Windows Vista driving me nuts - again! Anyone help?

[White House Workshop]

I'm a pretty computer-literate guy - I should be after 40 years in the industry - but I am being driven crazy by Windows Vista.

I was running a nice wireless network at home for years using a mixture of Win2k and XP machines. Shared folders, shared printers, everything working fine and dandy. then my wife bought a new laptop - and it came with Vista Home Edition. The network couldn't see it, although it could connect to the router and the Internet, and we couldn't share any files or printers. I managed to solve it by installing 'Network Magic', a pretty cheap utility. At least now she could use the printers and even see the shared folder on the main PC, although not any shared files on the other laptops. That was a minor inconvenience though as long as she could print.

Now it seems Vista doesn't want to connect to the printers any more.

Every morning her laptop comes up OK, connects to the Internet but no longer can it see the printers or shared folders. Can't even see 'HOME' any more. The printers still show in her list of available printers but she can't print to any of them. The only way I have found to fix it is to delete the printer from her printer list then go through a search for network printers and reinstall. Of course, the search returns no results anyway so the printer has to be added by name, but even that usually takes about 3 attempts and a login to the administrator account from the laptop in order to set it up. Once it's set up it works fine - until the laptop is next shut down and then the whole rigmorole starts all over again.

The REALLY annoying thing is that she can 'see' the printers on 'Home' using Network Magic, but still can't print to them until she's gone through the delete/add printer process.

I think something changed in the last month on a Vista update but I can't find which one might have caused it. Not only that, the Vista forums seem to have disappeared (I think M/S got fed up of the complaints?).

Can anyone help me save the last few bits of my hair before I tear them out too?

Thanks....

 

[RogerS]

Can't really help as I know nothing about Vista but have you ever thought about subscribing to Experts Exchange? Nominal fee and they're usually pretty good.

 

[White House Workshop]

This is the only reference to this type of problem I have been able to find from microsoft, but it doesn't apply in this case as there have been no updates to the main computer registry keys...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936556/en-us

Surprise - microsoft states the problem but doesn't provide a solution......

 

[Dave S]

Rather topical since my wife is about to buy a new laptop which will come with Vista.

I'm fully expecting to have to upgrade it to XP! :wink: :lol:

Dave

 

[Gill]

I recently bought a new computer having been told it would be possible to uninstall Vista, only to find it isn't. The computer siezes up with a blue screen of death whenever I try to install XP.

If I had my choice again, I'd buy a computer with a Linux OS.

Gill

 

[Dave Bamber]

Are you using uPnP to connect to the net through the router?

Also, have you checked your subnets match? That can cause file sharing issues. (DAMHIKT)

Finally - remember that for security, every seperate connection in Vista now has seperate toggles for activating network discovery (NetBIOS-over-TCP/IP) Filesharing, Public folder sharing, Printer sharing and media sharing.

All of those settings can be reached from the network and sharing centre which is in Control Panel > Network and Internet.

HTH

 

[BradNaylor]

As a user of Windows '98 I've no idea what any of you lot are on about!

 

[White House Workshop]

Are you using uPnP to connect to the net through the router?

Also, have you checked your subnets match? That can cause file sharing issues. (DAMHIKT)

Finally - remember that for security, every seperate connection in Vista now has seperate toggles for activating network discovery (NetBIOS-over-TCP/IP) Filesharing, Public folder sharing, Printer sharing and media sharing.

All of those settings can be reached from the network and sharing centre which is in Control Panel > Network and Internet.

HTH

I'm not sure of the answer to all those questions, but I'll check when I can get 30 minutes on her computer! However, why should everything be working fine until a few weeks ago and then decide to give up? Very confusing.

Subnets all match and are all in the trusted zone.

I do know you can't install XP over Vista - you have to wipe the hard drive and start from scratch..... OEM versions of XP are still plentiful but it's annoying to have to spend best part of another hundred quid and hours of set-up time to solve a known problem that micro$oft refuses to fix. I think it's their way of getting everyone on to Vista - or Linux!

 

[mailee]

I have heard of so many people having problems with Vista recently and would definitely not buy a computer with it on. I have also heard that Vista isn't backward compatible with older programs? I use XP and SWMBO is thinking of buying a new laptop which we will make sure has XP on and not Vista! I also hear that Vista takes a lot more memory and disk space to run!! I remember owning an Amiga 500 computer that I used to make and edit videos on and all it took was one floppy disk or two per program. It worked well enough even if not as quick as the latest PC's. So why with all the technology today does it take gig's of space and memory to do the same jobs the Amiga used to?? Is it a case of the progrmers just being sloppy or have programs just got that much larger??? Strange world isn't it? :?

 

[wizer]

I won't entertain Vista at all. XP works.

My opinion is bin Vista and install XP

 

[titan]

I recently bought a new computer having been told it would be possible to uninstall Vista, only to find it isn't. The computer siezes up with a blue screen of death whenever I try to install XP.

If I had my choice again, I'd buy a computer with a Linux OS.

Gill

It is simple and quick to install Linux on any machine, I dumped Windows rubbish five years ago and never looked back, no viruses, trojan, etc.

 

[Anonymous]

Every morning her laptop comes up OK, connects to the Internet but no longer can it see the printers or shared folders. Can't even see 'HOME' any more. The printers still show in her list of available printers but she can't print to any of them. The only way I have found to fix it is to delete the printer from her printer list then go through a search for network printers and reinstall.
Thanks....

Yep, I get exactly the same with our Vista laptop, the 3 desktops and other 3 laptops (XP) don't exhibit this problem

 

[Smudger]

I'm saying nothing...

 

[mr]

I recently bought a new computer having been told it would be possible to uninstall Vista, only to find it isn't.

Gill

Course it is. I trust there's a command prompt accesible somehow... (start - Run - cmd)
Type "Format c:"

not much more to it than that.

Then reboot with the linux distro of your choice in the cd drive having set the bios to boot from cd first of course.

Cheers Mike.

 

[Gill]

Please buy a Vista machine, Mike, and try it yourself . But don't say you haven't been warned.

Gill

 

[mr]

Please buy a Vista machine, Mike, and try it yourself . But don't say you haven't been warned.

Gill

I'm confident that I can kill Vista for you but to avoid hijacking the thread I've sent you a pm.

Cheers Mike

 

[CHJ]

WHW / Tony, are you by any chance running a software firewall such as Zone Alarm on the machine controlling the Printer?

 

[gasmansteve]

Don`t know if its much help but I have XP and recently did my usual Microsoft upgrade ( about 5 files if I remember) and then lost use of my emails, couldn`t send or receive. Only option was a system restore everything working fine again. I then chose individual files to upgrade until I found the offending file which stopped my emails. Another system restore made everything ok again so god knows what the file contained but my system didn`t like it. First problem I`ve had with XP and MS upgrades though!
Cheers
Steve

 

[misterfish]

I reckon we've been lucky then. I'm running an XP desktop with a printer with sharing enabled.

My wife recently got a notebook with Vista - we just ran through the printer install routine and she now prints using her wireless network access. My son has a desktop running Vista that is cabled into the network and he also prints across the network without any problem.

The only (initial) problem was to make sure that the printer was available as a shared resource.

Apart from that we've had no problems with Vista apart from unavailability of drivers for my son's machine as he is running the 64bit version of the OS.

Misterfish

 

[Malc]

Hi

have you got network discovery turned on?
http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Window ... d1033.mspx


Also if you have a home network are the machines all in the same workgroup?

I have Vista laptop mixed with XP works very well. Service pack 1 is about to be released which hopefully resolves some niggles. Vista is much better with 2gb ram, but ram is cheap now and XP ran better with 1gb which was a big leap after win98.