My Vista Experience

kop48

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Joined
11 Jun 2006
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Well, I installed Vista yesterday. How did it go? I'm back to XP! =P

Basically, two big problems:
  • dwm.exe (the window compositor) just went to 100% CPU usage a couple of times, for no reason. This happened mostly when using WMP along with it. I had to reboot to stop it, as task manager wimply would not respond. While it's nice that windows redraw properly even when they're crashing now, this is not really acceptable behaviour for a final product.
  • My soundcard still doesn't have decent drivers and caused my Vista to bluescreen.

From the looks of things, I just need to wait until both Nvidia and Creative release new drivers that work properly in Vista. On the upside, the format for XP did wonders - it's running sweet now. ;-)
 
I hope your experience of bad drivers will not give you a poor outlook on Vista...my drivers are WDDM and its very stable.

My only issue is the fact that I use a lot of programs that were meant to check for XP but they did not allow for anything "beyond" XP. :(
 
Vista is being held back by drivers at the moment.

You can try and find some leaked Dell and HP editions but I have a feeling those will be for custom hardware builds and may not give much more success.
 
Creative and Nvidia both have drivers that worked for me ...but looking at the way we are not seeing that many drivers for Vista I get the impression that they might not make alot of backwards compatible drivers for Vista .
 
For Soundblaster Live I just inserted the CD then told Vista to look there for the drivers.
 
yeah they'll work like that but they get wrapped in so many API converters its stupid :)

Vista really should be used with Vista specific drivers to fit in with the new display and audio subsytems.

The fact your old drivers work at all is because MS is still clinging to backwards compatibility like glue to a page.
 
Like LordOfLA said, they will work, but do enough things to them and they will break.

The problem with the DWM going to 100% CPU usage should hopefully be fixed by new drivers.

Also, the audio stack has changed so much that if you want proper sound drivers + apps you need to wait for Creative to get them out.
 
I feel lucky. I upgraded an XP SP2 Dell D600 laptop. Installation hung, so I unplugged the laptop from the dock and re-ran the upgrade. My ending configuration is as follows:

1. Upgraded Vista Business (RTM Build 6000) Ran compatibility tool first.
2. Upgraded Office Pro 2007 (RTM)
3. Live OneCare beta v. 1.50

After a couple of hours, the OS upgrade was done. There were a couple of caveats:

1. My corporate Multitech FaxFinder DID Fax device driver will not load. I am, therefore, without my normal desktop fax capabilities.
2. My corporate accounting program installed with some diffuculty, but runs fine.
3. I removed the follow on product to PWS. My processor utilization dropped to an acceptable level.
4. Motorola Phone Tools will not sync with Outlook 2007.
5. AIM Pro will NOT run. AIM v. 6.0 works fine.

This laptop is in full production and my general performance comments are as follows:

1. Speed is about the same.
2. I have experienced no hangs or blue screens.
3. Office runs fine.
4. Live OneCare is awesome! It will reduce desktop support needs.
5. Vista is a well thought out, well planned upgrade and I think the folks at MS did a good job overall.

I will observe this behavior for a couple of months. In the first quarter, I plan on replacing two computers with new Vista equipped laptops, so I need to make sure they work well in a production environment.
 
I expect Vista to hit a few speedbumps over the coming months as it goes mainstream it and just hits hardware and software combinations no-one expected. But once the kinks are ironed out it should be pretty good.
 
Vista was OK for me. I did not run into many bumps along the way, but I did not really test the system either.
 
Im skeptical, i only have 768 mb of ram....plus ill wait for a bit, im getting a new MB, so ill see how that goes..
 
I have installed Vista on my production box, other than a few minor initial glitches everything is great.

Vista installed 100% of my hardware out of the box, although I'm sure I'll get better performance and higher scores when I can get drivers from the manufacturers directly. Everything is smooth, HD audio is sweet, and I'm a happy camper.

Vista/Office 2007 were made for eachother :D
 
some of us have to wait till the end of january cos they never encountered a bug to report :(
 
I agree the new office and all of the features of windows are awesome, but I'm getting some showstopper problems here.

Random infinite loops of the DWM and ****ty soundcard drivers.

Sigh, I really wish Nvidia and Creative would get their acts together - they're getting outdone in the driver department by companies who are much lower on the 'quality' scale then they are - though I am using the term 'quality' loosely here.
 
Keep in mind Vista won't really be publically available until January 30th. While Creative/NVidia should be on the ball by now, you can't really hold them too accountable until on or around that point.

If you have Vista now you shouldn't expect things to be 100% perfect with your hardware since most vendors haven't finalized driver support as of yet.
 
sigh I know...

But I wanted to play with Vista... and now my toy is broke. :'(
 
Soon enough my friend, soon enough.
 
If you have Vista now you shouldn't expect things to be 100% perfect with your hardware since most vendors haven't finalized driver support as of yet.
same goes for security holes, other bugs etc... it took xp a while to become stable and secure.

before i unleash that overpriced Bloated piece of DRM perfection they call "vista" on my main surfing/serving box, ill be awaiting the first SP.

have tried it on an offline hi spec machine i use for specifically multitrack digital audio recording/editing and found it very very nice to work with.
My audio card (RME hdsp9652) already has very nice x64 vista drivers. http://www.rme-audio.com/english/index.htm
 
I bought XP and it works well- so i decided that Vista should do even more wonders but ... most of my programs have issues with it and my sound doesn't work. Luckly for me that i had dual booted my PC. i'm back to XP now!!
and Office 12 looks way complicated to me(i saw a demo of it). What do you think?

<usrname>deboz<usrname>
 

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