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>"upgrade"from XP.

Not shure that word means what you think it means.

I guarentee you it is the hardware (even if it is the drivers that are causing it).

no other os crashes at all but vista. Its not the hardware. (and drivers are software too, so if its the drivers, no.. its not the hardware)

The only way I got Vista to BSoD was to install an older version of Symantec Anti-Virus that MS, Symantec and Vista all said would not be compatible and would not work.

What's the event log say? Is it a driver?

Why should bad drivers bring down an entire OS? And wasn't this one of the much-touted improvements of Vista, the fact that the entired driver stack had been re-written from graphic to sound card drivers?

I honestly find it amusing the kinds of excuses some of you can come up for the lack of quality assurance and proper design principles in Microsoft products.

Just give the hardware vendors some time to rewrite their drivers. I'm sure every piece of hardware will get tremendous support (just as they do now with windows xp) when the OS is actually released to consumers in January '07

Why should bad drivers bring down an entire OS? And wasn't this one of the much-touted improvements of Vista, the fact that the entired driver stack had been re-written from graphic to sound card drivers?

So maybe it's not a graphic or sound card driver? Honestly, I don't know of any OS that can stand up to shitty drivers. Sure, the entire OS might not go down in all cases, but generally, it has some sort of unpleasent side effects. For example, if the entire screen goes blank and I have to kill the desktop envrioment, that's not a whole lot better than an OS crash, especially when it takes longer to boot back into the DE than it does to reboot the Windows OS.

And for those who are complaining about the price, the problem isn't that it's too expensive - the problem is you can't afford it

Technically, a Microkernel-based operating system should not crash if one server goes down.

However, "Technically" and what actually tends to happen aren't always the same thing.

If you're going to bash the new Windows, bash it. Don't gripe about little things that ALWAYS crop up on a new OS.

So maybe it's not a graphic or sound card driver? Honestly, I don't know of any OS that can stand up to shitty drivers. Sure, the entire OS might not go down in all cases, but generally, it has some sort of unpleasent side effects. For example, if the entire screen goes blank and I have to kill the desktop envrioment, that's not a whole lot better than an OS crash, especially when it takes longer to boot back into the DE than it does to reboot the Windows OS.

Most operating systems do not crash because of poor drivers. A bad driver may mean loss of internet connectivity or no sound or no graphical server, but never a complete lock-up. Claiming that a hard crash where you may lose your data to a corrupted file system or due to unsaved work is in the same ballpark is a very large stretch.

Most people that use a Unix or Linux know that they can restart their session quicly by doing Ctrl+Alt+Backspace or that they can type startx at the screen to get back to a graphical environment. Both of these options take seconds.

If your driver is buggy, you can always turn to Vesa, which is good enough for everything except gaming, which means that you can have a stable operating system while you wait for a better driver.

Please stop making excuses for things that are inexcusable. An operating system should not crash in the XXI century.

One of the main points with a client-server based OS is that no device driver should be able to pull down the OS.

It is a very typical reaction to blame everything on anything but Windows.

If it is an out-of-the-box driver as I suspect, then it also is certified. Should a certified driver behave this way ?

You guarantee it? Only from the rather vague description "BSOD on every boot" you guarantee it's the hardware?

Let me just say... wao.

It's a fairly safe bet (given that he's including drivers in this), but just not a very useful point.

Let's look at it: 90% Windows Vista Installs don't BSOD on boot. Lots of virtual-memory/SFC etc. protection is built in to prevent rogue software from screwing up the install. so it's likely to be one of:
1) faulty ram (hardware)
2) Dodgy driver (driver)
3) File Corruption (hdd = hardware)
4) Dodgy bios (hardware)
5) Hardware with bad Id (hardware)
6) Not enough ram and no pagefile (harware - kinda)

It's not very likely to be a core vista problem directly. It could be attributed to fault-intolerance though I guess.

It's funny how people blame it on hardware or drivers, it can never be the OS right?

If for some reason Windows doesn't shut your computer down properly, most lightly a important system files will corrupt. This happened to me in Vista so you see same old problems. So what's this, OS or filesystem, no lets blame it on the HD since the OS is never to blame is it?

I concur with CPUGuy... almost certainly driver problems.

Additonally, keep the price of Ultimate in perspective.

Barring discounts, the most expensive version of XP (XP Professional) was only $299.00 (barring discounts). This product is analogous to Windows Vista Business which is also $299.00. Ultimate adds a whole slew of new features.

Seems like a fair price to me.

I believe I'm going to end up with "Windows Vista Home Premium" with my upgrade plan. Whatever that means.

I have an extreme distaste for Windows.

That said, this is a brand new Operating System and it is bound to have flaws that need to be fixed here and there. Given the extremely vast amount of 3rd party hardware out there, it is not unusual to have some flaky hardware cause problems.

Not that I'll ever know, I'm already free.

Hey, you know what happens when I call the wrong driver on my system? I get a shell. After a quick 'sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf' I am back up and running in my sweet Gnome world. Know what happens when you use the wrong driver in Vista? BSOD!
j/k I do think that Vista is a massive step forward and I hope that it truly is as stable and secure in the real world as it is on paper.
It is kinda strange though, that in this day & age we don't have more systems that can live through a bad driver and will ultimately result in a BSOD and/or a complete inability to boot the system.

I dont know what he did, but in xp, when you have a bad driver (and maybe an BSOD(not very common) or a reboot loop(this is quite common)) you go into safe mode and just unistalld it.

I dont know what he did, but in xp, when you have a bad driver (and maybe an BSOD(not very common) or a reboot loop(this is quite common)) you go into safe mode and just unistalld it.

Very convenient during online game play :-)

Yep. Sounds like your hardware, or the installation is duff. Did you clean your machine down before installing Vista, or did you install it over XP?

Price is my problem. I won't get Vista until I get a new computer and that's a couple of years down the road at least. I might have upgraded this computer but I can't justify the money.

For a dyed in the wool windows fanboi, you sure don't know your own products very well.

I don't think windows Vista Home is quite the same thing as windows Vista Ultimate e7e37 Hax0r Premium or whatever the hell the $600 windows is called..

I'd like to see notparker put his money where his mouth is and buy that computer for bob. Or at the very least, he should be kind and give bob a Windows Vista Home Edition license if it's sooo cheap.

Edited 2006-12-04 10:46

Vista Premium 700.00
Office 2007 400.00
Watching some Jack_ss pay that much to MS
Priceless
Snaker is a happy Ubuntu user

Vista Premium 700.00

I notice that the FOSS have some sort of bidding war to see who can raise the price of Vista well past its real price to try and make an irrelevant point.

Actualy pricing:

Full Version
•Vista Ultimate: $399
•Vista Business: $299
•Vista Home Premium: $239
•Vista Home Basic: $199

Upgrade
•Vista Ultimate: $259
•Vista Business: $199
•Vista Home Premium: $159
•Vista Home Basic: $99

Modded down as Spam/Advertisement.

Out of curiousity, what features require the other OS's to play catch up to Vista?

I was/am under the impression this release is about Microsoft catching up to the rest of the industry.

Wow.

Suddently if something is deemed "too expensive" then the people who buy that something are labeled fanboys. lol

I was sooo wondering when the Waaahhhgon was gonna arrive.

I wasn't calling everybody that will buy it a fanboy, just the ones that will pay anything to get it.

Truth hurts, huh?

1) Microsoft are entitled to use whatever license they want. After all its their software.

My problem is how they enforce their licensing in Vista and XP. Activation and WGA makes you dependent on Microsoft even after money have changed hands. This means that the customer ends up in a hostage situation.

What if Microsoft are no longer there for you to get a new activation key when you have replaced a faulty mother board not that I find it very likely that MS should go out of business, but it could happen.

After all who expected the fall of Soviet Union even in the late 1980s, who expected Great Britain to be at war with Argentina over the Falklands. Speaking international conflicts, there may be situations where you may be prohibited from getting a new keys due to such conflicts. At least non US governments should consider these kind of things. The world is not as safe as it used to be.

It may also be a problem for future digital archeology, i.e. how to restore and use data from since long abandoned platforms. If you talk to a Microsoft salesperson he will probably assure you that Microsoft will provide keys forever, but can we be sure that really happens. As far as I know there is nothing EUALA that grants the user the right to that kind of service. Even if they will provide such services, it be free or will you have to sign up for some extended software support agreement (assuming you originally payed for the OS). Paying a little extra money for some to get some old file you really need may be acceptable for a company, but what about a public library or sombody having genealogy as a hobby. This may lead to losses of cultural values in the long run.

Even if you can live with the minimal risk of being cut of from Microsoft, the new volume activation schemes in Vista will increase the software management costs in business.


2) Yes, I agree, it sounds a bit expensive. This will put very high pressure on hardware prices. People will expect to pay the same amount of money or less for a computer that they do today.

This may force small and medium sized hardware vendors out of business. Fewer hardware companies will mean less competition and higher prices.

There is of course the chance that hardware vendors that find Vista too expensive will ship their boxes with some alternative OS such as Linux, but the problem is that Linux will not run the programs people are used to and this will limit their market.

"What if Microsoft are no longer there for you to get a new activation key when you have replaced a faulty mother board not that I find it very likely that MS should go out of business, but it could happen. "

Or worse yet, what if Windows decides that it doesn't like the look of your mp3 collection... and locks up your data until your pay restitution to the RIAA.

what if Windows decides that it doesn't like the look of your mp3 collection... and locks up your data until your pay restitution to the RIAA.

What if space aliens come down and eat our brains? Our precious brains!

We can all make up entirely inane "what if?" scenarios with no basis in reality; it's sad that this is all the closed-source/Vista/Microsoft-bashers have to offer. It's sadder that such scenarios are being modded up while the voices of reason are being modded down.

But that's what OSNews is all about these days.

Both cases are possible.
You shouldn't simply discount them as inane just because you feel safe right now.
Like the other poster said, nobody ever imagined the fall of the Soviet Union or Britain going to war with Argentina.
But the fact is that anything can happen at some point in time.
So hold your fingers crossed that it doesn't happen at the point in YOUR LIFETIME.
But don't warry, your "precious brain" will be one of the last ones being munched on

I agree, it is highly unlikely that RIAA and Microsoft will turn against their customers, that would not be good for business in the long run.

However, situations where you got locked out from your data due to DRM is not that unlikely. E.g. the DRM security system would be a fun target for black hats.

DRM systems are constructed to make unauthorized use impossible. It will probably be quite hard to break them in a way that allows you to get to the data, without paying for it. However, they are most likely not designed to be safe against tampering, if all you want to achieve is denial of service, leaving the field open for malware writers distributing their software as viruses or trojans.

My apologies to all the fanboys who can overlook that stuff.

Yeah, it's the fanboys who don't have problems with a license or with getting Vista pre-installed. Jeez.

Most people don't have problems with the eula because they don't read it and have no idea whats in it. Imagine their surprise when they find out they can no longer play their music or watch a movie because someone else decided they wanted to be paid again for it.

The fanboys know what's in it yet are willing to use it anyway, despite the limitations it places on the ability to use their own computers.

What animiations? There aren't any animations that are actually new to Vista.

Just the new flip 3D task switcher and moving light flare in the Control Panel backdrop.

Nothing spectacular.

Actually WinXP has fast desktop search too. Turn on the Indexing Service in Windows.

And in the search box: Use the freetext search field, and when searching for general terms put an ! in front of the term, like !hotbaby or if you search for files @filename mkv to search for all matroska videofiles. It's not as fancy or as easy as the Vista experience, but at least it's fast. You can create more complex queries of course, but these will do in most cases.

You can do this in Vista, but you must do it for each folder type (Documents, Pictures and Video, etc.). This is because you may want different views depending on the type of data (e.g., details for files, large thumbnails for pictures, etc.).

IIRC, you can apply the same settings accross all folder types at the same time by going to your %userprofile% folder (the folder with your name), modify this folder to your preference, right-click in an empty space in the folder, choose "Customise this folder", choose the "All Items" template and click the checkbox to apply the template to all subfolders.

Yes, it's switching back to Aero basic. I wonder why more work didn't go into resolving this problem at Microsoft, now it's the problem of other software companies and they will have to do the work.

Every 6 months is a huge year for Linux.

2007 is especially big. We will get to see how Microsoft's newest OS shapes thier competitors offerings.

Edited 2006-12-04 04:15

For me it is.

For me XP is a lot more stable than MacOSX. I've yet to have a single crash with my XP installation, whilst OSX occasionally hangs or refuses to wake up from sleep.

You're quite right about the schedular - many operating systems features a better schedular.

But most of the problems that you mentions, I suspect is based on single threaded applications. Multithreading is not widely used in Windows a