Vista's Irritating Me Lately

[Jason Dunn]

http://www.jasondunn.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/network-drives-broken.PNG

How can Vista be reporting my network drives as being broken in the folder pane, yet functional and connected in the Computer reporting. When I closed it and opened it again (Windows Key + E), it was reporting them as being connected. The most irritating of all though? When I tried to open the network drive, I'm getting an error about the drive not being accessible ("An unexpected network error occurred.") This is all related to some funkiness with my Windows Home Server (http://forums.microsoft.com/WindowsHomeServer/showpost.aspx?postid=2372842) that has cropped up and is puzzling me. There are some things that I adore about Windows Home Server, and some things that are driving me nuts.

Back to Vista: I'm thinking about doing a week-long log where I keep track of everything that puzzles/frustrates me about Vista...but I'm worried that the results might be too depressing.

[jeffd]

I've had my fair share of network issues and bugs in xp too (aside from the fact that xp home does not remember network passwords, even if you tell it to). MS is only being consistent. ;)

[marlof]

I know there's a reason why I didn't install my free Vista upgrade on my notebook. As long as XP isn't giving me any issues (which knock on wood, it currently doesn't), it is here to stay.

[Jason Dunn]

As long as XP isn't giving me any issues (which knock on wood, it currently doesn't), it is here to stay.

There are some real advantages to Vista - I quite dislike XP now when I have to use it, but there are also a lot of frustrations I have with Vista, and that's what I'm fixated on lately...

[dehakal]

This is not a Vista problem, it occurred in W2K and XP also. Windows has for a very long time put network connections into an 'idle' mode after a time out period to 'conserve resources' and shows the red X to indicate no current connection. As soon as you access the drive letter it reconnects and in theory updates the GUI. I have noticed that Explorer often will not update its graphic in the folder pane to show a change in status. This is pretty much an every day occurrence for network drives and often an issue with optical drives. You can change the CD or DVD several times but Explorer still shows the title of the original disk.

Net Use and Net Show commands are still much more accurate than the explorer GUI.

Duane

[BugDude10]

I don't know if I'm having the same problem: I recently connected a new Vista laptop to an XP PC in my office, replacing the XP PC that I used to use. While my apps can find the other PC to load files (opening files stored on the XP PC in WordPerfect on the Vista laptop), Explorer on the Vista laptop simply cannot find the XP machine. If I want to attach a file to an e-mail, I need to drag it from WordPerfect's "Open File" dialog to the e-mail -- I can't get to it from the "Open File" dialog in Outlook. WTF?