Anyone find Vista RTM too buggy for use?

[Smilin]

Couple things to check in device manager.

Go to properties of the controller (may need to look at a particular channel on a controller). There will be an 'advanced settings' tab that should tell you if you are running DMA or not.

Go to properties of the Disk Drive itself. Look at the Policies tab. On an internal drive you should be optimized for performance with write chaching on disk enabled.

Check your event logs as well. Controllers will throw errors under event id 7,9,11. Disk/filesystem will throw events in the 5x range. As far as errors go for every one you see many have happened in the background. A delayed write failure for instance is the logging of the *retry* failure. The original won't get logged. So any errors seen are often the tip of the iceberg.

Indexing and whatnot should really not affect performance. I'm not 100% sure what else is going on in the background though. For me things started at an XP performance level then got snappier after about a day. I never went through any sluggish to non-sluggish transition.

 

[Fishy007]

I'm not at home right now, but I can tell you that the write caching feature of my drives is NOT enabled. I went there last night to see if I could see anything and there's a checkbox there for write caching, but it's unchecked. I tried checking it off and hit ok, but when I went back into the properties, the text next to the checkbox had changed and it said something like 'the physical properties of this disk does not allow caching'. I can get the exact text later if needed.

All my hard drives are 2 years old or less. One of them I just bought about 6 months ago. 3 of them have 8mb cache and one of them has 16mb. Any thoughts?

 

[ChronoReverse]

Sounds like a driver bug to me. Have you tried rolling back to the drivers that come with Vista? Are you using RAID?

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: Fishy007
I'm not at home right now, but I can tell you that the write caching feature of my drives is NOT enabled. I went there last night to see if I could see anything and there's a checkbox there for write caching, but it's unchecked. I tried checking it off and hit ok, but when I went back into the properties, the text next to the checkbox had changed and it said something like 'the physical properties of this disk does not allow caching'. I can get the exact text later if needed.

All my hard drives are 2 years old or less. One of them I just bought about 6 months ago. 3 of them have 8mb cache and one of them has 16mb. Any thoughts?

mmm, yeah not so much a driver bug as perhaps a bug in the .inf file for the driver.
It sounds like it's getting detected as removable for some reason. Do you see a safely remove hardware icon in your notification area? Even the best disks are slow as ****** so without proper caching this could certainly make things run like a dog. I'm not sure if this is your whole problem but it's definately contributing.

 

[Mark R]

Originally posted by: drag
But it reboots so it'll probably be ok. I wonder how memtest86 vs this thing adds up when detecting memory errors. It should be a interesting comparision.

While I haven't tried the vista version, the MS memory diagnostic is similar to memtest86 in performance.

However, it does have some slightly different tests - one of which seems to be more sensitive to slightly flaky or not-quite-compatible RAM.

For this type of strange problem, Windows memory diagnostic will find bad RAM much more quickly than memtest86, and in my experience always finds the bad RAM on the first pass - while memtest86 may need 5 or 6 passes to find subtle problems.

For RAM that is clearly defective - then it doesn't make much difference. Both programs will find the problem in short order.

 

[Fishy007]

Originally posted by: Smilin

Originally posted by: Fishy007
I'm not at home right now, but I can tell you that the write caching feature of my drives is NOT enabled. I went there last night to see if I could see anything and there's a checkbox there for write caching, but it's unchecked. I tried checking it off and hit ok, but when I went back into the properties, the text next to the checkbox had changed and it said something like 'the physical properties of this disk does not allow caching'. I can get the exact text later if needed.

All my hard drives are 2 years old or less. One of them I just bought about 6 months ago. 3 of them have 8mb cache and one of them has 16mb. Any thoughts?

mmm, yeah not so much a driver bug as perhaps a bug in the .inf file for the driver.
It sounds like it's getting detected as removable for some reason. Do you see a safely remove hardware icon in your notification area? Even the best disks are slow as ****** so without proper caching this could certainly make things run like a dog. I'm not sure if this is your whole problem but it's definately contributing.

I don't think they're getting detected as removable. The exact message is below
When I open the properties on a drive, under the Policies tab I see a checkbox that's available labelled "Enable Write Caching". Then under that I see the wording "This device does not allow its write cache setting to be modified."

Now at first I took that to mean that it was enabled by default and I couldn't DISable it. But then wouldn't that mean the box should be checked off? Does your drive show it as checked?

This happens with 5 hard drives I've checked.

 

[pcgeek11]

I don't think they're getting detected as removable. The exact message is below
When I open the properties on a drive, under the Policies tab I see a checkbox that's available labelled "Enable Write Caching". Then under that I see the wording "This device does not allow its write cache setting to be modified."

Out of curiousity I had to check mine and it is fine ( checked to enable write caching ). Yours is troubling me I'll continue to look and see what I find.

pcgeek11

 

[Fishy007]

I checked the event logs like Smilin suggested and I found event 34 repeated for each reboot/startup: "The driver disabled the write cache on device..." and my hard drives are listed. The device driver is a MS driver with a June 2006 date. Is there a way I can replace this?
Note that this is not the SATA controller driver which Intel provides. This is the actual DISK driver.

At least now I know why my system has been slower than a brain-damaged monkey stuck in tar.

 

[Smilin]

Can you paste the entire contents of that event 34?

 

[Fishy007]

Lol. I did. The ... just represents the device listed.
I may do a re-install on the weekend if I have time. But this time I'll do it without installing the Intel drivers during installation. If Vista has built-in support for the SATA connections, maybe there's a weird conflict. It's a longshot, but the only shot I have at the moment.

 

[Fishy007]

oh, I forgot to mention that it's a warning event, not an error event.

 

[Smilin]

k, yea I found the text of that event. Doing a search on the internal KB I'm seeing many cases of this stretching back to the Windows 2000 days. I have yet to find one that wasn't resolved by updating the controller drivers.

The only Vista related instance I'm seeing of this references an issue that occurs during upgrades to Vista. You clean installed though right?

Before you try a reinstall, try just rolling back to inbox drivers. Install new drivers for the SATA controller and browse to your Vista dvd for them. I think there is a really good chance this will clear things up.

 

[Fishy007]

Hmm. Ok. I'll give that a shot. Thanks!
Yes, I did do a clean install on a completely different drive. I have XP on a separate hard drive to fall back on in case Vista kills my machine altogether. I saw a lot of the Windows 2000 issues when I searched as well, but I didn't see any solutions. Now that I think of it, I'm not sure I can roll back to the native drivers for the SATA controller. I presented Vista with the drivers during installation, so as far as I know it never used the ones off of the DVD. I'll try uninstalling the drivers and then pointing to the DVD when it re-detects the hardware.
Or maybe I can even just put my drives in IDE mode from the bios and see if write caching is enabled in Windows....hmmm

 

[Smilin]

uninstalling then rebooting may: 1) detect and install the same driver again 2) go into a Stop 0x000007B reboot loop.

Start with simply hitting the 'update driver' button then 'browse my computer'...

 

[Fishy007]

I'll give that a shot, but my experience with that has been that Window simply refuses to install a driver with an older date. Maybe Vista is different?

 

[porcorosso]

Heh. I got along fine with RC1. But, for some reason, Microsoft keeps sending me in a loop every time I try to get to the download page for RTM. Been trying for a couple of days. Damned site keeps telling me it's encountering an error in retrieving my benefits information (Technet Plus subscription).

Was hoping to start running RTM this long weekend. Anyone else having this issue?

BTW, Microsoft support for Technet seems to be MIA today.

I'm brain dead and tired today. Maybe it's best that I can't download the OS.

 

[spherrod]

Originally posted by: porcorosso
Heh. I got along fine with RC1. But, for some reason, Microsoft keeps sending me in a loop every time I try to get to the download page for RTM. Been trying for a couple of days. Damned site keeps telling me it's encountering an error in retrieving my benefits information (Technet Plus subscription).

Was hoping to start running RTM this long weekend. Anyone else having this issue?

BTW, Microsoft support for Technet seems to be MIA today.

I'm brain dead and tired today. Maybe it's best that I can't download the OS.

I was getting that a lot on the 17th (when it was on MSDN) but since then it seems ok - I put it down to the demand at the time

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: Fishy007
I'll give that a shot, but my experience with that has been that Window simply refuses to install a driver with an older date. Maybe Vista is different?

No. About the same. That's why you have to go down the 'let me pick route' when installing the driver.

It can be done via the GUI without any sort of hacking

 

[porcorosso]

I was getting that a lot on the 17th (when it was on MSDN) but since then it seems ok - I put it down to the demand at the time

Maybe lots of people are downloading it today in anticipation of TURKEY DAY.



Too bad Microsoft doesn't just like, you know, have their site be honest and let you know they can't service your request because of heavy traffic. The messages that come up make you think something is wrong with your account.

Anyway, thanks for supplying a little confirmation of what I suspected was probably the case. I'd rather think it was a bandwidth issue than a problem with my subscription.

 

[Fishy007]

Smilin, it worked Installing the default Vista AHCI driver enabled the write caching on all my disks. Now, the messed up part is that Windows wants me to reactivate! What the hell is going to happen to the people running an OEM version? If a DRIVER change causes a reactivation notice, then there's going to be trouble.

Thanks for all your help!

 

[Smilin]

Right on!

So the million dollar question now.. Since you have high end hardware does Vista feel snappier to you than XP?



I have no idea what goes down with the activation thing but I'm not really worried about it. MS has shown time and time again that they are sensitive to the pain that activation causes. The OEM guys should get nothing worse than a 'click to activate'. I could definately see a driver change triggering activation but I'm surprised this one did. Things are weighted in some form or another. Changes in Chipset and NIC (due to mac addy) are big clues that the OS has been 'transplanted'. I suppose a mass storage driver might carry some weight too. Dunno. Did it reactivate ok?


Porcorosso: probably some sort of server issue. Running MS out of bandwidth is tough. Even with something like this. Try a download at off hours to be sure.

 

[Mellman]

a buddy of mine has RTM (of course, since he works at MS he's been using vista for a long time) For him, he has had some problems, but all have been driver related, some w/ DX, some with his nvidia card, *some* games not working right, while others work fine.

as far as whether or not he thinks its any faster than XP...not really. I think the big things he likes about it are a few features - such as the new search box.

Glad you got it working Fishy!

 

[KPACOTKA]

First, I like ME and have it on most of my machines. I guess technet has a fishy RTM, probably some rebadged old beta. Second, Vista RC Two works flawlessly for me. I have problem with <input type=file...> tag on IE7, but the rest looks great. I seems big step forward from XP. BTW did you test DVD burning?

 

[porcorosso]

Porcorosso: probably some sort of server issue. Running MS out of bandwidth is tough. Even with something like this. Try a download at off hours to be sure.

I finally got Vista. This situation was just plain weird. All day long yesterday I would go to the TechNet Online site, sign on, and simply not get offered the link to downloads and product keys.

In other workds, there's a little block of text on the top right of the sign on page that looks like this:

---start of excerpt---

My TechNet Subscription

Subscription Benefits:
? TechNet Plus Downloads and Product Keys
? Support Incidents
? Managed Newsgroups
? Online Concierge Chat
? Microsoft E-learning


Manage My Subscription

---end of excerpt---

But all day yesterday I would sign on and the choices under Subscription Benefits were altered to not include ANY of those choices in that list. I tried with two different browsers and two different computers to be sure there wasn't a browser configuration issue, lame as that would have been.

I finally went in to my profile and found that they had TWO different old addresses listed for me, and that they had an old credit card account listed as well. I haven't resided at the most recent of the old addresses for a couple of years. I updated the information and, suddenly, I'm no longer persona non grata at TechNet Online. I know that this isn't something I could have done. After all, how would I have continued having my for-pay Hotmail account and my TechNet Plus subscription if they were actually operating on that old information?

Hey, the Windows Live / Passport thingy is just swell, as long as they don't goof it up like this. It's surely a mystery to me how this could have happened. Funny thing is that similar stuff has happened to me before this, and just corrected itself (apparently). It would almost make me suspicious that someone was deliberately messing around with my account. But in my particular situation it's pretty hard to see how anyone I know could be doing that.

Anyway, I've got it, I've burned it, and now I get to waste the entire holiday weekend playing with it while my wife glowers at me!

8D

 

[Fishy007]

Originally posted by: Smilin
Right on!

So the million dollar question now.. Since you have high end hardware does Vista feel snappier to you than XP?



I have no idea what goes down with the activation thing but I'm not really worried about it. MS has shown time and time again that they are sensitive to the pain that activation causes. The OEM guys should get nothing worse than a 'click to activate'. I could definately see a driver change triggering activation but I'm surprised this one did. Things are weighted in some form or another. Changes in Chipset and NIC (due to mac addy) are big clues that the OS has been 'transplanted'. I suppose a mass storage driver might carry some weight too. Dunno. Did it reactivate ok?


Porcorosso: probably some sort of server issue. Running MS out of bandwidth is tough. Even with something like this. Try a download at off hours to be sure.

My re-activation was fine. I didn't have any issues, but I highly protest the fact that I had to reactivate. Basically because I changed the driver for the SATA controller, Windows re-detected the hard drives and thought I had added all new hardware. That's insane...to put it mildly. I was hoping that by now Microsoft would be able to tell the difference between a driver change and actual new, physical hardware.

As for Vista being 'snappy', I didn't get much chance to play with it last night, but it IS a lot more responsive. I would say that it's probably on par with (or one small step below) the responsiveness I got with XP. That might improve once Creative and Nvidia release better drivers. The only issue I still have is iTunes. It's quite sluggish, but I'll chalk that up to iTunes+Vista compatibility rather than a Vista problem.

Now to see how smoothly some of my games run. I used to play WoW when I was using RC1 and my framerate jumped 25fps going from XP to Vista. Almost makes me want to re-subscribe to see what the final is like. Almost...