I had another Windows Vista SP1 issue, it was sort of my fault, I removed a USB device without using the safely remove hardware icon  in the taskbar.

Windows 2000 used to gracefully give you a message when you removed USB devices but my  Windows Vista ultimate SP1 laptop just blue screened and rebooted.

Boot times are painfully slow and this is on a machine with a Core 2 Duo 2.0Ghz, 7200 RPM hard disk and 2gig of ram and only core applications like Office and Anti-Virus installed.

A couple of positive things.

1) Microsoft are offering free technical support to customers with SP1 issues. the number in the US is toll-free and is (866)-234-6020, I will try and locate the UK equivalent.

2) Windows Vista SP1 has made some changes to Remote Desktop that are nice. Nice for anyone who uses Remote Desktop/Terminal Services as much as I do.

When I get a spare couple of hours I am going to install Windows Vista on another machine in a clean install, as I don’t seem to be any more stable now that I was pre SP1.

Well I took the plunge, I backed up my laptop and and installed Windows Vista SP1 on my Dell XPS M1210 running Windows Vista Ultimate (32 Bit).

The entire install took about 70 minutes in total and about 40 minutes into the process I get a Blue Screen of Death the faulting file was ks.sys The laptop automatically rebooted and continued the service pack install.

ks.sys is associated with video and kernel streaming, but beyond that I am not really sure how significant the error is.

All I can tell you you is a blue screen isn’t the best start in life for Windows Vista SP1.

Thankfully the rest of the install completed without a hitch.

I have installed Windows Vista SP1 on my main computer so I am going to find out pretty quickly how stable Windows Vista SP1 is. Bookmark the link at the bottom of the post for future SP1 Coverage

The first good news is the file copy bug seems to be fixed and accurate times now show when coping files.

Before SP1

After SP1

The install required several reboots, the onscreen indicator gave me a good sense of what was going on. Example Stage 3 of 3 70% complete.

Screen shots from the install

Summary.

I would have a lot more confidence in Windows Vista SP1 if it didn’t blue screen on me. So I am holding back from recommending people install Windows Vista SP1 at least for several weeks. Lets see some other anecdotal evidence of the success or failure of the in place upgrade.

So now the real testing begins by actually using it.

Link: View all posts in Windows Vista SP1

Sample data taken from Steam (Sample Size 1,331,330 13-11-2007 to  28-02-2008)

This survey is pretty much consumer PC’s, Gamers in-fact.

A class of user usually known for having having high performance computers and latest in  PC technology.

So Windows Vista is running at about 16.5%, Ouch, with this crowd it should have been 25-30% at least.

The corporate/business numbers for Windows Vista vista must be considerably lower. I’m guessing 5 to 7 percent.

Take this week for example. I have deployed 5 desktop PC’s and 2 Laptops all running Windows XP Pro. Happily I might add.

Microsoft may shout “hey we sold 100m vista licenses” but its still a drop in the ocean comparatively speaking.

I wish Windows Vista SP1 would hurry up, it was supposed to be public in February but a last minute problem delayed its release.

Bookmark the link below if you want to read my future Windows Vista SP1 stuff. Things like my deployment experience and what I think about it.

The biggest questions of all is it ready to deploy commercially?

Link: View all posts filed under Windows Vista SP1

The default behaviour after you install Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) is to visit the link show in the above image. http://runonce.msn.com/runonce2.aspx

But what if as in this case the site is down or experiencing problems?

Every time I open IE7 on a machine I have just reinstalled Windows XP on it keeps trying to get to the same page and it cant.

At first I got Server is too busy.

Then just the error page as shown below.

But what can you do if you are stuck in the IE7 first run loop.

Well on the Microsoft support link below they tell you to copy and paste a registry command into notepad and save the document with a .reg extension, then you run the reg file to import it directly into the Windows Registry.

That seems to work however I suppose the real question is why on earth do we have to visit the runonce link in the first place.

Link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/945385

Please note the following observations are based on my own usage scenarios.

Microsoft Windows is a bit like a car, it starts off running well but 50,000 miles down the road and it begins to creak a bit.

At a recent event Microsoft announced that they have sold 100m Windows Vista licenses.

My own Windows Vista Ultimate install is just one year old this month.

Current Niggles

1) Cant print locally to a shared resource by IP Address, but can on UNC path.

2) When moving between my own Wired and Wireless network my pop3 e-mail will sometimes fail to connect. Although all my other Internet access works. So basically traffic on a port.

3) My Num-Lock key seems to come on at every opportunity.

4) The Remote Desktop Connection Credentials box can take about 40 seconds to appear. This is very frustrating when you are in a rush to help a client.

5) General performance seems sluggish. Those Hundreds of Windows Updates can’t be helping.

6) VPN connections sometime fail to connect for no discernable reason. I can jump on a Windows XP machine and connect in right away.

7) Copying files across the network is very slow. This is a well known problem.

The Promise of Windows Vista Ultimate Extras was just that a promise and an undelivered one.

9) In the real world no one uses Flip-3D after the first couple of days.

Windows Vista Observations

Power is everything. I thought my Core2Duo 2.0Ghz 2gig of Ram machine was powerful. However when I recently used Vista Ultimate on a Core2Duo 2.4Ghz it did run much smoother (naturally).

The advice here is buy a machine with plenty of power with a good video card.

For the past year I have running two computers: Windows XP Pro and Windows Vista Ultimate side by side and I am of the opinion I would have been more productive running Windows XP.

Looking to the future

I am looking forward to rebuilding my Windows Vista Ultimate machine with Service Pack 1 in the hope of a more reliable and better user experience.

If I can’t make my own Vista install run smooth what hope do my clients and end users have.

Summary

A lot of what is wrong with Vista can be classed as an annoyance. Things that used to work in earlier versions of Windows now don’t (reliably). A slightly less demanding user will have a much better experience but the fact remains this isn’t good enough.