Vista Headaches - any suggestions?

[windycitycoder]

I would appreciate any suggestions on what to try next. I've been banging my head against the wall for a couple of days now...

Here's a little background on the setup: The internal company network has multiple Windows 2003 Servers, 15 XP Pro desktops, 9 printers and a single Vista Business desktop on it. The reason for the single Vista machine is that that person got a new cpu and the main IT person decided to get it w/ Vista (as we're moving to it this summer).

Since starting to work on it, I cannot get it to connect to all services / printers within the network. However, it will connect to the shared drives (Windows 2003 Server), login scripts (Windows 2003 Server) and only one of the printers. In addition, the network tray icon says 'an error occurred when trying to connect'.

I've tried turning off the firewall temporarily, creating tunneling, adding printers manually as TCP/IP resources and nothing works. It still says 'cannot connect' and freezes when I try to open the Network properties.

Is it possible that some parts of Vista were not set up properly (set up by someone else)? Or is it possible that there are conflicts between Vista and Server 2003 that will go away when we go to 2008?

Thanks.

[TJ111]

I dunno where the admin tools are in Vista, but find them and open the event viewer. Look through it for the full error details as to why you can't connect.

Step 2: Switch to Linux

[windycitycoder]

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll take a look at the event viewer and see what comes up.

Yeah, going to Linux would solve so many headaches. However, I know that it's a battle I'll never win so I'll save my breath and spend my energy elsewhere.

[chazzy]

I love when people swear by linux :-) how many of them actually use linux on a regular basis for a desktop?

windycitycoder, more likely than not the print drivers need to be updated on the printer itself for vista compatibility. i ran into the same dilemma on networked printers not too long ago. I'm not sure what you mean by "services" but if you mean windows services, if they're internally written they're likely to not be fully compatible with windows vista. vista is heavily reliant on sql server, most of the management stuff is built on top of sql server, as a result certain things will need to get upgraded.

[TJ111]

I use linux (Ubuntu) exclusively on my home PC. If I could do it at work, I would, but XP is ok. Not trying to make this an OS vs OS thread, just answering your question.

[LeeU]

I love when people swear by linux :-) how many of them actually use linux on a regular basis for a desktop?
I do also -- Ubuntu.

[boxxertrumps]

Same here, Fedora 8.

[drhowarddrfine]

I don't run Linux but I have 7 FreeBSD boxes and haven't used Windows in almost two years.

[Stephen Philbin]

I've been happily running Linux as a desktop (and web host) for many years now. Hell, even my girlfriend prefers to use Linux now that she's gotten used to the basic differences.

On a vaguely ironic note, however. I'm making this post from from Windows XP. I booted into Windows to use a desktop program that Sony made that only works on Windows. I'm taking samples to help my effort in trying to make a platform-independent program written in Java that serves almost the same purpose so that I can use it on Linux.

For the curious, I have Windows XP, Debian and OpenSuse installed on this machine.

[TJ111]

I installed XP under VirtualBox (they have a .deb package) and use it for most windows only programs. I got tired of having to tinker with Wine to get them to work properly (or reboot to get into XP). Hell XP runs better virtually in Ubuntu then it does on 60% of my friends Windows computers.

[drhowarddrfine]

Hell XP runs better virtually in Ubuntu then it does on 60% of my friends Windows computers.
It's weird about things like that. On FreeBSD, Linux apps run faster than on a Linux box due to some reason I can't recall right now.

[gd6noob]

i wouldnt use vista... try going back to XP...

[Sunny G]

Yeah, just update everything.
Software, drivers, windows update, everything. Then do it again.

And Linux is good. Viva Tux.

[blue-eye-labs]

I love when people swear by linux :-) how many of them actually use linux on a regular basis for a desktop?

I personally use a mac, but I set up all the other "pc"s in my house to use ubuntu... it's much, much easier to use... If I didn't use a mac, I'd use Linux and still do whenever I need to use a different computer, Windoze is left there because I like Crysis and Rome: Total War.