I rarely post here for several reasons, but thought this was important.  Please read down. It is important I think ....

This is the first time this has happened and I'm more than a little pissed off about it.  Last night or early this morning, Vista downloaded an upgrade, no problem, it has done it before.  But this morning I got to find that it had wiped out not only Office and Outlook but all my email, and contacts as well.  That was bad enough and then I started trying to open poser and it had to reinstall itself and then I discovered that the only files in Poser were the program files and content.  Everything was gone!! Including all the character for the series I have running now as well as the character for the next two series as well.  Then I went to check my documents to make sure the Story Outline and story files were there, GONE!!  Everything is gone.  This is what happened when I first installed Vista, I knew it would happen and had backed up all my files.  That's one of the reasons I have three external hard drives, but I didn't expect this, because it has never happened before.  The only good thing is that I do have backup files for the current series so that I recreate or simply import the files back into my computer but everything is else is GONE!!  If I didn't dislike APPLE so much I think at this point I might switch over to an APPLE.  Now that I have vented, guess what?  I'm still Pissed....
Note:  If any of you have Vista, and the upgrade for last night 04/03/2007, DO NOT REBOOT YOUR COMPUTER TO COMPLETE THE INSTALL UNTIL YOU HAVE BACKED EVERYTHING UP!!!

I have  XP pro on my PC's  ..and a MAC ..so this is importand why ?
 ;}

Chris

There is an alternative to Apple & Microsoft, it goes by the name of Linux. I'm dual booting Linux & XP till I can use Poser properly under Linux then Windows is history for me.

Vista is a curse, it just makes YOUR computer a client of the almighty microsoft. I'm on XP pro and my next upgrade will be to linux... as will the next upgrade of many, many other users.

I really can feel for you....Last week I bought a computer with Vista on it and returned it the next day...took some hunting, but I found a new one with XP on it...not many of those left....sorry this happened to you,
Carol

Ooh, that sucks. I'm glad I didn't upgrade, and don't think I will be for quite some time.

Can you not do a system restore or anything of that nature?

Vista has copyright protection schemes built in it.  I WILL NEVER use it ever. My next maching WILL be a Mac for sure the more I see these types of posts the more I am convinced that MS has implanted something sneaky in their OS.

and from what I hear it doest work well with Poser. I have XP. And refuse to upgrade.

Stay away from Vista.

I will never get Vista..I'll just stick with my outdated XP Home...everything works so why fix it. Sorry to hear you got sideswiped by Vista :sad:

Yeah, I'm just going to stick with XP till it reaches the point that the software I use is no longer XP-supported.
I can't afford to switch to Mac because too much of what I use doesn't exist in a mac version (Rhino and 3dsMax  are windows-only and I think lightwave is too.

Did you know that when you buy a new pc with an OS pre-installed you have to agree to the terms & conditions before you can use the OS for the first time,  if you don't agree with them you can phone the company you bought it from & get a refund on the price of the OS after returning the backup/install discs, you're then free to install whichever OS you fancy in it's place.

Are you logging in to the account with the correct user privileges? It may be that you installed as an administrator but now the default has been reset so that you are logging in as a user, (or visa versa). That may account for you not being able to access the files.

That's what I was thinking. Are you sure all your stuff is not still there but under a different account?

There has been thousands if not millions of posts saying how crappy Vista is. Dajadues is right - Microsoft has implaneted sneaky anti-piracy code into the OS. I play by the rules .. but I don't like the idea of being spyed on by an organization that holds hands with 'big-brother'.

But here's what really sux about Microsoft. They're going to force us all to upgrade from XP to Vista .. they're notorious for releasing malware in their own updates. Hell Butch has a great example right here. (And I'm sorry to hear about your problems - btw). Windows based PCs dominate the world of computers .. though MAC is starting to win out some die-hard PC lovers. Linux .. that could be the program that shuts MS down .. if only it was more compatible with all these programs.

And here's the real kicker about Vista - now I'm not 100% sure its true, but I wouldn't be surprised - Microsoft plans on releasing another new OS come 2008. 

There's a smart business move to be made by Apple here - lower the prices dramatically on the MACs. That'd show Bill.

I just posted a thread about the massive security patch MS sent out last night in a desperate attempt to hold off hackers from China. It was big and MS was scared sh@tless about the breach. I feel for you because that patch really screw up a lot of folks running Vista.

I, like, others, will run XP until there is no more support from MS and even then I'll still run it or look for copies in Ebay. Linux is the next move. PC, Apple or whatever if  your OS and your security parameter are crap they all fall down and go BOOM!

its slightly amazing, but if you look at it "ever OTHER " version of Windows is okay lol, i dont know why that is, but its true.

Just for example, look back, 98 ran like a top, ME? OMG what a nightmare! (2000 was actually ME with fixes to make it actually work!) and then XP, which runs stable..... now vista which is a dog.  I dont have it, but my kid does on her comp, what a PITA!

*ME? OMG what a nightmare! (2000 was actually ME with fixes to make it actually work!)

sorry... wrong ! ;)

ME was based on 98SE. 2000 was based on the NT series, and XP is infact 2000 with improvements. the 9X series of code ended with ME.

Yeah, that's what I read,  when they first came out. ME was from the 9x kernel and XP from the 2000 kernel.
I first tried XP about a month after it came out, when I got a rental computer from rent-A-center that had it, and I never looked back. When I got my inheritance money and could finally afford to buy a computer instead of renting one I got one with XP instead of Linux or a Mac.

3.1 - stable as a rock, but dumb as one too.
95 - somewhat unstable, but must be expected from a 'first of its kind' step
98 - stable
ME - burn, die, burn, die!  The beta was a p.o.s., the release was 98% a p.o.s. (thus the 98 relationship).
XP - started out unstable, but has been rock solid since SP1.
Vista - hasta la vista, baby.  I'll stick with XP Pro and OS X.

Linux would be great if it could run anything.  And by anything, I mean Poser, Cinema 4D, Lightwave, Adobe anything, etc. and so forth.  Show me the Linux alternative for AutoCAD, Poser, Premier Pro, Vue Infinite, or Cinema 4D... (and a way to develop for Windows on Linux - haha).

If you like Gimp and OpenOffice, great.  I'm a substantial user and none of the 'big guys' support it - heck, they hardly support MacOSX!

Oh, yes everything is gone!  I have discovered that my story files still exist under the User folder as well as some of my other stuff.  I have spent the morning digging through folders and searching nearly every folder in windows looking for stuff.  (Do you know how many folders, sub folders, sub-sub folders, etc. there are on your computer!)  As far as stuff goes, it wasn't as bad as I thought, but all my emails, address book, as well as all my stuff in poser which really hurts is gone.  Any thing that I added into poser as characters, poses or saved files went out the windows, (small pun)  I finally got my email back up after two hours of waiting on the phone and about 30 seconds to fix the problem.  The reason that I post this was to warn other people that might have Vista or even XP as apparently it was the security patch that was downloaded last night and that patch was suppose to fix the hole in windows, well it did by filling in the hole with a lot of my stuff.

I really don't like APPLE, so I probably would never buy one, besides having to go back and buy all the software for it would more than double the cost of the computer.  I don't know if you remember it or not, but I liked IBM's OS2 Warp which in the early days was Window's main rival.  It would run anything Windows would run, was stable and had a lot of bells and whistles for it's time.  I tried Linux, but it doesn't run the stuff I use.  Being stuck between a rock and a hard place is no fun.  I sent MS a sarcastic message to their tech support and am waiting for a reply.  I'll let you guys know what happens....
Thanks
Butch

You dont seem to realize that you can run windows on the IntelMacs with either Parallels or bootcamp. That means you dont have to replace all your windows software that uses XP. Yes the Mac can run just about every OS out there. Ron

*Yes the Mac can run just about every OS out there.

*C/PM?

My recommended approach:

1.  Don't buy a computer with pre-installed OS or anything else.  Rather, build your own.  It's easy and there are lots of resources out there to help guide you.

2.  When you build your own and qualify for OEM version of OS, you get the disk (cheap) and can reinstall whenever you want (or need to due to bad drive etc).  And you only install the software and services you want.

3.  Avoid Vista until it is stable and has adequate drivers... probably after at least the first service pack.

For recent build, I bought XP Pro with free (except $11 S&H) upgrade coupon for Vista.  Left space for a future dual boot partition for Vista once it is stable.  Only reason I'm installing Vista at all is that it is required for some upcoming games my kids will want to run.  But they will not get to do that until Vista is stable... maybe a year from now?

Oh, and my new custom duo core build takes 22 seconds to do a firefly render which it took my Dell workstation over 3 minutes to render.  I'm sure part of the reason I get these speeds is the lack of Musicmatch, Real, and other unnecessary (for me) pre-installed programs and services.

Poser 7 is also very flaky and flawed (e.g., the "point at" bug), but it's fast at rendering.  That 22 second render in P7 takes twice as long in P6.  And if I build the scene in P6, the point at bug doesn't pop up when the scene is then loaded into P7 for rendering.

My bottom line: Build your own machine using XP Pro SP2.  Avoid Vista, at least for now.   Build scenes in P6 but render the frames in P7.

Yeah I do know that, one of my friends has been pointing that out to me for years,  He is a dedicated Mac fantic.   He has last count 7 of them from a note book to the new monster machine.  My problems with Mac goes back to when I was trying to get my first new computer.  I was looking at and this shows you how long ago it was, at a Swan 485/25 with a 50 megabyte harddrive (or something like that) and at whatever Apple computer was out at the time.  When I called Apple to see about getting one they were less than helpful and the guy I talked to and I will never forget this basically said that, "...if I couldn't afford to buy an apple then an apple was probably too good for you and that I should get a cheap pc", basically he was telling me that Apple computers were too good for me.  So I did I got a great PC, not the swan, for less than half of the cost of the Apple and it had bunch of software titles and I got a free printer as well.  Over the years at the Comdex shows when they were still being held in Atlanta, I had several other run ins with the all mighty Apple company.  I found their people snobbish and so smug that that if they stood out in the rain they would drown from having their noses so far up in the air.  (And no, I wasn't looking for trouble when I talked to them, I was seeking infomation.  At that time I was still considering an apple because I was just getting into computer graphic at that time.)  There are several things that I still like about Apples but they still leave a really bad taste in my mouth whenever I have to deal with one.  My fantic apple friend even gave me one of older apples to pay with and it was fun, but in the end I gave it back.  

Over the years and through I don't know how many different computers as well several operations systems, I still think that for the average user and I put myself in that group, that for convience and ease of use, Windows still is the best solution.  I don't think that windows is the end all to end all operating system, that MS thinks it is, but I have yet to find something that can replace it and still do all the stuff that I want to do, and as easy as I can do in under windows.  If something comes along that can do that then I jump ship so fast you won't even see my shadow.

Alot of tools are available under Linux Wings3D, Blender, Gimp and alot of Windows apps will run under Linux using an emulation layer  like wine or winex (Cedea or Crossover). You can even install VMWare or VirtualBox  (like VmWare but free and IMHO better) and run a virtual session of Windows under a Linux host.

http://www.virtualbox.org/ (has both Linux and Windows versions)
http://www.winehq.com/
http://www.transgaming.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=29&meid=
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/

OpenSuse is a great Linux distro.... http://www.opensuse.org/ and very easy to install and configure... I've also tried Mandrake (now Mandriva) and Ubuntu... but much prefer OpenSuse...

Quote - Linux would be great if it could run anything.  And by anything, I mean Poser, Cinema 4D, Lightwave, Adobe anything, etc. and so forth.  Show me the Linux alternative for AutoCAD, Poser, Premier Pro, Vue Infinite, or Cinema 4D... (and a way to develop for Windows on Linux - haha).

If you like Gimp and OpenOffice, great.  I'm a substantial user and none of the 'big guys' support it - heck, they hardly support MacOSX!

Guess what, I can tell you that most of the software you mention does actually work in Linux.

Poser4 runs better than in Windows, Poser5+ install & run sort of.
Cinema4D is usable for everything but animation at the moment
Lightwave7+ are working, how well I don't know as I can't afford them ;)
Adobe everything works to varying degrees, photoshop7 runs like a bat out of hell.
Premier 6 is working but not perfect, pro not at this time.
all Vue versions up to 5 are as good as in Windows at the moment.

Which development software do you use for windows? there's quite a few in the list. .NET doesn't work at the moment but it's being worked on so it's only a matter of time.

Have a look at this http://appdb.winehq.org/ It's a list of EVERYTHING windows that will work in Wine & also the stuff that wont at the moment.

kathym,

From what I've also read on tech forums Vista can lock you out of your computer if it finds Suspicious files, not sure what that means & I don't wanna know. I will stick to XP until it stops working. I would not be in a good mood if MS decided to lock me out of my own computer that I paid for.

Mac's sound more & more appealing to me everyday. As long as Poser runs on it
I'm good to go.

And, they ARE already forcing people to upgrade. If you can find a new computer with XP that is very, very rare. I won't be forced into upgrading. :)

Microshaft can stick it.

Butch, sounds like to me it made you lose all your unsaved work when you upgraded?

Lucifer, that's the problem.  Wine et al are improving, but Poser 4 support has been the most that they can offer for some years now - we are on Poser 7.  And note the limitations - C4D without animation is like Poser without figures - it's '4D' for a reason... ;)  Varying degrees, no Premier Pro, and who knows what emulation speed hit you take.  And as more versions come out and 64-bit versions and multi-processor versions, how far behind will these emulators get (very, imho).

I tend to stay on the bleeding edge and it seems to me that with Linux and emulators, I'd be stuck in some limbo hiatus for years - no danke you.  Plus, that was a very, very short sampling of software.  I also use Microsoft Office Pro, Daz software, Shade, Deep Exlporation, Carrara, Hexagon, UV Mapper Pro, Guitar Pro, iTunes (hmmm), QuickTime Pro, Street Atlas, Skype, SmartSound, Winzip, and so on and so forth.  Last I checked, the support list was limited or with limitations.

I use Visual Studio 6.0 for Windows 32-bit, but Visual Studio 2005 Pro for Windows 64-bit.

What is interesting is that the MacOS Windows emulation seems to be very good (that's what I hear anyway).  And this is mainly due to the 'Linux' BSD underbelly.  So why is it that Apple can provide such a good emulator but Linux is in the stone age?

I just sprung for a Compaq laptop with Vista home premium (getting it tomorrow); mainly because it would behoove me to learn the bugaboos of Vista. However, the main box and rendergarden currently are running XP Pro, XP home and Win2k (and I'm collecting OEM's XP-64, so that the next time I upgrade I can set up dual boots on everything....I want 4 gig of useable memory with V6I, I do I do.....), and there is no plan to pollute my working machines with....IT. btw, anyone notice the strange resonance? Vista Virus Coincidence?

I had a bloody gigantic download came for my Xp and after insatall came up with you aint got genuine XP, rebooted said yes genuine confirmed but computer rans slow.
Went and shut down some start up stuff, scaned and deleted stuff with mcafee and spybot, and windows running smoother and better now.
Gates will soon like 98 realese corrupt code in next year so Xp becomes unstable so you will have to go to vista, and the hackers having fun with vista.
As one arab chappy said laughing on the bus we have confirmed what you said that microsft and bonzo bush allowd CIA and NSA to have partial program control over vista, seems some dobate at CIA let cat outa bag.
So the child porn hackers and other hackers will shred vista, like XP was writen as spyware confimed by every hacker on planet, and before he was forced to fix XP millions of people world wide had child porn on thier comp.
That was confimed by a russian hacker who managed to realese a bit of code he said to shut that down, microsoft kept it quiet, so i sugest you people with vista watch out because of certain flaws in vista do not keep ya personal details on comp.
As the pedo hackers will download to ya comp then send your details to law enforcement about downloading child porn.
Oh yes the greatest political military genius in the world today, dear old bin laden like crim gangs has best hackers in world on vista.
And remember 1 our chaps that hacked yank def computers thank's to windows yea, so enjoy ya vista but i will never allow that scum bag company to put vista on my system.
Any company that allows an operating system to allow child porn to be downloaded by hackers should be shut down.
BUT AS HAS BEEN SAID WHY GATES  HAS NEVER BEEN ASSASINATED OR MICROSOFT BOMED TO BITS, IS EVERY CRIMINAL AND TERRORIST ORGANIZATION ON PLANET.
PROTECT HIM AS THANKS TO HIS OPERATING SYSTEM THEY CAN HACK GOVERMENT COMPUTERS TO THIER HEARTS CONTENT.
We the people who use his operating system are pawns in a global hacking war between goverment hackers, and crim and terrorist hackers, including all the children that suffer beause of it.
I expect the bill gates worshipers and the loony toon yank fanatics will scream my post down, but have ya ever asked you fanatics why america is the most hated country on the planet.

Lol, listen to all the "hoary old XP diehards" here.

I'm still running W2K!

It's odd how people's experiences can differ so greatly. Everyone I know hated Windows 98, due in large part to it's tendency to develop registry errors that caused bootup problems and hanging on shutdown. SE was supposed to have fixed those glitches. Too bad you had to buy an upgrade to use a product you paid for instead of getting proper support. Of course, every Windows version would have been a much better product if Microsoft had just done away with their bloated registry system. No chance of that.

I'm not an XP diehard. I hate MS but, XP is stable for me at the moment. ;)
I don't allow Windows to auto update I do that on my own safer that way.

If it was up to me I'd still be using DOS & Win95 for gaming. LOL.

IMO the real trouble with Windows isn't this or that, it's the whole thing.  An OS should be an OS, not a media player, a disc burner, a Web browser, bla bla bla.   Obviously MS just wants to wring cash out of their monopoly position.

I wish the gov't would break up their monopoly (one of the few things gov't is good for), so the software industry would have some breathing room to collaborate on an actual OS, one that handles files, drivers, etc., properly, and leaves the bells and whistles to individual vendors.

As soon as Vista was released I turned off Automatic updates for my XP SR2 PC so that Microshit couldn't sabotage my OS. Then I used Tweakui to turn off the annoying popup reminders that I had "turned off auto updates" No upgrade for me!

Gee... the Government has such an excellent record of Breaking up monopoly's huh? Am I the only one who's been watching Ma Bell rise from the dead as AT&T? They were forced to sell off all their sub companies like Southwestern bell etcetra, and now look>? They've bought most of them back again already!

Anyone remember the complete clusterfsck that was Microsoft Bob ? lasted about 3 months before it got binned - now that was a POS operating system.

By the way - the security update for XP broke my computer, fortunately not fatally and uninstalling it cleared the mess so beware

Oooh, Microsoft Bob.  A toy interface on top of a bland interface on top of DOS on top of a HAL on top of a BIOS on top of hardware - that was brilliant! ;P

What computer engineers seem to miss is that although interface abstraction is a great ideal, it is not practical - you don't see many 3D OS interfaces do you?  If you are going to do it, you have to design the system from the ground up for optimal performance - and I'm pretty certain that's not how MS did it.  Plus, it's nice to be able to 'open windows' into the guts of the system when necessary.  Iirc, Bob abstracted to the point of frustration without many windows to open...

My last Windoze update broke Word Perfect so bad I had to go back to an older version which ain't even supposed to work on XP yet does quite nicely under most circumstances. No Vista for me, thank you! And no more automatic updates either, of any kind. I just spent all day cleaning up the hash SpySweeper made with its newest build. Darn thing broke Easy CD/DVD Creator -- I'm still running version 6 and haven't had any problems with it till today -- so bad it couldn't find my DVD burner no matter how many times I tried pointing it in the right direction.  Finally got it back after 4  repair attempts and 3 complete re-installs. Had to get rid of SpySweeper, though. Which, since I still have 8 months left on my subscription, does not make me a happy camper.

 NO FORCED UPGRADES! EVER!

Well here I sit... with a Vista OS.  It's downloaded the lastest updates and wants to restart but  I have been postponing the restart.  Anyone know how to cancel the updates from being installed? 

I think I found it and uninstalled it.  Although I might have to play this game every day so it doesn't install it again.

Wish me luck!

No way.  Once installed, any reboot will complete the process.  If this is anything like Windows XP Pro x64, it will finalize as it shutsdown so as to have the purty demolisher awaitin' on reboot.

The only way not to install an update is not to download it (uncheck in the updater download list and tell the bastards that you don't want to be asked about it again).

I'm not sure where the updater download list is.  Okay.. duh, it's in the same place I am trying to uninstall the update.

What I did is to click on tools then windows update.   In there is a link to the update history. And there is the all important security update for today.  Then I clicked on uninstall although the install was still pending.  

Still hoping it works.  Most of the programs I have on Vista are working okay. 

Anyone have problems with the 4/03/07 update for XP ? 

Dunno 'bout Vista but in XP you can set your update preferences to download but NOT install unless/until you want to. Which is what I have done. Of course you must be careful how you shut down your computer then because doing it the regular way will automatically install all downloaded updates. To avoid this you must click on a small text line on your shut down screen, NOT on the big "Shut down" button.  If you forget -- and I did forget one night when I was too tired to think -- you could end up with unwelcome surprises when you next reboot. A security update for Internet Explorer got accidentally installed; luckily it only broke Word Perfect, I didn't lose anything else. Still annoying as hell, though.

Which is why I have no plans at all to install the latest XP patch. Merlin only knows what that'll screw up!

I'll never upgrade to Vista either. My next computer will be a Mac. I'm really tired of Microsoft, almost as sick of them as I am of the RIAA and this Republican US Gov't to be honest. I just hope Apple doesn't do something stupid to screw up the great opportunity that's beginning to present itself to them.

Hmmmm, interesting thread.

I'm currently running Vista 64bit business edition on a Intel Duo Core (E6600) machine with Poser 7 SR1 and various other proggies with absolutely NO problems. None. Even with updates and reboots. 

No men in black suits from Microsoft (or the government) have come to take me away, my machine isn't being hijacked by every hacker known to mankind and aliens haven't landed in my backyard. 

At least not yet. :-)

Not sure what you have against Apple but about 10 years ago I made the switch from PC to Mac and I've never been happier! And VISTA is just making me all that much happier. I do have a PC but I'm running XP on it for other things and when I upgrade to the new Intel Macs, I'll install XP. Sorry you're having so much trouble but that is part of dealing with Windows.

I'm still running Windows 2000 pro. I try and block any auto updates to any program. I hate the fact these programs just love to take over. I quit updating my windows long time ago.

Yikes! To late! But I didnt lose anything. I turned off UAC after taking administrative control on day one. Earlier this year I was finally able to afford a Mac Pro. Never used OS X before, and bought the machine because I could install Windows. Vista came out right about then. Been wrestling with it ever since, and consider (ed) myself a genuine Windoz fan. Now Im seriously going over to Tiger. Plenty of software available, including Poser, Vue, C4D and of course now CS 3. There are also real gems from smaller vendors that put Windows to shame. Best solution I think is both. Theres no seamless path for multiple operating systems yet. Boot Camp runs Windows natively, but currently has a 2GB memory cap (32-bit Home Premium here, but its not supposed to support 64-bit at this point in any case) and of course you have to restart. Parallels is a virtual environment. Convenient but limited, though improving rapidly. Right now Im just glad I have a choice. Vista is cool but I find its continual disruption of my calm making a Makery of me.

Quote - Hmmmm, interesting thread.

I'm currently running Vista 64bit business edition on a Intel Duo Core (E6600) machine with Poser 7 SR1 and various other proggies with absolutely NO problems. None. Even with updates and reboots. 

No men in black suits from Microsoft (or the government) have come to take me away, my machine isn't being hijacked by every hacker known to mankind and aliens haven't landed in my backyard. 

At least not yet. :-)

me neither. my Vista is up to date (as of 6th April) and so is my XP. Neither of them have deleted my files, changed my account or acted weirdly in any way. Infact afaik the only updates for Vista in the last couple of days have been one for the animated-cursor hack, and an update of Windows defender. Neither of which would delete your stuff. Well, Windows Defender might, if you were running a hacked Vista or something. Not that Butch was.

What I would do is get on the phone to someone at Microsoft and get the the root of it. Say you're going to sue them for compensation for lost work or something.