Vista SP1 Guides for IT Professionals Released

wilkinism writes "Microsoft released several detailed documents explaining just about everything you ever wanted to know about Vista SP1. Highlights include a Deployment Guide, list of included hotfixes, and a 17-page list of 'Notable Changes'. In reviewing the Notable Changes document, it seems the company focused on improving reliability & performance in really specific scenarios, so it's no wonder that most reviewers are reporting no noticeable gains."

Specific scenarios?

[ccguy (1116865)]

From the changelog:

25% faster when copying files locally on the same disk on the same machine

Significantly improves the speed of moving a directory with many files underneath.

I don't think those two (from a quick glance at the doc) are very uncommon...

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

Moving a directory? Why is that complex?

You don't actually physically move the files & directories on disk. You just change a few index entries.

This isn't bleeding edge stuff - I'm sure this was done more than 20 years ago.

Re:

[MMC Monster (602931)]

That's what I'm wondering. A move of a directory tree on the same disk should be changing a couple links and that's it. Regardless of the underlying filesystem.

What would be interesting is if they implemented a faster "copy directory on same disk" that involved hard links and copy-on-demand when files change. (Something like what Sun's ZFS)

Re:Specific scenarios?

[ccguy (1116865)]

The move operation itself might be as simple as that. The problem is that vista has a tendency to open files for no good reason. For example you can flag 40 files, press shift-del to delete them forever, and have the operation fail because one of the was opened by explorer to display a thumbnail. It's really hard to believe that MS can't put a couple of interns to work on explorer and get rid of these incredible annoying things forever. Or fuck, buy someone else's replacement.

Re:Specific scenarios?

[ccguy (1116865)]

It's not Explorer's fault. From what I recall, you can't delete a file off an NTFS volume if a program has opened it with exclusive (ie not shared) access.

How it's not Explorer's fault if it's explorer the program that opens the file I just told to delete? If it really really needs to open it so it can show a thumbnail or display the dimensions etc for a few milliseconds before it's deleted, at least it should implement a 'panic close', or 'delete queue', or any other dumb solution they can come up with... anything is better than displaying an error message saying that the file is open (which it's not true by the time the message comes up, btw).

While they are at it, they could ALSO try to not to cancel long operations just because of an error in a specific file...i.e. copy 500 files from one place to another, file number 219 fails and the operation is cancelled? 218 files copied, 287 files that COULD have been copied not copied, WTF?

Ah, and a final suggestion... if the user asks to copy 50 Gb to a drive with 40 Gb free space, fucking start doing it if the users really wants to, instead of completely refusing to even try...you don't know if the remote is making space at the same time, or compressing, or just reporting an invalid free space number for whatever reason.

OK, just needed to vent a little :-) Feel free to defend explorer at any time.

USE SYNCTOY!!!!!! by MS too

[cheekyboy (598084)]

Use synctoy, its MSs attempt at an rsync clone which is quite ok, though could be better for once off 'copys'

It does all you want, the way you want it, its what should be in the OS by default!!!

Im sure explorer has 15 years of legacy code and exceptions and 100 levels of tree decisions, its probly why they
dont want to change too much, especially if its bad code thats been cleaned up.

Re:Specific scenarios?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul (629286)]

Thats why I wrote my own copy program for windows. It copies and or moves each file individually, taking into account exactly what I intended it to do if the operation failed. Sure it *might* take a little longer, but I only use it in cases where I'm copying/moving hundreds of files and don't want to stand in from on the computer for the entire operation.

Re:Specific scenarios?

[seaturnip (1068078)]

Vista (or Windows XP w/ Resource Kit) already includes a robust copy tool, called Robocopy [wikipedia.org].

Re:

[OldManAndTheC++ (723450)]

Vista (or Windows XP w/ Resource Kit) already includes a robust copy tool

Which makes you wonder why such a tool is necessary in the first place. Why can't normal Explorer copy operations be robust?

Re:Specific scenarios? synctoy dude

[cheekyboy (598084)]

You could have just used synctoy, and saved your coding efforts.

SyncToy
SyncToy: the smart way to copy files, at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/prophoto/synctoy.mspx [microsoft.com]

What Does SyncToy Do?
SyncToy synchronizes the files in folders of your choosing. It does so by copying, renaming, and deleting files.
What's So Special About SyncToy?
There are many ways to copy files in a Windows® environment. However, SyncToy is faster, easier to configure, more transparent, and easier to repeat

Re:

[techno-vampire (666512)]

So handle it the same way *nix does: the deletion takes place when the last program using it closes the file.

Re:Specific scenarios?

[balloonhead (589759)]

I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Vista fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Windows Vista rig (a 4GHz Intel Core2 Extreme w/ 4 GB of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to move a 17 KB file. 20 minutes! At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running Windows 3.1, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this behemoth, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.

In addition, during this file transfer, Firefox will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even my IDE is straining to keep up as I type this.

I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Vista machines, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Vista system that has run faster than its XP counterpart, despite Vista's modernised architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster with Photoshop than this 4 GHz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that Vista is a superior machine.

Vista addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use it over other faster, cheaper, more stable Windows environments.

First page

[roman_mir (125474)]

The first page of the instructions say: Uninstall Vista, install something else.

Second page says...

[christian.einfeldt (874074)]

... "Please protect your Windows investment! Don't use Microsoft products to access the Internet. Instead, go here to request a free (as in beer) CD [ubuntu.com] with the latest anti-spam and anti-virus software. When your CD arrives, just place it in your CD-ROM, and reboot your computer before going on-line. You will then be able to surf the web in full comfort knowing that no viruses, spyware or spam will take over your machine. When you are ready to return to the full Genuine Windows Vista experience for running your favorite games, such as BSOD, simply reboot your machine and take the CD out of the CD-ROM before the reboot starts."

Re:

[Ash Vince (602485)]

When you are ready to return to the full Genuine Windows Vista experience for running your favorite games, such as BSOD, simply reboot your machine and take the CD out of the CD-ROM before the reboot starts.

I find that game too frustrating. I never seem to make any progress with it so I have given up and stuck with Mahjongg instead.

Re:

[4D6963 (933028)]

The first page of the instructions say: Uninstall Vista, install something else.

Argh! Please, stop with the overly subtle sarcasms, I'm so confused now!

Re:

[whopub (1100981)]

everything you ever wanted to know about Vista SP1

In my case an unprinted stamp sized leaflet would do just fine.

Re:First page

[marcello_dl (667940)]

You think you are funny? I just bought a laptop.
I said to myself: look, Microsoft is evil and Vista is a POS according to many reports- but you have it with your new lappy, keep it for compatibility tests with the other POS explorer. Just dual boot. You already multibooted two macs, three intel laptops and an old alphaserver.

Ok. Let's try.
Booted vista, made backup dvds. Looked around. Ok Vista seems to suck. Slow, and every desktop is different from the others, due to personalization by laptop manufactured, so it's the usual popup galore plus new widgets. Totally different from the macos -> osx transition, which was totally smooth, except for the fact that OSX till 10.2 was not even complete.

But I gotta repartition. Let's do it from vista, lest they did some FS trickery that linux installers do not yet know about.
oh three partitions? well at least data is separate. OUCH but it won't resize to more than 50%. Defrag. OUCH no defrag Data partitions only, defrags everything. STOP. defrag.exe from commandline after looking for the proper options. Just like that difficult to use OS called linux. Defragged. Still won't resize. I guess I must get to windows forums looking for answers, just like that other difficult OS? No way- But I'm not using only 20 out of 120gb of disk for my main OS. Let's do it from linux. Resized, cut some 60gb of free space between two partitions. The linux zealot in me thinks: "wanna see that vista won't tolerate even leaving free space in the middle of his partitions?" reboot. Indeed, the restore screen comes up.
That's it, vista goes. Kept in my house for two hours. Subtract one from vista install stats :)

Re:

[roman_mir (125474)]

mmm, no.

1. Reformat the drive.
2. Install something else.

2GB+ Installation fix?

[by Anonymous Coward]

The number one thing Vista should fix, and I didn't see it on the list (I could have missed it), is including the fix that will allow machines to install Vista with over 2GB of memory. It is pretty silly that one of the huge benefits of using a 64-bit OS is the ability to have over 4GB of RAM, but Vista has a problem with that.

Vista bashing aside, who would want to install any OS first by REMOVING some of their RAM, installing the OS, applying a patch/fix, then adding back the RAM. What a hassle!

I have Vista SP1 RC installed

[HeavensBlade23 (946140)]

It did fix a few issues for me, most notably being the widely-reported file copy speed problem. After installing the RC my drive-to-drive speed went from 20MB/s back up to XP levels. That was one of my top-five gripes about Vista.

Re:

[rucs_hack (784150)]

Me too. Copying from my vista machine to the other machines I own was horrificly slow. I'm somewhat concerned that they got a 45% improvement in copying to a non vista machine with the first service pack though. It doesn't speak well for their quality control if a flagship product gets released with that level of error.

I wonder if they've just quietly disabled some of that stupid drm stuff.

Re:

[ashridah (72567)]

Let's be clear about this. Copying from disk to disk is a different bottleneck than copying over the network. Network copies are affected by the media playback QoS, AND the relative chattiness of SMB2 (the new version of the CIFS protocol that vista likes to use if it can). Media playback will put an emphasis on prioritising access to media so that it can keep the buffers as full as possible when the QoS service is active (i don't recall what it's called, sorry,) and SMB2 just uses a shitload more packets (

Re:

[operagost (62405)]

I don't SMB2. It's like a totally different Super Mario Bros. game. I hear SMB3 is going to totally rock, though! Rumors are that it will be featured in that "Wizard" movie that's coming out!

Disable indexing, restore point, and shadow volume

[Billly Gates (198444)]

This will bring your disk access speeds close to XP with or without sp1. SP1 from what I read mainly effects lan speeds.

With all these things going on the disk access will slow down considerable and no service pack will fix it. Most users dont care and just want their system to work so this is why its enabled by VISTA by default.

Re:Disable indexing, restore point, and shadow vol

[ichigo 2.0 (900288)]

I thought those were enabled as default in XP as well?

Re:

[pla (258480)]

I thought those were enabled as default in XP as well?

Indexing no, restore yes (though I believe it works differently in XP, I still turn it off and see a not insignificant performance boost), shadow volumes no.

Though various things you install may turn those on for you, a vanilla XP SP2c Pro install has them set as I describe above.

Support Blender and Ogre3D!

[headkase (533448)]

Bucking the slant around here, I bought Vista the very same day that SP1 RC1 became available exactly because of that. In a short while SP1 will be final and Vista will get incrementally better. It's been a pleasant experience for me so far, all of my software works but about 1 in 15 needs to have XP compatibility checked. UAC doesn't annoy me very often as well - maybe that's because I don't go into OS configuration screens or run XP ticked programs all that often. Now, with all that said: the day Linux runs all my games and all games are released for Linux is the day I say: "Vista? Yeah I used to use that.". Linux has everything but entertainment and for me entertainment is the primary use of my computer.

Re:

[bigstrat2003 (1058574)]

Vista is actually pretty good, contrary to popular opinion. I was foolish enough to install SP1 RC1 on my home computer (risky, I know), but it's worked out well for me. The only issue I did have with Vista, a really weird one where DNS would randomly stop working until I restarted, has gone away now. Much better than the last Windows service pack I installed, XP SP2 right when it came out, which broke literally half my games for some reason. In fact, Vista SP1 actually made KOTOR run somehow, which I could

Re:

[headkase (533448)]

#1 ... the day Linux runs all my games ...

Accomplishable through api-translation programs such as Wine or Cedega (isn't Cedega a branch of Wine??)

#2 ... all games are released for Linux ...

Will happen when enough feedback (see first point for how to achieve feedback) makes Linux a profitable target.

Re:

[Jackie_Chan_Fan (730745)]

linux doesnt even have the everything but entertainment. It lacks a lot in the area of content creation as well.

Gimp is a peice of shit folks. Lets be real.

SP1 includes stability fixes for bios hacks!

[BitZtream (692029)]

Also coming with SP1 but not in the current release candidate, we will also be including updates that deal with two exploits we have seen, which can affect system stability for our customers.

• The OEM Bios exploit, which involves modifying system files and the BIOS of the motherboard to mimic a type of product activation performed on copies of Windows that are pre-installed by OEMs in the factory.
• The Grace Timer exploit, which attempts to reset the "grace time" limit between installation and activation to something like the year 2099 in some cases.

Funny ... I don't seem to remember the bios hacks or grace period resets causing stability issues that weren't there already. I'm sure glad they are going to fix them and release them without giving the rest of us a chance to know they are safe to deploy.

Atleast it'll give the 31337 hax0rs something new to work around, keeps them off the streets, prolly requires more drugs though.

Re:

[0racle (667029)]

I wonder if these will show up in XP SP3 as well.

Cliffs' Notes

[The Clockwork Troll (655321)]

In my opinion, here are the fixes and improvements ones that the general Windows population might actually care about:

Adds support for exFAT, a new file system supporting larger overall capacity and larger files, which will be used in Flash memory storage and consumer devices.

Enhances the MPEG-2 decoder to support content protection across a user accessible bus on Media Center systems configured with Digital Cable Tuner hardware. This also effectively enables higher levels of hardware decoder acceleration for commercial DVD playback on some hardware.

SP1 addresses issues many of the most common causes of crashes and hangs in Windows Vista, as reported by Windows Error Reporting. These include issues relating to Windows Calendar, Windows Media Player, and a number of drivers included with Windows Vista.

Improves power consumption when the display is not changing by allowing the processor to remain in its sleep state which consumes less energy.

Significantly improves the speed of moving a directory with many files underneath.

Improves performance over Windows Vista's current performance across the following scenarios1:
  25% faster when copying files locally on the same disk on the same machine
  45% faster when copying files from a remote non-Windows Vista system to a SP1 system

Improves responsiveness when doing many kinds of file or media manipulations. For example, with Windows Vista today, copying files after deleting a different set of files can make the copy operation take longer than needed. In SP1, the file copy time is the same as if no files were initially deleted.

Improves the time to read large images by approximately 50%.

Improves IE performance on certain Jscript intensive websites, bringing performance in line with previous IE releases.

Allows users and administrators using Network Diagnostics to solve the most common file sharing problems, not just network connection problems.

SP1 includes a number of changes which allow computer manufacturers and consumers to select a default desktop search program similar to the way they currently select defaults for third-party web browsers and media players. That means that in addition to the numerous ways a user could access a third party search solution in Windows Vista, they can now get to their preferred search results from additional entry points in the Start Menu and Explorer Windows in Windows Vista with SP1. 3rd party software vendors simply need to register their search application using the newly provided protocol in Windows Vista SP1 to enable these options for their customers.

Re:Cliffs' Notes

[kamochan (883582)]

As an IT professional, I would like to highlight a few additional items (please do bear with me, a point should follow :-)

• Adds support for new UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) industry standard PC firmware
• Improves reliability by preventing data-loss while ejecting NTFS-formatted removable-media
• Improves wireless ad-hoc connection (computer-to-computer wireless connections) success rate
• Improves Windows Vista's built-in file backup solution to include EFS encrypted files in the backup
• Improves network connection scenarios by updating the logic that auto selects which network interface to use (e.g., should a laptop use wireless or wired networking when both are available)
• Enhanced the BitLocker encryption support to volumes other than bootable volumes in Windows Vista (for Enterprise and Ultimate SKUs
• Enables a standard user to invoke the CompletePC Backup application, provided that user can supply administrator credentials
• Adds full support for the latest IEEE draft of 802.11n wireless networking
• Enables support for hotpatching, a reboot-reduction servicing technology designed to maximize uptime. It works by allowing Windows components to be updated (or "patched") while they are still in use by a running process
• SP1 reduces the number of UAC (User Account Control) prompts from 4 to 1 when creating or renaming a folder at a protected location

Reading the list in another way: this means that with Vista SP1, Windows users will now have modern, cutting edge features such as:

• Vista can now boot on modern PCs!
• Vista now reports the actual amount of RAM installed (although it can use only 2GB of it)!
• Vista can now eject removable NTFS-formatted drives without data loss!
• Vista can now create and participate in ad-hoc WLAN networks with >50% success rate*!
• Vista now allows users to encrypt their data drives as well as the Vista system drive!
• Vista can now back up user's files even when the hard drive is encrypted!
• Vista now allows a user to actually run a backup!
• Vista now support 802.11n WLAN networking!
• Vista can now install fixes to software, without requiring a full system reboot!
• Vista now allows a user to create a folder with just one (1) UAC verification prompt!

Et cetera... in other words -- I had no clue that Vista was this badly broken to begin with. Data loss when ejecting removable NTFS volumes? Doesn't know which network interface to use? Cannot encrypt other than the system drive? Cannot backup encrypted drives? 2GB RAM limit? WTF?!?!

Boggles the mind, quite frankly... If I'd had any of the abovementioned issues in my current home/work machine line-up, I'd had probably found a new system vendor very quickly. I'm constantly moving between a number of 802.11n and g and wired networks, both infra and ad-hoc, often multi-homed, with 2 or 3 virtual machines running various Linux versions, alongside MS Word and Powerpoint, on encrypted disks both internal and removable, and yes backups are critical as this is business use. (Although we know how to make all this happen also in Linux or BSD, having things just work was why me and most of our company has moved to macs...)

Just amazing.

*) 50% figure by NOOMA**, ****
**) Based on wording "improved success rate" taken to imply a significant*** failure rate.
***) Significant = double-digit percentage figure.
****) NOOMA = Numbers Out Of My Ass.

Vista now reports the actual amount of RAM install

[anss123 (985305)]

Vista now reports the actual amount of RAM installed -- I consider that a regression. Why does it matter that I got 5 gig installed if the OS can use only 3? Oh, and Intel will now be free to limit their chipsets in any way they please as long as the BIOS reports the "installed" memory.

I'm glad to see so many issues being resolved...

[SirLurksAlot (1169039)]

even though they're issues which shouldn't have been issues to begin with. I mean, come on!:

(From the list of changes):

Allows users and administrators to control which volumes the disk defragmenter runs on.

and

Improves the copy progress estimation when copying files within Windows Explorer to about two seconds.

Why in the world was defrag set to not give the user a choice on what drive it ran on? Also, why should defrag take an admin password to run??? And why the hell did it ever take longer than 2 sec

So long, Vista

[by Anonymous Coward]

I've been using vista almost for a year now. At first, I was quite happy about it, it is supposed to have exiting new features like IO priority, readyboost, superfetch and all that. And I liked Aero at first. And better security (I must say, I like UAC, it's really no greater pain than sudo).

But it's SLOW. And while I could live with that, I just couldn't stand it hijacking my desktop. How many times did the system start doing some heavy disk IO, without ANY option to stop it. Even task manager didn't respond so I could check what was going on.

As time passed, I upgraded from a 3 year old laptop to a new one (Acer 5920G, a fine machine I must say). The only problem is, Vista is not any faster than on a 3 year old system!? Wtf??

So, the other day I was doing some linux stuff and installed Ubuntu to an external USB disk.

OH MY GOD (spoken in that-lady's-voice-from-friends-series).

It's fast. It's nice. And it's fast. And it uses only so little of my 2 gb ram. And did I tell you it was fast? Oh, and file copy is a snap!

So I've been using it for a week or so and I love it. But then... yesterday I came across this "compiz fussion" thing.

OH MY FSCUKING GOD THAT'S AWESOME!

So guess what. About an hour ago I've "cp -a /dev/sdb1 /dev/sda1". Yup. Vista no more (well, it is saved as an image on external drive, just in case).

I do a lot of .Net programming and I've set up a vmware XP box for development and virtualized XP is waaayyy faster than vista ever was.

Since SP1 doesn't solve any performance issues, I probably won't use that beast ever again. When I have to use Windows, I'll use XP.

So... Is Linux winning the desktop in 2008?

Totally!

Re:

[Jackie_Chan_Fan (730745)]

Linux will never win the desktop in 2008, until it supports the dam iphone, itunes, adobe applications, and any of the other billions of windows apps that people use.

They wont go to linux.

Linux is still a pain in the ass to configure compared to windows. The average person isnt going to linux... They're going to APPLE.

Just go to your local Apple store if you have one. The one in NYC, and the one out here on the island... (long island) Is Jam packed from the minute it opens.

Apple is winning my friend.

I dont

Does it include:

[BlueParrot (965239)]

"Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to make sure." ?

One reason not to install on 64 bit

[JamesTRexx (675890)]

VMware server... I'll have to pick specific updates and avoid those that modify the original unsigned driver loading option.
I'm not going to use the 32bit version as having 4GiB would waste 1, and because it's for work running Vista is mandatory now. :-/

Too bad it seems the one hotfix in the list about file copy speed is one that needs a call to customer support.

When does SP1 come out?! I cant take it anymore

[Jackie_Chan_Fan (730745)]

I run Vista 64, because XP64 has no printer drivers for my printer (s9000). I blame Canon. Canon wrote one for Vista64, but not XP64.

I hope Canon gets the big aids dick.

I like Vista in general. Yes it is slow, but there are some nice things about it. SOME.

I've been debating on going back to XP64, but i cant until i know for sure that Vista SP1 is a disaster.

I need SP1 to come out soon because i really need to know if it will actually improve Vista64, back to XP64 quality levels.

The sooner it comes out, the quicker i can decide whether or not to go back to XP64... printer be damned.

Running service pack 1 now

[hklingon (109185)]

...well, the release candidate anyway. It does fix some issues, but Vista just doesn't feel stable. Period. It is very hard for us to make the business case for vista because it doesn't seem to hold up well under load. What do I mean? Well, things like Mega-Tasking with lots of apps open, lots of I/O, lots of network activity.. it craps out in strange ways.

We've been using vista 64 business for over a year (because if we didn't use it on our work desktops we wouldn't properly test it..eating your own dogfood..and all that) and in no short order we have experienced all sorts of fun issues. Just off the top of my head:
*unstable video drivers (crashes, black screens, etc. SP1 makes this worse)
*slow file i/o
*explorer is unresponsive (its just like on windows 98 when some program in the co-operative multitasking would flake out and take the system with it.. except command prompt windows continue to run just fine)
*the tiff viewer that comes with vista is broken. the solution from ms? use the office 2007 document viewer. Nevermind the "new improved" built-in fax stuff on vista.
*backup with vista has never worked (maybe in sp1 its ok?)
*attempting to uninstall sp1 rc1 resulted in bluescreening (whee)
*users that want to change the font or size run into Serious Issues with minor changes.. text cutoffs etc
*random window placement/size issues on multiple monitors
*people that like to use the keyboard in the default save/save as dialogue cause all sorts of weird issues if they hit arrow keys. google this one... its weird
*explorer isn't smart about huge files and generating previews.. big images cause explorer to hang which seems like the whole system
*have I mentioned horrible performance?

SP1 Vista Driver Crash and Slow File Copy [youtube.com] Whee.

At one point forums.nvidia.com had 110+ pages of people having driver issues in one thread. I can attest that things have not improved to xp-levels of stability in the past year.

I really, really hope Linux continues growing exponentially. Good windows app support on linux would be golden. I am super impressed by wine at this point.... so tempting.

Re:Failed to include the upgrade to Ubuntu button

[bigstrat2003 (1058574)]

Look, here's what the intelligent people want from you, and the others who are posting to rip on Vista. Shut the fuck up. We know you don't like Vista, and you've had an entire fucking year to make that plain to everyone. Now, when a Vista story comes along, just shut up so that we can have some sort of sensible, intelligent discussion about the topic.

Re:

[causality (777677)]

If this is intelligent discussion, then so is goatse. Bashing Vista isn't intelligent discussion, it's trolling, when it occurs in the context of a story about SP1. Intelligent discussion would be the merits/demerits of SP1, not saying "lolz people need an upgrade to Ubuntu button".

I can't tell which is less intelligent - expressing an honest opinion about Vista without ever representing it as factual or intelligent, or what you are doing which is 1) coming to Slashdot expecting information that is better

Yeah, that's about it.

[symbolset (646467)]

That's the best you can come up with to say Vista is bad?

Yeah, I would say "it does not work" is a fairly significant issue for most people. They don't care why all this software [iexbeta.com] won't work including Novell Client, Brio Intelligence Explorer, SecondLife Client, Crystal Reports, Microsoft SQL Server (both 2005 and 2007) and the myriad apps that require that. They don't care why all this hardware [iexbeta.com] won't work including VIA KT400 chipset with radeon graphics controller, many popular tv tuner cards and nearly all Adaptec RAID controllers.

What they care about is that it is their computer and they want it to do stuff that Vista won't do. There are enough problems that they're not corner cases - they are the main stream. For goodness sake how does Microsoft make an OS incompatible with any flavor of Intel NIC? Who doesn't save files from a share to a pendrive, or upload pictures from their camera? Don't you think a normal person would want that to happen in under a month? iTunes? It won't work with iTunes? You don't think people are going to consider that a deliberate failure? Or a fatal flaw?

That's it. "It won't do what I must have my computer do" is the dealbreaker for everybody I've seen use it so far.

The VM solution

[symbolset (646467)]

You're on to something there. Here is a sample of XP running under Ubuntu [youtube.com]. It's stable, it can be secured. You can use all the free stuff that's a couple clicks away for all Linux users - an embarrassment of choices [ubuntu.com] actually. It supports all of your processors and memory. It's updated more often. It's more secure - and not in the context of "the most secure Windows ever" either. It doesn't have millions of malware applications. Drive-by installs are unheard of. The only anti-virus available is just

Re:Not to be redundant

[CastrTroy (595695)]

Having an older system really shouldn't affect the stability of the system. Perhaps some of your RAM is dying. You should run a memory test. Apart from that, it may be some buggy drivers, but it probably has nothing to do with the Athlon 2000+. I have a Celeron 1.5 with 512 MB of RAM. Vista is extremely stable. Although it's unbelievably slow. Which is why I run Mandriva. Of course, the wife refuses to use Linux, Although all she does (web, watch videos, msn) can be done just fine on Linux.

Re:Not to be redundant

[gnuman99 (746007)]

Vista's memory tester is basic of the basic type memory tester. You can't really compare it to memtest86. One hint would be that Vista's memory tester runs a few magnitudes faster than memtest86.

You can boot memtest86 from USB stick.

Re:

[The Living Fractal (162153)]

Sort of a nitpick but.. you told everyone not to install it on their personal Personal Computer.

So.. yeah. You can -troll me now ;p