No, I didn’t do that, but to be honest… I don’t see the advantage of a BSoD
over a hard reboot… when the system is not running anything other than what
MS installed… i.e. Why would I want to debug MS’s work for them? my role as a
beta-tester is to debug the stuff they DIDN’T write or can’t test themselves.
I have a Hewlett-Packard workstation (modern, but not the very latest
new-fangled toy) which ran Win-XP perfectly, and is now running Win-2003
perfectly… but which crashed every day running Vista… and eventually
obliterated my system disk.
I fully appreciate the value of beta testing, but to have a system crashing
like this, is not what I call beta-testing… it’s what I call masochism.
You are perfectly correct that MS will eventually sort Vista out… as they
did with NT4 and W2K … but they are DEFINITELY now pushing the schedule on
this **WAY** too fast, in order to satisfy their need for something to sell
(and something for ISV’s to sell off) and hence keep the market speculators
placated.
MS continue to fall for the same old trap, with ALL of their products… avoid
selling minor upgrades, over-specify the next major upgrade and
under-estimate the resources needed to achieve it.
The net result is ALWAYS the same with MS… late delivery, dropped features
and a shipped product full of bugs.
MS need to learn from their own history… and target minor-upgrades, shipped
on a more regular basis.
NT3.51 -> NT4.0 == PAIN
NT4.0 -> NT5.0 == PAIN
NT5.0 -> NT5.1 == NO-PAIN
NT5.0/1 -> NT5.2 == NO-PAIN
NT5.0/1/2 -> NT6.0 == PAIN
You would think that SOMEONE at Microsoft would look at this and figure..
hey, you know what?? We tend to ship major upgrades, rather than minor
upgrades… and every time we ship a major upgrade, we get a whole bunch of
problems and a heap of p’d-off customers… perhaps we should focus on
shipping/selling more minor upgrades and only ship major upgrades when they
are truly ready for prime-time.
Perhaps we could even satisfy that whole "Software Assurance" thing we
suckered people into, if we did that.
R. C. White said:
Hi, Mike.
Maybe too late to even ask you this, but did you change the default setting
for what to do on System Failure? The default is to Automatically Restart,
putting you back at the POST with no clue as to the underlying problem.
Let's see. I had these steps memorized in WinXP, but in Vista... Press the
Windows key + Pause/Break; this brings up the System window. Then click
Advanced system settings | Advanced | Startup and Recovery / Settings.
Under System failure, remove the check from Automatically restart. Next
time, instead of a POST screen, you should see a BSOD - with codes telling
which driver failed. It won't help much with hardware problems, of course,
but it should tell you if anything in software is causing your problem.
It sounds like you are an experienced user and you probably already thought
of that, but sometimes we overlook the simple stuff.
As Mark said, I like Vista. This latest build (5456) is much better than
what we first saw last summer. There are still bugs, of course, but I'm
optimistic about what we'll see when it finally goes Gold.
RC
--
R. C. White, CPA [RC]
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(currently running Windows Mail 7 in Vista x64 Build 5456)
Mike said:
If it's a driver issue, then is a Microsoft Driver issue... as there was
nothing installed that was not part of vista.
The machine is a HP D530... so it's not as if it's an unstable clone, or a
machine so new that the HW is not supportable... and all the firmware if
fully up-to-date.
Since installing Windows 2003 to replace vista... not even a hint of a
hiccup.
I'll be sticking with this now, and giving vista the flick.
