The title of this article is "10 Vista problems you didn't know you had" and most of the sections are about great features of Vista rather than issues...

It did have some useful information in there though.

Seriously, why take 11 pages of tweaking Vista and figuring out crashes and performance problems. Can we just move onto a WORKING O/S? Ubuntu? OS X for the needy, anyone?

I'm sure that the Trinity Rescue Kit you mention in step 5 is a very good tool, but it should be noted that you don't *need* to use a commandline only linux distribution to clean up your windows filesystem, and doing so would probably seem somewhat masochistic to some who were used to using the point and click graphical file management interface available with vista. I'd suggest grabbing a ubuntu live CD or a knoppix CD instead and just point and clicking your way through these file management tasks the same way you would in windows if it allowed you to (and I have to admit I'm kind of amazed that vista can't tell the difference between currently a currently active \windows directory and a directory on another drive that just happens to share the same name - sound like another example of the 'good enough, it'll do' code coming out of redmond these days).

This is interesting.

11 pages of "vista woes" and in all reality, folks, zero information given. Talking about a problem and giving a solution are two different things. This article just lightly brushes across some issues with Vista, but doesn't give anyone anything actually useful.

The most useful thing in this entire article was a link to another website, to BlackViper's website, where you WILL find real actual information about servicing your Vista operating system, unlike this article, which doesn't do anything what so ever. "Did you know that Vista and Linux sometimes have network trouble talking? NO? Now you do! Oh, and we don't actually have information on that... lol, oh yea, check out BlackViper's site if you want to actually learn something! Ta! Thanks for visiting Tom's!" That's the article in a nut shell.

GET SOME REAL INFORMATION OR DON'T BOTHER `AUTHORING' EMPTY BLOAT.

Very best,

I WANT THE TIME BACK THAT I SPENT READING THIS. 11 Vista problems I never knew I had, well, I know vista pretty well and have only ever come across the 1 and only problem you listed which was an easy fix (which is not actually needed to be fixed as it is dynamic in size and frees up space when needed). The rest of your list are just tweaks that can be performed, with a few giving detrimental results to the stability and speed of Vista

This is just a moan on the perceived stability of Vista and how to break it in a very quick way by disabling services and unlocking protected areas of storage so they can be "fiddled" with. There are good reasons why some folders cannot be access by the end user as it stops viruses and other spyware from infecting the PC at the root level easily and disabling random services will make it less stable.

I have managed to use Vista for well over a year and have never had any need to go fiddling with it to the extent you listed here. I have only ever seen 1 BSOD caused by Vista, I have had a few from unstable drivers but I had about 10x as many BSOD under XP than I have under Vista 64bit.

According to MS (http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols) it's:
http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols not http://msdn.microsoft.com/download/symbols

I agree w/ others - this article is not only WEAK, but inaccurate, and as a bonus, etremely sloooow to load...

I have Vista running 24 hours a day, use it as my media center, playing games, downloader, browser, and visualizations. I have 10 external WD My books through USB. Works fine. Vista is a good OS, people need to grow up and stop bashing it. Sure XP ran faster, but thats because the OS was less complicated. XP is like a security check at a train station and Vista is like a security check at an airport. You can get through the train station faster, but you accept that the airport will be slower because its more thorough and for your protection. The only reason why we need something like Vista is because sooooooooooooo many people are out there are writing exploits to make it look bad and to mess up peoples OS's. I don't get why people need to waste their time trying to make peoples life's miserable. At the end of the day, are they really proud of themselves to crash someones system or make 1000's of popups appear? I would like to interview a hacker and just hack their psyche. Hopefully make them realize they are better off dead; i mean its like someone who has AID's and wants to infect you just to see you die. They really have no morals and that scary, because the end of the world will be caused by someone with too much knowledge and no morals.

I appreciate all of your comments. However, it seems like many of you are the type of people who are very knowledgeable about OSs and are very comfortable tweaking them on your own. It is only natural that experts of this sort would find this article to be basic. We created this feature for people aren't at all familiar with Vista's inner workings. It just wouldn't be right to create an article for OS experts on Tom's Guide.

Rachel Rosmarin, Editor of Tom's Guide

FWIW, my goal in writing this story was to document actual issues that I've had to research and solve on my system in the past 6 months or so. It was written from the perspective of "If this happens to you, try the following..." I do understand that the level of info provided here is not terribly deep, and I did try to point to other, more detailed sources when it seemed appropriate. The Black Viper site is one of my favorites, too, and definitely worth a bookmark and a visit. For me most of the really useful troubleshooting Vista information comes out of online forums (sometimes Microsoft's, most times third parties) and from Knowledge Base and TechNet stuff.

Thanks to whomever for catching my typo on the symbol lookup URL: I rekeyed instead of cut'n'pasting, and now I must pay. If I'd just opened the symbol path in WinDbug, I could have grabbed "SRV*c:\Windows\Symbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols" My failing eyesight made the unwarranted character swap. My apologies.

--Ed--

To Arbie:

Re: the useless happytalk remark.
1. Google me: I've contributed to over 100 books. How many have you written (over a dozen different ...For Dummies titles included)
2. The editor's assignment asked me to make this approachable for newbies. Maybe it was a waste of your time, but I wrote what I was asked to provide.
3. Why don't you submit an article to Tom's? We're always looking for smart, savvy contributors. Put your work where your mouth just was.

'Nuff said,
--Ed--

Some of the criticism was unnecessarily harsh, while some was valid. I think the article just needs a different title. Those of us who believe Vista is (now, after a service pack) a decent OS, are constantly frustrated by articles that cast Vista in a bad light.

In this case, what does the title ("10 Vista Problems You Didn't Know You Had") suggest to someone who is browsing through the list of articles on this site? It tells us that Vista has 10 problems that need our attention.

The people who dig into the article will find that several of those 10 items are not Vista problems. For instance, the item discussing USB ports. The difference between USB 1.1 and 2.0 has absolutely nothing to do with Vista. Another item, "Vista drive images to the rescue", talks about a feature of Vista that can help you with backups. Is that a Vista problem?

This is an interesting article for new Vista users, but the title is misleading.

Kinda funny reading this... seems like 10 reasons to not use Vista!

As this article is targeted to some what newlings, I'd highly advise against disabling the UAC (briefly mentioned in BSOD section). Or, if you do, operate under a user account and reserve the admin account for software installations only. Without the UAC and operating as admin, you might as well name the machine "malware honeypot".

Been using Vista at home ever since it was released. I'm still looking for that "gotta have it!" feature that was worth leaving XP...

I love this "Internet Tough Guys." that bash these articles that people take their own time to write freely for the public. Just to point out that these articles are in fact "free" so there should be no need to bash an open article to the public. Its not like a magazine that you paid a couple of dollars for. If you would like to make some suggestions, great! But look at the perspective of the writer as ettitel said how he was writing this article as if he was talking to newbies. Now being a Vista Ultimate user myself, I understand that there are problems with Vista and no OS is "Perfect" in any way. Im looking forward to Windows 7 and I hope Microsoft will not charge existing Vista users a high amount for licenses because considering how many people are frustrated with it, many people will abandon PC's for Macs. But even then, the user will not be completely satisfied with a mac. I've tried OS X and I find it to simplified as well and was not to my taste. I like the flexibility of Windows and I find its interface quite attractive. Theres nothing really wrong with it. What I dislike is Mac fanboys bashing microsoft yet they are using MS Word on their macs. Hmm....

Throughout reading this up to step 5 I was thinking "WTH is this guy trying to accomplish here?". And then I got to Step 5 and went crazy enough to comment.

You don't need to use linux to delete something you for some reason can't access. Try taking ownership of the files first, give yourself access, or kill UAC if you must (though I don't suggest it, you should be able to access anything you need by taking ownership and giving your user group the rights).

Good lord...I don't even know why I read this things expecting to learn something I didn't know already. I was expecting tweaks, not basic OS information that is also relevant to many of MS's other OS's.

Time to resume reading this madness....6 looks equally stupid (sorry no other word for it....XP uses minidumps too).Throughout reading this up to step 5 I was thinking "WTH is this guy trying to accomplish here?". And then I got to Step 5 and went crazy enough to comment.

You don't need to use linux to delete something you for some reason can't access. Try taking ownership of the files first, give yourself access, or kill UAC if you must (though I don't suggest it, you should be able to access anything you need by taking ownership and giving your user group the rights).

Good lord...I don't even know why I read this things expecting to learn something I didn't know already. I was expecting tweaks, not basic OS information that is also relevant to many of MS's other OS's.

Time to resume reading this madness....6 looks equally stupid (sorry no other word for it....XP uses minidumps too).Throughout reading this up to step 5 I was thinking "WTH is this guy trying to accomplish here?". And then I got to Step 5 and went crazy enough to comment.

You don't need to use linux to delete something you for some reason can't access. Try taking ownership of the files first, give yourself access, or kill UAC if you must (though I don't suggest it, you should be able to access anything you need by taking ownership and giving your user group the rights).

Good lord...I don't even know why I read this things expecting to learn something I didn't know already. I was expecting tweaks, not basic OS information that is also relevant to many of MS's other OS's.

Time to resume reading this madness....6 looks equally stupid (sorry no other word for it....XP uses minidumps too).Throughout reading this up to step 5 I was thinking "WTH is this guy trying to accomplish here?". And then I got to Step 5 and went crazy enough to comment.

You don't need to use linux to delete something you for some reason can't access. Try taking ownership of the files first, give yourself access, or kill UAC if you must (though I don't suggest it, you should be able to access anything you need by taking ownership and giving your user group the rights).

Good lord...I don't even know why I read this things expecting to learn something I didn't know already. I was expecting tweaks, not basic OS information that is also relevant to many of MS's other OS's.

Time to resume reading this madness....6 looks equally stupid (sorry no other word for it....XP uses minidumps too).Throughout reading this up to step 5 I was thinking "WTH is this guy trying to accomplish here?". And then I got to Step 5 and went crazy enough to comment.

You don't need to use linux to delete something you for some reason can't access. Try taking ownership of the files first, give yourself access, or kill UAC if you must (though I don't suggest it, you should be able to access anything you need by taking ownership and giving your user group the rights).

Good lord...I don't even know why I read this things expecting to learn something I didn't know already. I was expecting tweaks, not basic OS information that is also relevant to many of MS's other OS's.

Time to resume reading this madness....6 looks equally stupid (sorry no other word for it....XP uses minidumps too).Throughout reading this up to step 5 I was thinking "WTH is this guy trying to accomplish here?". And then I got to Step 5 and went crazy enough to comment.

You don't need to use linux to delete something you for some reason can't access. Try taking ownership of the files first, give yourself access, or kill UAC if you must (though I don't suggest it, you should be able to access anything you need by taking ownership and giving your user group the rights).

Good lord...I don't even know why I read this things expecting to learn something I didn't know already. I was expecting tweaks, not basic OS information that is also relevant to many of MS's other OS's.

Time to resume reading this madness....6

I frequent Tom's quite a bit and generally like these kind-of articles - but, like I said before, the title is very mis-leading. It seems, and this may of not been your intent, that lately posters write Vista articles and give them these titles in order to get views when in fact they have nothing to do with the flame-catching title.

So much has been made about Vista's lacking over XP since its release, but no one really focuses on the high points and real reasons to move away from XP - enterprise enhancements.

I will admit that I hate most things Apple; mainly because I am subjected to fixing issues with our company head's mac books when *surprisingly* they can't seem to figure out even the simplest tasks. And I openly admit that I am so very much a Microsoft fan boy, mainly because the products that come from MS for the enterprise are absolutely amazing. I can site many great things - most of which people here have never used - such as System Center enterprise suit which includes: Operations Manager, Data Protection Manager, Virtual Machine Manger and Configuration Manger all for a paltry $1,200!! DP alone with worth so much more than that and has saved my bacon numerous times -- all these tools work in-tune with the enterprise enhancements MS makes to their OS (server & workstation) - this is where the real value resides and these are the articles that should be written.

"Living with Vista: It is Possible" - you are #$%@ right it is possible; the move to image based OS loads alone is worthy of an upgrade -- (yes I know others have been doing this for some time). Not to mention the additional group policy additions - which is one of the best anti-malware/spyware tools in the box.

XP is/was a great OS, and we still use quite a bit of them in our network - but the time for change is here and if that means waiting for Win7 or jumping on Vista then so be it - but please, please, please stop misleading faithful readers into these bait/switch titles!!

Most people that have had issues with both XP and Vista are usually self-inflicted -- meaning that they choose to install wrong/old/bad drivers, didn't read the release notes on software updates and/or driver updates, or generally just don't know what they are doing and instead of asking for advise or using the generally accepted universal tool Google.com -- they just go it alone and click "yes, go ahead and install that useless junk on my computer" -- the same damage can be done to ANY OS in the same manner and usually there is no easy turn-around with them.

And lastly (if you have even read this far), as the UAC goes vs. the competition (Apple), I just has to install a new Verizon air-card on a brand-new powerbook (osx 10.5.5) and I had to click allow (or continue) about eight times which didn't include the typing of the admin password at the beginning. On my Vista laptop it was two including the admin pass - just food for thought... you know, not believing the MAC vs. PC (over)hype ads.