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Bugs, preferences, from an old W/9x user.

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.

=====================================

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

Posted: 04/09/2007 @ 07:45 PM (PDT)  (edited 11/12/2007 @ 06:54 PM (PST))

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Read original item: Top 10 Windows Vista annoyances

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keyboard to shutdownsaved2serve@... | 11/12/2007 @ 06:31 PM (PST)

RE: Top 10 Windows Vista annoyancesgwd@... | 08/28/2007 @ 09:19 AM (PDT)

RE: Top 10 Windows Vista annoyanceswrocnrob@... | 11/06/2007 @ 12:45 AM (PST)

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Responses....Spiritusindomit@... | 09/07/2008 @ 04:38 AM (PDT)

Weak......phugger@... | 09/24/2008 @ 05:56 AM (PDT)

RE: Top 10 Windows Vista annoyancesgeorgecatling1932@... | 05/02/2009 @ 01:49 AM (PDT)

RE: Top 10 Windows Vista annoyancesthebatty1@... | 12/15/2009 @ 11:18 PM (PST)

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