Ed Stoffel

After using Windows XP for three weeks, I'm finally getting Windows Vista up and running again at good, normal speeds. In the end, the culprit turned out to be Nvidia's Vista drivers.

In my final install, I used Vista Home Premium OEM on an XFX nForce 680i LT SLI motherboard, XFX GeForce 8600 GT video, Intel Quad-Core processor, 4GB Corsair TWINX RAM, and Seagate 250Gb SATA hard drives. In earlier install attempts, the system would slow down to a crawl just after installation of drivers for the motherboard's chipset, audio, and nTune utilities. I found that installing ANY of these from the included CD would cause the problem. There are newer versions of the drivers available online, but I'm waiting to get all the applications installed to try them out. Then I plan to make an image of the system, which I can revert to, in the event that the new drivers destroy the OS.

During this rebuild project, I discovered a number of things about some of the hardware. During Vista's updates, the NIC stopped working, and I needed to run a repair process. My multi-reader stopped working, but I found it no longer worked under XP either, so I believe that to have been a hardware failure. My DVD drives are working again, able to read CD-R, CD-RW, and DVDs.

I experimented using a Netgear SC101, a housing for IDE hard drives making them available on my local network. Unfortunately, the device requires installation of software for each computer wishing to access the drive. The device also reformats any drives used in it, changing the drives to a non-standard format. I found the drives often became inaccessible, and ran extremely hot.

I also found it annoying to have to wait to make phone calls during normal business hours for reinstallation codes to get Quickbooks, Microsoft Money, and Audible up and running again.

In the rebuilding process, I used Seagate's hard drive utility to clone my rebuilt Vista drive so that I could test an install, reverting back if it failed. After the install did fail, I returned to the original hard drive, only to discover that the utility had wiped the original drive, leaving me with nothing to fall back to. I won't be using that imaging software again.

When my system rebuild is done, I'll have two hard drives I can boot to, one with Vista, and one with XP. I'll also setup a stricter backup regiment, including a Maxtor One-touch drive, and JungleDisk to upload to off-site storage. Using these, I'll just have to be sure my backup routines are run often enough to preserve anything important.

Vista and I have gotten along well for the past few months, but all that has come to an end this week. Vista was installed and running fine until the failure of the computer two weeks ago. Around the time of some critical updates, the system just stopped working. Was this an OS failure, a motherboard failure, or a bad processor? The hard drive tested fine with Spinrite. Installing that hard drive in another computer still wouldn't boot the OS, and using the Vista install disc to attempt a repair failed to cure the problem. Was that because it was now mated with a different motherboard/processor combination? I don't know.

I purchased everything to build a new system: new Nvidia motherboard, Nvidia graphics card, an Intel Quad-core processor, a pair of Seagate SATA hard drives, new case and power supply. After installing Vista, the first problem I noticed was that it is painfully slow. This shouldn't be, with an Intel Quad-core processor, but it is. Things weren't slow with my previous Intel single-core 3.33Ghz processor. Vista turned my DVD-RW/CD-RW drive into DVD only, and failed to recognize my multi-media reader. Installation of a network drive failed (Netgear SC101), using Netgear's latest firmware and management utility version for Vista. The install disc for HP's office printer took over an hour to complete, and Quickbook's online update feature took nearly 3 hours to complete.

But the biggest, most frustrating problem was that Vista literally wouldn't let me do two things at once. With an internet browser open (either Explorer or Firefox), clicking on any link when the machine was otherwise busy would produce the (not responding) error to appear on the browser's title line. This even occurred when viewing a disk directory in Windows Explorer. If I clicked again, Vista produced a white-out mask across the screen, further indicating that the application was too busy to respond.

I was able to somewhat speed up Vista by following the recommendations of Black Viper to turn off unnecessary services. Problem is, it is difficult to be certain which services I really don't need.

After stewing about the problem overnight, I decided to pull the hard drive, insert a new one, and install Windows XP-SP3. It didn't take long to get the OS up and running, and I immediately noticed how fast all the applications installed themselves... much faster than with Vista. My DVD/CD drive works again, as well as my multi-media reader. I'll miss Vista's sidebar gadgets, but this machine now flies along with XP. I'll pack away my Vista OS disc, and we'll see if Microsoft ever gets the operating system working well before the emergence of Windows 7.

Early last year, I was testing Linux as an alternate OS. While it has some security advantages, I found I wasn't able to easily perform many of the things I do in Windows. So I took another look at Vista. Watching security issues closely over the last year, more and more critical alerts have dealt with Microsoft XP vulnerabilities that don't occur in Vista. And while I'm sure Vista vulnerabilities exist, the way Vista is designed is already offering protection that is absent in XP.

I purchased the upgrade version of Vista, and found it required that I install it over an installation of XP. (Showing it my XP CD was inadequate.) However, once Vista verified that I was eligible to use the upgrade version, I was able to select a "clean install" option, which formatted the hard drive and started fresh. I then installed the applications I use which did not require upgrades for Vista: Microsoft Office XP, Quickbooks Pro 2007, and Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004. I also installed the following software without issues: Firefox, AVG-AV, iTunes, Audible Download Mgr, dB PowerAmp Music Converter, efax, Cyberpower, and JungleDisk.

Before installing Vista, it had scanned my applications and informed me that I should upgrade Microsoft Money, Nero, and Adobe Acrobat to Vista-compatible versions. To upgrade Nero, I purchased a DVD drive which came with Nero 7, instead of buying Nero alone for about the same price.

Vista discovered my printers and installed the appropriate drivers (HP Deskjet D1420 and Brother MFC240C). However, Brother has not released a Vista version of their printer control suite for scanning, faxing, etc. So I installed another HP printer, which integrated both of HP printers nicely in the "HP Solutions Center" control suite. The HP Officejet 6310 is a nice networkable all-in-one printer which was very easy to install on everyone's Vista laptops without using the CD. However, those in the house still on XP had to use the CD and create a local IP port for connecting to the new printer. In the past, I would install printers on my computer and share them, requiring that my computer stay on for others to use those shared printers. With a true network able printer (one that has its own IP address), others can access it directly, and my computer doesn't have to stay on.

I was using the Logisys KB608BK, an illuminated keyboard with shortcut buttons for Office, Internet and Multimedia. The standard keys continued to work in Vista, but to date, they do not offer Vista drivers for the shortcut buttons. Attempting to install their XP drivers in Vista crashed the OS.

After using Vista for a few months, I tried reinstalling Linux Xandros 4.1 on the same drive, using a boot loader to choose which OS to run. Xandros ran fine, but something about it KILLED Vista. After spending hours trying to repair it, I ended up reinstalling Vista by itself. I wish that Xandros offered an easy uninstaller that would remove entire installation including the modified MBR, but the Xandros CD didn't offer this as an option.

Today, our family has four computers running Vista, and four still running XP. Over the last few months, the machines with problems have been the XP machines. At my desk, I still keep an XP machine standing by, just in case, but I haven't needed it. While I'm not ready to eliminate all the XP machines just yet, I'm quite happy with Vista's performance.

Microsoft is so determined to block HD-DVD piracy in Windows Vista that things will often just stop working, including HD video cards and monitors. The OS overhead to manage DRM seriously affects Vista's performance and stability.

Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content protection. That's that AACS you're talking about for premium content, typically HD data from Blu-ray and HD-DVD sources. But here's the gist of it. Providing this protection incurs considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software costs. And these issues affect not only users of Vista, but the entire PC industry, since the effects of the protection measures extend to cover all hardware and software that will ever come into contact with Vista, even if it's not used directly with Vista, for example hardware on a Macintosh or on a Linux server.

 Continue Reading: Peter Gutmann on Vista DRM, Security Now!