Over at ZDNet, I’ve just posted a description of the new Reliability Monitor tool in Windows Vista Beta 2. (Go read Watching Windows Vista Decay for all the details.)
According to the System Stability Chart at the top of the Reliability Monitor, my notebook has deteriorated alarmingly in the past four weeks, going from a perfect 10 rating to a mediocre 1.70. See for yourself:
The trouble is, this system isn’t particularly unstable. Instead, it appears that the System Stability Index itself is inaccurate. As I point out in the ZDNet piece:
This is a crude measurement, to be sure, and it’s misleading as well. The problems I’ve been experiencing (and which are logged in detail in the Reliability Monitor) are pretty much the same bugs, in Windows and in application software, occurring repeatedly, which is what you expect from a beta. So the inference that the system is somehow getting much less stable over time may not be accurate. In other words, my system stability was never a 10, and it’s certainly not a 1.70 now..
If you’re beta-testing Windows Vista, I’d like your help in assembling a dataset of Reliability Monitor readings. Open Reliability Monitor and make a note of the first date in the chart and the current Stability Index. (Click Start, Control Panel, System and Maintenance, Performance Rating and Tools, Advanced Tools, Open Windows Diagnostic Console. Or you can just click Start, type Perfmon in the Search box, and click the Perfmon shortcut when it appears.)
Post the date and the Index number and any additional subjective comments you have about Vista’s performance in the comments section below. Thanks!
Ed Bott 
I’m going to be installing Vista Beta 2 before long and will be posting my own assessments over time, but this just goes to show hos statistics can be terribly misleading.
My primary test system had been cruising along for a couple of weeks at a perfect 10. Then, suddenly, on June 8 it dropped precipitously to 5.76, where it has hovered ever since. What happened on that day? One software install: Definition Update 1.14.1496.17 for BETA Windows Defender. Huh??
Btw, as we discussed yesterday, this system is extremely unstable — Word and IE lock up frequently, for example — and I think it’s current rating of System Stability rating of 4.91 is generous.
Have just checked on my laptop, started off as perfect 10, 12 days later it’s down to 6.88
System hasn’t become less reliable over this time. IE7 locks up everytime I try and use it since clicking a link from Live Messenger to access one of my contacts spaces. Also has power management problems – the display won’t come back on if the system goes to sleep, sometimes when the screen has gone to power save it won’t come back up (however pressing power button initiates a normal shutdown). Possibly links to the fact that opening/closing the panel gives an add/remove hardware sound?
Well it was 28 days ago that i had installed it and starting with 10 now i am hovering to 1.60 a improvement, why such a crash , well it was mainly due to, bad memory module and msn messenger plus IE keeps crashing.
Now all is fine so lets see until the next build comes, lets see of a improvement if any.
cheers
Ed, isn’t this feature essentially Event Viewer with a ill-conceived number ranking system?
I like the concept of trying to relate Event Viewer events to objectively ascertainable performance, reliance, or stability issues. But this system seems to be anything but objective.
I’m working with a clean install of Vista, running Aero Glass, on a second partition of my Gateway CX200X TabletPC with 512mb of RAM and a system performance rating of 2.
My index started at 10 on 6/12, but immediately dropped to 6.35. Over the past week it’s hovered around 6.14, dropping to 5.8 Tuesday when I had two crashes — one of explorer.exe, and one of msnmsgr.exe. But as of Weds it’s back up to 6.11.
Interestingly, the console doesn’t report any of the various times that I tried to put the system to sleep and had to forcibly turn it off. I solved that problem by rolling back from Windows Update drivers to the ones that came with Windows XP — now it goes to sleep ok, but it sure doesn’t wake up quickly.
Overall there is not a great deal of information out there for public consumption as a great deal of these statistics continue to deal with ‘legacy drivers’ and as Vista moves towards RC1 this information will have greater accuracy.
Here are my two Vista Desktop machines.
Vista-Primary
Vista-Secondary
Both machines are ‘extremely’ reliable and I was a little surprised to see the difference between the two ratings.
Just received a freshly minted Vista Beta Disk at an MS event yesterday, Sat June 25th in Toronto, Canada.
Installing today, June 26th (Sunday). Must repartition
primary install drive.
Will report accordingly.
Index was at 10 most of the time until I installe Live messenger which reduced it to 8.75 but stayed at that for a while until I now installed build 5456, which brings other issues.
Down from a 10 to 6.34 in 4 days … mostly minor stuff. Looks like a poorly thought out system.
A bit like the performance rating tool … a Intel 950 running at 4.1GHz, 3GB or RAM, 3 x 250 GB hard drives and a Radeon X1800 scores only a 4!
Need help with Vista2 Beta. Not sure where to ask for help, so please direct me to correct place if not able to help.
I loaded Vista2 Beta on 2nd Hard drive and now when I try to load XP the system gets to the sign in screen to select my name and system crashes. I cannot get to my XP system and would appreciate any help. Please respond
jsilver41@earthlink.net