I got an email from Virgin Media, my ISP, the other day about their cloud like online storage, where they give you 10 gig.

I downloaded the client software onto my Vista PC and had a go at backing up a few files, and it did appear to work, though the upload speed was very slow. Nevertheless it was free and I liked the idea of backing up all my documents to a site that will probably be around for the forseeable future. I also downloaded the client software to my XP PC and got that backing up my documents to its own folder on the ‘network’ drive. Again it was slow. Just to push it a bit I got the Vista PC backing all of my documents on that PC up to it’s own folder on the ‘network’ drive as well at the same time.

You have the option of selecting folders or individual files, and the folder with the documents in is ‘My Documents’ on XP and ‘Documents’ on Vista. The trouble with this is the ‘Documents’ folder on Vista includes my VMware virtual drive image files, which are huge and which I don’t really need to backup.

After a while I noticed that the Vista PC was uploading about 10 times slower than the XP PC, so I stopped the XP backup to see if it was just a bandwidth issue. It wasn’t, the Vista PC was still crawling up a hill. I stopped the Vista PC backing up and had a look at the server to see what was there, and there wasn’t much. Hmmm…

I started looking at other backup services and there was one called humyo (Not a capital in site. Ed). This service was web based so there was no untested client software to install. I set both PC’s to backup and fired them off and they appeared to work OK, well they thrashed about to their hearts content for a while.

Sometime the following day I rebooted the XP PC with no problems but later when I rebooted the Vista PC it wouldn’t start. No kidding, just got a blank screen. Don’t panic (Why not, sounds like a good idea to me. Ed). I rebooted in Safe Mode, which worked OK and spent ages trying to figure out what I had changed on the PC in the last couple of days. Of course I had installed the Virgin backup client. I uninstalled that and restarted the PC and it booted up OK. Of course it wasn’t quite that quick as before uninstalling the backup client, I had fiddled about with restores quite a bit, to no avail.

Though the Vista PC now booted and worked OK what I inexplicably lost along the way were my display adapter settings. They were, prior to Vista not starting, at a resolution of 1680 x 1050 which looked pin sharp, then they got stuck at 1280 x 1024 and text looked blurred. I could increase the resolution but it still didn’t look as good as before and if I went higher than 1680 x 1050 then the Samsung monitor displayed a message slap bang in the middle of the screen saying that it should be set to 1680 x 1050. I had a feeling that this was something to do with the monitor that Vista thinks I had and that was set to ‘Default Monitor’. I had a Samsung driver disk which didn’t want to work (The plot thins. Ed). The monitor is P ‘N’ P but no matter how many times I rebooted it wasn’t discovered. Until……

I performed the biggest reboot I could do, short of switching off the local power station. In fact it wasn’t even a reboot, it was a switch off for 5 minutes. That did the trick. Rebooted Vista, the Samsung monitor sent some data to Vista, which recognised it and the screen resolution is back to 1680 x 1050. Good stuff Virgin.

Quote of the day

‘All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors’ Unknown.

iTunes on Vista keeps asking me whether I want iTunes to be the default music player for various sound files.

I agree but it’s obviously not sticking as I keep getting asked the same question. Also the Bonjour service doesn’t seem to be working very well. Quite often when I start iTunes, I check for app upgrades, new podcasts or just go to the iTunes Store then nothing happens. Eventually I’ll get a message that the Bonjour service isn’t running, but it is. All I have to do usually is open up the Windows Services window and that gets it going again without me even having to touch the Bonjour service. Something I have installed is obviously clashing with Bonjour.

Earlier it got a bit weirder in that iTunes still wouldn’t connect and this time it was suggested that I run ipconfig /flushdns to give it a clean start. Even then no joy. Ran the iTunes diagnostics again and this time it told me that my user wasn’t an administrator. Wrong, I am an administrator.

Did the obvious and rebooted the Vista PC and of course everything worked OK. Nice to know that Microsoft still know how to code these lovely little inconsistencies as I was starting to wonder if they’d left all that behind with XP.

My Vista PC is connected to the router via an ethernet cable, I also have a Belkin wireless adapter for when the ethernet cable is in use elsewhere. Each time it boots Vista wants to install the driver for the adapter. When I said yes awhile ago it tried to download the driver, got stuck and needed a reboot, upon which Vista convinced itself that the state of play with the PC was so dire that what it really needed was restoring. I tried again today and this time it gave up the ghost and told me to do it instead. I went to the Belkin web page and downloaded what I thought was the correct driver, it wasn’t, and let it get installed. Bizarrely half way through the installation the setup had switched from a Belkin wireless adapter driver to the Microsoft Virtual PC software. Whaaaat….. Anyway I let the Virtual PC software install itself and then I had another go at downloading the Belkin driver. Had a eureka moment. The version I had download and which had so spectularly failed to install, let alone run before, was an XP version and there was no mention anywhere for that driver of any kind of Vista compatibility.

It was a miracle anything was installed, Virtual PC or not. No wonder Vista wanted to do a restore after the damage installing an XP only wireless adapter had done. Downloaded the correct driver and it was ok.

I’ve been using Vista since the day it came out in January 2007 and it’s only in the last month that I’ve started to use it in anger.

Prior to this I disliked using it so much that there was no way I was going to use it as a day to day machine, and be dependent on it. But now I finally appreciate the darn thing. Admittedly it is slow, even at booting up, and this despite Microsoft promising, as usual with every new version of Windows, that it has been listening to its customers and version n now boots up quicker than version n-1.

Like hell it does, it’s pretty neck and neck when I start the Vista and XP machines at the same time. Also it does go to sleep a lot. Well, when I say a lot, it just seems to freeze for 10 seconds then gives itself a quick ticking off and it’s away again. Another thing is that a couple of times it’s gone into such deep sleep, when not in use but powered up, that it just does not wake up at all. On both occasions I’ve had to power off and on.

But I get the strong feeling it is more stable and secure. When something does go wrong they do eventually end up going right, with very little assistance from me. Compare that with the XP PC which seems to catch a cold as soon as a CD/DVD is loaded. The longer I use Vista and get more confidence with it then I’ll start uninstalling software from the XP PC and eventually rebuild it software wise. Not a lot of point in chucking it out though so I’ll probably use it as a very basic backup PC with Office, including Outlook setup for all accounts, net connectivity, a connected printer, iTunes with apps and podcasts but no music, so that I can sync the iPhone with something if (when) Vista starts playing up. I’ll also be able to use it for watching live soccer.