My First MS Vista Ultimate Experience
Well this morning I decided to give MS Vista Ultimate a try and see how well it would perform and if some of the issues I've been having with MS Windows XP x64 would be solved.
To my dismay there were not and my first experience with Vista has proven to be a poor one. Installation went nice and smooth, it definitely does not ask you for as much information as Windows XP did and it even seemed to install faster then Windows XP.
After having the machine reboot 3 times and having to enter the Product Key twice I was finally presented with the wonderful Vista desktop. I found that the desktop environment is similar to Windows XP but seemed to flow much more seamlessly. It gave me the oppression of Mac's OS X environment with a hint of X Windows. Overall I did like it and was hoping the rest of my journey to this new OS would be a fun and exciting one.
I was wrong.
On thing I remember reading is that the beta 1 (Longhorn) of Vista had support for my wireless USB adapter. The D-Link DWL-G122 Rev.A2. This lovely little USB Wifi adapter device was the make it or break it deal for the OS. I could not get support for the drivers under Windows XP x64 and since I found that Vista supported it I was hoping for the best. It does not support nor does it seem to even recognize the silly device. I downloaded the Vista Beta drivers from D-Link's website but Vista complained about how it did not match the device I was trying to install even though I downloaded it from the product's support site. Crazy eh? I also downloaded the OEM drivers or what I thought to be the OEM drivers for the chipset of the USB WiFi adapter. Those did not work either.
After failing miserably I decided to reboot the machine to see how fast it would reboot under my machine's hardware. Oh look at that a blue screen! This looks promising.
Since the reboot, the machine hangs every time at the desktop just after it's finished POSTing. So I said screw it, I'll wait for SP1 (which is due to come out soon) and try again. I had to hunt down my WinXP Pro SP2 install disk and settle for that. I am also installing the 32-bit version because I've had weird hardware/software issues with the 64-bit version and I don't want the headache anymore.
I could of possibly plugged the machine into a wired ethernet jack but that is just too much work for what I am trying to accomplish. So as I write this my machine is currently being formatted and having MS Windows XP Pro installed back on it where I will (yet again) start with a fresh windows install.
I was looking so forward to the various features that Vista has to offer including the partitioning on the fly like the various flavors of Linux has supported for so long. Though I guess I will just have to wait and see what happens down the road. I mean my computer's hardware isn't all that out-dated either.
- Asus K8N Motherboard
- AMD 64bit 3200+ CPU
- 1GB DDR Memory
- eVGA GeForce 7600 GT 256MB
- 40GB SATA Drive
- LG DVD+-RW
- SB Live x-Gamer (ok so this is a couple years old)
So has anyone else tried out MS Vista and have any good experiences with it yet? How about bad experiences? I'd love to hear about them!
February 24th, 2007 at 16:40:05
I’m still using the RC1, and the only thing I hate about it really is that the media center stuff is borked and it does not work with my wireless PCI card from Linksys.
Oddly enough, I have similar specs as your box.
* Gigabyte K8N mobo
* AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (NewCastle 130nm core)
* 2×512MB OCZ PC3500 Gold GX DDR Memory
* MSI Geforce NX7600GT 256MB
* Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 250GB SATA Drive
* LG DVD ROM (I didn’t see a reason to get a new DVD writer for a test box like this :p)
*Antec Fusion Home Theater Enclosure
I originally had an SB Audigy 2 Value in there, but I decided the onboard sound was fine (HD Audio Codec). I really just wanted to cut down on system components because it’s pretty much a media center box.
I have it connected to an Acer 2671W (26″ LCD TV/Monitor), and the DVD quality is pretty sweet compared to my cheapo DVD standalone player.
February 24th, 2007 at 17:08:11
Geesh Alex, stop spamming
I’ve deleted your first post! LoL
February 24th, 2007 at 18:11:45
It was an accident, I swear. Someone turned on the microwave! :p
February 25th, 2007 at 01:39:54
Why must people blame the microwaves? What have they ever done to us?
I accept your apology!
February 25th, 2007 at 20:07:06
They interfere with my wireless connection! I should really be blaming the guys who decided upon the 2.4Ghz frequency, but what are ya gonna do?
March 16th, 2007 at 10:37:48
I just got a new laptop last week, and it’s rebooted itself twice in the last week, and the side gadget taskbar no longer works ‘due to an error.’ Does your machine still reboot itself?
March 16th, 2007 at 11:33:25
I uninstalled vista and installed XP on the machine again. We have a machine here at work for playing around with that has vista on it but it has no problems.
What type of laptop is it?
April 5th, 2007 at 17:26:10
I started a comment and it got really huge and is now a post on my blog, lol. It just didn’t feel right leaving a comment that huge. Feel free to read the fullness of my experience with Windows Vista at: http://www.jonocono.ca/ramblings/2007/04/05/windows-vista-experience/
April 7th, 2007 at 09:13:09
Oh that’s cool that your comment spawned a blog post for you! Thanks for sharing your experience with Vista!
August 27th, 2007 at 20:11:07
I’m also having issues with Vista ultimate along with the DLnk DWL-G122 rev A2 fw 1.02. It does not recognize the device - I looked into it further and the darn INF does not list the device ID for it.
I tried modifying the DLink INF, but it fails to START the USB network. I called DLINK’s support but they were of no help either.
My specs:
Asus Xpress200 chipset
Corsair Value 2 x 512 DDR
Maxtor 7200 RPM IDE drive
DLink DWL-G122 USB WLAN
September 19th, 2007 at 22:02:47
Indeed I have had a horrific experience with the Vista ultimate upgrade– from both a hardware and ongoing Op/Sys function perspective. I’m a 23 year veteran in PC mgmt/ops. PCs are all I’ve ever done since graduating college in’83. That’s why I’ve decided to search Vista blogs, etc. for other user experiences. I’m faced with a 2nd reload of a system that failed completely. My hardware is more than adequate with a duo core Intel processor, 4 gigs/RAM, 320 Gig HD, 550 watt Power supply, Top of the line PCIe video with 640 MB on board, plus an excellent cooling config with the PC on a conditioned electrical line.
There were numerous issues with the initial upgrade including no drivers for my HP 2410 printer, no drivers for the link-sys lan adapter and a nightmarish configuration ordeal to move from Active-Synch (Treo 700w) to Vista’s Windows Mobile. There were a myriad other problems as well but many are too small to mention individually.
Just days after I had gotten the new config where I needed it to be (i.e to be used as my primary system), Vista suddenly just failed to boot one day. There appeared to be HD corruption but when I removed the drive from system A and connected it to system B, the drive was operating just fine. Apparently only Vista was problematic. Still I decided not to take any chances so I purchased another HD (the first was a 250 gig SATA Western Digital). I acquired a Hitachi 320 to be used as primary and relegated the old unit as a removable backup. I had backups so I restored the most recent to the new drive and was back up with minimal data loss. Everything was fine for about a month but then Vista started acting strangely and suddenly failed. When I attempted to reboot, the system reported that the registry had become corrupted! This time when I attempted a restore the Vista config reported that the system failed to boot due to a configuration change and that I should insert the install disks. Unfortunately I purchased the upgrade from the MS Marketplace as a download. I didn’t have a set of boot CDs or DVD. I’m screwed with this PC. Fortunately I had an XP box that could be migrated to primary with a few data moves (Outlook, bookmarks, personal info mgmt data, contacts, etc.)
I’m sorry to be so long-winded but honestly the major failures have only been about 60% of the countless issues, anomalies and other strange behaviors. The Vista alpha and beta test programs were the longest I have ever seen and yet the product was released lacking device drivers from even leading vendors. It doesn’t take a great leap of faith to wonder if MS wasn’t fighting big problems very late in the game!
In all truth and at the risk of appearing paranoid, I’m beginning to wonder whether Vista doesn’t have fundamental problems.
September 20th, 2007 at 06:59:34
Wow good reply! It is nice to see I am not the only one that had(has) issues with Vista. My buddy Rod decided to hop over to Ubuntu because he was tired of incompatibilities with Windows. I would like to see Vista working, and I haven’t heard many people say good things about it. I’m waiting till at least the first Service Pack comes out before I try to run Vista again.
Windows XP is working fine so I don’t really need to upgrade, well I don’t see enough benefits for the upgrade yet. Now if Linux handle playing PC games better I would make that switch. Though I hear it is getting better.
January 16th, 2008 at 23:04:48
My brother recently installed MS Vista on his laptop but even on Core2Duo, 1 GB it was f#$king slow with the Aero being on. Switching it off did some good but MS Vista without aero is plain Xp so why would anyone do that.. atleast for now when we don’t have any probs with XP..
January 17th, 2008 at 10:15:19
I still haven’t loaded Vista. I’ve used it a few times over at my Dad’s but I still see no need to upgrade. XP does everything I need and I wouldn’t upgrade to Vista until they released the Service Pack for it and have MUCH better driver support.
January 31st, 2008 at 10:56:53
It’s really good written and I fully agree with You on main issue, btw. I must say that I really enjoyed reading all of Your posts It’s interesting to read ideas, and observations from someone else’s point of view… it makes you think more. So please try to keep up the great work all the time.
May 10th, 2008 at 23:49:01
Thanks for sharing your experience with Vista!