Time to take a deeper look at the single Vista application that holds Windows together and that no one can avoid: Windows Explorer. I've already written a few things about its usability in part 2 of my Vista Review; in this article I'll cover the topic of stability and other misbehavior.

Stability

With Explorer being what 99% of Windows users perceive as "Windows" one would think that Microsoft puts considerable effort into making it stable and eradicate its well known bugs. Fat chance. Vista comes with the most unstable version of Explorer since ... well, since Explorer was invented. Not only did most Explorer bugs from XP safely make it into Vista. In the cozy environment of what seems to have been a poorly coordinated effort to make Explorer more usable they multiplied. Since I've installed Vista I don't think I've had two consecutive work days without Explorer crashing at least once. Let's look at a few occasions where Explorer regularly crashes:

• Opening folders: No kidding, but quite often all it takes to crash Explorer is open a folder, either by navigating to it or by typing a folder name into the Start|Run dialog. It especially (but not exclusively) happens when folders containing video folders are involved. And what's more is that the crashes are not strictly reproducible. The next time you navigate to the same folder it usually works.

• Doing nothing: Yes, Explorer can crash while you work on a Word document, develop in Visual Studio, or do something else that is completely unrelated. You notice it by the crash dialog that suddenly pops up. And before you can shout "Shoot! My Word/Visual Studio/whatever crashed!" you notice that it was "just" Explorer.

• Creating shortcuts: Creating links to programs or directories can either crash Explorer five times in a row, or just work. It's really a gamble, so if you're looking for an adrenaline kick, open a bunch of Explorer Windows, navigate them carefully to the locations you need for work and arrange them on the screen just the way you feel comfortable with. Now, create a few shortcuts on the desktop and pray.

• Creating new folders: The above game also works with creating folders. On several occasions I've seen Explorer hang after I tried to create new folders. At least once it recovered after a few minutes. But let's face it, who wants to wait for that long? So, what does the adept Windows user do? That's right: kill explorer.exe, submit an error report to Microsoft, and try again.

A bug named Methusalem

Many applications have learned to crash "gracefully". You restart them and within a few seconds you can get back to the state you were previously in and continue work. Not so with Explorer. While Windows is nice enough to automatically relaunch it for you, it doesn't let you get away that easily.

In the best of cases, after Explorer crashes, it slightly rearranges maybe four or five of your desktop icons and shortcuts (in a more or less consistent manner, so the cleanup becomes a habit after a few days). In the worst of cases Windows completely shuffles your desktop icons by rearranging them alphabetically or in some other seemingly random way.

There are some tools out there that can save and restore the location information of the Windows desktop icons (like Ultramon, which I have installed anyway), but even those don't seem to be able to correctly restore the order of the previously mentioned "slight rearrangement". After a few weeks even the toughest of the tough give up and accept that Vista has broken their will and ability to control the location of their desktop icons. A truly sad moment.

By the way, the desktop icons not only get "slighly rearranged" on such "rare" occasions like Explorer crashing, but also on such uncommon tasks like connecting or disconnecting a second monitor or projector, something that I do at least twice a day.

Remember when Windows 95 did the same thing after a system crash and we all thought "I'm sure Microsoft will fix that for the next Windows version"? Let's count: NT4, 98, Me, 2000, XP. That's over ten years of computer history. A strong candidate for the longest-lived software bug.

Leaks

A few years ago Microsoft added features to Explorer that allowed it to display file-specific attributes like author information or the length or format of media files. With the introduction of that mildly useful feature the problems started: Files were suddenly impossible to rename, move, or delete and USB storage devices became impossible to eject. The user was presented with messages like "File still in use" and "Please close all applications and try again". Of course, closing all applications didn't help because the only application that could have freed the files was Explorer--and Explorer had simply leaked the handles on those files.

The solutions to those problems reached from restarting Windows (entry-level) over killing and restarting explorer.exe (intermediate) to using the great Process Explorer from Sysinternals to selectively close the offending handles (advanced).

Vista has improved the situation a little bit, but, from my experience especially with MPEG files involved, handles are still leaked, making it impossible to eject USB hard disks and delete files.

Everyone who knows how file systems work and how file system inconsistencies come about inevitably aches when (s)he sees someone yank out a USB key without properly ejecting it first. But those people are not to blame. For one thing, Windows doesn't explain why people should eject the device first before unplugging it and what can happen if they don't.

For another, even people who know that they should eventually get discouraged by the fact that two out of three times, Windows complains that the device is still in use and therefore cannot be ejected. To be fair, Windows is not always at fault here, there are plenty of applications and Explorer extensions (like the otherwise awesome TortoiseSVN) that leak handles. But it is up to Microsoft to do something here. When disconnecting a USB key becomes a one-minute hunt for open handles the temptation to just yank it out becomes very big. And when's the last time you actually encountered file system inconsistencies on a USB device after just unplugging it? Never? Same here.

My suggestion: Take a practical approach like disabling write caching at least for USB keys altogether and get rid of the corresponding eject function. A lot less confusion and much better usability.

While we're back on the topic of usability, in Vista the bubble that popped up in the lower right corner under XP saying that the device can now be removed was replaced by this great dialog:

That's a clear step back that makes ejecting devices even more annoying because now you need yet another click to close the dialog box. It doesn't even automatically close when you physically unplug the USB key, something that would have been really easy to add.

Working efficiently

There are two other really annoying things about Vista Explorer. One of them is about as old as the icon shuffling habit I talked about before and just as annoying.

Assign keyboard shotcuts to certain programs using the properties of a shortcut is one of my favorite features. I prefer keyboard shortcuts to lengthy program searching in the start menu or even the quick launch bar. Unfortunately, Windows Explorer has had a bug since Windows 95 that makes this feature almost unusable. Once in a while (maybe in 10 to 20% of the cases), the launching of the program has an inexplicable delay of 5-10 seconds between the time when the user pressed the key combination and Explorer actually launches the program. During that time the CPU usage stays low but Explorer doesn't react anymore (that obviously includes the desktop and the task bar with its start menu) and all your left with is a quick break.

I use this feature to be able to work more efficiently but that bug reliably kills that goal. Over the years I have used different programs to overcome this problem. The best one I've found is the free AutoHotkey.

The last issue I want to mention is the way that the Vista Explorer handles network devices. Due to the omnipresence of Explorer components in many other areas (e.g. the open and save dialog boxes) not only Explorer windows are affected but all other applications that use the common dialogs. Here's what the File|Open dialog looks like in Notepad:

The dangerous part is the navigation pane on the left side. When I captured the above screenshot it took almost eight seconds for the dialog to come up. And why? Because I have some slow network devices mapped. Note, however, that the 'Computer' entry you can see wasn't even expanded by default. Yet, the network drives were apparently accessed, which blocked the entire application for several seconds. Luckily, the navigation pane can be disabled, which seems to alleviate the problem a little bit. But every so often the delay will still occur forcing the user to stare at a frozen screen and think about the consequences of his actions (in this instance, the action of installing Vista on his machine).

Bottom line

The more you work with Vista the clearer and shorter the bottom line gets: The Vista Explorer just sucks. There is not enough eye-candy in the world to make up for the stability and usability issues. If Microsoft wants to draw more and more novice users to the computer, they finally need to make the primary interface stable. That means: Provide a decent and efficient way of managing files (remember Norton Commander?), disconnect the desktop and start menu from the file manager, and make sure that each one of them is stable. The Explorer is beyond help or fixing and needs to be dumped.

It hurts to say because Vista has a number of nice features, but the Explorer is a reason by itself not to switch to Vista yet.

For reference, here's a list of links to the other parts of my Vista review:

• Windows Vista: User interface (Part 1: The Good)
• Windows Vista: User interface (Part 2: The Bad)
• Windows Vista: User interface (Part 3: The So-so)
• Windows Vista (Part 5: Power management)