Comments on: Windows Vista is so unstable!

By: Dan

Dan — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 03:54:35 +0000

BSODs are generally caused by bad drivers from hardware vendors. As for Windows 7, I’ve been using it since the beta and haven’t had any problems with it. Now some co-workers and I are using the RTM and it seems to be working great. I even had to use video card drivers for Vista from nVidia at first, but now they have Win7 drivers out.

By: Kyle

Kyle — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 03:38:14 +0000

You must be lucky. I bougt a brand new laptop with an intel core2 duo x64 processor, 6GB ram, and a 500GB hard drive, yet Vista can’t seem to run correctly out of the box. I’ve had it for two weeks, and ended up with blue screen errors caused by ntfs (verified using windows debugger to check the memory dumps). I re-iinstalled from the hard drive disk image, and now I feel like I need to be careful not to break it. I haven’t even installed the software I need for school yet.

Please dear god, either let windows7 be amazingly better, or help the makers of my wireless card develop a linux driver!

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 06 May 2009 14:33:04 +0000

That has a whole lot more to do with the piece of crap sub-$600 HP laptop that you bought. They shouldn’t sell those things with Vista.

By: Adam Hampton

Adam Hampton — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 17:57:33 +0000

I got a new HP G50 with Vista Home Basic, and everything from just copying/pasting to launching apps was freezing up and just giving the white screen and swirl (hourglass). So I thought this was due to it being home basic. I upgraded to ultimate, and still continue to get the same thing. It’s running the Atheros WiFi adapter, which doesn’t run native in Linux. And the system can’t downgrade to XP. So I’m stuck with this POS.

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 13:55:56 +0000

I’m glad someone else is getting the same issues with Vista ( the Windows Explorer ). I am unable to delete folders with lots of files – over a gig and it just sits ‘discovering’. Copying files is slow also slow. Expanding folders is poor. Normally I have to close windows explorer to refresh it once a file is deleted. I hate it. They should be able to get the basics right.. This is Vista Business!!

By: leonardo

leonardo — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 20:08:23 +0000

Vista very instable. I got blue screen 3-4 times a days. XP was much more stable.

By: Brad

Brad — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 04:30:04 +0000

Murph put it pretty well. I’ve been sticking with Vista until now because of the sidebar and the convenience that comes with it: seeing the weather on your desktop, being aware of my ebay items via the desktop, etc. However, I just can’t put up with it anymore. It is constantly freezing and/or crashing, and even the simplest tasks will at times hose the entire system.

I think I’ll be migrating more towards the Black XP warez versions, as I like the Vista-style interface but would prefer an XP OS for stability and reliability.

By: BL

BL — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 03:44:24 +0000

Agree with others – Vista is very unstable.

I have Vista Business on an HP laptop.

Was having about 3 crashes a day, so upgraded to 2 GB of RAM, which bought the crashes down to about once every 3 days.

It’s ridiculous though. There is no common crash method, it last happened when pressing Ctrl+b to bold a cell in Excel. Though it also happens when opening explorer occasionally and the worst is when it happens when saving a file. The explorer process in task manager is particularly unstable.

The type of crash is horrible too. Everything just stops including (after a while) the mouse. I have left the machine for 2 hours when this happened (thinking it might be doing something in the background) but on return found it exactly the same as when I had left it.

I think Microsoft should really test their products before they release them. It sounds like people were having these problems in their Beta releases but Microsoft did little to fix them. Instead they should have pushed back the release date and actually released a stabel OS. As a software developer I know the success of a product is the quality of the product multiplied by it’s acceptance. Microsoft got the acceptance right, pity they couldn’t make a quality product.

By: Murph

Murph — Thu, 29 May 2008 12:35:12 +0000

Vista is awfully unstable. I use several computers with it and it is universally crappy. Yes, the entire system rarely goes down (that is unless it wants to force an update on you and goes into suicide restart mode that deletes your open files — great feature, Microsoft).

The issue is that Vista has heavy overhead. Take a look at its processing and chunking protocols. They are woefully inefficient. The way it directs tasks is disaster waiting to happen. One small problem happens in my Skype IE add-on and it cascades throughout the system. Word, Outlook, Stata — they all go down for the count. Then try reopening them and see the “memory sticking” that happens. Starting up IE has resulting in half hour-long hangs. It kind of just sits there with the cursor spinning, the screen resolution jumping around, and then the screen going black. It is clear that Vista isn’t actually doing anything.

Another problem is that the Task Manager is feeble in Vista. So many processes are protected that disruptive apps can run with impunity. You can’t end that stupid Windows Media Player updater. Why is that so essential? Sometimes the Task Manager won’t even open. The spinning cursor just reappears.

Then there are the 15 minute cold boots ad the 5 minute sleep/wake-up ordeals composed of Vista fighting with its own drivers to get going. My contention is that this further proof that Vista is always on the verge of crashing programs. It just needs a push.

I hate to say this as someone who hates the Jobs cult, but Macs have been quite appealing ever since Vista appeared.

By: GP

GP — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 17:14:14 +0000

Vista is very unstable!
i have a decent laptop T61 thinkpad with 2G ram, 2.2 GHz clock speed and 160G HDD @ 7200 RPM. It is not too bad. Am using Vista Ultimate. It crashes everyday atleast twice. Cant vista handle gtalk or Yahoo msngr atleast?? I really dont know, if Vista Ultimate can be call Stable.