I feel so close to that story. The good thing is that Windows helps us to learn how to deal with frustration, the bad one is that it happens too often. May be I am a masochist sticking to a windows system. At least I have not shifted to Vista, I am still on XP.

Well gee! You know, if you hadn’t downloaded something with the trojan attached, you probably wouldn’t have had the problem. Why do people always blame Windows for their own screw-ups? If you don’t like using Windows then go get the much more “secure” Mac and worry about their buggy operating systems.

Kirk,

I really don’t see how I was blaming Windows. I know I downloaded something that was risky, but I do it as part of my job, and sometimes you just can’t prevent these things.

Talk about being cranky.

Yeah, I know. I’m having a not-good morning and just blew. I’ve been reading too many articles lately about how bad Vista is and I guess I lost it. Sorry about that. However, what I said was true. A lot of the gripes coming from people about Vista, or Windows in general, is because of things that they’ve done themselves and wasn’t due to the OS. Too many people don’t know what they’re doing and it’s easy to blame something they don’t understand in the first place.

Scott,

I imagine the reason for Kirk’s comments was because you said “I guess that’s just the way it goes in a Windows world.” That statement suggests that you are blaming Windows for your problems. Maybe if you had said something like “I guess that’s just the way it goes in the Computer world,” then people wouldn’t think you were suggesting that problems like this only happen to Windows users.

Rick

I wouldn’t use Vista for anything critical yet, as there are too many bugs, and beyond that I (and I think I speak for anyone outside the hallowed halls of Redmond) don’t know the ins and outs of it just yet. That takes time, and there hasn’t been enough.

People who rely on their computers usually have a ‘test’ computer to try out new things, and ‘the old standby’ for necessary work.

My question about the images on the external drive - was a compare run not done just after the backup?

I just wonder if the problem might have been averted by running something like Sandbox or Sanboxy; one of those system emulators which runs fully out memory?

I haven’t used these as yet, but I just wonder if that could have helped?

Bob

Oracle,

“I wouldn’t use Vista for anything critical yet, as there are too many bugs,”

Could you be a little more specific? What bugs are there that are so severe as to prevent most people from using Vista for anything “critical?” I am using Vista now for all my critical work, including web development, graphics, video and audio editing, DVD authoring, playing games (having a little fun is “critical,” isn’t it? ;-) ), etc. I am not experiencing any significant problems at all. Not to say that everything is always 100% reliable, but overall, it is at least as reliable as XP. Patches from Windows Update have fixed pretty much all of the issues I had when I first started using Vista.

“and beyond that I (and I think I speak for anyone outside the hallowed halls of Redmond) don’t know the ins and outs of it just yet. That takes time, and there hasn’t been enough.”

I am “outside the hallowed hall of Redmond,” but I have a pretty good grip on the “ins and outs” of Vista. It’s not drastically different from XP. It still has a Registry, it still has a Start menu and a Control Panel and so on. Still, I will agree with you that it does take some time to get “up to speed” on everything.

“People who rely on their computers usually have a ‘test’ computer to try out new things, and ‘the old standby’ for necessary work. ”

That’s exactly how I started out with Vista. Actually I used Acronis Disk Director to set up a separate partition to install Vista in, while leaving my XP partitions intact. This way I could experiment with Vista while still having my “old standby” on hand.

Rick