According to this other Mike Hall, Vista isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Apparently it’s too difficult to understand, especially that darn Windows logo:

It’s completely alien to the user until they get used to it. It’s silly little things like where you used to have the Start menu — it’s now a Windows graphic which is harder to explain on a support helpline.

Yeah, training people to click on the logo instead of the "Start" text will take several hundred man hours. Other companies have had "problems" too:

Transfer of files is actually slower than in previous versions

And even though much of that problem has been addressed in SP1, we won’t mention that.

Putting a Vista machine on a desk costs more money

Wait a second here… so you’re telling me that the newest, up-to-date OS with all the new features and better security takes better hardware to run? Ok, wait… slow down… It does more AND it needs more RAM and proc speed? Wait wait… So you’re saying I don’t get all that for free. Ok, you’re still going too fast for me…

What people love to forget is that the same things were said when XP came out. "Why go with XP? We love Windows 2000!" XP was the new, glitzy OS with all the bells and whistles. There were compatibility problems. It took more RAM and beefier processors. But that’s how this game works. But people just love to blame Vista. They want to blame Vista.

What’s worse is that they don’t even want to try it out first, because if they did, they’d probably like it.

Recently I’ve been working on the membership provider that I talked about in my last ASP.NET post. I know it was mad secure already, but I figured a little extra beefing up probably wouldn’t hurt. So I create a user class derived from MembershipUser and override some more methods in my derived MembershipProvider class. I fire up the page, login and then bam!

Configuration Error

Ok, well how about we set some breakpoints and see what’s going on. I hit F5 and get a welcome dialog in return:

You want Windows auth? I’ll give you Windows auth. Back into Visual Studio. Open up web.config. Change it from Forms auth to Windows auth:

<authentication mode="Windows">

Ok, let’s F5 again…

Ok, looks like I’ll need a little more help. I hit Google with the error and get a wide variety of help. After a few wild goose chases and clicking through IIS Manager a lot, I finally come across a page actually talking about this problem in Vista and IIS 7. It says to go to the “Turn Windows features on or off” dialog. I go. As directed, I click IIS -> WWW Services -> Security, and then check “Windows Authentication”:

Ok, seriously. What the heck? The option that the IIS 7 help page for my exact error is telling me to check an option that isn’t there. Peachy. I go back to IIS Manager and go to the Authentication section for my site. I click on help and find the answer to my questions (but not my prayers):

What? What?!? So Windows Home Premium isn’t good enough to debug with? For something as “esoteric” as debugging you have to go all out and buy Windows Vista Ultimate? Please… Sure I can still debug by opening up my project as a file system solution rather than an HTTP solution and then debug with Cassini, but that’s just annoying and just shouldn’t be necessary. You shouldn’t need the end-all-be-all ultimate-of-ultimates version of Vista to debug. However, since there’s little choice, I may just be upgrading to Vista Ultimate after all:

At least this gives me a more compelling reason to upgrade than the “Vista Ultimate Extras”…

I was installing some updates today. Nothing really special: Office 2007 SP1 and three optional updates. I had everything shut down except for Windows Media Player since I was watching a DVD. Well, everything progressed smoothly until it got to the very end. After all four updates were installed, the video driver reset and the screen flashed. Playback of the movie stopped and I received a copy protection error saying something about updating my driver. Yeah, yeah, I’ve seen that before. But after I pressed “OK” something else changed:

My main monitor went black and white and remained so through out the whole shutdown process. So I’m thinking to myself that something in the install tripped the copy protection module of Vista. Ok, so a restart should do it…

Uh oh. I’m screwed. If a restart (and even a subsequent complete shutdown) doesn’t work, what am I to do? So I figure I’ll log in anyway just for kicks. It stays black and white. No change. But then about 10 seconds after the login succeeds, the main monitor goes back to displaying color.

I’m not really complaining here. This is probably how it’s supposed to work. And I have color again, so no harm, no foul, right? It just would have been nice to have some indication (probably in a toolbar balloon or popup dialog) of what happened and how to fix it. Otherwise every other user out there that this happens to will probably do the same thing I just did: Sit there and wonder “Ok, what now?”

I recently upgraded my three monitor PC from XP to Vista. The install went smoothly and it booted up fine. So I go into my display settings only to see two of my three monitors available. So I mess with trying to get the other driver to load. I play with the video settings in the BIOS. No luck. As it turns out, the problem is that Vista simplified their display architecture by allowing only one video driver to load:

…the Windows Vista Display Driver Model (WDDM) brings fundamental changes to the management of multiple graphics adapters and external displays. This includes a new restriction, because WDDM drivers do not support “heterogeneous multi-adapter” multi-monitor implementations.

Well, that may be good for them, but it’s surely bad for us. Not all is lost though. Microsoft makes a suggestion:

The user could change the graphics hardware configuration by choosing multiple graphics adapters that use the same WDDM driver. Graphics adapters from the same ASIC family generally have the same graphics driver. In late 2006, each of the major graphics vendors had a single WDDM driver for all supported WDDM graphics adapters.

So it sounds like I just need another NVIDIA card. My PCIe slot is being used by my first NVIDIA card so I just need to get a new PCI NVIDIA card. Ok, no big deal. I call up IT and after a little finagling I walk back to my office with a GeForce FX 5500. Not the greatest card in the world, but it’ll do. I pop it in, start up the PC and am welcomed by this:

Ok, what’s going on now? As it turns out, the 5500 is using a WDDM driver and the 8500 is using the “Version: 7.15.11.5818″ driver. Trying to force one to use the other’s driver just results in a lot of blue screens and other funness. Using a 6200 or another similar card fixes the issue since they use the same driver as the 8500. But say you don’t have that option. What does that leave you with?

If you have another PC or laptop at your disposal, you have a couple options:

1. Maxivista. This is a client/server set of utilities that let you run the client PC as a secondary display device for the server PC. You can use the same keyboard and mouse across monitors/PCs, drag windows across monitors/PCs and use the clipboard across monitors/PCs. It truly feels like a 3rd monitor. That is, if I could get it to work. After installing Maxivista, I still received the “incompatible display adapter” message. No amount of disabling Aero, shutting down Ultramon or reinstalling would make it work. Too bad too.

2. Synergy. This is another great little client/server tool. It’s similar to Maxivista, except for a couple things. Synergy doesn’t act like a secondary monitor. It still displays the desktop from the client PC. It simply lets you share a single keyboard and mouse across multiple computers. It supports full clipboard functionality across computers too (Maxivista costs a little extra for that). But Synergy is totally free! Maxivista definitely is not.

I can definitely see the benefit in simplifying the display driver architecture for Vista. Simple = better when you’re talking about source code. However, in terms of usability this is definitely a step backwards. This only causes pain and configuration issues (and usually expensive new cards) for the user. Maxivista would have been a great substitute if I could have gotten it to work (even though having to disable Aero would have been a shame), but Synergy will still give me the three monitor feel that I wanted.