While Windows Vista contains many new features, a number of capabilities and certain programs that were a part of previous Windows versions up to Windows XP were removed or changed – some of which were later re-introduced in Windows 7 and later versions.
The following is a list of features that were present in Windows XP and earlier versions but were removed in Windows Vista.
Windows Explorer Windows Briefcase no longer allows synchronizing items across multiple computers and a removable media device. Windows Briefcase cannot sync files or folders in locations protected by User Account Control. This removes the ability to sync many locations. Grouping items by name in Explorer no longer groups them under each individual letter of the alphabet (A, B, C... Z) like in Windows XP. When using Group By Name, items are always combined into just a few groups (A-H, I-P, Q-Z). This removes the ability to locate items by their first letter. If hidden files are not allowed to be shown in Windows Explorer, the Status bar does not report how many hidden files are present. In addition, if all items within a folder are selected at once (by pressing or Select all), the user is not alerted to hidden files being selected. Even after setting the ForceCopyAclwithFile and MoveSecurityAttributes values as documented in KB310316, permissions are not retained/copied when Windows Explorer is used to copy or move objects across volumes or in the same volume. A hotfix is available (KB2617058) to restore the MoveSecurityAttributes value but not ForceCopyAclwithFile. Thumbnails can no longer be forced to regenerate by right-clicking the image and selecting Refresh thumbnail. Thumbnail support for .HTM, .HTML, .MHT and .URL files has been removed in Windows Vista. The Explorer thumbnail handler and metadata property handler for .AVI and .WAV files (Shmedia.dll) has been removed. Ctrl+Enter on the selected folder no longer opens it in a new Explorer window. Tiles view only shows the name, type and the size of items. It no longer shows information depending on the criteria by which items are sorted. The Version file properties tab has been replaced by a Details tab that omits custom version information strings, does not show all of the same information as the Version tab and does not support copying any of the displayed information to the clipboard. Various properties are not visible anymore from the Details tab, such as Audio sample rate and Audio sample size and Channels for certain audio files. The column by which items are sorted is not highlighted unlike Windows XP. Only the column header is highlighted. The address bar dropdown displays recently visited folder or file paths typed into the address bar and websites but does not show the complete top level file hierarchy. Right clicking on the top-left icon of the Explorer window no longer shows the context menu for that folder. It instead shows the window menu just like left click or Alt+Space does. The top-left corner of the window no longer acts like a draggable icon representing the folder. The Desktop.ini Sharing=0 parameter which could prevent a particular folder from being shared is not supported. The Up toolbar button in Windows Explorer, which allowed one to jump to a parent folder in the address hierarchy has been removed. As a result of this, the key combination to open the parent folder in a new window does not work. The keyboard shortcut, , is still available. The link to the parent folder in the Other places task pane has also been removed. The new method of viewing parent folders is to click the respective folder or its dropdown arrow from the breadcrumbs bar. It is not possible to turn off full row selection in List view. It is not possible to turn off autorefresh/autosorting of files and folders as sorting is treated as a state instead of as a verb. As a result, any file modification activity such as copy-paste, creation, rename or deletion makes items move continually to obey the sort order instead of the items appearing at the end and getting sorted only when the view is refreshed. It is not possible to set NTFS security ACLs, ownership and audit permissions on more than one selected item using Windows Explorer because the Security tab has been removed from the Properties for multiple selected items. Microsoft states that this feature was removed as the UAC prompt which may need to be displayed to gain ownership and reset permissions cannot accommodate the names of multiple selected files. However, this justification would also apply to all other batch actions on multiple selected files such as setting attributes, using NTFS compression or Encrypting File System where a different UAC prompt is displayed and the batch action is not disallowed. The IColumnProvider shell extension interface (column handler) has been removed. Shell extensions that display information in Explorer's columns will therefore fail to work. As a result of this API removed, folder sizes cannot be displayed in a column in Windows Explorer Details view. The replacement for column handlers, Property Handlers, cannot be registered for all files. It is no longer possible to add a background to folders via a desktop.ini. Icons of any 16-bit files including New Executables or DLLs are not extracted by Explorer (or any other 32-bit process) even in 32-bit versions, and therefore are not displayed. The shell's Change icon dialog cannot browse 16-bit icon libraries and DLLs. The collapsible File and Folder Tasks pane actions have been replaced by the Organize menu which requires an additional click after selecting items. The navigation pane (tree view) can only be toggled through the Organize menu. The Folders button has been removed. The Favorites menu has been removed from Explorer (not from Internet Explorer) and replaced by Explorer-specific Favorite Links in the folder navigation pane (tree view). Favorites can now only store folder location shortcuts, unlike the Favorites menu in Windows XP which also supported program and file shortcuts. The ability to view and edit metadata at the file system level – such as description, author, tags, rating etc. stored in a file's secondary stream – through the "Summary" tab of the file's "Properties" dialog was removed. Metadata is now stored inside files; however, developers must write a Property handler for any file format in order for users to be able to edit and view its metadata. There are limitations to opening more than 15 selected files in a single operation, i.e. by selecting more than 15 files and pressing Enter. The "Open" verb is not present in the context menu when more than 15 files are selected. Single click to rename after selecting an item is not available in the navigation (left) pane. Arrows indicating subfolders in the left pane cannot be set to always show. They disappear when dragging and dropping if the user clicks in the right pane before starting to drag to the left pane. A folder tree does not expand automatically while collapsing the previous one in the navigation pane even after turning on "Display simple folder view". It is not possible to display the full path in the title bar when Aero Glass is enabled. When Aero Glass is disabled, the full path can be displayed in the title bar. The full path can be shown in the address bar regardless of the status of Aero, by clicking to the right of the breadcrumbs or pressing Alt+D. The ability to customize the standard toolbar's layout and buttons was removed. Users can no longer make the menu above all other toolbars. Ability to add a password to a ZIP file (compressed folder) has been removed. Though this has no effect on third-party compression tools, such as WinZip or 7-Zip, Windows Explorer can no longer open ZIP files that are protected with a password. Filmstrip view is replaced by the Preview pane; however the state of the preview pane is not saved per folder. It can be globally enabled or disabled. Also, the preview pane does not show previews for folders whereas filmstrip view showed the preview of images within a folder if a folder was selected. Other functions available in filmstrip view such as rotating photos and navigating using Next and Forward buttons are only available in Windows Photo Gallery. Support for enabling a folder for web sharing with Internet Information Services via the Windows Explorer interface was removed. The "Computer Description" field is no longer shown on the Explorer view of a workgroup. It can be viewed from the command line using net view. The Status bar does not show file information shown in the infotips when the file is selected. It no longer shows the total space used by a folder when displaying a folder's contents. Some file information is displayed in the Details pane. The drive mapping dialog box no longer allows a network path to be mapped without assigning a local drive letter to it. It is not possible to view the Properties of an item in the left pane of Windows Explorer using Alt+Enter. Users can no longer browse a domain or workgroup through a tree view. All computers on the network are displayed in a unified list. The list can be "filtered" to display only computers from the desired domain, but the list is still populated with all computers on the network, slowing the process. The ability to undo more than one delete operation has been removed from the Explorer context menu. Only the last delete operation can be undone or redone.One can still undo/redo multiple renames, moves and copy operations from the context menu and older deletes can be undone from the recycling bin or through use of previous version feature. The file transfer dialogs for copying, moving or deleting do not show the actual file name which is being copied, moved or deleted at that instant. The File Types tab has been removed from Folder Options. This feature was available from Windows 95 up to Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. The File Types tab allowed users to change the file associations for various types of files. It allowed configuring which application would open when a user clicked on a certain type of file, or allowed manually defining a new file extension, defining/editing custom secondary actions, showing extensions only for specific file types, or customizing the file icon. While there is a more simplified option to change the file associations, called Default Programs in the Windows Vista Control Panel, this option only allows users to change the default action that occurs when they double click a file. It does not allow users to choose which application would load if the user were to right click on a file and then choose a secondary option such as Edit. Manual registry editing or third-party software is now required to choose default programs, change file type icons, and other advanced tasks. The Open With dialog box in Windows Vista also uses the corresponding Default Programs API which limits only one registered application to be set as the default program.File types tab removed The option on the File Types tab to configure particular file types to confirm open after download and others to open without confirmation after downloading has been removed. Folders can only display two 3D thumbnails of files within a folder. Previously, up to four 2D images could be shown.
Taskbar The Power icon on the taskbar only appears for laptops, and desktop computers with a USB-based UPS. The Network icon on the taskbar does not give direct access to the connection settings, connection status, firewall settings, or disabling the connection. The taskbar cannot be resized to zero height when unlocked, hiding it manually (users were unable to continue using the taskbar buttons after resizing the taskbar to zero height accidentally).