Renewed Adventures with Vista
Microsoft says "Get the facts. Please give Vista another try". I have said before, and I genuinely mean it, I would like for Vista to work properly. It has been a few months since I last gave up on Vista on my Lifebook S6510 laptop. Hopefully Microsoft has made some more fixes and improvements in that time, so I suppose it is time to give it another shot.
I have loaded a disk from scratch with the "Vista Recovery DVD" that came with my laptop. That presumably got it back to the state it was in when it was new. Then I let Windows Update install everything it wanted to, including both required and optional updates. Toward the end of the "update/reboot" cycle, it installed the update which is supposed to be the "preparation" for Vista SP1, but it never offered to install SP1 itself. Once that was all done, I downloaded the updated drivers from the Fujitsu support web site - audio, video, fingerprint reader, media slot, shock sensor and a BIOS update.
After all of that, I went back to Windows Update, and it still didn't offer to install SP1. Hmmm. I remember reading the list of "problem software" which would prevent SP1 from being automatically installed, and the Fujitsu shock sensor was on that list. Shortly after that list was published, Fujitsu came out with an update to the shock sensor utility, but honestly when I installed that update I didn't see any change, and the utility still identifies itself as "2.0L10", no indication that it has been updated.
So, I uninstalled the shock sensor utility, rebooted, and went back to Windows Update again. Hooray! It wants to install SP1! That is downloading and installing now (I am writing this on the S2110). Maybe this really will be better. The last time I had Vista loaded I "forced" SP1 to install by downloading the full package and installing it. I suppose it is possible that there really is a problem with the Fujitsu Shock Sensor utility and Vista SP1, and that was the cause of some of the problems I had then. We shall see. Fingers crossed.
jw 5/8/2008