Discussion on:

Top 10 Windows Vista annoyances

You would not be suffering from any licensing issues if you were using L I N U X ! I really don't like people telling me what I can and can't do with things that I pay hard earned money for!
Check out Ubuntu - Linux for life!

If you look at some of the forums back when XP came out you will find that most of this stuff has been said before. We said it after Win95, after Win98, after WinMe(especially after WinMe!!) and we said it when XP came out. We'll all be fine with Vista after SP1 comes out.

I alrdy hv Vist...and the original XP CDs as well...pls temme if thr r ny complications in getting a dual boot done?

You'd install win98 first on one partition then install winNT (Vista now) on the second partition. Since Vista (was winNT) is the more advanced OS, it should recognize and provide dual boot for the previously installed win98. In this case, try winXP installed first then Vista on a seporate drive/partition.

The other option is to use a true multiple boot manager. There are some good ones though I can't remember the name of a particular one mentioned on TR recently. It provides a boot menu of all your different OS partitions then hides partitions not belonging to the dormant boots so you can have as many different MS or other OS as you like.

fits on a floppy, selects what drive you can boot from
If you haven't got a floppy drive (get another computer) or, burn it to a CD,or thumb drive

I use it for a computer that doesn't let me select which boot order to boot from.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/btmgr/

I've loadlin and a few old Win boot disk images along with LILO on my personal machines but this is a nice "cover all" progarm to add in.

Interesting that no one included the WGA issue. Vista continually checks itself to make sure it is genuine and yet if you install something that makes a change and it doesn't like it then WGA deactives the OS you just paid 300 clams for - that would be an annoyance.

The rest, yes it is it irritating but no more so than say getting wifi working in linux; if you decide to live with the platform then deal with it - otherwise don't upgrade or change platforms.

Hi, i came across this site looking for a way to easily change the file icons in Vista, but as i believe i have found ?bugs? in Vista i thought it might help to share these, in the context of contrast with my prior W/ OS experience.

Unlike most others i had little experience with XP, and instead i used W9x machines extensively (10- 16 hours a day) for 7 years, especially on the web. Upon receiving a brand new PC (thank God!) recently for this little non profit ministry, a Dell E520 (3.08 ghz; 512mb ram), with Vista reinstalled, i hoped this one would fly. My fastest machine prior to that was a tweaked 650mhz AMD (320mb ram) with 98se, which i actually found faster in many respects than newer machines with XP that i had tried. Upon using Vista on this Dell machine i was somewhat disappointed, as from boot up (approx. 90 secs) to opening folders and files to shutdown it was actually slower, and about the same in web surfing (Firefox) and only slightly faster in opening heavy applications (even w/out indexing or anti-vir running and very low CPU use). Sails like it's dragging an anchor. But of course, it can do (some) more things and it can handle a whole lot more multi-tasking than the older but very manageable 98se, which among some other things, very often ran low on sys. resources (which FreeRamXP would alert me to). After i had partitioned the drive and done a clean install and realized the same slowness, I set about to tweaking Vista, which i mainly used the freeware version of TweakIV. http://www.totalidea.com/content/tweakvi/tweakvi-down.php to do, as well as going into the BIOS and choosing to set the CPU to best performance. These tweaks (ask for details if you like) lowered the boot time to about the same as my 98 machine (1 minute) and did things like making menu's jump into action (400ms to 75ms).

The tweaks were not bugs in Vista, only preferences therein, as was choosing Classic view in Start menu and Ctrl Panel, and setting my folder View preferences to Details (Apply to all folders under folder Options). But as regards the latter, this was one of the the first bugs, as it would ?forget? what my view preferences were, and revert back to large icons, or Tiles (which i just discovered it did again as i looked for a file). I found others have experienced this as well as windows not remembering their size. http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=532849&st=45. The registry tweak there seemed to reduced the incidences, but it still happens, even though in Folder Options>View ?Remember each folder view settings? is checked, as well as ?Show preview... ? under General. Under System (Windows key and Pause key) and Advanced Sys. Prop>Performance>Settings i have checked ?Animate windows when minimizing..;? ?Show preview..;? ?Smooth edges..;? ?Smooth scroll...,? and ?Use visual styles.?

As for my quest that brought me here, apparently Vista does not allow you to change file icons. http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article02-500. Also, once i had tried to change the default folder (not file type) icon into a one of the custom (but apparently corrupted) ones i had mad, it would not work, and now the option to change it is no longer there. These things of course are minor, though they make for faster manual searches.

A more major inability was that Vista could not play DVD's. Windows Media refused to play them, speculating that it was my screen resulution (1024 x 768) nor could the latest versions of apps i had used to do so under 98 (VLC, MPC, Jet Audio). But among the software Dell had included with the PC was a copy of Power DVD, praise the Lord, which i installed and which works (this is important as i sometimes share legal ? to - copy DVD files).

Related to that is the seeming inability with making playlists. Third party apps i had used before like Advanced playlist maker would not work, and in Windows Media player dragging music files into the pane (like it says) in order to make playlist would not work. And when navigating (in WMP or others) to folders in which i had made additional folders, it will not recognize the latter ones. All it will show are folders that originally were there. This is on a E partition of the main NTFS drive.

Under Control Panel (control.exe)> Personalization>Windows color and preferences it would not keep some appearance settings when choosing a custom color for icons. W/98se also sometimes did that, so it runs in the family.

There also appears to be a perplexing problem for some as regards Vista, Intel, and Sata drives on certain mobos, http://www.flyingnerd.com/intel-raid-problem-under-windows-vista/ thttp://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=dim_harddrive&thread.id=124682 . I thought this was my problem in getting another sata drive recognized, but that was because i needed to change the sata DVD drive to sata 4 and put the new drive on 2.

More minor and expected issues are things like software incompatibility, such as allows me (in 9x) to list the folder sizes (http://www.syschat.com/display-size-of-folders-on-drive-937.html). I also miss the Up arrow in navigating folders (i see the new system, but it still necessitates a left folder pane and is much slower).

My main reason for wanting to upgrade was not security (in 7 years of extensive web use i only realized one virus under 9x, and minor incidents of possible spy ware, and i could easily keep an eye on what was running, which wasn't much), but more CPU power (encoding etc.), and the indexing capabilities of XP/Vista. Vista is also far faster and easier in installing hardware than 98 (?Windows cannot find..?), even an old Lex 22 printer, and so far i have had little trouble with running major programs. I used the same external IDE drive enclosure that i sometime use with 98 to transfer programs like like Firefox, Opera, NVU, Thunderbird and OpenOffice from their Program Files and Application Data folders into their respective Vista directories, and then installed them (into the former), and they all work like they did, passwords, and bookmarks, preferences and all (except a minor glitch in Tbrid). Well, praise the Lord, i glad to have a new pc among other things, and am sure i will like Vista more and more. If not perhaps Linux distros like PclinuxOS will continue to evolve.

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I said in the above that i could not get FTP to work in Vista Basic (another on TR thread showed no solution). Well, thank God MS finally released a hotfix that works on both XP and Vista in case your problem is like mine. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/934376

From reading the posting this Microsoft Vista is an employment security system for techs.

Hi, good article !
You can add that
- Vista prices for France are much higher
Vista ultimate => ~550 Euros (735 USD)
- The OEM suppliers very seldom inform customers about the 5 Vista versions (maybe 7 with a Data center and Server versions ?) and attached hardware.
- The control center (firewall etc) is very verbose and you chase you tale to set it right

Hi the most annoying thing i have found with vista home premium is if you leave it long enough, say two weeks without using it, blue screens, unexplained multipull reboots,oh and of course having to keep patching a new system cause of MS in a hurry to get a few squid.
Apart from that must not grumble.

So I click help, and usually that help menu pops up and you can use the index, or search ect.. but nope it says the address is incorrect.. and then I try to connect the bluetooth and it says that settings cannot be saved..

WHAT? I just bought this laptop of course w/vista around feb 14th. It just doesnt make sense and Im not calling their support because I did it twice already and I just got indian people that repeat and repeat what they say.. oh so annoying. and then if I want real help it cost money.. I still have yet to try out the forum. BS I tell you!!

---or filled out a feedback or survey form.As far as corporations go Microsoft is not normal.They're too busy at the moment or they do not understand your question.If you worked for Microsoft how would you personally deal with being sued by the EU or Bill Gates being the wealthiest man on the Earth?There's no school thought at Microsoft---"Let's make everything compatible---Let's standardize it".

My suggestion would be that Vista would allow you to customize the taskbar icons, choosing different colors for each one by a R. click menu, kind of like the Colorful Tabs ext. for Firefox does. And also be able to do a "Lock tab" so that taskbar icons do not get moved. And also a Session Saver, so that the same things running open up again on reboot. I know that "Restore folders.." under Folder Options, but a quicker way would be better.

Because hundreds of apps that you use and love won't work on Vista. If I have to that AND learn a new interface, it might as well be Linux. It's more cost effective.

Diana, if you are a fan of simplicity then you should be running Ubuntu Feisty Fawn, not Vista.

That is the most annoying 'feature' of Vista to me and most graphic professionals. It just have no way to automatically load color profiles. And even when you use workaround third-party profile loader - it resets calibration settings with any UAC prompt or after waking up from sleep mode. Only reboot helps.

Everything described above are just a matter of habbit or can be classified as annoying, not critical. But color management seems to be a real bug with no effective way to fight it.

My big beef is no repair/restore option with the VISTA DVD (at least not how it works in XP) which is a deal breaker for me. Operating Systems do self destruct and I want a fast way to run a quick repair/restore process that will allow me to get my system back up and running. System restore assumes you can boot the OS to at least Start Menu stage and actually perform tasks. Rarely does an OS failure allow this with blue screens , virus , system files being broken , and disk errors, video corruption , or ram write issues etc.It may be solid IT Practice to start anew but that's often just NOT PRACTICAL and I am quite surprised others do not recognise this is a major omission and nag Microsoft accordingly. How would Toyota do if all cars they sold this year could not be repaired once sold ????

It's very, very simple. When XP was all you had, you'd bitch about how easy it was to slide malicious code onto your OS, owing to the fact that you'd insist on running your OS as an admin. How, Microsoft have adopted a years old remedy in their variation of "sudo" and every MS user in Christendom is bitching because now their computer is too hard to use.

As for your annoyances, well, sad really. Slew of options. Confusing power off options. Everything in Vista is customisable to allow you to set up your system according to the way you work. I shut my laptop down maybe once a month. It sleeps the rest of the time, so configuring my system to sleep for every power command is great. Users aren't too stupid to understand. They're just too lazy. As with most things Americanised, if it doesn't do it for you...

As for the boot.ini thing. What planet are you from? Ever tried configuring grub or lilo? That's tricky. The funny thing about operating system advances is they they advance. Strange really. Things change, you learn new things.

I think you should add a few more things to your whine. How about the fact that IPv4 and IPv6 are now built into the TCP/IP stack together, so you get support for both even if you don't use v6. That's annoying. Yet another networking option to confuse dumb people. How about the fact that you need 1 more click to get to your emvironment variables? Or horror of horrors, its harder to undock your quick launch from the task bar. What where Microsoft thinking, imposing such vile evil on their maligned user base?

You're complaining for the sake of complaining. You have a pretty secure OS that you can customise to the nth degree. The biggest problem facing you comes from lazy, incompetent 3rd part developers. And yet the most constructive thing you're capable of writing is a Top 10 List of things that don't matter.

Worst of all, I've ended up lowering myself to your level in response to your inane drivel.

UAC is a kludge of a security hack. It does nothing more than put the onus of security on the users that know nothing about security. UAC simply is not very useful and too many people will just turn it off anyway.

As for Vista being "customizable," I'd rather have it usable out of the box, thank you very much.

With the dual boot thing...Grub is quite easy. At the GUI, I just click next because Grub autodetects my OSs. If I have to do it manually, it's quite easy..simply type in the boot partition for Linux:
root (hd0,0)

Then have grub write itself

setup (hd0)

That's it. The new Vista way is 2 pages of screen shots on TR
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10877_11-6157570-2.html

As for the rest of it, I think you need to take a read of what Vista is all about:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

Well that's nice Paul. I can see you are very pleased with yourself. Consider this, while you sit ****, that most users are not that technologically savvy. If you did ANY kind of support work, you would understand the perspective and not adopt the attitude of the elitest power user. But go ahead, feel free to play the role of arrogant ****. It suits you well.

Message was edited by: beth.blakely@...

I work for a technology company but that doesn't mean the users are smart about tecnology. There's a lot of hand holding doing the most basic functions. Paul must not work in a help desk enviroment or even IT for that matter.

I've been using Vista Enterprise now since it's release in Nov. The only annoyance that has not been fixed to my knowledge at least I have this problem and a few others too. I have an Intel ICH7 Sata Raid Controller on my PC. When I try to import video in to my Itunes my Vista will hang. When I reboot My raid HD's get error occured. Then If I am able to get back into Vista (Which has not been successful majority of the time) I need to reset the RAIDED drives back to normal. If I can't get back into Vista I have to rebuild the raid array which most of you know deletes the partition. Luckily for me I use Acronis to recover my partition. Then I have to go through a Vista Repair process which sometime takes anywhere from 1 - 3 times for it to repair. Then I am back up running. Side note: 1 good thing about this. Vista's Repair feature blows away XP's repair feature which is just really a reinstall. Any way all and all I give Vista a 7 on a scale of 1 to 10. It's not all that hard to use. Oh Microsoft however needs to improve on Help feature and Errors that occur. I'd Like to see answers to errors not the dreaded "I'm sorry but we have no answer for that error" That's annoying!

I agree with Madcow, I would like to see more help and support function beefed up.

The only other thing that I can think of is when you try to copy a large file to another machine on the network Vista has that calculating feature were it tries to calculate the time it is going to take to transfer the file; I have seen some pretty slow transfer times.

All in all Vista is not that bad and actually it is a pretty nice OS once you get used to it.

Dude Paul how much did MS pay you for this.
About grub/lilo, you apparently know nothing about them. I'd guess you Googled for 'boot loaders' and got to know that they exist. Congratulations you have proven again that "Artificial Intelligence is no match for natural stupidity"

Looking at the new Microsoft Office Pro 2007, it's obvious it is designed for Vista. I tried to install it on XP pro but it wouldn't let me. I checked out the requirements on the Microsoft website and although it states that Office 2007 is ok for XP or higher, it doesn't seem to support it. Anyone thinking of purchasing Vista should research first just what software and applications are out there that Vista will support. Me, I think I'll be staying with XP for a little while longer.

Office 2007 installed and runs OK on my XP Home. It's slower to launch the apps than Office 2003, but every function I've tried runs fine. Not sure why it didn't work on the XP Pro. Maybe RAM or HDD free space issue?

Office 2007 runs just fine on XP - I've been using it for quite a while now.

I have installed Office 2007 Pro on 5 machines at my office running XP pro and I have not had a sinlge problem with them. The only change I made was changing the default saved document type to 97-2003 so that my users don't have to select it for themselves, at least until I either get Office 2k7 installed on all my machines or download the viewer for those that don't have it.

What business benefit did you get from your investment? Did you do as you'd buying a new forklift or tooling machine? Weighing pros and cons, including do we really need it, or do the supplier need the sale more than we need the equipment?
Are your staff more effective now than before, or did you line Microsoft's pockets?

So were you trying to install it on a PC that did not belong to you - say a Uni or College PC that you need admin access to?????

As simple and straight forward as this is; these are the EXACT 10 reasons why I'm not moving my users off XP until support ends.

There is only one complaint I have about Vista and the is the Americans have the cheek to go on about the price!

http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Windows-Vista-Ultimate-VERSION/dp/B000HCTYTE/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-8273434-4394543?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1175160618&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Microsoft-Windows-Vista-Ultimate-PC/dp/B000KCIA5A/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/203-6247853-7711137?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1175160559&sr=8-1

Please stop the complaining!

120 sheets!

My Paint shop pro 8 works fine in Vista Ultimate, I use it a lot and have not had any problems.
If they kept everything the same what would happen to keep the computer business from being boring??
Give it a chance...heard same kind of moaning when XP came out

I have a 10 year old computer with Windows XP, My complaint is that my hardware is extinct, I want a new computer, but guess what!! To get a new computer, I AM FORCED GET VISTA !!!! Sure, I can wipe the hard drive and install XP, but that voids the warranty (oh, yes it does), as now I have not maintained the OME !! (Yes, I know, there are computers out there with no OS installed, but not with the hardware I want and require.)

As of this point in time, you can still get XP. I just ordered a business notebook from Gateway and it's coming with XP Pro on it.

I work at Community College and we have been unsucessfully with Vista and IE working with our wireless network. It does however work with Firefox..???? Any ideas

Just bought some new laptops with Visa Business and the wireless worked great. Assigned an IP and put in password for network and logged right in. opened Internet explorer and surfed away.

skype 3 microphone does not work
orbicam does not work
lots of things bring up "has stopped working"
slow file copies
very slow boot
very slow shutdown
no or bad drivers
vendors, not Microsoft, are to blame for everything which does not work

With VISTA around who needs LINUX?

Had my first run in with Vista when I had to set up our Busiiness Manager's machine. Don't like it at all. Couldn't install some software (it recommended I upgrade the OS to Win2k or XP) and I know that's the software's fault but it's vital software. I ended up installing a virtual machine and putting XP on that.
I agree with all 10 annoyances listed in the article. It takes longer to do simple things, and there's no need for MS to have done that.
Also I had great trouble getting it to connect to the www. (Still have problems.)
But my main concern once set up was that slooow startup and shutdown. On a new, fast machine, it was much slower than XP or Linux on my 3-year-old machine running at 1/3 of the speed and without the benefit of dual core.

"With LINUX around, who needs VISTA?"

That my friend is wrong! - Linux is Open Source and freely modifiable by you -- to make things that don't work the way you want them to WORK -- try that with windows~ All for the price of 0.00 dollars out of your pocket! Long live Linux - Ubuntu/ Kubuntu rules!

People that confused and who can't read about the different flavors of Vista probably shouldn't own a computer. You mentioned XP had four, one more from Vista will really throw everyone off.

Also, the retail pricing between Vista and XP are the same. It has not gone up one penny. Feature for feature XP Home is comparible to Vista Home Basic, both at $199. Windows XP Pro is comparible to Vista Business, both at $299.