Yet another Vista WTF



  • I've installed Vista quite a few times, played with it for a bit, but I've never really sat down and looked at it seriously.  Today I got the chance to put my "Corporate Enterprise Network Manager" hat on and sit down with a typical Dell business PC and a copy of Vista Enterprise Edition.

    The full tale isn't played out yet, but I've definitely seen enough so far to enable me to make a large part of my mind up.  So strap in, here we go.

    Installation was a totally painless experience.  Very fast and easy, click-click done.  I did notice that it performed a quick format of the HD without even asking if that was what I actually wanted.  Now, it didn't explicitly say that it was a quick format, but I've done more than enough OS installs to know what a full format of an 80 GB SATA disk looks like, and this wasn't one.  Maybe suitable for a home user, but this is Enterprise Edition, and it should be assumed that the person performing the install has at least half an idea what they're doing.

    It walked me through the usual process of creating a local account and selecting a funky picture (Enterprise Edition, remember), then I got to the desktop.  I was fully aware of what had just happened, but I decided to persevere anyway, just for fun.  So a frantic search through the various options for the "Join a Domain" wizard ("new ways to do familar tasks" == "yes, we've changed all the control panels around again"), type in my domain name.  First surprise - it asked me for my own credentials.  (I'm leaving all the UAC interruptions out here,  we can assume that at every step I got a UAC dialog at least twice.)  This is odd, but OK, maybe it's trying to be helpful (or maybe Microsoft themselves set their own Domain PCs up this way - although I doubt it).

    I walk through the usual steps, and it fails to contact the Domain.  I know exactly what's happening myself, but I still want to see what Vista makes of it, so I let it continue.  A bizarre looking prompt for a "Computer Domain" - this is new.  Apparently you can have a separate Domain for Computers to that you have for Users.  I put in my own Domain again - it's only reasonable to expect that Microsoft's flagship Business OS will know what's happening (even though by now it's obvious that it hasn't the foggiest).  Bang, fail.  I get a list of possible things that could be wrong.  Invalid Domain credentials, malfunctioning DNS, all stuff like this.

    By this point I give up on even hoping that Vista will be able to tell me what's wrong and how to fix it, and just pull out my driver CD and install the bloody NIC drivers.

    (I've cheated a small bit here - I did get the notification area icon indicating a bad network connection, but there are two things wrong with this.  Firstly, one expects that this indicates that it's installed the NIC drivers itself, which it hadn't.  Secondly, one expects that if one part of Vista knows what's wrong, other parts will also have access to this information, which wasn't the case.)

    I join my Domain, reboot and log back on as my Domain User account.  Only to be confronted with the usual array of wacky gizmos, "connect to the internet and share stuff" links, "My Documents", "My Music", "My Videos", "My Pictures", "My Lastest Fucking Waste Of Enterprise Storage", and so on.  Whee, this is fun - hello, Enterprise Edition, people!

    So this is where today's adventure left off.  Tomorrow I get to have fun with installing some applications.  Office 2007 (for the lark!), some fairly ghastly LOB apps, and a few other little bundles of Joy.  I'm especially looking forward to seeing how it copes with our Oracle Financials system, and even more especially looking forward to seeing if Microsoft's flagship Domain Administrative tools will work on Microsoft's flagship Business OS (didn't happen with 2000/XP).



  • @mfah said:

    So a frantic search through the various options for the "Join a Domain" wizard ("new ways to do familar tasks" == "yes, we've changed all the control panels around again"), type in my domain name.  First surprise - it asked me for my own credentials. 
     

    Windows has always (as far back as I can remember) asked for the credentials of someone who can join the domain when joining a domain.

     

    The rest of this is a complaint about installing Vista 'Enterprise' in a home user way. If you are truly doing a company wide 'enterprise' deployment, use the proper tools.

    http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/desktopdeployment/default.aspx

    If done right, you should not have all the extra steps.

     

    As far as trying to connect to a domain without NIC drivers... I don't know. I don't expect any other operating system would have handled this much more gracefully. You are asking for it to hold your hand and self diagnose it's issues 100%, but then complaining about other things treating you like an average user... Make up your mind.



  • @mfah said:

    I've installed Vista quite a few times, played with it for a bit, but I've never really sat down and looked at it seriously.  Today I got the chance to put my "Corporate Enterprise Network Manager" hat on and sit down with a typical Dell business PC and a copy of Vista Enterprise Edition.

    The full tale isn't played out yet, but I've definitely seen enough so far to enable me to make a large part of my mind up.  So strap in, here we go.

    Installation was a totally painless experience.  Very fast and easy, click-click done.  I did notice that it performed a quick format of the HD without even asking if that was what I actually wanted.  Now, it didn't explicitly say that it was a quick format, but I've done more than enough OS installs to know what a full format of an 80 GB SATA disk looks like, and this wasn't one.  Maybe suitable for a home user, but this is Enterprise Edition, and it should be assumed that the person performing the install has at least half an idea what they're doing.

    It walked me through the usual process of creating a local account and selecting a funky picture (Enterprise Edition, remember), then I got to the desktop.  I was fully aware of what had just happened, but I decided to persevere anyway, just for fun.  So a frantic search through the various options for the "Join a Domain" wizard ("new ways to do familar tasks" == "yes, we've changed all the control panels around again"), type in my domain name.  First surprise - it asked me for my own credentials.  (I'm leaving all the UAC interruptions out here,  we can assume that at every step I got a UAC dialog at least twice.)  This is odd, but OK, maybe it's trying to be helpful (or maybe Microsoft themselves set their own Domain PCs up this way - although I doubt it).

    I walk through the usual steps, and it fails to contact the Domain.  I know exactly what's happening myself, but I still want to see what Vista makes of it, so I let it continue.  A bizarre looking prompt for a "Computer Domain" - this is new.  Apparently you can have a separate Domain for Computers to that you have for Users.  I put in my own Domain again - it's only reasonable to expect that Microsoft's flagship Business OS will know what's happening (even though by now it's obvious that it hasn't the foggiest).  Bang, fail.  I get a list of possible things that could be wrong.  Invalid Domain credentials, malfunctioning DNS, all stuff like this.

    By this point I give up on even hoping that Vista will be able to tell me what's wrong and how to fix it, and just pull out my driver CD and install the bloody NIC drivers.

    (I've cheated a small bit here - I did get the notification area icon indicating a bad network connection, but there are two things wrong with this.  Firstly, one expects that this indicates that it's installed the NIC drivers itself, which it hadn't.  Secondly, one expects that if one part of Vista knows what's wrong, other parts will also have access to this information, which wasn't the case.)

    I join my Domain, reboot and log back on as my Domain User account.  Only to be confronted with the usual array of wacky gizmos, "connect to the internet and share stuff" links, "My Documents", "My Music", "My Videos", "My Pictures", "My Lastest Fucking Waste Of Enterprise Storage", and so on.  Whee, this is fun - hello, Enterprise Edition, people!

    So this is where today's adventure left off.  Tomorrow I get to have fun with installing some applications.  Office 2007 (for the lark!), some fairly ghastly LOB apps, and a few other little bundles of Joy.  I'm especially looking forward to seeing how it copes with our Oracle Financials system, and even more especially looking forward to seeing if Microsoft's flagship Domain Administrative tools will work on Microsoft's flagship Business OS (didn't happen with 2000/XP).

     

     

    It's pretty so stfu and gtfo! 



  • Well yeah, I'm aware of the tools and I have used them to produce desktop images that have been successfully deployed to over 6000 PCs.  But master PC images don't spring fully armed from the forehead of Zeus - somebody has to sit down and go through a manual build process, especially if security updates, hotfixes that are required for hardware support (such as HD audio), heavyweight apps that you don't want killing your bandwidth, and hardware independence are required.



  • @mfah said:

    Well yeah, I'm aware of the tools and I have used them to produce desktop images that have been successfully deployed to over 6000 PCs.  But master PC images don't spring fully armed from the forehead of Zeus - somebody has to sit down and go through a manual build process, especially if security updates, hotfixes that are required for hardware support (such as HD audio), heavyweight apps that you don't want killing your bandwidth, and hardware independence are required.

     

    Right, and that is what makes an 'enterprise' deployment.

    Sounds to me like you were expecting Vista Enterprise to install Fedora Core or something. That is pretty funny to think about actually. MS should show some humor and do that to someone someday.



  • When I instaledl Business edition the same way you did I was given the option to customize how to format my drive on the screen where it asks what drive to install on. But you should have really installed it unattended style.



  • @Lingerance said:

    When I instaledl Business edition the same way you did I was given the option to customize how to format my drive on the screen where it asks what drive to install on. But you should have really installed it unattended style.
     

    I agree, I have installed/upgraded a bunch of the different license styles, and I have yet to see the installer format anything without my authorization.



  • @mfah said:

    Now, it didn't explicitly say that it was a quick format, but I've done more than enough OS installs to know what a full format of an 80 GB SATA disk looks like, and this wasn't one.  Maybe suitable for a home user, but this is Enterprise Edition, and it should be assumed that the person performing the install has at least half an idea what they're doing.

    Now tell me why you need non-quick format? I mean the one that will zero-initialize the disk and test if it's readable? You've got too much time on your hands?

    It's not your grandpa's MFM disk anymore. It's using Reed-Solomon error correction.

    Vista (and NT and XP, Win2003, Win2008) installer verify that all files are written OK. After that you're on your own.

    Disks that arrive from factory don't have any bad blocks. Any defects are hidden through a replacement table. Any marginally readable sector, when detected, will be moved to a replacement sector, and you won't notice that. Full format doesn't have any use anymore.



  • So, lets see if I get this straight.

     Your boot up the computer, and it tells you that it can't connect to the network.

    You then try to set up the domain, and go "OMG VISTA SUX!" when it fails, even though you know it has no connectivity.

     And the WTF here is that perhaps you should install NIC drivers first?

     On a side note, I can't remember a time I installed a OS that didn't recognize the NIC, but I digress.

     



  • @Jonathan Holland said:

     On a side note, I can't remember a time I installed a OS that didn't recognize the NIC, but I digress.
     

    I would imagine in Vista they twilighted support for shitty, obsolete, no name cards like they did in Server 2003. Even more of a WTF that anyone would use a card like that.



  • Hey MPS, why don't you have a pop at Lysis for quoting the entire OP? You're consistently an inconsistent Asshole!

     

    I find your thread hijacking totally more annoying that shadowman's quoting habits.



  • @bobday said:

    Hey MPS, why don't you have a pop at Lysis for quoting the entire OP? You're consistently an inconsistent Asshole!

     

    I find your thread hijacking totally more annoying that shadowman's quoting habits.

     

    I don't respond to blatant trolls like Lysis. He does it just to annoy people.

    Why don't you contribute something instead of being a fucktard?



  • @mfah said:

    So this is where today's adventure left off.  Tomorrow I get to have fun with installing some applications.  Office 2007 (for the lark!), some fairly ghastly LOB apps, and a few other little bundles of Joy.  I'm especially looking forward to seeing how it copes with our Oracle Financials system, and even more especially looking forward to seeing if Microsoft's flagship Domain Administrative tools will work on Microsoft's flagship Business OS (didn't happen with 2000/XP).

    The best part about installing Office 2007 is when you find J. Random User, sit him down in front of it, and ask him to open a Word document.



  • @Carnildo said:

    The best part about installing Office 2007 is when you find J. Random User, sit him down in front of it, and ask him to open a Word document.
     

    And he double clicks the file... and... ?



  • It was actually a brand new Intel card, but I digress.  I don't wanna say "read my post", but I did state that I carried out the experiment for fun (and perversity) more than anything else, and I thought it was amusing that it gave me a load of possible causes when the real cause was staring it in the face all along.  One would imagine that checking to ensure there's an actual valid working NIC would be a prerequisite for anything requiring network connectivity (if (!bHasNic) return ERROR_NO_NETWORK; as an early-out).

    I realised what was happening straight away, but I can easily imagine this badly tripping up someone who didn't, and sending them off down the wrong route for quite some time; whether that be from lack of knowledge or a late night.



  • @mfah said:

    I realised what was happening straight away, but I can easily imagine this badly tripping up someone who didn't, and sending them off down the wrong route for quite some time; whether that be from lack of knowledge or a late night.
     

    You envision a lot of people who are too dumb to install a NIC joining a domain on their own?



  • @Carnildo said:

    @mfah said:

    So this is where today's adventure left off.  Tomorrow I get to have fun with installing some applications.  Office 2007 (for the lark!), some fairly ghastly LOB apps, and a few other little bundles of Joy.  I'm especially looking forward to seeing how it copes with our Oracle Financials system, and even more especially looking forward to seeing if Microsoft's flagship Domain Administrative tools will work on Microsoft's flagship Business OS (didn't happen with 2000/XP).

    The best part about installing Office 2007 is when you find J. Random User, sit him down in front of it, and ask him to open a Word document.

     

    It's bizarre enough for J. Random IT Guy as it is!  Most of our users exclusively work through the File | Open dialog, double-clicking doesn't even come into the picture. 



  • @mfah said:

    It was actually a brand new Intel card, but I digress.  I don't wanna say "read my post", but I did state that I carried out the experiment for fun (and perversity) more than anything else, and I thought it was amusing that it gave me a load of possible causes when the real cause was staring it in the face all along.  One would imagine that checking to ensure there's an actual valid working NIC would be a prerequisite for anything requiring network connectivity (if (!bHasNic) return ERROR_NO_NETWORK; as an early-out).

    I realised what was happening straight away, but I can easily imagine this badly tripping up someone who didn't, and sending them off down the wrong route for quite some time; whether that be from lack of knowledge or a late night.

     

    So, your real rant is that they should also include "Make sure the cable is plugged in, and make sure the NIC drivers are installed" in the help?

    Who reads help? 

     



  • @mfah said:

    It's bizarre enough for J. Random IT Guy as it is!  Most of our users exclusively work through the File | Open dialog, double-clicking doesn't even come into the picture. 
     

    All the users I have given it to took a month or two to even notice it wasn't there. They were a little confused until someone told them "Click the windows icon on the top left" 

    LightBulb.Illuminate();



  • @Jonathan Holland said:

    So, your real rant is that they should also include "Make sure the cable is plugged in, and make sure the NIC drivers are installed" in the help?

    Who reads help? 

    Right, but the rest of the rant involves "I bought enterprise because I am 1337! Don't treat me like a baby!". I don't get it.



  • @alegr said:

    Full format doesn't have any use anymore.

    I don't think it ever did, in the sense that Windows uses it. A 'format' really means laying down the structural data on the drive, like the track position markers and so forth; what Windows is doing here is creating a filesystem, not formatting anything.

    Historically, the DOS 'format' command was used to actually format floppies. In that case, a 'full' format meant actually formatting the disk, and a 'quick' format meant just creating a new filesystem on it without formatting it.

    On modern (~20 years) hard drives, you cannot format them from software (that's done at the factory). For some inexplicable, bizzare, downright idiotic reason, Microsoft decided that a 'full' format on such a drive would mean zeroing out some of the blocks. This behaviour has never been useful and has no good excuse for existing. It doesn't even zero out all the blocks, so some old data can still survive.



  • @asuffield said:

    For some inexplicable, bizzare, downright idiotic reason, Microsoft decided that a 'full' format on such a drive would mean zeroing out some of the blocks

     "Full format" in NT installation was actually doing read test, to scan for bad blocks;same as "full format" for a HDD under DOS. It doesn't make sense anymore; if your drive starts getting bad blocks it simply means it exausted all spare sectors and is really going to die soon.

     



  • @Jonathan Holland said:

    On a side note, I can't remember a time I installed a OS that didn't recognize the NIC, but I digress.
     

    My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 6400 purchased in March of last year.  The particular hardware Dell chose to use for several of the laptop's components do not have drivers that ship with XP SP2, including the NIC and the wireless.  (Makes it hard to download the drivers from Dell's website).

    They also sent me the wrong driver CD.  Twice.  I made my own after that.



  • @asuffield said:

    @alegr said:

    Full format doesn't have any use anymore.

    I don't think it ever did, in the sense that Windows uses it. A 'format' really means laying down the structural data on the drive, like the track position markers and so forth; what Windows is doing here is creating a filesystem, not formatting anything.

    Historically, the DOS 'format' command was used to actually format floppies. In that case, a 'full' format meant actually formatting the disk, and a 'quick' format meant just creating a new filesystem on it without formatting it.

    On modern (~20 years) hard drives, you cannot format them from software (that's done at the factory). For some inexplicable, bizzare, downright idiotic reason, Microsoft decided that a 'full' format on such a drive would mean zeroing out some of the blocks. This behaviour has never been useful and has no good excuse for existing. It doesn't even zero out all the blocks, so some old data can still survive.

    I recently worked on a couple of PCs that were shipped with XP Home and I needed to "upgrade" (reinstall) to XP Pro.  The first one I did a full format and everything was fine.  Second one, I decided to be quick about it and just do the quick format.  Now, keep in mind that the drive had 2 factory-installed partitions plus an unused portion (thanks for everything, Dell...) and I deleted all of them and then installed to the unpartitioned space.  Imagine my surprise after the install to discover that some parts of Home had survived and the boot.ini now featured both OSes.  So after all of that I had to turn around and full-format anyway...



  • @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    @Jonathan Holland said:

    On a side note, I can't remember a time I installed a OS that didn't recognize the NIC, but I digress.
     

    I would imagine in Vista they twilighted support for shitty, obsolete, no name cards like they did in Server 2003. Even more of a WTF that anyone would use a card like that.

    I think network cards are a major weakness of XP. It comes with drivers for my 15 year-old printer (HP Deskjet 500), but can't quite figure out the network card (some D-Link 10/100 card).



  • @Cap'n Steve said:

    I think network cards are a major weakness of XP.
     

    We are talking about Vista.



  • @GalacticCowboy said:

    Now, keep in mind that the drive had 2 factory-installed partitions plus an unused portion (thanks for everything, Dell...) and I deleted all of them and then installed to the unpartitioned space.  Imagine my surprise after the install to discover that some parts of Home had survived and the boot.ini now featured both OSes.  So after all of that I had to turn around and full-format anyway...

    Weird. That's not supposed to happen. I think you discovered a(nother) bug in the XP installer.



  • @Cap'n Steve said:

    I think network cards are a major weakness of XP. It comes with drivers for my 15 year-old printer (HP Deskjet 500), but can't quite figure out the network card (some D-Link 10/100 card).

    Blame D-Link for not being able to get the drivers up to the quality MS requires to in-box them.

    And OP, blame Intel for not submitting drivers in time for inboxing.

     



  • The OP's rant seems silly and contrived but it does point out a couple of things that I find very annoying about both XP and Vista:

    1. Other than the ability to join a domain, there is virtually no difference between the "Enterprise" and "Home" versions .

    2.  Lack of drivers for the Audio and Ethernet controllers built into motherboards these days.  I was fooling around with Ubuntu Linux recently and although it sucks, I was surpised to find that I had working audio and network conection right out of the box.


  • @El_Heffe said:

    1. Other than the ability to join a domain, there is virtually no difference between the "Enterprise" and "Home" versions .

    Home has features for home users (basic has less than premium), and Business and Enterprise have features for businesses, whereas Ultimate has all the features, I fail to understand how you can consider them to have little to no difference other than domain-membership ability. If you can afford to buy the Enterprise version I would suggest buying Ultimate instead (as Enterprise comes only on very expensive hardware if I remember my Vista course correctly). Unless of course you need that hardware.
    @El_Heffe said:
    2.  Lack of drivers for the Audio and Ethernet controllers built into motherboards these days.  I was fooling around with Ubuntu Linux recently and although it sucks, I was surpised to find that I had working audio and network connection right out of the box.

    As of late the Linux driver situation is a lot better than windows' driver situation, having the basic drivers built as small modules than can easily be updated instead of massive non-generic drivers that frequently have a requirement for a special control panel which sometimes borders on spyware/nagware (I had to reboot my XP box so the driver could detect my speakers if I booted without the plug in). Honestly, every box I operate now requires me to download drivers for networking on the windows side, but Linux picks them up fine.



  • @alegr said:

    Blame D-Link for not being able to get the drivers up to the quality MS requires to in-box them.

    And OP, blame Intel for not submitting drivers in time for inboxing.

    That's true... but when it comes down to it, you can usually:

    1) Install Linux and have working network and sound out of the box, or

    2) Install Windows and then good luck getting the drivers with your non-existent Internet connection.



  • @superjer said:

    Install Windows and then good luck getting the drivers with your non-existent
    Internet connection.

    And here's when you take yer ole' serial modem, and...



  • A couple of serious questions: 

    Business and Enterprise have features for businesses,
    OK.  That's what Microsoft's marketing literature says.  But what exactly are these "Business features"?  Other than stuff that would only be used by system administrators, are there really any significant differences?

     

    Enterprise comes _only_ on very _expensive_ hardware
      HUH?  Please explain.  Vista Enterprise runs just fine on any computer that can run Vista.  The only real difference is the activation method (Vista Enterprise has to contact a Key management server every 6 months)

     

     



  • @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    You envision a lot of people who are too dumb to install a NIC joining a domain on their own?
     

    Maybe in somebody's world it's considered acceptable to allow Joe User to add any old machine they want to a Domain, but not in mine, OK? 



  • OP: I once tried to connect to the internet without turning on my router. Vista didn't tell me! It sux! I'm so installing Linux, at least Linux is user-friendly and tells you what to do when something goes wrong.

    TRWTF is that there isn't any standard driver that works for every network card on the planet and gives you basic connectivity. Having to download drivers from the internet to get your internet connection to work is ridiculous, just like finding yourself in DOS with a corrupted Win95 installation and no way to access your CD drive from DOS and reinstall Win95 was such a riot ten years ago. We had MSCDEX then (if you were lucky and had it on a diskette), we need something like that for network cards today.



  • @mfah said:

    I've installed Vista quite a few times, played with it for a bit, but I've never really sat down and looked at it seriously.  Today I got the chance to put my "Corporate Enterprise Network Manager" hat on

    When I'm bored I have a Corporate User Network Terrorist hat that I like to put on 

    @mfah said:

    and sit down with a typical Dell business PC and a copy of Vista Enterprise Edition.

    The full tale isn't played out yet, but I've definitely seen enough so far to enable me to make a large part of my mind up.  So strap in, here we go.

    So, basically everything worked fine, although a full network diagnostic isn't built into every single app that uses network features?

    Fine.  You know the drill:
    Enjoy your mug!

     




  • @El_Heffe said:

    OK.  That's what Microsoft's marketing literature says.  But what exactly are these "Business features"?  Other than stuff that would only be used by system administrators, are there really any significant differences?

    Bitlocker drive encryption is Enterprise/Ultimate only. EFS is only for B/E/U.
    Also IIS, Offline file support, multiple user interface languages smart-card management, GPO support (which you can do without a DC), faxing and folder redirection are all for B/E/U.
    @El_Heffe said:
    Vista Enterprise runs just fine on any computer that can run Vista.  The only real difference is the activation method (Vista Enterprise has to contact a Key management server every 6 months)
    I'm slightly curious to how you acquired Enterprise edition, or why you are using it outside a business. Enterprise edition cannot be bought without it being bundled with hard-ware which I recall being informed was very expensive. Enterprise edition has certain features that Business edition doesn't. Just for reenforcement: Vista Enterprise edition cannot be and is not sold retail.



  • @Lingerance said:

    Enterprise edition cannot be bought without it being bundled with hard-ware which I recall being informed was very expensive. Enterprise edition has certain features that Business edition doesn't. Just for reenforcement: Vista Enterprise edition cannot be and is not sold retail.

    I suspect that might even be a reason to exclude drivers for consumer-grade hardware from it.

     



  • @superjer said:

    @alegr said:

    Blame D-Link for not being able to get the drivers up to the quality MS requires to in-box them.

    And OP, blame Intel for not submitting drivers in time for inboxing.

    That's true... but when it comes down to it, you can usually:

    1) Install Linux and have working network and sound out of the box, or

    2) Install Windows and then good luck getting the drivers with your non-existent Internet connection.

     

    I've never had linux work out of the box with a NIC that Windows didn't work with.  I can't say the same thing for the other way.  While I can usually get sound working in 15-20 minutes on linux, I simply cannot get it to do digital audio out.

     

    As for the OP.  You are TRWTF.

    1.  Oh noes, I wanted to wait longer for the full format.  What will I do with this extra 20 minutes in my life?
    2.  Ack!  I have to create a local machine account!  I have to spend 2 seconds clicking on a picture.  Now I've only saved 19 minutes and 30 seconds.
    3.  They changed stuff!  I'm a power user and I knew exactly how to do everything.  Now where do I join a domain?  Oh yeah:  right click on Computer -> properties -> Computer name, domain, and workgroup settings.   Just where it's always been.
    4.  Oh no!  I ried to join it to a domain and it is wanting to make sure that someone with access to the domain is putting it on the domain.  That is such a stupid idea. 
    5. Windows popped up a little thing in the notification area saying that my network drivers aren't working.  Let me assume that it is wrong and spend my time trying to connect anyways.  At least I'm up to 22 wasted minutes now.
    6.  The code that connects to the domain doesn't have insane amounts of checks at the beginning to diagnose any and all possible problems a user might have when trying to connect to a domain.
    7.  The computer has My Documents, My Videos, My Music, My Pictures, and My Shared Stuff...   HELLO!!!! What would business users have to do with DOCUMENTS?!?!?!   Companies don't create documents!  Employees would never keep PICTURES on their computers!!! And employee would never want to listen to music as they work.  What is wrong with those poeple at microsoft?   (Quick note, you will note that the "My" prefix has been dropped in Vista, it's just "Documents", "Music", "Computer", etc.)
    8.  And damn those microsoft people for putting desktop gadgets on the desktop.  What business user would want the weather, a stock ticker, a place to put quick notes, etc.

    Honestly, this was a funny read.  Keep up the good work!

     

    PS.  I just did a fresh install of Vista at microsoft.   They do network service boot to install operating system (I'm rocking vista SP1 right now).  It took me all for 5 minutes to get running on the domain and that's with a 900 MhZ processor.



  • @tster said:

    1.  Oh noes, I wanted to wait longer for the full format.  What will I do with this extra 20 minutes in my life?

    Right, and I don't believe for a minute the OP's claim that it didn't prompt him to format. Vista installer definitely gives you the option to install on current disk or to format.

    @tster said:

    3.  They changed stuff!  I'm a power user and I knew exactly how to do everything.  Now where do I join a domain?  Oh yeah:  right click on Computer -> properties -> Computer name, domain, and workgroup settings.   Just where it's always been.

    I always laugh that many of these people complain constantly about where things are located, how things work, etc in Windows. And yet when MS moves something, it is often the same people who exclaim "WTF! How could you move or change anything!!!??" As if nothing has ever changed in any linux distrib before... or any Mac OS....

     @tster said:

    4.  Oh no!  I ried to join it to a domain and it is wanting to make sure that someone with access to the domain is putting it on the domain.  That is such a stupid idea. 

     Right. I call BS here, since the poster makes himself out to be an admin/power user and yet he clearly doesn't understand what a domain is or how to use it. Why would you allow (by default) someone without domain admin credentials to join your domain?

    @tster said:

    5. Windows popped up a little thing in the notification area saying that my network drivers aren't working.  Let me assume that it is wrong and spend my time trying to connect anyways.  At least I'm up to 22 wasted minutes now.
    6.  The code that connects to the domain doesn't have insane amounts of checks at the beginning to diagnose any and all possible problems a user might have when trying to connect to a domain.

    It is awful that Windows expects a minimum requirement of the user being a little bit more intelligent than a turnip, and not ignoring an error message and complaining that Windows should give you that very error message. </sarcasm>

    @tster said:

    7.  The computer has My Documents, My Videos, My Music, My Pictures, and My Shared Stuff...   HELLO!!!! What would business users have to do with DOCUMENTS?!?!?!   Companies don't create documents!  Employees would never keep PICTURES on their computers!!! And employee would never want to listen to music as they work.  What is wrong with those poeple at microsoft?   (Quick note, you will note that the "My" prefix has been dropped in Vista, it's just "Documents", "Music", "Computer", etc.)

    I might add that any admin/power user should know these are controllable by group policy, not by the install. When he joined to domain, the standard templates according to group policy should have been used. If he is setting up every computer by hand he is a moron.



  • @tster said:

    (Quick note, you will note that the "My" prefix has been dropped in Vista, it's just "Documents", "Music", "Computer", etc.)
     

    Even better, they switched to a sane script/command line-friendly layout for user directories:

    \Users\CodeSimian\Documents

    \Users\CodeSimian\Pictures

    \Users\CodeSimian\Music

    ....

     Much better (seriously) than:

    \Documents and Settings\CodeSimian\My Documents

    \Documents and Settings\CodeSimian\My Documents\My Pictures

    \Documents and Settings\CodeSimian\My Documents\My Music

    .... 



  •  

    ]I'm slightly curious to how you acquired Enterprise edition,
    You're kidding, right?  Vista Enterprise wsa the first version leaked to the internet in late 2006.

    or why you are using it outside a business.
    Curiosity.

     

    Enterprise edition cannot be bought without it being bundled with hard-ware which I recall being informed was very expensive
    I don't believe this is true.  Vista Enterprise is merely the "Volume License" version of Vista.

    Vista Enterprise edition cannot be and is not sold retail.
      This is true, but *HOW* it is sold doesn't change the fact that Vista Enterprise isn't really much different than all the other versions.



  •  

    @tster said:

    7.  The computer has My Documents, My Videos, My Music, My Pictures, and My Shared Stuff...   HELLO!!!! What would business users have to do with DOCUMENTS?!?!?!   Companies don't create documents!  Employees would never keep PICTURES on their computers!!! And employee would never want to listen to music as they work.  What is wrong with those poeple at microsoft?   (Quick note, you will note that the "My" prefix has been dropped in Vista, it's just "Documents", "Music", "Computer", etc.)

    I might add that any admin/power user should know these are controllable by group policy, not by the install. When he joined to domain, the standard templates according to group policy should have been used
      You are correct about group policy but you are missing the point.  Why do these even exist in a "Business" version?


  • @El_Heffe said:

     

    @tster said:

    7.  The computer has My Documents, My Videos, My Music, My Pictures, and My Shared Stuff...   HELLO!!!! What would business users have to do with DOCUMENTS?!?!?!   Companies don't create documents!  Employees would never keep PICTURES on their computers!!! And employee would never want to listen to music as they work.  What is wrong with those poeple at microsoft?   (Quick note, you will note that the "My" prefix has been dropped in Vista, it's just "Documents", "Music", "Computer", etc.)

    I might add that any admin/power user should know these are controllable by group policy, not by the install. When he joined to domain, the standard templates according to group policy should have been used
      You are correct about group policy but you are missing the point.  Why do these even exist in a "Business" version?
     

    Are you new to software licensing?



  • @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    @El_Heffe said:

     

    @tster said:

    7.  The computer has My Documents, My Videos, My Music, My Pictures, and My Shared Stuff...   HELLO!!!! What would business users have to do with DOCUMENTS?!?!?!   Companies don't create documents!  Employees would never keep PICTURES on their computers!!! And employee would never want to listen to music as they work.  What is wrong with those poeple at microsoft?   (Quick note, you will note that the "My" prefix has been dropped in Vista, it's just "Documents", "Music", "Computer", etc.)

    I might add that any admin/power user should know these are controllable by group policy, not by the install. When he joined to domain, the standard templates according to group policy should have been used
      You are correct about group policy but you are missing the point.  Why do these even exist in a "Business" version?
     

    Are you new to software licensing?

     

    In other words, Microsoft is going to do the minimum technical work and put in the maximum marketing effort to "distinguish" the different versions of Windows Vista.  In the past, I believe there were certain "business" features that were unlockable in "home" editions (and vice-versa) using a simple registry hack.  As an example, System Restore is disabled (and unsupported) in Windows Server 2003, but can be re-enabled using an unsupported hack.

    (At least, I hope that's what MPS was trying to say.  Otherwise, just forget I said anything....) 



  • @CodeSimian said:

    In other words, Microsoft is going to do the minimum technical work and put in the maximum marketing effort to "distinguish" the different versions of Windows Vista.  In the past, I believe there were certain "business" features that were unlockable in "home" editions (and vice-versa) using a simple registry hack.  As an example, System Restore is disabled (and unsupported) in Windows Server 2003, but can be re-enabled using an unsupported hack.

    (At least, I hope that's what MPS was trying to say.  Otherwise, just forget I said anything....) 

     

    It is marketing, and it works.

    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><link href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5Crburgess%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml" rel="File-List"><link href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5Crburgess%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_themedata.thmx" rel="themeData"><link href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5Crburgess%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_colorschememapping.xml" rel="colorSchemeMapping"><style> </style>http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckies.html 



  •  @El_Heffe said:

     

    ]I'm slightly curious to how you acquired Enterprise edition,
    You're kidding, right?  Vista Enterprise wsa the first version leaked to the internet in late 2006.

    or why you are using it outside a business.
    Curiosity.

     

    Enterprise edition cannot be bought without it being bundled with hard-ware which I recall being informed was very expensive
    I don't believe this is true.  Vista Enterprise is merely the "Volume License" version of Vista.

    Vista Enterprise edition cannot be and is not sold retail.
      This is true, but *HOW* it is sold doesn't change the fact that Vista Enterprise isn't really much different than all the other versions.

     OH NOES, my 3 year old pirated copy of Vista doesn't have current drivers! WAAAAH!



  • I am tempted to go with the OP on this one. One of the changes in Vista is that it's trying to hold itself more accountable for problems, but clearly something is not working there quite right. Even Winamp has an error message "Please buy a soundcard first", so Windows must have, somewhere, a "Please provide a data link layer first" message.

    Apple's approach was always to baffle you with bizarre numbers (Error -110, Error 50, Error -3250 etc) and only a guru could guess which subsystem was involved (-32xx will probably be Open Transport, small numbers < 0 are possibly the file system etc). The idea of perror() wasn't something Apple embraced, nor any sort of generic range decoder (e.g. for 100 < x < 120, easy_error_message = "Network hardware problem").

    GraphicConverter provides its own perror service, so if it doesn't know what's happened, you'll get an error like "A system error occurred (error -43; invalid filename)" or something to that effect. It won't always help, as Apple's error codes and explanations aren't always well chosen and used, but it's a good start.

    If Vista wants to eat some obscene amount of hard drive space, I'd really hope that a certain portion of that space got taken up by a decent list of error messages. So if the domain join utility doesn't think to check whether you have a NIC, and it receives some strange error -1701, it could at least perror this and show "An unexpected problem occurred trying to join the domain. Windows reported error -1701, "No data link layer found." if this helps any?"

    Anyone who's received the ubiquitous "Error printing" will be with me on this one.

    (-1701 is a real error number, another of Apple's beauties, means that the Enterprise crew found reverse and the universe has suffered damage as a result. That, or something went wrong with an IPC message.)



  • I don't know. Idiot-proof error messages would be nice, but you can't really expect the application to check for every possible problem. Take a web browser for example, when it starts up should it

    1. check how much free memory there is
    2. check how much free disk space there is
    3. make sure an internet connection is available
      1. if not, see if it's because there's no NIC
    4. see if a graphics card is installed
      1. if not, see if a sound card is installed
      2. beep a morse code error message


  • @Cap'n Steve said:

    I don't know. Idiot-proof error messages would be nice, but you can't really expect the application to check for every possible problem. Take a web browser for example, when it starts up should it

    1. check how much free memory there is
    2. check how much free disk space there is
    3. make sure an internet connection is available
      1. if not, see if it's because there's no NIC
    4. see if a graphics card is installed
      1. if not, see if a sound card is installed
      2. beep a morse code error message

    I think you didn't quite follow what I meant. I know that it's awkward (and pretty worthless) to check for every possible error from every OS/DLL/RPC call you make. However, imagine your browser loads, and you ask to see a page. This means opening a TCP/IP connection, and the network subsystem will have to select a data link layer for you. If this fails, it returns error -1701. The browser may be expecting this, but otherwise, it could just call the OS equivalent of perror(-1701) to return an error description. Then at least you get something that might have a clue.

    Checking for hard drive space seems a bit daft, but people failed to do this even in the days when hard drives were pitifully small, and if you got too many e-mails one day you'd come back to find a crashed computer with a full hard drive. I have a screenshot of Windows 98 where Starcraft won't play because it needs 20 MB space and Windows spontaneously reduced the drive to 3 MB while the user was AFK. But Starcraft did check!

    As for checking for a graphics card, that's entirely dependent on the OS of course. More realistically, you mean, can the program connect to an X server? But then, I don't imagine too many people would be trying to start a graphical browser from a command line on a machine with no X server...


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