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Handful of Vista Hotfixes Available

By BetaNews Staff, BetaNews

February 1, 2007, 4:17 PM

Now that Windows Vista has been unleashed onto an expecting public, a number of minor issues have cropped up in the new operating system. Microsoft has already posted a handful of hotfixes for those running into issues, although they aren't critical enough to be published on Microsoft Update.

Windows enthusiast Steven Bink has linked to the fixes, which include patches for Vista crashing when connected to a Firewire device, high definition audio devices not working after resuming Windows, and audio playback in a different language when using Media Center. Microsoft frequently releases non-priority hotfixes that usually make their way into service packs for its operating systems.

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By alphatrigon

posted Feb 4, 2007 - 10:32 PM

patches and fixes will always exist for open hardware platforms.

I am glad that MS does this and without all that pretentiousness. Vista and office 2k7 for me baby! :D

Score: 0

By ghammer

posted Feb 3, 2007 - 1:08 AM

Cool, I waited until the first patches were available to install.

Back in an hour or so.

Score: 0

By terminalx

posted Feb 2, 2007 - 9:22 PM

I got this in my email today I found it amusing wasn't sure where I should post it though...

"It's time to get a Mac. If you're thinking of upgrading to Vista, you'll probably need a new computer. Why not get a Mac? It's simpler, more secure, and way more fun. And it works with the stuff you already have, like printers and cameras. So before you upgrade anything, you owe it to yourself to check out a Mac."

click on start button hit browser tada. Seriousily, mac is simpler then that does it just load the internet by thinking it I mean really does it?

Score: 0

By Yakumo

posted Feb 3, 2007 - 10:17 AM

rofl, yeah, works with the last 10 years backlog of MS based software & games?

uh oh, I think not.

cheers for posting a good laugh.
such a hoot, like tae kwon do advertising as 'the most effective martial art'

Score: 0

By CarLox

posted Feb 2, 2007 - 7:26 PM

guys, the driver part by windows vista is good for now, but Microsoft had so ****ing time to create a new source code, NEW EVERYTHING YOU KNOW, but like the "Pirates Of Silicon Valley", they like to copy everything, like Apple, they stole the UI from Xerox, so what the hell? and if you want to increase your protection in ANY WINDOWS OS you just have to be careful with spyware, dont be lazy people, buy the anti-everything software or at least try to find anything that gives you protection for free, Windows onecare is bulls***...

Score: 0

By Pixelsmack

posted Feb 2, 2007 - 12:22 PM

Yeah, my experience thus far with Vista Ult has been a good one. I LOVE how fast and clean the GUI is and all little touches make the traditionally boring to use Windows a tad more exciting.

Score: 0

By dhjdhj

posted Feb 2, 2007 - 1:22 PM

Yep - that's what they said when XP first came out....and when W2K first came out....and when Windows 98 came out...

etc., etc., etc.,

Score: 0

By tickko

posted Feb 2, 2007 - 10:53 AM

Honestly, I upgraded my Media Center to Vista Ultimate and I only had to find one driver after the installation was done and that was for a Logitech Quick Camera. In the past when I did a XP reload I had to run 4 or 5 installation disks for all my drivers. Sounds to me like a step in the right direction.

Everyone rips on Vista, but my proformance is the same if not improved with the upgrade. Applications seem to load quicker, the image rendering engine has been greatly enhanced. Granted I am running 2 gb of memory. If you run a system on 512 mb of RAM, you probably aren't going to see an increase in speed.

You have to expect that there are going to be bugs to fix. But thats why Microsoft has given you options. Didn't they just extend their support date for XP?

Just my two cents...

Score: 0

By frankwick

posted Feb 2, 2007 - 11:34 AM

I don't have retail Vista, but I dual-booted with several pre-releases on my media center machine. I agree with you. All drivers and decoders were present out of the 'box' and I didn't have to look for anything.

App speed was quicker and I run with 1GB RAM. I think the speed boost can be attributed to the new way graphics are rendered in the video card. I have 512MB of video RAM.

I'm glad there are hot fixes. Software must continue to evolve. What most of the people on these forums don't realize is that it is rare that any two configs are exactly the same. Even store bought machines eventually get new hardware or software installed. It would be impossible for anyone to test every config before it is released. Windows does an amazing job of running the millions of possible scenarios and configs we have on our machines. No other operating system can make such a claim. It is amazing really.

Score: 0

By Floodland

edited Feb 2, 2007 - 5:04 AM

Patching the OS is ok, and necesary, but the main problem with Vista is the speed. Vista is slow dog, feels slow and it's not going to change until a few years when hardware (maybe) makes the sluggish UI feels decent... Shame on Micro$oft...
I forgot: DRM, OS phoning home and gov. spyware are problems too.. I don't want any of those on my computer.
Don't but Vista or any computer that bring it installed. Stick with XP if you don't want to try Linux or OSX.

Score: 0

By only71stitches

posted Feb 5, 2007 - 3:45 PM

I found Vista to be much faster on my system then XP was, but I am well with in the hardware requirements for Vista.

So my question to you would be, what are your system specs? And what background stuff is running, Norton (Which I found really slows down your computer no matter which OS you have), spyware software, other stuff that was ment for XP?

Score: 0

By bourgeoisdude

posted Feb 2, 2007 - 6:38 PM

Speed is relative to so many factors other than just the OS that it is impossible for you to say that at this point. Norton 2007 is slower in Vista than XP, because it was still written primarily for Windows XP and not optimised for Vista. So is Vista slower? Nope.

I used one app as an example, but it applies to 99% of the others right now...

Score: 0

By Floodland

edited Feb 2, 2007 - 8:20 PM

Bad start. Many Symantec products are bad. Norton Antivirus is specialy bloated and one of the first things I do when I see it (ussually pre-bundled with some computers) is to replace it for a good AV.
Vista core is slower than XP, Aero is damn slow. I compared with some computers and XP is allways faster in the same computer. Tried in Athlon 64X2 with 1gb RAM, Core 2 Duo with 2gb RAM and a Radeon X800gt and allways way behind XP.
I still think that the operating system should do just that: Be a plattaform for applications and not bloat your screen only to show a translucid window. It's ok if it's there, but I repeat: Only if it doesn't hog the system performance. Vista is a terrible monster without reason.

Score: 0

By smarterthanyou

posted Feb 3, 2007 - 3:53 PM

The Vista kernel is one of the most efficient OS kernels ever created. On the desktop, Vista is considerably faster than any *nix flavor, not to mention Vista is more secure and stable than *nix is.

If Vista seems slow on your computer, then it's because of driver problems. Not because of a bug in Vista itself. Both ATI/AMD and Nvidia have made it very clear that their first drivers for Vista RTM are NOT fully functional drivers in any way.

Score: 0

By KingMotley

posted Feb 2, 2007 - 12:08 PM

Would you change your mind if Microsoft included a free tin-foil hat with every copy?

Score: 0

By Joey Deacon

posted Feb 2, 2007 - 4:43 AM

Anyone that thought that a slew of fixes would not be released upon retail launch (considering code was closed 2 months back), is naieve to say the least...

Score: 0

By phenomnaruto

posted Feb 2, 2007 - 3:39 AM

wait didn't OSX just release a patch for its bugs too? Yea ... I thought so ... many fools who have replied to this article seem to forget that.

Score: 0

By smarterthanyou

posted Feb 2, 2007 - 3:19 AM

From the article: "patches for Vista crashing when connected to a Firewire device, high definition audio devices not working after resuming Windows, and audio playback in a different language when using Media Center. Microsoft frequently releases non-priority hotfixes that usually make their way into service packs for its operating systems"

So Microsoft is saying that bugs that make my computer crash or my hardware stop working are not important? Most of these patches sound like pretty big issues to me.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Feb 2, 2007 - 11:56 AM

The number of user it affects also determines their priority. I am guessing these will only affect a marginal number of users.

Score: 0

By TalGreywolf

edited Feb 2, 2007 - 6:11 PM

That might depend on how you define a marginal number of users. Would 100,000 be marginal? One million? How many users have DV cameras that use Firewire and download to their computers? That's not exactly what I'd call a marginal number, considering that Firewire is the preferred way of transferring video.

Admittedly Vista has quite a few known issues and likely twice as many unknown ones that will come out over the next few months as more and more folks work with the OS. Despite Microsoft's claims, *WE* are the beta testers, those of us who actually use the OS now daily. It's only after SP1 is released that we can legitimately say that the OS is finally in a stable state.

I have been working with Vista for close to two months now, and I can say that there are still issues and problems with the OS, some of which may become major showstoppers later on down the line. For example, my system would not see any USB external storage device with more than 2gb of memory installed. XP worked fine, but Vista wouldn't play with the devices unless and until I removed the extra memory. Only then would it recognize USB memory sticks and external drives.

But we'll see... it's still early in the 'testing' cycle.

Score: 0

By bugmenot

posted Feb 2, 2007 - 2:36 AM

Hahaha. Just out and there's a tons of bugs already? My god. This is the kind of things people pay $500 for and upgraded their computer for?

Score: 0

By morriscox

posted Feb 2, 2007 - 12:58 PM

Maybe you should change your handle to 'thinkmenot'. So how much do you think each bug weighs? A few hundred pounds? $500??? Where are people buying this from? Are you trying to imply that everyone is going to go to Canada and purchase the Ultimate edition in CDN? I hope that everyone listens not to you.

It irks me that people go out of their way to look ignorant and stupid. FUD on you. At least your spelling is accurate (not your grammar, though).

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Feb 2, 2007 - 11:55 AM

No OS or complex software is released without bugs. It's an unrealistic goal, as it's simply not possible.

Score: 0

By TomA102210

posted Feb 2, 2007 - 9:56 AM

"Hahaha. Just out and there's a tons of bugs already? My god. This is the kind of things people pay $500 for and upgraded their computer for?"
--------------------------------------------
Where do you come up with a "ton" when it says a handful? And $500? Maybe $170.00 tops.

Score: 0

By bourgeoisdude

posted Feb 2, 2007 - 6:34 PM

I paid $180 USD for Vista Ultimate Edition here in the states ($200 w/o rebate), and my system needed no upgrades at all. Could have bought the Vista Home Basic for $90 USD, but I wanted to test every aspect of Vista as a PC tech support guy so I went with the big one.

I had no problems with the RC2 version of Vista, and suspect upgrading it to the RTM will work fine--just waiting for it to arrive...

Score: 0

By crashoverride

posted Feb 2, 2007 - 12:45 AM

What's amazing is the fact that you guys keep talking about the code being free of all known bugs and expecting perfection from the people at Microsoft. Sure these guys are smart. Heck I would love to know how to do half of what they are capable of but it is absolutely absurd to expect perfection. Anything we do as imperfect beings is inherently going to have flaws. There is no way around this simple fact, so you guys need to get a grip, keep patching, and quit the whining.

Score: 0

By r4dius

posted Feb 1, 2007 - 9:27 PM

Vista looks like a new 'Windows Me' for me, a state of the art half finished OS

Score: 0

By Aires

edited Feb 2, 2007 - 5:55 AM

Do a search and you'll find I said much the same thing months and months ago. XP was a great upgrade for all prev OSs but Vista is not a necessary upgrade from XP. It's like a bloated XP SP - a terrible wats of M$ money and it'll never fly. No WinFS and pretty much a waste of time. Yes there are good points but don't go there - not enough to make Vista worthwhile - don't waste my time.

Score: 0

By morriscox

posted Feb 2, 2007 - 1:00 PM

If we did a search, I suspect that we'll find that when XP came out, you claimed that it wasn't a necessary upgrade and that Windows 2000 was a great upgrade. Have you used Vista yet?

Score: 0

By r4dius

edited Feb 1, 2007 - 9:28 PM

Oops double post

Score: 0

By cranbers

edited Feb 1, 2007 - 8:23 PM

I like how microsoft brags about 60 years of testing went into vista. That is combined time of all the people who tested it.

The other funny thing is that vista shipped with undreds of known bugs. They said rc1 had 2k bugs, rc2 had 1200 and anything around 500 is rtm.

So who the heck releases a os with 500 bugs known and calls it gold code! I thought gold code was when it was with NO KNOWN BUGS!

Good stuff, Maybe they should of just took xp, fixed all the performance and bugs with that os instead of a complete rewrite so now they have all new bugs to work out! Where the heck is sp3 for xp? It's lost in wonderland I guess. They are too worried about getting the new os out the door to make some$$$$$$$$$$$.

This is where microsoft came up with the word vista is a work in progress. That windows update will be used to push out updates as they are finished. Nice. As long as it works for the most part microsoft is happy.

Score: 0

By morriscox

posted Feb 2, 2007 - 1:18 PM

Guess what? Every operating system has released with hundreds of bugs. Linux, Unix, OS X, MacOS, Amiga, OS/2, DOS, Palm, you name it. To expect otherwise shows that one is ignorant of the reality of operating systems.

Score: 0

By xyzcb1

posted Feb 2, 2007 - 9:06 AM

You sound like the moron lawyer from IL or whatever state he represents want to prohabit MS releases a software unless it's perfect and bug free.

Score: 0

By menting

posted Feb 1, 2007 - 10:31 PM

no OS ships with NO KNOWN BUGS
you are living in a fantasy if u think otherwise

Score: 0

By sst

posted Feb 1, 2007 - 7:05 PM

Thank You, Mister Bink!
When this type of information is available from Microsoft@ I will consider the corporation 'customer friendly.'
Now if the o/s cracks what is the best use of your time: 1) search the web for information 2)self-explore for breaks in the loaded software 3) debug the machine looking for hardware problems/incompatabilities.
Meanwhile, Microsoft@ policy never admits that unresolved problems exist. Problems occur with their software only after they are patched.

Score: 0

By legah

edited Feb 1, 2007 - 6:48 PM

After reading so many negative judgements on MS I realize it doesn't really have anything to do with the OS itself. It really isn't, because the people commenting are refering to different Linux distributions, OSX, W2K etc. All operating systems that supports anything new or old -has- to be updated from time to time, since both hardware and software evolves, and come on, OSX has, in comparison with Win an advantage in the fact that they only support a limited number of hardware, thus all the homemade hacking to make it work with other hardware. And when looking at Linux distributions, am I the only one who once in a while get a message when starting up that there has been a new critical update? And regarding w2k, this one has a couple of service-packs and needs to be updated in order to function with newer hardware, and older too.
And yeah sure, they've had some years in the making of this OS, but since they've re-enginered quite big portions of it I don't really think they spent all those years on testing every single hardware component available. But also remember that MS, Apple or any of the Linux distributions can't be held responsible for bad drivers written by hardware-manufacturers, all they can do is try to test new drivers asap -when- they arrive, so please, there's no such thing as a master system that works without problems, there will allways be flaws in every system, let's just hope that MS, Apple and all the others can fix them asap and that hardware-manufacturers write better drivers.

A modern OS isn't something to be burned in ROM, it -has- to evolve with it's users.

Score: 0

By Daddy_Spank

posted Feb 2, 2007 - 12:03 AM

Finally someone mature here....

Score: 0

By RejZoR

posted Feb 1, 2007 - 6:09 PM

Obviously you'd prefer that they'd just ignore the bugs and never fix them. Ignorant ppl lol...

Score: 0

By Program86

posted Feb 1, 2007 - 5:32 PM

sure, keep tolerating Microsoft's mediocrity. Vista is already Vista+SP1. Way to go MS. Way to be on top of things...

Oh, they only had over 5 years to fix those bugs. Thats what TESTING is for! There are still bugs in Vista dating all the way back to Win98.

Unacceptable. Ubuntu, SUSE, and OSX are all better alternatives. Hell, Win2000 is a better alternative!

Score: 0

By id242

posted Feb 1, 2007 - 5:44 PM

Ubuntu, SUSE, and OSX *NEVER* to be updated past 1.0?

It's a good thing their programmers are proud of their products and constantly thrive to improve upon them (despite what you claim).

Score: 0

By zridling

posted Feb 1, 2007 - 5:59 PM

Difference is, Ubuntu plans its upgrades (if you knew how it ties versions to months) unlike Microsoft, which is always in a reactionary-crisis mode of operation. YOU pay Microsoft for that "service"; Linux users never will and never have to because their OS simply works; something inconceivable to lifelong windows users.

Score: 0

By id242

edited Feb 1, 2007 - 6:17 PM

Well damn, I should have just stuck with Kickstart 1.4 (AMIGA OS), "because their OS simply works". Too bad I wanted to be using the same OS that the rest of the real world uses. Actually, I enjoy Microsoft because I can expect something new from them right around the corner - unlike other OSs (that you mentioned), I have no clue what is planned for them months ahead... years or for that matter, any sort of contingency plans at all. But if I switched to the OSs you mentioned, why would contingency be of any concern to me - "because their OS simply works" and therefore, I should have to update it.... EVER.

BTW, I do also run a few dedicated web servers and *nix is nice, but there are always some flaws in either that need to be patched (mail, http, php, etc). Apache/MySQL/PHP/PERL...etc

Score: 0

By GoodThings2Life

posted Feb 1, 2007 - 5:52 PM

Indeed.

Score: 0

By bourgeoisdude

edited Feb 1, 2007 - 4:52 PM

This is to be expected. No company on the planet could produce such an intricate OS working with so many billion third-party developers and hardware manufacturers could expect a perfect Operating System, not even in a million years. Reason? Microsoft was delaying Vista's release, but with those delays they had to continue adapting to new software updates from other third-party software vendors (e.g., Norton 2007 instead of just 2006, etc.).

It will never be perfect, and the patch schedule will not be a whole lot different than it was with XP--except that the initial security flaws discovered hopefully will only be about one tenth what they were the first 6 months that XP was released...(remember XP's bug count in the first 6 months was horrendous? Vista will hopefully avoid that episode)

Score: 0

By Galway

posted Feb 1, 2007 - 4:47 PM

Same situation as XP with 98 users, they will wait until the issues are sorted before migrating. After a year or so the desire to upgrade will grow by which time it will be hopefully be stable, secure and needed to handle the better hardware.

Score: 0

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