Loading ...Is Windows Vista RC1 a release candidate?
By Michael Pietroforte | 5 Comments | Permalink | Trackback | Previous | NextAseem Badshah calls on testers to share their experiences about the reliability of Windows Vista RC1. On the “Windows Vista Scenario Voting” site you can rate how satisfied you were in various scenarios. Unfortunately, one doesn’t see the results of other voters. The question is: Is it justified to call Vista RC1 a release candidate?
I guess, it depends on how you define the term “release candidate”. For me, it simply means that an OS or a program is almost ready for release. Many testers are writing these days that Vista is quite stable now. My experience is different, though. I don’t play all day with Vista. I just tested some features which are relevant for system administrators; thereby encountering many problems which made me believe that Vista is still not ready for release.
Bluescreens under VMware
Whenever I shutdown Vista on VMware Workstation and VMware Server, I always get a bluescreen. You could blame VMware for this. However, VMware “virtual PCs” belongs to the most often used “PC hardware” these days. So, I blame Microsoft.
Installation on VMware Workstation
I’ve been writing about this before. If you boot from the ISO image on VMware Workstation you only get a black screen after loading the initial file. My workaround is to install Vista RC1 on VMware Server first. But it seems that there is an easier solution. Please check out this comment .
Forever sleep mode
I tested Vista on Fujitsu-Siemens Esprimo. The machine is half a year old. When power management sets the PC in sleep mode, it is not possible to ‘wake up’ the machine again. I had to use the power switch. It works, however, when I do this manually. Most of public institutions in Germany use these machines. And world-wide, Fujitsu-Siemens is a well known brand. I wonder, why such a simple feature doesn’t work.
Group Policy network location awareness
Group Policy has a new feature called Network Location Awareness. The documentation says that when a Vista client detects a domain controller, it will update Group Policy. For example, if you establish a VPN connection to a domain controller, the client will download the latest policies automatically. In my tests, this didn’t work.
Group Policy with cached domain logon
This seems to be a serious bug for me. If you logon to a domain in cached mode, i.e. without a connection to a domain controller, all Group Policies will be removed from you Vista machine. To logon in cached mode, you must have logged on at least once to the domain. Every user can do this. All one has to do is to unplug the network cable and logon as usual. Then, all policies are gone.
Backup tool without restore feature
Did you try the new backup tool? It has some nice new features. You can now create a complete backup of your machine to hard disk or DVD drive. I backed up my Vista installation to a second hard disk on this machine. Everything worked fine. But when I tried to restore my backup, Vista told me that I never made one on this machine.
Event Viewer Subscriptions
The new Event Viewer is really great. There is no doubt about it. There is one feature, called event forwarding which I like most: Using so called subscriptions, you can now access multiple event logs on multiple other computers. The only problem with this feature is that it doesn’t work on RC1. I tried to access the event logs of another Vista machine. Event Viewer informed me that it is trying to connect. It is still trying, for some days already… I have no problems connecting to the second Vista machine by other means.
Of course it is possible, that I just didn’t configure those tools correctly. But there were just too many problems for my taste. You can spend a lot of time making them work, but you’ll never know if it is bug or you are just too stupid. So usually it is better to let it be, and wait for release of more stable version. My bet is that the first release candidate for my network will be Windows Vista SP1.
Leave a Comment | 
Subscribe RSS
| 
Newsletter
Concerning “Forever sleep…”: Which model of the Esprimo did you try on?
I ran into this problem too with an earlier release. This is really annoying because I thought powermanagement is a thing that I could rely on. I used the 5600 SIS chipset Esprimo which except of the audio drivers installed like a charm.
Greets
Max
when in R&D, we would characterize RCs as builds that could go out the door if we didn’t find any showstopper bugs. this was still a bit discretionary, but vista is more beta 2, then RC1.
@MaxTD. I also tested it on a Esprimo E5600, SIS761. I encountered the same problem with the beta 2 and RC1. And you are right, it is annoying because power management is enabled by default. So I had my first Vista crash a few minutes after installing it.
@joey It is interesting that I had lesser problems with beta 2. I was quite disappointed when RC1 came out and none of the bugs I found in beta 2 were fixed.
I had problems with Windows Vista’s VPN causing instant hard crashes. For more info, read my article here: http://jw.fi/2006/9/15/windows-vista-release-candidate-really
I have the retail version of vista ultimate and it STILL crashes when connecting to a VPN. No update to fix this issue as of yet to top it off. If anyone knows a workaround, would love to hear it.