Channel 9 Forums - Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

phreaks — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 03:01:16 GMT

That's it, I've finally had enough with Vista.

I will be uninstalling Vista on my home boxes and reverting back to XP & Win2k3 as soon as I get some free time to back up close to a terabyte of data. reformat 2 boxes, reinstall XP and then reinstall and configure all my apps.

After months of wasted time and frustration, I'm simply giving up.

I suspect my Vista registry is FUBAR'd, silverlight doesn't work, flash doesn't work, adobe acrobat PRO doesn't work. ASPx pages take 5 full minutes on the first run when launching from VS.NET, the list goes on and on and on.

3rd party components such as DevExpress and Infragistics are unable to create toolbox icons in VS.NET....

I don't have access to literally hundreds of registry keys, in fact, no one has access to them. Even psexec can't replace the rights on them since apparently they have NO Owner.

This is absolutely retarded, I have spent at least 30 full hours trying unsuccessfully to fix these issues, or to obtain support for them.

My Event Log wrote:

Product: Microsoft Silverlight -- Error 1402. Could not open key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes\AgControl.AgControl.1.0\CLSID. System error 5. Verify that you have sufficient access to that key, or contact your support personnel.

What a pain in my a$$.
Microsoft, I'm not impressed; not at all.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

typemismatch — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 03:08:37 GMT

maybe wait for XP SP3 - then you get to go back to something better than what you left ....

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

me — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 03:09:22 GMT

that's what ive been thinking too... sp3 makes xp faster than vista... and i like xp..

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

phreaks — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 03:17:13 GMT

When is SP3 for XP being released?

I can't convey how utterly disappointed I am with Vista.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Sven Groot — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 03:19:09 GMT

phreaks wrote:

I can't convey how utterly disappointed I am with Vista.

I'm sorry you feel that way, especially since my own experience has been so completely different.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Minh — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 03:24:04 GMT

Vista is a 1.0 product after all.

My experience has been mixed. I would say that it REALLY, REALLY helps to have Vista on "approved" hardware.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Apogeum — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 03:46:08 GMT

Haven't even tried it yet, nor will I. As far as I am concerned XP does everything I need beautifully!

Also I need tools to work not toys. Vista is a toy (no offense). But I am really looking foward to explore Windows 2008 Server.

I hope Windows 7 will go with "less is more". Or maybe come with a special "japanese-garden-mode" quiet yet beautiful.

man, I must be getting old...

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

phreaks — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 03:53:54 GMT

Sven Groot wrote:

phreaks wrote:
I can't convey how utterly disappointed I am with Vista.

I'm sorry you feel that way, especially since my own experience has been so completely different.

Yea, I guess its hit or miss.

I suspect something went wrong with my install, because its been one issue after another and it's really unfortunate that it has gotten to this point; where it just doesn't make sense for me to continue losing time trying to work around registry rights issues.

I've tried hard to solicite feedback from MS regarding my problems using various avenues; but they just seem to ignore me.

After about 3 months, I think I've put enough of an effort in, I really wanted to like Vista.

All my hardware is Vista Approved, the one piece that wasn't, I replaced the day after I installed.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

phreaks — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 04:13:18 GMT

CompGuy101 wrote:

phreaks wrote:
When is SP3 for XP being released?

I can't convey how utterly disappointed I am with Vista.

It's out now! W00T!! I'm downloading it now from Windows Update.

Windows XP will always be my favorite OS!

What's XP SP3 all about anyway?

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

LaBomba — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 06:26:04 GMT

I'm going to get an Asus EEEpc and put xp on it...with SP3, i'm sure it'll run great.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

YearOfTheLinuxDesktop — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 07:11:19 GMT

LaBomba wrote:

I'm going to get an Asus EEEpc and put xp on it...with SP3, i'm sure it'll run great.

it would run great if the SDD didn't had a ~5mb/s performance and if the 1Ghz celeron CPU didn't perform way lower than expected

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

evildictaitor — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 07:22:32 GMT

phreaks wrote:

I don't have access to literally hundreds of registry keys, in fact, no one has access to them. Even psexec can't replace the rights on them since apparently they have NO Owner.

It's not a permissions error. It looks like your registry got corrupted on disk, the cure for which is a reformat. If your registry dies then it's not really surprising that everything else dies pretty soon after.

This tends to happen if you kill your computer during a shutdown, or if you break your harddisk...

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Bas — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 08:43:02 GMT

littleguru wrote:

Another point is that this registry thing needs to fixed in one way or another. It can't be that you need to reinstall your whole system, because one component failed. This is not possible!!

Isn't this kind of unavoidable? I mean, there's always going to be an essential component.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Christian Liensberger — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 08:44:14 GMT

evildictaitor wrote:

phreaks wrote:

I don't have access to literally hundreds of registry keys, in fact, no one has access to them. Even psexec can't replace the rights on them since apparently they have NO Owner.

It's not a permissions error. It looks like your registry got corrupted on disk, the cure for which is a reformat. If your registry dies then it's not really surprising that everything else dies pretty soon after.

This tends to happen if you kill your computer during a shutdown, or if you break your harddisk...

That's what I thought too. Seems like a broken registry after all, which could also happen in XP.

But it's true that XP feels a lot faster than Vista. It's a lot more responsive, even after having installed SP1 on Vista... but some of this could also come from the transitions: like fading in each windows, fading out etc. But sure, not all comes from that. I noticed only after havin had XP and Vista installed side by side on my notebook. Vista seems to be slower, if you go back to XP. Even though I seem to have a pretty reasonable hardware and get 4.0 in Vista scores...

Another point is that this registry thing needs to fixed in one way or another. It can't be that you need to reinstall your whole system, because one component failed. This is not possible!!

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Sven Groot — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 08:46:26 GMT

littleguru wrote:

Back it up - hide that from the user! Make it better. Find ways...

Congratulations! You've just reinvented System Restore.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Christian Liensberger — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 08:47:50 GMT

Sven Groot wrote:

littleguru wrote:
Back it up - hide that from the user! Make it better. Find ways...

Congratulations! You've just reinvented System Restore.

soooo... why doesn't this work on his side? Looks like it doesn't work properly to me. You can disable system restore. The registry backup system should be critical and not possible to disable in any ways!

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Christian Liensberger — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 08:48:08 GMT

Bas wrote:

littleguru wrote:
Another point is that this registry thing needs to fixed in one way or another. It can't be that you need to reinstall your whole system, because one component failed. This is not possible!!

Isn't this kind of unavoidable? I mean, there's always going to be an essential component.

Back it up - hide that from the user! Make it better. Find ways... I can't understand why the registry hasn't turned into an SQL database years ago.

Imagine you would fly in an airplane (since we are on c9 here) and the pilot would tell you: damn we can't do anything anymore. Our registry is broken...

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

cheong — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 08:49:56 GMT

CompGuy101 wrote:

Microsofties, can we please have a changelog?

Here you are.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Sven Groot — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 08:50:11 GMT

littleguru wrote:

Sven Groot wrote:

littleguru wrote:
Back it up - hide that from the user! Make it better. Find ways...

Congratulations! You've just reinvented System Restore.

soooo... why doesn't this work on his side?

Probably because the back up also got corrupted.

EDIT: A second copy is exactly what FAT did with the file tables. It's not a good solution. When the backup and the real copy don't match, how do you tell which one is corrupt?

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Bas — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 08:50:39 GMT

littleguru wrote:

Bas wrote:

littleguru wrote:
Another point is that this registry thing needs to fixed in one way or another. It can't be that you need to reinstall your whole system, because one component failed. This is not possible!!

Isn't this kind of unavoidable? I mean, there's always going to be an essential component.

Back it up - hide that from the user! Make it better. Find ways...

Backing it up might work.. but then you'd run into differences between your restored registry and what happened on the rest of your harddisk in the mean time. System restore isn't that great for that reason either.

Hiding it from the user would just result in threads by some people here going "Windows is not allowing me acces to my own computer!"

Making it better though... I agree completely. As long as we don't end up with endless amounts of xml files in thousands of subfolders.

Anyway, the real answer to this, of course, would've been WHS. Because then you'd just boot from a CD and return your PC into the exact state it was in a day before the registry got corrupted.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Sven Groot — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 08:51:13 GMT

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Phreaks already try reinstalling Vista at some point, and it didn't help? Or am I confused with someone else?

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Martin Ennemoser — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 08:52:47 GMT

phreaks wrote:

Sven Groot wrote:

phreaks wrote:
I can't convey how utterly disappointed I am with Vista.

I'm sorry you feel that way, especially since my own experience has been so completely different.

Yea, I guess its hit or miss.

I suspect something went wrong with my install, because its been one issue after another and it's really unfortunate that it has gotten to this point; where it just doesn't make sense for me to continue losing time trying to work around registry rights issues.

I've tried hard to solicite feedback from MS regarding my problems using various avenues; but they just seem to ignore me.

After about 3 months, I think I've put enough of an effort in, I really wanted to like Vista.

All my hardware is Vista Approved, the one piece that wasn't, I replaced the day after I installed.

Why not reinstall Vista instead of reinstall XP? If your installation of Vista is broken, this would be more logical than downgrading. Otherwise you might see yourself upgrading to Vista again in a couple of months if SP1 delivers on the promises.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Christian Liensberger — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 08:55:06 GMT

I don't get this... really. There is tons of people around who are doing backups of databases on a daily base. Why shouldn't this be different with the registry. But let's say Windows does that on a second partition (which might be tiny) or to another file. Or even to a set of files, like you do with database backups.

Now when the system crashes and the registry has taken some damage, which you can detect, the user gets a screen during startup that tells him that the registry is broken and that the last good backup is going to be restored. Tell him (or her for that matter) also that the installations during the period of the last backup and now might not work anymore and that she/he has to reinstall these apps...

I know this might not be well thought out, but there are solutions for this kind of problems! It's not like this is the first thing in the world that gets backed up.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Christian Liensberger — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 08:56:04 GMT

Sven Groot wrote:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Phreaks already try reinstalling Vista at some point, and it didn't help? Or am I confused with someone else?

Might be. Perhaps he did a repair

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

stevo_ — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 08:58:59 GMT

So far I've only had one install out of three show instability, and this was due to; what I believe to be an instability in my graphics card that got more pronounced with the 'virgin' graphics drivers of Vista..

You noted that this was multiple machines you were going to revert, that seems extremely odd that you have so many issues.. I would perhaps worry about the interactions with the OS, are you doing a lot of tweaking?

All the same specification? perhaps its a hardware combination issue?

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Sven Groot — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 09:02:54 GMT

littleguru wrote:

I don't get this... really. There is tons of people around who are doing backups of databases on a daily base. Why shouldn't this be different with the registry. But let's say Windows does that on a second partition (which might be tiny) or to another file. Or even to a set of files, like you do with database backups.

But that's what system restore does. It still doesn't help if the corruption has crept into the backups too. Or if the last correct backup is so old that you might as well reinstall.

And I believe Windows does keep at least one more copy of at least the boot driver configuration around, which is used for the "Last known good configuration" boot option.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Christian Liensberger — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 09:05:59 GMT

Sven Groot wrote:

littleguru wrote:
I don't get this... really. There is tons of people around who are doing backups of databases on a daily base. Why shouldn't this be different with the registry. But let's say Windows does that on a second partition (which might be tiny) or to another file. Or even to a set of files, like you do with database backups.

But that's what system restore does. It still doesn't help if the corruption has crept into the backups too. Or if the last correct backup is so old that you might as well reinstall.

And I believe Windows does keep at least one more copy of at least the boot driver configuration around, which is used for the "Last known good configuration" boot option.

OK! Everything good. Still I'm curious how the corruption can move into the backups... Shouldn't the system be aware if something went wrong and immediately restore? And you are able to disable the System Restore... that shouldn't be possible for the registry!

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Sven Groot — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 09:14:22 GMT

littleguru wrote:

Shouldn't the system be aware if something went wrong and immediately restore?

Explain to me how it knows something went wrong? The only thing I can think of is a CRC for the registry, which would need recomputing every time the registry is changed. That'll be nice for performance.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Massif — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 09:17:50 GMT

Sven Groot wrote:

littleguru wrote:
Shouldn't the system be aware if something went wrong and immediately restore?

Explain to me how it knows something went wrong? The only thing I can think of is a CRC for the registry, which would need recomputing every time the registry is changed. That'll be nice for performance.

Well, you could do it for each element, and then if you read a corrupt element you fire a "whoa! it's busted" event.

Which would be slightly less of a headache than the entire registry.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Bas — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 09:18:53 GMT

I'm wondering what, exactly, can go wrong in the registry. The only thing I often hear is that it's 'messed up' or 'corrupted'. I'm wondering what exactly is going on, and why. Why didn't this happen with all those separate .ini files, for instance?

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

stevo_ — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 09:34:30 GMT

I think its just referring to reg entries state being left in a bad way.. Imagine I had a program I wrote as a service, and it needed to write a registry update when it closed, and I'd stupidly made the program utterly rely on this, and one day the computer crashed or whatever, now the service doesn't work until someone manually repairs the bad (or lack of) entry in the registry..

I'm sure it's possible for a mass corruption on the underlaying file, but I think in most cases its poor design choices that rely too much on the registry..

Plus, It occurred to me recently just how bad the registry can be on a system, when I was thinking about 'Wouldn't it be nice to have an app installed on a portable harddrive, and move it from system to system when I wanted to use it?'..

Self contained apps would be a nice thing, but I think there's a balance to be had for the sake of the systems awareness and such..

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Sven Groot — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 09:35:47 GMT

Bas wrote:

Why didn't this happen with all those separate .ini files, for instance?

It most certainly happened there as well!

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Bas — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 09:45:09 GMT

Sven Groot wrote:

Bas wrote:
Why didn't this happen with all those separate .ini files, for instance?

It most certainly happened there as well!

But what? What exactly happened?

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

AndyC — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 09:51:06 GMT

Massif wrote:

Well, you could do it for each element, and then if you read a corrupt element you fire a "whoa! it's busted" event.

Which would be slightly less of a headache than the entire registry.

How do you checksum a DWORD?

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Massif — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 10:28:34 GMT

AndyC wrote:

Massif wrote:

Well, you could do it for each element, and then if you read a corrupt element you fire a "whoa! it's busted" event.

Which would be slightly less of a headache than the entire registry.

How do you checksum a DWORD?

Approximately. (you could... gasp... just use a checksum bit (which would at least catch half the corruptions). Heck you could just store the damn thing twice and then if they differ you know something's gone wrong, and it's time to look for a backup. I'm not suggesting you make it such that you can restore from the check data or anything.)

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

AndyC — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 11:44:58 GMT

Massif wrote:

Approximately. (you could... gasp... just use a checksum bit (which would at least catch half the corruptions). Heck you could just store the damn thing twice and then if they differ you know something's gone wrong, and it's time to look for a backup. I'm not suggesting you make it such that you can restore from the check data or anything.)

But that really doesn't work, because it's impossible to know whether it's the checksum that's corrupt or the data itself. It's just too small a datastructure to try and implement that sort of validation. Not to mention the actual overhead of trying to compute that in any reasonable way.

What's more, it's not a very effective strategy. Registry corruption is usually caused by one of two things:

1) A crash during read/write operations, leading to an on-disk corrupt structure. At that point you're looking a significant overhead on every read/write operation for the sake of a tiny possibilty of data recovery in the event of a crash.

2) Applications writing invalid data. No amount of checksumming helps there because what's getting written is technically what the application wants to write. Enforcing type-safety on the registry might help, but again it's a lot of overhead when applications are supposed to be doing the right thing.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Massif — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 11:57:08 GMT

AndyC wrote:

But that really doesn't work, because it's impossible to know whether it's the checksum that's corrupt or the data itself. It's just too small a datastructure to try and implement that sort of validation. Not to mention the actual overhead of trying to compute that in any reasonable way.

overhead aside, I don't care whether the checksum or the data is corrupt, the assumption is that if something's corrupt then everything's suspect. (And it's time to reach for the backup.) I know that a simple bit is primitive (and allows half the corruptions to escape undetected.) but it's better than nothing.

Also, there's not a huge overhead on a checksum for an individual item, that's why you may choose to do it on an individual level. (Rather than the entire registry.) Well, not when you compare it to just getting disk access to begin with. (I'm pretty sure registry access is going to be I/O bound, almost regardless of how much computation has to be done to ensure data integrity.)

AndyC wrote:

What's more, it's not a very effective strategy. Registry corruption is usually caused by one of two things:

1) A crash during read/write operations, leading to an on-disk corrupt structure. At that point you're looking a significant overhead on every read/write operation for the sake of a tiny possibilty of data recovery in the event of a crash.

Granted there's probably a more general means of determining whether the disk is corrupt and what files the corruption spreads to, and that would be preferable to any structure-specific tinkering. But if it turns out you can't definitely say which files a disk corruption affects, then this is a next-best measure type thing.

AndyC wrote:

2) Applications writing invalid data. No amount of checksumming helps there because what's getting written is technically what the application wants to write. Enforcing type-safety on the registry might help, but again it's a lot of overhead when applications are
supposed to be doing the right thing.

Well, you can't solve this no matter what you try, (even enforcing type safety on the registry doesn't prevent people writing nonsensical values of the right type.) so it's not even worth trying to fix a broken applications behaviour from here.

But it's a good point though, I could be evil and ask for a change in the registry API that asks for the application to compute the checksum on writing and throws a fit if they don't match. But somehow I think breaking nearly every single windows application ever just to solve a minor problem of registries occasionally being corrupted just isn't worth it. (Also how would they know how to calculate the checksum? There'd have to be a "calculate checksum" API, and then people'd just pass that nonsense and we'd be back to square one.)

Not that I'm saying my idea would work, just that you'll have to think of a more definite reason as to why it wouldn't than those.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

rodtrent — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 12:20:57 GMT

Bet you turned off UAC.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

evildictaitor — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 12:29:59 GMT

Bas wrote:

I'm wondering what, exactly, can go wrong in the registry. The only thing I often hear is that it's 'messed up' or 'corrupted'. I'm wondering what exactly is going on, and why. Why didn't this happen with all those separate .ini files, for instance?

The registry is saved to disk during shutdown. If the power goes during shutdown, this file can be partially damaged which means that when power is restored, some of the registry is dead, which means all programs that rely on the registry will be dead.

This can typically be solved with System Restore so long as System Restore has not been disabled.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

evildictaitor — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 12:32:10 GMT

AndyC wrote:

But that really doesn't work, because it's impossible to know whether it's the checksum that's corrupt or the data itself. It's just too small a datastructure to try and implement that sort of validation. Not to mention the actual overhead of trying to compute that in any reasonable way.

You could huffman encode it for an optimum, self-repairing checksum.

AndyC wrote:

2) Applications writing invalid data. No amount of checksumming helps there because what's getting written is technically what the application wants to write. Enforcing type-safety on the registry might help, but again it's a lot of overhead when applications are supposed to be doing the right thing.

Are you sure the registry isn't type-safe? That would surprise me.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Bas — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 12:35:44 GMT

evildictaitor wrote:

Bas wrote:
I'm wondering what, exactly, can go wrong in the registry. The only thing I often hear is that it's 'messed up' or 'corrupted'. I'm wondering what exactly is going on, and why. Why didn't this happen with all those separate .ini files, for instance?

The registry is saved to disk during shutdown. If the power goes during shutdown, this file can be partially damaged which means that when power is restored, some of the registry is dead, which means all programs that rely on the registry will be dead.

This can typically be solved with System Restore so long as System Restore has not been disabled.

I see. So why isn't the registry written to disk on a per-application basis? Wouldn't that -only- corrupt the registry keys of the application that's 'being written'?

I realise some registry keys are shared, but wouldn't this at least solve part of the problem?

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

evildictaitor — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 12:40:11 GMT

Bas wrote:

I see. So why isn't the registry written to disk on a per-application basis? Wouldn't that -only- corrupt the registry keys of the application that's 'being written'?

I realise some registry keys are shared, but wouldn't this at least solve part of the problem?

I don't know for sure, but I'd suspect that the registry is kept in memory and only written to disk every now-and-then, since registry access is fairly frequent, and disk operations are expensive.

As a result (I would guess) that the entire structure of the registry needs to be written down again to the disk every certain number of registry write operations and during system shutdown.

Why they don't do multiple redundancy checking is beyond me though.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Tom Servo — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 13:00:41 GMT

Apogeum wrote:

Also I need tools to work not toys. Vista is a toy (no offense). But I am really looking foward to explore Windows 2008 Server.

Server 2008 is the same damn thing as Vista SP1.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Tom Servo — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 13:02:08 GMT

AndyC wrote:

How do you checksum a DWORD?

Because there aren't any 8- or 16bit checksum algorithms, right?

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Tom Servo — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 13:06:11 GMT

evildictaitor wrote:

Are you sure the registry isn't type-safe? That would surprise me.

Offering string, DWORD and blobs without any sort of format checking isn't exactly typesafe. Obviously DWORDs and blobs are rather hard to check for validity without injecting tons of third-party code into the registry code. But most things are stored as strings. Creating the registry subtree, attaching regexes or whatever else mechanism to each string key and validating everything on application install time would allow the application to catch itself going nutso.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Christian Liensberger — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 13:07:39 GMT

Sven Groot wrote:

littleguru wrote:
Shouldn't the system be aware if something went wrong and immediately restore?

Explain to me how it knows something went wrong? The only thing I can think of is a CRC for the registry, which would need recomputing every time the registry is changed. That'll be nice for performance.

How about a log file like they use in databases? You could roll back if you see that one of the writes didn't work out (power went off or similar stuff) - or even restore the database (=registry) from a backup version if rolling back isn't working anymore.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

AndyC — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 13:08:11 GMT

Tom Servo wrote:

Because there aren't any 8- or 16bit checksum algorithms, right?

Not that are performant and reliable enough to be worth bothering with, no.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Tom Servo — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 13:09:17 GMT

Sven Groot wrote:

Explain to me how it knows something went wrong? The only thing I can think of is a CRC for the registry, which would need recomputing every time the registry is changed. That'll be nice for performance.

The registry is a tree like structure. Make use of that fact. ZFS doesn't crap all over itself during metadata updates, either, which is checksummed to no end and usually involved updating all checksums from the modified filesystem block, going up the metadata tree up to the uberblock.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

AndyC — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 13:09:55 GMT

littleguru wrote:

How about a log file like they use in databases? You could roll back if you see that one of the writes didn't work out (power went off or similar stuff) - or even restore the database (=registry) from a backup version if rolling back isn't working anymore.

Congratulations, you've just invented Transactional Registry support.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Massif — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 13:11:15 GMT

littleguru wrote:

How about a log file like they use it in databases? You could roll back if you see that one of the writes didn't work out - or even restore the database (=registry) if rolling back isn't working anymore.

You mean some kind of transactional registry... (or even just try searching)? Jason, as transactional stuff seems to be one of his favourite things>

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Massif — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 13:11:45 GMT

AndyC wrote:

littleguru wrote:

How about a log file like they use in databases? You could roll back if you see that one of the writes didn't work out (power went off or similar stuff) - or even restore the database (=registry) from a backup version if rolling back isn't working anymore.

Congratulations, you've just invented Transactional Registry support.

Dammit! He got there first!

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Christian Liensberger — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 13:38:46 GMT

Interesting... very interesting - we are getting to a point. But still the registry is transactional because the file system is transactional... oh lord: why is the registry no relational database after all

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Sven Groot — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 13:56:03 GMT

littleguru wrote:

why is the registry no relational database after all

Because it doesn't need 99% of the features of a relational database?

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Christian Liensberger — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 13:57:49 GMT

OK. It is much better than I thought it is... http://www.easydesksoftware.com/regfiles.htmThe"> http://www.easydesksoftware.com/regfiles.htm

The article isn't mentioning a backup folder that is also in there. I don't know when that folder is updated but the file stamps are very recent (yesterday and the day before). The backup files seem also to have second backup files (.old extension).

There's really something in place to back this crap up! I'm so ignorant... should have checked first... before complaining. But you know I had so many problems in 9x with the registry, I'm still not liking it after all.

It's gotten better that's for sure

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Christian Liensberger — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 13:58:56 GMT

Sven Groot wrote:

littleguru wrote:
why is the registry no relational database after all

Because it doesn't need 99% of the features of a relational database?

man you hurt me... *sniff*

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Tom Servo — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 13:59:59 GMT

Sven Groot wrote:

littleguru said:
why is the registry no relational database after all

Because it doesn't need 99% of the features of a relational database?

SQLite is pretty popular on the other side. And lightweight to boot.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

AndyC — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 14:01:44 GMT

Tom Servo wrote:

SQLite is pretty popular on the other side. And lightweight to boot.

How would be a relational database help? Given that the Registry doesn't contain or require any concept of relationships.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Bas — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 14:06:40 GMT

littleguru wrote:

Interesting... very interesting - we are getting to a point.

We're getting somewhere, but I still don't get why, with all these features in place, so many things apparently still go wrong.

Not that I've had any registry trouble that I recall myself, but still.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Massif — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 14:11:53 GMT

Bas wrote:

littleguru wrote:
Interesting... very interesting - we are getting to a point.

We're getting somewhere, but I still don't get why, with all these features in place, so many things apparently still go wrong.

Not that I've had any registry trouble that I recall myself, but still.

Things will always go wrong, even in the best case on a standard PC everything is stored on the same disk. If that gets damaged then there's little you can do to prevent the damage causing problems.

Even systems with multiple redundancy and all that jazz experience downtime occasionally. As the philosophers say "sh!t happens".

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Bas — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 14:24:59 GMT

Massif wrote:

Things will always go wrong, even in the best case on a standard PC everything is stored on the same disk. If that gets damaged then there's little you can do to prevent the damage causing problems.

Yeah, but we're not talking about a simple disk crash here. It's sort of maddening to think that, as far as we've come, we're down to "Well, sometimes this happens, we know exactly what it is, and there's nothing we can do about it."

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Shining Arcanine — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 14:34:37 GMT

jamie wrote:

that's what ive been thinking too... sp3 makes xp faster than vista... and i like xp..

Windows XP SP2 is already faster than Windows Vista. Windows XP SP3 simply widens the gap.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Sven Groot — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 14:39:44 GMT

Shining Arcanine wrote:

jamie wrote:
that's what ive been thinking too... sp3 makes xp faster than vista... and i like xp..

Windows XP SP2 is already faster than Windows Vista.

Not here. Vista is noticably faster. Go, superfetch, go!

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

phreaks — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 14:57:01 GMT

Sven Groot wrote:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Phreaks already try reinstalling Vista at some point, and it didn't help? Or am I confused with someone else?

No, you are not mistaken. I have reinstalled once already.

My disks aren't corrupt either.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Sven Groot — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 14:59:30 GMT

phreaks wrote:

Sven Groot wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Phreaks already try reinstalling Vista at some point, and it didn't help? Or am I confused with someone else?

No, you are not mistaken. I have reinstalled once already.

My disks aren't corrupt either.

It might be a disk driver, or something. If I install the SATA drivers for my motherboard, about 70% of the time Vista will fail to boot with a BSOD saying that the registry isn't writable. So I stick with the built-in Vista drivers for this system and have no trouble with those.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

phreaks — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 15:11:02 GMT

Sven Groot wrote:

phreaks wrote:

Sven Groot wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Phreaks already try reinstalling Vista at some point, and it didn't help? Or am I confused with someone else?

No, you are not mistaken. I have reinstalled once already.

My disks aren't corrupt either.

It might be a disk driver, or something. If I install the SATA drivers for my motherboard, about 70% of the time Vista will fail to boot with a BSOD saying that the registry isn't writable. So I stick with the built-in Vista drivers for this system and have no trouble with those.

The main problem is that I literally have hundreds of registry keys that do not have an owner, and hence no effective permissions.

My machine boots fine and apparantly all the core keys have the proper rights since the core Vista features work fine.

Mainly Registry keys for IE add-ons and VS.NET add-ins, are the main victims.

Since so much of the computing experience is browser based these days, not having anything work inside IE is a show stopper.

I have too much stuff on my PC now to risk another Vista reinstall, because there is no guarantee it will fix my problems, then I'll be back at square one.

If I install XP, at least I'm confident my computer will work properly again; so it won't be a complete loss of 8 or so hours because at least I'll have a usable PC again.

I installed SP1 last night, and it didn't fix my problems

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

JohnAskew — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 15:17:13 GMT

Minh wrote:

Vista is a 1.0 product after all.

My experience has been mixed. I would say that it REALLY, REALLY helps to have Vista on "approved" hardware.

Quoted for truth.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Sven Groot — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 15:48:34 GMT

phreaks wrote:

The main problem is that I literally have hundreds of registry keys that do not have an owner, and hence no effective permissions.

It's weird, I've never even heard of anyone having issues like that. If these issues exist even on a clean install, maybe your Vista installation DVD is corrupt? Although that's highly unlikely (that it'd be corrupt but in such a way that it'd still install). If they don't exist right of the bat it'd be worth tracking your post-install actions and when the problems start happening, but that takes a lot of time.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

phreaks — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 16:02:19 GMT

Sven Groot wrote:

phreaks wrote:
The main problem is that I literally have hundreds of registry keys that do not have an owner, and hence no effective permissions.

It's weird, I've never even heard of anyone having issues like that. If these issues exist even on a clean install, maybe your Vista installation DVD is corrupt? Although that's highly unlikely (that it'd be corrupt but in such a way that it'd still install). If they don't exist right of the bat it'd be worth tracking your post-install actions and when the problems start happening, but that takes a lot of time.

it wasn't a clean reinstall, it was more of a restore I guess.

But, I'm not the only one having these issues...

http://www.google.com/search?q=vista+registry+%22Access+denied%22&hl=en&safe=off&rlz=1T4GGIH_enUS221US221&start=20&sa=N

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Massif — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 16:04:05 GMT

Hmmm... Are these keys even needed anymore? Where's the RegClean for Vista? Sweep out the ones you don't have access to (umm... like, presumably by elevating to admin first.) And start again. (If you can find a RegClean like tool for Vista.)

Odd though, I did used the transfer wizard to backup, did a clean install and a restore and haven't had any problems.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

GoddersUK — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 16:32:19 GMT

CompGuy101 wrote:

phreaks wrote:
When is SP3 for XP being released?

I can't convey how utterly disappointed I am with Vista.

It's out now! W00T!! I'm downloading it now from Windows Update.

Windows XP will always be my favorite OS!

I don't see it

EDIT:

I don't see it here either:

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

phreaks — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 16:46:44 GMT

GoddersUK wrote:

I don't see it

EDIT:

I don't see it here either:

MSDN Subscriber Downloads

Windows XP Service Pack 3 Release Candidate 1 (x86) - EXE (English)

Date/Time Posted
2007-12-03 20:14:27 (UTC)
File
en_windows_xp_service_pack_3_release_candidate_1_x86_60967.exe Self-Extracting Executable
File Size
336 MB

I think it's only released to MSDN and technet subscribers as of yet.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

GoddersUK — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 16:47:38 GMT

phreaks wrote:

MSDN Subscriber Downloads

Windows XP Service Pack 3 Release Candidate 1 (x86) - EXE (English)

Date/Time Posted

2007-12-03 20:14:27 (UTC)

File

en_windows_xp_service_pack_3_release_candidate_1_x86_60967.exe Self-Extracting Executable

File Size

336 MB

I think it's only released to MSDN and technet subscribers as of yet.

CompGuy101 wrote:

It's out now! W00T!! I'm downloading it now from Windows Update.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

phreaks — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 16:49:00 GMT

GoddersUK wrote:

phreaks wrote:

MSDN Subscriber Downloads

Windows XP Service Pack 3 Release Candidate 1 (x86) - EXE (English)

Date/Time Posted

2007-12-03 20:14:27 (UTC)

File

en_windows_xp_service_pack_3_release_candidate_1_x86_60967.exe Self-Extracting Executable

File Size

336 MB

I think it's only released to MSDN and technet subscribers as of yet.

CompGuy101 wrote:
It's out now! W00T!! I'm downloading it now from Windows Update.

Oh sorry, I wasn't following along.

I only checked MSDN, didn't look on Windows Update.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

GoddersUK — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 16:55:53 GMT

As always wikipedia has the answer:

Linkage">http://winfuture.de/news,35838.html&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhttp://winfuture.de/news,35838.html%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26hs%3D5PY">Linkage (a reference from wiki)

I think I'll be staying away from the dodgy reg hacks for the moment.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

GoddersUK — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 19:15:34 GMT

You a technet/msdn subscriber?

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Sven Groot — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 03:00:49 GMT

phreaks wrote:

it wasn't a clean reinstall, it was more of a restore I guess.

In that case, reinstalling Vista for real is just as likely to fix your problems as installing XP.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

phreaks — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 03:03:14 GMT

Sven Groot wrote:

phreaks wrote:
it wasn't a clean reinstall, it was more of a restore I guess.

In that case, reinstalling Vista for real is just as likely to fix your problems as installing XP.

The Vista SP1 RC seems to have resolved most of my problems.

I still don't have any toolbox entries for any of the 3rd party libraries / controls I use; but I haven't tried reinstalling them yet either.

Flash and Silverlight both are working normally now.
SP1 couldn't have come at a better time.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Red5 — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 05:14:06 GMT

phreaks wrote:

Sven Groot wrote:

phreaks wrote:
it wasn't a clean reinstall, it was more of a restore I guess.

In that case, reinstalling Vista for real is just as likely to fix your problems as installing XP.

The Vista SP1 RC seems to have resolved most of my problems.

I still don't have any toolbox entries for any of the 3rd party libraries / controls I use; but I haven't tried reinstalling them yet either.

Flash and Silverlight both are working normally now.
SP1 couldn't have come at a better time.

I got sick of all the lackluster Vista compromises I had to make.
Just reinstalled TabletPC 2005 and I am flying by comparison.
In performance mode it rocks.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Elmer — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 08:31:11 GMT

AndyC wrote:

Tom Servo wrote:
SQLite is pretty popular on the other side. And lightweight to boot.

How would be a relational database help? Given that the Registry doesn't contain or require any concept of relationships.

Yep "Relational Database" has nothing to do with "File Structure" anyway -- the file format for an SQL RDB is not something that's defined or controlled.

With an RDB you talk to a supervisor program that "owns" the file (even if only temporarilly, as in the case of Access) and does it's own black magic with the file structure that often only it knows about. Ripping into a .mdf without the assistance of SQL-Server is no trivial task.

The registry file structure itself is well known enough... OLE Structured Storage - similar to that used in MS-Word (prior to the 2007 format) - and there is nothing inherently wrong with it per-se... unless it gets corrupt. Fixing a corrupt registry file is a bit like fixing a corrupt MS-Word (pre-2007) file... like rubbing jam in your hair.

Where the RDB argument has some legs is that the main problem comes from the fact that there is no "Registry Supervisor" that manages the file on behalf of the system, the way an RDB Supervisor manages the database file. This has resulted in every man and his dog comming up with tools to hack into the registry file and that's sorta asking for trouble.

Personally, I can see the registry moving towards the type of format used in Office-2007, which might possibly help with the business of fixing problems after they happen.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Rossj — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 08:35:50 GMT

I was reading this this morning. Is it true that the UAC dimming kills the color calibration in Vista - anyone know if this will be fixed in SP1?

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Ray6 — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 09:39:41 GMT

elmer wrote:

The registry file structure itself is well known enough... OLE Structured Storage - similar to that used in MS-Word (prior to the 2007 format) - and there is nothing inherently wrong with it per-se... unless it gets corrupt.

Yes, but that seems to be the whole problem. Once it's broken, you're pretty much stuffed. At least with each application managing its own configuration, you didn't have this massive single point of failure.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Rossj — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 09:42:55 GMT

Ray6 wrote:

Yes, but that seems to be the whole problem. Once it's broken, you're pretty much stuffed. At least with each application managing its own configuration, you didn't have this massive single point of failure.

I tend to agree, rather one program fail than all of them - how then do you manage system-level configuration that needs to be accessible to all programs - i.e. the program registered to handle .tiff files?

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Ray6 — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 09:56:53 GMT

Rossj wrote:

Ray6 wrote:

Yes, but that seems to be the whole problem. Once it's broken, you're pretty much stuffed. At least with each application managing its own configuration, you didn't have this massive single point of failure.

I tend to agree, rather one program fail than all of them - how then do you manage system-level configuration that needs to be accessible to all programs - i.e. the program registered to handle .tiff files?

The same way they handled it before the registry came along; config files that live somewhere in the system folder. And use a separate config file for each section they're trying to manage. If the program associations become corrupted, then the whole system doesn't need restoring; just a single file that can probably be recrafted by hand.

I don't have a problem with the registry, but it has to work reliably, and I'm not sure that they can do that.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

AndyC — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 10:14:02 GMT

elmer wrote:

Where the RDB argument has some legs is that the main problem comes from the fact that there is no "Registry Supervisor" that manages the file on behalf of the system, the way an RDB Supervisor manages the database file. This has resulted in every man and his dog comming up with tools to hack into the registry file and that's sorta asking for trouble.

How many applications do you know that actually attempt to modify registry hives manually, rather than just calling the system APIs to do it? I'd wager that there aren't many and the OS itself generally performs the role of "Registry Supervisor".

What is really needed is a type safe registry with a somewhat better discipline for data organisation. And all the stuff which really shouldn't be touched (like COM registrations) should be separated out from the day-to-day, safe to delete, configuration settings.

The worst possible scenario is to wander back into the hell that was ini files scattered all over the place.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Sven Groot — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 10:34:06 GMT

Littleguru and I went over some of this on MSN yesterday.

The registry consists of in total six separate files: SAM for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SAM, Security for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Security, Software for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE, System for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System, Default for HKEY_USERS\.Default and ntuser.dat for HKEY_CURRENT_USER.

All of those files are contained in %WinDir%\System32\Config, with the exception of ntuser.dat which is stored per profile. These files are protected so that they cannot be accessed directly; you must use the registry APIs, the only way to get at the files directly is if Windows is not running (e.g. if you use WinPE or something).

For each of those files, Windows keeps a .sav file which contains the file as it was when Windows setup finished; if you were to restore those files Windows essentially goes back to the post-install state. Windows also keeps two backup copies of each file in %WinDir%\System32\Config\RegBack. There are also multiple log files in that location that contain transaction logs used for maintaining consistency. Then there's System Restore that backs up the registry as well.

All in all, a lot of things have to fail before the registry becomes fundamentally corrupt like it seems to be in Phreaks's case. Saying it's a "single point of failure" is a bit simplistic.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Ray6 — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 10:39:33 GMT

AndyC wrote:

The worst possible scenario is to wander back into the hell that was ini files scattered all over the place.

As far as I remember, they were kept with the application that they were related to, or as part of the system.

It was hardly 'hell', and I don't remember it ever causing problems requiring companies to bring out third-party tools to keep it running.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

evildictaitor — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 10:39:56 GMT

Rossj wrote:

I was reading this this morning. Is it true that the UAC dimming kills the color calibration in Vista - anyone know if this will be fixed in SP1?

I'm not sure what it does, but it's not a very good mechanism, whatever it is. Before NVidia released pseudo-stable drivers, every time UAC appeared it used to take-out my drivers and flash the whole damn screen off and kill Aero.

I don't see why they don't just use a software post-process. UAC is supposed to stop the system so not seeing the background isn't a problem, and UAC shouldn't be graphics-card dependent.

In my opinion it is a fairly big failure.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Ray6 — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 10:41:29 GMT

Sven Groot wrote:

All in all, a lot of things have to fail before the registry becomes fundamentally corrupt like it seems to be in Phreaks's case. Saying it's a "single point of failure" is a bit simplistic.

Don't think so to be honest.

If the registry breaks, Windows breaks. That does sound a lot like a 'single point of failure' to me.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Massif — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 10:43:32 GMT

Well, the registry is no more a single point of failure than the MBR, or the boot loader, or any one of a handful of drivers on which the system depends. (esp. HD drivers.)

It's just a slightly painful thing to fix.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Ray6 — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 10:59:47 GMT

Massif wrote:

Well, the registry is no more a single point of failure than the MBR, or the boot loader, or any one of a handful of drivers on which the system depends. (esp. HD drivers.)

It's just a slightly painful thing to fix.

I see your point; though I do wonder if this is the reason why no-one else followed MS down the registry route.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Sven Groot — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 11:16:31 GMT

An application that corrupts some vital part of the registry (most notably the stuff in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System file, which is needed for Windows to be able to boot) is comparable to some application on Unix accidentally corrupting init.d or some other critical configuration file.

Since the only way to access the registry is through the registry APIs, and there's separate files, and as I said there's backups and logs, and it's stored on a file system that does journaling as well, corrupting a vital part of the registry while trying to modify some other, unrelated part of the registry, should in theory be about as likely as corrupting NTFS's MFT.

I have never seen the registry itself fundamentally corrupt like it appears to have been in Preaks's case, at least not on NT. Corrupt values, sure, but that can happen with config files too.

The registry approach has disadvantages and advantages, as with any other. I just don't think it's as bad as some people think.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Bas — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 11:23:23 GMT

Ray6 wrote:

AndyC wrote:

The worst possible scenario is to wander back into the hell that was ini files scattered all over the place.

As far as I remember, they were kept with the application that they were related to, or as part of the system.

It was hardly 'hell', and I don't remember it ever causing problems requiring companies to bring out third-party tools to keep it running.

Except that the settings were impossible to backup unless you hand-picked each .ini file to backup, because there was no way of knowing where they were located. It was also nigh impossible to manage settings by group policy, because every application had a different format and location for the .ini file. This also made scripting a nightmare.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Ray6 — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 11:30:30 GMT

Sven Groot wrote:

I have never seen the registry itself fundamentally corrupt like it appears to have been in Preaks's case, at least not on NT. Corrupt values, sure, but that can happen with config files too.

Though with a config file, he may be able to fix it with Notepad.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Ray6 — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 11:34:37 GMT

Bas wrote:

Except that the settings were impossible to backup unless you hand-picked each .ini file to backup, because there was no way of knowing where they were located. It was also nigh impossible to manage settings by group policy, because every application had a different format and location for the .ini file. This also made scripting a nightmare.

Why not just back up every file ending in .INI on the disk? That's your whole configuration backed up.

And I think the great thing about text files, is that they're fairly easy to manipulate with scripts, especially if they have a reasonably rigid format. As I remember, INI files were not too different from properties files.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Rossj — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 11:49:43 GMT

Sven Groot wrote:

is comparable to some application on Unix accidentally corrupting init.d or some other critical configuration file.

init.d is normally a directory containing a collection of scripts, not one single file.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Barry Andrew Hall — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 12:15:13 GMT

I feel you phreaks...

I do actually love Vista... its a shame that I simply cannot get it to work for me. Hell its more than likely my user error with it but its not the point. None of my sql / vs stuff would run properly.

I have an xps-m1330 with 4 gig of ram and boy did I have to wait for things to finish. Now I have it on xp it totally flies!

Im sure Vista will get better. Its just not quick enough for me right now. Again my config? Probably. But I dont want to move from fast to slow. I know everyone says its no different and they are probably right, but for me its seriously noticably slower. Which is a shame. Because I do love it. Its sexy, its neat, it has some cool toys, I reccommend it to all home users. But for my business users its a no go im afraid.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Sven Groot — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 12:44:26 GMT

Pace wrote:

I have an xps-m1330 with 4 gig of ram and boy did I have to wait for things to finish. Now I have it on xp it totally flies!

Bizarre. I have an XPS M1330 with 2GB RAM, and it works just fine.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

AndyC — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 14:49:11 GMT

Ray6 wrote:

And I think the great thing about text files, is that they're fairly easy to manipulate with scripts, especially if they have a reasonably rigid format. As I remember, INI files were not too different from properties files.

They were supposed to have a reasonably rigid format. They were supposed to be read/written using the system APIs. And yet every other .ini file had some subtle variant where someone had taken a shortcut and expected the format to be ever so subtly different than it actually was. Making changes to .ini files via scripting (assuming you could even find the right one) was a bit of a black art and would often break in wierd undocumented ways.

And they never, ever solved the problem of allowing more granular security (which the registry does) or allowing multiple apps to change one set of config data in a safe way (which the registry also does).

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Elmer — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 22:49:45 GMT

AndyC wrote:

elmer wrote:

Where the RDB argument has some legs is that the main problem comes from the fact that there is no "Registry Supervisor" that manages the file on behalf of the system, the way an RDB Supervisor manages the database file. This has resulted in every man and his dog comming up with tools to hack into the registry file and that's sorta asking for trouble.

How many applications do you know that actually attempt to modify registry hives manually, rather than just calling the system APIs to do it? I'd wager that there aren't many and the OS itself generally performs the role of "Registry Supervisor".

What is really needed is a type safe registry with a somewhat better discipline for data organisation. And all the stuff which really shouldn't be touched (like COM registrations) should be separated out from the day-to-day, safe to delete, configuration settings.

The worst possible scenario is to wander back into the hell that was ini files scattered all over the place.

No, the registry APIs are not a registry superivor, and I'm not even saying that such a thing is even desirable... just that because there isn't one there is nothing to stop anyone from writing their own registry utilities and stomping all over the files.

As previously said by others, the "registry" consists of a collection of OLE Structured files which are loaded as system objects, and quite obviously you don't modify the registry without going through the registry APIs... which allow you to create utilities to find, iterate, add, delete, etc etc, keys and data (I used to work with this all the time).

However, if you compare that to an RDB... while it also must use APIs (both OS and it's own) to manipulate the database file, all request to access the database file must go through a database supervisor, which ensures that all reads/writes to the file are logical and conform to rules it enforces -- e.g. SQL-Server and SQL commands (via any number of supported programming methods) control the access to the .mdf files... you can't just write your own .mdf editor utility to directly read/write that file, as the file structure and applicaton APIs used to do it are not widely published... you must ask poliitely and play nice with the supervisor.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

evildictaitor — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 00:08:12 GMT

creditcard wrote:

Silverlight is a great example.

What happened to your Silverlight install?

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

magicalclick — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 00:50:35 GMT

The way I think about it is that I can't tell what's what in regEdit. And I have no idea what going on in there. And those pop-up about registry errors, like DLL not there, physical space already been taken. It is really messy.

I don't even know why we need registry that much. I mean why do I have to register DLL if it will only be used in my program. And there is no such thing as removing my applicationXXXfolder will automatically remove my registry values. You know sometimes I just wish it gone by just deleting the whole folder. I don't care registry.

For this, I am so prefer a slower performance approach. Not only it is RDB, but the RDB is only a cache. It will automatically taken out when the application folder is gone, which contain an xml registry and all that stuff.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Elmer — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 05:12:46 GMT

magicalclick wrote:

The way I think about it is that I can't tell what's what in regEdit. And I have no idea what going on in there. And those pop-up about registry errors, like DLL not there, physical space already been taken. It is really messy.

I don't even know why we need registry that much. I mean why do I have to register DLL if it will only be used in my program. And there is no such thing as removing my applicationXXXfolder will automatically remove my registry values. You know sometimes I just wish it gone by just deleting the whole folder. I don't care registry.

For this, I am so prefer a slower performance approach. Not only it is RDB, but the RDB is only a cache. It will automatically taken out when the application folder is gone, which contain an xml registry and all that stuff.

The "registry" is just a file system for persisting data... most commonly config and application settings. It's simply an alternative to ini and conf files that people seem to have no issue with. It's just a "standard" manner for handling the problem, that the OS supports intrinsically, as opposed to having simple config files splattered all over the shop. The biggest hassle with it is the file format used (OLE structured compound document) which, because of the advanced format and structure, demands the use of specialised utilites that call dedicated registry apis. Trying to access a registry file without such specialised tools is like trying to read a traditional MS-Word document without the assistance of MS-Word... it ain't easy and you can't just view it like a simple text or xml file.

There is nothing mysterious about the registry or even mandatory for applications. You don't *HAVE* to register a dll if your app is the only consumer and knows how to deal with it. However, if you want others to be able to know about it and/or access it, then you need a standard OS level way to publish its existence, etc etc. It's a perfectly valid way to manage the problem, but the main issue is that it's a shared file system and many devs and apps play pretty fast and loose with the contents, and often demand admin privs to do as they please with it. If you get some crap app or crap installer that stomps all over the file and makes mince-meat out of it, then that can impact on apps and services other than just itself, and leave you with no clue as to what's been trashed and where... and that's a major pain if it results in a system that won't boot, as fixing a registry file from the recovery console is no trivial task (although it can be done).

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Elmer — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 05:13:13 GMT

Oops... double post.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Barry Andrew Hall — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 10:42:33 GMT

Sven Groot wrote:

Pace wrote:
I have an xps-m1330 with 4 gig of ram and boy did I have to wait for things to finish. Now I have it on xp it totally flies!

Bizarre. I have an XPS M1330 with 2GB RAM, and it works just fine.

Exactly, this is what im saying, am I doing something wrong? Probably not.

To be fair your M1330 probably does work just fine. Because you havent seen what it can do on xp. If you put it on XP it will be a powerhouse, it will fly, search for installing xp on it and look at how many people say how quicker it is on xp. Now we cant all be wrong.

To me it seems everyone is trying to defend it. There is no need to, Vista is an amazing OS, im not denying that, its the best I have seen, its just not quick enough for me. Thats all im saying. Sure im not alone. No one will admit xp for general development and business use is quicker. Thats the end of it. Your all so much smarter than me if it werent the case you would be proving it. No one can. Could you HONESTLY say Vista is quicker than XP? Because everyone I have spoken to about it face to face admits if they ran vista, they have switched back from Vista because of the speed. Im not talking your average user, I think Vista is perfect for them. Im talking power users and Administrators, everyone in pc world business agrees, my contract developer I get in to help me out from time to time when I have masses of work in agrees, my third party IT support company I use for when I go on holiday agrees, heck even my friends out of work agree. So everyone I speak to is wrong and lying because a forum of microsofties says otherwise? I think not. God I love Microsoft, I just want you to admit that Vista is slower than XP. Geez even the boot and log in takes like twice as long in Vista, is that not proof enough that its slower.

Vista is amazing but slow
XP is suffiecient (missing features of Vista) but fast (Post SP2)

If this argument continues im going to do a video and re-format my xps twice to prove it timing applications and runs using a stopwatch because you all need to admit it. There is no shame in it. Why cant you tell me, yes its slower than xp, or appears to be because the file system is indexing your most used files, or the security is so damn tight and its so damn secure it takes a performance hit looking for things malicious. I could live with that. I just cant accept this "no, vista is the same speed as xp, you dont know what your doing" attitude because I know I know enough for what I need to do. I don't know the ins and outs of an os, I dont know all of the namespaces and objects in the .net framework. I know how to make a front end that puts data in a backend through a layer of business logic and report on it using a mix of technologies. I dont claim to even be a developer, I just know how to make a computer do things. Which just so happen to be useful for businesses in my area. And thats good enough for me. I em enjoying the learning experience of going deeper into things, but I love the practicality of making things work for people, turning ideas into solutions, telling my company where the most customers are for a sepecific product line. Thats what I enjoy and im bloody quick at it. Vista, prevents me from being as quick as I am at reacting to departments needs.

Its probably because you guys have time to do things. You have the environment that permits you to do things how you want to go about it, so the fact that the os is a bit slower has no bearing. Your management probably have a great understanding of IT and the benefits it can bring to the business as a whole and everything is planned. But for me the average joe bloggs in the average IT Dept of probably what it is like in 60% of the other companies around me, its all about speed, If they tell you about it, then they want it yesterday... with xp I can give it them today, but with vista it would have to be tomorrow. And that is where Vista falls on its face although proably with good reason, but not a good enough reason for me.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

kettch — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 11:37:00 GMT

Pace wrote:

Could you HONESTLY say Vista is quicker than XP?

Yes, I can. On an AthlonXP 2800+ and nForce2 with 2GB of RAM at that. It is on par with, or faster, than XP in everything that I do and Service Pack 1 has made it even better.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Sven Groot — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 12:52:40 GMT

Pace wrote:

Could you HONESTLY say Vista is quicker than XP?

Yes I can. I've run XP and Vista side-by-side on several machines. Vista was faster in each case. Perhaps not in every area (Vista's explorer does feel a bit slower) but certainly in application startup times. I haven't tried this on the XPS, though, but Vista on my XPS performs comparable to Vista on my desktop which has about the same specs (desktop has slower CPU, more RAM, faster GPU), and on the desktop I did try XP (with the express purpose of trying whether it would squeeze some extra performance out of FSX; I found it made no perceivable difference in framerates, and loading times were faster on Vista).

Though I've not tried this on my current computer, on my old desktop in the Netherlands Visual Studio 2005 would launch in about 3-5 seconds under XP. On Vista it was near instantanious.

Some parts of Vista may appear slower because of the animations. That doesn't mean they really are slower.

Now I will say this: I've found Vista's performance is largely determined by drive speed. With this in mind, I specifically picked a 7200RPM drive for the XPS. I have no idea how it performs on the default 5400RPM variant.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Bas — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 12:57:28 GMT

Pace wrote:

Could you HONESTLY say Vista is quicker than XP?

Yes.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Barry Andrew Hall — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 14:14:26 GMT

Hey Sven, im even more intrigued now as I went for the uprated hd also. Basically I maxed every option and just left out the fp reader...

We upgraded the games machine to vista, and we noticed a 10fps drop... strange, its running dual 8800GTX 640's in SLi. dual core though so not sure there and 4 gig... The only thing I have noticed that much much better in vista is crysis running dx10 the lighting is unbelievable.

I dont want to rant and do apologise, I am very pro-microsoft im more annoyed than anything because I really really want to use it, but I have found in my case its not suitable, im gutted

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Barry Andrew Hall — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 14:24:58 GMT

Here is an example...

I recieve my xps after 3 weeks hard wait.
I format the drive to get rid of all that nik-nak.
I do a complete fresh install of Vista Ultimate.
I install SQL Server.
I install Visual Studio.

I start to test my machine;

it stops after returning 9 rows when there are hundreds of thousands and disconnects, when suddenly

Now my frustration... I would kill to use vista, but as a dba I have to work and from the pics you can see I had little choice.

Coffeehouse - Giving up on Vista

Sven Groot — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 14:39:09 GMT

My desktop (where I did the FSX test) has an ATI card so the drivers might be better. Also FSX is CPU bound.

On the XPS I did not do a clean install. I just uninstalled all the junk. And installed the English language pack as it's a Japanese version of Vista. I also stick to Dell's drivers; I don't use it for games so the ability to resume from sleep reliably is more important to me than using the latest nVidia driver.

As for Management Studio... did you install SQL Server SP2? I run Management Studio on Vista too without any issues.