As much as there are parts of Vista that I like the biggest screw up I have seen to date with this OS is when it comes to moving or copying multimedia files across a network. To illustrate just how bad this is; even after installing the pre-SP1 hotfixes, here is a screen grab of one such copy I tried to do today
I took the screen grab after sitting there for almost 10 minutes of nothing happening.
The scenario behind the screen grab is this:
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9 video files being copied from my Vista machine over a network to a mapped network drive on an XP Professional machine.
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screen grab taken approximately 10 minutes after dialog was first displayed.
The real kicker of this is that I can be on the XP machine and copy the same files from the Vista machine to the XP in less time than it took me to wait and grab the screen capture of the above dialog.
I sure hope that the upcoming service pack for Vista fixes this problem or I will very seriously be considering moving back to running XP on this machine because to put it bluntly – this is a intolerable situation considering that Vista is suppose to be the best Microsoft OS yet.
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Why the hell would you use Windows Vista in the first place?
There is ABSOLUTELY no valid point. For example, you may say you want it so you can play Halo 2. Well, a counter-argument is BUY AN XBOX 360 AND HALO 2 FOR IT!\
Windows Vista is pure garbage! I wouldn’t even use it if I got it for free.
In my opinion Steve, XP Service Pack 2 is undoubtedly the best OS Microsoft has produced yet. It’s been VERY VERY stable for me and the associated third parties and software have matured along with the OS. It could be another year or two before this same thing happens with Vista.
I, too find Vista’s copy and move functions painfully slower than XP. a I thought it was my Vista installation, but several installations later, and this thread tells me my problem is not unique. Time to go back to XP and tell everyone I was wrong about Vista (I had been shouting it’s “praises” – okay, not praises, that it’s “okay” – for a while now. Not anymore! Bill Gates are you listening???!
Before completely going off the deep end, you might want to run windows updates as Microsoft has released a hotfix that addresses this specific issue. I’d like to see if this hotfix solved Steve’s problem.
Ok dokey then. In recent news, I have reverted my Vista notebook back to XP SP 2 until Vista reaches Mature status. At any rate Steve, I’d be interested in knowing if this issue or any others are resolved through Service Pack 1.
I copied 6GB of files between 2 USB external HDDs last night and it went almost ‘instantly’. Yes, this was a Vista machine! The trick? I opened a command prompt, and used XCOPY. Sigh….
for those of you experiencing the same copy/move problems on Vista give this program a try – TeraCopy http://www.codesector.com/teracopy.asp
I have tried it here and while it still takes awhile to start the move or copy it does actually go through pretty damn quick once it starts (which leads to believe even further that this is base problem with Vista)
Did you ever see this article by George Ou? Similar problems due to a corrupt driver.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=639
I’ve never had a problem copying files to/from the network. 348 k/s? You have a serious hardware problem somewhere.
Also, the screenshot is suspicions. Why does it have the OSX style header on top of the window? I bet you either faked this, or so far screwed up your Vista install that even file transfers don’t work properly.
Guys (and Gals). Forget the “nVidia network drivers” being a possible cause. See my comment of October 16th. I get this problem when copying between 2 USB hard drives. I even get this problem copying between two logical NTFS partitions on the SAME hard disk drive. But it’s fine when I open a CMD prompt and use XCOPY. It’s the Vista “smart” front end.
i have the same problem with copying/moving to and from usb stick. my machine runs on intel chipset, not nvidia. although i did install the 931770 hotfix, it didnt help. and among many others, i did regret installing vista on my new core2duo machine instead of running good old xp sp2.
From what I’ve gathered so far, this issue is primarily noticed while copying FROM Vista, TO XP, and not the other way ’round. No, no hotfix fixes it, and No, it’s not a fault with network drivers. It’s simply a fault with Vista.
Well, make the move to Linux or migrate back to XP, have been trying vista since beta 2 since I’m a developer developing some stuff for windows based platforms, at home I run Linux or XP as a fall back for specific tasks.
Can’t understand people actually paying hard earned cache for the gigantic crap sandwich that Vista actually is, even with SP1 RC1 installed it’s so slow it’s faster to actually copy the files to 1 billion floppies and run in an old fashion snikernet
Now now Patrick
… I have always been an early adopter for all of Windows version – with a big exception of WinME. Additionally as a developer one has to be able to be able to know what you are up against.
If the hotfix you are referring to is the one that was made available a week or so ago then it didn’t make a bit of difference moving or copying across a network. IIRC the graphic in the post was made shortly after applying the hotfixes.
Now if they have release some more in the last week I might have missed them but as of today with any hotfixes that I know of having been applied there is no improvement.
to further this after reading your comment I had the idea to whip up a quick little test app to see if I could possibly bypass (like you did with XCopy) the Explorer copy/move.
that didn’t work either when trying to copy 6 large video file to a mapped folder on the other machine (XP).
I’m beginning to believe that there is a real problem with Vista and network activity. It would be nice to see if anyone else can confirm this as well.
I wish that was the case but my system is using the nvidia nForce Networking controller.
That said I have wondered if this actually more of a case of it being a network problem than an actual Vista problem. It is so easy to just up and blame Microsoft for everything but as I have found in most cases in the past the majority of Windows problems can usually be traced back to bad 3rd party drives and software.
Yonah,
Really … hardware problem .. then you obviously missed the part where I explain that I could move/copy file from the XP machine across the network.
As for the Window titlebar … you never hear of WindowBlinds? … I don’t need to fake a damn thing.
That said while I might be faulting Vista for this problem I am also not entirely sure if the problem doesn’t reside with the nVidia network drivers given the company’s track record with the whole Vista driver set.
If it turns out that it is the network drivers and not Vista I will be the first one to say so public right here.
Yesterday I decided to see if it could be the nVidia network drivers and plugged in a separate network card. Even with the new card there was no change so I have to think that yes this is a definite Vista problem.
Don’t forget bad hardware, Steve. The equipment I work with is donated by individuals and local businesses. In my environment, nearly all BSOD issues are traced to bad memory.
I encountered too many compatibility problems running WindowBlinds and abandoned it several years ago. Ditto with CursorXP.
on this I will agree with you .. memory and hardware are usually the first thing to check when it comes to things like BSOD’s
But I have also seen it happen more than once with drivers and other software which is one reason I swore off of ZoneAlarm early in its popularity .. it forever crashed my machines – regardless of the hardware.