The Powder Toy

Windows 7 idiosyncrasies

  • EqualsThree     30th Oct 2011 Member 0 Permalink
    After my old game development PC died a horrible death, I finally got around to buy a new one. It came with a funny OS called Windows 7 ...

    Apart from the well-documented FPS performance hit, I haven't had too many problems so far. But still, there are a few new Windows "features" that are seriously getting on my nerves.

    Currently, I am battling with an apparent change of the interpretation of file modification dates in Windows 7. It seems that the dates are no longer static, but are dynamically interpreted by Windows according to time zone and daylight saving mode. As a result, when creating a 7z archive, the modification date of a file can be different between its disk and archive instances. This screws up all my packaging scripts which rely on comparing files between archive and working directory instances. Files are interpreted as different even if they are in fact identical.

    Is there a way to force Windows 7 to return to the old (XP) version of interpreting modification dates statically? Are there any other workarounds? At the moment I can think of ony two solutions:


    1. scrap the beta diff packages and only upload full betas (rather wasteful)
    2. in the future, work on games only in Winter, so that Windoes 7 can't sneak in it's daylight savings offset




  • cctvdude99     30th Oct 2011 Member 0 Permalink
    Solution:
    Turn off your PC and never turn it on again. :)
    Problem, EqualsThree?
  • EqualsThree     30th Oct 2011 Member 0 Permalink
    @cctvdude99 (View Post)
    It's because i'm a Game Developer and a Beta Tester, but this OS doesn't seem to like Games ..
  • jenn4     30th Oct 2011 Member 0 Permalink
    That is true. 7 just doesn't like games or developing them.
  • TheWiseEyes     30th Oct 2011 Banned 0 Permalink
    This post is hidden because the user is banned
  • disturbed666     30th Oct 2011 Member 0 Permalink
    maybe run in compatibility mode for xp???
  • Ximon     30th Oct 2011 Administrator 0 Permalink
    The zip thing is going to happen on any operating system you use, you can try using a different archiving program. I don't think your problem is windows 7 related and you should find a different way of packaging your files. Windows/NTFS stores file timestamps using UTC so they are timezone independent.
  • MasterMind555     30th Oct 2011 Member 0 Permalink
    I do both and it works fine.
    Just get to know the OS
  • eternity     30th Oct 2011 Member 0 Permalink
    7 is probably one of the best gaming OS' XP is meant more for word processing
  • Shriek     30th Oct 2011 Banned 0 Permalink
    This post is hidden because the user is banned
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