Vista slow file copy/delete/move: Vista – The woe starts now!

More on the problems relating to
Microsoft’s not-so-shiny operating system, Windows Vista. This time, the very basic requirement of being able to move, delete or copy files from one drive to another, either locally or over a network, causing machines to slow to a crawl (at best) or even hang completely.

The problem is being discussed (sometimes vigorously) on Microsoft’s own forums (and can be found here http://forums.microsoft.com/technet/showpost.aspx?postid=1358057&siteid=17&sb=0&d=1&at=7&ft=11&tf=0&pageid=0 ) and has been present since the public release of
Vista back in January of this year. The length of the thread suggests that this is no isolated incident. Copying even a small file can take an age, with one user reporting that a folder containing 500MB of data takes almost six hours to copy from one drive to another. Other users post that sometimes the copy process gets into such a muddle that the explorer shell itself hangs and has to be restarted.

I can confirm this, as it has happened several times on my own system, The same copy process under XP (same drives, same PC, in a dual-boot configuration) works as it should, and takes seconds rather than hours as it does under Vista.

The problem appears to be an intermittent one, and is version-agnostic, with users of x86 and x64 (various flavours) suffering from the symptoms.

So far, MS has declined to comment on this problem – or even confirm that it exists. They have posted a hotfix article designed to address problems with copying files across a network (KB931770 which can be read here  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931770/en-us although the hotfix itself is not included and users must contact MS directly to obtain it). So far, those who have tried the hotfix claim that it has had little or no effect. (I tried this on my own system and can confirm it did absolutely nothing towards fixing the problem).

Due to the deafening silence coming from Redcmond, contributors to the MS forums have resorted to trying to work out a solution for themselves. Accusatory fingers have been pointed at various processes running on the system, and several workarounds have been proposed by the posters themselves, including turning off thumbnails, disabling IPv6, disabling the Windows Search indexer and installing the KB931770 hotfix, although so far the various suggestions have, for the majority of users, done nothing to resolve the problem.  (Incidentally, turning off the Search indexer does have a nice side effect in that it gives a noticeable boost to overall system response).

Other contributors to the forum have suggested that perhaps something more sinister than a bug in the Vista code is responsible, and are pointing the finger at DRM, claiming that this is being applied as the files travel across the system bus and referring users to Peter Gutmann’s excellent article on Vista DRM, which can be found here http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

Following a lack of response from MS, various users are reporting that they are going back to XP – or even deserting MS software altogether in favour of Linux. Jay Paterson posts, “I am absolutely astounded that a multibillion dollar company with the resources and talent of
Microsoft… that
Vista is the result of this braintrust.  They should be ashamed of themselves”. He also adds that he is “in charge of development for a medical software firm and make the recommendations for over 2500 users.   Guess who won’t be installing
Vista any time soon!” Quite. Perhaps
Microsoft should re-tag their OS – may I suggest the following: 

“
Vista: the woe starts now!”

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