I (almost) give up!

[Tom Brown]

I have had Vista and Mail for about 6 months on a new Sony Vaio laptop with
2 gig ram. It's supposed to be one of the fasted laptop available. I also
have Comcast Cable modem to increase my speed in email and browsing. But, I
am so sick of seeing (Not Responding) and waiting for
seconds or minutes for a response on almost everything I do on it, I am
ready to chuck Vista and reformat and install XP.

I have read messages about other having problems until I am sick of it and I
see that many times, the suggested solution is to get a new AV program. One
frequent responder seems to think that Norton or McAfee, two of the most
popular AV programs in history are the culprits. How about Kaspersky? I
have had it for years and have been happy with it. I have it installed
without email scanning but my problems also include the same (Not
Responging) in Internet Explorer. I am about to lose it when I have to wait
minutes for anything to open or close! I would say I am about to "go
postal" except that would probably offend someone so I won't say it. But,
you get the idea.

On the surface of it, it seems ridiculous that Microsoft would build
something that is not compatible with the most popular A/V programs. There
has to be another answer. I am coming to the conculsion that Vista and
Vista mail was not ready for prime time when it was released? Has anyone
upgraded to Windows Live Mail Beta? Did it solve all your problems with
Mail. I am leary of updating a buggy program with a beta version of
anything.

Any comments before I reformat and reinstall?

Thanks,

Tom

 

[Gary VanderMolen]

This isn't the right forum to ask about unresponsiveness with
Internet Explorer. I have no idea whether that is antivirus related.
Have you tried Mozilla Firebird?

As far as the Windows Live Mail Beta, there is no harm in trying it.
If you don't like it, simply uninstall, and Windows Mail is back.

Before you decide to go back to XP, check with Sony to ensure they
have released XP drivers for the hardware on your laptop.
I know of several people who tried to revert a HP Vista laptop back
to XP, but failed because there were no XP drivers.

Gary VanderMolen

 

[Tom Brown]

Gary,

Yes, I know that this is not the place to get help with IE but I thought it
might be appropriate to mention that it happened not only in Mail but in IE.

I am not interested in trying Mozilla. Again, it's a MS product (Vista,
Mail) and I would like to think they could work in tandem.

Thanks for the tip about Sony and the drivers. I fear you may be correct.

So, help me out here. How should I have handled it? Should I have written
my complaints about Mail (Not responding, slow) and not mentioned that the
exact same thing happens in IE? I actually wanted to post to the
Vista.general forum but didn't want to be accused of double-posting by
sending the same complaint to both forums. So, I just picked this one first.
Is there a way to send the same info to both places and still stay within
the rules?

Looking forward to hearing your answer.

Tom

 

[Gary VanderMolen]

Well, there are no hard and fast rules when you have a problem
that affects multiple programs. The best approach is to emphasize
the mail slowness in the mail newsgroup, and the IE slowness in the
IE newsgroup. The newsgroups tend to be single program minded,
except for a few general newsgroups like microsoft.public.vista.general.
There are few experts who have the time, energy and interest to be
multifaceted to the extent that they feel qualified to handle broad
problems like yours. The usual approach would be to tell you to
format the hard drive and reinstall the OS. Often that is also the
quickest solution for multi-program symptoms.

Gary VanderMolen

 

[Tom Brown]

I don't want to appear argumentative but if I have a similar problem
affecting two separate programs (IE and Mail) then I suspect solving the
problem in one area might resolve it in both.

Format .... right. That's the easy way and I was hoping to avoid the pain.

Thanks for the help,

Tom

 

[Tom Brown]

By the way, I installed Windows Live Mail and I still have the same problem
(NOT
RESPONDING) so I guess I will have to look elsewhere for a solution.

Should I assume that it's not normal to get that message very often. Do you
ever get it? Anyone else see this message often?

Thanks,

Tom

 

[Gary VanderMolen]

The "Not Responding" message means something is wrong.
On my system I have only seen it in Windows Live Mail, when I
click on Newsgroups, and one of the news server accounts turns
out to be corrupted. Deleting and re-creating that news server
account fixes the problem for a while. I tolerate it with WLM
only because I know it is still beta.

Gary VanderMolen

 

[Gary VanderMolen]

A problem that affects both IE and Mail is likely to be caused
by some common structure in the OS, like the TCP/IP stack.

Gary VanderMolen

 

[Tom Brown]

Is there something I can do to the TCP/IP stack?

Tom

 

[Gary VanderMolen]

The TCP/IP stack and other basic structures in Vista will be renewed
when you do a repair install:
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/88236-repair-install-vista.html

Gary VanderMolen [MS MVP-WLM]