Certainly, I would have tried to take it back to the store I bought it from first. They may have given you a new one off the shelf, but that aint good if you have accounts and data on the returned machine - you loose all that stuff. I’m confident that you finally did the right thing by shipping it back. You’ll get a repaired machine and still have your data on the disk (fingers crossed).
Good luck.
Yeah Vista is a pain.
Kinda wish we’d got a XP too.
We had problems with the printer.
Thought we’d use the old one since the ink is so cheap and I can refill myself.
Vista didn’t recognize the old cannon.
So we got a new HP.
The driver didn’t recognize vista.
Contacted India. Boy those folks might be cheap labor but they are mostly useless.
Tried to download the correct driver from Dell but it takes 10 hours with dialup.
Didn’t know that until we started. 1 1/2 hours into the download my isp kicked us off line.(justwannano pulls out a handful of hair)
Finally my wife said she would have a friend with dsl download. Took her 15 minutes.
System works ok but has more bells and whistles than I’m used to.Still no better than the old computer in doing the simple tasks I need.
Gonna have to do something other than dialup.
My wife and daughter are into photography so this computer is awesome to them.
best of luck on your problem
just
Funny, the problems people have with Vista.
For some it’s flawless, for others it’s a trainwreck.
I wonder if operator error is involved with what percentage of Vista problems?
I’ve got three computers networked (two on XP and the new one on Vista) and three printers too. One of the printers is a relic and I can still print to it.
Drivers shouldn’t take that long to download, should they? With a cable modem I’ve grabbed some drivers for various devices off the internet and it only takes a few seconds. Drivers aren’t really huge files, unless you’re trying to download all the third party software that came with the printer/scanner/camera too. Then it may take a while.
Just depends on your luck. If your hardware configuration happens to be supported out-of-the-box by Vista, you might never run into any problems. One of my laptops performs pretty much flawlessly.
On the other hand, if your hardware requires updated drivers and the manufacturer doesn’t care to provide them, Vista gets problematic. This is the case with my desktop (sleep functions don’t work) and my other laptop (a whole lot of things don’t work). And the few drivers that the manufacturer does provide are pretty big, their website is slow, and I’m the unfortunate victim of a sub-megabit DSL line.
Depends on the printer. I tried to install a Lexmark 2381 dot matrix printer, but Lexmark doesn’t supply a Vista compatible driver for it. I also had a need for a 9-pin serial port, but the drivers that came with the CompUSA board I bought would not work under Vista. I am trying a Siig CyberSerial board today, crossing my fingers.
I am visiting my son who just bought a new Vista run machine from Dell. Now my son is not the average clueless guy but a Microsoft programmer. The video driver failed the second time he booted. He has the video driver working most of the time, but the computer hangs up every night (he leaves it on overnight). He has not tried calling help (what’s the point; he understands how these work a lot better than the help people, especially at Dell (once upon a time, his job was programming communications drivers for NT 3.5). He asks how Dell can ship a computer that is broken out of the box and will probably return it. Based on my one experience with Dell, there is no way to communicate with someone who actually knows anything about these machines (or anyone with access to the same model machine).
Bottom line: don’t buy a new operating system until it has been out for a year. They used t say six months for a new OS, but Vista seems to be so fouled up that I would wait at least a year.
I thought that too, but I couldn’t pass up the price on this nice machine. Plus, I could always go back to XP if things got really bad.
As it is, it seems that I’m getting updates automatically installed almost daily, from either Gateway or Microsoft. So I’m thinking that MS and GW are being either proactive or trying to stay on top of any serious issues as this thing rolls out.
Question: Does Vista Automatic updates now download hardware and software updates?
I was always under the impression that Automatic updates (and Express if you actually go to the site) only download and install critical (security) updates.
Not exactly sure, but I think in my case that GW will install drivers while MS just installs security patches. Holding out for a better answer though.
I can see GW doing it yes. Particularly if you install their ( I am assuming they have) software installation/update program, or whatever they call it. At least the IBM version did, however they would seperate needed updates from suggested ones.