Problems with windows vista

Below is a list of known problems on Windows Vista. If you know of more issues specific to Vista, please let me know by posting some comments.

The Windows explorer in Vista has changed quite a bit, and one of those changes was to abandon the additional columns but introduce a new "property system". Since the property system is file type based, we can't add a column for Subversion information anymore.
The context menu may look wrong. That's because I use ownerdrawn menus. Since Vista changed the appearance of the context menu, it switches back to the 'old' look as soon as it detects an extension which uses ownerdrawn menus.

Exporting from a working copy only copies some empty folders.
This bug is due to a change in the SHFileOperation API. Since the API doesn't work the same anymore on Vista as it did on Win2k or XP, we've already used another way for exporting. If you're affected by this, you can try a nightly build.
UI rendering
There are some problems when resizing the dialogs. After resizing, black areas and artifacts of borders and other controls can still show over other controls. Minimizing and restoring the dialogs will get rid of those and the dialogs will show correctly again.
This has been fixed on trunk, you can use a nightly build if you like.
Version 1.4.2 has some problems with the explorer. Use version 1.4.3 which has this fixed.
very slow repository access.
If every access to the repository is very slow and sometimes even times out, even though everything is working ok from an XP machine, then you most likely hit a special problem in Vista with the TCP-Autotuning feature. To get rid of these problems, open a command prompt and type netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled. You can read more about these problems on the next publications

Drivers for Windows Vista

Ya know, despite the operating system’s countless shortcomings, I have to say that Windows Vista’s driver support has exceeded my expectations. Let me give you two living examples.

Story #1: My Silicon Image 3531 (eSATA controller) was not recognized when I first installed Vista. I didn’t think much of it, as I don’t own any eSATA drives. Still, it’s annoying when a piece of hardware isn’t recogn… wait a second. Tonight, Windows Update tells me there’s a new driver available for my motherboard’s chipset. I install it, reboot, and am promptly prompted with the newly-familiar “I don’t know what the heck this is” hardware wizard. Did it not take? Well, it took the chipset update for Windows to recognize the Silicon Image controller. To my surprise, the wizard downloaded and installed the updated Silicon Image driver from the Windows Update repository. Smooth as silk.

Story #2: I just picked up a new laser printer all-in-one center (an HP LaserJet 3052). I popped in the CD to install the drivers and software, as that’s what it tells me to do - at least, for Windows XP and earlier. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get the installation program to complete. “Run as Administrator” didn’t work, nor did logging in as the Administrator and installing it from that account. I was just about ready to give up, when I decided to plug the cable int… wait a second. Vista recognized every single function of the device - from printer to scanner.

Windows XP vs. Vista

Mainstream users will certainly appreciate the improved usability of Windows Vista, and the average office/multimedia user will likely never notice some lacks. However, the performances of Windows Vista requires more dedication. In particular, two things require an in-depth analysis:

• Basic Windows Vista Performance
  How does Windows Vista perform compared to Windows XP? Will applications execute equally quickly, or will they even run slower due to the new features and the AeroGlass interface?
• Windows Vista Performance Enhancements
  With SuperFetch and ReadyBoost, Windows Vista introduces two features to make use of today's technology in order to improve the user experience. This means that more application data should be actively cached into all available memory (SuperFetch), whether that is physical RAM or a USB Flash memory device (ReadyBoost). Microsoft's goal was to create balanced performance by removing delays in everyday work.

This article deals with basic application execution under Windows Vista Enterprise, which is representative of the other editions. By putting together a high-end test system and by performing a comprehensive benchmark session both with Windows XP Professional and with Windows Vista Enterprise we will see if there are differences.

Although the main Windows Vista core has undergone lot of modifications, many of your applications will work with Vista. There is, however, no guarantee. You should definitely try any essential software on Windows before you upgrade.

Process scheduling and thread pooling have been improved in Vista; a deadlock protection mechanism and hardware partitioning for virtualization support were added, together with many more features.

We found Vista updates for the Futuremark benchmark programs 3DMark and PCMark, as well as the popular data compression tool WinRAR. Lots of video-related software such as DivX could no longer be installed; new versions are required. The popular audio player WinAMP 5.32 throws up an error at startup, yet it works properly. Quake IV can still be executed, but the installation program did not work. Applications that run their own memory management won't benefit from Vista's SuperFetch function. For example, Adobe Photoshop takes care of creating a temporary work file every time it launches - Vista has no access to this process and cannot speed it up.

There are some types of software that you should only use if they have been specifically designed for Windows Vista: firewalls, anti-spyware and anti-virus software needs to be Vista-Ready.

Windows Vista doesn't require more energy than Windows XP, whether running under full CPU load or idle. We also tried to stimulate the power consumption at the plug by aggressively moving windows or by switching between multiple tasks in 3D mode (Windows key + [Tab]). We would have expected an increased power draw, since Vista and its AeroGlass interface are more 3D-intensive and require 3D acceleration. However, there was no noticeable increase in power requirements due to the involvement of the 3D subsystem. This might be different with automated loads, but a single user cannot cause sufficient 3D load to influence the power draw.

Windows Vista clearly is not a great new performer when it comes to executing single applications at maximum speed. Although we only looked at the 32-bit version of Windows Vista Enterprise, we do not expect the 64-bit edition to be faster (at least not with 32-bit applications).

Overall, applications performed as expected, or executed slightly slower than under Windows XP. The synthetic benchmarks such as Everest, PCMark05 or Sandra 2007 show that differences are non-existent on a component level. We also found some programs that refused to work, and others that seem to cause problems at first but eventually ran properly. In any case, we recommend watching for Vista-related software upgrades from your software vendors.

There are some programs that showed deeply disappointing performance. Unreal Tournament 2004 and the professional graphics benchmarking suite SPECviewperf 9.03 suffered heavily from the lack of support for the OpenGL graphics library under Windows Vista. This is something we expected, and we clearly advise against replacing Windows XP with Windows Vista if you need to run professional graphics applications. Both ATI and Nvidia will offer OpenGL support in upcoming driver releases, but it remains to be seen if and how other graphics vendors or Microsoft may offer it.

We are disappointed that CPU-intensive applications such as video transcoding with XviD (DVD to XviD MPEG4) or the MainConcept H.264 Encoder performed 18% to nearly 24% slower in our standard benchmark scenarios. Both benchmarks finished much quicker under Windows XP. There aren't newer versions available, and we don't see immediate solutions to this issue.

There is good news as well: we did not find evidence that Windows Vista's new and fancy AeroGlass interface consumes more energy than Windows XP's 2D desktop. Although our measurements indicate a 1 W increase in power draw at the plug, this is too little of a difference to draw any conclusions. Obviously, the requirements for displaying all elements in 3D, rotating and moving them aren't enough to heat up graphics processors. This might also be a result of Windows Vista's more advanced implementation of ACPI 2.0 (and parts of 3.0), which allows the control of power of system components separately.

Our hopes that Vista might be able to speed up applications are gone. First tests with 64-bit editions result in numbers similar to our 32-bit results, and we believe it's safe to say that users looking for more raw performance will be disappointed with Vista. Vista is the better Windows, because it behaves better, because it looks better and because it feels better. But it cannot perform better than Windows XP. Is this a K.O. for Windows Vista in the enthusiast space?

If you really need your PC to finish huge encoding, transcoding or rendering workloads within a defined time frame, yes, it is. Don't do it; stay with XP. But as long as you don't need to finish workloads in record time, we believe it makes sense to consider these three bullet points:

• Vista runs considerably more services and thus has to spend somewhat more resources on itself. Indexing, connectivity and usability don't come for free.
• There is a lot of CPU performance available today! We've got really fast dual core processors, and even faster quad cores will hit the market by the middle of the year. Even though you will lose application performance by upgrading to Vista, today's hardware is much faster than yesterday's, and tomorrow's processors will clearly leap even further ahead.
• No new Windows release has been able to offer more application performance than its predecessor.

And you? What do you prefer? Vista Or Xp ?