Vista and printing

[jigamaree]

This is a FYI post, maybe it will save someone some grief.

I recently got a new PC with Vista on it. I managed to move my files with minimal headaches, but printing was another problem altogether. I have a HP 5550 photoprinter on a network (Getting the network setup wasn't all that fun, either!) so that I can print either from my XP machine or my new Vista PC. There is a different printer driver for each machine. I get great pictures off of the XP but the Vista pictures had a greenish cast. My first thought was the ink cartridge, but that wasn't it. I then made sure the color management was set for optimize for printer and the picture had the Adobe color profile, but my picture still had the greenish cast. What I found was that there is an advanced menu for the 5550 that uses ICM (image color management) done by the host system. I had to disable that and I got good color back in the picture.

My second problem with printing was that the image didn't fit on my 4X6 w/tab photo paper. If I tried to print, it told me that some clipping would occur. To work around this, I had to select the 8X11.5 paper, then in printer preferrence, I had to reselect the 4X6, hit okay and then hit print.

I am just happy now that I can print! :) I am sure I will have some future woes with Vista, but then again, I had them with XP, too. Glad that I have the forum to look to for answers.

Greg

[Joe M]

Greg, Microsoft has made public Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Release Candidate. You can download it here (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9de6260e-4275-482d-9524-de850c4dd91c&DisplayLang=en). You can read about it here (http://www.winsupersite.com/faq/vista_sp1.asp).

This Service Pack may help your problems. Understand though this is only a Release Candidate, it's not a final version. Proceed with caution.

I am currently running a Release Candidate for Service Pack 3 on Windows XP. I definitely notice a faster XP which was already pretty fast. I haven't had any problems with it.

[jigamaree]

Thanks for the information. I will read up on it.
Greg

[JonE]

I recently got a new PC with Vista on it.

This is the first line of many a very bad and nightmarish stories. Don't anyone else go down this road if you can avoid it! Windows XP is an excellent and mature operating system. Vista is a not-ready-for-prime-time mess. It is so highly configured for security that is virtually impossible to get everything on a home network to work with each other, and truly impossible for the average user. After months and months and months of working on it, I still have elements of my network that won't work together (one computer can get another's files, but not vice versa; can access one printer but not another; etc. etc.). But, at least the terrorists cannot get at my photos! By the way, did I happen to mention? DO NOT BUY VISTA!

[RobertSchuldenfrei]

Hi Greg,

I have posted a number of messages with the title: "Vista blues." I truly believe Microsoft is over the hump. While I had a number of issues with this release of the Windows OS, it has been stable now for over six months.

I hope you will not think me a shill for Microsoft, but it is hard to be number one... Everyone is gunning for you. The bad guys will not waste their time with UNIX or even OS X. The payoff for them is to shoot Windows in the heart. Then there are the regulators. As good as their intentions are, they have made life difficult for the folks from Redmond. Finally, there are just the plain folks who find it a joy to bash Windows.

Therefore, it is no surprise that Microsoft tries to make Windows as bulletproof as possible, no matter what the cost in ease of use or efficiency. I have a mix of Windows versions in my computer complex. I have Vista on my base machine which accounts for 90% of my day to day usage. There are two laptops that have XP loaded because they do not have enough RAM to support Vista. They hook into my condo's LAN both by wire and wireless Ethernet. Finally, I have a really old server running Windows 2000 Advanced Server.

While it took some doing to get everything to "play nice" with Vista it has worked out for me. I do not mean to step on anyone's toes here. Staying with XP for awhile is no problem for people whose main application is PSE. However, there will come a time for them, just like it did for the people who stuck with MS/DOS, when they will have to move on. Some, I suspect will go over to Apple, but most will finally suck it up and move to the current release of Windows.

Cheers,

Bob

[jigamaree]

Actually, I got my computers to work together. I have 3 of them networked. One of them is XP Home, another is Vista Ultimate, and a third is XP Media Center. While it was a bit of struggle, I did get them to talk. What helped was taking a class at the local technical college. (If you have a local college, I would encourage you to check it out for classes on Elements and other digital photography. I learned a lot from my first class a number of years ago.) The networking class got me the basics. From there, it was searching the net. One of the tricks on searching was wording the search correctly. By far, getting the XP home machine networked was the most difficult. I had to install Link Layer Topology Discovery Transponders in my local connection. Another difficult area was that I had to increase a setting in the registry. I would have to dig through my files to find out that one, my memory isn't all that good anymore. It had to do with allocating enough resources to the networking functions. If anybody wants me to dig, let me know. Shortly after I got my Vista machine, I had a hard drive failure and had to send it back for replacement. Which meant I had to configure the Vista machine over again. To get all of the pc's to talk, I also had to put them in the same workgroup. Vista and XP call theirs different, so I had to change them. The printers (HP5550 and HP970cse) are connected to the XP Home and I had to call them a local printer on the Vista machine to get them to work from there. Overall, I am happy with my Vista machine. Sure, it has a few quirks, but so did the XP when I first got it. When I purchased the Vista PC, I made sure that I had enough ram and computing power to handle just about anything I can throw at it . I do this to make it last longer. I did the same thing with the XP 5 years ago and it is still going good. l have PSE 5.02 installed on the Vista PC (The Vista upgrade) and haven't had any problems with it except for getting the printer settings correct. My original posting was a For Your Information posting, I wasn't looking for help, just wanted to let others know what I did to get things straightened out. I do thank all that have looked and posted.

Merry Christmas everybody!

Greg

ps another thing I did was to install Outlook on the Vista so that I could read email on either the XP Home or the Vista. This cannot be done in Outlook Express.

[lowbone]

I was very happy when I bought my new computer with Vista Home Premium. I thought that I would not have to deal with software along the way that was no longer XP compatable. I have had so many problems with Vista that I am seriously thinking of reformating my computer and buying a copy of XP. My thinking is that in the future when Microsift debugs Vista I can reinstall it with the updates.

[JonE]

Link Layer Topology Discovery Transponder was probably the easy part. It's amazing that anyone could even think of a name like that, much less authorize it for public release! [What about "Network Mapper"??] Then having a new OS that uses a different home network workgroup name from every prior Windows release... Then trying to get each computer on the network to let the other talk to it . . .

Yes, there will come a time when everyone has to move from XP to the next version of Windows, but it probably won't be Vista and it if it is, it will be when Microsoft figures out how to make it work more fluently. Roberrt, I know your comment wasn't intended to be personal but just to be clear, I'm not a MS basher. As I said, the XP OS is now excellent and quite robust. Vista just isn't fully baked yet. Actually half-baked is a pretty good description. It wasn't ready for release and MS management should have called time out.

[RobertSchuldenfrei]

I was very happy when I bought my new computer with Vista Home Premium. I thought that I would not have to deal with software along the way that was no longer XP compatable. I have had so many problems with Vista that I am seriously thinking of reformating my computer and buying a copy of XP. My thinking is that in the future when Microsift debugs Vista I can reinstall it with the updates.
Hi Larry,

In a PM you asked:

"Hi Robert,

A while back you posted some adjustments in PSE6 that helped things run better. I remember one of them had to do with the cache. I'd appreciate it if you could resend those as well as a how to on how to get into the place where the adjustments are made. Thanks,

Larry"

Here is my take on both items. I would stick with Vista and try to iron out all of the issues. Reformatting the disk and trying to restore your files to the way it was will take time and effort. Then, going back to Vista down the road will be another exercise in frustration. You can use this forum to give you aid as you address one problem after another. Those of us who have gotten Vista running on even keel will be glad to answer your questions even if they are not about PSE directly.

As for things that make PSE 6.0 work well on Vista, they fall into two areas: disk and RAM. Since you have a machine that came with Vista you at least have 1GB of RAM. If that is all you have I would strongly suggest you buy another GB of RAM bringing the total to 2GB. That will make a big difference in running PSE.

Often, manufacturers of PCs lard up their machines with software at boot time. This has a bad effect on RAM hogs like PSE. Once you have your machine up and running, drop into Task Manager. (<ctrl><alt><Del> and then click on Task Manager) Ideally, the only application running will be PSE. Review the Processes running and uninstall any software you know you do not want to use. DO NOT "End Process" from anything you see in Task Manager. It is just to inform you as to what is running on your machine by virtue of booting it up.

The trick about getting more usable RAM inside PSE 6.0 is as follows:

1/ Edit > Preferences > Performance

2/ Adjust RAM such that PSE can use 80% of it.

If you have more than one physical (not logical) disk in your machine you can perform another trick. I do not have a second hard drive so I cannot give you the step by step to do this under Vista right now. What you want to do is place the Windows paging file (or sometimes called the swapping file) on a little used drive. That way paging will not interfere with reading or writing or file loading or saving. When using a lot of RAM, like lots of layers, or history, Vista offloads things PSE has stored in RAM and places them onto disk. This is called paging. Since disk is three orders of magnitude slower than RAM, you can take quite a performance hit. If you do have a second drive, write back and I will look up the steps to place the paging file (named Pagefile.sys) on an alternative disk, or even split it between the primary and secondary spindle.

As you can see there is a lot you can do. Let's first get Vista working.

Cheers,

Bob

[jigamaree]

Merry Christmas!
One thing that I have found out about Vista is that it is not ready for the workplace, at least in the cheese plant where I work. For instance, it is not compatible with Rockwell software or is Rockwell software not compatible with Vista? Anyway, the two don't cooperate. Another thing, sometimes dual core machines also screw up work place software. We wiped out an Allen Bradley programmable logic controller by trying to communicate with it with a dual core laptop.

My guess is that Vista is being geared more towards consumer type of procucts. Maybe along the way, it will creep into the business community.

For me personally, I think my greatest problem is the learning curve. With any new software, there is a certain amount of differences that have to be figured out. The different versions of PSE are a good example of the changes that can happen. Sometimes we lose some things in one version only to gain something different and hopefully better in the next.

In time I think Vista will get better. I haven't had nightmares with it, and I think that is because I got a machine with 4 gigs of ram and a 400 gig RAID 1 setup. I didn't want to lose my pictures and I certainly didn't want a machine with the minimum requirements for Vista.

Enjopy the holidays!

Greg