It turns out to be due to a bug in the new Multimedia Class Scheduler Service (MMSCC) included in Vista, that will help prioritize processing and network resources during media playback. As Mark Russinovich explains in his blog, the MMSCC will give media applications higher priority during playback, while at the same time throttle down network activity to ensure that streaming audio and video get through without glitches.

The problem seems to come from the hardcoded limit that is forced upon the network card, which would give a computer with a single network card a maximum throughput of about 15 MB/sec., which in itself is not that bad. The problem surfaces when you have more than one network card (like most laptops), then a bug in the MMSCC will throttle the network connections even more.

If you, like me, have multiple virtual network adapters from installing VMWare and various VPN software packages, you will have degradation out of proportions of what the MMSCC team intended for. Luckily, Microsoft has the networking and MMCSS team working on a fix for this. Meanwhile, remember to kill your online radio whenever you want to transfer data over the network at a reasonable speed.

• Wictor describes how you can customize the Favourite Links in Windows Vista common dialogs, which is a lot simpler then completing the same feat in Windows XP.
• Symbolic Links has finally made its way into the Windows family. Microsoft describes a “symbolic link is a file-system object that points to another file system object”, which can be sort of abstract to say the least. What it basically means is that you can go into C:\Users\Egil\Current Project\ and it will be the same as going in to C:\Users\Egil\Document\Customer\2007\Project Name\. In other words, C:\Users\Egil\Current Project\ is a symbolic link to C:\Users\Egil\Document\Customer\2007\Project Name\, it is just a shorter path which safes me mouse clicks. Think of it as an advanced way of creating shortcuts to things. The official documentation for symbolic links can be found on MSDN. If my explanation just confused you, give Wikipedia’s a try.

Performance tricks and tweaks:

• On TweakVista there is a short guide in getting a bit more speed out of your SATA disks. Microsoft recommends only using this option if your disks have a backup power supply, like a battery in a laptop, otherwise you might lose data.
• Ever wondered why Vista suddenly starts hugging the hard disk around 01:00 on Wednesdays? Well the answer could be the scheduled defragging included in Vista (at least Business and Ultimate). If you are comfortable in handling your own defragging, go in to Task Scheduler and disable that “service”.
• Out of the box Vista has a lot of enabled services, which can be safely disabled, especially if you are not a corporate laptop user. The very geeky but always reliable Black Viper has always been the place to turn to, for a service guide for your favourite Windows edition.

Visual tricks and tweaks:

• Vista comes with a rather big border size by default, more precisely a total of 4 pixels is wasted on every side of windows, dialog boxes… well everything that is boxed in Vista. Luckely, this is easily customized. I personally just set the border size to 0.

At first I thought it was an issue with the NVIDIA graphics driver, but it turns out it was an issue with Windows’ handling of hardware profiles.

The laptop had previously been connected to a different docking station where the connected display had been configured to 1280×1024, and Windows seemed to be remembering that setting even thought that display was not connected that docking stations anymore.

Solution: The solution turned out to be quite simple. Windows allows you to remove faulty hardware profiles. You can even copy existing hardware profiles, so you can have different hardware profiles, one for the office docking station setup and one for the home docking station setup, for example.

To manage the hardware profiles, go to the Control Panel and choose System. In the System Properties dialog box, click on the Hardware tab and then on the Hardware Profiles button. This should bring up the Hardware Profiles dialog box.

To fix the problem I had, do the following:

1. Remove the computer from the docking station and boot it up.
2. Navigate to your Hardware Profiles as described above.
   On a laptop, you should have to profiles already. They are created by Windows automatically – Undocked Profile and Docked Profile. The Undocked Profile should be the current profile, as indicated by the text “(Current)” after its name.
3. Delete the Docked Profile.
4. Click OK a few times, closing all dialog boxes, and then shutdown the computer.
5. Re-dock the computer and boot it up.
   Windows will now generate a new Docked Profile for you.
6. Configure your display settings as you like, and try restarting Windows.
   Windows should now remember the display settings correctly.

If you have different configurations on two or more docking stations, you can always copy an existing docked profile and thus have a unique docking profile for each docking station. If more docked profiles exist, Windows will ask you to choose one at boot time.

As you have probably guessed it didn’t go as planed. Every time I started the SP2 installation, it would get stuck when it reached “Checking Product Key”. After some googling I stumbled across the following solution mailed to another unlucky guy by Microsoft Support, which thankfully worked for me as well.

Fix for Service Pack 2 installation stuck at “Checking Product Key”

1. Please go into the CMD prompt (Start/Run –> cmd.exe)
2. Then type cd /d %windir%\inf and make sure we are in that directory.
3. Then type ren oem*.inf oem*.old, it will go back to the prompt after giving you some error (do not worry about it).
4. Then type ren oem*.pnf oem*.old1, it will go back to the prompt after giving you some error (Do not worry about it).
5. Then goto Start/Run and type "%windir%\inf" and you will see the files in the folder.
6. Then find the file by name INFCACHE.1 and move it to the desktop (or another place outside the Windows folder) from c:\windows\inf.
7. Close all windows and reboot the computer to safe mode and start the installation of SP2 and it should go fine.

Microsoft, you owe me three hours…

Update: I originally forgot to mention why this happens. When SP2 tries to validate your Windows key using the infamous Windows Genuine Advantage, it can fail if OEM drivers have been installed. So to avoid this problem completely, simply upgrade to SP2 right away after the initial installation of Windows.