Stabilizing Windows Vista

Yes, Vista is the hot topic again. It has been almost three months now and I feel a little bit better with the OS that initially ruined my life. Things are settling down a bit and I can even point to some features I like in Vista :) How about that?

I have got used to the new Windows Explorer features. Still have a feeling they do not behave the way I want them to - I keep changing the view too often, they keep reverting to some defaults with those big folder icons. They must be looking good on a 1080p, 50 inch TV, but my laptop is only 12 inch, so I definitely prefer a more compacted view. And it freezes less frequently. Observing the behavior of the system I nailed down the blue screens and freezes to one certain kind of application - a virtual CD/DVD drive. My Thinkpad X61 does not have a CD/DVD drive, so Lenovo shipped an Intervideo Virtual Drive application to allow making an "image" of a disk on the hard drive. I do not watch DVDs on my laptop (if I did, I would have bought a machine with a DVD drive...), so I uninstalled the application. And voila - Windows Vista stopped freezing (ok, not completely, but the failure rate dropped by at least 90 percent). I do not watch movies on my laptop, but occasionally I play some games and as most of the games implement some sort of copy protection based on the presence of the original game CD, I thought I would be handy to install my faithful Virtual Clone Drive by Slysoft. And just after I started using the Virtual Clone Drive, my Vista started freezing again, the same way as it used to when the Intervideo Virtual Drive was present on the system. And again, uninstalling the Virtual Drive has brought back decent stability. So there must be some system level incompatibility with virtual drive - type applications. I am not messing with that anymore. Will try after Vista SP1...

The second application I have been really missing after moving from Windows XP to Vista, has been the PDF Creator, a virtual, GPL - licensed PDF printer driver, used to create PDF documents out of everything. PDF Creator hist some Vista bump and it officially does not work. There is even a $150 bounty offered, but seems not enough... Yesterday I finally moved to the PrimoPDF. Free and works so far without a glitch... So my reference XP - based functionality is almost restored now...

I promised to tell you what I do like in Vista... OK, the first thing is the Instant Search. It IS better than the Google Desktop I used to use in XP. It is better integrated with the desktop and the Windows Explorer and does not lose the track when the Outlook cache (OST) is rebuilt. So Microsoft vs. Google is 1:0, at least as far as we talk about the local resources and the desktop. And the second thing I really like is how fast the machine wakes up from the standby state.

Did I say fast? Vista and fast? Yes indeed... I am not sure how much the X61 BIOS contributes here, but really I am at my desktop in about four seconds from the moment I press the power button. And that includes authentication via the biometric fingerprint reader. I also like how it handles wireless (WiFi) connection after wake-up. Seems it does not refresh the IP settings from DHCP... just behaves as the old ones are still valid... so after the abovementioned four seconds, the WiFi connection is pumping data... Something just not achievable on Windows XP... Accesspoint association and DHCP refresh itself used to take at least 10 seconds...

I think I have learned about Vista quite a bit during the three months of 20 hours spent with it every day... It is a bit like driving a new car... First thing you usually don't like it... Things are different and less predictable... Then you get used to it, learning how it handles and in the end it becomes your old car and you have to like it, want it or not... there is no going back...

Next week I will tell you how to make Vista run even faster. I did it last week. So stay tuned :)