"To recap, an untold number of Vista users are unable to delete, copy and move files without interminable waits, in which the OS appears to be calculating the time the job will take"

Is Vista still doing this old Windows "feature" of wandering off taking twice as long to work out how long it's going to take to copy files? Is this just so it can display an estimated time on the screen?

Surely any DRM feature will not delay the *deleting* of files?!?

As far as I know its not illegal to delete any file, wether you paid for it or not!

With the new Ubuntu 7.04 release a few weeks back, surely this is another reason for why linux is a good solution!!

If you do need windows then build yourself a small vm with an XP build on it and run it when you need to. No need for dual boot, no need for faffing about and as soon as your done just close it down and get back to whatever it was you were doing

As Simon said about the DRM, I am just wondering, during the process of copying/deleting/moving, could Vista be actually monitoring the content of the files, ie, checking for sensitive information or some type of US goverment hidden agenda of forcing Vista to check each byte being copy/move ?

Just in case these files were used by terroists, so before they get a chance to delete, Vista would check each file and its content, and if any are found, either flag them or secretly copying the content to a hidden location or even wire them online to some secret service HQ ?

How else could one explain that something as simple as copying/moving and even deleting could take so long ? when Windows since 95 had been working perfectly on these everyday functions. This is not MS's first OS, if anything, the operation should be even faster than XP/2000.

But as we are no Bill Gates, we are simply guessing.

I finally took the plunge last week and made the Vista test machine I'd had for a while into my main work machine.

The hardware is exactly the same as it was with my XP machine (I mean _exactly_, I just swapped the hard drive out of my test machine).

I experienced the exact problem with copying across the network that's reported here (the Long Goodbye) and became very frustrated - it had been fine with the XP machine.

After a few days, I actually bothered to check the switch (Cisco 2950) I was plugged into - it was set to Auto, as was my NIC, and Vista said 100/full.

However, once I changed both the NIC and the switchport to explicitly 100/full, everything became fine.

I can't believe that this would answer _all_ similar problems out there, but mybe it'll help some people?

I think this problem is incredibly rare, and it's been hyped up purely to bash vista.

I've had this problem too on my PC, both copying across the network and locally and it is monumentally frustrating.

This aside, I've found the Vista experience to be far better than XP. This one thing though is a true nightmare that *really* needs fixed.

I've had two Vista Ultimate machines do this to me. Needless to say they are both back on XP now. This was one of a dozen problems I ran into with Vista. (The biggest of which was not being able to install unsigned drivers. MS's NVidia drivers simply don't work.)

Please continue to hold. Friend was looking for a version of XP Pro here to replace the OEM Vista install for removal of annoyance. He's decided to wait until driver support is a little better, hopefully that will get rid of stuff like this.

They're probably still trying to figure out how to port the guts of NetBSD's progress(1) (http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?progress+1 for windoze lusers) without breaking the serial port driver code...

I've actually had Vista running on my laptop for a few months now. Although, I've reinstalled it a couple of times. The first time I had the exact same bug, which I remember reading about somewhere (something to do with thumbnail generation?).

At any rate, the current install of Vista on my laptop has no problems, whatsoever. I've turned off indexing (completely) and UAC. Aero's running with everything it's got.

I think it's a common bug, but I also think that something I did solved it, atleast for me. Might've been indexing, might've been UAC, who knows.

Indexing, huh? Could be. Anyone remember that horror called Fast Find? MS seems to have a vapour lock on the whole subject.

I've been running Vista Ultimate at home for two weeks now. I've moved large files, and large quantities of files to and from my Win2k server without any noticable problems. I'm running a 3com Gigabit switch at home.

Apart from the slightly more than occasional BSOD, Vista has been a pleasant experience - and the BSOD's only seem to happen on shutdown for me, so they're bearable.

Overall, I'm happy with Vista.

Vista just hates to part you with your files ... meanwhile, a BRAND NEW version of OS X 10.4.x "Apple Pro Application Support 4.0" manages to mangle, strangle and kills Apple other "Power Applications - Logic Express and Logic Pro ... geez, I think I'd rather wait for Vista to empty or move file??

Ps, WHEN will we see THIS referenced in those oh so honest Apple Switch ads??

Quote: (per macfixit.com)

Monday, May 14 2007 @ 09:30 AM PDT

Apple Pro Application Support 4.0 (#3): Logic crashes, potential fixes; Aperture will not launch, potential fix

Users continue to report an issue where Logic Express and Logic Pro 7 repeatedly crash -- sometimes at launch -- after applying the Pro Application Support 4.0 update. One reader writes:

"Just wanted to share my frustration with Apple's Pro Application Support 4.0 patch. Basically the patch completely broke my installation of Logic Pro 7. Every-time I open Logic the application crashes with a " Program quit unexpectedly" error. Right now there seems to be nothing I can do. I have tried all the usual fixes including reinstallation. I am on a Macbook Pro with 2 GB RAM running OS 10.4.9."

Other users are reporting miscellaneous issues with Logic after the update, including problems saving. A reader writes:

"Since the last Apple Update I have problems with Logic Express. I cannot 'Save As, Save a Copy,' nor set the Recording path."

Just a quick note any OS requiring multiple reinstallations is not stable. I've a couple of clients that have chosen to become Vista early adopters desipite my warnings and 2 of the 3 have had to reinstall the OS a few times due to odd behaviour.

I've noticed slow transfers speeds when moving files from one drive to another so the DRM scan or goverment inforced scan idea makes sense to me but I'm open to other options. The only thing I know for sure is it doesn't happen under XP.

Finally Aero having put together a system that scores 5.9 across the board I was expecting some really cool looks instead I am left wondering what all the fuss was about. I've seen better from linux desktops that were out 6 months before!!!

Roll on SP1 for a bit of stablity.

I have had this bug working with files and folders on local drives a well a networked, it happens randomly I’m beginning to think Vista is haunted. I have noticed that empty folders and files that register as “0 bytes” seem to really confuse it.

And many other exciting bugs. I endured Vista for just over 2 months before switching back to XP.

http://www.billbuchan.com/web.nsf/d6plinks/BBUN-72YSPG

My next laptop will be a Mac.

---* Bill

They're probably struggling with some obscure conflict in the spaghetti that is their codebase. Maybe the kernel NetBeui driver:-)

Vista seem to take very seriously the type of file you are trying to manipulate. I use to have the long goodby problems. Local file that won't delete, well in fact local file that can't do anything after been created. It was .UFO created by Ulead Photo Impact 12. Vista just seem to stall when calling Photo Impat to get info on the file (even when inside a folder and trying to delete the folder).

The Solution: Delete .UFO entry in the registry and pouf problem gone... sure you need to open .UFO from whitin Photo Impact, but at least no stalling. Divx file use to have similar problems (witch seem to have now been resolved with the last Divx codec)

I am sure that peoples who have problems deleting huge number of files will find out that Vista hang on a particular file extention.

I have been using vista on various machine since early january and have been able to solve *ALL* of the problems i had and run *ALL* the applications i needed to run.

So before bashing Vista for all your problems, try to think: This is a radical OS change in many way compare to XP and it will get better with times. The solution is sure not to install Linux (Linux is a good idea, but it is extremly far from ready for regular joes)

Most of vista problems as in fact application problems, vendor had plenty of time to make they application vista friendly. but most of them faild and now a rushing in to fix it (Divx is a good exemple).

As for drivers signing. i have used Nvidia drivers (from Nvidia, not MS) in both 32 and 64 bit and did not have any problems.

I had the same problem with my install of Vista and after lots of searching I found a solution.

There is a setting in Folder Options which is "Always show icons, never thumbnails". If you uncheck this, the problem does not occur. I would have thought it would be the other way around but it is not.

Why MS can't fix the problem and why they released the OS with these sorts of problems after there massive amount of Beta testers, I will never know.

I have seen this issue in XP. With larger files or lots of larger files. I think it is something to do with the Indexing Service.

I'm running Vista 64bit, dual boot with XP, I have no performance problems, but as a previous poster mentioned, all my ports are 100/Full fixed. I never use auto negotiate, because of the problems I've seen with this at work (I work in Storage/Backup).

As an aside, why does any problem with Windows OSes result in a bunch of 'Windoze Lusers' and 'Change to MacOS/Linux' comments? Grow Up!

... turn UAC off and the problem goes away, at least it did for me on Vista 64bit Ultimate.

"I've actually had Vista running on my laptop for a few months now. Although, I've reinstalled it a couple of times."

If this was a decent OS you'd be saying:

"I've actually had it installed for a few years now. Although I've had to restart it a couple of times."

How can you not see this as a problem? Are your expectations really so low?

Ross

have a listen to this edition of FLOSS weekly, where Jeremy Allison of Samba is interviewed. SMB2 is covered about 40 minutes in.

http://www.twit.tv/floww14

The Samba guys discovered that in order to delete a single file, 1500 packets of data are transmitted over the network.

It's a good idea and will be a good addition to security, once MS have got it bug free. In the meantime though I'm running Trendmicro's AV, Firewall and Spyware protection so I'm happy to switch UAC off until it's working properly, never had a problem since and removed most of the issues with older software (games included).

Come on MS, sort UAC out.

but you could only run into it when a few rare conditions occur at the same time. In case of the win2k3 server the problem lies in the cache and ntfs journaling. When you create an empty file and want to delete it just after creation because it was a mistake, explorer will hang for some very long time. The solution is to kill explorer on the local machine, force a cache flush on the server and restart explorer. The problem goes away as soon as you turn off indexing, set the cache to write through (a seriously bad idea on a server) and use a file manager other than explorer (or disable thumbnails). It seems that when a kernel service holds a file, you can't do anything with it and most operations block the process using the file. The solution seems to be to move the service in question out of the kernel. In case of cache management, file system journaling this can not be done with the win2k3 architecture. The chances are high that the same 'the kernel is using the file' problem blocks the operation under vista too. Disabling the service in question would solve the problem. Unless it's a critical one. The drm system or the indexing database is imho not ciritical but ntfs journaling is.

Just my 2 cents...

Nice idea but I fail to see how Linux is any different to Vista in regards to problems. I have spent the last 2 days trying to get FC6 and Ubuntu 7.04 to work with my wifi connection. I have tried 2 different wifi cards using 2 different chipsets using ndiswrapper and although I have managed to get FC6 to recognise the second card I can't get it to use WPA even with wpa_succulant. No one wants to spend hours trying to get there computer to work. So if it causes someone with a good technical background so much trouble what would the average user do?

Vista on the other hand installed perfectly on my Laptop and has not given me any more teething problems than the previous incarnations of Windows. Remember XP is on service pack 2 and has had numerous hot fixes so these problems are normal and have become an expected part of a new Windows OS.

If you don't want to suffer the teething problems stick to XP if like me you want a challenge and to gain experience in troubleshooting Vista take the leap and hope for the best.

Good Lord, another Windows article another fanboy telling us all to use Linux.

XP works quite well for most of us so until I can play all my lovely games on Linux go and annoy Mac users.

I have to side with the "incredibly rare" fellow above. I'm not a fan of Vista, but I have experienced this kind of phenomenon elsewhere. A piece of hardware of software that I own, and that works without a hitch for me, is drubbed online by what seems like an endless procession of people who have the same problem. The reality is that they are only a small majority of the total user base, and that we never hear from people such as myself who do not have the bug; I am part of a vast silent majority. The speculation above - that this is a result of DRM, or an anti-terrorist plot - does not help shed light on the problem.

Comments about this problem being hyped to "bash" Vista are somewhat reminiscint of the posts one finds on game forums, where the fanboys all claim there is no problem, and the rest of the world + dog all complain bitterly that the problem exists. As I've posted on some such sites, given the wide range of platforms that software is run on in the real world, it's hardly surprising when this kind of thing crops up.

What is a surprise however is that the MS techies have made no feedback about the issue at all. Simply blanking the issue is ridiculous. Let's all get a sense of proportion, the ability to copy, delete or rename files is about as essential as it gets in an operating system and an answer needs to be given prontissimo...

The author of this article points to "DRM conspiracy" in a somewhat derisive way, but the truth is, that Vista DRM gets more time than many user interactions. According to one academic article, Vista DRM is woken up every twentieth of a second, just in case the user has decided to rip content, regardless of what the machine is doing. It strikes me that the approach to DRM on Vista isn't seriously a proportionate response, it's hitting all users with an overhead, and doing so all the time. Bearing in mind the inability many users have had getting hi def content to display in hi def I tend to believe that all this overkill DRM will manage to acheive is to get legit users of Vista, who have honestly paid for their content properly browned off.

Should the Long Goodbye issue transpire to be DRM related, then I believe that it would tend to mitigate against Vista in the market place for any serious use of any kiind until it's fixed.

Andy Enderby

we've got one test machine - same problems copying data onto an external drive - put same external drive into an identical XP machine and it flies.

Just one of MANY Vista annoyances (tried to get free VNC working in service mode yet?)

I tried to install The Sims "8 in 1" which fits on three CDs - about 1.8GB. It took over THREE HOURS with a 24x speed drive. Think it's the drive? I copied the file off the first CD onto the hard drive first. The copy didn't take long but the installation still spent just as long on the first file as it did on the other two. My friend told me that the whole thing only takes a few minutes on XP.

Sorry to be a realist but all OS's have their problems as well as their fans.

I've just taken my Desktop machine back to XP from Ubuntu 7.04 after an automatic update for Ubuntu killed the desktop and all menus on logging in. After 2 weeks worth of tweaking my configuration and getting all my hardware working correctly I wasn't impressed. I'd love to run Ubuntu but I don't want to spend hours setting it up and searching forums to find out why I can't get a wireless connection. The latest release is much improved, but still can't handle hidden ssids with the standard wireless configuration guis.

As for Vista - I'm running my (finally received) Express Upgrade Business edition without issue, and copied 70GB worth of remote files without issue (and in considerably less time than XP used to take). I had 2 minor issues on upgrading, both of which were resolved in less than 5 minutes with a bit of Googling.

So, using Linux is bad for 'regular joes' but messing with regedit to fix a broken operating system is OK?

Hmmm, sounds like Linux bashing to me. Tried Ubuntu 7.04 yet?

I don't think there is any conspiracy theory here, just shoddy programming. If you have any sense wait for SP1 before switching to Vista. Does anyone else get the feeling that Microsoft release their software too early? Remember Windows ME? Ho ho.

PS. Does M$ Office have a spell-checker?

I have seen issues with XP reading long files or files which it has no codec installed.

The issue and a fix is detailed here, is this the same thing?

http://www.madsally.co.uk/index.php?action=view&id=34

Until last night when I finally had enough and removed Vista, I was experiencing exactly the same problem. However, during the process of re-configuring my machine I removed my slave IDE drive from the IDE 0 channel. Large files transfers were instantly possible with very high transfer rates. Maybe coincidence but perhaps the problem is IDE drives sharing the same channel.

I think I may have some of them on my windowsill at home...

Although i want to laugh and laugh as a i am linux user and have had systems installed in the time it takes to read the MS EULA, I do find it quite alarming that so many of these comments seem to accept that Vista is not perfect and they must accept it. Given the amount of money you have paid MS for this dubious pleasure i think you should perhaps demand a little more for your money.

I was entitled to a "free" upgrade with my laptop as i bought it in december, but i wasnt going to waste my life trying to get them to send it (which i believe they still havent managed to sort out) and now all these people with BSODs and accepting it!!!

You people are crazy, as another comment says a stable system does act like this and given the time it has taken so far, i dont think Vista will ever be finished, they just shippped it as it had taken so long already.

And to the person with the wifi problems, try Ubuntu, check the forums and ask for some help. I too have had wifi problems with Debian, Suse, and others only for them to dissappear with Ubuntu and the help of the good people on the Ubuntu forums.

When Vista came out I bought a Mac. I told My client to buy new Laptops before Vista came out so they wouldn't be forced to buy Vista. A little hassle finding good replacement utilities like FTP on the since it OS X is new for me. But now I am glad to see I made the right decession. I spend my time making things better on the machines not just trying to get them to work as well as they did a year or two ago.

Yes, Yes, very good. I'll install Linux on the desktop when it's in a position to be installed on the desktop. It's good, but it's still a server OS that has a crap desktop UI shoved on top of console. Think Windows 98 with a more stable core. (DOS is bash/kernel and Windows is KDE/Gnome - nice try, will work for some but generally it's still sh*te for mass roll out without a huge amount of support)

Anyway, fanatic's aside - had Vista Enterprise, Business and Ultimate rolled out across 30 machines since November as a testing pool across various hardware types (laptops and desktops from different vendors, randing from brand new to 3 year old devices) and haven't come across this issue anywhere.

Had lighweight and power users playing with it as their main machine and we've had such a drop in support requests from these users that run Vista we're rolling it out across the network as soon as possible.

The DRM thing is complete bollocks. Take a peek at what the various DRM proceses are doing when you copy a file. See any surge in CPU cycles used by these processes, or increases in the amount of RAM it wants to gobble? Nope? That's because it has nothing to with DRM.

One day bias journalists will actually do first hand research rather than putting a slant on 3rd hand research to get a grabbing headline. (Well, maybe)

Judging from the raft of different replies/suggestions, either nobody (including MS) really knows what the problem is, or it is caused by a multitude of things.

Either way, I think I'll hold off until :

a) it's a bit more stable

b) the price ceases to be a blatant rip-off

I bought a brand new top of the range Sony Vaio running with Vista...

I tooked (well, I aborted...) 106 days to move 35Gb... I spent three weeks trying to work with my new notebook, and just before becoming mad and killing myself, i sold everything and bought a MAC.

I am recovering my sanity and i have just ditched my Windows mobile phone!

and it feels really good...

...that there are bugs in Vista. It's new and it's complex. It works better than I expected. The real problem is MicroSoft's response - there isn't any. I know all software companies are guilty of this but MS is one of the largest, richest companies in the world and this is a critical release. They are trying to show that they are professional software vendors not money grubbing buy-or-copy monkeys. they need to be better than this.

"Why MS can't fix the problem and why they released the OS with these sorts of problems after there massive amount of Beta testers, I will never know."

They might have had a massive amount of beta testers, but it's still a very small percentage of actual users there ends up being. Those testers can't test every scenario on every combination of hardware that people might have.

So i've installed SuSE OSS 10.2 on my acer travelmate 4500 and _everything_ was detected and worked fine, graphics card, wlan etc. Then i parallel installed w2k3 server and it detected neither sound, wlan, normal network, graphics so i had to run linux to get the newest drivers and store them for win$ on an extra fat partition - now that's an operating system ;)

I'm experiencing the same slow network transfers with Vista to/from SBS2003 and XP Pro. I'm dual booting Vista Business and XP Pro on my desktop PC, everything on our network is gigabit, and Vista is dead slow when transferring files across the network. The usual 1gb/min transfers I was used to with XP have been downgraded to 1gb/hour when I boot Vista on the same hardware.

UAC was the first thing to go, tcp autoscaling has been disabled on server and desktop, tried different gigabit NIC's(figured Intel Pro1000MT might have better drivers than onboard Yukon in desktop), spent hours reading forums about this problem, and no fix yet. I'm just dealing with this one for a while and using one of our tech PC's(XP Pro) whenever I have to move large files. Hopefully a fix will magically appear one day.

Otherwise Vista has been great, nice eye candy, lots of bells and whistles, love my weather, news, and cpu monitor in the sidebar, works well with our existing equipment and domain, etc. Driver support was spotty at first but after ME, 2000, and XP I expected to not have all of my stuff working well for 6 months until manufacturers can catch up. 3 months into Vista my Handycam USB connection is the only hardware that doesn't work-bravo! The biggest headache aside from network transfers has been upgrading all of the software we use to be compatible with Vista, some of our software was upgraded under maintenance contracts but I'll have to buy new versions for others and/or make good use of my XP partition.

Linux is like Windows 98? Even in 1998, Linux wasn't like Windows 98. For starters, it's actually a real protected-mode operating system right down to the ground, whereas Windows 98 always had that weird real mode stuff going on. Unix was always designed to have services that ran in the background, whereas Windows 98 was never really designed. I could go on, but that guy probably doesn't care.

That said, I don't run Linux on my desktop machine except at work, where I need to. I use Mac OS X, which is a kernel with a shell on top of it, just like Linux.

Personally I think the problem is probably some weird interaction between filesystems, paging and locks being held in uncomfortable places...

In response to Webster Phreaky's post about Logic 7 crashing. Logic 7.2 is the latest release, Logic 7 is the older PowerPC only release.

Stuff does break in all OSes, it's how it gets resolved that counts.

The wi-fi problems in Linux are due, wholly or mainly, to inadequate documentation released by manufacturers. That there are any drivers at all owes a lot to the dogged determination of a few hackers.

Don't blame the Linux developers; it's not their fault! Blame the hardware companies for not releasing sufficient information to enable Linux drivers to be written. If you're bothered enough to complain about the state of drivers, write to your MP and push for a new law requiring manufacturers either to document hardware fully (to the extent where a competent programmer could create drivers for a non-Windows operating system) or face having it banned from sale.

And it *will* take a law to accomplish this (although there is technically -already- a law, since the rightful owner of an object is by definition privy to any secret embodied in that object) because otherwise, firms will complain that they might be giving away information to their competitors (who in all probability are busy dissecting their products under a microscope even as we speak).

I recently bought a new Vista laptop to replace an XP machine, and boy does the anecdote ‘wait for the first service pack’ ring true. While I could read my entire laptop drive on another XP machine, Vista really didn’t like the idea. Altering file security settings on the drive helped, but still failed to copy key folders without any warning. One tip is don’t try to do a bulk copy with OneCare enabled, not only will Vista have trouble reading files, it will also quite randomly fail to write them too, and bombard you with ‘try again’ messages! Don’t get me started on the intermittently working keyboard shortcuts or random startup changes in screen resolution…

I can endorse the earlier comment about nVidia drivers in Vista - our system doesn't show half the controls (including screen resolution!) in the nVidia control panel, and the PnP (Ha!) monitor doesn't.

Local dealer has just told me it is possible to install XP with Vista licence code - it will fail, but will prompt a call to MS, who will give you one that works, apparently...

BTW, is Dell offering XP as an option in the UK yet?

Baldauf, it's easier installing linux laptops because they're a set hardware configuration - and there are people with the time to make custom configurations for each laptop. This dosn't help desktop users. (And say "forum" to your average older casual user and he'll ask why why you're talking about Roman culture..)

As for 2k3 not working, it's a server OS. Why were you expecting it to work on a laptop again? What didn't XP pick up..that'd be far more relevant.

Ross, if you're willing to spend the estimated four man-years to port all the apps I use to Linux, feel free. My router runs linux, and I'm very happy with it. But my desktop gets turned off every night...it dosn't matter if after a few weeks of running it'd stall. Different markets, different requirements.

Windows has ALWAYS taken ages to copy or delete files. Goodness knows why it does, but it's certainly not a new problem.

I know of no other OS that has such problems handling files, killing processes, communicating over a network, logging off, or shutting down. All these things seem to stall it at one time or another; I mean, WHY can it take Windows ages to shut down? For goodness sake - it's easy - all it has to do is pull the bloody plug!

Basically, it's shite.

Why does it take so long to delete 23GB of data? Cos it ain't deleting it.

I imagine MS has done a deal with the FBI or DHS, MI5 etc etc so that a Vista machine never deletes anything.

From what I can tell so far about Vista, its DRM, its ability to delete software it doesn't like and from the terms & conditions of the licence, every Vista machine is owned by Microsoft with a written-in backdoor for all those agencies who signed up and probably help make MS so rich.

So, why so long to delete 23GB? Ever tried zipping up 23GB of data? It takes a long time.

I rest my case.

I dont blame Bill Gates. I blame George Orwell. This was all his stupid, brilliant, amazing, frightening idea and the human race has to go through it all, I think, to be able to sift out from the ashes a better way of how to run this planet. But, before it gets better it usually always gets worse. That's just the way it goes.

Why is it that every time I read any Microsoft related article in here there's always some pillock making snide "you should be using Linux then" type comments.

I've been using LINUX for years. That's my choice, and I like it, and to be honest for a lot of people on this site you'll be preaching to the converted anyway. If however I go to a LINUX forum and look at bug reports I don't see loads of comments to the effect of "you never get that in Windows." It's poor form, it's making the rest of us more moderate LINUX users look bad, and it's making you personally look like the sort of narrow minded twit that the open source movement could do without the support of. A bit like the standard clueless nit you always get propping up the pub bar opining about something he knows very little about to anyone that'll listen. If you don't like Microsoft products then fair enough, many of us don't - but surely that means you have no real opinion on Microsoft related stories?

Prats.

I use Vista purely as a media center and I am horrified at the number of bugs in the OS. Applications that don't window when I click the button, but do it the second time. The inability of Vista to reconnect to a network when brought out of suspend. Utterly appalling driver support, admittedly not MS's fault, but directly related to them allowing XP drivers to be used for the RC releases. My performance has halved since moving to Vista, my machine runs 6C hotter...

I could go on.

I will just single out nVidia though as be so far off the mark with their driver support it is untrue. I actually removed my nVidia graphics card and went to the onboard graphics chip to get basic things like a monitor functioning correctly. I now get better performing media center, my monitor doesn't turn off randomly, I can suspend my machine without wondering whether I'll get a monitor when it comes back on. It really isn't good enough at all. (Oh and I ought to point out, these are WHQL certified drivers where nothing works).

Vista won't even properly copy/move files from one system to another if there are any permissions differences between them.. I have a NAS and it will start to copy, but abort it at various levels.. Its a shame I have to flip over to a FTP over SSH to get it working reliably.

This is a big problem when you are moving/copying several gigs of data.

I have not heard about copying problems from the dozen or so vista users where I live, but since it is late at night here, I can't be bothered to wake them up until tomorrow.

I wonder if there has been any code like some from windows 2K comments like "this is my first c program", "I don't really understand this but it seems to work" (this had a reply "I don't know either, leave it alone"), which were all reported to have been in the source code. I think the forst of those was from FDISK, and had been in every 32-bit windows at least up to XP.

From what I have read, some of the problem appears to be from the fooling around generating thumbnails. This seems to be something vista does badly, since both Tiger and XP manges to generate thumbnails for, between them most file types which can have thumbnails, and don't seem to waste huge amounts of time doing so. (I am not a Mac fan, I just use them at Uni. I have used OpenSuse/KDE, XP home and pro, adn Tiger in the lst two months, and they are all better for some things than otehrs, except for XP home). Under XP i have tried to cut down on teh use of Tumbnails, since I have better things to waste HDD space on than pretty pictures to remind me whats in files with stupid names. If I can't figure out what a file is for from its location adn name, that tells me to rename it, not use a pretty picture to remind me.

I just love being categorised as "gay" or "useless" or "inexperienced" for expressing the opinion that "My next laptop will be a mac".

Why ? Is it MS Bashing?

No. After some 22 years in IT, and over 15 years beating my head against windows (and other related MS crap) that the computers job is to do what I tell it.

Its not my job to rebuild the sodding thing every six months, download patches every night (and pray they dont lock my machine up - as XP did this week), etc, etc.

I want a solid machine I can depend on (*again, as I used to depend on XP till a year ago), that doesnt actually need 2+ hours a week care and maintenance.

So a mac - since its built on BSD or some other fairly secure kernel, fits the bill perfectly. Or perhaps Unbunto/Debian/Fedora/Suse. Whatever.

No doubt I'll curse and swear at it on occasion, and no doubt I'll write shonky code that kills it. Fine. I can live with that. I can live with the consequences of what *I* do.

What gets on my t*ts is the MS sycophants claiming that;

1. Its not a problem.

2. Every other platform is *gay*, indexperienced, etc

3. We're the market leader - get over it.

4. There's no choice.

Well, there is a choice. I choose life. I choose moving off windows for my core work, and will tirelessly point out to the blinkered CIO's out there who seem to live on Gartners/Forresters tit that its their job to provide reliable and secure infrastrucuture.

And that aint windows anymore, is it ?

---* Bill

talking about weird bugs in vista, some people have been experiencing funny beeps when using programs with listview controls, like the one used in explorer to show files. It's maddening, since whenever you move the cursor or select an item you get a sound. I have seen many people moaning about it but no solution yet

Yet another nail in the vista coffin.

Say what you want but Dell, with the upcoming withdrawal of OEM XP on new pre-builds, are now selling PCs with Ubuntu on. This to me is a complete summary of the industry's thoughts on vista. Dell obviously think that forcing vista on people is not a way to sell many PCs. I think they're right.

My XP and Linux installs are staying firmly put. My boss (Head of IT) has made it completely clear that we are under no circumstances upgrading to vista pre- SP2.

Maybe they should have made it free? People tend not to mind if something isn't perfect if it's free.

Has 25 years of substandard, broken, beta quality m$ software not taught anyone anything?

Most, if not all, problems with Linux are caused by the end users themselves for not properly understanding what they are doing. Some people above are complaining about wifi cards and ndiswrapper not working just because they lack the intelligence to comprehend simple ndiswrapper tutorials. Chances are their wifi cards are natively supported in the kernel and they just have no experience in configuring and compiling the kernel.

I mean it isn't like Vista is MS Bob 2.0 or is it? Perhaps they could play an animation and have the little dog dig into the screen to fetch a file for moving and copying. The pernicious pup could also chew it to shreds for delete. We won't get into the whole recycling bit without a special setting in the parental controls window.

You folks are on a Jihad here eh?... Just a couple of points...

1. If you want to ride the "Bleeding Edge" you will suffer.... every experienced user/admin knows this. Us smart folks... lol... will look at an upgrade after the first SP is released.

2. The majority of problems on any PC occur between the keyboard and the chair. So, users are pretty quick to tell you the problem is the computer and not them to try and hide a lack of competence.

3. What is the current install base of Vista? More users... more problems... No?

You want to talk about the "never ending .... WAIT"?

Let's talk about FIVE incarnations of Mac OS X (since 10.0.x, I was a beta tester) with the deep gene embedded endless Spinning Beach Ball of WAIT n wait n wait n wait! Do anything on stupid OS X (and stupid is correct), from simply launching another App while others are running, or connecting to an exterior NAS, opening a file or doc, previewing a picture file, launching a browser, EVEN shutting down and you are more likely than not with see the endless Spinning Beach Ball of WAIT n wait n wait n wait!

Why? Because OS X is STUPID, literally and you can thank BSD for that because it's in the "Genes". Indexing always Sucked on BSD and Apple never fixed it. OS X gets "lost" looking for files, applications and libraries to complete functions, and often these and preferences get corrupted. Lets not even begin about the HORRIBLE disk fragmenting the happens on OS X and the lack of Defrag tool!

OS X IS STILL NOT A TRUE (operative word) MULTI TASKING Operation System (thanks to BSD and UNIX) as Windows is, which is WHY you NEVER see any delays doing these things in Windows since 95 or in Linux.

So don't give me this shit about this seldom seen bug in Vista that's really just a rare poor upgrade installation of Vista, likely over a cludged previous version of Windows. With over 12 thousand PCs (only 2300 Macs now) on my US school district docket that I administer, WE'VE NEVER SEEN THIS PROBLEMS ..... probably 'cause we know what we're doing! BUT, EVERY Mac (10,4.9) HAS the endless Spinning Beach Ball of WAIT n wait n wait n wait!

Heres the fix (well, this worked for me).

This problem existed in RC1 and to some extent RC2 too. I did report it, and it’s partially fixed but still not good. Microsoft at the time blamed my Cisco router.. Anyway, I get really poor intermittant network performance. It turns out this is due to a new addition in the TCP/IP stack called Receive Window Auto-Tuning Level.

To check the status of this feature, run “netsh interface tcp show global” at a command prompt.

You will see something like:

Querying active state…

TCP Global Parameters

———————————————-

Receive-Side Scaling State : enabled

Chimney Offload State : enabled

Receive Window Auto-Tuning Level : disabled

Add-On Congestion Control Provider : none

ECN Capability : disabled

RFC 1323 Timestamps : disabled

In this example, you can see I have it disabled. (My network performance returns to normal with it off!).

To disable it, run: “netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=disabled”

To enable it, run: “netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=normal”

(Both these last two should be run from an Administrator Command Prompt, not a “normal” command prompt).

Using a new laptop with Vista Home Premium on it, just deleted a minor sound file I had on there, 7.65Kb in size.

It took 25 seconds. Which, frankly, is a bit much.

Someone above documented the issue occurring in Windows Server 2003. Has anyone duplicated similar behavior in Longhorn?

Using a FAT32 secondary drive for storage of media, misc. As such, it should have no applicable security. I loved it when I was trying to access my files & Vista told me that I needed permission from 'everyone' to access my files. Hmm.. that might take a while.

@ Simon: "think this problem is incredibly rare, and it's been hyped up purely to bash vista."

I have been forced to use Vista on a new desktop at $DAY_JOB (I am half the IT team and the entire Help Desk here, so I must be familiar with this travesty of an OS in order to help my users when they're forced to switch).

It isn't necessary to hype this particular flaw to bash Vista. There's enough wrong with Vista that it isn't necessary to hype *any* of the flaws. For example, out of seven mission-critical software applications we use, only one works with Vista - and oddly enough, that one is Remote Desktop Client, which is bundled with Vista.

Vista is simply a crap OS. Period.

The problem isn't Vista itself. Vista's filesystem APIs work just fine. The problem is Vista's version of Explorer. So, rather than throw the baby out with the bathwater, try using a good file manager (which doesn't just use Explorer's file copy APIs) on Vista instead of switching back to XP.

Directory Opus 9, a product I love, supports Vista and I've been using it on Vista since January. Except if you delete files to the Recycle Bin (in which case the only documented method is to use the Shell/Explorer API), it bypasses Explorer's file copy/move/delete code and works as well as it did on XP. It also shows 1/2 or 1/4 as many UAC prompts as Explorer does for the same operations, removing the other common complaint about Vista/UAC.

Surely this large a cockup could cause microsoft some very severe financial losses and eventually cause its collapse ????

Oh, when will Windows be ready for the desktop? People should be asking, methinks. The Windows fanboys are desperate to justify their huge expense in hardware just to see some little "improvement" and a few cool (or annoying?) effects. If all you want is pretty displays and stuff like that, buy a nice fish tank. It's gonna be much more entertaining, relaxing, environmentally friendly... If you do real computing and have need for speed and stability, there are real OSes out there that don't need next years hardware to just turn on.

That's what you get for *buying* alpha releases. Suckers. Well, except the poor folks who have no choice and are forced to use Vista. I'm sincerely sorry for you, and I wish there was a way to diminish your pain.

Yeah, yeah, all software has some trouble here and there (although, copy/move/delete is way too pathetic...). But I'm not the one who had to sell a kidney to buy the newest, most powerful machine plus a bunch of bloatware just so I can write and send emails. See, "you get what you paid for" is not always true. :-)

J

I know that in XP, when you delete something, you're really only removing the directory pointer to that file's location on the disk. That's easy. Perhaps Vista is actually deleting the data, rather than merely the pointer to it??

Anyone know?

@Webster Phreaky. Mac OSX well-known single-tasking tasking nature is due to the unrefactored old "cooperative-multitasking" single-threaded OS9 Mac code layered over the top of BSD. BSD itself is very good at multi-tasking. The end result is the embarrassing result you see on Mac compared to Windows.

"No. After some 22 years in IT...its not my job to rebuild the sodding thing every six months, download patches every night" I think Bill needs to consider a new line of work. I have never rebuilt an NT server for more than 10 years because the OS actually went bad. I haven't rebuilt an NT based client workstation in about 8 years. Given that Microsoft primarily only release patches once per month you must be utterly clueless if your patching every night. A few months ago I installed Ubuntu 6.06 and after rebooting it wanted to install about 300MB of updates. Software updates are just a fact of life no OS is immune from. Manage it correctly and it isn't a problem.

It's nice to see a few more responses attacking the endless and completely thoughtless comments that whenever a problem with Windows is found, the immediate answer is install Linux/Unix/Mac OSX. Words honestly fail me in describing how cretinous these remarks are. I mean, if this is the intellect of the average OS-of-choice evangelist then I really do they stick to that and keep away from Windows. The key point to understand is that system administrators don't exist in a vacuum. Even as a senior system admin myself, I don't actually get to choose what operating system to install/use. These kind of decisions are organisational and/or strategic and products like Windows are chosen for much more holistic reasons than what OS is best. Windows is generally chosen because (a) the installed base requires is (b) Windows itself is actually subordinate to the Windows-only applications businesses require, (c) it actually makes financial sense because support is plentiful and relatively cheap and (d) it isn't difficult to implement. There are always systems that are technically superior but none of them are ever going to be deployed in isolation. The endless Linux evangelism is an absolute turn-off for me and is a reason I would find it difficult to ever recommend it. The world needs Eric Raymond clones like a hole in the head.

"2. The majority of problems on any PC occur between the keyboard and the chair. So, users are pretty quick to tell you the problem is the computer and not them to try and hide a lack of competence."

You know, it's funny, Burton. I've been working with computers since before IBM thought it would be a good idea to repackage a sewing machine controller to try to compete with IMSAI and the other S-100 systems. I've seen a lot of different operating systems, and used most of them, including CP/M, PC-DOS, MS-DOS, GEM, MAC OS (prior to OX X), every flavor of MS Windows since 3.0, and a number of different Linux distributions. Here in the office, I don't get to choose what runs on the servers, so they are Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 servers; we have a number of machine tools, and with only one exception, they all run some flavor of Linux. The only problems I ever have with them is (a) they don't get a DHCP address from the Windows servers, which seem to have major issues finding room in their IP pools (100 addresses each) for the dozen-or-so clients,or (b) the one machine we have that uses Windows crashes - usually in the middle of a logn, expensive machining run.

And I can't think of any other operating system which has changed the user interface with every major release. Sure, Linux has offered *new* GUIs - but the old ones are still available and still work just fine. Whereas my database admin, who just got her new Vista PC, has spent the last half hour trying to figure out how to make the desktop look and work somewhat like the XP desktop.

So, maybe the problem is between the keyboard and the chair.

And maybe the problem is that we have trained all our users to use one interface, and then sudddenly we've taken that away and substituted something comeptley different - which doesn't work better, doesn't work faste, isn't more efficient, and isn't less expensive - it's jsut different *for the sake of being different.*

That's not progress. That's stupidity. And it's not the users' fault.

"Surely this large a cockup could cause microsoft some very severe financial losses and eventually cause its collapse ????"

- Now thats the funniest thing I have EVER read.

Where I work in the UK we have downgrade rights. With each Vista licence bought we can install XP Pro via a volume select licensing deal for the education sector. Our corporate arm also has the same rights with a slightly different public sector deal, they still use Windows 2000 mainly :)

J

Michael,

No, when you "delete" the file, you are generally moving it to the bin... the sort of delete you are talking about is more of a "scrub" where the system overwrites the space occupied by the file with 0's and 1's, and if it did that, the whole system would end up being unusable...

You will notice also that the slow file operations also hits file copying (copying my MP3 collection takes 15 minutes between PC and external hard drive on Win2000 (an up to 4 year old heinz-57 upgraded homebuilt, but 55 minutes on my brand new HP & Vista), so somthing is eating up the processor power doing somthing not really linked to copying...

Can we get a debug kernal for Vista? That should at least help pin down what the OS is doing when it should not...

When deleting vast quantities of files on some of my Win2K servers, I ended up using DEL /S on the command line. It just does what it's told, and does not think for 40 minutes before giving a wild assed guess about the time it may or may not need to delete the same files.

What is the link to vista? Easy: Isolate where the slowdown is coming from:

I have not yet tried it, but if you make 3 copies of a "heavy" folder, (then reboot to fool the cache), then delete:

1 folder by the Vista explorer (shell delete)

1 folder by DOS (del /s and rmdir /s) (DOS delete)

1 folder by a program (API delete)

and see if the delete times are different... this will enable you to find if the delete slowdown is coming from some shell module or handler, or directly from the API: remember that the shell is also doing some funky stuff, like generating thumbnails of films and images, that the command line and API cannot use. If they are all as slow as each other, then the culprit is somewhere in the kernal... Now, add that to a kernal debugger, like the Yank who patched the XP shell to wait 5 seconds before deleting a "locked" file...

Does anyone have a copy of Vista Hacking for Dummies?

Cheers,

Daniel

You may have to get your company's executive to get an NDA for that.

The publication is really Microsoft's internal system specifications manual for the Operating System, and details how Windows 95 was hacked to obtain each successive (but not necessarily successful) operating system. A companion manual is the internal marketing advisers' spin and obfuscate guidelines.

I've spent the past 20 minutes reading & rereading all of the comments to this article and I have to admit I find it all incredibly amusing! You have the Mac, *nix & windows purists pointing out flaws of their least favorite OS's, you experiences IT folks basically saying screw it, I'm bailing on Vista until SP1 comes out and then you have the occasional spark of pure luck or genius who solves a problem that is specific to their machine but similar enough to a larger problem that it only fuels the mass confusion.

To add insult to injury, you have Microsoft giving everybody the silent treatment, which loosely translates to "yeah, we know there are problems but we haven't completed all of the root cause analysis's yet to know how much damage will be done if we implement the latest alpha patch"

This is better than watching a couple of monkeys attempt to fornicate with a football!

What makes it even funnier, is a lot of folks in here made the CHOICE to upgrade to vista OR went out and bought new equipment so they could get it... But alas, there are the poor folks who were simply at the wrong place at the wrong time and got stuck. I feel sorry for the latter, but sheer jubilation over the comedic value provided by the former...

As for me? I'm just a simple network geek... I don't give a rip about which OS does what, better or worse than another... PC's, workstations and servers are all a pain in the ass to me because they are the single significant contributer to the lack of bandwidth on my network...

Just because the seperate GUI and OS thing didn't work in Win9x doesn't mean its a bad idea.

I'll be the first to tell you that X badly needs to be recoded from scratch (this time with some planning and forethought,) but the opportunities for this setup are great.

How many OSes with fully integrated guis allow you to switch them at a whim? If you don't like KDE or Gnome or Fluxbox, you can just find an alternative, and there are loads of them out there. Chances are that there is someone out there with the same desktop tastes as yourself and an ability to program, which leads to awesome and unique desktop experiences.

With X you can run multiple window managers at a time, one on each VNC session, and even on totally remote computers.

More over, if your gui freezes, you can just switch over to a virtual terminal and restart it.

I just don't see how a distinct gui is at all beneficial.

- Nexox

"I know of no other OS that has such problems handling files, killing processes, communicating over a network, logging off, or shutting down. All these things seem to stall it at one time or another; I mean, WHY can it take Windows ages to shut down? For goodness sake - it's easy - all it has to do is pull the bloody plug!"

Ah yes, and prey tell me why the other week I spent almost an hour trying to shut down my Fedora Core server when it refused to?

It turned out it had somehow locked up a file in such a way that the instant it tried to flush the filesystem to write any remaining data would cause a kernel dump (which it hides from the user), and any shutdown command, even the most abortive, just would bail out because of it. To work out what the hell was going on required me using my XP laptop to surf the net for clues and pour through endless excruciatingly cryptic man pages for help.

The only solution was to pull the plug, which is all your average user is going to do anyway.

Like XP with NTFS formatted partitions, the system came back up with no corruption despite pulling the plug.

What Linux fans also gloss over when moaning about bugs in Windows is the huge amount of bug fixes (a lot security related) in Linux. Run yum on Fedora in about the same frequency as Microsoft's usual patch release and guess what? Yep, there are lots of patches. In fact there are a lot MORE patches than XP has usually. That often includes the core of the system, the kernel. When I investigate them most say things about security issues.

And anyone who's ever run a web server will know that in the recent years most of the attacks are directed at applications and platforms that not only run on linux but grew out of unix/linux (mostly php and Apache related). Web servers on linux are probably the weakest point in the system especially as so many people don't have a clue about security in web servers and the need to patch not only the server, but the applications running on the web server as well.

Oh and as for the GUI and OS being separated. Actually that is a good thing... because you can disable the GUI :-)

Everything in it's place though. I love linux for the jobs it's best at, but it's not the angel people think.

Thanks for proving my point, If it doesn’t work out of the box then it's no good for the end user. Granted Windows suffers it's problems but UNFORTUNATELY Linux isn’t yet good enough to take over as a desktop solution for the majority of business applications or home user's.

I doubt this will be another nail in the Vista coffin. Numerous businesses and some major financial institutes are only just rolling out XP. One of which I have done some work for and they are currently moving from NT to XP purely because the support for NT has expired. So I think once the bugs have been ironed out the bigger businesses will start to migrate over from Windows 2000 and XP to Vista some of which will just skip XP and go straight to Vista.

If you work in IT support use Vista's teething period to gain knowledge and experience in troubleshooting it and when the bigger company's migrate you will be in a better position to get the contract. If Windows worked perfectly there would be a lot of unemployed IT professionals.

I have seen this reported many times as well. I haven't seen it as much because I still use cmd for 90% of my file operations. MS needs to get this fix out broadly ASAP but sysadmins who want to stay on Vista should know that this issues appears in Explorer but not cmd (e.g., xcopy).

Test run on about 5000 files (350 Mb).

The data was copied to 2 different directories by 2 different methods:

Explorer cut & paste: 3 minutes 50 seconds.

DOS COPY : 1 minute 5 seconds.

So it would seem that it is linked to the explorer shell and not the copy kernel API

Cheers,

Daniel

Just as a side note, I have noticed forever that when copying a file in the Windows gui, the file always goes to swap first, then to its destination, even when the swap file is on the same partition or device as the source or destination. That causes loads of unnecessary seeking, reading, and writing. xcopy on the command line doesn't do any of that, so I've seen almost a 2x speedup on large copies using any computer with a swap file (The secret to Windows performance is to get enough ram so as that you can disable the swap file all together, since Windows uses it like you have 8mb of physical memory no matter what.)

Either way, looks like I'll be sticking with XP and Linux on my desktops.

Yes...we, too are almost completely converted to Linux. Looks like our last Windoze box will be UPGRADED to Linux of some flavour this weekend. (My other half spends his spare time evaluating Linux and it's various distributions - I just use 'em.) Windoze & it's problems can suffer in a VM There are so few Windoze apps needed now, IMHO.

Cheers,

Judi

I was having long delays with some connectivity to systems in our DMZ or to systems on the internet (RDP to internet bound systems) and Vista would hang. Disabling the tcp/ip auto-tuning fixed the issues:

netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=disabled

Rock on.. This was the only issue I had with Vista. I'm VERY happy now, won't go back.

I just got windows vista, it seems to be quite fast for general use, however when it comes to transfering files to another location ( external hard-drive ) it takes forever.

I had XP and it took me roughly 30 secs to transfer a 350 meg file to my external hard-drive ( fat32 drive ).

Now it takes me 8 mins for the same file, it totally crazy.

I took the hard-drive to my friend who is still on XP just to see if how long it took, again it was about 30 secs.

How do i make this Calculation crap etc stop? I mean after calculating it says transfer rate is 896kb per sec approx, but it is still bearly moving.

I mean should i just buy another copy of XP and install that over vista? I mean its shit, lets be honest guys.

Also how to search for movies like in XP. you could search for all movies on their own. Then photos on their own,Now this weird search option is not so easy to find file types.

Please help with comments. cheers