Guys

As we all know Microsoft released first service pack for Windows Vista this March and tried to fix all broken things in Vista including bugs, performance issues, security issues, etc.

When Windows Vista was under testing, I found several bugs and reported them to Microsoft but to my disappointment, almost all of them are still present in SP1. Only 1 bug got fixed in SP1 but other bugs are still present and can be easily re-created. So I want to ask you a simple question! Do you think, its time for Microsoft to release SP2?

I posted an article earlier containing all Vista bugs which can be easily re-created on any Vista machine. One of them is as following:

File Renaming Bug:

This bug appears when you try to change a file name as well as its extension.

First make sure “Hide extensions for known file types” option is disabled in “Folder Options“. Now open Explorer and try to rename a file. Type a new name and also change its extension, then click on empty area in Explorer, Windows will show a confirmation dialog box. Click on “Yes” button. As soon as you click on “Yes” button, a weird selection rectangle will be created from the point you clicked on empty area to the “Yes” button location.



There are several other bugs which are very annoying. So please take a look at the following article:

Windows Vista BUG Report

So after reading the article, pls post your opinions. What do you think, is it time to expect SP2 for Windows Vista?

I agree, vista is still buggy, and still has several issues. To be honest i don't think Microsoft will release sp2 just yet or anytime early next year. I think sp2 will be ready by mid or late 2009 (hopefully or earlier).
The main noticeable issue with vista still is the file copying issue and Vista's Explorer Status bar Bug, and still performance wise its not there yet.

Also i would like to see some changes on dependencies areas. They really need to work hard and cut down the dependencies on each services to make it less resource hungry, and get rid of all these DRM stuffs as well.

[off topic]
Vista has great potential and really can fly. If you use vlite to strip vista down and take out these huge sized componenets that are useless (atleast for me) then you can see vista runs very fast and responsive wise its great.

The funny thing is, I can't seem to reproduce that particular bug you shown here, in any view mode I tried. Vista has some bugs & issues, but I can't say I've ever noticed this one myself.

Most of the bugs on your page are there indeed (mostly minor annoyances), but there's a few more that I can't reproduce or that do different things:
-the "2 Desktop.ini Files on Desktop Bug". Never had the problem, and yes, I always have "show hidden files" enabled and "show protected OS files" enabled too.
-the "Taskbar Bug", not that clicking there does nothing, but for me it opens the "safely remove hardware" dialog instead (not that it makes more sense, nor that I double click on nothing often either)
-the "Titlebar Buttons Bug", I only get the popup on the minimize button, the maximize/un-maximize button doesn't do that when I try, but it's still a bug I guess (problem with the skin perhaps)

But 90% of the stuff on your list is just small visual glitches and lack of polish i.e. everything but the statusbar issues in explorer and the lack of logoff confirmation dialog. It would be nice if those 2 things were fixed, and not having to wait until SP2 for that to be fixed either!

There's several more annoyances I could add to that list though, not just small GUI bugs that don't really affect anything, but more significant issues. Like when you use volume mount points, none of the drives mounted get indexed. Even if they get mounted in a directory on a drive that gets indexed. And even if you also go in the mounted volume's properties, and select "Index this drive for faster searching". There is no easy way to make that happen either (even the Microsoft.ISAdm object doesn't work so you can't script it). And I'm pretty much forced to use them too: A: & B: are wasted for old floppies, then I have 15 partitions (across 12 hard drives), 4 letters taken by a memory card reader, another used by my DVD writer, one by a virtual drive (daemon tools), another one for USB memory sticks (usually plugged in), so I'd be using all the way up to X:, still leaving me with Y: and Z: to juggle with for when another when I plug in my mp3 player or external hard drives/other memory sticks, and mapping network drives. That's pretty ridiculous & hard to keep track of what's on which letter...

Also, there are various small issues regarding some language packs (MUI). Here's what the clock looks like using the french MUI pack on an english copy of Vista:

The line at the bottom (change date and time settings) is in french, but the month at the top is in english (July), the day of week headers are in english (above the numbers), and the day of the week when you hover on the clock is also in english. Not a very big issue either, but it could be improved for sure.

And don't get me started on the screen savers having no options at all... There's just no excuse for that one.

Well, not a service pack but it could be taking in with some updates .

You should re-do those screenshots *without* a custom theme. Those things are well-known for their oddness and are immediately suspect.

Thanks guys for your reply. I agree that if they can't release an SP, then they should release updates to fix these bugs.

PS: All these bugs have been re-created in Default Vista theme as well on several other Vista machines. Even I have checked them in fresh installations too. So it has nothing to do with theme.

A new bug which I found yesterday:

1. Right-click on the Desktop or in the Explorer and select “New -> Shortcut“, It’ll open “Create Shortcut Wizard“.
2. Now either click on “Cancel” button or press “Esc” key to exit from the wizard and get ready to see the bug.
3. Again right-click on Desktop and you’ll see a new entry “Undo Apply Properties“. Properties? Which properties? Did we apply any property which we should undo now?
4. OK. Not a big issue but try to click on this new entry and you’ll be surprised to see an error message:



WTH??? Windows can’t find the new shortcut which I never created. Keep clicking on “Try Again” button and it’ll keep showing the same error message again and again. Now click on “Cancel” button and the “Undo Apply Properties” option will change to “Undo“. Click on “Undo” and it’ll change to “Redo“.

Keep clicking on both these options and enjoy the endless loop unless you End Task of Explorer or log off/restart your system.

Full Story with Screenshots

When clicking New -> Shortcut Vista does create a shortcut at that moment (you can even see it). Regarding the properties thingy, I pressume Vista creates a default shortcut then add permissions, date and other stuff to it automatically even though you later cancel the dialog. Thats probably why the "undo" option.

Yeah. That's pretty minor too. Even XP still has some glitches like that left after 7 years (I've seen some boxes where trying to create a new shortcut fails about 50% of the time). As long as they get around to fixing the more serious issues (like the status bar), I'm happy.

And again, tested on many boxes or not, some of those I just can't reproduce. And talking about those, the Taskbar Bug" specifically (when you click where there's no icons), I noticed I get the "safely remove hardware" dialog or the volume control, depending on where in the empty space I double click.

This post has been edited by crahak: Aug 7 2008, 09:15 AM

@XPero

I agree but this happens in other Windows versions as well. When we click on "New -> Shortcut", Windows immediately creates a new shortcut but removes it if we close the wizard. But in Vista the bug exists in "Item not found" error.

This post has been edited by Vishal Gupta: Aug 7 2008, 09:08 AM

I notice your Signature is "Tweaking with Vishal".............. maybe thats the problem right there. Especially since Crahak cant seem to reproduce the bugs. Just food for thought

I think your idea of what meets the bar to spend (very expensive) dev time fixing versus spending that time fixing actual problems that cause breakage, deployment blockers, etc, are very different from Microsoft's. Many bugs just never get fixed - why? Because they're annoyances without much other side effect, or fixing it will break something else far worse, or it's not reproducible in a test environment, etc. I have to agree with not fixing the first bug you filed there - it's not so much a bug but an annoyance (and one I cannot reproduce here either).

I'm not saying your bug filings aren't important to you, but just giving perspective - thousands upon thousands of bugs get filed for each release cycle, and a bar needs to be set as to how critical an issue must be (Microsoft doesn't have infinite resources), and trivial annoyance bugs rarely will ever meet that bar.

And that's hardly a Windows-only thing (much less a Vista specific one). A quick peek a Ubuntu's bug tracker (just one distro) shows there's 46967 bugs currently open...

Why is SP2 needed to fix bugs?

Microsoft can release standalone patches.

FWIW...I've seen both the file rename bug as well as the shortcut bug on a clean Vista x64 SP1 install - no vLite, no custom theme, etc.

Ribbons screen saver is broken, it broke soon after i installed Vista the first time, the second time i had to install it seemed to be CoD4 or steam that broke it, still no fix for this one and should you be inclined to do a google for this screen saver many more peeps have managed to bork it too.

That doesn't mean it's Vista's fault...