For anyone who read this blog you will probably remember my posts regarding Vista’s apparent inability to copy or move over an network to an XP machine. You will also probably remember how I said I wouldn’t be going anywhere near the Release Candidate of Vista’s Service Pack 1. Well …. what can I say … the irritation of not being able to use my machine the way it is suppose to got to be too much and as you can tell from my post earlier about the new Microsoft Download Center Beta I bit the bullet and grabbed my very own copy of what would hopefully be my salvation.

After what has to be the longest install of a service pack that I have experienced; and yes I know it’s only a release candidate so I accept the time spent, I was all ready to get to the business of finding out if the problem had been fixed. So from a fresh reboot and with nothing else running as far as using the network I proceeded to open up Explorer and drag the first victim video file from its folder on my Vista machine over to the mapped folder that resided on the XP machine in the next room.

And waited …. and waited …. and waited ….

Then all of a sudden I had this wonderful dialog box being displayed:

I gotta admit this one still makes me scratch my head in wonderment after all the file was on my machine … the one I was sitting at .. the one I was trying to copy from and here Vista was telling me it couldn’t access the file and that I should check check the network setting that was already letting me access the XP machine through Explorer on Vista.

So being the hopeful optimist - hey it happens once in awhile - I clicked on the Try Again button hoping that maybe it just need a few minutes to figure out what was going on. This is the dialog box I got in return for my optimism:

Needless to say I wanted the file copied before I died so I canceled out of this state of ridiculousness shaking my head wondering just what Microsoft was thinking when it came to Vista.

Not wanting to be totally depressed over the whole situation I decided to do some experimenting and see just what would copy between the two machines and this is where it gets really strange.

First I wondered if I could copy a video file from the XP machine to the Vista machine from the Vista machine and to my bewilderment it worked like a charm. Mind you it wasn’t the speediest experience but hey it worked. So I rightfully concluded that if that would work so would any other file and so it wasn’t a problem to do with XP and the network.

With that thought in mind I picked a text file in my Documents folder on Vista and dragged it in Explorer over to another mapped folder of the XP machine … damn the copy dialog box didn’t even display and the file was where I had copied it to.

Well that worked like a dream so next up was a JPEG graphic file .. drag … drop … presto there it was in the folder on the XP machine. Wow … that was as fast as the text file. So what to try next .. oh ya … an MP3 file … let’s give that a shot.

So selecting the lucky file in Vista I dragged it over to the mapped folder on the XP machine and let go. Lo’ and behold the Copy dialog box displays and the progress bar indicated that the file is being copied over. Wow .. it was copying … amazing.

The end result of all this?

Well it would seem that the Service Pack hasn’t made one bit of difference to the problems I was experiencing despite what had been listed in their published changelog that Long Zheng was good enough to publish. I realize that some will say that this is just something I am experiencing and must be related to my setup. The problem with that wishful thinking is that it is just that - wishful thing - especially considering that more than few forums around the web are reporting exactly the same; or very similar, problems.

Where does this leave me?

Well as far as I am concerned considering my needs - pretty well screwed. Yes I could wait until the RTM version of the Service Pack is available but that’s in the new year and I really don’t know if I have the stamina to wait that long. So I have to very carefully consider saying good-bye to Vista and actually make the plunge back to XP. I can tell you this though - if I do go back to XP I won’t be having anything to do with Vista and even though I’ve been bitten badly by Vista I’ll be waiting for any OS upgrades until Windows 7 goes Gold.

In the meantime Microsoft has left a really bad taste in my mouth and I am feeling just a tad bit ripped off considering that a core functionality of an OS is so badly borked and they still took money from loyal customers for a faulty operating system. I hope Bill and all those shareholders are happy because I know a shitload of customers aren’t.

As for migrating back to XP - well I’ll let you know how it goes and maybe prepare a list of all the things to make sure you have in place for those folks looking to make the same move over the coming months - which I am sure is going to happen.

Listening to: Infernal - from Paris to Berlin (UK edition) - Hey Hello

Conversation Tags: Microsoft, Windows, Vista, Service Pack 1 RC1, copy files, move files