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Vista Slow To Copy, Delete Files

Bruce Schneier has said that trying to make digital files uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet. With Vista, Microsoft seems to have done a pretty good job of making premium content files not copyable. Now a few readers have tipped us to a new wrinkle: Vista also makes it very, very slow to copy, rename, or delete ordinary files. Here is a Microsoft TechNet thread on the problem. The Reg reports that Microsoft has a hotfix for what sounds like a subset of the more general problem complained about on TechNet; but they will only give it to customers who ask nicely. And a hotfix is fussier to install than a proper patch.

13 of 494 comments (clear)

  1. Why only a Hotfix and no patch? by jkrise · · Score: 5, Funny

    For very very basic functionality?

    What is Vista doing? Factoring large primes in 640KB RAM?

    --
    If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
  2. Obligatory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Vista fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Vista PC (an Intel Core 2 Duo w/4 gigs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my ancient Mac running OS 9, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Vista PC, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.

    In addition, during this file transfer, Firefox will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even Notepad is straining to keep up as I type this.

    I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Vista PCs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Vista PC that has run faster than its Mac OSX counterpart, despite the Vista PC's same chip architecture. My 286/12 with 2 megs of ram runs faster than this 2.4ghz mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that Vista is a superior operating system.

    Vista lovers, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use Vista over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.

    1. Re:Obligatory by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 3, Funny

      One of these days somebody will make a statue of Natalie Portman and nobody will even care


      I did. And she was naked. And petrifiedq, of course. I even put hot grits on it! Nobody cared. Very sad, indeed.
  3. It is feature I invented by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hey, They stole my stuff. My code takes very long time to do trivial tasks. That is my idea. They stole my idea!

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  4. Re:Vista File I/O Like Swimming in Molasses by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Someone remind me why I need to "upgrade" to an OS where everything is slower and comes with a restriction for pretty much anything. Not to mention it's not really more secure than a fully patched XP anyway. AND it requires me to upgrade my RAM to do less. How's that making any sense?

    Shiny!!

  5. I can attest to this... by GFree · · Score: 4, Funny

    Vista is definitely slower at copying, deleting, pretty-much all file processing commands. I can say this from my own experiences; God help you if you have thousands of files to process.

    But you should check out the new animations they made for the copy/move/delete functions, whoa! They've got, like, flipping rectangles and shit, and the animations are so shiny!

    At this rate, I bet the next service pack will bring a new 3D-accelerated BSOD too, complete with shiny and flippy messages to tell you your system is screwed, but man... check out that neat animation, that'll take the sting off at least!

    (Oh, and to finally wrap up the karma bonus once and for all, Vista was the reason I finally converted to Linux. Huzaa!)

  6. Re:Confirmed! by drooling-dog · · Score: 5, Funny

    Moving/copying a lot of large files is very suspicious behavior. The compliant and well-behaved user who leaves things where they are supposed to be should only rarely have to do that. Perhaps Microsoft is slowing down the process to give you time to reflect on the error of your ways (or maybe to think about switching to a different OS)...

  7. Re:Interesting... by david_g17 · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...Why is Slashdot so slow to highlight glaring defects in Vista?

    Actually, slashdot reported on this months ago; however, since the slashdot server is running on vista, it took this long to get inserted into the database.

  8. Re:Confirmed! by dosquatch · · Score: 4, Funny

    Attempting to delete large numbers of files under XP sets one up to wait quite a while for the OS while it is "preparing to delete", and Vista makes this slower? WTF is "preparing to delete", anyway? Does it really take that long to generate an "Are you sure?" dialog?

    --
    "Hey, the third matrix movie would have been good except for the plot,story, and acting." --AC
  9. Re:WTF Register quote? by vrt3 · · Score: 4, Funny

    I realize "The Register" is the "National Enquirer" of IT, but what the heck does this quote in TFA mean: "it's as if you're copying over a 64k link using only 256mb of RAM"

    Note the small m and b: it's not 256 megabyte, but 256 millibit. That's not a whole lot of memory.
    --
    This sig under construction. Please check back later.
  10. Re:Confirmed! by sconeu · · Score: 4, Funny
    WTF is "preparing to delete", anyway?

    Dark Helmet: Why are we always "preparing"? Just go.
    Colonel Sandurz: Just go.
    --
    General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
  11. Re:Confirmed! by mikiN · · Score: 3, Funny

    Apparently the calculation is doing more than just figuring out file transfer size. Like maybe MD5ing your files and running them by several (online and offline) forensic file signature databases trying to find out whether they're not legit?
    --
    The Hacker's Guide To The Kernel: Don't panic()!
  12. Obligatory old reference by BeerCat · · Score: 4, Funny

    Finally, a chance to turn the tables...


    I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Vista fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Dell (a Core 2 Duo w/1 Gig of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my G3 iMac, running OS9.2, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.


    (the original rant)

    --
    "She's furniture with a pulse"