hating Vista (64) all over again...

[iSign]

well, I pretty much avoided Vista like the plague... and then (about 2 years ago) I got jammed up by some losers at Sony.com, when they took an order for a laptop with XP, to be rushed out in time for a business trip... when the shipment was 2 days late I contacted them & they hadn't bothered to notify me of a back-order... and at that point I had to run straight to costco & be stuck with my first Vista experience...

...well, that's old news, and I've actually "UP" graded my laptop & managed to end up with XP, like 7 of my other computers...


...but my main workstation was upgraded to 8 gigs of ram last summer & I wanted a 64 bit OS.. and they were no longer willing to sell XP, but W7 was not out yet... so I got Vista64 & have been making do with it for 8 months or so...

..well, I really don't have time for this post right now, any more then I had time for the hour of inconvenience already shoved down my throat today... but some dame auto-update crap snuck in when I was in the other room helping a customer... closed several programs I had open, including unsaved work that who the hell knows where it ended up if it became a temp file... and I restarted the thing & up pops this install window for the damn Windows update.. and like a F'n idiot, I figured all this inconvenience for the damn update, go ahead and click "Install" and be done with it, because otherwise it will probably pester me 10 times a day until i do...

...so, right after I click "Install" I see "Service Pack 2"... and I think holy crap... I remember when I first heard of a SP2 was when even XP was shutting down signshops with an SP2 that was incompatible with everything... but anyway, SP2 was about to take over...


...so, even with my hairs on the back of my neck starting to stand up in alarm... I still assumed this BS would install in the background & I'd really never notice a thing... DON'T I WISH??

I LOST ALL MY QUICK LAUNCH SHORTCUTS & DOZENS OF FIREFOX BOOKMARKS & WHO KNOWS WHAT OTHER SETTINGS... HELL EVEN MY INTERNET CONNECTION WASN'T WORKING FOR AWHILE... AND THE QUICK LAUNCH STILL WON'T WORK.. AAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH

CAN I SOMEHOW REVERT THIS WORKSTATION TO YESTERDAY OR THIS MORNINGS STATE??

 

[iSign]

OH, AND BEFORE ANYONE SAYS IT... I am upgrading this workstation to windows 7... and it will be a free upgrade... but to get it free, I have to settle for a 4 week delivery time... and besides, even if I was upgrading this weekend, I can't function efficiently without putting things back like they were, and that will take time even in an OS I understand... this crap doesn't even have a functioning quick launch tool bar...
so W7 is on the horizon, but I want my F'n workstation back like it was ASAP!! AAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH ..... I hope someone cann tell me some good news here, as I haven't had much of that lately!

 

[GAC05]

have not used it myself but seems like it should work:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/using-windows-vista-system-restore/

wayne k
guam usa

Win7

 

[BrianKE]

To start with change your settings to notify you when updates are available but not to automatically install (Control Panel -> Windows Update -> Change Settings).

In order to revert back to a previous day you can use System Restore (Start -> Accessories -> System Tools -> System Restore) and choose the most recent date prior to the update. This of course only works if you have System Restore monitoring your hard drive in question.

HTH

 

[iSign]

thanks guys... it offered the first choice to go directly in front of the most recent updat, at 4:20 today.. I said yes sir!!

wish me luck... I'm gonna go running & check back in a few hours!

 

[iSign]

it worked!! yeaaaa!!!

 

[Techman]

completely turn off all updates.. They useless. 99% of us will never know about some obscure problem. You will be safe.

 

[GB2]

completely turn off all updates.. They useless. 99% of us will never know about some obscure problem. You will be safe.

Personally, I think that is a really bad recommendation, about the equivalent of telling someone with any type of problem that the universal solution is just to reformat their hard drive or that all these new versions are no good you should just stick with Windows 3.1.

I think Windows updates should be managed, installed selectively when you authorize it and also other updates should be reviewed by launching Windows Update manually, not only the critical updates set to download via automatic update.

 

[Techman]

Personally, I think that is a really bad recommendation, about the equivalent of telling someone with any type of problem that the universal solution is just to reformat their hard drive or that all these new versions are no good you should just stick with Windows 3.1.

Thats about the lamest anology I have ever seen. First of all. I never reformatted a single machine I ever worked on and secondly the dougs's experience is exactly why I say turn it off.

Personally, If you have worked on as many computers as I have over the past 20 years. And had the pleasure to work around some world class computer gurus as I have and have worked on certain details of windows operating systems as much as I have,,, your opinion would be just like mine,,,. That is to to let a perfectly running machine sit like it is and never update until there is a genuine need. I have never seen or heard of a PC that failed from not updating.. In fact. I just updated one of my old XP machines to xp SP2 just because some software packaged demanded it. It has never failed, or had a reformat, or had a virus or malware in all these years either.

Its that simple. I have my retirement plan based returning PC machines back to a pre-updated state after some user was told an update would be a good idea.

Some of those updates remove some function. Yes that is a well known fact.
Or,they just close some obscure hole that 99% of us common users will never know about let alone fear a problem with it. On the other hand in too many cases an update does exactly what doug has experienced. There are gillions of iterations of PC's. They cannot make a blanket update and NOT ruin some users life. Very few users know that is being updated anyway.

Who on this forum knows what NETDOM is? How many here use net proxies?

OR how about this one.
Recording quality is poor when you use a USB microphone on a Windows 32 Vista-based computer that has 4 GB of RAM or more.

I don't know much at all about the latest and greatest hardware configurations. I don't care to know it doesn't pay. But I do know about the win operating systems and its problems. In case you do not remember,, I was one of three of a group who first found out and correctly predicted that that XP SP2 would be a disaster for certain software users. Our group posted findings all over. I posted on sign forums announcing that any dongled software will fail with XP SP2. And yes, more than a few said I was mistaken yet found themselves suffering long bouts of downtime.

But alas. It's just my opinion. It is only an opinion based on empirical data.

 

[GB2]

I knew that would get you all riled up....

Doug, I'm glad you're back in business. I just spent the last week rebuilding a couple of computers and rebuilding my entire network. It's an unfortunate neccessity these days that in order to be a creative sign artist/craftsman you first need to be a compter technician.

 

[Stealth Ryder]

I used Vista 64 for about a year, never had any issues at all. Using Win 7 64 Bit now, No issues thus far to report... Fingers Crossed...