Vista Basic - The most screwed up version ever?

My brother has a new PC with Vista Basic
I spent the best part of today trying to fix the O/S which seems to have a mind of it's own ..

Everytime he was restarting Vista it kept trying to install updates prior to login. It was failing on each attempt giving up after 8 minutes then finally moving on the login screen

So, I checked for updates within the O/S and sure enough Vista needed to install 3 important patches. I allowed the patches to install then restarted the PC. Great. No errors. Straight to login screen. Guess what though? More problems! ..

After previously removing the ghastly Norton AV and installing AVG Vista somehow managed to revert back to Norton kicking AVG out of the system!!

So, another 30 mins uninstalling Norton again, re-installing AVG, setting up a RESTORE POINT, restarting again to make sure everything was good to go, and .... Yup ... something else broke!
This time the network connection would not initialise. Vista reported that it is trying to establish a connection.

Seriously, does this sound like a one-off or is Vista "Basic" a badly flawed afterthought?

Sounds like a Virus to me.

I use vista basic on my laptop, no problems here i quite like vista. i was a little unsure what to make of it but after a couple of months its like when i moved from win98 to xp and now xp to vista i wont go back.

I reinstalled XP after I used Vista for several month.

The whole OS is one large bughole to me.

ive encounterd no probems with my vista install it seem very stable, did you use sp1 i think it fixed many pre-sp1 problems. i still use xp on my main pc but like i already stated its much better than xp.(thats only for me) im not saying this is the case for every vista user

Make sure that the DHCP Client Service is running -- I've had problems with Norton Antirivus in the past adding itself as a dependency to that service, and NOT remove it after uninstalling. Meaning that even though Norton was no longer there, it kept the DHCP client service from starting. Without the DHCP client service, your computer won't ask for an IP address on the network, hence no network connectivity.

I had to go into the registry and remove the Norton dependency from the service manually. Don't know if Norton ever ficed that in newer versions, but it sure sounds like something that could be applicable here.

So, to be fair: While Vista may not be the best OS ever, Norton antivirus is a steaming pile of <something> that very well might be the root of the problem here, not Vista.

I blame norton here, SO many problems after uninstalling that its not even funny.

Why does it have to be a dependancy anyway!?

I've had no problems with Vista either. Sure it was a bit flakey in the early days but then, so was XP.

When you buy a PC with an OS pre-installed, it will typically have a bunch of other crap pre-installed too and this is also replicated on the recovery CD. This plethora of mire includes but is not limited to any Norton products.

The best way to get rid of it, is to install from a proper Vista CD and use the licence key on that came with your PC. On desktops its on the side, on laptops its normally on the bottom.

I got £30 off my laptop because I didn't want them to give it to me with Norton 360 on.

what about all the laptops extra features ie bluetooth ect.. would this comin under a standard cd/dvd version of vista. i would think that the pre-installed and recovery cd/dvd version for the laptop would contain the drivers for the hardware that would not be available on a standard cd/dvd version of vista.

i hope you prove me wrong gfk and tell me that it should work, how i would love to get rid of the bloat that comes with my recovery disks.

Kev

My laptop (a Compaq Presario C700)came with a recovery partition that didn't work. It had an option to create a recovery CD from the aforementioned, which also didn't work. It claimed that it couldn't find a DVD writer.

Rather than go to HP and pay them £30 for a set of recovery CDs, I reinstalled from my Vista CD, registering it with the licence key on the bottom of the laptop, and downloaded hardware-specific drivers from the HP website beforehand.

The system booted up fine first go, and I installed all the drivers I got from HP which took about 10 minutes including reboots. Everything works perfectly, plus I don't have gigabytes of bloat that HP/PC World seemed to think I would need.

yes thanks gfk you just made my day, fun as it as been. now to obtain a copy of vista without the bloat and the next intall i do im sure to do using the drivers from hp. i also own a hp having just looked i see drivers that are available to download.

great im very happy theres no need for the ammount of bloat that comes with my recovery cd/dvds common do i realy want trial versions of software i dont use, i think not.

Just a small note of caution; if you're using Intel GMA, compare the latest drivers that HP have with the ones on the Intel site. I think I got my drivers from the Intel site and they fixed a problem with Blitzmax OpenGL stuff not working properly (something to do with shared GL contexts, according to Mark).

I was an early migrator to Vista and the only problem I had was with a ADSL modem driver... So I bought a router.

Never looked back! \o/

Dabz

Does anyone actually use Norton AntiVirus? Has it ever worked without, in some way, breaking the way the OS works and clinging on for dear life when you try to remove it?

Ross, yes- I have experienced this. I have also experienced it half-uninstalling and then refusing to reinstall OR completely uninstall.

Norton is ONLY well known because they bundle it with PC's, and it really bugs me to see people using it because it can do more harm than good!

Norton sounds like the problem here, not Vista. Vista I have found to be quite capable and robust. Norton, converseley, has never done any good on any machine I've ever seen it installed upon.

Trying to diagnose any type of network issue with Norton installed is an exercise in futility. Trying to uninstall Norton is likewise difficult. 3rd-party uninstall tools exist, and do a better job than Norton's own.

F-Secure is of comparative price, yet 'just works' and keeps nag to a minimum. ESET's NOD32 is expensive, but provides a very unobtrusive security suite.

F-Secure's affect on Windows boot time can be marginally annoying, but proves insignificant when compared to Norton.

Considering the amount of PC's I see with 4-year-old Norton products installed, I'm not surprised how many calls I get from people having all manner of problems with their computer. I know all the top vendors have to release a 20XX version of theie product to stay 'current', but Norton's products are so woefully bad that there likely exist several large reference books on how to deal with them (from a repair-tech point of view).

Oh god. I just had a topic not too too long ago about a million issues that turned out to be norton. Also having 2 anti-viruses doesn't help =P

Go to their site and get the removal tool..

#1 worst software on my list. I don't even have a #2, so i'll put norton there too. They need to put that on the simpsons where bart is writing lines on the chalkboard, "norton is a piece of crap" over and over.

Norton is the anti-virus software they force you to use in Hell. It should be illegal and is arguably worse than most of the malicious software it's supposed to protect against.

What FlameDuck said.

what big10p said.

> Norton is the anti-virus software they force you to use in Hell. It should be illegal and is arguably worse than most of the malicious software it's supposed to protect against

Fully agreed. Upon uninstalling we got this message

"WARNING: You have 320 days of subscription left. If you proceed to uninstall you will lose your remaining subscription"

What kind of crap is that?!
It reminds of the AOL days where it's next to impossible to cancel out of the agreement. Norton seems to be playing the same game

Even though Norton has been un-installed there is still a rouge Symantec icon which refuses to go away in the control panel
It makes me wonder how effective their AV protection is if they still cannot write a correct uninstall procedure after all this time

Vista Basic... At first I was thinking this was a replacement for vb.net. :) lol..

What LarsG said.

Did you use their removal tool from their site, or remove it through "add/remove programs"/Click uninstaller?

They have a removal tool because simply uninstalling it (which is too 'simple' for them) doesn't work properly, screws things up.

what ervin said.

2Ps worth, I have "Home Premium" edition, i shudder to think what "basic" is like (i don't know what the differences are, i guess its same-same-but-less?).

You need to break open the top of your harddisk's case and gouge the filthy whore disks with a screwdriver for being such a Vista floozy...any decent wholesome disk would have nothing to do with such filthy binary.