Outlook 2007 and Vista - a cautionary tale
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Well, I've spent the first half of my morning dealing with the fact that upon starting Outlook complains it can't find the data files (on another server). In a delightful manner, Outlook presents you with a dialog to find the missing data file. There is no cancel. You just keep getting the dialog to find the file (which it of course can't access). The only way to shut down Outlook at this point is to kill the process. Thanks, Microsoft. I love your Flying Dutchman approach to error handling. Fearing the worst, I checked the server. It's fine. What followed was the typical scenario, with upon subsequent starts Outlook wanting to start in Safe mode, run repair, or just do nothing (literally). All, of course, to no avail. I then brought the files to the local machine and realized that default.pst was now at 1 gig. Make note of that magic number. I eventually got Outlook up by running with the files on the local server. My best guess is that it was freaking about the 1 gig file across a network, and I suspect Vista complicity in this scenario. Once Outlook tried to (unsuccessfully) talk to the 1 gig file on the net, I could no longer access that server's drives from Vista. (Remote Desktop from another box showed the server to be fine.) Hosed Outlook, hosed Network. After all that excitement and the rush of relief that comes from just being back at square one again (with half your day gone), I then decided to reduce the 1 gig size of the file, so I saved off a copy and then deleted all data prior to 2008. Still the same size. I then went to File Management and ran Compact on the size. Later, that same day... same size. Tried it again to be sure. Same size. So, boys and girls, here are your lessons from today.
- If Outlook can't find your data file, hit the power switch on your computer. The OS will recover from this scenario far better than Outlook did from its own.
- Don't let your files get up to 1 gig. I'm not quite sure how, since Compact is an illusion.
- Access pst files over the network at your peril
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Coming soon: Got a career question? Ask the Attack Chihuahua! www.PracticalUSA.com
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Well, I've spent the first half of my morning dealing with the fact that upon starting Outlook complains it can't find the data files (on another server). In a delightful manner, Outlook presents you with a dialog to find the missing data file. There is no cancel. You just keep getting the dialog to find the file (which it of course can't access). The only way to shut down Outlook at this point is to kill the process. Thanks, Microsoft. I love your Flying Dutchman approach to error handling. Fearing the worst, I checked the server. It's fine. What followed was the typical scenario, with upon subsequent starts Outlook wanting to start in Safe mode, run repair, or just do nothing (literally). All, of course, to no avail. I then brought the files to the local machine and realized that default.pst was now at 1 gig. Make note of that magic number. I eventually got Outlook up by running with the files on the local server. My best guess is that it was freaking about the 1 gig file across a network, and I suspect Vista complicity in this scenario. Once Outlook tried to (unsuccessfully) talk to the 1 gig file on the net, I could no longer access that server's drives from Vista. (Remote Desktop from another box showed the server to be fine.) Hosed Outlook, hosed Network. After all that excitement and the rush of relief that comes from just being back at square one again (with half your day gone), I then decided to reduce the 1 gig size of the file, so I saved off a copy and then deleted all data prior to 2008. Still the same size. I then went to File Management and ran Compact on the size. Later, that same day... same size. Tried it again to be sure. Same size. So, boys and girls, here are your lessons from today.
- If Outlook can't find your data file, hit the power switch on your computer. The OS will recover from this scenario far better than Outlook did from its own.
- Don't let your files get up to 1 gig. I'm not quite sure how, since Compact is an illusion.
- Access pst files over the network at your peril
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Coming soon: Got a career question? Ask the Attack Chihuahua! www.PracticalUSA.com
I'm pretty sure that outlook files are just access database files with a different extension (at least, they used to be) and 1 gig is really spanking the size limit of those puppies if you need to compact. Good luck: it'll never happen. I've noticed, in any case, that Outlook 2007 is veeeeery slow on Vista and I've kept the data file as small as I can get away with: no more than 100mb with constant archiving. In any case if you haven't read a message in a month or so you're probbaly not going to :-)
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Well, I've spent the first half of my morning dealing with the fact that upon starting Outlook complains it can't find the data files (on another server). In a delightful manner, Outlook presents you with a dialog to find the missing data file. There is no cancel. You just keep getting the dialog to find the file (which it of course can't access). The only way to shut down Outlook at this point is to kill the process. Thanks, Microsoft. I love your Flying Dutchman approach to error handling. Fearing the worst, I checked the server. It's fine. What followed was the typical scenario, with upon subsequent starts Outlook wanting to start in Safe mode, run repair, or just do nothing (literally). All, of course, to no avail. I then brought the files to the local machine and realized that default.pst was now at 1 gig. Make note of that magic number. I eventually got Outlook up by running with the files on the local server. My best guess is that it was freaking about the 1 gig file across a network, and I suspect Vista complicity in this scenario. Once Outlook tried to (unsuccessfully) talk to the 1 gig file on the net, I could no longer access that server's drives from Vista. (Remote Desktop from another box showed the server to be fine.) Hosed Outlook, hosed Network. After all that excitement and the rush of relief that comes from just being back at square one again (with half your day gone), I then decided to reduce the 1 gig size of the file, so I saved off a copy and then deleted all data prior to 2008. Still the same size. I then went to File Management and ran Compact on the size. Later, that same day... same size. Tried it again to be sure. Same size. So, boys and girls, here are your lessons from today.
- If Outlook can't find your data file, hit the power switch on your computer. The OS will recover from this scenario far better than Outlook did from its own.
- Don't let your files get up to 1 gig. I'm not quite sure how, since Compact is an illusion.
- Access pst files over the network at your peril
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Coming soon: Got a career question? Ask the Attack Chihuahua! www.PracticalUSA.com
Christopher Duncan wrote:
Well, I've spent the first half of my morning dealing with the fact that upon starting Outlook complains it can't find the data files (on another server). In a delightful manner, Outlook presents you with a dialog to find the missing data file. There is no cancel. You just keep getting the dialog to find the file (which it of course can't access). The only way to shut down Outlook at this point is to kill the process. Thanks, Microsoft. I love your Flying Dutchman approach to error handling.
With Office 2003 or lower the previous functionality was to popup a message box that outlook could not find your folder. I believe it would then ask you to look for it and if you canceled outlook exited completely. I found that highly frustrating because with an exchange email account having the personal folder should be optional.
Christopher Duncan wrote:
# Don't let your files get up to 1 gig. I'm not quite sure how, since Compact is an illusion.
I don't know about Vista (as I will not allow it on our network) but with Outlook I do know the size limit is around 2GB. I know this because my boss hits that limit every few months and I have to help him work it out when outlook prevents him from even deleting items from his box.
John
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Christopher Duncan wrote:
Well, I've spent the first half of my morning dealing with the fact that upon starting Outlook complains it can't find the data files (on another server). In a delightful manner, Outlook presents you with a dialog to find the missing data file. There is no cancel. You just keep getting the dialog to find the file (which it of course can't access). The only way to shut down Outlook at this point is to kill the process. Thanks, Microsoft. I love your Flying Dutchman approach to error handling.
With Office 2003 or lower the previous functionality was to popup a message box that outlook could not find your folder. I believe it would then ask you to look for it and if you canceled outlook exited completely. I found that highly frustrating because with an exchange email account having the personal folder should be optional.
Christopher Duncan wrote:
# Don't let your files get up to 1 gig. I'm not quite sure how, since Compact is an illusion.
I don't know about Vista (as I will not allow it on our network) but with Outlook I do know the size limit is around 2GB. I know this because my boss hits that limit every few months and I have to help him work it out when outlook prevents him from even deleting items from his box.
John
John M. Drescher wrote:
I don't know about Vista (as I will not allow it on our network)
I originally installed Vista because I was doing a toolbar project and needed to test it under Vista. Virtual PC ran great with everything but Vista, which was so slow as to be unusable. Since I'm a professional geek, it made sense to stay current. I regret that decision daily. I think the only reason I haven't reinstalled back to XP is the day long adventure of reinstalling all my software. Besides the bright, shiny graphics Vista brings nothing but usability hassles and slower performance to the party, so the cost / benefits analysis takes about 1 second. Which is the only thing that happens on Vista in that amount of time, I can assure you. A similar C/B can be applied to Office 2007. They broke backward compatibility, didn't offer anything new that I cared about, it runs slower, and they moved everything around so I now get the same functionality that I always got, but it takes me longer to find it.
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Coming soon: Got a career question? Ask the Attack Chihuahua! www.PracticalUSA.com
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I'm pretty sure that outlook files are just access database files with a different extension (at least, they used to be) and 1 gig is really spanking the size limit of those puppies if you need to compact. Good luck: it'll never happen. I've noticed, in any case, that Outlook 2007 is veeeeery slow on Vista and I've kept the data file as small as I can get away with: no more than 100mb with constant archiving. In any case if you haven't read a message in a month or so you're probbaly not going to :-)
digital man wrote:
I'm pretty sure that outlook files are just access database files
I gave it a try with Access 2007, wouldn't recognize the file format. Oh, well - it was worth a shot! I'm trying to figure out how to get all my calendar stuff from the 1 gig file copied to a new, blank default.pst. I can copy the email and contact stuff easily enough, but I don't want to lose the calendar history.
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Coming soon: Got a career question? Ask the Attack Chihuahua! www.PracticalUSA.com
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John M. Drescher wrote:
I don't know about Vista (as I will not allow it on our network)
I originally installed Vista because I was doing a toolbar project and needed to test it under Vista. Virtual PC ran great with everything but Vista, which was so slow as to be unusable. Since I'm a professional geek, it made sense to stay current. I regret that decision daily. I think the only reason I haven't reinstalled back to XP is the day long adventure of reinstalling all my software. Besides the bright, shiny graphics Vista brings nothing but usability hassles and slower performance to the party, so the cost / benefits analysis takes about 1 second. Which is the only thing that happens on Vista in that amount of time, I can assure you. A similar C/B can be applied to Office 2007. They broke backward compatibility, didn't offer anything new that I cared about, it runs slower, and they moved everything around so I now get the same functionality that I always got, but it takes me longer to find it.
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Coming soon: Got a career question? Ask the Attack Chihuahua! www.PracticalUSA.com
Christopher Duncan wrote:
Virtual PC ran great with everything but Vista
Huh, wierd, maybe it needs an update or something, Vista runs great for me under VMWare workstation.
"The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying." - David Ogilvy
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Christopher Duncan wrote:
Virtual PC ran great with everything but Vista
Huh, wierd, maybe it needs an update or something, Vista runs great for me under VMWare workstation.
"The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying." - David Ogilvy
Virtual PC was what I happened to have, perhaps VMWare is better. You can get the full Aero stuff and normal performance?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Coming soon: Got a career question? Ask the Attack Chihuahua! www.PracticalUSA.com
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Virtual PC was what I happened to have, perhaps VMWare is better. You can get the full Aero stuff and normal performance?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Coming soon: Got a career question? Ask the Attack Chihuahua! www.PracticalUSA.com
I can't remember if Aero was enabled or not, it wasn't relevant for testing my stuff though. Peformance was excellent, not noticeably slower at all however I have a quad core cpu, fast SATA array and loads of ram so that might be misleading.
"The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying." - David Ogilvy
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John M. Drescher wrote:
I don't know about Vista (as I will not allow it on our network)
I originally installed Vista because I was doing a toolbar project and needed to test it under Vista. Virtual PC ran great with everything but Vista, which was so slow as to be unusable. Since I'm a professional geek, it made sense to stay current. I regret that decision daily. I think the only reason I haven't reinstalled back to XP is the day long adventure of reinstalling all my software. Besides the bright, shiny graphics Vista brings nothing but usability hassles and slower performance to the party, so the cost / benefits analysis takes about 1 second. Which is the only thing that happens on Vista in that amount of time, I can assure you. A similar C/B can be applied to Office 2007. They broke backward compatibility, didn't offer anything new that I cared about, it runs slower, and they moved everything around so I now get the same functionality that I always got, but it takes me longer to find it.
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Coming soon: Got a career question? Ask the Attack Chihuahua! www.PracticalUSA.com
i was in the same situation regarding vista ... the only thing stopping me going back to xp was the time it was going to take ... but eventually i could stand it no longer ... the pain of the tooth ache got worse than the pain of the dentist ... and i spent a good half day backing up and putting xp back on my machine it is totally worth it ... it actually feels nice to boot into windows again :)
"mostly watching the human race is like watching dogs watch tv ... they see the pictures move but the meaning escapes them"
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I'm pretty sure that outlook files are just access database files with a different extension (at least, they used to be) and 1 gig is really spanking the size limit of those puppies if you need to compact. Good luck: it'll never happen. I've noticed, in any case, that Outlook 2007 is veeeeery slow on Vista and I've kept the data file as small as I can get away with: no more than 100mb with constant archiving. In any case if you haven't read a message in a month or so you're probbaly not going to :-)
The files can be way bigger than 1Gb. I think it was Outlook 2003 that improved support for larger files (Mine was at 8Gb before I moved to cached mode. It's about 13Gb now)
cheers, Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
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Well, I've spent the first half of my morning dealing with the fact that upon starting Outlook complains it can't find the data files (on another server). In a delightful manner, Outlook presents you with a dialog to find the missing data file. There is no cancel. You just keep getting the dialog to find the file (which it of course can't access). The only way to shut down Outlook at this point is to kill the process. Thanks, Microsoft. I love your Flying Dutchman approach to error handling. Fearing the worst, I checked the server. It's fine. What followed was the typical scenario, with upon subsequent starts Outlook wanting to start in Safe mode, run repair, or just do nothing (literally). All, of course, to no avail. I then brought the files to the local machine and realized that default.pst was now at 1 gig. Make note of that magic number. I eventually got Outlook up by running with the files on the local server. My best guess is that it was freaking about the 1 gig file across a network, and I suspect Vista complicity in this scenario. Once Outlook tried to (unsuccessfully) talk to the 1 gig file on the net, I could no longer access that server's drives from Vista. (Remote Desktop from another box showed the server to be fine.) Hosed Outlook, hosed Network. After all that excitement and the rush of relief that comes from just being back at square one again (with half your day gone), I then decided to reduce the 1 gig size of the file, so I saved off a copy and then deleted all data prior to 2008. Still the same size. I then went to File Management and ran Compact on the size. Later, that same day... same size. Tried it again to be sure. Same size. So, boys and girls, here are your lessons from today.
- If Outlook can't find your data file, hit the power switch on your computer. The OS will recover from this scenario far better than Outlook did from its own.
- Don't let your files get up to 1 gig. I'm not quite sure how, since Compact is an illusion.
- Access pst files over the network at your peril
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Coming soon: Got a career question? Ask the Attack Chihuahua! www.PracticalUSA.com
Have you installed Vista SP1? This may help with file transfers over the network.
cheers, Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
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Have you installed Vista SP1? This may help with file transfers over the network.
cheers, Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
I'm thinking instead of installing Vista SP-XP. :)
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Coming soon: Got a career question? Ask the Attack Chihuahua! www.PracticalUSA.com
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Virtual PC was what I happened to have, perhaps VMWare is better. You can get the full Aero stuff and normal performance?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Coming soon: Got a career question? Ask the Attack Chihuahua! www.PracticalUSA.com
My experience with both is that VMWare stomps the shit out of Virtual PC, both in the variety of OS's supported and the basic performance of the VM.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog
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My experience with both is that VMWare stomps the shit out of Virtual PC, both in the variety of OS's supported and the basic performance of the VM.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog
Hmmm. That leaves only one category. Is it free?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Coming soon: Got a career question? Ask the Attack Chihuahua! www.PracticalUSA.com
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Hmmm. That leaves only one category. Is it free?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Coming soon: Got a career question? Ask the Attack Chihuahua! www.PracticalUSA.com
There is (or used to be) a 30 day trial version. Other wise it's $175 ( I think, or somewhere in that ballpark).
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog
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There is (or used to be) a 30 day trial version. Other wise it's $175 ( I think, or somewhere in that ballpark).
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog
Probably worth it. I just went with Virtual PC because I was in the middle of a gig, it was free, and... well, you know how it goes. Thanks for the tip, though!
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Coming soon: Got a career question? Ask the Attack Chihuahua! www.PracticalUSA.com
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Hmmm. That leaves only one category. Is it free?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Coming soon: Got a career question? Ask the Attack Chihuahua! www.PracticalUSA.com
Christopher Duncan wrote:
Hmmm. That leaves only one category. Is it free?
I think you can get the plain VMWare server for free. You just have to register to get a serial number. I have done it in the past, and could not see anything about a time limit. http://www.vmware.com/download/server/[^] I have been using it on a PC at the office. It's been way over a month since I installed it.
WE ARE DYSLEXIC OF BORG. Refutance is systile. Your a$$ will be laminated. There are 10 kinds of people in the world: People who know binary and people who don't.
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I'm thinking instead of installing Vista SP-XP. :)
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Coming soon: Got a career question? Ask the Attack Chihuahua! www.PracticalUSA.com
12 months ago now I brought a dell latitude D820, with Vista Business preinstalled. I was never happy with it, it seemed slow and bloated. With Outlook, 2x Visual Studio and SQL management studio open my memory usage was normally around 2.5gb and the machine was painful to use. The performance and reliability updates helped, and I installed the release candidate of SP1 as soon as I could and that helped too but I was still disapointed and tempted to go back to XP. I was running vista with things like aero, superfetch and UAC disabled, just to get every last bit of performance out of it. Yes, disabling these things helped... I decided to give vista another chance - I formatted and re-installed, installed SP1 immediately, then all my apps. The difference is astounding. I don't know what the problem was with dell's vista installation, but my memory usage is now 0.5-1gb lower than it was under all circumstances. Before after a clean boot I never had less than 1.4gb of memory allocated. Now its 800-900mb. With 2xVS, Sql studio and outlook I am using less than 2gb. Dell's vista image seemed fairly clean... but there must have been something. This was the first time I had not immediately formatted and re-installed after getting a new machine, and it will be my last. Overall my machine is much, much snappier and doesn't give me any grief. Vista no longer seems slow and bloated. My frame rates in FSX have also nearly doubled, which I'm at a loss to explain as I'm using the same drivers. So, now I'm officially a vista convert. It makes me wonder how many people buy a new machines with a dodgy preinstalled vista image, they find it slow and bloated, so they re-install XP, find it much better and then go out and bag vista. I can honestly say I've got no problems with vista now. I find my XP machine at home slow and clunky now.
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I'm pretty sure that outlook files are just access database files with a different extension (at least, they used to be) and 1 gig is really spanking the size limit of those puppies if you need to compact. Good luck: it'll never happen. I've noticed, in any case, that Outlook 2007 is veeeeery slow on Vista and I've kept the data file as small as I can get away with: no more than 100mb with constant archiving. In any case if you haven't read a message in a month or so you're probbaly not going to :-)
Word of warning on the speed thing. I found that my new dell had installed some strange outlook addins by default and they were crashing and slowing down outlook. So it is worth checking that out. Not sure I can help with the core thread though ;P
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12 months ago now I brought a dell latitude D820, with Vista Business preinstalled. I was never happy with it, it seemed slow and bloated. With Outlook, 2x Visual Studio and SQL management studio open my memory usage was normally around 2.5gb and the machine was painful to use. The performance and reliability updates helped, and I installed the release candidate of SP1 as soon as I could and that helped too but I was still disapointed and tempted to go back to XP. I was running vista with things like aero, superfetch and UAC disabled, just to get every last bit of performance out of it. Yes, disabling these things helped... I decided to give vista another chance - I formatted and re-installed, installed SP1 immediately, then all my apps. The difference is astounding. I don't know what the problem was with dell's vista installation, but my memory usage is now 0.5-1gb lower than it was under all circumstances. Before after a clean boot I never had less than 1.4gb of memory allocated. Now its 800-900mb. With 2xVS, Sql studio and outlook I am using less than 2gb. Dell's vista image seemed fairly clean... but there must have been something. This was the first time I had not immediately formatted and re-installed after getting a new machine, and it will be my last. Overall my machine is much, much snappier and doesn't give me any grief. Vista no longer seems slow and bloated. My frame rates in FSX have also nearly doubled, which I'm at a loss to explain as I'm using the same drivers. So, now I'm officially a vista convert. It makes me wonder how many people buy a new machines with a dodgy preinstalled vista image, they find it slow and bloated, so they re-install XP, find it much better and then go out and bag vista. I can honestly say I've got no problems with vista now. I find my XP machine at home slow and clunky now.
While Vista never seemed slow to me, when I was limited to 1gb of ram, I found that Vista64 blazed when I bumped that to 4gb. It is even still fast when I have a Virtual PC running a 2003 virtual machine with devleopment tools running. It was amazing what the ram increase alone did for performance, it was like I had bought a new faster machine. I would imagine that perhaps some OEM installs could have restrictions set for the lower common denominator of hardware mix. Or maybe they just had some junk software installed eating things up. From the various hardware I have ran Vista on, it did not seem much of a difference in performance than Win2003 server (unless the machine had a low grade video card and Areo was enabled, Areo really needs a decent video card to be smooth).
Rocky <>< Blog Post: Handy utility app that is always on my machines! Tech Blog Post: Microsoft Live Writer Plug-ins!