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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.
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"
I've used Windows 2000 with only 256M of RAM and it's quite speedy...I've run a remote desktop session over a 56kbps link and although noticable, it's pretty speedy. (and yes, I've copied big files over that link)
How does mixing speed (bps) and RAM (M) work anyway? It's sorta like saying "I've driven my car 50kph with a cat,ferret, and dog in the back seat but when the seat covers are blue it seems really slow"
TDz.
Nowhere in the thread does it mention DRM. Where did the summary of the article come up with this assumption? I am not saying that I would be surprised if this were the case, but random accusations and misleading summaries...we can leave that to the National Enquirer ... or Slashdot.
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
It's a trap. A real Microsoft fanboy would have told people to use Windows Live Search.
Egads, what a piece of JUNK.
What in the *hell* is the point of a pretty interface for your operating system, when it won't carry out basic operating system tasks efficiently?
Of course, I'm not *really* asking this question, since we all know that the point of Windows upgrades isn't to improve our experience, but to drive the purchase of new hardware, that will require new software, that will drive Microsoft's numbers up. That being said, this sort of thing is just completely unacceptable. Copying files is amongst the most basic things a computer can be asked to do.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
This just in! An extremely common and necessary file operation takes about 10 times longer to do in Vista on the exact same hardware! Trust me, it's _really_ annoying. Oh, and this is Slashdot, of course there will be an article about every little thing ;-)
WHO NEEDS SHIFT WHEN YOU HAVE CAPSLOCK/ DAMN1
half the new kids won't even get it
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
I'm about as anti-Windows as they come, and everyone around me will attest to the frequency at which I bitch about Windows (as I am in the unenviable position to have to use it on occasion at work). So I'm the last person who would use Vista, or defend it, but ...
... I have a hard time believing Vista is, by design, that bad. 20 minutes to copy a 17M file on a local disk, something is clearly wrong here. In the worst of conditions, that operation should take not longer than a few seconds. If your experience is typical and consistent with others, I'd be keen to read some more formal benchmarks to this effect. But I really think there's no way Vista is working as designed on your computer. Questioning Microsoft's competence is daily routine for me, but this pushes the realm of reason.
This just in! It's confirmed that Firefox loads slower than Opera! I'll have to submit that as an article I guess.
If it was "just in" (and not known for years), and it was loading 10 times slower, then sure, it's Slashdot-worthy.
With something so basic and fundamental, yes, it will be reported on /. It indicates MS completely blew QA on Vista, which isn't surprising since they were going to ship in Jan come hell or high water. Another delay was absolutely not acceptable, as Vista delays have already made them a laughing stock among some, and more importantly was shaking confidence in others.
I think we will see that rushing out an incomplete and untested product is a sure way remove confidence. Evidently MS hasn't learned from their "only use odd-numbered service packs" mantra that used to exist among many of us. Why was that? Because the odd numbered SPs fixed the issues of the even numbered SPs, including the initial release.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Bottom line: file operations in Vista suck, even if your HD is fast and you have lots of RAM.
My question is: for all users, or some...? I really doubt this happens everywhere, I had the Vista RC2 until recently on my modest machine and copying/moving was as fast as on XP (i.e. normal).
Generalizing that in Vista these are slow kinda skews the issue: quite possibly this is not just unfixable bloat, but is caused by something specific and will be fixed in the coming weeks.
I think you dont give M$ enough credit. I think they employ folks to test and evaluate how far they can push push consumers ( aka sheep ) before they actually bolt.
M$ is serving themselves, the RIAA, and the MPAA with Vista, not you.
I think they have very carefully examined this and many more yet to be discovered issues and have figured out how bad they can make it for consumers while serving their real customers, big business and the govenment.
Give them more credit, they are good at this.
Cheers
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Even XP takes a lot longer to copy files than Linux, for example...It's just an artifact of the file system. I use a Linux server to back up my Windows machines, and I've seen it a hundred times...Ten minutes to copy up, a hour to copy down.
I don't necessarily think it's Microsoft out to screw people, it's just that they store a frickton of file information...I mean, it's undelete information, and fragmentation information, and system restore information...That's just the way Windows works, and it's the way it's always worked, and comparing it to something like Linux or OS X where the file system doesn't contain all that overhead, it's an apples to oranges comparison.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Seems Vista's security initiative paid off. No security-related issues to report so Slashdot begins posting headlines about every little twitch that Vista suffers as a serious issue.
Only server users? I don't think so... anyone frequently doing file operations during their regular usage will be affected. That includes anyone from people processing documents, programming, working with graphics, photos, multimedia, etc. Maybe if you're just browsing the web or playing games it won't be a big deal, but anyone doing real actual work on their computer will be taking a hit.
oh for heavens sake. In QA it is impossible to catch everything.
Well QA departments usually maintains a serie of tests and run them on various architectures and measure the time taken by each test. Trying to copy/erase/rename files seems like a basic operation you don't want regression on, so it is probably part of a test. The fact that such a thing wasn't caught on a flag product just amaze me.
Agreed, it should not *too greatly* affect anyone. But you have to admit that when you have bought Vista for a fistful of dollars, probably bought a recent computer to make it work, you have the right to be annoyed when a basic operation is slower than on an older machine, with an older OS.
In fact, on linux, I wouldn't care much and would agree with the "oops, sorry here is a fix" because I didn't pay for that, because the developer wasn't paid to write the soft and wasn't forced to release a fix, so yeah, there is a bias and it has some good justifications.
Also I don't know what kind of uses you have with your computer, but copying or moving 10+ MB files happen all the time. If you are a gamer, a creator, a film/music down... consumer, hell, even if you are a MS Office user, 10Mb is insanely easy to reach.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Sorry but I have to disagree. .NET 3.0 What I really don't like is that Microsoft is making it hard for average people to buy systems with XP on it. They shouldn't be forcing people to Vista since it clearly isn't ready yet.
This will impact any user that copies files to their system. It also looks as if it is a problem with the DRM a "feature" that doesn't benefit the people that actually pay for the software at all.
Also that hot fix is only available to average users that call up and ask for it.
The one thing you have almost correct is that people should have waited until Vista proves it's self. Everybody should wait until Vista proves it's self. I really don't see any reason to run Vista if you are not a developer. The really cool new API is available for XP if you install
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I agree. This is an issue that will eventually be corrected in a service pack. (Pretty much anything that starts out in hotfixes ends up in a service pack.) It's not like this is going to be a permanent problem/curse of using Vista.
BUT - the big reason I see for pointing it out to the "general Vista using public" is to make people more aware of the added complexity and potential headaches DRM brings to the table. Until manufacturers give up on the idea of protecting digital content through DRM measures, we're going to keep running into incompatibility problems, performance issues, and other nasty side-effects in the products we use.
The way you wrote that, you were asking for a flamebait mod.
However, I agree with you in spirit. I was helping a friend transfer files from an XP machine to her new Vista machine. I noticed file transfer was extremely slow (was glad to see this article, I thought it was me). Yada yada.
The real mind blower for me, though, was more in line with your post. The simple act of inserting my thumb drive caused explorer to lock up for a while (assuming this, since the taskbar, all other windows, etc, were inoperable). It locked up for about 2 minutes the first time, then after that it would lock up for about ten seconds each time I inserted the drive, thus preventing preventing me from doing anything. As I waited in in front of my friend's PC, totally exasperated, I was quite bemused by the fact that her sidebar was clicking along perfectly. The slideshow was reloading a new picture every few seconds, the transition effects were working perfectly, he analog clock was working, etc.
So there you go -- while it doesn't validate the flamie-ness of your post, it does vindicate your point at least anecdotally. Vista seems to be designed to protect the flashy useless crap at the expense of core tasks (like, you know, explorer). If a task like explorer is having trouble, then resources should be diverted from other resources to help. Or, core tasks should bullet-proof. Or, MS should have concentrated on core tasks rather than flashy widgets like the sidebar. I dunno, but something seemed to be a bit mis-prioritized.
blah blah blah
Perhaps Vista is busy calculating all the MD5's for each file... so that later on, it can ship the filename and MD5 over the Internet to some server somewhere where someone can later check them to see if they match files of movies, songs, etc, that you are pirating.
Is it a coincidence that the captcha I must type in to post this is the word "eviller"?
oh for heavens sake. In QA it is impossible to catch everything, in fact I'm impressed vista works as well as it does considering they rebuilt so much of it.
Remember that Vista has been in development for what, 8 years? You'd expect basic stuff like copying files to work at least as well as it did in previous Windows versions by now...
Now at work they upgraded to Office 2007 on XP, now that's something to bitch about. Opening an Excel file created in 2003 takes eons and that's if you don't have to tickle the program to remind it to show the spreadsheet once it's open. This compatibility mode is just killing my time compared to some file transfer issue. I haven't seen a /. article on that yet.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
This is an awesome bug, shows a major flaw in the OS, anti MS people will be overjoyed.. but for now it is JUST A BUG.. there is even a "hotfix" (and yes I know hotfixes suck).
Some people seem to get way to much enjoyment over every microsoft failing, At least the word is getting out and microsoft will address the problem, for me I won't be switching to Vista anytime soon but still it seems to be selling well enough and there are bound to be problems whenever an app is this widely distributed (20mil copies out in the wild now?).
Do we really need 200 posts about how much MS sucks or can we just have a technical discussion that might prove some insight into why this is happening...
Anyone use the hotfix yet?
Vista had the largest public beta program in the history of software. If this were a widespread problem, it would've been fixed. You're at least partially right. The beta program started in Jan 2007. The fix isn't out yet.
As for why people may not have noticed, not too many apparently were willing to trust or were able to run the type of workloads that results in large amounts of files being moved/copied/deleted. I don't know of more than a very small minority that ran Vista with anything approaching daily use, since most do more than browse the internet and weren't willing to trust their primary system to Vista. Smart move on their part.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
MS's initiative for the last 6 to 7 years is to make things better for dumb users, and worse for ppl that know what they are doing.
On a new install of windows xp, it takes quite a bit of time and effort to UNDO all the crap to get the windows to it's basic elements and to run in a fast enough way to deal with. Want to see hidden files? How about extensions? What about system files? And let's not forget the really hidden ones you can never really see. Set start menu back to old classic. Set the control panel to classic so you can actually see all your options. Turn on underlines for hotkey letters. Etc. Etc.
Ever deal with MMCs? Why can't MS save the screen size settings? I have to move everything around a thousand times a week or just keep it open forever when i do things like look at services or other basic operations.
Active Directory and Exchange system manager are a pain to use. IN system mgr, you have to go down about a million levels to get to important stuff. Then when you refresh it, you have to do it at a high level to get it to work right... then it closes all the stuff you just drilled down into. DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN.
I noticed (and so have others)in Vista that to get to something simple like video settings, they want you to go a TOTALLY NEW AND COMPLETELY random route from the old way. As ppl say, it serves NO USE being in this new area. And it's about what 10 or 12 steps down... where as before it was like 2 steps????
This is utter and complete bullshit. just becuase your computer sucks doesnt mean its a problem with Vista. Im running two different versions (Ultimate at home, and Home Premium at work) and it isnt slower than xp. In fact the relentless bashing of Vista is getting a little old if you dont like dont use it. since installing it, my computer hasnt crashed one time, runs faster, boots faster. the only thing that i dont like is the missing button to go up one directory. other than that im impressed with it and i started on an apple IIe when i was 7 so ive been through every iteration of OS you can imagine except unix and some of the more large scale OS solutions.