For our software, we are now “supporting” Vista, however we haven’t been running Vista internally, and our entire Vista testing environment has been at our oursourcing company in India.  A few months ago, I had to get a new laptop, so I decided I should be running Vista.  Our company’s Vista standard image was just coming out, so I decided to try it.  Yes, I’m surviving, no, I’m not necessarily happy.

One of the bizarre things is the very odd color scheme that our software has when run under Vista Aero.  I decided to do some playing around with the compatibility tab on my applications shortcut to see if I could make it look better.

We found that clicking the “Disable desktop composition” setting, and then launching the application caused the entire desktop to switch from Vista Aero to Vista Basic.  Yes, our application looked a little more normal, but I didn’t like the effect.  The really odd thing with this is that the shortcut for our application in the Start Menu (the one created by the installer) didn’t have the Compatibility tab.  I had to create an actual shortcut to the exe.

Fast forward to this morning, and when I launched our application from the shortcut in the Start Menu (the one without the Compatibility tab) and my whole desktop switched to Vista Basic.  It turns out that the Compatibility tab settings of a shortcut actually pass through to the exe itself (assuming you have permissions.)   And it seems to set these settings without a UAC prompt.

I’m still finding odd things with Vista everyday.

I'm really loving Live Mesh.  Until yesterday, everything just worked^TM.  Unfortunately that all came to a screeching halt when Mesh on my MacBook told me I had to update because it wouldn't connect to the network anymore.  A quick download, and then install (of course that requires a log in as an Admin user for me) and it seemed ok, for 30 seconds or so.  Now it's continuously crashing.

It seems that several others are having the same issue since the update.  I've already submitted feedback using Microsoft Connect, so hopefully they will figure something out quick.

I read that a Windows update is also coming soon.

Every time I boot my machine, I get the following:

Of course “Check online for a solution (recommended) doesn’t seem to do anything.  When I check in Services the Print Spooler service is stopped.

The workarounds I can find via Google are all pretty brutal (restarting in Safe Mode to delete printer drivers and registry keys by hand.)

Yuck

I was just installing Cygwin on my new Vista laptop, and at the end, I got this message:

Of course the “What settings are applied?” link was less than helpful.

I finally got Live Mesh working on my Mac, my phone, and my fileserver.  I'm waiting on a new laptop for work, so I haven't installed there yet.

I have to say  this is very cool.  At the very basic, it does file sync.  This is what most users will see at first.  I've used several different sync applications, and within a couple of days, I've been quite satisfied with this solution.  One thing to note is that the Windows Mobile client actually does scheduled sync with your Live Mesh desktop in the cloud!

The Windows Mobile and Mac client sync with the cloud.  The Windows client has the ability to sync with the cloud, and to sync peer to peer with other Windows clients.

The interesting thing is that you can sync with other people's Mesh objects, if they invite you.  I can see this replacing Groove and FolderShare when it is release (it's a Technology Preview right now.)

More to come as I play with it.  BTW, there's a SDK as well.

With the new availability of the Mac client, I'm going to try Live Mesh again.  I was able to get logged in to my account, and download the Mac client.  I'm getting an error trying to log in, but I suspect the service is getting hammered right now.

Update: Looks like I'm not the only one getting this error.

On10.net has a good video on Live Mesh, and the Mac client.  If you're interested, it's worth the 10 minutes.

JK (and other's I'm sure) have been talking about this new special edition Tablet PC that Microsoft/Asus have cooked up.  Apparently this is a limited run, and won't make it into production.  It does make you wonder if there will be any new Tablets coming out in the next few weeks?  I'm guessing that if there were any, they would have been announced at CES, but what do I know.

Only Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Ultimate can join a Windows domain.  link

The big differences between Business and Ultimate are:

• Media Center capabilities
• Bitlocker Drive Encryption
• Windows DVD Maker
• 
  

Log Name:      Application
Source:        profsvc
Date:          3/29/2006 9:13:03 PM
Event ID:      1521
Task Category: None
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          LOBRECHT\rlobrecht
Computer:      CHARLIEBROWN
Description:
Windows cannot locate the server copy of your roaming profile and is attempting to log you on with your local profile. Changes to the profile will not be copied to the server when you logoff. Possible causes of this error include network problems or insufficient security rights. If this problem persists, contact your network administrator.  

 DETAIL - Access is denied.
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
  <System>
    <Provider Name="profsvc" />
    <EventID Qualifiers="49152">1521</EventID>
    <Level>2</Level>
    <Task>0</Task>
    <Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
    <TimeCreated SystemTime="2006-03-30T03:13:03.000Z" />
    <EventRecordID>550</EventRecordID>
    <Channel>Application</Channel>
    <Computer>CHARLIEBROWN</Computer>
    <Security UserID="S-1-5-21-968063695-1190742555-1786530785-1003" />
  </System>
  <EventData>
    <Data>Access is denied. </Data>
  </EventData>
</Event>

Check out this download speed:

I didn't get to spend a whole lot of time on the Vista machine this weekend, but the time I did have was full of problems, one I haven't solved yet.  On my home network, we have an Active Directory domain.  Our My Documents are on a server, and our profiles are roaming.  The first problem I had with Vista is that our My Documents directories weren't owned by the user, they were owned by Administrators.  The user did have Full Control.  Vista refused to connect My Documents to the directory until ownership was taken by the user.  The problem I haven't solved yet is the profile.  I can't get Vista to pull down my profile from the server.  The Event Log just shows something useful like Access Denied.  Those directories are owned by the user.  SYSTEM and Administrators do have Full Control as well, and maybe that is the problem.

I hopped on to Microsoft's site to check out the Vista newsgroups, and was greeted with a nice surprise:

I guess I'm downloading again.

If you're planning on running Vista, you better make sure you have a lot of memory.  Check out a screen shot of a freshly booted Vista machine (no other software installed.)

480 MB in use!

I installed Vista on my desktop.  The install is pretty simple.  Its hard to tell what's going on, because all it gives you is a progress bar.

I went to add the machine to our domain, and got to the part where I'm telling Windows what kind of user to make my domain account.  On my XP machines I make them a Restricted User, which amounts to putting them in the Users group.  I don't see this option, but I do see Users, which seems like the same thing.  Well, sort of.  The description is a little odd.

"Users are prevented from making accidental or intentional system-wide changes.  Thus, Users can run certified applications, but not most legacy applications."  I wonder what is considered a certified application and a legacy application?

Cool.  I got invited to the Vista Tech Beta.  Now I can really destroy my tablet by running a beta OS and a beta office suite.  I'm pretty sure I've seen on someone's blog that they installed Vista on a TMC111 like I have and it went ok.  I'll probably blow away my dead desktop first anyway.