Vista stinks!

[ColonelPanic]

So my bosses' boss has a lapop with Vista Enterprise on it and he hands it to me to try to figure out why the modem speaker isn't working when dialing out to stuff. Dell Latitude D620, BTW. Upon checking everything I know of to check for the modem and still no luck, I proceed to check with Dell's "award winning technical support." Followed their stupid wizard, which is useless, and ended up rebooting the laptop and defaulting the BIOS stuff. Now it no longer boots. What is this Bitlocker crap? That is what it is stuck on. I rebooted the thing and now it's sitting here with "Enter the recovery password for this drive." Uh, wha? I can't get past it as it tells me I need to reinstall Winblows. "Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause." And I don't know the password.Is this thing blown up, or is it normal for it to prompt me for a password to boot the stupid thing? Seeing "recovery password" my guess is something's blown up. All I did was reboot the piece of crap. Dude, I've got a dell. And a headache, thanks Micro$oft! I guess an operating system that just WORKS is too much to ask for, such a thing has no place in Corporate America. Anyway, I've gotta wait for the boss to get back to tell him I probably blew up his laptop. I'll see if he has a password for whatever it is asking but knowing my luck, this thing blew itself up and of course I get to be blamed for it since it is well known around these parts that I have a hatred for Microsoft. LOL! I couldn't have done too much damage, I don't even have admin rights on this thing.

[ArcsVibe]

Sorry to hear you guys are having issues with Vista. So far *knocks on wood* I have had no issues on my desktop.Good luck CP!

[GrayFox]

don't forget guys... this is ColonelPanic we're talking about here j/kthat sucks CP I hope you can get it fixed.

[ArcsVibe]

Quote, originally posted by ANO_Vibe »don't forget guys... this is ColonelPanic we're talking about here j/kthat sucks CP I hope you can get it fixed. (removed)! You're right! Bro I just think you are cursed lol

[ColonelPanic]

Yeah, it is me, I can crash anything!Disaster averted... I called our other help desk that deals with the PC's and fortunately there was a contractor about who is helping with the vista conversion process...Apparently whatever I did I had him confused too. He had to dig up this huge encryption key thingy to get the thing to boot. When I reset the BIOS, apparently this bitlocker stuff thought I was up to some mischief so it decided to not let me use the computer anymore. Apparently if you make ANY hardware changes at all, you have to turn bitlocker off, make your changes, then turn it back on. Otherwise it will lock you out of your own system.But it's back up and running... for the moment. However now I have admin rights to this thing so let the real crashing begin.

[CCD]

None of my biz software will work with Vista, nor will it ever. There is no Active Synch support with Vista. I have 12 or so remote editor suites I use to make a living so I will stick with XPpro forever. Oh yeah my Quickbooks Pro will not work either. Dud if you ask me.

[ColonelPanic]

Yeah, we rely heavily on a really super old terminal app to dial into our Linux point of sale systems. This software was around in the win 3.1 days and was abandoned shortly thereafter by the company that made it. It isn't working so hot with Vista. I'm trying to find us a new one that will fill all our needs but I'm having a rough go at it.

[coldmm803]

(sarcasm) good to see your enjoyin vista, at least you got it fixed quicklyi believe that the bitlocker is a data encryptiondell + vista, is just askin for trouble

[silvrhawk7]

Quote, originally posted by coldmm803 »dell + vista, is just askin for troubleCouldnt agree with you more.....

[ColonelPanic]

Yeah, I'll also agree that Dell stinks, in addition to Vista. I'm still bitter towards them over my stint in desktop/laptop support. The things of theirs we had break way before their time, it was horrible. Anyway, I never did get that stupid modem to squeal. The next step in Dell's stupid troubleshooting garbage was to reinstall the drivers which I really didn't feel like doing considering what it put me through. So I gave up. The Vista expert said it probably wouldn't ever work. I miss all those mixer settings you used to get, the modem volume was probably in there. But Vista just gives you "windows sounds volume" and "speaker" volume. That's another poorly implemented ripoff of the Mac, we have one volume control, but everything points to that one volume control, even my steenkin' modem! Anyway, oh, Vista - I just don't get you! I know I'm a Linux and Mac guy here so maybe I'm not supposed to get you. All those thousands of options in the control panel, I am lost! I don't know what buttons to push to really work you, baby! And that sexy interface, mmmm! Sorry Redmond, I'm not "wowed" over it like you say I should be prepared to! Sure it may look better any older version - I'll give it that! Thank goodness the mighty Redmond has finally figured out what "antialiasing" is! Finally, no more of those jagged fonts all over the screen. (xp sorta smooths it out if you tell it to, not as good as a Mac or even a modern Linux distro, but it looks like Vista did improve on that.) But why, oh why have they abandoned the horribly cheesy low color icons that we've seen since 3.x and 95? I'm saddened! Thank goodness that they did though, seriously I hated that!But I guess the reason that I'm not wowed is for all that's new on the surface just isn't new to me! Even way before I had a Mac.... I've had pretty, glossy icons full of color, transparent menus, nice looking titlebars, smoothed out fonts, and various other fluff for at least 4 years now in KDE if not longer, so it's business as usual. Plus the cool thing... It didn't take 64 bit processors running at eleventeen GHz or a video card with a terabyte of RAM to draw that fluff then, and it still doesn't now. Sorry Microsoft, not wowed at the least. A little late for the party. I'm glad the Microsoft fans get to have a better looking OS, they've needed one for ages. I'm not sure this is the right one, but it's a start I suppose. The one thing I really dig though: the market will be flooded with massive amounts of super cheap perfectly good used PC's that people throw out that won't run Vista which I could put Linux on and continue use for half a decade. As long as they aren't Dells. lol!