Joe, I am glad it is you and not me encountering these issues. I use XP-Pro and very happy to stay in my safe comfort zone. I was under the impression that Vista SP1 was supposed to fix the most serious issues that you experienced. Perhaps my expectations were too high? I agree with you, MS has big problems if the service pack is causing this many problems. I am so glad I bought a new laptop with XP instead of Vista.

I would have preferred that this service pack fixed the majority of Vista problems. I am concerned that this expanding defect trend is going to bleed over to other products such as MS SQL Server, which I primarily work in.

Vista SP1 vs. XP SP2 - Benchmarked
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=1332&page=5
Quote:
"So, onto conclusions. Looking at the data there’s only one conclusion that can be drawn - Windows XP SP2 is faster than Windows Vista SP1. End of story. Out of the fifteen tests carried out, XP SP2 beat Vista SP1 in eleven, Vista SP1 beat XP SP2 in two of the tests, and two of the tests resulted in a draw."

"Note: I didn’t benchmark against XP SP3 because the EULA prevents the disclosure of benchmark results. Also, since it’s a beta, things can change between now and the final release."

Microsoft battles Vista perception issues with $15,000 prize
http://apcmag.com/8017/microsoft_battles_vista_perception_issues_15_000_prize
"In what can only be described as an act of utter desperation to overcome Vista’s mostly negative public perception issues, Microsoft Australia
has put together an online “Fact or Fiction” quiz all about Windows Vista. Every person who enters gets a certificate of completion and, if you are an OEM system builder, you get a Windows Vista Advisor polo shirt too. Ah the temptation is overwhelming and I sense the greed welling up within you."

"This is desperate, desperate stuff. Seriously. I can’t think what Microsoft hopes to achieve with such a stunt, and to be honest I almost hope that resorting to such cheap and blatant tactics does more harm than good. Unless I win the main prize in which case it’s a bold and courageous move and I heartily applaud such a brilliantly innovative and cunning marketing strategy."
----------
Eh Chips , do you think that our old friend Neil (and others Australian Shills) will be given away those polo shirts?. Maybe they will be sending something to us. He,he

Microsoft wants to worm its way into your PC
"Microsoft is taking a leaf out of the virus writers' handbook, hoping to use friendly "worms" to distribute software patches surreptitiously."

"Like the malicious worms that spread from computer to computer by self-replicating and automatically seeking out new computers to infect, the "friendly" worms will be used to distribute updates to users without forcing them to download anything from a central server."

.smh.com.au/news/security/microsoft-wants-to-worm-its-way-into-your-pc/2008/02/15/1202760555255.html

i use a microsoft wireless 8000 laser mouse and haven't seen this issue, not even with any of the beta releases of sp1. but, i don't have a notebook with a touchpad, i use a desktop.

now, i'm no proponent of vista. i can't use it as my main os because of about a dozen stupid ui changes they made. they gave us back listview, as a carrot, when we complained during the beta, but everything else fell on deaf ears. just think, there may be even more complaints if they didn't relent and put listview back as an option.

to me this whole ui, whether it's in home, ultimate or business should have been confined to home users. it has no place in a production environment. there are just things that take more clicks to accomplish, and there’s less left to the users discretion as vista tries to do every damn thing on its own instead of letting the user have control. this interface should have been in win9x, when there were far fewer users of computers, not now when there are billions.

So what's so stunning? You guys act like you're shocked that Microsoft has screwed yet another opportunity to demonstrate they know what they're doing.

Just another half-baked project by a team that has marketeers and lawyers calling the shots with a CTO hiding from view and keeping technology projects in the dark.

Vista is a doomed duck and SP1 is just another cinder block tied around the little duckies legs for ballast. Billions down the drain. Billions and billions and the reputation of a once proud company along with them all. Flushed.

Joe Says :
"I waited most of the day..." http://ncane.com/35ex

@Joe Willcox

Its good that system restore almost fixed everything, as it was supposed to fix everything. At least in XP I found system restore to be mostly lacking, and only a few times helpful. Restore to last know good configuration at bootup was usually pretty good though. I have had MS patches in the past crash XP, but always managed to find the cures. After that I turned off auto-updates, as I did not want to be a guinea pig for M$. Let someone else find the bugs first. Then learn the cures from them, before you install the patches.

Joe, let me state the obvious here, did you go into control panel, then add/remove programs (called something else in Vi$ta) and check to see if you can remove those two patches, or if they are still there installed?

Glad I use Linux for my everyday stuff, and only occasionally mess with XP anymore. XP is pain enough with all its problems and maintenance.

@Marco

I think that our old friend Neil (and others Australian Shills or sock puppets) are probably having lots of fun learning the ins and outs of Vi$ta on that new laptop he bought. Either that or he got a virus on his computer, But the most likely for Neil is he stills writes and read comments here under a different name.

Joe,
Most likely system restore is leaving something of the patches in the registry, as its not really rolling you back all the way to where your system was before the patches were installed. You could see if there are other waypoints in system restore to change back to.

There is a program, that worked well in XP (don't know if it works in Vi$ta or not) called Total Uninstall. You can still even find it by doing a google search for "last freeware version total uninstall." With that 3rd party program, even registry changes can be set back to where they were.

Of course, you had to install the program or patches with Total Uninstall in the first place, to be able to completely remove it later. Which is not going help you now, but could with future problems.

JM:
"I was under the impression that Vista SP1 was supposed to fix the most serious issues that you experienced. "

This article is not about SP1 itself. Read it again.

Joe Wilcox:
I believe there the word "see" is missing from this sentence "I need to review the system logs, when there is more time, to what's going on"

Joe - Stop trying to find the Microsoft digital lifestyle, it looks like it is making your wife and daughter unhappy. It will only end up with them hating you for it!

Just buy them both a mac and they can both have what they want and you will have a much more stress free life. No more using them as an experiment for your job.

You may even want to try Linux on their computers, I am sure your friend SJVN can help you.

I believe that Neil now writes his garbage on The Register...

dont you use Microsoft Update?

Did you proof read?
Did you consider, this article makes me look like any idiot with enough information can bring down any computer they touch?
These are the sovereign words of a seasoned professional, who'll not only weeney-whine about screwing up a test box, but a box of the woman he has to sleep with? What were you thinking? My time is not precious?
Get a job hacking X-box computers for Hussein, moron.

My Vista runs fine and could not be better.

The update runs perfectly.

May be I am a Chinese ... I don't have all the problems mentioned by Joe

Sorry, this is a petty and probably insignificant complaint, but as soon as I saw you use the word "loose" in place of "lose", all interest in your article was lost. Just a major pet peeve.

I love it -- the MSFT shills counter Joe's comments about poor functionality in the Vista update with nit picking over spelling and grammar!

Yo, 'softies, half of MSFT's customers start every other sentence with "duuude", so cut Joe some slack.

4 issues with your comments Gary:
1. No M$ shill here. In fact, I'm rebuilding a Vista install as I type this.
2. Why shouldn't we hold a professional journalist to a higher standard than the audience to whom he is writing?
3. I don't think I've EVER seen a comment to a M$ focused blog or article start with the word "Dude". I'm pretty sure the Apple crowd is quite a bit more inclined to use that type of language, on average. And before the Apple crowd starts bashing, I have 3 of them up and running now, dudes.
4. I did say it was a pet peeve, which makes it a personal observation.

I made a mistake in my first comment that I was referring to sp1 rather than pre-sp1. Joe, my apologies. I also want to apologize to you for any vitriol from the other posters. Not all of us feel that way. Keep up the good work.

"would have been a disastrous circumstance under Windows XP"
This is very presumptuous. I've had several microsoft "driver" updates which I've rolled back with XP's System Restore with no problem. Last Known Good Configuration has also helped several times. Although System Restore hasn't helped in every situation I've been stuck in.

"I gave Microsoft an unusually long time to respond"
"Nearly eight hours after asking for comment"
You are so not in the the troubleshooting trenches. Asking for email support can take MANY vendors at least 24 hours to respond. I've opened Red Hat tickets that haven't been addressed in DAYS. That's with a support contract which you make no mention of, so just asking for a "comment" without a support contract wouldn't necessarily give you a right to a speedier response.

Joe;

Damn, sorry to hear about your troubles with Vista SP1. I just purchased a brand new HP Blackbird 002 LCi. albeit, a bit pricey, but hey I can afford these toys. As I got it out of the box and put it on my workbench I noticed it came with Vista Premium x32 which I got to tell you that I am shocked, why handicap it with a x32 bit operating system. As I turned it on, the first thing I did was reformat the hard drive and put on the Vista x64 bit Ultimate with SP1.

An hour later, I shut the beast down and added the additional 4 gigs of memory and the new Quad-Core 3.0GHz QX6850 loved the new 4 GB 1066MHz CORSAIR PC2-8500 DDR2 SDRAM SLI ready memory and I had a bit of trouble with the Dual NVIDIA GeForce 8800 ULTRA graphics driver after installing the SP1, aparently Windows replaced the original driver with it's own and that didn't work too well.

Once I fixed that, I through it on the network and finished downloading the latest patches from Microsoft. There were a couple for the Office 2007 SP1 and stuff like that. Oh, with the ASUS Striker Extreme 680i there is a new BIOS already, boy and I just got this thing in. One other thing, Vista picked right up on the AGEIA PhysX(TM) 100 Series PCI-E Accelerator Card, good thing, my latest version of Starry Night Professional will definitely utilize this and take some of the load, if not most from the GPUs. Yeah, I am also wondering how this beast will perform with Flight Sim X Sp1?

The Creative Audio Sound Blaster(R) X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Professional was a snap to get the x64 version of the driver and with fingers crossed, this worked without a hitch. I've had problems with this card before.

Now MS is putting out a hotfix just to get their service pack to install? This is about more than just Vista; they've got some kind of institutional/structural problems with *something*, whether it's their development process or quality control or other, and I really have my doubts that they know how to fix it. Vista was supposed to be significantly cleaned up from XP (internally, with dependencies moved around and the SKU structure streamlined). If it truly is cleaned up, I fail to see how it resulted in an improved product (or dev process). The same line is being touted about Win7 and its MinWin kernel, but what will actually change between today and tomorrow in that regard? Did someone over there go "Hey, we change our driver model every cycle, and the world doesn't end, so what other parts of the OS can we get do-overs for?"

HI JOE,SORRY TO HEAR YOUR MICE ARE FIGHING BACK!!!!
I HAVE MICROSOFT 6000 WIRELES KEYBOARD AND MOUSE.
INSTALLED SP 1 A MONTH AGO WITH NO PROBLEMS. THAT WAS RC 1 REFRESH WHICH WAS RTM!!!
ARE YOU GOING TO 2008 SPLASH IN LOS ANGELES???
IT IS GOING TO BE HOOT WITH GOOD FOOD!!!!
OH YES, YOU CAN HUG STEVE!!!!
RG

HI JOE,SORRY TO HEAR YOUR MICE ARE FIGHING BACK!!!!
I HAVE MICROSOFT 6000 WIRELES KEYBOARD AND MOUSE.
INSTALLED SP 1 A MONTH AGO WITH NO PROBLEMS. THAT WAS RC 1 REFRESH WHICH WAS RTM!!!
ARE YOU GOING TO 2008 SPLASH IN LOS ANGELES???
IT IS GOING TO BE HOOT WITH GOOD FOOD!!!!
OH YES, YOU CAN HUG STEVE!!!!
RG

I've been running Vista on a high end machine I built in late 2007. The performance, particularly with disk i/o, has been horrible compared to XP on my 3 year old machine based on a much slower platform.

I installed the pre-release Vista SP1 hoping it would help. It has helped the disk i/o slowness noticeably, though it still feels sluggish.

However, I now find Photoshop Bridge CS3 crashes repeatedly. It's still very slow, but now also gets into a state where I see the "hourglass", and nothing happens. Eventually I get the famous Vista "program has stopped responding" dialog.

I'm about at the end of my rope and plan to allocate a couple days to scratch Vista and install XP. I consider this a Last Resort, since as an IT professional I would prefer to stay on the track to the future, not regress. But MS is leaving me no choice. I need a stable platform, and Vista clearly is not it.

Who knows how long your troubleshoot will take, and whether it will even have the desired outcome? To keep your wife from being cranky -- and you from being the object of said crankiness -- go to the big-box office store and get a $15 USB wired optical mouse. Should just use the plain-vanilla mouse driver. No batteries to go dark. Much better than a touchpad. Sometimes low-tech is best.

I have a new Dell Inspiron desktop running vista, and I'm also having a mouse problem. The mouse works, but it doesn't track properly. Everything is shifted right. In order to open a link or click a button, I have to click to the right of it. When I resize a window from the right, I have to position the mouse about one half inch to the right of the window's edge. When sizing from the left, I have to position the mouse a half inch inside the document. And when the window is maximized, I cannot close it using the upper-right exit button. Lots of fun.

I forgot to mention it in my post above, my problem is with a wired mouse.