Why I hate Vista.. YMMV.

Honest guys, I really did try to like it.

I uninstalled XP Pro x64 from Throttle Junkie, and installed Vista Business x64 instead. 3DMark Vantage was calling my name.. as was DirectX10.

So, I backed up my files, installed Vista, and started customizing. At first, things were goin nice and smooth, and I was being cautious. Finally, as I began to see the "light at the end of the tunnel" (tunnel being reinstall), I started to let my guard down a bit.

Oops.

First of all, I've forgotten how much of a pain the UAC is. Yes, it's there for security purposes. Yes, I realize that in the hands of an average user, it's much harder for someone to make seriously destructive changes in Vista than in XP. For someone like me though, the UAC is annoying as hell.

Second, streaming audio? Forget it. If you have Vista x64, you can kiss Shoutcast goodbye. Any station that streams on anything other than port 80 will either play for 3-4 seconds, then buffer forever, or never get past 60% buffering at the beginning and play nothing.

No, it's not a firewall issue. Yes I tried playing with that anyways. It *DID* work on XP x64, so it has to be a Vista issue. Yes, I googled. Yes, i posted on Shoutcast's forum. The short answer: "It's a bug in Vista".

One possible solution: SP1. So I start downloading it from Micro$oft's site. 80% and it hangs. Restart, 80%, and it hangs again. At the same time, my Live Messenger suddenly disconnects and reconnects. Wth.. network driver issue maybe?

I added a different NIC, and rebooted. Same issue persist, so it's not a driver issue. I just started downloading SP1 again from a diff MS link, it's currently @ 47% of 726mb.... still. It's been there for a few minutes.

Whoops, Live Messenger just disconnected and reconnected again, and the SP1 download crashed... again.

Meanwhile, right beside me sits the trusty Inspiron 8600 laptop running XP Pro, streaming away from Shoutcast and downloading the Mint Linux ISO.. no disconnection, no interruption... and it's on wifi. Desktop is plugged in... so there goes the possibility of a local network issue.

Let's talk Office 2003 for a moment. Once installed, it prompts me every single time I start (any of the applications in the suite) to accept the EULA. Google reveals a registry tweak to correct that.. didnt work for me.

Reinstall = same thing again.

I've run all the updates for Windows, as well as all the driver updates for my hardware, and my issues continue.

Now before anyone jumps on me for trashing Vista, or trying to run it on no-name/obsolete hardware, have a look at my system specs. This is not cheap stuff, and it's certainly not no-name, so there's no excuse for this sort of half-assed behavior.

I have decided that Vista is complete garbage FOR ME and that I will not recommend it to anyone. If you like Vista, good for you. I don't, I won't use it anymore, and will not ever buy another copy of it (or any other MS product) for any purpose.

Yes, I'm selling my Xbox360 (which I got for FREE ANYWAYS, with an RRoD, and fixed).

Weird... I'm planning on giving it a shot as soon as I get my secondary PC hooked up to the web and a monitor. Hopefully I don't have similar issues... and hopefully I don't take a performance hit when playing games but I think my specs are good for it. Who knows, never know until ya try, lol.

First thing I do on ALL my Vista machines is disable UAC, so I can understand that.
Shoutcast issue, never heard of that issue, but I don't really use such applications anyway.
Can I ask what you were using to download SP1? Just IE? Unlikely to help, but try disabling IPv6.
Office 2003, not sure on that, if you wish I'll look into the issue for you and see what other possible solutions there are.

That hardware certainly should be running Vista fine.

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Originally Posted by crenn

That hardware certainly should be running Vista fine.

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We all hope so, lol. Is there a page in the Wiki for improving Vista's performance after a fresh install? If not, that'd be a cool thing to add. Maybe I'll start a thread on it or something after I start figuring it out more. :D

Generic tip of speeding up Vista, get rid of anything you don't need... this may include Vista itself.

Hahahaha, I think I need an OS to run games though.

Reminds me... they need an OS dedicated to gaming. Just gaming... well, maybe include other features too but have a real basic one that is very minimal so you get the most out of your machine. Just an idea.

It's called nLite.

Well you can turn off the UAC. I have been running Vista x64 for the last 6 months. . I have had no probelms with shoutcast. Sounds like internet connection problems, you may want to adjust your MTU.

I've grown fond of it "Vista" works great . .for me atleast. At first there we allot of compatibility issues with hardware, and software but after making all the nesissary updates everything I use works fine.

The only thing I don't like is the fact that its a memory hog, Control panel icons take some getting used to, and when you start to save something you have to use the browse folders drop down menu to save files locally.

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Originally Posted by Eclecticos

I have been running Vista x64 for the last 6 months. . I have had no probelms with shoutcast. Sounds like internet connection problems, you may want to adjust your MTU.

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Ok, that's incredibly odd. I've found loads of people with the same issue as me, so I just assumed that it was the combination of Vista x64 and Shoutcast that was causing the issue. Are you running Vista Business?

I doubt very much that it is internet connection issues.. Every other PC on this LAN (almost 70) are working just fine, as was this PC before replacing XP with Vista. I did try disabling the QoS and IPv6 already, so no luck there.

My search continues, but there are other software compatibility issues arising now, so I'm likely going to end up back on XP before the end of the day anyways.

Nlite: I thought nlite was a tool to strip down an OS to the bare minimum, for smaller footprint installs?

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Originally Posted by xRyokenx

Reminds me... they need an OS dedicated to gaming. Just gaming... well, maybe include other features too but have a real basic one that is very minimal so you get the most out of your machine. Just an idea.

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I've thought this before.

M$ needs to make an os that doesn't have any unneeded programs, no unneeded interface (just xp, or even 98 would work). Just great device support, rock solid stability and linux-like system security. Then, I would be happy.

It would have directx 10, and be 64bit capability (I.E more than 4gig of ram).

That's what we want, microsoft. that's all most of need. Let us add our own programs and our packages if we need anything else. Please.