What is up with vista

[kensuguro]

I've been using vista on my laptop core2duo 2.5ghz 4gb (okay, effectively 2) and everything's just been horrendously silly. I use it to play my piano samples only.. occasional wordprocessing, email, internet, the usual bunch.. it's not meant to be a powerhouse, and I don't use it as such. But still, I'm riddled with crashes, random freezes.... just bad behaviour in general. I'm definitely thinking of selling this off and going back Mac.

There's that whole mac or PC war I know.. but when the OS is this bad, it doesn't really leave me much choice. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong... I just clean installed, and installed 3-4 apps on it, and that's it. Horrible, completely unacceptable. grrrr..

You know, it is a fact that at work, I can just sit down on a blank slate mac, install stuff, and get working in very little time. That is, with out crashes, freezes, mysterious behavior... Actually XP does it just fine too. I first thought Vista won't be so bad after all and gave it a month or two. just seemed to go downhill from there.

Anyone have a great vista experience? I'm just curious, because it runs so poorly, that I have trouble believing that anyone would be having a blast using it. Dunno, maybe it works well for some people's configurations. Just not mine.

[garyb]

i can't see any reason to use it right now.

macs run better on XP too......

[braincell]

I think you got a lemon, it has not enough memory, or you need to configure it. What brand is it?

I have been using Vista for 6 months of heavy use and this is the very first OS I have used which has never crashed. Some people in this group suggested I should delete Vista before I even tried it. I'm glad I didn't! Besides the stability of it, I enjoy the thousands of new features. Just to name a few off the top of my head: In XP you use "Remove Hardware" and scroll down the long list to find your mp3 player. In Vista I can right click on the icon of my mp3 player on the desktop. I like that I can copy a program and when I paste it there is an option to paste as shortcut. I like that the desktop is both auto-arrange and manual arrange at the same time. I like the DVD burning software, it works fine for me and the burner is fast. I like the added security. Windows XP is pretty good but I prefer Vista.

It's ridiculous that people point out that Aero is a reason to buy Vista. I disabled Aero right away. Microsoft just copied the annoying, distracting crappy look of the Mac with "Areo". Don't get a Mac, they don't have extensions on the files because Macs are designed for women and they only want it to look "pretty" so they take out a lot of functionality. iTunes is a great example. Why the hell can't I see how fast my files are downloading? When I am downloading a bunch of podcasts it would be really helpful to see if a server is acting up. Apple thinks it's customers are too stupid to know what KBps is. They always dumb things down and call that a "feature" because it's "easier to use" ha!

[astroman]

Apple doesn't think it's customers are stupid - Apple knows it
how else could they have established a vintage mess of code for which they once presented a fully functional alternative, decades ago
...All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain....

back to business - cheers, Tom

[skwawks]

it's not XP ,go no further till later

[valis]

I've been using vista on my laptop core2duo 2.5ghz 4gb (okay, effectively 2) and everything's just been horrendously silly. I use it to play my piano samples only.. occasional wordprocessing, email, internet, the usual bunch.. it's not meant to be a powerhouse, and I don't use it as such. But still, I'm riddled with crashes, random freezes.... just bad behaviour in general. I'm definitely thinking of selling this off and going back Mac.

There's that whole mac or PC war I know.. but when the OS is this bad, it doesn't really leave me much choice. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong... I just clean installed, and installed 3-4 apps on it, and that's it. Horrible, completely unacceptable. grrrr..

You know, it is a fact that at work, I can just sit down on a blank slate mac, install stuff, and get working in very little time. That is, with out crashes, freezes, mysterious behavior... Actually XP does it just fine too. I first thought Vista won't be so bad after all and gave it a month or two. just seemed to go downhill from there.

Anyone have a great vista experience? I'm just curious, because it runs so poorly, that I have trouble believing that anyone would be having a blast using it. Dunno, maybe it works well for some people's configurations. Just not mine.

There must be something wrong with your installation or hardware if you're truly getting that much instability across the board. If it's a single application crashing you (like whatever you're using to play piano samples) then the drivers used for ASIO etc might be suspect, but from your description it sounds like more than that. Besides insuring that you're updated to Vista Sp1 and have all the latest (stable) drivers, you might want to grab a copy of Everest and run some hardware tests to make sure that you don't have bad ram or a poorly manufactured laptop (bad thermal paste etc). Keeping an eye on the temps using Everest might be a good idea too.

I'm no huge fan of Vista, but the main cause of instabilities for it are addressed in my comments above.

[braincell]

Was this a factory install? Are you using integrated graphics? How much RAM? I think you might have a faulty motherboard. I think you might have a monkey on your back.

You should try the Mojave OS. I hear it rocks!

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-9998336-56.html

[garyb]

i'm quite sure that Vista works more than acceptably well.

the idea of added security is the joke of the decade, however! thinking Vista adds "security" is like thinking the dumbed-down aspect of the mac is a "feature"....i doubt there's been a secure computer since OS9, if ever and the newest computers are the most compromised, ever.

i'd tend to agree that if there is extreme instability across the boards that there's probably a hardware issue...or aero is enabled.

[braincell]

There is a type of virus which is hidden from the API known as a rootkit. Once you have one of these it is difficult or impossible to remove becayse anti-virus software can not see it. Vista blocks rootkits. Windows XP does not.

[kensuguro]

I'll give it the everest test.. I do wonder if it really is a hardware issue because I've never had any OS act this strange before.. Even Windows 95, so I'm really puzzled. It may be because I have a tablet version, I'm not sure. I wouldn't be surprised if the tablet extensions caused compatibility issues.

In more detail, it's a Toshiba m700 tablet pc, 2.5ghz core2duo, with 4gb ram.. with some sort of integrated graphics. So, it shouldn't be a performance issue. Dunno, maybe tablet technology isn't mature enough for real world use. Besides, I haven't used it at all since I got it, since the notebook is more than an arm's reach away from me on the piano controller. (so how do I touch the screen?)

I was wondering why my vista was running so poorly, I guess I'm relieved to hear that it's been working well for other people. Although I don't like it in the first place, I would have been shocked if it ran this poorly on everyone's machines, and people still bought it.

From my perspective (osx at work, used 2 osx notebooks in a row, DAW is XP, and Vista notebook in question), comparatively, osx machines require much less hassle, and don't crash. I'm not particularly in favor for osx religiously, but osx isn't necessarily an os for dummies.. at least not the way we use it for development at work. The 'nix back end is extremely powerful, and I think they did a good job at packaging both the sophisticated back end, and a sleek front end. I guess that's no different from any win + cygwin combo but anyway..

I really don't care what the OS is, as long as it does its job. And so far, osx is doing great. BUT, that's probably because what I do (all adobe and flash stuff) is extremely well integrated with osx. Maybe not so cool for other things I guess. Like for audio, I much prefer win for all the win compatible vsti.

[garyb]

There is a type of virus which is hidden from the API known as a rootkit. Once you have one of these it is difficult or impossible to remove becayse anti-virus software can not see it. Vista blocks rootkits. Windows XP does not.

ok, they fixed that problem, but put in more secret backdoors with full access.....kinda like shutting the screen door, but cutting big holes in it to improve circulation....

[braincell]

Sounds like a good computer but integrated graphics is bad! Try turning off Aero and upgrading your graphics driver and see if that helps.

[valis]

Fyi there's been more than one way found now to detect all current forms of hidden rootkit.

Also the methods used to hide a boot volume in Truecrypt 5 were recently revealed to be not totally hidden either, and the fellows who found the detection method implied that Truecrypt 6 was also vulnerable, although the Truecrypt team denies that possibility (of course).

There's even been methods found now of reversing encryption using data stored in ram, retrievable even after the machine has been off for a length of time.

[kensuguro]

but integrated graphics is bad!

Wait, no offense, but you mean ALL notebooks are bad? I do have aero turned off, one of the first things I turned off. Actually with todays' graphic boards, I doubt aero does anything substantial, especially since non-hardware accelerated features seems to get turned off automatically. Bleh, I'm just going to ride it out 'till I fix the keyboard on the notebook, and just get rid of it. I really don't have time to be tweaking it.

Compiz on the newest version of ubuntu runs great tho. Too bad ubuntu itself has compatibility issues with this specific notebook.

[braincell]

Strange, I have a Toshiba single core (not a tablet) with half a gig of RAM with integrated graphics and it never bombs. I wonder what the problem is. I use Vista. Not all notebooks are bad but integrated graphics is always bad. You can buy lots of notebooks without integrated graphics but they cost more. I would always recommend not having integrated graphics unless you just need to use word and surf the web.

Try Mujave.

[kensuguro]

oh, oh, I see, I misunderstood the meaning of integrated. I thought for notebooks, all graphic related things were "integrated"... but I see, so you mean, like nvidia mobile chipsets wouldn't be integrated, correct?

Anyway, I'm going to try the hardware tests.. It just had a bluescreen without me touching it. Just strange..

[skwawks]

There has been a LOT of controversy over vista sp1 .Mostly it's cool but some people are tearing their hair out since installing it... with weird hardware glitches . Can you roll back if you've sp1 ?
Paul

[braincell]

An integrated graphics chip is generally made by Intel and uses the computer's RAM rather than it's own RAM. It's not as powerful as dedicated graphics such as by Nvidia and ATI.

[garyb]

i have done an install of vista for a client(non scope) and it seemed pretty stable. i don't think it should be super flakey, but then....

[valis]

Kensugoro, if you installed Vista from a retail or upgrade DVD (rather than from the notebook manufacturer) then flaky drivers could definitely be a possibility. That might be the first thing to check once you've done the basic paces with everest. The reason for this is because Vista's integrated drivers (especially non-SP1) would date back to quite a ways before Vista went 'gold', and although windowsupdate might find newer versions, there are cases where you might wind up with a driver version that's seeing the onboard chip as one device rather than another.

Newer notebooks can be difficult to get working properly from fresh installs using non-OEM media as it often takes a while for all the drivers to be released to the general public.