So I’m happily plugging away on my latest Vista install but there are a few odds and ends that are not doing so well:
Windows Media Player doesn’t want to play WMV files
This is an odd one. MP will run AVI and MPG files but not WMV files downloaded of the Web or from the local disk. This is strange because I can use the Picture Album Viewer (the default ‘image viewer’ application) to actually view WMV files that won’t play in Media Player. I suspect there’s some odd configuration setting that’s mucking up MP, but I can’t seem to find what it is. This is annoying as it’s not possible to view most tutorials of the Web.
Outlook 2007 Link Clicking Warning
This one is pretty annoying: I’m in Outlook and I have a message that includes a hyperlink. And I can’t click on the link. Instead I get a dialog like this:
Microsoft Outlook
This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer. Please contact your system administrator
This looks like an Outlook configuration issue, but I don’t think it is because in my previous Vista and Outlook 2007 installation I did not have this issue. I hunted through all the Outlook security options (which are still hideously nested and configurable all over the place) but I don’t see anything there. I also checked the security policies for the machine but couldn’t find anything without a more detailed.
It turns out this is an Internet Explorer setting, but I’m not quite sure what needs to get set to make hyperlinks work in Outlook. Hyperlinks work from elsewhere (via ShellExec() which I assume is what the problem is).
Visual Studio Crashes on Exit
This is also new and improved <g> in this particular build. Visual Studio will crash after having an ASP.NET project open. Immediate start/stop no problem. Operation for long periods of time – no problem. But when shutting down and after VS has cleared off the screen I’ll end up a VS.NET 2005 crash. The error reporting tool reports a C5 error in webengine.dll. This is more of a nuisance than a problem since it does occur after I’m done with VS <g>…
Blue Screen when shutting down with USB drives connected
Another nuisance – if I have a USB drive connected to the machine, Vista will try to shut down, think about it for about 10 minutes and eventually blue screen. When starting back up with the USB drive(s) still connected Vista will blue screen immediately while trying to boot into Windows as well. Interesting Blue Screen too – it doesn’t stick around, I just see a quick blue flash before the machine reboots without actually doing a dump. If I disconnect the drives everything goes fine though and I can plug the USB drives in after Windows is up without any problems.
Still can’t run some EXE files
I mentioned this in an earlier post – I have a BIOS update Flash file I downloaded from the DELL site and I cannot execute this file on this machine. I’m an administrator, have turned User Account Control, remove the administrator account restrictions in the policy editor but Vista refuses to let me execute this file. The file is a self-extracting zip file from the Dell Web site, and I have other similar files with similar names etc. that I’ve downloaded and that run fine. But for some reason this one will just not run and throw me a security dialog. This one really scares me from a machine owner perspective. C’mon it’s my machine let me freaking run the applications on it! Don’t tell me I can’t do that because the OS knows better!
Most of these are minor annoyances and on balance compared to the previous Beta 2 build I was running which appeared more stable, this build is still more preferable for its improved performance and overall cleaner look and feel. Still it’s a little annoying to see some of these kinds of issues popping up in ‘close to’ RC1 builds of an operating system.