Vista Question

[den]

Okay, all you clever geeks, I have a problem.


New Toshiba laptop with Vista. Want to connect it to the office network (LAN And/Or Wireless) Can see the network, can't connect. Any idea how to do this? How do I change the Workgroup? In XP there is an option to connect to the Internet via a connection that is always on. Where is that in VISTA?

How the hell do you OPERATE Vista, anyway. It seems to work on a need-to-know system that the user doesn't need to know.

Comments

[aj-hyena.livejournal.com]

I know the feeling. I have a Vista machine myself, and I'm beginning to think the CD in which 700 MB+ of important stuff that I have... wasn't a bad CD, it's just that Vista doesn't see anything ON it, which is odd since it saved my music just fine.

Doesn't like my digital MP3 player though... sees it's there, sees it's full, but doesn't see the files.

Doncha just love Vista?

Ageis J. Hyena, over and out.

[sjwt.livejournal.com]

change the intel network drivers to MS network drivers.

[bobbain.livejournal.com]

I have three copies of Vista. It is "plug and play" meaning that you aren't supposed to know and that Microsoft have finally made it suitable for even a feeble minded idiot such as myself.

If in doubt do what I do. Hit buttons over and over again until it works ! It takes time but it's like solving Rubik's cube. It'll work eventually if you try often eough. How many weeks ,years or months is perhaps another question.

As Mr. Gibbs if he's still around (sigh). I'm sure he loves Vista and uses it with great enthusiasm.

He's probably send a donation to Mr. Gates in appreciation of his efforts.

"Bad Vista" (biased)

[bobbain.livejournal.com]

http://badvista.fsf.org/

http://badvista.fsf.org/what-s-wrong-with-microsoft-windows-vista

"DRM is enforced by technological barriers. You try to do something, and your computer tells you that you can't. To make this effective, your computer has to be constantly monitoring what you are doing. This constant monitoring uses computing power and memory, and is a large part of the reason why Microsoft is telling you that you have to buy new and more powerful hardware in order to run Vista. They want you to buy new hardware not because you need it, but because your computer needs it in order to be more effective at restricting what you do."

[kuangning]

I hate to say this, but all the clever geeks avoided Vista like the plague it is. :( I'm sorry you have to deal with it. My best advice is wiping it and going back to XP. Vista is *not* an upgrade.

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

Not an option, unfortunately. It's a new laptop that came is Vista, so there is no going back. 8(

[kuangning]

There's always an option if you have or can get a copy of XP. When the day comes that I can't get around having Vista on the machine I buy, it will not survive the day with it in place.

[dragonpearl.livejournal.com]

I have a copy of XP with an Open License... for example: can be installed on thousands of machines if needed. Want a copy?

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

Oh yes please!

How did you get an open license? If it's not legal I can't use it on the company machines for legal reasons, but I can certainly use it at home. email with address on the way.

[dragonpearl.livejournal.com]

perfectly legal. Mom works for the county and it's a copy she uses to intall on the work machines.

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

I wonder how legal it is to send out of the country 8)

[dragonpearl.livejournal.com]

send to drgnprl at Gmail.com

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

Got the cd! Ta!

[dragonpearl.livejournal.com]

Awesome.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

If you have Vista Business and this isn't a tablet PC, then step 1 should be to exercise your rights under the license, reformat, and upgrade to XP Professional immediately. If you've got Vista Home, then return the machine on the grounds that it doesn't work and get one with a working operating system.

If you must stick with the slow, buggy spyware-infested piece of crapulence that is Vista for some reason, well, it *should* work out of the box: plug in a network connection, and the Network control panel lights up with happy little notification that it's trying to connect. Since DHCP works by default, this means you're connected, almost immediately, most of the time. When you open up the Control Panel and hit the Network options, what does the Local Area Connection entry actually say when you plug in a wired connection? Does it say you're still Network Cable Unplugged? Does it say Limited Or No Connectivity?

Changing the workgroup name is almost exactly where it was in XP - right-click on $Account_Name (formerly "My Computer"[1]) and go to Properties.

[1]: And what bit of brilliance was THAT change? Sure, "My Computer" was insipid and confusing to new users, but it's been that way for 12 years - and now you've changed a critical icon that's going to be used constantly to something that *changes for every user*? Are you completely insane, UI designers? Have you never encountered a customer or considered how often people need to be walked through stuff over the phone or the internet? And you disabled NetMeeting at the same time?

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

$Account_Name wasn't on the desktop by default, but now I know what I'm looking for I got it working at home. For my next trick, I get it working at the office.

There was no Properties on the right-click menu, but that may be under the need-to-know settings that the user doesn't need to know. It DOES have an Open option, which opens the system and drive directory, and Explore (see: Open.)

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

oh yeah. Company laptop, under warranty, cheap, came with no disks apart from a restore CD. As much as I would like to "downgrade" the OS, I can't. Plus, I get to use Vista and learn all its poxy tricks on someone else's computer.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

"get to" is such an unfortunate choice of words.

And if it's Vista Business, all you need is an XP Pro CD. Any XP Pro CD.

But yeah.

[camstone.livejournal.com]

This should be all you need to know...
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/columns/cableguy/cg0406.mspx

Good luck, I took VISTA off my laptop as soon as I got it, and put on XP Pro. Couldn't be happier. (And it's a freakin AMD turion 64x2 dual processor, and I'm only runnin' 32 bit XP Pro! XD)

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

If it were my laptop, it'd be XP'd immediately. It bugs me that it requires so much high-end hardware to run, and it's just a bloody OS! Great for users, bad for operators. I can see techos hitting the format/install button instead of trying to troubleshoot.

What is your Workplace's policy on Vista?

[camstone.livejournal.com]

What is your Workplace's policy on Vista?

"Just say no."

Actually, I think we're migrating to it in late 2008. Because we have thousands of users however, we're not about to upset the current workings for a lot of "glitz" and no real substance. However, by then, it's going to almost be an essential move since we get a lot of code support from Microsoft directly - and many major platforms (HP, Dell, etc) are moving that way already. And yes, our techs are about as adept as monkeys with a hangover.

Them: "But, in order to do that, you have to disable the proxy settings and..."
Me: "Okie, Done."
Them: "Uhm... buh... are you..."
Me: "Okie, go to where I needed to thanks, bye." *click*

[vik_thor]

From the stuff I've been hearing about Vista, I'm almost thinking that M$ made Vista to drive people to switch to Apple...

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

It does seem that way.

[valkyrwench.livejournal.com]

My new laptop came with Vista, unfortunately. However, once I figured out how to turn off most of the nannyware, it wasn't that bad.

[torakiyoshi.livejournal.com]

That sounds suspiciously like this:

All the stewards, captains, baggage handlers, and ticket agents look and act exactly the same. Every time you ask questions about details, you are gently but firmly told that you don't need to know, don't want to know, and everything will be done for you without your ever having to know, so just shut up.

But I'm not the first one to make the Vista-MacOS comparison. On the other hand, you can go here (http://www.zyra.org.uk/os-air.htm) and read what the originators of that joke think Vista is really like.

Have the best

-=TK

[carlfoxmarten]

Have you tried exploring all the Control Panel applets?
(of course, since I haven't ever played around with it, I don't what weird and horrible things they've done to it, so that question may not help at all)

My brother said that when he gets a new computer that has Vista preloaded on it, he's going to switch to Linux.

[quen-elf.livejournal.com]

Be grateful you're using a computer that is (presumably) designed for it. I am trying to make an old piece of software I wrote work on Vista (for work obviously) and it works very much better on the 'Vista Capable' computer than on the one that doesn't even mention Vista on the sticker. Neither of them have WHQL-certified sound drivers, but sound does work properly on the 'capable' computer; not so much on the other one.

My program doesn't work on either as far as I know, but I'm not entirely sure, because I haven't got admin access on the 'capable' one so I can't install it on there.

Doesn't sound like anyone here needs it, but my firm advice would be that nobody ever install Vista on any machine that didn't ship with it.

My favourite Vista feature is mapping network drives. This is incomprehensibly difficult, and quite simple, all at the same time. Most of us are used to the incredibly-shitty-but-works system in Windows XP; there's a button, or it's on the Tools menu; you choose that and it promptly forgets what folder you're looking at, but does let you map the drive. In Vista? No button, no menu.

EXCEPT the magic 'Alt' button! If you press Alt (not hold it) the same menu mysteriously appears! Then you can do it that way.

I found this out after ten minutes with Google (some of the pages that came up had the wrong answer). Yay for discoverable interfaces.