Limewire Beta and Windows Vista

[xboxbrian]

Anyone try this with Vista yet. Just installed it yesterday, working great, only need Limewire to be complete! Any known issues?

[Aaron.Walkhouse]

Go boldly where no man has gone before…

…then tell us all about it if you survive. :p

[Kath]

My motto - never be first over the cliff, wait for the splash or the squelch :D

[xboxbrian]

Tried the Beta version first, program works, but the graphics are pretty messed up, about to the point that it's hard to even read or see what you are looking at. Very, very distorted. Tried to set Vista to run it in an XP environment (Feature of Vista, can run any program in any Windows environment virtually), but that did not work. Only way to make the GUI somewhat legible, was to dumb my entire computer display down to 256 colors. Also uninstalled and tried the commercial version, 4.10, same issue. No different. Interestingly, when I do an "Alt-Prt Scr" and paste the image into Paint, you can see the outline of the window, but everything inside simply looks blank??? (See Attachment) Definitely some sort of graphics incompatibility issue, that hopefully the people at Limewire can patch quickly!

[Sam]

What happens if you change the theme to something other than the Windows theme?

[garbagefan2]

Windows Vista was released? Microsoft.com said it was coming out in 2007.

[xboxbrian]

I tried changing the Theme in Windows Vista to the classic theme, no change. However, I did get a pop up error when I started Limewire that stated that due to the incompatibility of the program I was trying to run, it might not display properly??? Which is exactly what is happening.

[xboxbrian]

Microsoft released Windows Vista Beta 2 to a rather large number of people to begin testing. It is a Beta 2, so it is very stable, and works rather well. Not being a big Microsoft fan, I have to admit that I am very impressed with the OS so far. Besides the issues with Limewire, I have noticed that the entire system slows down whenever you run something that utilizes Java. I do not think the most recent version of Java and Vista are working very well together. This is probably the only big issue I have noticed so far, been running Vista since last Friday. All other bugs I have reported have been very minor cosmetic or small issues.

[Sam]

Are you able to get the beta releases of Java 1.6? The latest updates seem to have fixed various problems with Vista. (I've been chatting with some of the Sun devs, who have mentioned 1.6 will work better.)

[xboxbrian]

Will try to get beta version of Java when I get home today, thanks!

[garbagefan2]

How much does Vista cost? I want Vista. Is the beta free?

[Aaron.Walkhouse]

Betas are always free, otherwise there would never be enough victi… uh… volunteers. http://www3.telus.net/public/walkhoub/tongue3.gif

[xboxbrian]

Sam,

Thanks for the tip on Java Beta, I found a copy of 1.6 on the developers resource website for Java. Limewire noow works, however, Windows stops all of the 3D desktop effects I have running while Limewire is open, then restores them when I exit Limewire. I attached a screen shot of the error, hopefully someone at Limewire can make it compatible with the advanced graphic features.

This is also stated in the Windows help files:

Why are some visual elements of the theme being automatically disabled?
[This version of Windows is still in development, so some Help information might be inaccurate or missing.]

This version of Windows includes a technology that allows for certain graphics and visual effects. Some programs are not compatible with this technology. If you run an program that is incompatible, you might see changes to some visual elements in your theme, including borders, colors, animations, and effects. This is because Windows automatically disables the visual elements that are affected while the incompatible program is running. When the program is no longer running, Windows will re-enable the theme and your visual elements will return to their former state.

If you don't want your visual elements to be disabled when you use an incompatible program, you can try changing your theme to one that doesn't require this technology, such as the Windows Classic theme.

I tried this on the commercial version of Java, but that still didn't help Limewire display legibly. The Beta Java is definitely required to run Beta Limewire on Beta Vista!

[xboxbrian]

Not to get off topic, but to add...Vista Beta is available free from Microsoft, but you have to register on their website using a Microsoft Passport account. It is available for download as an .iso file, but it is very large, 3.12GB. I also obtained Microsoft Office 2007 Professional Plus Beta as well. I have tested other Beta software in the past, but never an entire operating system. I am very, very surprised at the stability of this OS, as well as all of the new features, both functional and cosmetic. I did have to purchase a larger graphics card, as my computer is over two years old, and only had a 64MB on board graphics chip. Bought a Geforce 6200 Nvidia with 128MB for $70.00, and everything looks and works fine.

[Sam]

Thanks for the update, xboxbrian.

I've been that that Java 6 beta77 should fix the Vista graphics problem. I haven't been able to confirm or deny this, though. See the bug report at: http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6343853 .

[IceCube]

Running on a clean install of Vista Beta 2 (the public beta build) I am not experiencing any problems whatsoever with LimeWire 4.12.0 with the latest Java installed (not beta). Don't ask me why or how - it just works :D

[xboxbrian]

I also did a clean install, what is the build number for your copy of Vista?