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7721. wabbit - 6/2/2009 11:43:27 PM Having just gone through three weeks of crap with Windows Vista, I thought I'd share my experience in case someone has a similar problem.
First, let's accept that Vista is the new ME. I'm hoping for better things with Windows 7 (but no, not holding my breath). If Adobe ever writes their software for Linux/Unix, I suspect a lot of folks besides me will leave MS for our OS.
Three weeks or so ago, Vista suddenly started to randomly blue-screen on me. I hadn't installed any new software or hardware for the previous two months, so you wouldn't think that would be the problem. I could boot into Safemode with networking with no issues. I ran the usual programs - CrapCleaner, HijackThis, SmitFraudFix, VundoFix, ComboFix - all to no avail. No viruses, no malware, nothing evident. I have a Windows Vista repair disc, which also solved nothing.
I really, really didn't want to go through a reinstall of Vista. I would have opted for RC1 of Windows 7 first. However, I decided that maybe the issue was something to do with my profile. So, I created a new profile, copied anything over that I wanted from the screwy profile to the new one (which has taken the better part of six hours), and then deleted the bad profile.
So far, so good. No problems booting, no crashes (I hope I am not jinxing myself here), everything seems to be working.
It pays to do regular backups, which I do, but moving profile info from one account to another takes a bit more tweaking. Nothing major, mind you, just time.
Bottom line is, if you must use Windows, and have Vista, and haven't had any major problems yet ... do yourself a favor and back up anything you value, like your Bookmarks, email profiles, any sounds/fonts/photos/etc., and you will be ready if this happens to you. 7722. alistairConnor - 6/2/2009 11:47:54 PM "Vista is the new ME" -- works for me!I have never used vista (funnily enough, I'm running one machine on Windows ME -- it's too old and slow to run XP reliably)
I have become a "late adopter". Better is the enemy of good enough.
I'll see about Windows 7 when I can afford some new hardware. 7723. wabbit - 6/3/2009 12:21:51 AM My sister had a Windows ME machine - I moved it back to Win '98 after too many re-installs. I still have all my old install discs.
Who ever thought XP would end up being as solid as it has been? Not perfect, but not horrible.
Vista was supposed to be a wholly new OS, not built on NT. Oh well. I have an older box that I'll install Win 7 on, just to see how it does. At least I know it's beta and won't have shelled out any money for the aggravation. 7724. arkymalarky - 6/3/2009 1:40:22 AM My work laptop is vista and I hate it. I love xp, and bought a dell mini 10 with it and a refurbished dell latitude d410 12" with xp pro. The mini had some issues but will be great for its intended purpose(for Bob) and I love the latitude, which will end up being my main work and home pc, which is what I used my old dell inspiron for before they bought the vista inspiron for me to use. Our techie's replacing everything with macs as fast as he can before the axe comes down on us year after next. 7725. wabbit - 6/3/2009 5:30:58 PM Macs network very nicely, I think you'll like them, but I have a knack for crashing them. I may have mentioned this before, but when I was in school, the Mac lab folks used to come get me whenever Apple delivered and installed upgrades. The Apple guys would stand there with a smirk for about five minutes, then wonder what I had done to crash the computer (and sometimes the network). My reply was always, I have no idea, weren't you paying attention?
It's a gift. 7726. arkymalarky - 6/3/2009 10:14:45 PM Haha! Mose is about to buy a macbook. Her bf has one and loves it, but he takes better care of stuff than she does. I'm fine with my xp computers and I'll use them as long as I'm able. When xp's no longer viable I'll probably switch to mac or see if I can operate a pc with linux. But by then I'll be retired and doing independent work and/or fun stuff. 7727. wabbit - 6/4/2009 12:49:29 AM Linux has come a very long way in the last 5-10 years. I'm a fan of Ubuntu, myself. If you can use Open Office instead of MS Office, short of the Adobe programs there is no reason not to switch. The GUI isn't exactly the same, but it's close enough that you won't have any problem figuring out what's what.
If you want to stick with Microsoft, hold off until November at the earliest. Windows 7 should be available by then - of course, as always, it will still be buggy...
And if you don't need a computer for heavy lifting, there's Acer's upcoming Netbook release of Android. 7728. vonKreedon - 6/4/2009 3:12:15 PM Just to put in a contrarian experience, Vista has worked great for me, other than the "I need your approval to do the the thing you just told me to do" dialogues, on several machines for several years now. I understand from some colleagues running Win7 that it is really nice. 7729. alistairconnor - 6/4/2009 5:36:01 PM hmmm. Apparently the phone makers are going to be releasing netbook-like devices soon, with free OS... They will be plenty of computer for most needs, and will undercut Acer and Asus handsomely on price. 7730. arkymalarky - 6/4/2009 5:49:21 PM The ball and chain contract and the outrageous monthly fee are the kickers. You can get the small computers for under $400 as it is and by the time you pay $60 a month minimum for two years you really didn't end up with a bargain at all imo. It's less convenient to use hotspots, but I think the cell phone companies are charging far too much for portability through their cards. And if you have the $30 unlimited data package necessary for making an iphone or blackberry worth anything, you still have to pay the $60 a month to get unlimited access on your netbook, and $90 a month is a ridiculous price to pay for mobile internet access. 7731. arkymalarky - 6/4/2009 5:55:22 PM Things I hate about Vista:
1) What vk said
2) I've had blue screens a few times and it doesn't seem to run programs as smoothly as xp
3) Most annoying of all, it is difficult, at least for me, to use the search function. I don't want a system that looks pretty. I want it clean and clear and that's why I like xp and ms office 2003 over vista and mso 2007. I've heard people say they like office 2007 for all the neat stuff it does and it's more streamlined, and I haven't given it much effort, but like vista it seems to set up roadblocks rather than just letting me get straight to what I want to do. 7732. arkymalarky - 6/4/2009 6:00:44 PM Disclaimer on the above (aside from the fact that I really don't know jack about this sort of thing): I'm a creature of habit and tradition who likes cozy, simple and comfortable and I'm not patient about getting past changes of features I like in order to give the new ones a chance and see if I like them better. But after all, if it ain't broke.... 7733. wabbit - 6/4/2009 7:08:36 PM VK and arky, that's the UAC (User Account Control). Feel free to turn it off. In the system tray down by the clock, you should see a little shield shape. Mine is red with an X, because I have UAC turned off, so yours may be yellow or green. Double-click the shield to open the Windows Security Center. Expand "Other security settings" and turn that sucker off. No more annoying "do you want to do this?" and "are you really sure?" windows.
Mind you, MS put that stuff in because so many people griped about how easy it is to screw things up. But if you don't need handholding, shutting UAC off is not a problem. 7734. robertjayb - 6/10/2009 5:27:25 PM OhMiGod! We're running out of wind!
WASHINGTON (AP) - The wind, a favorite power source of the green energy movement, seems to be dying down across the United States. And the cause, ironically, may be global warming the very problem wind power seeks to address.
The idea that winds may be slowing is still a speculative one, and scientists disagree whether that is happening. But a first-of-its-kind study suggests that average and peak wind speeds have been noticeably slowing since 1973, especially in the Midwest and the East.
Its a very large effect, said study co-author Eugene Takle, a professor of atmospheric science at Iowa State University. In some places in the Midwest, the trend shows a 10 percent drop or more over a decade. That adds up when the average wind speed in the region is about 10 to 12 miles per hour.
7735. alistairconnor - 6/10/2009 5:40:06 PM Yeah that means the wind's shifting elsewhere. There is just as much, distributed differently. Hard to model. 7736. alistairconnor - 6/11/2009 7:42:01 PM My faithful old HP laptop (must be going on 7 years old) has been blue-screening a lot with disk errors... Tried to clean up the disk and now I get the dreaded "Non-system disk or disk error"...
I haven't actually got time to deal with it, because I've got three hours and twenty minutes left to file my income tax on line... under pain of a 10% penalty. 7737. iiibbb - 6/12/2009 2:33:24 PM Message # 7721
Wabbit, since you regularly back up, you might want to make it part of your routine to preemptively mirror your profile files in a secondary account you've already set up. I had a friend who used to have profile crashes on his machine all the time and always had a second profile he could log into to "fix" things.
If it doesn't stop the crashes, it might as least spare you the hassle of putting the brakes on something you're in the middle of.
7738. iiibbb - 6/12/2009 2:38:07 PM Yesterday MS Excel just quit working on me. No reason at all, but when I try to start it, the installer wants the original disks. I got office pre-installed on this machine, so all I ever had was a recovery disk, and with the past 2 moves I don't really know where it is at the moment. I'm certain that it wasn't acceptable as a installation disk a while ago. So I'm going to have to re-install a pirate copy.
This quashes any guilt I ever had about pirating MS software. I'm pretty sure I've paid for office 2 or 3 times in my life now. There is no reason for software to just conk out, and if they're not going to provide a means to help their users, then screw them. 7739. wabbit - 6/12/2009 10:47:19 PM iiibbb,
I've always got a backup profile, but it is never a dupe of another. If something in the profile is causing a problem, having a mirror with a different name won't necessarily be any help. Replacing things like the Dreamweaver configuration files, or fonts, email programs, address books, etc. are easy enough to do, you just have to remember to back them up.
I don't worry much about losing something I'm working on, I figure if I did it once, I can do it again. It's time lost, but not the end of the world. I once had a computer hard drive die on me just as I was finishing up the bibliography for a paper that was due the next morning. Fifteen pages or so, all gone. The prof found me in the library typing furiously shortly before class and came over to say hello, and I gave him the two sentence explanation without even looking at him. He headed off to the class and amazingly enough, I actually got that sucker done and printed in time. Thank god for memory and index cards. And did I learn not to leave writing to the last minute? Well, sort of...
I'm still having computer problems, though not as bad. Windows boots up and quits after a minute or so. I shut down, log into safe mode w/ networking, check my email, then restart and log into Windows in normal mode. For whatever reason, that is working so far.
Are the other MS Office programs working for you? I've heard of problems with SP2. 7740. iiibbb - 6/13/2009 5:40:21 AM Everything else was working. My laptop is 5 or 6 yrs old. It was Office'93.
P's work had a disk... I reinstalled it, and it's working now. Might've been a sector going bad on the hard drive... I don't know.
If there's anything in this world that could turn me into a Luddite it's Microsoft's products.
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