WinVista: The Eternal Headache/Win7 Help?

[Seamonk]

Clearly this would come off as obvious to many of you guys. Windows in general is an evil OS assembled by an evil organization. There's also Windows 7 which has been out for a while(I'm late i know), and yada yada, I don't have that. I would LOVE to switch to Linux or Unix-based platforms; A lot of people say that but many of us can't. Why? The classic excuses of can't game, can't do this work-related task, can't do that. Now I'm not trying to convince anyone to switch over to Linux or anything else. I'm just gonna talk about by far the dumbest thing I just experienced with windows. If you wanna skip the rant, go to the last paragraph

So here goes...

I notice my Computer isn't running as smoothly lately, some programs seem to hang up when I try to right click. That's not a fault of windows, most likely some other program interfering with something. Anyway, I typically keep my computer running all the time, sometimes for months. Don't get ahead of me here, that's not the problem either.

The problem is.. I notice I have 2 things to update. Java. and Windows Updates. Now, from prior experience, I refuse to update Java unless it's a clean new install. Java is horrible at updating, they leave behind old copies which can be exploited apparently. Anyway that's not the point. The point was, I chose to update windows. That's simple right? You're just going to make your system safer by installing updates that will improve security. Wrong. Windows doesn't even know what you should be installing and neither do you. They offer 049380493804938 fixes for the same thing which typically end up canceling out the effect of another one anyway. It's M$'s way of saying "oh my bad, lemme get that".

Sorry for leading you on, that again, is not the point. I let it download and install the updates.. wait for it to ask me to reboot and I reboot. It's rebooting and it does that stupid configuration thing on a screen where you have NO control whatsoever so if it gets stuck you're screwed. Not to mention it has that warning underneath it telling you to not turn off your computer in the process. So guess what? It hangs up. "Configuring Updates - Stage 3 of 3: 100% Complete" .. Wait what? 100% and it HANGS UP? This is the second time it's happened. The first time, I just hit the reset button and it worked after reboot. This time, however, no amount of resets could fix it. I ended up using my netbook to look up solutions. All of M$'s generic options list using system restore and windows recovery disk yada yada.. stuff that doesn't really HELP unless you've got a system restore point. It's only when you look at posts from people who the M$ employees never seem to back, that you begin to see that more people are confiding in their knowledge than "Jack - Lead Engineer" (that asshole).

Now what's the fix? It's simple. You change the name of 1 file. That's right. 1 file. pending.xml to pending.old or whatever else.. and BAM. it works. Now this has been an issue with Vista's updating system for what.. 4-5 years? And 1 xml file is responsible.. really?

Now here's the kicker.. that file is found in the winsxs folder of C:\windows. winsxs is the largest folder in there. If you own vista, you should try right-click properties that folder and check the filesize. (oh wait, in case that doesn't show file size, just hover the mouse over the folder for a bit. or download windirstat - a program that uses various graphs to show you where the bulk of your weight is across your drives)

Ridiculous, i know right? Why is that folder so big? Well, here's the thing, it's full of millions of copies of the same files to allow various programs to access the same file at different times. This is their solution to some sort of problem that windows 98 had or something. but seriously.. I have a 40gb ssd for my OS. that folder takes up more than HALF of that. And with the latest update effing me in the butt, i have 1gb left on the drive. (After Disk Cleanup removing some of the broken update files, i have 4gb.. still not a lot.)

To put that into perspective, Windows XP, the first bloated operating system by M$, only took up about 6gb. Maybe 10gb if you tried hard enough. or 15 if that's where your "New Folder" was located.

Despite all my issues, I'm still using Vista. Mostly for compatability reasons and because i JUST installed plants vs zombies on here. However, if any of you guys have Windows 7 and can tell me it is a vast improvement over Vista in terms of everything then I will strongly and most likely make the switch. I'm so tired of Vista's shenanigans. Please also tell me what version of Windows 7 to get.. if any difference. (My netbook has win7 starter if that counts for anything) I've tried ubuntu and gentoo before, but I can't use them for all the things I need. I had ubuntu installed after my old OS hdd died. Loved it, but powerpoints would be missing things and other minute details. and you can't watch stuff on netflix because it requires silverlight.

PS: I wish there was one of those " show spoiler" buttons on this forum so i could conceal majority of that rant.

[Darth Biscuit]

Here at our office we still mostly run XP, but have started to migrate new systems to Win7. We never even had one copy of Vista. Doesn't help your problem, but that was our solution to Windows...

[The Saltman]

I have win 7 on both my computers now. Works much better but im no computer nerd so what I just said probably will make no difference.

[natty]

My work laptop is Win7 and I've been pleasantly surprised by it. I would definitely upgrade.

Windows OS versions are only good every other release. 95 - crap, 98 - good, ME - ultracrap, XP - good, Vista - megacrap, 7 - good.

I really wish game makers would switch to OpenGL instead of DirectX, I'd solely used Linux in a heartbeat.

[mmmbeans]

What natty said.

Win 7 is as much better than Vista as XP was better than ME.

Difference is huge.

/OSX user.

[cookinwithgas]

Vista was bad for 2 reasons.

1. Too much intrusive security

2. Bad vendor driver support

Win7 IS Vista with improvements in these areas and some look and feel changes, as well as updated networking support.

I ran Vista for 2 years and other than not having drivers for some of my stuff and having to hit "OK already JUST DO IT!!!!" too many times, it was solid.

Win7 has been all that and more.

PS changing the XML file name would seem to tell the OS that a pending patch is already installed. It may screw up dependencies down the road. There are other ways to not have a patch install.

My daughters DELL craptop had a Windows update error similar to this. I booted it into safe mode with network support, ran the updater and restarted. Problem solved - Update wanted to update a device driver that was a screwup. In safe mode the driver was not running and took it like a man.

[Seamonk]

Vista was bad for 2 reasons.

1. Too much intrusive security

2. Bad vendor driver support

Win7 IS Vista with improvements in these areas and some look and feel changes, as well as updated networking support.

I ran Vista for 2 years and other than not having drivers for some of my stuff and having to hit "OK already JUST DO IT!!!!" too many times, it was solid.

Win7 has been all that and more.

PS changing the XML file name would seem to tell the OS that a pending patch is already installed. It may screw up dependencies down the road. There are other ways to not have a patch install.

My daughters DELL craptop had a Windows update error similar to this. I booted it into safe mode with network support, ran the updater and restarted. Problem solved - Update wanted to update a device driver that was a screwup. In safe mode the driver was not running and took it like a man.

I couldn't boot into any of the safe mode options otherwise I would have done what you did. Only could do anything once I had the Win Vista install cd in and used cmdprompt from WinRE to rename the file. I've already looked into the changing filename thing and realize that i'd have to change some things in the registry but would much rather just get Win7 now. The windows registry is a hellhole.