Vista

So it turns out that the board supports up to six channel audio, and I just never noticed the additional audio jacks before complaining about the sound problems. An idiot is me. Still, it's not all my fault.

Pretty much what it says. So, I got my brother’s old PC, and I’ve been spending most of my waking time getting Vista and various programs installed and happy. Unfortunately I’ve hit on a major stumbling block. The motherboard has no official Vista support (and indeed is out of manufacturer support) and there’s no working, usable audio.

Well, this will teach me to trust the official Windows Vista help website. After running the Live Installer to bring myself up to the Live Writer and Live Photo Gallery wave 3 betas (and update Live Messenger to the latest, although that was unsuccessful), I had to restart my computer because Windows Update also decided to do its magic today. The machine restarts, I log in, and… “User profile cannot be loaded.”

Uh oh, what?

As a big thank-you for attending the Toronto launch of Visual Studio 2008, I got in the mail today a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate as well as a CD containing a bunch of Live products (including a 90-day subscription for OneCare).

Now, I just need to get a new computer, one which can run a version of Windows newer than 2000.

My article on Game Explorer and XNA has been updated, just slightly. This update has been some time in coming, although it doesn't include all the information I was hoping. Check it out and see if you can tell what the changes are!

I mentioned a while ago about XNA updates being mentioned on the XNA Team Blog. I'm still curious to know, however, if support will ever be added for Game Explorer without the use of my hack.

The article on integrating Game Explorer and XNA is finally up and available for your reading pleasure! Included with the article are two sample projects, one which demonstrates how to integrate the metadata Game Explorer uses into your project, and the other showing how to register your game.

Read it, and tell me what you think!

One of the great new features in Windows Vista is the Game Explorer. The Game Explorer (or GameUX, as taken from the C++ header file for the component) makes it easy for Vista users to quickly and easily find the game they want to play or administer. Unfortunately, when Microsoft released XNA Game Studio Express, support to add XNA projects to Game Explorer was not added. I'm currently writing an article that explains how to add XNA projects to the Game Explorer, and so far I'm about half done. I expect to have the article completed by this time next week, or perhaps even earlier.