Preserved Topic: XP questions (Page 1 of 1)

I recently reverted to win98 from ME, which was causing me no end of grief, but my system still crashes like it did with ME so I now have to give serious consideration to XP. The reviews I've read tout XP's stability and while there are a few negative comments the reviews are mostly positive. So... I know a few people here are running XP and I'd like to know your real world experience before I take the plunge.

Did you have to upgrade many if any of your software packages or were patches available?
Anything with XP that you really can't stand?

Upgrade or 'stand alone?' Am I correct in assuming that if I go for the upgrade I will not I will not in the future be able to format the HDD's and simply reinstall XP, without *first* reinstalling Win98? (was that clear??)

I don't, by todays' standards, have the most robust of systems (800mhz 196mgs ram) but from what I've read this should be able to handle XP not too badly.

Any other comments...anything you can help me out with...greatly appreciated.

If you had a horse that fell down as much as this system you'd bullet the sucker.

thanx

"Any other comments"

I recommend Win2k. It's has been on the mark longer so there is less bugs/security flaws.
It's cheaper and you don't get that 'too muck make-up' look which XP has.

WinME is absolutely terrible. It seems everybody learns that the hard way.

The first time I installed XP on my machine, it was an upgrade from ME to XP Home. I don't speak for the world, but I had no problems with an upgraded OS. However, I've heard of a lot of other people that had problems with this kind of "dirty" install. I had no driver issues. The only software issues I had was antivirus and CD burning software. XP doesn't like old versions of Norton/McAfee/CD Creator. The University supplies antivirus software for us, so that wasn't an issue for me. XP has CD burning as part of the standard OS, so that wasn't a problem either. I later reformatted. The disc I had bought was an upgrade disc, but it does new installs just fine. So I didn't have to reinstall ME to install XP. YMMV though.

Overall, it's been a great eXPerience I'm quite happy with this OS. Even if I ditched the shell for Aston. heh

[edit]
Olssone: Win2k's internal name is NT5.0, WinXP's internal name is NT5.1. XP is basically 2k with a pretty shell. Which can be removed.
[/edit]

[This message has been edited by Raptor (edited 02-07-2003).]

I have many times here talked about how XP is better than 98 (that's better than ME). My advice is, if you can afford, install a dual-boot machine, i.e., keep you Win98 and install XP in another partition, another letter. This way, you can "test" how good XP is going to work in your machine before getting rid of the old 98 installation. I installed XP more than one year ago and I didn't trust it so I installed apart from Win2k (my OS by then). I had some drivers problems (one year ago many vendors didn't have drivers for XP yet but now this problem is minimized) but after a short period of time I switched definitely to XP. I still have my old Win2k working fine (and I still update it) but only rarely I need to use it. My machine is worst than yours, a P-III 733 MHz and it can handle XP very nicely. About Win2k, it's as good as XP, but with that old - and I'd add tired - grey flat look. If you can afford, go XP, if you can't, go 2k.

XP is, without a doubt, the fluffiest OS ever created, however... it sits solidly on the back of Win2k and for this reason, it's quite a stable OS (and once you turn off the fluff, it's fast too).

If you do decide to upgrade, I'd seriously recomend NOT 'upgrading' over 98, but installing a fresh copy.
(Dual booting is a great idea, if you have the space)

One word of caution though... avoid the 'Home' version if you can afford to.
It's nowhere near as stable as 'Pro'.

___________________________
Money is the game other people play, that I try to avoid by having just enough not to play it.
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[Dufty][Cell 698]

You can perform a full install from an upgrade CD as long as you have a cd containing a full version of windows around.

I'll echo what Dufty said XP Pro >> XP Home

Clean install is always better than an upgrade, my personal experiance: I upgraded from 98se to XP Pro and the only problem I had was with EZ CD Creator.

Win 2k is a great alternative to 98se and also XP, I personally prefer XP to 2k for the excellent driver support and I enjoy some of the afore meantioned "fluff"

By default, whenever I say 'WinXP', I'm always talking about the Pro version. I never tried the Home edition. But, of course, this is related to the fact that I'm Brazilian and, in my country, these softwares are 'very affordable', so to speak.

i use xp home edition....
at first i didn't like it because i really liked 98 but now that i'm used to it, i do like it alot! like has been said previoiusly, i've turned off most of the fluff! it is fairly solid. the nice thing about it is if you do have older games and such you can run them in compatibility mode. the only game i haven't been able to put on here is daggerfall ( i don't wanna hear anything about that game, i like it).
i did have to reformat once right after i got it though, but that was because of a giant software conflict. ever since all has been well.

Thank you all. Exactly what I was looking for.
If there's something else you want to add....please do, but it does seem certain that XP is on its way. Home or Pro is the only question.

Take a look back... read thru the replies.... that's what makes this place so great.

Interesting...what is this 'Aston' you speak of? Does it improve the running speed of XP?

PRO!

Izz is got a question...

I have 2kpro... love it... is there any reason to upgrade to XP home?

hmm... my grandmother is trying to learn how to use a digital camera with her computer... does XP handle digital media, such as photos and emailing them very well? Anything like mac os X does? (X is just *so* clean and simple)

                                   

http://www.astonshell.com

I've used both Home and Pro. Both have been just as stable as the other at all times for me. Pro allows you to use IIS and send remote desktop invites. Whee.

It also has support for multiple processors, remote desktop (different than Remote Assitance), better security, etc.

I don't know the difference between Pro and Home but based on the few messages about it, it seems it won't make a big difference using Home or XP, at least for the average user, since the advanced extra features of Pro are rarely used.

eyezaer - I'd suggest you to move to XP if you want to deal with multimedia stuff. I don't know Mac but I 'think', based on my 'limited' experience with both, in the multimedia area, that XP is better than 2k.

quote:

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does XP handle digital media, such as photos and emailing them very well?

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In short... yes.
The Windows unified driver (which finally works) and associated accoutrements make importing, compressing and emailing photos/video extremely light work.

More often than not, you don't even need to install the camera software... plug and play finally works (usually).

the cam software didnt work well in the first place... i was wondering if XP has a replacement for it.

for example... Mac has one button that will take yer photo(s), resize it(them), compress it(them), and open your email program and attach the picture(s) all with one click.

i must have some bad karma lurking somewhere or something...not too long after i posted the above, my system crashed!
obviously, have it fixed now....it was nuthin that a reformat couldn't fix LOL j/k

this is not ment as a slight aginst xp...as it was a power supply problem that snowballed. i still like xp

Hmmm...now Aston I have, and Aston I like (everything runs that little bit faster now)...

But riddle me this...how do I go about creating a new theme?

An important part of any operating system stability are device drivers. Before you upgrade to XP, hunt down the latest drivers for every bit of hardware in your box. Put them on a CD and use those instead of XP's (or any other OS's) drivers when you install. Remember, the drivers on the orginal XP disk are coming up on two years old. Everyone's swatted bugs in their drivers since.

An important part of any Windows OS stability is background stuff, like all the bs in the system tray. Less is more. Just because some app or driver installs something there doesn't mean you (or it) needs the thing.

I have exactly zero things running down there and have all services I don't want or need turned off. After boot, Task Mangler reports just 14 running processes--one of them being Task Mangler itself.

Running XP since the release date, the only crashes I have are those associated with oddball sites crashing Mozilla or Opera, which are issues with those apps, not with the OS.

Echoing the comments above, it's solid because it's built on Win2K. The user interface stuff is all a matter of personal taste. There's no "right" or "wrong" way to run it. I have some of the Fisher-Price stuff turned on, and some turned off, and even that varies by which of the six logins I use.

My tests proved to me that disabling services and other behind-the-scene stuff is useless. I once, after reading such a tip, disabled all the services and background programs and run some performance tests and I found out that I can get 2-3% more power with them turned off. So, I thought: not enough to justify all the trouble of turning them off (sometimes one or another is necessary) or the risk of disabling an essential service.
Right now, I have 43 processes in my WinXP (IE and task manager included), I have a apache web server, mysql server, an ftp server, an email server, anti-virus, firewall, spam control, printer control, multimedia control, hardware control, and some others in my notification area (no AOL stuff, Real One and other stupid stuff there, though - only 'important' stuff). Winamp 2.72 is also playing a nice italian music.
If I take a look at the task manager, my cpu usage is around 1-6 %, so why worry? I have plenty of power. And my machine is an old Pentium III - 733MHz. What if I had a Pentium 4 3GHz?
I really hate programs that install stuff in my notification area or hidden programs (like the stupidest program of all, Real One, that I was forced to install because my stupid University, Harvard, uses it) without asking my permission and I'm always keeping an eye on this kind of programs. They invade our computer, literally.
So, my conclusion, if it's a good program, if it's going to provide you a service, no problem, my cpu can deal with it. If it's a stupid intrusive program, I delete it from whatever place the installation has added it.

ADDED: By the way, my WinXP installations (I have two) are stable as hell.

[This message has been edited by viol (edited 02-09-2003).]

Viol: I agree with you completely on the RealPlayer and other invasive apps.

Perhaps I was a little too strident in my remarks about background processes. I don't keep the number of processes down for speed increases. The limiting factor in almost everything I do is me, and I'm not the least bit surpised that you find your PC fast enough.

It's more of a personality thing, I guess. My desk is fairly minimalist, unadorned and unaccessorized. Just because I own a pencil cup doesn't mean I feel compelled to keep it on my desk and overflowing with writing instruments. My stapler and scissors are in a drawer. I keep my PC the same way.

But, when I've solved stability problems for others, provided the whole PC isn't hosed, it's *always* come back to drivers and crap running in the background.

That said, I recognize my situation is different than that of most people. If I didn't have my old vintage 1995 Pentium I PC still kicking around and working just fine, I'd be running much of the same stuff--Apache, SMTP server and such--on this one as you do on yours.

Some things I run only every so often. Anti-virus for instance. The primary vector for viruses lately has been Microsoft email progams, and I've long preferred Eudora. So I can get away without an AV program running all the time. I own one, I keep it up to date and scan occasionally, but I don't keep it resident.

For firewall I used to run Black Ice or Zone Alarm. After I installed the Linksys router to share the cable modem on our LAN, neither program ever saw anything again. So I don't run them any more.

Yes, I'm aware of the security issues with Linksys boxes. No, it won't hold up against a serious attack. But in that regard it's like the burglar alarm on my house. It won't keep a professional out and a pro could disable it easily. But it's 100% effective against common burglars and druggies. Just as the Linksys box is effective against script kiddies.

So really, we're in full agreement on tray stuff. We both said if we don't need it, it goes. It's just that my needs are apparently less than yours. And keep in mind, my count of 14 processes is before I launch any apps. It goes up rapidly after that, although never quite as high as 43.

And the count frequently includes a 2.7something version of WinAmp.



[This message has been edited by brucew (edited 02-09-2003).]

quote:

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By the way, my WinXP installations (I have two) are stable as hell.

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Yeah, stable as hell.
My newest WinXP has just crashed, in an unrecoverable way - I had to boot. I wonder if I had some valuable work not saved...
Merda.

Oh gee. Thanks for sharing Viol.

Now I'm going to be up all night worrying about professional burglars breaking in to disconnect my Linksys box so script kiddies can pump my PCs full of IRC bots and virii then use my SMTP server to spam the universe.

Merda indeed!

I think I have installed some very bad software in my WinXP. The problem is that I have no idea which one can be to blame. Actually, today it was the second time the machine totally froze. Yesterday, it had frozen the first time, since the installation. Yesterday, I wanted to believe it was just some bad luck but now I'm convinced something is going wrong in my system. In my old installation of WinXP, that's more than one year old, I did have some freezes, but I think it was no more than 2 or 3 in this whole period of time (almost 18 months). Now twice in two days, no good thing. Well, I have no critical work in my computer. I just get really mad.
I have some ideas I could try because I have images of my installation every now and then. I could restore a one month old image and use the computer and see if it's still freezing and, if it's not, install a newer one, and so on. But I'm not in the mood of trying this. I'm going to wait for one or two more freezes.

Well I have jumped from OS to OS as newer ones have come out. I have not had to reboot my computer in about a month now, and I'm smooth sailing with WinXP. I do however feel that certain hardware and memory configurations can crash things.

I always keep sensitive data backed up on different drives than the OS, so that in case I have a blowout its just a matter of reloading the OS. I am also running a 0+1 RAID array for security. Defragging, running Ad-Aware, and scanning for viruses on a regular basis have proven helpful for my rig.

Just my 2 pennies...