Is Vista honestly this bad?!??

[KevinM2k]

I moved from windows xp to windows vista business (in work) yesterday, so didn't have much chance playing on it. Today I have been trying to sort the network out and have had unbelievable numbers of problems.

Firstly accessing the network is ridiculously slow, talking between 5-10 seconds to click on a file to be registered, and then I got an estimation of around 7 days for a gig to be copied over the network (wireless).

Pinging the local gateway brings back like 200ms at best which surely should be at like 2ms max.

I also use PhpeD to work on the projects which are stored on the linux server we have (networked).. as you can imagine its VERY slow, everytime i click on a different line in the program it seems to stop the computer and think about what its doing first. Saving and uploading which was like a 2sec job on XP takes up to 20seconds on this machine and I can't find ANY help with it at all.

I contacted Dell (manufacturers) and they basically said they cant do nothing and sent me 2 free copies of XP Pro, but seriously that can't be it, there must be a workaround or a fix?!? It actually makes the system for business use... unusable!

We also have another system in the office which is Vista Ultimate and is wired. This has EXACTLY the same problem as mine apart from pinging the local gateway. All the XP machines in the office that we are networked too have no problems.

Edit: Also my mouse pointer seems to be strange, it will be fine, next minute the actual clicking part of the pointer will move to the bottom right of the arrow rather than the top left.. its kind of random and goes back to normal when its ready.

Edit2: OK i've just done some more testing and managed to get a wired connection temporarly, ALL my problems disapeered! everything was perfectly fast, so its just the broadcom wireless adapter thats inside this vostro 400, although everything says i have the latest drivers, it looks like this is the issue, anyone have any info on how to sort this????

Anyone help?!?

Kev

[chris_fuel]

Drivers can be an issue with vista at the moment, as Vista being a fairly new (not so much now) operating system, needs to have companies update their drivers.

Some companies such as HP are very quick, and have Vista drivers available within the release period. However, some companies don't update their drivers frequently, and even though most xp drivers work with vista, you can't always guarantee it. The best you can do in that case is to contact the vendor and see if they have Vista supported drivers.

As for the card, I've always been a fan of the intel series of network adapters, although I don't think you'd want new hardware to be a solution to your issues.

[Sagewing]

We reverted TEN LAPTOPS from Vista to XP. Very disappointing.

[felgall]

Microsoft probably never made so many sales of Windows XP separately from a computer as they have made since the release of Vista. There seems to be a huge amount of software that will not even install on Vista that runs quite happily on XP.

[Viflux]

The problem when it comes to a lot of these things is not Vista, but rather the software developer.

Most commercial software available for Windows required administrator access. It is performing actions that it really should not be performing.

You can get this software to work (or install) by telling it to run in Windows XP SP2 mode with Administrator rights. It is not a great solution, but it does work. I don't see how Vista can be faulted for this (that's not to say it can't be faulted for many things, because it can).

My employer mandated a change to Vista (part of our licensing) and I have no no problems with any applications (including many ancient applications, like Coldfusion Studio 5) outside of attempting to run IIS 6 and IIS 7 in parallel.

[petertdavis]

I've not had any problems with it on new computers. All the complaints I've heard of are from people who tried to upgrade from XP.

[logic_earth]

...7 days for a gig to be copied over the network (wireless)....

You do know that wireless networks are awfully slow... B has a max thoughput of about 11mbps while G allows for 54mbps. Compared to a wired connection that as 10-100-1000mbps. Thats a max they are not always going to get those speed as wireless is a very unstable.


For me Vista is working very very well on two Dells, an Inspiron E1705, and a Dimension 8100 which is about 7 years old. The 8100 even has Areo support: Pentium 4 1.5GHz, 512MB Ram, 128MB ATI Radeon 9700. Its a little sluggish but it was even sluggish with XP. It has a lot of old components like the NIC card and sound card, had to use XP drivers (Which do work! Most of the time) the sound card was the biggest problem it produces sound but doesn't fully work. This is a discontinued product so no hope for new drivers.

Review your computers hardware and go searching for drivers and see if Dell offers Vista drivers for your make and model.


I think what the problem what most people have with Vista is the new security model they just are not used to it. If you used Linux you would find the same model that is on Vista tho a little more developed. I have UAC on and I'm on a Standard user account I only get prompted when I do something that needs admin rights like installing.

[wwb_99]

First thing is, like just about any MS OS, upgrading in place is a big no-no. Basically the only reason to do that is as part of a disaster recovery operation.

Anyhow, I went through an upgrade to Vista 64. Can't really complain about anything save:

1) Lack of a builtin SMTP server in IIS. Solvable but slightly annoying for some development operations.
2) Cisco's attempt at forcing the world to upgrade to newer ASAs by refusing to release a 64-bit VPN client.

Note the UAC stuff lasted all of 15 minutes for me. I spend too much time in control panels and doing odd stuff to deal with it.

[logic_earth]

Note the UAC stuff lasted all of 15 minutes for me. I spend too much time in control panels and doing odd stuff to deal with it.

You can turn it off for you admin account while leaving it on for everyone else.

Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Local Security Policy

Local Policy > Security Options > Scroll to the bottom > "User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode" > Elevate without prompting.

Another I like ot edit is "User Account Control: Switch to the secure desktop when prompting for elevation" then the prompt doesn't block access to the screen.

[wwb_99]

Good to know, and I'll keep it in mind. No one but me uses that computer anyhow, and it lives in a locked office when I am not around, so it is not an issue anyhow.

[KevinM2k]

After 40 minutes on to a Dell representative, from somewhere in the middle east, I have got the network working fast, I had to upgrade the bulit in Broadcom wireless drivers to Asus drivers, the only problem I have now which I can't find any help on is the mouse.

Sometimes its fine, next minute the bottom right of the mouse is the actual point it recognises, it seems a bit random and can't find anyone with same problem. I'm sure there is a program which you can say where you want the mouse pointer to be, can anyone remember what its called an i'll give that a go.

I have updated the drivers to the latest btw.

Kev