Vista

A friend of mine did a computer class not that long ago and in the process of learning new stuff, also built his own system with Vista.

He reported that most hardware was non compatible and would not work until the OEM had a fix or an updated driver.

If you have a new vista and old printer, monitor, router, modem, scanner or anything else, you may only have 2 options, 1)wait for the OEM to get a new driver on the market or 2) buy a new compatible peripheral.

Sorry.

No personal experience of Vista yet - so I can't really comment.

However, talking to my local PC supplier the other day, he seems to be making a fortune scrubbing Vista off new machines that people bring in with lists of complaints as long as their arms (having got cheapos at ASDA, PC World or wherever), and installing XP.

Thank you for your input. When I first got the computer I spent most of the time down loading updates, and sorting out antivirus and addware protection. I looked around the internet for trouble shooting programmes, I down loaded a programme called RegCure, when run it stated that I had over 700 faults? pay up and it would correct them. Any body have Any experience with this programme.

Now have my old computer back (XP), and life is again back to normal.

Regards JD.

As with any registry tampering programme, you need to ask yourself one question, do you think they know enough about Microsoft to be able to do this job ok?

Don't forget that Microsoft is the worst company for sharing it's "hidden" windows capabilities as they want their programmes to run faster than competition's products. This is why most will not work well and some are even outright ludicrous and cause more havoc in the long run.

Run XP, update and keep it simple. Once every while do a complete re-install of the windows. This is the only way to keep it fast according to my brother. He has been a network engineer for many years now on all sorts of platforms.

Alternative is to run Mac

I used Regcure on XP for a while. At first it made a big improvement in speed. The problem I found is that I had trouble installing Windows patches. There are unused hooks in XP. Regcure identifies these as wasted resources and gets rid of them. When a patch comes along that needs one of those hooks, the patch will not install. You then go to the MS Knowledgebase and get instructions for restoring the hook manually in the Registry. Scary.

I "upgraded" to Vista. After a frustrating six weeks, I went back to XP. (BTW when you install Vista, it does not give you a rollback option as other versions of Windows have.)

Check your hardware mfr to see if they are going to develop Vista drivers. HP lists some printers for which they never plan to develop Vista drivers.

Something new in Vista is also the refusal to run "old" file formats. If you have corel draw, wp6 or an older excel, Vista will not give you support for these files and you will have a problem retrieving old back ups. Some say that this is not a valid argument as most users are past this but they did not think about companies relying on back up retrieval dependency like in law and financial firms. Often it is not worth the effort to update your complete back up which can be years worth of files. If you happen to need an old file you are screwed with Vista.

Vista, total utter crap, ...oh did I type that out loud?

"...Vista, total utter crap..."

Except for the folks at MiniSquishy - for them, it's a gold-egg laying goose. For the rest of us, just a goose... Me, it leaves cold.

I installed vista as a dual boot with xp on two of my PC's. I found the Vista networking tools to be much more intuitive than with XP, and solved some networking issues, where XP left me high and dry.

That said, it would not recognize my creative labs sound blaster card. Microsoft never heard of that company I suppose. I had to install a generic equivalant. Quite a few programs wouldn't run on it either. Including a Cisco VPN client I use to telecommute.

My biggest hangup is the new windows search function that will not find anything. I have to remember where I put everything. It will not search in certain directories. (ie. C:\Program Files.) Makes me long for the good old xtree pro days.

In the end however, I find that me and my family boot into xp less and less and Vista is taking over as our OS of choice. I have a Linux box too that no one but me will touch.

Thank you all for your input, I think I'll leave regcure alone. Vista came with the computer I bought, HP model SR5140AN. It now sits in the corner and I have my old old computer back in service,XP. I'll look at it now and again and try to solve some of the problems.

The comment about not finding anything on vista is interesting, I do programming in c++, and it was my intention too develop a programme that I was going to call Information manager when I retired, but never did? as the hard drives become larger so does the problem of finding information. It was to be a mixture of something like favourites that when called before shutting down, you could put in your own search info, and the programme would have a question section that could analyse a sentence structure to look for the your current programme no matter which way you worded it. It was to work along the lines of finding that bit of inform you tucked away when doing your college projects etc. Just dreams now, anyone interest?

Regards JD.

I'd be interested in USING it - not being a C++ programmer, I wouldn't have the first clue how to write the code for it though... Do I take this to mean you will not be pursuing this project? Deepest regrets if so, it sounds like the kind of thing we will ALL need (and probably sooner than we realize!). Won't get it from THIS (see below) lot though...

I've written a few utilities for digging through directory structures etc. using C/Assembler & 'system interrupts' (W3.1), & then VB + API calls (W95 et seq). Any idea if the API calls still work with Vista?

One app I did was the only way I could find out where 1G of the 4G HDD on a 'pre-owned' Acer laptop (running ME) had disappeared to. It was hidden away in an otherwise invisible directory full of restore files - one created every time the machine had been shut down since new!

"I realise its a 50/50 problem,"

What do you mean? It's 100% your problem. If you had followed CR4 threads, you would not have bought it. BTW, I like your acronym. I have heard of lots of printer driver problems.

Yes I agree its 100% my problem. I was also thinking along the lines of partitioning and installing XP on the hard drive as well, and working through the problems. I should be more careful not to give the impression of having more knowledge than I really do. I have not done any c++ programming for some time, I originally had and still have Borlands 4, and I was working my way through that. I have Microsoft Visual C++ 6 on this computer, I was working my way through that but other think have taken over. I have written a programme similar to the above, running in dos, which I now use to keep track of contacts and other info, its not very comprehensive. And I believe the programme Access does much the same, and a lot more, I'm not familiar with it, but I believe that it can make menus for accessing information and building data bases?

Regards JD.

My father in law bought a new HP computer with Vista which would not work with his old Canon laser printer. My wife and I went up to visit and see if we could make it play. We got a beta level driver from Canon to work with the printer, but it didn't work either.

I just happened (in my great wisdom) to bring an HP printer, Vista compatible, brand new, in an unopened box. We installed it, and it didn't work either... but this allowed me to go into HP customer service, with a total HP system, for help.

They recommended that we re-install Vista, but the computer came with the software pre-loaded, and we did not have the restore disks to do this. We also went around and around HP, from Puerto Rico to Canada, to Palo Alto for about 2 hours on the phone before we found a way out.

We ended up taking the machine (and the Canon printer) back to COSTCO where they re-installed Vista, found an appropriate driver for Canon, and were able to make it play. Then COSTCO tried to bill us for the work. We said NO WAY!! This is warranty repair and HP is well aware of it!! Send them the bill. We also got a set of restore disks out of the deal.

Best advice I have is to stick to XP as long as you can. If I remember right though, XP was a piece of garbage in the beginning... until Service Pack 2 I think? Eventually Microsoft will get their act together and make Vista into a viable operating system... in a year or two...

Also ALWAYS get a set of restore disks when you buy a system. They are definitely worth the expense.

Sincerely

Bill

Please don't get me started about HP - there aren't enough hours in the day .

Point I was going to make, tho', before I got cross, is why should anyone have to pay extra for the disk(s)? You shell out a load of cash for the 'PC'. A PC is a doorstop without software. If the HDD goes down (out of guarantee) & you haven't got a disk, you've payed £££ (or $$$, €€€ etc) for a doorstop.

If you use any register program make sure you can back up and restore the register. I have had several problems with reg progs. (you can also use windows restore)

As far as the Vista problem, Install a second HDD and copy your files to it. Format the Vista disk and install XP. To many driver / security problems with Vista.

Thank you DGCYS for your input.

Regards JD.

For Vista problems, please click on the following link, it will help you understand the whole Vista/MS problem fully:-

VistaProblemsInANutshell

Read and inwardly digest!!

I completely agree, I did not stop to think. A lesson learnt.

Regards JD.