Part 20: Windows XP vs. Vista: Printers & Problem Reports and Solutions

030: Printers
It’s kind of funny that I actually was curious to know what the difference was in XP vs. Vista’s Printer Control Panel. . . Anyways, I ended up finding out Vista now includes the Fax and the Microsoft XPS Document by default. If I recall correctly both items are installed on XP machines once you either do the most recent updates of Windows or by installing Microsoft Office products.

XPS is simply the Microsoft version of Adobe’s PDF format.

Windows XP - Printers

Windows Vista - Printers

031: Problem Reports and Solutions
Unlike XP’s Error Reporting services (located from your System Properties Control Panel Applet), Vista includes all this junk in a separate Control Panel named Problem Reports and Solutions. The Problem Reports and Solutions I assume also sends error reports of all related Microsoft products (i.e. Office suite) installed on your computer if you encounter an error. Of course if you look at the screenshots below you can notice it failed to install certain system drivers and the Problem Reports and Solutions indicates no solutions.

What Microsoft fails to tell you is that this problem-to-solution error reporting junk-crap-o-la only provides information related to Microsoft products. In other words, this service does not provide solutions for third party hardware or software (i.e. Your G15 Keyboard, or why your 7.1 HD speakers are not working).

Windows XP - Error Reporting