This weekend I decided I needed to upgrade to Vista on my home system. I've been using Vista at work now for a few weeks, and truth be told I really dig it. The look is sexy, the search feature rocks, and IIS7 finally lets me have a real web server on development machine (even supports multiple websites, yay!). Now the caveats: my system is very new, I have tweaked every OS I've ever used (including Linux) and enjoy doing so, and the main reason I'm wanting Vista is the features to make programming easier (i.e. I don't play a whole lot of games).
I wanted to make a post today about how awesome everything was - the UAC is not as bad as it's been made out to be, I kind of like the "Cancel or Allow" options because I can keep evil things (like Abode's nasty little services that install with Reader) from running. I spent some time learning a few short cut keys, like CRTL-SHIFT-ENTER to run an app as Administrator, and this has made a huge difference. Even though I'm running Vista Ultimate x64, I've not had any software problems with 32-bit apps (note that I loath iTunes, so I don't care if it ever works on Vista).
So why am I not making that post? Well, because I have a Silicon Image 3114 SoftRaid 5 controller. I don't use it, but it's on my motherboard. This controller changes it's ID every time I reboot. This is bad because after activating windows and rebooting for a window's update, vista told me "you've changed hardware and have 3 days to re-activate." Trying to re-activate gives the error "this key has already been used" - probably because I used it to activate the first time.
All weekend I've been waiting on support from Microsoft - because it was the weekend I couldn't get anyone on the phone. I don't intend to be very polite, because after spending $300 bucks on an OS I should get more than 3 days of use out of it. This problem has been fixed with a new driver (which I've now installed), so it's a known issue (yet the new driver form windows update doesn't let you re-activate). Oh yes, all drivers must be certified by Microsoft to run on Vista - so it would have been nice if they would fail to certify a driver that can take down your whole system.
Oh, one more thing - Where the fuck was my UAC "Cancel or Allow" to install a driver that would take down the whole system!? Cause that would have been useful.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to "Window's Key Tab" and watch the pretty graphics for a few hours to calm down.
Update: After getting home I went to the support page and started a request for chat support. It took only a few seconds before Rajesh answered and reactivated my computer. He also called me on my cell to let me reboot the system and ensure the problem driver was fixed. Last, I asked about the process for support if I was outside of my 90 days (when support is free) and I had a hardware change (real or not) - he said Microsoft would credit me back the support fee. That sucks (having to pay then get credited), but as my brother said, what else can I do?
