The Reliability Monitor
One other option available under the Maintenance tab of the action center is a link labeled "View Reliability History." This brings up a screen that allows you to track system problems and frequency over time.
While "Check for Solutions" has improved over time, it’s still not perfect. There are times when you need to manually grab a new update or driver.
The reliability monitor doesn’t point out trends, but looking at system problems over time does allow you to interpolate trends on your own. Sometimes you may encounter seemingly disparate problems that actually have a common cause.
Recently, for example, I’ve been having an issue with the PC RPG Dragon Age: Origins. The sound in the game would stop working. Okay, so maybe my sound drivers were behaving oddly. But if I examine earlier dates in the Reliability Monitor, I see no Dragon Age issues.
At the same time, I’d been running into other issues. USB ports would randomly stop working. Every now and then, I’d lose my network connection. The frequency of these sorts of events has been increasing over time.
This finally led me to the conclusion that my motherboard's I/O Controller Hub was starting to fail. USB, some PCI Express lanes, and networking all hang off ICH10 on my X58 motherboard. So I’ve ordered up a new motherboard to replace it.
- windows ,
- 7 ,
- troubleshooting
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Couldn't get dx8 era games to work in 7 so ended up going back to XP..
Google brings up a ton of potential solutions but none ended up working for me..
Weirdest thing is that this is the sort of error that you would think would be universal, if it's a software incompatibility or missing libraries but there is quite a mix of solutions, and an equal mix of people that have managed to get the games working and those that haven't..
I figure that we are still in dx9 era anyway given the consoles being prevalent in development anyway so I'll keep hold of 7 till I need it again..
To be fair, since then I've discovered XP Visual styles, and changing the look of XP provided the lions share of 7's benefits to me considering I just use the PC for games, web and open office..
Windows 7 does all right for me. I don't think it brings much to the plate vs. Windows XP (except for DX10/11 support). For the average (non-power) user is much better better as the interface is simplified. Windows Media Player does look like someone at MS 'vomited' the interface (any more) either...
I don't have any problem running games through Steam (+1 to Steam yet again). Still working on SS2 (which was fiddly to get working under Windows XP as well).
*doesn't
@matt66: What games, exactly? I've played pre-2000 games on Win7 that worked just fine.