Vista Tutorial - Still happy with Vista, but . . . (Games Explorer problem)

Well, I've been running Vista for several weeks now. Generally
speaking, I'm satisfied. Performance is good, my system is stable, and
the majority of my applications and games are working and behaving as
they should.

I have to admit though, I have now run into a problem which is just
downright annoying. The problem is with the new Games Explorer.

I'm sure most of you here know what that is -- it's the new feature in
Vista that serves as the central repository and starting point for all
of the games installed on your system (allowing you to organize
everything according to various criteria and such).

It's a nice feature of course, and initially I got it to work. But
unfortunately for me, the icons inside my Games folder have become
seriously screwed up, and I've been unable to repair the situation.
There's nothing wrong with the icons that represent the games that come
with Windows itself (Chess, InkBall, Purple Place, etc.), but the icons
for most of the games I've installed myself are in a complete state of
confusion. They are THERE, but have become SHUFFLED and INCORRECTLY
ASSIGNED to the wrong entries within the Games folder (sometimes the
correct icon for a game doesn't appear at all). It's such a turn-off
that I ended up disabling the Games link on the Start menu.

Something tells me that one of the possible reasons for this occurrence
might be the fact that all of the games I've installed myself are from
the Win98 to WinXP era and are not officially "Vista Certified." Maybe
all of the games that are released from this date forward (the DirectX
10 titles especially) will know how to better integrate themselves with
this particular aspect of Vista.

Microsoft: I support you, but this is the kind of silly bug that should
never surface in an OS (assuming that it's Windows' fault). By now you
should be able to know how to get icons to behave correctly.

Anybody else experiencing this problem?

--
Vista Ultimate 32-Bit
Core 2 Duo 2.40 GHz, 2 GB RAM, EVGA 8600 GTS

Erich,
I have several XP games (and a couple of win98) installed into the Games
Explorer and so far I have not experienced the kind of problem you mention.
I do experience a loss of config all the time, i.e. the list switches size
and they resort themselves, lose groupings, etc. But they always work.

Mark


"Erich Kohl" <ekohl@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:Ljtri.1729$Yz6.1312@newssvr22.news.prodigy.net...
> Well, I've been running Vista for several weeks now. Generally
> speaking, I'm satisfied. Performance is good, my system is stable, and
> the majority of my applications and games are working and behaving as
> they should.
>
> I have to admit though, I have now run into a problem which is just
> downright annoying. The problem is with the new Games Explorer.
>
> I'm sure most of you here know what that is -- it's the new feature in
> Vista that serves as the central repository and starting point for all
> of the games installed on your system (allowing you to organize
> everything according to various criteria and such).
>
> It's a nice feature of course, and initially I got it to work. But
> unfortunately for me, the icons inside my Games folder have become
> seriously screwed up, and I've been unable to repair the situation.
> There's nothing wrong with the icons that represent the games that come
> with Windows itself (Chess, InkBall, Purple Place, etc.), but the icons
> for most of the games I've installed myself are in a complete state of
> confusion. They are THERE, but have become SHUFFLED and INCORRECTLY
> ASSIGNED to the wrong entries within the Games folder (sometimes the
> correct icon for a game doesn't appear at all). It's such a turn-off
> that I ended up disabling the Games link on the Start menu.
>
> Something tells me that one of the possible reasons for this occurrence
> might be the fact that all of the games I've installed myself are from
> the Win98 to WinXP era and are not officially "Vista Certified." Maybe
> all of the games that are released from this date forward (the DirectX
> 10 titles especially) will know how to better integrate themselves with
> this particular aspect of Vista.
>
> Microsoft: I support you, but this is the kind of silly bug that should
> never surface in an OS (assuming that it's Windows' fault). By now you
> should be able to know how to get icons to behave correctly.
>
> Anybody else experiencing this problem?

Mark wrote:

> Erich,
> I have several XP games (and a couple of win98) installed into the
> Games Explorer and so far I have not experienced the kind of problem
> you mention. I do experience a loss of config all the time, i.e. the
> list switches size and they resort themselves, lose groupings, etc.
> But they always work.
>
> Mark
>

Okay, thanks for your input.

I'm just glad that my games do work . . . seems there are people
experiencing serious software compatibility problems, but the situation
is not that bad with me. Maybe MS will discover the Games Explorer bug
that I mentioned and fix it -- at the moment, however, there's really
nothing I can do about it.