5365 is was a good build. It looked pretty; it had nifty features, stunning wallpapers, and a fairly stable core. But, as the say, looks can be deceiving.
Can an operating system without the ability to access the internet be considered a "good" OS? As a desktop machine? I doubt that the best written operating system is worth a dime if it can't connect to other computers and services. It just won't work. So, excuse me while I uninstall Windows Vista Build 5365, and update GRUB2 to reflect the changes and boot FC5 instead.
What happened? Good question. What do you do when, 3 years after rebooting a beta program and starting from scratch, one of the most annoying bugs in existence that you were only too glad to wave goodbye at comes back, meaner and scarier than ever? When you have less than 8 months to get the product more or less bug-free? When the bug mangles your system so thoroughly, that FUBAR'd has no meaning? When you cannot fire up IE7 from within the OS to post this very complaint on your blog?
That is what happened.
Rewind 3 years back: PDC 2003; Codename Longhorn, Build 4051 is released to attendees. Amidst the hub-hub and the amazing animations and graphics, hard-core IT admins were realizing that using static IPs would result in an inexplicable loss of internet and and failure to establish network connectivity. It wasn't too long before people began to realize that the TCP stack was so hopelessly buggy that it would corrupt every single routing table on the partition, and render their PCs out-of-touch from others worldwide. It's back!
Flash-forward 3 years, Vista Build 5342 has been released; it's not too stable, not too pretty, but an improvement on previous builds nontheless. Then a lone beta tester finds out the TCP/IP stack is broken, but he (she?) is too bogged down by work and studies, and simply hopes it was an isolated case, and awaits the next build. One month later, build 5365 is released, and it becomes clear that the bug is here to stay. Anyone that uses a static IP cannot use the Internet, and as such, cannot use Vista.
It seems that routing tables are no longer flushed to the registry properly, and every time you disconnect or connect to the internet, a new entry is written, and the old one is not erased; and soon enough, overlapping routes make it impossible to reach the internet. A temporary fix is to run "route -f" (nevermind what Chris says above, this is an easier way); but two minutes later it will be back. Your best bet is to find a way to get DHCP running and giving you the settings you need.
I don't know what happened to your install. But I get the interet functions just fine. In fact I have everything working in Build 5365. The only gripe I have is the Java / Aero issues. other that that , this build if beautiful.
Like I said; this only happens if you use Static IP Addresses, and change your IP a couple of times.
Well Guru ji, the problem that i have is that, Nforce controller's drive for NIC wont get the DNS address for me, but gets the IP address, so i have to hard wire the addy and then wola, everything works;)
This bug just hit me hard this morning – 3 hours lost trying to get my laptop to connect to a network only to have it work for 15 minutes and break again!
This is the story: laptop, travelling, connecting to home network, hotel network, office network, hotel and then office again. All are set to DHCP. Seems that Vista is having problems with renewing IP adresses. It is also impossible to select a wired network to connect to manually – Vista picks one and it just happens to be the wrong one every time now.
I am hoping that by the time Beta 2 ships (latest I heard was May 22nd via WinInfo) this issue is resolved. If not, I agree that is is a major bug to be hanging around this late in the development process.
David
Hullo David…
Yeah, there is a serious issue with the networking TCP stack on Vista; it seems that until we pointed it out to Microsoft they had no idea it was there…. and they were already so far in done "perfecting" the TCP stack itself (much improved over XP, BTW) that it will be hard; but soon as I get more info from my contact I'll be posting it here.
I have come across this issue now two times. Here is the strange part though. First install of 5365 was horrible. Indexing messed up, tcp stack issues as well as multiple other problems. I format and reinstall again and the only issue was the tcp stack. The third time….. not even the slightest problem as of yet. Same proceedure followed each time but with different results. Whats up with that? Cory