Your experience with Vista Beta 2

[CaptnKirk]

How I spent the last 4 days . . .

I finally got a valid installation of Vista to take - after 20 separate attempts.
One ( the 15th ) worked partialy, no side bar, refused to load ATI Video Drivers, was unstable & crashed to BSOD every 5 minutes . . so I killed it & started over . . again.

I have tried both the 32-Bit & the 64-Bit, and have tried every combination from Boot from CD, to Run from CD with starting in XP & load to destination of a separate HDD, including attempts to load while running in Safe Mode on XP Pro.

This is the glitchiest Beta load I have had to struggle with, and I thought that the 64-Bit Beta with minimal drivers was bad, but this is worse.

Anyway - the 32-Bit is running . . . after 6 downloads from the server to capture a valid ISO Image that could be burned to DVD, then throwing out 6 DVD discs that we compromised in their content, never got a valid 64-Bit to complete installation, only the 32-Bit finally completed & was stable enough for the driver updates to be accomplished, registration of the system, & installation of the Secutity Beta from CA (Computer Associates) - This has been a struggle since Saturday, and 4 days later I have something that runs well enough to begin system evaluation on.

If it's any consolidation, I did get a response back from the Microsoft Beta Analysis Team that my 'Crash Data Input' has let them resolve an issue that will be used as a fix in the next release of software - whatever the glitch was it's fix will be included in the RC-1 Release . . . Whoopee!

 

[jpetermann]

Installed on my laptop last night. Got most of my stuff working now. Only thing left is my 7800 GO card. It is being a pain! I can get the drivers to load, but every driver I have tried (or combination of drivers!) gives me lags and 100% CPU utilization for up to 10 seconds, bringing the laptop to a crawl. Anyone find a way around the NV issues yet? i do have an ATI x1400 that I am thinking of putting back in since I do very little gaming, especially on this laptop.

 

[CaptnKirk]

For those of you who haven't endured the Vista Experience yet,
it's a great way to prepare yourself for a long term relationship ,
like getting married and taking your SO along everywhere:

It has a 'nag' dialog box that comes up every time you want to do anything.
It's kinda like having an extra 'wife' loaded in the software:

What are you doing?
Where are you going?
Why are you doing that?
Do you really want to do that?
Does this application make my ass look too fat?
Quit tracking dirt on my nice clean desktop!

You get the picture.
You don't have a check-box option to make it stop.

 

[BD2003]

It is much to early to dismiss Aero Glass as simply just some eye candy. The WPF that makes glass work is a very powerful upgrade to the display system for Windows, and I'm really excited about all of the possibilities it opens up - especially for the Adobe conetent creation apps that currently do all of the filters, vector drawing and video compositing in the CPU rather than the GPU. I'm really hoping that Adobe gets on the ball and writes their CS3 apps to get the most out of WPF (not to mention the similar Core Image and Core Video over in Macland). I'm hoping that the latter part of 2007 will bring with it a whole collection of fast and easy to use content creation apps, not just for porfessionals but also for the casual user.

Agreed - it is a major upgrade to the underlying display system, but as it is implemented in the shell, it is nothing more than eye candy.

They could have done excellent things with it, allowing us to zoom, tilt, literally put windows in the background, dynamically expose all windows (like in OSX) - as far as I know, the underlying API makes this all a possibility.

But what we get with the OS is a nice minimize effect, a useless glass title bar, and a useless 3d flip feature.

Hopefully someone will come up with a software addon that can add these possibilities sooner than later.

 

[Skitzer]

Originally posted by: CaptnKirk
For those of you who haven't endured the Vista Experience yet,
it's a great way to prepare yourself for a long term relationship ,
like getting married and taking your SO along everywhere:

It has a 'nag' dialog box that comes up every time you want to do anything.
It's kinda like having an extra 'wife' loaded in the software:

What are you doing?
Where are you going?
Why are you doing that?
Do you really want to do that?
Does this application make my ass look too fat?
Quit tracking dirt on my nice clean desktop!

You get the picture.
You don't have a check-box option to make it stop.

You can turn it off but you get a warning message everytime you boot into Vista and the little red shield is always present on the taskbar.

 

[Skitzer]

Continuing on with my Vista experience...........
Well, it has been almost 5 days since I installed Vista on a second hard drive in my machine and I am having mixed feelings about it.
I have installed most of the programs and apps that I use in XP and so far they seem to be working Ok. Only 1 program has failed to install and work properly and that is Power DVD 6. I'm going to attempt to install Adobe Audition today.
Stuff I have installed so far:
WinRar, Winzip, Nero 6 Ultra, DVD Shrink, Office 2007 Beta, Adobe Acrobat reader, Macromedia Flash Player, Doom 3.
As stated earlier I installed the Netgear FA311 drivers, ATI drivers for my Radeon 9800 Pro, the Creative drivers for my Audigy 2 Value and the nForce 2 IDE drivers (just those, no need for the others as I don't use onboard ethernet or sound). Those driver installs went perfectly with no problems.
I use Firefox and Thunderbird in XP but have decided not to install them in Vista. Instead I want to keep using IE 7 and Outlook 2007 to get a better feel and to see how they hold up over time. IE 7 is working fine although I don't really like the layout. It hasn't crashed once and seems pretty quick at loading pages. I downloaded the Suse 10.1 Live DVD last night and burned it to disc and everything went without a problem.
The more I use Vista the more I like it. I have turned off the sidebar which I have no use for right now, (may change later if better gadgets come out). I have also disabled UAP but unfortunately now I get a warning that it is disabled everytime I boot in and the little red shield is always present in the taskbar.
My only real gripe about Vista is that everything takes so long to launch. When I open WMP it takes about 15 to 20 seconds to load. This is true for just about anything I launch. Once they are open they are pretty responsive and seem to work Ok but the waiting is starting to get to me. I have a Gig of memory and even after a fresh reboot, about 48% of physical memory is being used. I hate to think that I will have to go to 2 Gigs so Vista will run more effectively.
I have tried using the Classic desktop and turned off all the eye candy but it makes little or no difference in the wait for programs to launch. Is anyone else seeing this problem?
Doom 3 takes a long time to start but seems to play fine. I haven't experienced any lag or crashes once it is finally up and running. I'm going to install a few more games later tonight and see how they play but I'm pretty sure I won't have any problems other than the load time.
I still have a lot of evaluating left to do before I make a final judgement. The deal breaker is the long wait for programs to load. If I can figure out how to speed that up I will probably keep Vista and use it, otherwise that single issue will drive me to delete it and install Suse 10.1 on my spare drive.
I'll keep plugging away and give an update in a few days.

 

[Looney]

Programs do take longer to open than XP for me as well. But not 20 secs long (at least i don't think so). Part of it could be lack of memory (i've got 2GB myself), but more than likely it's probably due to the debugging code.

 

[the cobbler]

Originally posted by: n19htmare
so far my copy of vista X64 seems to be doing fine THOUGH....

I don't get anything in CPU-Z... also what program can i use to see temps and stuff. Seems like those drivers are not working at all.

DFI Ultra-D mobo
Opteron 165

I've gotten all of those to work, CPU-Z, MBM5, PowersTrip, a whole bunch of stuff

usually you need to run either the installer or the program itself either in Windows XP SP2 Compatiblity Mode, or at the very least right-click>>Run as Administrator

 

[SEAL]

does anyone here have a asrock dual-sata2 board and have 32bit vista running on it. i cant seem to get the intergrated ethernet to work.

 

[Skitzer]

Originally posted by: SEAL
does anyone here have a asrock dual-sata2 board and have 32bit vista running on it. i cant seem to get the intergrated ethernet to work.

Does Vista see that there is an ethernet adapter present?
Have you tried the XP divers off your install disc?

I used the latest drivers for my Netgear FA311 and they installed just fine.

 

[WT]

Addendum to my earlier post on this page:
I used the supplied mobo floppy and found Vista would not allow me to browse for the driver, only searching the root folder, so I manually created a driver disk. It saw that right away, but gave me an error that the device driver was not correct, check the path, blah blah blah ... I tried using Server2003 driver instead of XP with the same results, so it looks like it isn't liking that particular hardware (Promise PDC20579 controller).

 

[Armorize]

been playing around with vista since first longhorn beta. after 4053 lost interest until I heard about the cpp finally being available. the IT version differs from the CPP, its alot laggier, more processes run after installation. installed the CPP beautifully, only one error after installing winamp because WMP11 is a jerk and I'm constantly having problems with audio that I download to my computer from cds (liscencing info crap). according to ATi their video drivers for both 32 and 64 bit editions of vista is already in the OS. had issue with my game fear not displaying textures correctly, had to trick it a little by installing XP Pro x64 WDDM (not the catalyst driver). helped with some of the texture errors I was getting. Installing Trendmicro for 64 bit doesnt work and wont uninstall. Installed the Computer Associates beta antivirus, runs very very slow....but still beta. I cannot get my wireless usb adapter to work and that has been annoying. Transferring files from my vista pc to my wireless labtop via router faster then xp to xp. mapping network drives works considerable easier with vista than xp although of course whatever you are networking file/cd/w.e. takes a chunk out of performance from the extra space it takes to be made available offline but thats a duh anyways. To get Steam to work correctly I had to install it on a seperate hd and then put it in my vista pc and copy the files to the PF(x86) folder. works fine =P considerable frame rate differances ive noticed for all of my games comming from xp pro to vista....bla bla bla ya =P

 

[randym431]

I like it! ATI 9550 video. Bluetooth. Sata drives + usb drives. All seem to work well. Loads smoothly and fast. A few hangs here and there but vista seems to knock it off and stop it instead of telling you its not responding.
I have a pent 4, 2.6 and 2gb mem.

This is a beta. I'd bet they dump the nag screens in the final retail. Or allow you to turn them off totally. The nags may be part of the test/beta thinking. letting you know each step what is happening. Bad in a final but expected in a beta. And giving it free to everyone that wants it is the best user-friendly attempt in rolling out a new os in the finals. I have always thought highly of MS, in really trying to make their os more and more user friendly, so many can experience the pc.

I remember the old days and DOS. A black screen with a C: prompt. And good luck finding printer drivers for your word processor back in the DOS days. Or that new sound card. Or scanner. etc etc. Every dos program/game had to have specific drivers for your specific hardware. Remember?

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: Skitzer
Continuing on with my Vista experience...........
Well, it has been almost 5 days since I installed Vista on a second hard drive in my machine and I am having mixed feelings about it.
I have installed most of the programs and apps that I use in XP and so far they seem to be working Ok. Only 1 program has failed to install and work properly and that is Power DVD 6. I'm going to attempt to install Adobe Audition today.
Stuff I have installed so far:
WinRar, Winzip, Nero 6 Ultra, DVD Shrink, Office 2007 Beta, Adobe Acrobat reader, Macromedia Flash Player, Doom 3.
As stated earlier I installed the Netgear FA311 drivers, ATI drivers for my Radeon 9800 Pro, the Creative drivers for my Audigy 2 Value and the nForce 2 IDE drivers (just those, no need for the others as I don't use onboard ethernet or sound). Those driver installs went perfectly with no problems.
I use Firefox and Thunderbird in XP but have decided not to install them in Vista. Instead I want to keep using IE 7 and Outlook 2007 to get a better feel and to see how they hold up over time. IE 7 is working fine although I don't really like the layout. It hasn't crashed once and seems pretty quick at loading pages. I downloaded the Suse 10.1 Live DVD last night and burned it to disc and everything went without a problem.
The more I use Vista the more I like it. I have turned off the sidebar which I have no use for right now, (may change later if better gadgets come out). I have also disabled UAP but unfortunately now I get a warning that it is disabled everytime I boot in and the little red shield is always present in the taskbar.
My only real gripe about Vista is that everything takes so long to launch. When I open WMP it takes about 15 to 20 seconds to load. This is true for just about anything I launch. Once they are open they are pretty responsive and seem to work Ok but the waiting is starting to get to me. I have a Gig of memory and even after a fresh reboot, about 48% of physical memory is being used. I hate to think that I will have to go to 2 Gigs so Vista will run more effectively.
I have tried using the Classic desktop and turned off all the eye candy but it makes little or no difference in the wait for programs to launch. Is anyone else seeing this problem?
Doom 3 takes a long time to start but seems to play fine. I haven't experienced any lag or crashes once it is finally up and running. I'm going to install a few more games later tonight and see how they play but I'm pretty sure I won't have any problems other than the load time.
I still have a lot of evaluating left to do before I make a final judgement. The deal breaker is the long wait for programs to load. If I can figure out how to speed that up I will probably keep Vista and use it, otherwise that single issue will drive me to delete it and install Suse 10.1 on my spare drive.
I'll keep plugging away and give an update in a few days.

I think performance is a mixed bag right now. On one hand, its a new version of windows, so it's going to require more memory and a bit more CPU time, and theres nothing we can do about it. I don't thats so much of a big deal, it's been almost 5 years since XP came out, it's been a long time coming that 2gb will be the standard.

But on the other hand, if you can resign yourself to buying a $50 stick of RAM, I do think it is faster overall. The flash card cache actually does help a good deal, a 1gb thumb drive is cheap, and the low priority I/O really works well. Theres a lot less delays for menus etc, and it actually does a good job of preloading programs unlike XP.

I only wish I had more explicit control over the precache, that way I can tell it specifically what programs to have cached for when, what to never cache etc, instead of it trying to figure it out for me. THAT would be killer. Have it preload all my productivity apps early in the morning, and have it preload all my media players and startup files for games later in the day. It sort of tries to do this automatically now, but whenever windows tries to do me a favor, I usually cringe.

 

[Eug]

I got it running on my Core Duo MacBook, with 2.0 GB RAM and Intel GMA 950 graphics. Aero Glass works great (after I fiddled for some time with the drivers), but Flip 3D is utterly useless. It's like ALT-Tab with lipstick on.

Ethernet worked out of the box. My integrated wireless LAN works perfectly now, although I had to fiddle with the drivers for this too. So far I haven't gotten sound working properly (Sigmatel integrated audio), but I didn't have much time to try.

The install process really, really needs work. I don't know how many times I had to restart. I guess that's why it's called a beta. P.S. I'm not sure if it's the MacBook or Vista, but after I put the MacBook to sleep with Vista, it doesn't properly wake up. I can see everything on screen and move the cursor, but everything is dead. Not even the Windows Start button works.

And what's with all of those dialogue box nags that black out the rest of your desktop?

P.S. What version of Office are you guys running? Office 2003 or Office 2007 beta? Is Office 2007 beta stable and compatible enough to use full time? I use Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. I don't use Access.

 

[Looney]

Suspend works fine on my laptop (iXPS2). As for the dialogue box, that's just the UAC. It blacks out the rest of the desktop because they found that you could exploit it by putting another window ontop of the real dialogue box (i assume this is because of Aero glass), and have people accept malicious things. As for all the reboots in the installation... i don't recall that many, just one in fact.

 

[Zedtom]

I've been running it for two days. This box is rated a 1, with a NVidia GeForce 4 MX-440 and Duron 1.8 GHz with 768 MB's of RAM. This is not my main PC, and I'm glad that I don't have to deal with the bootloader hijack on that box.

I can't utilize the Aero features, but have turned off all the eye candy anyway- which I do on all of my installs.

The best tweak is always a matter of debate- but I always defragment the partition the OS is installed on. I use Paragon Hard Disk Manager and it makes a noticable difference. The only issue I've seen is with menus opening slowly on first use.

I am using Firefox 1.5.0.4 right now with no problems at all.

I was initally unimpressed, but now I like it.

 

[clickynext]

When does the beta end, and what happens when it ends?

 

[CaptnKirk]

Originally posted by: clickynext
When does the beta end, and what happens when it ends?

If you are on the Beta Test - CD Order, you will get a primary disc now of the present build configuration.
Rumor is that the next phase will be a release of what's called 'Release Candidate 1' about 1/2 way between
the June 2006 release of Beta 2 and the expiration date of june 2007 - a years span.
look for that one as early as November, or as late as January.

Some rumor-monger said "don't let anyone know I said in August . . "

Then after June 2007, who knows . . Beta 3 with steroids?


---------------------------------------------------

As the stomach turns . . .

Beta continues. If you drag off the word 'computer' on the program start screen, you get a shortcut, like the old 'My Computer'.
It's a qiuck way to access explore & work with the drives.

Going into the system & finding my launch icons for my XP security cache, Ad-Aware launches, updates & runs cleanly. Faster too.
Same for SpyBot - clean & a little quicker.

CounterSpy is dead
Avast! won't launch. (missing .dll) - light run if from same drive. I'll check it out.
Norton is dead as well.

Update: Download & install Avast! to Vista side of the world, & it loads & runs well - just like in XP.

 

[WT]

Latest news on my dilemma:

After trying three different Promise SATA IDE drivers, I gave up and just booted into W2k. I then decided, what the hell, I'll see if I can't run the install right from the DVD. Sure enough, the damn thing ID'd my empty second HD and is installing on that drive right now. Simple as that ! Good grief, sometimes a person can really complicate the process by overthinking.

 

[wiin]

Originally posted by: angrynerdrock
visually, its beautiful. i will definately get it when the problems are fixed.

otherwise, so far i hate it. its incompatible with about half the drivers i throw at it, half the software doesnt work....im going back to xp. maybe RC1 will fare better...but as of right now im not happy. hell nero wont even install

It is also not compatible with AVG . Vista blocked the AVG installation.

 

[RobertR1]

My feedback:

Positives:

The new Disk administrator seems really nice with it's ability to expand/shrink volume and create new partitions.
IE7 in vista seems to work a lot faster than IE7 in XP
Aero is aesthetics and does well at that.
The Windows Firewall is now really nice and basically a full blown fully customizable software firewall.
I like the new Explorer and the layouts for various windows. Took a couple of days to adapt but they seem more natural now.
Expanded Search feature is actually useful now!
Flip 3d (needs AA and clear font), Alt + TAB and your preview bubbles to be constantly upated is very nice.
The Desktop Toolbar is nice since it allows me to hide all my desktop icons which in itself in a nice feature as is making the "Show Desktop" a window on it's own.
Media Player 11 is well done.

Negatives:
UAS needs to be turned off asap or you'll hate vista.
You have to select the "run" option manually to appear in the Startmenu.
Give me an option to Expand the "All programs" not just keep them in the same start Window.
There is not a "Media Player Toolbar" regardless of checking it or not.
I want to use gadgets without needing the sidebar open.
Media Player 11 needs to allow Ipod Sync.


Have not tried:
Media Center
Gaming: not even going to waste my time installing. I'll use my XP boot for that.

 

[stash]

UAS needs to be turned off asap or you'll hate vista.

Please leave it (UAC) on and file bugs. Turning it off defeats the purpose and doesn't do anyone any good.

You have to select the "run" option manually to appear in the Startmenu.

That is of course your choice, but have you tried the search in the start menu? It also works as the run dialog does. Hit the windows key and type your command.

Give me an option to Expand the "All programs" not just keep them in the same start Window.

Give this time, it really does work better. Or better yet, just hit winkey and type what you want to run (winkey+mahjong, winkey+defrag, etc). The start search will find it a lot faster than you can usually.

There is not a "Media Player Toolbar" regardless of checking it or not.

File a bug please.

I want to use gadgets without needing the sidebar open.

That's a good suggestion, you should submit feedback on that.

Media Player 11 needs to allow Ipod Sync.

Amen! but alas, that is up to Apple.

 

[RobertR1]

Stash,

I actually (for once) did use the feedback option. I figured if I'm going to be using it for many years to come, might as well see if I can help improve it.

As for UAS, I like the concept but it's far too intrusive and I did submit feed back about that so if in later builds it's a bit "smarter" I'll leave it on but it stays off for now.

Thanks for the Search tip! works great. No "run" command for now

 

[RobertR1]

Anyone figure out how to make the Creative Vista driver work?? I downloaded the Vista Beta Driver for Audigy 2 cards but it fails during the install. Device manager shows it as a bad driver install.