Driver Of Doom - Total Destruction
This driver single-handedly destroyed hours of work, (nearly) lost me 4,500 e-mails and made me turn grey all in a matter of minutes. Click on the picture for a bigger view.
The so-called ‘routine’ Vista Compatibility update, rather than fixing existing issues, caused the boot-critical driver ‘nvstor64′ to become corrupted, hence making my PC useless. One startup, instead of greeting me with the glassy welcome screen, a glaring 800×600 resolution (Oh, THE HORROR! 
) error message was awaiting, in a pre-XP style Window! Imagine my surprise… Afterall, it’s been years since I’ve actually even touched a pre-XP PC, let alone had one in my bedroom! 
Anyhow, the system couldn’t fix the file, and it automaticalyl forced the PC into it’s last state of System Restore. The day it was delivered! Luckily, as the PC is still only a few weeks old, I didn’t lose that much essential software. All my documents and photos are (now) safe, along with my e-mails. You wouldn’t believe how long it took though! My Dad and me spent several hours yesterday salvaging what we could, though not everything can be got back.
Several hours of Vista Voice Recognition training. Gone. Tonnes of software. Gone. The software can be re-installed, sure… But I’ve had a bit of an issue with some product keys as they’re not wanting to be used again. Luckily though, the major software, like Vista & Studio 8 are still running fine.
What really annoys me? The fact that a HUGE company like Nvidia can make such a MASSIVE mistake. They sent me an update to download which was incomplete. This wrecked my PC. This ruined my weekend. This has lost me hours of my work… Who’s going to pay?
On a slightly more cheerful note, Alexa has now got a spiffy screenshot of Techzi! Check it. 
UPDATE: Oopsies! No wonder you guys weren’t commenting. I’d accidently saved this as private.
March 12th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
No wonder it was showing up in the RSS feed.
Anyway, Vista is a bit of a flop for drivers. My sound especially took ages to get working…
March 12th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
Ah… That will be it.
As for sound drivers, I’ve had no problems myself. Other than Vista stripping out the beautiful capabilities of my X-Fi card.
March 12th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
At least you got a crash course on Vista troubleshooting. A rare knowledge this days which might become very handy -and maybe profitable?- in the future.
March 12th, 2007 at 8:56 pm
Heh… Indeed. Perhaps I should seriusly consider offering online Vista help to poor souls who Microsoft have left stranded without means of data.
I can sympathise.
March 12th, 2007 at 10:00 pm
Makes you wonder how people who are not as computer literate cope when they upgraded to Vista.
March 13th, 2007 at 9:36 am
I’ve got this great tip for you… Use Ubuntu. Or if you’re dead set on Windows, use XP. It’s just easier.
I’ve not been impressed with Vista, I’ve got to say. Moving the Add/Remove Programs tool, changing how you do things with IIS, and all the “helpful” tweaks… It’s trying too hard to be OSX, rather than being a really clean, simple, easy to use OS.
March 13th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
“It’s trying too hard to be OSX, rather than being a really clean, simple, easy to use OS.”
My thoughts exactly!
March 13th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
FWIW, the Broadcom 802.11 driver on Windows Update sucks, too. The one installed with Vista works great, after the update, my laptop would hang virtually every time it went to sleep.
March 14th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
Whenever my Vista PC goes to sleep, it darn right refuses to wake up… Really weird.