Sometimes you just have to reload Windows.

[Ali G. 37]

Vista is the absolutely worse product MS has ever put out on the market.

What are the specs of the PC?

[spookyturtle 9,465]

I have used Vista 64-bit for three years with no problems, now have windows 7 64-bit installed and that is even better. Actually I am really impressed with 7.

The biggest problem for Vista is that people purchased inadequate hardware expecting it to run a state of the art OS. Cases like this is why Apple tells you what hardware you can or cannot use. Anyone who wants to use basic hardware should seriously look at using Fedora or ubuntu [linux]. Your only other option will be Google OS, when it comes out later this year.

What has basically happened for Vista is the equivalent of people purchasing Chevy Cobalts, then becoming angry once they break down because they took it four wheeling or used it to tow a 2 tonne trailer.

Vista actually works fine when it is run with the proper hardware. You need 4gb or RAM. Vista got it's bad rep at the beginning when there was a lack of suitable drivers for much of the hardware people were using. This was rectified over time, but the damage was done.

[rsn 135]

What are the specs of the PC?

I'm using Vista 64-bit on a machine with two processors, 8 total cores. Vista does piss me off sometimes, especially with the ridiculous UAC #######. However, Windows Me was the worst, by far.

[Ban Hammer 13,334]

I'm using Vista 64-bit on a machine with two processors, 8 total cores. Vista does piss me off sometimes, especially with the ridiculous UAC #######. However, Windows Me was the worst, by far.

Edited February 19, 2010 by charles!

[NickD 202]

Everything was going fine, finally with the reload, had to take car of something else, Vista all by itself starting loading some 99 upgrades, I never touched the computer. When it got to 96, it crashed and shut itself off. When I rebooted it, got a screen saying Vista is trying to repair itself, after several attempts, it quit and said it couldn't do it. It popped up a screen, I selected a full recovery from the partition it created, it said it couldn't find it. I went to DOS command prompt, I found it, exactly on the partition Vista installed it at.

Told my wife not to worry, her two HD's are still intact, with problems, but she still can get on the net if she wants to. But going to load XP pro on her box tomorrow. Who cares what version is on the computer, as long as it works. Have a 16 year old box with Win 3.1 on it, never had to touch it once, has Word 2 on it with a full medical and legal dictionary can't seem to find anymore and great for writing patent abstracts, it works and is just as fast as me. Also have a Win 98S box along side of this XP unit that has been troublefree.

Step daughter came home tonight crying, her brand new three week Sony notebook with Windows 7 crashed on her, she can no longer log in. Called Sony, they are having lots of problems with it, say it's either hardware or software, no sh!t. We did make up back up disks, but if he OS was corrupted on the drives, bastards don't even supply a recovery disk anymore, she will have the same problem. At least her Sony only had two trash programs on it, HP goes nuts with over 15.

If you haven't noticed what they are doing with the latest OS's, they are taking away all the control of your computer from you.

[Ban Hammer 13,334]

i like xp over all of them. i think you going to it is a better move.

[spookyturtle 9,465]

Everything was going fine, finally with the reload, had to take car of something else, Vista all by itself starting loading some 99 upgrades, I never touched the computer. When it got to 96, it crashed and shut itself off. When I rebooted it, got a screen saying Vista is trying to repair itself, after several attempts, it quit and said it couldn't do it. It popped up a screen, I selected a full recovery from the partition it created, it said it couldn't find it. I went to DOS command prompt, I found it, exactly on the partition Vista installed it at.

Told my wife not to worry, her two HD's are still intact, with problems, but she still can get on the net if she wants to. But going to load XP pro on her box tomorrow. Who cares what version is on the computer, as long as it works. Have a 16 year old box with Win 3.1 on it, never had to touch it once, has Word 2 on it with a full medical and legal dictionary can't seem to find anymore and great for writing patent abstracts, it works and is just as fast as me. Also have a Win 98S box along side of this XP unit that has been troublefree.

Step daughter came home tonight crying, her brand new three week Sony notebook with Windows 7 crashed on her, she can no longer log in. Called Sony, they are having lots of problems with it, say it's either hardware or software, no sh!t. We did make up back up disks, but if he OS was corrupted on the drives, bastards don't even supply a recovery disk anymore, she will have the same problem. At least her Sony only had two trash programs on it, HP goes nuts with over 15.

If you haven't noticed what they are doing with the latest OS's, they are taking away all the control of your computer from you.

You must have a black cloud following you around.

[NickD 202]

You must have a black cloud following you around.

Wife also used Vista for about three years now, the entire problem started with some Microsoft upgrade. On doing a net search with this new blue screen incident with a strange new sign. Windows is shutting down your computer to prevent damage, thousands are having this same problem.

I also ran into a problem with XP with some kind of netframe upgrade that crashed my computer, but found a solution for it, fortunately, I had backups. Guess I better do backups on my wife's and daughters computers as well.

I feel the problem with Windows 7 and my daughters new Sony Varo is poor loading of the OS on the hard drive or just one corrupt file on it. Really hate what they are doing now by preloading the software. I did make backups for her, but sure if just one file is corrupted, the same problem will come back. And yes, hundreds to my knowledge are having the same problem as what she is having. Only cost 15 cents extra to supply a CD with the OS on it, hell, I would be glad to pay them an extra 25 bucks to save all this aggravation.

[Darnell 8,478]

I suggest you make a Knoppix boot CD. IMO, quickest way to 'copy out' any important files on a hard disk, regardless of the infection type, prior to a total reformat.

see http://www.knoppix.org for more info.

[Christi and Ian 24]

The biggest problem for Vista is that people purchased inadequate hardware expecting it to run the state of the art OS. Not going to happen. Cases like this is why Apple tells you what hardware you can or cannot use. Anyone who wants to use basic hardware should seriously look at using Fedora [linux], ubuntu [linux] or XP. Your only other option will be Google OS, when it comes out later this year.

What has basically happened for Vista is the equivalent of people purchasing Chevy Cobalts, then becoming angry once they breakdown because they took it four wheeling or used it to tow a 2 tonne trailer.

I agree. My laptop has 4 gigs of RAM, and I find that it's the bare minimum you should have when running Vista...

[rsn 135]

I agree. My laptop has 4 gigs of RAM, and I find that it's the bare minimum you should have when running Vista...

Unless you are doing some pretty memory intensive stuff, 4 GB of RAM is overkill for the average user on a 32-bit OS. I assume you are using a 64-bit version of Vista since you have 4 GB of RAM installed though.

[Christi and Ian 24]

Unless you are doing some pretty memory intensive stuff, 4 GB of RAM is overkill for the average user on a 32-bit OS. I assume you are using a 64-bit version of Vista since you have 4 GB of RAM installed though.

Yes, I run 64 bit - refuse though, to use Internet Explorer, and choose to use Firefox instead - I love the Adblocker Add-on. I would use Google Chrome if they had an option for blocking advertising, which obviously wouldn't help Google.

One of the funniest things I've seen was when IE went 64 bit and didn't support Microsoft's own website!

My husband has a Mac and refuses to even touch my Dell, however, he renders and edits video for a living.

The only thing, and this has nothing to do with the OS, that really ticks me off is Office 2007. What were they THINKING? I've been an expert at MS Office for years, now I've got to go and re-learn where everything is...grrrrr....

My next computer will most likely be a Mac. I'm just tired of having to give Windows permission to do everything, all of the time.

Edited February 20, 2010 by Christi and Ian

[rsn 135]

Yes, I run 64 bit - refuse though, to use Internet Explorer, and choose to use Firefox instead - I love the Adblocker Add-on. I would use Google Chrome if they had an option for blocking advertising, which obviously wouldn't help Google.

One of the funniest things I've seen was when IE went 64 bit and didn't support Microsoft's own website!

My husband has a Mac and refuses to even touch my Dell, however, he renders and edits video for a living.

The only thing, and this has nothing to do with the OS, that really ticks me off is Office 2007. What were they THINKING? I've been an expert at MS Office for years, now I've got to go and re-learn where everything is...grrrrr....

My next computer will most likely be a Mac. I'm just tired of having to give Windows permission to do everything, all of the time.

A few things:

1.) Chrome does have an adblocker extension. One that comes to mind is AdBlock+, but there might be others too. Google doesn't really have control over extensions, they can be developed by 3rd-parties.

2.) What editing software does you husband use? Avid by any chance?

3.) I use OpenOffice. It's free, it works pretty well, and it reads and writes Office files. Actually I've been using Google Docs a lot more lately - also free & all of your work is stored in a "cloud".

4.) You can disable that annoying permissions system in Vista (UAC).

[NickD 202]

Maybe I knew all this stuff three years ago and forgot it, jumping between XP and Vista is crazy, basically the same old #######, but hidden in different places.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vis...-windows-vista/

This gives you some user control even if you did log in as the administrator.

" Click Start, click Run, type sysdm.cpl, and then press ENTER. " Let's you block automatic upgrades, most of these are security you don't need anyway, just overcrowding your memory and processor with more #######.

Another link for MS problems with upgrades, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949358.

A Link on installing two different OS's on your computer, but think that would drive my wife nuts.

She has plenty of RAM, 4GB, and never had a problem until these new rashes of automatic upgrades.

Another annoyance I have with Vista is that extraordinary long reboot time when you are forced to hit restart. Wouldn't be bad if MS would give me a two week paid vacation between reboot cycles. Most of the time, it would be ready for the next upgrade when you got back.

[Marilyn. 340]

A few things:

1.) Chrome does have an adblocker extension. One that comes to mind is AdBlock+, but there might be others too. Google doesn't really have control over extensions, they can be developed by 3rd-parties.

2.) What editing software does you husband use? Avid by any chance?

3.) I use OpenOffice. It's free, it works pretty well, and it reads and writes Office files. Actually I've been using Google Docs a lot more lately - also free & all of your work is stored in a "cloud".

4.) You can disable that annoying permissions system in Vista (UAC).

you can and I did that once awhile ago but taking the permissions away caused other problems.. I can't remember what happened exactly but I put the permissions back and everything was fine again...