While wasting my time talking to a Dell “technical” support representative, I was trying out different options in Vista as a last desperate attempt to get Lightwave to work correctly. I switched my Theme over from “Windows Classic” to “Windows Vista” and then switched my Color Scheme over to “Windows Aero”. Suddenly, Lightwave works.
Why would a stripped down, simplified theme interfere with a 3D graphics program but the bloated, graphics intensive Aero features fix all my problems? It almost seems like Microsoft knee-capped the old themes to force people to use and love the new Aero interface, which is obviously meant to compete with Apple’s MacOS. It is all very suspicious.
Of course, the new settings didn’t fix the random crash problem I’m having with Lightwave. If I grab a viewport’s edge and move it around quickly, after 5 seconds the program dies. That makes me very worried about the overall stability of the program on Vista. I guess I’ll have to install the program on my old system (the new backup system) just in case.
I tried to ask the Dell support representative (Adam from India) if I could buy an OEM XP license from Dell to downgrade my system, but he tried to explain to me that it is impossible for me to install Windows XP on my computer now that I have a clean installation of Windows Vista. He also tried to tell me that my problems cannot possibly be related to my video card drivers because I already told him that the drivers are installed correctly. They have a bunch of geniuses working over there. The Newtek support person, however, was very friendly and helpful, even though she wasn’t able to solve my problem (because in all fairness, the problem is not with the Lightwave software).
One last Vista complaint, also related to drivers. I have a very nice optical gaming mouse from Logitech with a bunch of extra buttons. Now that Vista makes driver development so difficult, Logitech is using the built-in Windows drivers for my mouse. Which means that I can no longer assign different functions to the mouse buttons except for those that Microsoft chooses, which are far more restrictive than what Logitech allows in XP and 2000.