"I've gotten an enormous amount of feedback from readers about Windows Vista Beta 2, most of it quite positive. This feedback, however, stands in sharp contrast to what I've experienced with Windows Vista Beta 2, especially with my main desktop and notebook systems. A month ago, concerned that Microsoft was going to release this incredibly buggy build to the public, I contacted the company and began a dialog about the issues I was having, and began sending Windows Error Reporting (WER) data to them so that Microsoft could evaluate the issues I was having.

I was actually hoping that Microsoft would delay the public release of Windows Vista and would instead ship a post-Beta 2 build, such as the excellent build 5456 (see my overview and screenshot gallery) that it just released. Ultimately, Microsoft did of course ship Beta 2 publicly, and despite my concerns it appears that many of the people who downloaded it aren't having the same kinds of problems I did. Just before installing build 5456 on my desktop system late Friday night, I decided to take a quick run through the new Reliability Monitor, which is part of the Performance Diagnostic Console. You can find this in Vista by opening the Start menu and typing perf into the instant search box."