Wow. Vista is even worse than I feared

[phongn]

Incidentally, installing programs to an unprotected directory does increase the risk of malware doing, well, malicious things to various program files and whatnot.

[Losonti Tokash]

I'd rather have XP, since I loathe Vista's Start menu options with a burning passion, but it's not available.

Seriously? I love the way it works now, I barely ever need to actually navigate through the folders since I usually just hit the windows key and start typing what I'm looking for.

[Beowulf]

Two suggestions:

1. Use a limited user account as your standard account, and only run as your admin account for admin stuff
2. Install the following reg file: http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/40841/less%2 ... %20UAC.reg It'll essentially eliminate the UAC prompt when running as admin, and make it a bit less annoying as a standard users.

As far as firefox crashing everytime you close it: *shrug* that's bizarre, and is probably related to either plugins you installed, or interactions with some of the default software.

Vista keeps from caching UAC responses for a good reason. However, if there is a application that must be run as admin, and you don't want it to prompt every time, there is a work around: http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/windo ... ows/?p=730

[Dominus Atheos]

I'm sure some WinGeek will come along to tell me about all of the "memory architecture improvements" or something, but holy shit, this OS sucks. I just got a Lenovo PC with Vista preinstalled, and it's an absolute piece of shit. It's constantly bugging me to allow or disallow every goddamned thing I do, and doesn't remember previous times I've approved it. Every time I close Firefox, it tells me that it crashed and that it's trying to analyze the problem. When I put in a DVD and then ejected it before WinDVD could start up, the whole goddamned thing locked up.

Firefox shouldn't be crashing like that. It sounds like something got messed up during the install at the factory. If you just got it, I'd recommend reinstalling Windows. Lenovo is known as one of the better OEMs, and I assume this is a business machine (did it come with Vista Business or Home Premium?) so there shouldn't be a any crapware, bloatware, or shovelware. If this is a Business machine, you can just use Lenovo's built in recovery feature. Just press F11 when the computer starts up and then follow these instructions from step 5. That should fix any issue's you're having.

If that doesn't work, or this is a consumer model, you'll probably need to install a fresh copy of Windows Vista. Just find an installation cd (if you have the license key that should be on a sticker on the computer, Microsoft has no problem with you getting it off of Bittorrent) and install that with said license key, following these instructions:

If the “Vista sucks” movement has a public face, it’s the Sony Vaio. No one knows that better than my new friend Jeremy Toeman. In May 2007, this 15-year Windows veteran replaced his old, beloved, XP-powered Vaio with a newer Vaio that came with Windows Vista Business installed. Practically overnight, he told me, his experience went from “awesome” to “awful.” The experience was so terrible, in fact, that after several months of struggling he finally surrendered, putting his $2500 Windows notebook in storage and replacing it with a MacBook last summer.

At first glance, Jeremy’s machine is Exhibit A in the case against Windows Vista. As Jeremy documented in a series of posts, this gorgeous machine was ugly in action: slow to start, sluggish when performing everyday tasks, crash-prone, and overloaded with annoying and unwanted software. But is it really a hopeless case, or was this system done in by the rush to market and a sloppy OEM integration?

My instinct and experience says that even under these extreme circumstances, Windows Vista can be fixed. That’s why, for the past two months, Jeremy and I have been collaborating on an experiment. After he sent me his Vaio in early March, I blew away all traces of the old installation and set up a pristine copy of Windows Vista Business, with up-to-date drivers and zero crapware. (This screen shot, from the accompanying image gallery, shows the blizzard of dialog boxes and icons that are part of the original, unpleasant experience.) The initial results were eye-opening and impressive. After my makeover, this machine was every bit as fast as its specs said it should have been.

In this post and its accompanying image gallery, I’ll give you a close-up look at what I had to do to turn Sony’s messy, half-baked Windows installation into one that was worthy of their excellent hardware and that took full advantage of the new features in Vista. At the end of this post I’ll share some of the lessons I learned about how Sony and its rivals can win their customers back.

If you're still having problems after that, the only other thing it could be is a hardware issue, and you need to call tech support.

[Singular Intellect]

I'm sure some WinGeek will come along to tell me about all of the "memory architecture improvements" or something, but holy shit, this OS sucks. I just got a Lenovo PC with Vista preinstalled, and it's an absolute piece of shit.

'Preinstalled' raises warning signs. You never know what kind of mindless twit installed the software and other stuff.

It's constantly bugging me to allow or disallow every goddamned thing I do, and doesn't remember previous times I've approved it.

I'm actually not very familiar with this common complaint. I've encountered permission issues before, but I had to setup programs beforehand in order to get that warning.

Have you looked under properties of any particular program to see if "Run as Administrator" is enabled? Disable that, and you shouldn't have any problem.

Every time I close Firefox, it tells me that it crashed and that it's trying to analyze the problem. When I put in a DVD and then ejected it before WinDVD could start up, the whole goddamned thing locked up.

What is this shit? Is this a typical experience?

Certainly not on my end. I'm running Vista Home Premium 64 bit, and I haven't had issues. I did have a problem installing it initially and had to remove two gigs of RAM of my four in order to finish the installation. Once I downloaded the patch, I replaced the RAM and it worked like a charm.

The only other issue I've ever had is with my current Anti-Virus software (KasperSky) crashing the system to the evil Blue Screen. But that appears to be an issue with their software, not Windows itself, and I just keep tabs on their updates to the product.

[Davey]

Well, you hit it spot-on, Mr. Wong. I've got that problem too, and the issue I have with Vista's "Allow/Disallow" thing is that it's all-or-nothing. Even with the shittiest antivirus software I can always whitelist the processes I want, but the permissions system doesn't have that, and if I turn it off and I lose the power to stop any unauthorized processes. But if I turn it on, and it interrupts me with 'This program needs your permission to continue!" and then "Are you sure you want to allow/disallow this program?" right after if I so much as sneeze at it. Still, it probably won't do much anyways even if it is on, so I figure that's a moot point. I've also had that experience with Firefox more than once. I simply reinstalled it the times that it did, and it fixed most of my problems.

The other problem I have with Vista is that it's slow and laggy. I was a little short on money so I had to settle for the low end, and although my new computer with two Gigabytes of RAM, a AMD AthlonX2 64 processor and NVIDIA8200 graphics card looked great on paper compared to my old one, which had only one Gigabyte of ram and an old single-core processor and a Radeon 200M graphics card, but in practise it's actually slower than my old one because svchost.exe and explorer.exe hog all my system memory. To solve those problems I opened up "services.msc" and halted whatever I could and disabled the pretty graphics and gimmicky window twirly things, then disabled user account control. The only problem is I can't halt all of the services without making Windows crash, and it still hasn't solved svchost.exe.

This is why I'm switching to UNIX. I don't care for pretty graphics when I use a computer. If I want pretty graphics, I will buy a porn magazine. They tend to be cheaper, come with an index pre-installed that's linked to every article of interest, and I've yet to see paper and ink give me a blue screen of death. Best of all, they don't make me open up "taskmgr.exe" or ask "Are you sure?" when I want to to put them away.

[Bounty]

This is why I'm switching to UNIX. I don't care for pretty graphics when I use a computer. If I want pretty graphics, I will buy a porn magazine. They tend to be cheaper, come with an index pre-installed that's linked to every article of interest, and I've yet to see paper and ink give me a blue screen of death. Best of all, they don't make me open up "taskmgr.exe" or ask "Are you sure?" when I want to to put them away.

Yes, run to the nirvana of UNIX, where everything works out of the box, and you will never again have to suffer the headache of broken permissions or mysterious performance issues! Run! Run!

[phongn]

Well, you hit it spot-on, Mr. Wong. I've got that problem too, and the issue I have with Vista's "Allow/Disallow" thing is that it's all-or-nothing. Even with the shittiest antivirus software I can always whitelist the processes I want, but the permissions system doesn't have that, and if I turn it off and I lose the power to stop any unauthorized processes. But if I turn it on, and it interrupts me with 'This program needs your permission to continue!" and then "Are you sure you want to allow/disallow this program?" right after if I so much as sneeze at it.

Microsoft erred on the side of greater security when it came to Vista. UAC should only be turning on for programs that are requesting elevated permissions (which most programs do not need, but developers have been lazy about properly segregating things). From a security perspective, whitelisting is dangerous since another (possibly malicious) process may attempt to latch on to elevate itself.

The other problem I have with Vista is that it's slow and laggy. I was a little short on money so I had to settle for the low end, and although my new computer with two Gigabytes of RAM, a AMD AthlonX2 64 processor and NVIDIA8200 graphics card looked great on paper compared to my old one, which had only one Gigabyte of ram and an old single-core processor and a Radeon 200M graphics card, but in practise it's actually slower than my old one because svchost.exe and explorer.exe hog all my system memory. To solve those problems I opened up "services.msc" and halted whatever I could and disabled the pretty graphics and gimmicky window twirly things, then disabled user account control. The only problem is I can't halt all of the services without making Windows crash, and it still hasn't solved svchost.exe.

Something isn't right there, since my 1.8GHz dual-core Opteron with 2GB of RAM (since upgraded to 4GB) and a GF7800 runs Vista perfectly fine. I can perceive no difference compared to when I had XP on that machine. Vista also reports RAM use in a significantly different (and IIRC more accurate) manner than XP, so I'd be wary of any comparisons. Also, what the hell are you doing fucking around with services? Don't. If you want to turn off UAC, so be it, but the default service set is not problematic.

This is why I'm switching to UNIX. I don't care for pretty graphics when I use a computer.

Have you seen what KDE and GNOME are doing as of late? Do you seriously think you're going to get away from process-elevation prompts, or that you won't have other problems when working with a UNIX-esque operating system?

[Durandal]

This is why I'm switching to UNIX. I don't care for pretty graphics when I use a computer. If I want pretty graphics, I will buy a porn magazine. They tend to be cheaper, come with an index pre-installed that's linked to every article of interest, and I've yet to see paper and ink give me a blue screen of death. Best of all, they don't make me open up "taskmgr.exe" or ask "Are you sure?" when I want to to put them away.

Hur hur, you're clever.

[Davey]

Microsoft erred on the side of greater security when it came to Vista. UAC should only be turning on for programs that are requesting elevated permissions (which most programs do not need, but developers have been lazy about properly segregating things). From a security perspective, whitelisting is dangerous since another (possibly malicious) process may attempt to latch on to elevate itself.

I understand what you mean about latching on, that's happened to my old computer before, but one issue I can see is people becoming so annoyed with constantly selecting allow and turning it off completely to get rid of it. But, well, I guess that's their problem, not Microsoft's. Point conceded.

Something isn't right there, since my 1.8GHz dual-core Opteron with 2GB of RAM (since upgraded to 4GB) and a GF7800 runs Vista perfectly fine. I can perceive no difference compared to when I had XP on that machine. Vista also reports RAM use in a significantly different (and IIRC more accurate) manner than XP, so I'd be wary of any comparisons. Also, what the hell are you doing fucking around with services? Don't. If you want to turn off UAC, so be it, but the default service set is not problematic.

Hmm. I do my speed comparisons by my stopwatch and not by the numbers I see on task manager. XP could load Microsoft Word faster, load AutoCAD2007 faster and run it more smoothly, and AutoCAD didn't go white, randomly stop, freeze, and then remain that way for twenty seconds for no apparent reason. That's my problem.

The services I shut down were the ones I didn't need; the bloatware that came with itunes (ipodservice, ituneshelper, bonjourservice), several of the media services, desktop manager, game console service, and the like. I enable them when I need them. But, if you insist it's not a good idea I will set it back to the way it was before and leave it alone. I just noticed that after I turned off Windows Aero and killed all those processes my computer could run different programs without lagging out like it had before. Disabling Windows Aero improved performance and I noticed my battery lasted longer, disabling those services improved performance a bit more. It actually runs perfectly fine right now, but if I turn all that stuff back on it'll lag like crazy.

Have you seen what KDE and GNOME are doing as of late? Do you seriously think you're going to get away from process-elevation prompts, or that you won't have other problems when working with a UNIX-esque operating system?

No, no, not at all. I was just trying to be funny.

[phongn]

Hmm. I do my speed comparisons by my stopwatch and not by the numbers I see on task manager. XP could load Microsoft Word faster, load AutoCAD2007 faster and run it more smoothly, and AutoCAD didn't go white, randomly stop, freeze, and then remain that way for twenty seconds for no apparent reason. That's my problem.

Huh, that's weird, and honestly I have no idea what could cause that, especially as one of Vista's goals was to launch applications faster (by improving on XP's prefetcher).

The services I shut down were the ones I didn't need; the bloatware that came with itunes (ipodservice, ituneshelper, bonjourservice), several of the media services, desktop manager, game console service, and the like. I enable them when I need them. But, if you insist it's not a good idea I will set it back to the way it was before and leave it alone. I just noticed that after I turned off Windows Aero and killed all those processes my computer could run different programs without lagging out like it had before. Disabling Windows Aero improved performance and I noticed my battery lasted longer, disabling those services improved performance a bit more. It actually runs perfectly fine right now, but if I turn all that stuff back on it'll lag like crazy.

Well, Aero is probably something useful to disable (especially on a laptop), but it doesn't require service hackery. If you must mess with things - at least set them to Manual, so Windows will enable them as needed.

[Davey]

Well, Aero is probably something useful to disable (especially on a laptop), but it doesn't require service hackery. If you must mess with things - at least set them to Manual, so Windows will enable them as needed.

Sure. I'll set set them to manual, then. Thanks.

If I find out anything more about the wierd loading problem I'll try to get a report done.

[Turin]

Davey, I can't speak to a lot of your problems (other than "ug, Vista" as I got rid of it). But your AutoCAD loading might be a problem with AutoCAD. Autodesk has been having trouble getting some of their products working properly in 64-bit Vista environments -- I'm 90% certain that AutoCAD 2007 isn't supported for Vista last I checked.

[Ryan Thunder]

I'd rather have XP, since I loathe Vista's Start menu options with a burning passion, but it's not available.

The option takes all of five clicks to set, including clicking "OK" and other such painfully simple commands. Did you even bother looking?

If the “Vista sucks” movement has a public face, it’s the Sony Vaio. No one knows that better than my new friend Jeremy Toeman. In May 2007, this 15-year Windows veteran replaced his old, beloved, XP-powered Vaio with a newer Vaio that came with Windows Vista Business installed. Practically overnight, he told me, his experience went from “awesome” to “awful.” The experience was so terrible, in fact, that after several months of struggling he finally surrendered, putting his $2500 Windows notebook in storage and replacing it with a MacBook last summer.

I'm going to call horseshit on this one.

I have a Sony Vaio with Windows Vista Home pre-installed. It's a fine machine, and I'm glad to have it. It's replacing a good XP laptop. I prefer it to the old one. No, I would not rather have XP.

If anything, its Sony's hardware that I'm worried about.

Personally, I think the only thing that's different between the "Vista sucks" crowd and the "XP sucks" crowd is that the "XP sucks" crowd didn't get to be so vocal about it. So they died off and nobody gave any more of a shit than they would otherwise.

[Crayz9000]

My biggest complaint about Vista is that MIcrosoft made just about everything (maybe with the single exception of the Start Menu, unless you don't use its search feature) with about three to seven additional clicks to access.

I can use it, fine, but the UAC is annoying (and while I do understand that is at least partly due to shoddy third-party programming, it's still annoying) and the sheer amount of mouse clicks and dialogs it takes to get to anything useful is extremely irritating. Trying to walk someone through changing the IP address on their network card over the phone is an exercise in frustration and pain.

And yes, while GNOME and KDE have added more reminder prompts, at least they use the already built-in sudo mechanism for escalation, rather than a one-click mechanism that you can do while asleep. And it only comes up when you are ACTUALLY trying to do something that involves modifying the system, unlike for example just trying to change your desktop background.

The only good thing about Vista is that its slow adoption rate and widespread, lingering complaints actually seem to be forcing Microsoft to rethink the next version of Windows a bit more carefully, rather than letting the retards in their marketing department have free rein.

[Stark]

I can certainly agree with that; the rearrangement of the network dialog windows in particular make trivial network tasks a pain in the ass in the UI. The logic behind their 'network locations' thing was also pretty broken pre-SP1.

[Beowulf]

And yes, while GNOME and KDE have added more reminder prompts, at least they use the already built-in sudo mechanism for escalation, rather than a one-click mechanism that you can do while asleep. And it only comes up when you are ACTUALLY trying to do something that involves modifying the system, unlike for example just trying to change your desktop background.

If you're getting a UAC prompt changing your background, you're retarded.

[haard]

Bah, Vista is not done, give them another year of patching. XP was halfway decent after SP2, not before.
A lot of early adopters getting screwed, SNAFU.

[Ryan Thunder]

Bah, Vista is not done, give them another year of patching. XP was halfway decent after SP2, not before.
A lot of early adopters getting screwed, SNAFU.

What, early adopters like me?

Let's just totally ignore that I haven't had any problems with it!

[haard]

Ah, so since you have not had any problems, the software is evidently fine?
That's a fucking dumbass reasoning. At the two major companies I've been at since Vista was introduced, both have had massive and widespread problems with running their applications on Vista. At one of them, the support number now has a pre-screening - "If you have problems with Windows Vista, please press 1". Since Microsoft markets backwards compatibility, and Vista is not (was-not?) even backwards compatible with all of their own products, it is broken. To set the responsibility on the non-power users to 'fix' stuff is not an answer.

And no, no OS is perfect. Of the windowses though, XP is vastly more mature (surprise!) and stable, for now.

[Ryan Thunder]

Ah, so since you have not had any problems, the software is evidently fine?

Yeah, pretty much. I use it for business, so I have stuff like Visual Studio 2008 (I was running 2005 without problems, as well,) Microsoft office 2003, then the latest one, both without problems. I've also got a ton of old and third-party software on here.

Oh, and it runs old games fine, too, a common complaint.

So, as I'm sure you can understand now that I've explained my situation, I'm convinced that at least some of these people are just pulling it out of their ass.

That's a fucking dumbass reasoning. At the two major companies I've been at since Vista was introduced, both have had massive and widespread problems with running their applications on Vista. At one of them, the support number now has a pre-screening - "If you have problems with Windows Vista, please press 1".

Given my experience with the system, that's probably rather telling about the quality of the software you try to use with Vista, rather than an indication of anything about Vista. I've had no trouble running anything that I've tried, at all, be it third-party, ancient stuff written for DOS or the latest Office software.

So tell me, what makes my setup so special, that your entire company has massive recurring problems and I have next to none?

Since Microsoft markets backwards compatibility, and Vista is not (was-not?) even backwards compatible with all of their own products, it is broken. To set the responsibility on the non-power users to 'fix' stuff is not an answer.

What products?

And no, no OS is perfect. Of the windowses though, XP is vastly more mature (surprise!) and stable, for now.

Mature, I'll give you. Stable, I can't really comment on. However, I've never had a bluescreen since I started using XP on my laptop, and I haven't had a single crash since I bought my VIAO with Vista Home preinstalled a couple months ago. And I use it daily, for long periods of time.

My only complaint is that the firewall acts like its disabled and my computer is therefore vulnerable--because I have an antivirus with its own firewall software installed, and they don't mix. Other than that, however, it has run flawlessly. Took a little getting used to, that's all.

[haard]

Ah, so since you have not had any problems, the software is evidently fine?

Yeah, pretty much. I use it for business, so I have stuff like Visual Studio 2008 (I was running 2005 without problems, as well,) Microsoft office 2003, then the latest one, both without problems. I've also got a ton of old and third-party software on here.

Oh, and it runs old games fine, too, a common complaint.

Bolding mine.
To quote myself:

That's a fucking dumbass reasoning.

If I can find a guy who has correctly predicted Swedish winter severity for the past thirty years, obviously he can predict the weather accurately, right?


Started to answer the rest of your questions, but could not be bothered since they're not really relevant when the thread itself provides this:

Have you tried safe mode?

Seriously: have you tried updating all the drivers? It shouldn't be a problem anymore, but you never know. Is it a laptop or desktop?

UAC is annoying as hell, yeah, you can disable it though; Here is a list of methods (it's really very simple)

...works pretty well once you uninstall all the bloatware that comes with it.

The UAC not being able to keep exceptions on file or whatever thing pisses me off too, since while you can disable it, that apparently breaks other things in Vista.

This is not shit Joe Avarage should have to care about. Vista has had, and from the look of it still has, way too many problems with way too many softwares, on way to many different hardwares.

I've not used Vista other than having to make a (Java SE!) application compatible with it and troubleshooting for others, since I use XP and Linux at home and Solaris and a virtual XP box at work. I'll not migrate until the colleagues that have done so stop whining.

[Ryan Thunder]

If I can find a guy who has correctly predicted Swedish winter severity for the past thirty years, obviously he can predict the weather accurately, right?

Because being able to predict the weather is totally the similar to not having problems with a commonly-used computer/OS combo.

Started to answer the rest of your questions, but could not be bothered since they're not really relevant when the thread itself provides this:

Well, then, let's see what I've done to "make" Vista useable.

Have you tried safe mode?

No. Why would I have to?

Seriously: have you tried updating all the drivers? It shouldn't be a problem anymore, but you never know. Is it a laptop or desktop?

It did that itself. All I had to do was give it permission to go ahead. Not that it seemed to be terribly broken before I did that, anyways...

UAC is annoying as hell, yeah, you can disable it though; Here is a list of methods (it's really very simple)

I haven't disabled UAC, nor have I seen any sort of pressing need to. What the hell are you trying to do with your computer that UAC is actually a hinderance?

...works pretty well once you uninstall all the bloatware that comes with it.

Haven't had an issue with bloatware. I did get some extraneous software with my VIAO, but it didn't cause any problems, either.

Bloatware would be an issue with the tits you bought the laptop from, not Vista.

That I need to explain that speaks volumes about your intelligence, or lack thereof.

The UAC not being able to keep exceptions on file or whatever thing pisses me off too, since while you can disable it, that apparently breaks other things in Vista.

Think about what this means: You want to disable UAC because a program you use needs administrator access to do what you want it to do. I do have a rather entertaining game written by a shitty programmer that's like that, though. I set the program to Run as Administrator under compatibility settings. Now, it just confirms that you want to run it as an Admin when you start. After that it, runs like a Swiss clock without interruptions. The option took all of about ten seconds to set. If that.

This is not shit Joe Avarage should have to care about. Vista has had, and from the look of it still has, way too many problems with way too many softwares, on way to many different hardwares.

What, is it too much for Joe Average to at least read parts of the bloody manual on an expensive and highly-complex system?

I doubt you'd have any sympathy for a guy who damaged his car trying to change the oil because he hadn't read the manual and put it in the wiper fluid container instead of where it needed to go.

Never mind that you'd probably have to be mind bogglingly stupid to do that, anyway, but I think you get the point.

So in short, I've had to do next to nothing. It was quite useable out of the box.

I've not used Vista other than having to make a (Java SE!) application compatible with it and troubleshooting for others, since I use XP and Linux at home and Solaris and a virtual XP box at work. I'll not migrate until the colleagues that have done so stop whining.

Which will probably be never, because people always whine about software they don't fully understand, yet can't be bothered to read the documentation for. I see these people at the office where I work. They blunder their way through the days until they finally get some kind of broken, hand-waving notion of how its meant to be used, at which point they call themselves "experts", and then proceeed to wail and moan about "Microsoft quality" when the new system comes around with an updated interface. Really, it'd be hilarious to watch if it weren't so pathetic.

[Ryan Thunder]

I'm sorry everybody: I forgot about that worthless piece of shit that is Windows OneCare. It always seems to spend a ludicrous amount of time "updating" itself whenever I want to recieve a file over MSN.

So, 2 problems, so far.

[Durandal]

What, is it too much for Joe Average to at least read parts of the bloody manual on an expensive and highly-complex system?

If you have meaningful professional standards, then yes, it's a bug if users need to visit the manual to find out how to find or use the feature. All those little concessions made in the name of "just put it in the manual" from each component pile up, and they keep piling up. Until you get an operating system like Windows, where half the UI is defined by "just read the manual".