Vista Issues/Resolutions

noel · Post by **noel** » January 26, 2007, 10:48 am

I'm hoping this thread will end up being a sticky. What I'd like to do is have people post issues they're having with Vista, and what they did to resolve them. The format will be below:

Issue: (Brief statement of the issue)
Brief Description: (actually describe with as much detail as necessary what the issue is)
Status: (resolved/open)
Resolution: (what steps you took to resolve the issue)

In this way we can help each other as much as possible with resolving issues or helping other people avoid issues with Vista.

noel · Post by **noel** » January 26, 2007, 10:56 am

Issue: Itunes unable to authorize music or play purchased music.
Brief Description: Itunes software launches fine. When you attempt to play one of your Itunes store purchased songs, or any songs encoded in AAC format, you're prompted to authorize your PC. The authorization is successful, but the song doesn't play. Attempting to play the song again will prompt you to authorize your PC again (over and over again).
Status: Resolved
Resolution: Change the Itunes program properties so that you always 'run it as administrator'. This is necessary so that Itunes has the necessary control to write to the files and if you have it organizing your music for you to move the files around.

noel · Post by **noel** » January 26, 2007, 11:02 am

Issue: Windows Experience Index score is never completed and it always shows that new hardware has been found.
Brief Description: You're able to run the Windows Experience Index test, the test completes, but the score stays grayed out and is never your 'official score'
Status: Resolved
Resolution: This problem occurs when you have hardware in your PC that either doesn't have a driver (not installed), has a faulty driver, or is just having some general issue. If this is the case, one thing you might see is:

In the C:\Widows\Performance\winSAT\winsat.txt log you'll see the following error:

winsat\main.cpp > Assessment FAILED due to an error

noel · Post by **noel** » January 26, 2007, 11:16 am

Issue: Firefox is unable to play windows media player 11 (WMP11) content found on the Web.
Brief Description: Same as issue.
Status: Workaround available, hopefully there will be a true solution in the future.
Resolution: This one is really on MS. There's zero support from MS on making the WMP11 plugin work with Firefox. Here's the information for the workaround:

Firefox is designed to automatically pick up the Windows Media Player Netscape plugin files when you start it up, so then there is no configuration necessary on your part. This has worked fine for Windows XP, but for Vista, something isn’t right. You won’t see WMP at all, instead you get told to install the “missing plugin,” which the service can’t find.

What’s going on here? All previous versions of Windows included the Netscape plugin, but it seems Vista has cut that part out. It is easy to solve.

If you are dual-booting with another version of Windows, the easiest way is to copy a couple of files: npdrmv2.dll; npdsplay.dll; and npwmsdrm.dll. You’ll find these in the Program Files\Windows Media Player directory in your older Windows partition. Copy these to the plugins folder where Firefox is installed (usually Program Files\Mozilla Firefox).

If not, you’ll need to download these files. You can get them each: npdsplay.dll; npwmsdrm.dll; and npdrmv2.dll. As above, place them in your plugins folder where you installed Firefox.

Once you are done, the browser will instantly recognise the new plugin(s) and you’ll be able to start using them.

Animalor · Post by **Animalor** » January 26, 2007, 11:22 am

noel wrote:Issue: Windows Experience Index score is never completed and it always shows that new hardware has been found.
Brief Description: You're able to run the Windows Experience Index test, the test completes, but the score stays grayed out and is never your 'official score'
Status: Resolved
Resolution: This problem occurs when you have hardware in your PC that either doesn't have a driver (not installed), has a faulty driver, or is just having some general issue. If this is the case, one thing you might see is:
In the C:\Widows\Performance\winSAT\winsat.txt log you'll see the following error:

winsat\main.cpp > Assessment FAILED due to an error

My machine used to hang doing this test and would also hang whenever I was playing WMV content.

Turns out that my video card was on it's last legs and dying a slow death.

noel · Post by **noel** » January 26, 2007, 11:27 am

Issue: Logitech input drivers unavailable
Brief Description: Though all of the hardware's basic functionality will work fine, there are currently no Vista drivers available for mice, keyboards, etc. from Logitech. Any advanced functionality (such as the G15s LCD) is currently not working.
Status: Open
Resolution: There are selected users who are getting some of this stuff to work. As an example, the XP version of Setpoint 3.10 will install if you play with it long enough (mess with Admin settings, change compatibility mode, etc.), but it doesn't have all your functionality and it has various issues.

There are also currently no beta drivers available. Logitech's attitude seems to be that they'll release everything on the 30th to coincide with Vista, but be aware that if you get drivers from them on the 30th, they might have issues.

Animalor · Post by **Animalor** » January 26, 2007, 11:30 am

Issue - Where do I find updated Vista video drivers?
Brief Description - MS has completely overhauled the way the Video system in Vista works and as such, XP drivers will not work with Vista. New drivers from card makers are required.
Status - Card makers are scrambling to get working drivers(which will not be necessarily optimised) available to the public. Not all hardware will be supported by Jan 29th so make sure your card is supported or you may not have access to the new Aero interface(which is the main new feature of Vista.) Be patient. If your card is not supported, it may soon be.
Resolution: Here are the links to the driver download section of each major card maker's reference drivers. Please note that these drivers are generally unsupported by your hardware maker (XFX/BFG/EVGA etc)
Intel Extreme Graphics
http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scripts ... 9&lang=eng

Nvidia
http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp

ATi
http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html

noel · Post by **noel** » January 26, 2007, 11:34 am

The vast majority of users won't have to 'find drivers' for their video cards, because they're included in the release. The driver that comes with Vista will support up to the 7950 out of the box. 8800 users are not so lucky.

Animalor · Post by **Animalor** » January 26, 2007, 11:37 am

I've found the MS driver only supported enough to get the aero interface to work properly and in a lot of cases left out things like OpenGL support and a lot of the advanced features.

If you're going to do any gaming, I would recommend getting the reference drivers.

Post by **Xouqoa** » January 26, 2007, 9:31 pm

Creative drivers for Vista are all still in beta unless you own a X-Fi... pretty lame.

noel · Post by **noel** » January 26, 2007, 10:49 pm

Xouqoa wrote:Creative drivers for Vista are all still in beta unless you own a X-Fi... pretty lame.

EAX is currently not working. Not sure who I blame more for this, MS or Creative. I'm inclined to lean Creative's way on this particular issue.

Voronwë · Post by **Voronwë** » January 27, 2007, 6:21 pm

probably Creative's fault.

I work for a software company, and we won't have our Vista compatible client out on 1/30, but we will have it out on 2/15 which was our next scheduled patch. It wasn't a surprise to anybody this was coming =)

Sargeras · Post by **Sargeras** » February 1, 2007, 3:27 pm

I just love Microsoft's "solution" for this.

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/01/1457252

Knarlz · Post by **Knarlz** » February 1, 2007, 5:21 pm

Bud Light Presents...
Real American Heroes (reaaalllll american heroooessss...)
Today we salute you, Mr Computer Software Exploit Finder (computer software exploit fii-inder)
While others are wasting away their lives drinking, dating, and and having fun, you're hunched over a screen, plowing through code.(hunch plow hunchie plow)
You may not have seen the sun in days, but thats ok- you do this for the greater good.(greaaater goooo-ooodd)
Only YOU could realize that a carefully crafted web favorites icon [microsoft.com] could potentially bring the world to its knees.(Down on its kneeee--eesss)
So crack open an Ice Cold Bud Light, Oh Overload of Overflow, because without you, CmdrTaco would have to get a real job.

noel · Post by **noel** » February 4, 2007, 6:42 pm

BTW If any of you are having a legitimate issue in Vista, please feel free to post it and I'll look into a solution for you. I'm actually doing some stuff with a group in DoD who are looking at Vista for future installations, so I'm working with it in various scenarios as well as on my home PC.

Fash · Post by **Fash** » February 5, 2007, 2:21 am

Heres one that happened to me:

Windows update was installing 6 updates... at the same time I was attempting to load drivers for a DLink DFE538tx ethernet adapter. The pc completely froze. Upon hard reboot, it was unable to completely boot even in safe mode.

I had to pop back in the vista dvd and do a system restore to the point right before the windows updates.

--

I'm not really all that pleased with it... I would have to buy a new pc to be satisfied... which is probably what I'm going to do.

Ebumar · Post by **Ebumar** » February 5, 2007, 6:49 pm

Wow... if you guys want, I can post my work's wiki on it. We have over 100 issues resolved...

Truant · Post by **Truant** » February 5, 2007, 8:32 pm

Fash wrote:Heres one that happened to me:

Windows update was installing 6 updates... at the same time I was attempting to load drivers for a DLink DFE538tx ethernet adapter. The pc completely froze. Upon hard reboot, it was unable to completely boot even in safe mode.

It's pretty much common sense that you do not install hardware drivers while multitasking, or especially while installing other things. There's even a warning informing you of that on every program that uses installshield...you know, that one you clicked without reading before the installation would begin.

Blame it on Vista all you want, that was user error.

noel · Post by **noel** » February 5, 2007, 8:47 pm

Ebumar wrote:Wow... if you guys want, I can post my work's wiki on it. We have over 100 issues resolved...

We're going to gear this thread more to the audience on this board. If you feel you've got some stuff that fits that description, feel free to post it, but follow the format.

Kelshara · Post by **Kelshara** » March 9, 2007, 5:24 pm

WinHlp32.exe not included in Vista. Breaks a LOT of help files for applications.

Solution: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... layLang=en

Thanks a whole fucking lot Microsoft. My hatred for you grows daily the more I work in development.

Kelshara · Post by **Kelshara** » March 13, 2007, 9:54 pm

Correction to the above: After further testing there is no resolution other than recreating help in a different format. Yay.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » June 21, 2007, 12:26 am

Here's one.

Issue: Getting a constant 40% CPU usage with no apps in use.
Brief Description: I woke up this morning to see my CPU usage bouncing around 30-50% usage.
Status: Almost closed. disconnecting second SATA HD got rid of Hardware Interrupts/High CPU Usage
Resolution: Second SATA drive is probably crapping out

I was going nuts looking at my CPU usage being so high. The first thing I did was check my tasks. The task manager under processes shows 96% CPU idle time but at the bottom of the task manages shows something different:

With nothing to help me there, I lucked out and found an app called "Process Explorer" from Sysinternals. A free thingy that shows what's going on in more detail.

After starting up Process Explorer, it looks like my cycles are being caused by Hardware Interrupts:

I'm at a loss for what it is. I unplugged what I could think of...Terastation, USB mouse, Keyboard, router and nothing changed the constant drain of CPU cycles. Rebooting helps nothing. I haven't installed any new drivers lately.

My computer seems to be operating ok, but something is screwy going on in the background.

Any ideas?

I tried to run a new "Windows Experience Index" to see if any of the processor, Memory, Graphics or Hard Drive scores dropped but I can't seem to run the index. (says unable to calculate because the user canceled the experience)

Edit: it seems to be only affecting one of the CPU cores:

Edit: semi resolved due to bad second SATA drive. (no porn was lost)...was used as Linux test drive and 360 image storage.

Tuberok · Post by **Tuberok** » June 21, 2007, 2:28 pm

Vista issue I was having resolved.. Just got new MacBook Pro. OS X/XP pro allows me to run everything I want to for the time being. Still have Vista on my home desktop but have not turned that box on in a while.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » June 21, 2007, 4:55 pm

My issue wasn't Vista related. Turned out to be a bad hard drive. I did make another Acronis True Image backup of my OS partition last night after determining the problems. Hard drives going bad are a fact of life. Don't forget to back up your OS partition at least once a month if you want to save yourself 12 hours of OS installs, application re-installs, configurations, lost documents, etc.

Animalor · Post by **Animalor** » January 15, 2008, 4:41 pm

It's been a full year. Have all your issues been resolved yet?

I'm running Vista on the PC's I use on a regular basis right now. Business on my work laptop, Home Premium with an HP system I bought recently (A6235X) and Ultimate on my old day to day PC and everything was running extremely well. (Mind you not as snappy as XP on my old PC cause of the lowish ram but everything was stable and worked.

Have you guys been able to fix all your issues?

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » January 15, 2008, 4:48 pm

No issues here. Looks like that last problem I had wasnt' Vista related anyway.

I like Vista. Haven't noticed much difference between 2GB and 4GB (3.5gb) RAM but didn't expect to for the most part.

miir · Post by **miir** » September 22, 2008, 6:12 pm

Replaced my motherboard/RAM/CPU today... didn't even have to reinstall Vista. It just happily updated all the drivers (mobo was even a completely different chipset) and was finished in about 10-15 minutes.

No bluescreens, no crashes, one reboot.

I

Vista.

Boogahz · Post by **Boogahz** » September 22, 2008, 7:36 pm

wow, didn't think it would work so easy with the MoBo change. That was one of the things that several people thought would constitute a second computer

Aabidano · Post by **Aabidano** » June 16, 2010, 10:03 am

Kind of late but I had my first experience with Vista lately, what a horrid piece of doody out of the box.

Glad I went straight from XP to 7 at home.

Kluden · Post by **Kluden** » June 16, 2010, 10:07 am

I recently got a free laptop or 4...no HD's of course...but put one back together, installed my old copy of vista. I really think the true magnitude of its suckiness was way overblown, considering after using Win7 since it came out, its basically the same damn thing. vista hate, while somewhat deserved, wasn't all it was made out to be by Jobs Mob.

Animalor · Post by **Animalor** » June 16, 2010, 10:58 am

Vista started to suck much much less after the hardware makers got their heads out of their asses and started making drivers for the OS.

SP1 helped quite a bit as well.

I think it may be high time this particular thread be unstickied and allows to die.

VeeshanVault

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