.

Matrox is a great product but due to space restraints, and cashflow, is a bit out of reach.

we have done this in a single box with no outside attachements or harddrives except the screens, mouse and keyboard and as you could imagine, a laptop is out of consideration.

the last reason, i have a hard time sending a computer worth a huge sum into the great outdors on a stage or into a pub full of drunken crawlers. so it has to be cost effective. its bad enough i have to send them out with 30,000 watts of audio gear and 175,000 watts of lighting. too many zero's in the ned price tag for me.

Download is done i will be back. thanks m8

thanks for the tip thats the one i was chasing-- like i said im new to vista, but not to the game.....

here is an update for those of you that may need it or are following this thread

Still working with vlite to get a better finished product. however

I used to use a tool on xp called win xp manager by yamicsoft. and for the last two years ive been seeing this banner everytime after a fresh reboot that indicated if you buy this now we will provide vista manager when and if you upgrade, so i went there and checked it out. they stood behind thier word

it fixes uac with no more balloons or warnings. there were also some other neat tweaks in there. things are much better now.

however i am still fighting the read only problem- even after recovery from norton ghost from the original install point. i ran ghost as soon as the last update was in when i built it.

but at the moment everything is running fine, including a few old xp apps i couldent get to run before.

search yamicsoft and check it out. it may be what a few of you are looking for to slove problems but be careful what you are changing. especially with the cleaners or windows repair fixes. i learned that in xp manager.

if not configured properly you can and will destroy you os with the junk file cleaner.

when setting up junk file cleaner, you can safely eliminate "recycler" "$recycle bin$" and temporary internet files. everything els is system files best left alone. when all else fails just use the reccomended settings.

by the way - using another old favorite of mine i was able to find the hidden uac control files- but im not sure if they can be modified or not.

effective file search from sowsoft. the best search program i ever used. it will find EVERY file in ANY copy of windows- even the ones windows dont want you to find..

One thing ive learned in the past 72 hours- if you want the control you used to have from xp, then dont be afraid to venture into vista's windows folder. and make sure your system is backed up.

im a lot better off now than i was yesterday at this time. . im off to a show. ill let you guys know what happened when i get online tomorrow.

Thanks to everyone for thier help and advice. mjs

Well for those of you still following this post last night went ok, even though after rebooting with ghost, i had forgot to load the catalyst software for the x850 card, but made it thru the night ok.

some of you may want to read this- i was venting on a blog called Wishlist for windows 7 on zd net.

here is the link

My Windows 7 wish list | TalkBack on ZDNet

UPDATE: the forum will not post the link so it is above.


had to do something- things are a bit better but this still should not be this way-