I take back every nice thing I said about Windows 7. My ATI drivers won't install, so I can't play Fallout 3. Dealbreaker, back to XP.
And later:
I take back everything bad I said about Windows 7. Got Fallout 3 working after all, a driver issue, which I suspected, VERY hard to fix.
I've been busy playing Fallout 3, and also trying to squeeze some work into the empty spaces, so that's why I haven't posted in a few days. Short story long, I broke down and put the Windows 7 RC on my primary desktop with the hopes it would solve random hangs and restarts it's been having with XP. Under Windows 7, I couldn't get Prototype or Fallout 3 to work, even with all the drivers installed.
Well, on 7 I kept getting errors on startup about certain (ATI) files not being compatible with my current version of Windows. I also couldn't access the 3d settings on my ATI control panel. I narrowed it down to either .Net 2.0 framework or my ATI drivers (duh). I ultimately decided .Net framework 2.0 was working properly, it just wasn't showing up as installed. Moving on to my ATI drivers, it took several uninstalls and runs of Driver Sweeper to get rid of whatever files were causing the problems. I didn't seem to be making any ground. I gave up, posted on twitter that I was going back to XP, rebooted my computer, and tried the ATI drivers one last time. The XP cd is still in my CD drive, (I used nLite to slipstream my mobo's SATA drivers). To my surprise I got no errors on startup, the 3D section of the ATI control panel worked, and lo and behold, so did Prototype and Fallout 3.
The Prototype problem I was having, btw, was the black or grey box in the upper-left hand corner of the screen, and then a message would come up: "Prototype has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience." If you're having that problem, you might try to clean out and re-install your graphics drivers.
Oh, one final note, the first ATI installation was stopped by a blue screen of death (in Windows 7), prompting me to inspect my graphics cards. I'm running 2 ATI Radeon HD 4830's in CrossfireX mode. I swapped the card's PCI positions and seated the Crossfire bridge on the second available tab instead of the first. I haven't had freezes or BSODs since. (Well, I had two freezes when playing Fallout 3, but only two crashes over the course of playing that whole game is really good, judging by what I've read online). Something probably just needed to be re-seated. After the BSOD I re-ran the ATI driver installation and had no errors shown, but the Fallout 3 install said the .Net 2.0 installation couldn't be completed, thus my distraction. I'm assuming the BSOD corrupted a driver file, the following installations ignored the fact that it couldn't overwrite said file, and once it was fully removed a fine time was had by all (me).
All in all, Windows 7 gets my seal of approval regarding gaming. I was worried there'd be some odd problems, this being a new OS and all, but the fact that 7 is built on Vista, so Vista drivers work on it helps a lot I'm sure. Vista drivers also work on XP SP3, but it's kind of a pain in the ass.
David
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