General ramble about upgrade of XP to Vista

Hello,

I upgraded from XP to Vista recently, and thought I'd put in writing some
observations and problems, in no particular order:

- it took 3 hours on a 3.2 Ghz machine with 4 Gb of memory. I don't have
that many apps installed either. It was mostly unattended, but still seems a
bit excessive, or is this normal?

- it changed a number of settings that I feel it should really have left
alone. It set the "Wakeup on LAN" setting to true in the BIOS (possibly via
the Network settings, as I saw later), meaning that whenever I sutdown the
PC, it started right up again. It changed a couple of similar wakeup
settings, and I suspect that it's done something to the power management
settings, since sometimes when I shutdown, the OS shuts down, but the power
(fan) remains on.

- it changed my Outlook email account setting to require TLS for the "send"
server, which was a bit unnecessary, IMO.

- it did not handle my monitor very well, setting it to 1024x768 and
refusing to set it higher, until I re-installed the driver several times and
rebooted in some order until I could get it to its former glory (a modest
1200x1024, in fact). It's a Samsung Syncmaster 171P, if anyone's interested.

- Some of the desktop icons, which formerly diplayed nicely in XP, look
distinctly VGA in Vista. Others are OK.

- it replaced my cursor scheme with some default (but did not lose my custom
scheme). I assume this happened somehow when it migrated the user accounts.

- with one particular web-based application, on accessing some option it
said that it couldn't display the screen normally (sorry, I can't remember
the exact wording) and gave me an option to display it in a new window which
took over the screen display ( a bit like some games do). This screen was
1024x768 again (this was after I'd reset the setting back to 1200x1024).
Furthermore, the screen was in right-hand mouse mode, ignoring my user
settings and when it returned control back to normal Vista the resolution
remained at the lower level.

- a couple of applications (Symantec antivirus and a VPN) did not work in
Vista. Not surprising, really, and not much of a problem (a later version of
the VPN supports Vista and works fine, I just downloaded AVG for the
antivirus). But, I was hoping/expecting Vista to tell me the apps that
weren't going to work properly.

- my scanner is now intrusive, whereas under XP it didn't do anything until
it was told to (except load an icon in the botton RH part of the taskbar).
Now it either comes up with its own config problem, which can be OK'd or
Cancelled without any apparent ill effect, or sometime during the session I
will get the Windows Fax and Scan application come up with an error message
box saying "Automatic Scanning could not be completed". This can also be
closed without any ill effect. It's a Microtexk ScanMaker 3800, if that
makes any difference.

Well, that was a pretty good whinge, wasn't it? In fact, I got about the
same level of trouble as I expected, but in different areas. Overall,
despite all the above, I'm quite happy with Vista - my favourite
applications all run fine and startup/shutdown times are significantly
faster. If anyone does have feedback (especially on the shutdown lack of
power off) I'd be grateful.

Regards,
Arfur

Arfur Million wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I upgraded from XP to Vista recently, and thought I'd put in writing some
> observations and problems, in no particular order:
>
> - it took 3 hours on a 3.2 Ghz machine with 4 Gb of memory. I don't have
> that many apps installed either. It was mostly unattended, but still seems a
> bit excessive, or is this normal?
>
> - it changed a number of settings that I feel it should really have left
> alone. It set the "Wakeup on LAN" setting to true in the BIOS (possibly via
> the Network settings, as I saw later), meaning that whenever I sutdown the
> PC, it started right up again. It changed a couple of similar wakeup
> settings, and I suspect that it's done something to the power management
> settings, since sometimes when I shutdown, the OS shuts down, but the power
> (fan) remains on.
>
> - it changed my Outlook email account setting to require TLS for the "send"
> server, which was a bit unnecessary, IMO.
>
> - it did not handle my monitor very well, setting it to 1024x768 and
> refusing to set it higher, until I re-installed the driver several times and
> rebooted in some order until I could get it to its former glory (a modest
> 1200x1024, in fact). It's a Samsung Syncmaster 171P, if anyone's interested.
>
> - Some of the desktop icons, which formerly diplayed nicely in XP, look
> distinctly VGA in Vista. Others are OK.
>
> - it replaced my cursor scheme with some default (but did not lose my custom
> scheme). I assume this happened somehow when it migrated the user accounts.
>
> - with one particular web-based application, on accessing some option it
> said that it couldn't display the screen normally (sorry, I can't remember
> the exact wording) and gave me an option to display it in a new window which
> took over the screen display ( a bit like some games do). This screen was
> 1024x768 again (this was after I'd reset the setting back to 1200x1024).
> Furthermore, the screen was in right-hand mouse mode, ignoring my user
> settings and when it returned control back to normal Vista the resolution
> remained at the lower level.
>
> - a couple of applications (Symantec antivirus and a VPN) did not work in
> Vista. Not surprising, really, and not much of a problem (a later version of
> the VPN supports Vista and works fine, I just downloaded AVG for the
> antivirus). But, I was hoping/expecting Vista to tell me the apps that
> weren't going to work properly.
>
> - my scanner is now intrusive, whereas under XP it didn't do anything until
> it was told to (except load an icon in the botton RH part of the taskbar).
> Now it either comes up with its own config problem, which can be OK'd or
> Cancelled without any apparent ill effect, or sometime during the session I
> will get the Windows Fax and Scan application come up with an error message
> box saying "Automatic Scanning could not be completed". This can also be
> closed without any ill effect. It's a Microtexk ScanMaker 3800, if that
> makes any difference.
>
> Well, that was a pretty good whinge, wasn't it? In fact, I got about the
> same level of trouble as I expected, but in different areas. Overall,
> despite all the above, I'm quite happy with Vista - my favourite
> applications all run fine and startup/shutdown times are significantly
> faster. If anyone does have feedback (especially on the shutdown lack of
> power off) I'd be grateful.
>
> Regards,
> Arfur
>
>


Last things first then,

Seems to me like some hardware just does not understand shutdown, and
this seems worse with Vista - I have tried all manner of new BIOS and
things on one PC and no go, it does what yours does, OS closes but the
power stays on... it does not come back with an error though so the
shutdown seems complete, it is just annoying since you are never quite
sure whether to hit the power switch or not. It is fine with all other
operating systems including Linux.

Symantec, you are better off without IMHO

The screen troubles sound like drivers, now there are some caveats with
drivers, especially video and more especially NVidia.

It messes up your desktop usually, but it is always better to use
control panel remove software to remove old drivers if you can see then
there, and turn off any security software so that it does not restart
with Windows when you reboot.

Download new drivers from the maker's website before starting this and
save them some place easy to find with a messed up screen, remove the
old drivers, kill off AV and reboot, them make installing the new
drivers step #1 (Unless you cant set the AV off and have to stop it again).

Check also for motherboard / chipset drivers, they too can be a serious
problem and I guess if you do find some new ones you should maybe do
this first, either way always reboot between these installs - usually
you will get asked to do that.

No answers for the other things, by all means see what others say about
drivers first but most here will tell you not to let Windows update do
drivers - it is not Microsoft's fault but with some combinations of
software and hardware it plain doesn't work and then often causes
serious trouble.

You have problems you never experienced with XP so you are happy with Vista?
You are Microsoft's kinda guy.

"flambe" <> wrote in message
news:OAI3j.48516$ et...
> You have problems you never experienced with XP so you are happy with
Vista?
> You are Microsoft's kinda guy.
>
>


That was my take on it too...

viz: Other than all the stuff that did not work right...it was just fine
<G>

"Arfur Million" <> wrote in message
news:ZzH3j.19768$...

>
> - my scanner is now intrusive, whereas under XP it didn't do anything
> until it was told to (except load an icon in the botton RH part of the
> taskbar). Now it either comes up with its own config problem, which can be
> OK'd or Cancelled without any apparent ill effect, or sometime during the
> session I will get the Windows Fax and Scan application come up with an
> error message box saying "Automatic Scanning could not be completed". This
> can also be closed without any ill effect. It's a Microtexk ScanMaker
> 3800, if that makes any difference.
>

Thanks for the replies so far, I'm making a (very) little progress with the
scanner: it looks like the problem is that different programs are competing
for the device, and this is stopping the manufacturer's program from working
properly (it starts then hangs). I can use the scanner with the "Windows Fax
and Scan" program. This looks OK, but I'd prefer to use the Microtek
Scanmaker software anyway. So, I turned off the Fax And Scan feature,
re-booted (why is this *still* necessary??) and then found that OneNote is
trying to take it over! This is especially irritating since I'd turned it
off in XP - this is another setting that the upgrade ignored/overwrote.
Anyway, rather than keep turning off Windows features, is there a way to
tell Windows that the only program I want associated with the scanner is
ScanMaker 5? I looked at the Program Defaults feature, but I couldn't find
it there.

Regards,
Arfur