One Step Forward and two steps back…
As most of you know I was a big advocate of Windows Vista. I was very active within the beta and i even colaborated with others within my circle of people to make sure important bugs got bumped up and recognized. It has now been a year since Windows Vista has been released. I have since updated my 7300GS to a 8500GT so i could get some better gaming performance out of my rig. Which is a tried and true Dual Core Opteron 165 @ 2.4Ghz. Because i have 4 gigs of DDR500 in my system the only real option i had was x64. Since converting to Vista Ultimate x64 and outfitting my rig with an X-Fi Fatality card and this new graphics card i have had nothing but problems. Heres what i have run into but not limited to:
- X-Fi nortorious Snap-Crackle-Pop
- User profile magically corrupts itself.
- Start menu Program list magically disappears.
- Graphics Properties shows an astonishing 512 MB plus an additional 1.5GB of my system ram being stolen by DirectX10.
(sidenote: I did a big professional right up about this to MS to which it got ignored)
- Applications load significantly slower under Vista
- Sidebar apps disappear.
- Suprise Suprise i cant share my printer on the network..infact Vista refuses to share it on the network.
- UAC nags the living daylights out me.. why do i need make sure i wanna delete a file two times?
- Networked Printer is practically unaccessable to any other machine on the net..and its because its connected to a vista machine
- Sharing a drive has never been so agonizing in my entire life..what happened to right click > share.
- Pagefile useage in Vista x64 – 2.2GB Pagefile useage in XP Pro x64 – 232 mb
- Since when did 4 gigs become not enough for an OS? …seriously..you cache my 2.9 GB of my memory thats leftfor what…Prefetch?!… no video steals it…
- Wife’s laptop refuses to shutdown…she hates Office 2007 and Vista. Needless to say..she’ll be getting a Mac next time.
On an end note , with all my trials i am just waiting for Vista to break itself one more time or waiting for the SCP issue with the Xfi to come back so it gives me a reason to wipe this machine and put Xp Professional x64 on it. I haven’t submitted but a few bugs for SP1 and they got closed so why bother reporting them if MS themselves don’t care to even acknowledge they exist. Oh and don’t think the corporate world is going to welcome vista warmly…You had it right with XP and 2003… improve on it not completely build a os on beta code. The only reason why i dont switch right now is cause A: i cant afford it, and B: XP and 2003 do what i want it to do…maybe i’ll do like the rest and throw the towel in on Vista. It’s pretty sad when some of your own people Microsoft don’t even understand vista anymore. You have lost base with your customers, your testers, and the community all together…
~BlueScreenOfDeath
Oh and for the record..im writing this in Windows XP Professional SP2 x64 …in VMware.
HAHAHAHAHHAH I told you forever ago to try it. Now to just get you to just wipe Vista and put it on for good.
The secret with Vista in my experience and observation (during the beta and since RTM) is to avoid the latest greatest hardware and stick to the slightly older (and cheaper) mid-range stuff.
For instance like every other geek, I wanted an X-Fi when it arrived but avoided it and have stuck with my original SB Live. It works just fine in Vista, with no pops or other audio problems. Even the ancient creative applets work.
My seven-year-old Intel webcam? Plug-in to Vista and it works. I know of plenty of others that have had far more issues with their newer cameras.
I’ve avoided the “latest” video technology and my newest machine of a few months got an x1650. No real issues with that.
I had an ancient deskjet on a Vista PC in my network which was sharing over the network just fine. Finally, it finally died and refused to turn on so it was replaced with brand new laserjet. The laserjet will not share over the network (it appears, but printing to it does nothing).
I realize this would (and will be) more challenging in the future as more people are forced to switch to 64-bit.
I’m with you on this BSOD buddy. I really loved Vista at first, but after a year have decided to upgrade to XP SP2! It’s great being back using an OS which is more responsive and stable. I’ve kept my dual boot options open, but don’t see me going back to Vista until they (MS) do so some more work on it. p.s. Nice blog
Haha its a pleasure to have you post on my blog, I have to admit that SP1 for Vista does fix some things but overall its still alot slower than what im use to working on in Windows XP 64bit and Server 2003.
Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog.
Cheers! Sandra. R.