Re: OT: Computer\'s...gotta hate \'em.
 

I'll have to disagree with you on this one. The vast majority of XP systems never get reinstalled. The system I'm on now is using a three year old install, and still works fine. At work, 90+ percent of the workstations never get a new install during their 4 year life. We were never close to that with 98 or 2K. To be fair, 2K is probably just as good as XP, but didn’t benefit from the management tools that XP enjoys now.

Most reinstalls not related to hardware are done because of three things. Removing malware by formatting is the biggest cause. Installing unsigned drivers and software is the second. And user error is third.

Re: OT: Computer\'s...gotta hate \'em.
 

Operating systems should be made to handle a bit of user error. Such as the reboot problems he had. If the file gets corrupted, then the operating system SHOULD be able to fix it itself.

Re: OT: Computer\'s...gotta hate \'em.
 

It can, but since it cant load because of the problem, you need to boot from the OS cd.

Re: OT: Computer\'s...gotta hate \'em.
 

"Installing unsigned drivers and software is the second."

"Signed" versus "unsigned" drivers means virtually nothing. Plenty of "signed" drivers are quite shoddy. They just ponied up the money for the signing... What is important is finding out if the company puts real effort into driver making, or if they just churn out crap that works most of the time.

"The reason that XP does this is so that it will restart after you make changes or add hardware. All Plug and Play OS’s need to overwrite the boot files at shut down... What he was doing is called bouncing the loader. If you happen to catch it at the wrong moment, you’ll end up with damaged files."

So not letting it boot up interferes with rewriting of boot files at shutdown time. Interesting proposition.

"I only fault you for blaming the OS for not being ID- ten-T proof."

I fault the OS for being set up to change boot files during booting, as you seem to be claiming it does. It makes no sense to change them at this time, especially if you didn't add any hardware, thus not creating a need for plug'n'play operations to kick in...

"The vast majority of XP systems never get reinstalled... The system I'm on now is using a three year old install, and still works fine."

The vast majority of XP systems are run by people that do not know how to take care of their PCs either way. I haven't witnessed XP to be any better at maintaining itself than 2k, both of which are only marginally better than 98...

There are certainly external tools you can get to keep Windows from eating itself, but they tend to cost money. Decent OS setup will let you get back up and running in under 20 minutes after the reinstall (or however long it takes you to restore your drive image if you go that route). I find it to be less effort overall, and much more effective, especially when maintaining the computers of people that like to install a lot of crap.

Re: OT: Computer\'s...gotta hate \'em.
 

Out of curiousity, what OS do you run IF? I prefer win2k personally. Although, as you say, win98 is still certainly a viable OS(especially if you strip it down to around 30-50 megs or so lol)

Re: OT: Computer\'s...gotta hate \'em.
 

The system was manufactured by Certified Data, the "recovery" CD came from them as well I assume.

I agree, it's not XP's fault that I messed with its comfortable routine. Mostly I was angry with the recovery CD for killing all my data http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif Though I do think that the OS should keep a backup of working boot files, just in case the usual set becomes corrupted or mutilated somehow. Then again, with a real XP CD, it wouldn't have mattered...just would have been a minor inconvenience.

I think I will take a look at the recovery CD, see if I can find the XP setup files I need, minus the crap http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: OT: Computer\'s...gotta hate \'em.
 

The process is described as “optimizing the boot sector files” beyond the fact that it overwrites some of the files, I can’t tell you exactly what occurs. This area of the hard drive is not visible in windows, you’d have to use disk probe to see it. Frankly, I never needed to know more than that. It works or it doesn’t work. When it fails, there is a tool to repair it in the recovery console, “fixmbr”. That is as much as I ever needed to know about it.

If you really want to know how the file system works, read this:

Technet



As for needing third party tools, some people might benefit from them. Most of them are only applications that make use of tools already built into windows. I will agree that there are some third party apps that do things better than the windows tools, but as you said, they cost money. The three apps that I recommend are Antivirus of some kind. Symantec Corp ver is the best but is resource intensive. And you should stay away from their home use versions, too much crap built in. Many of the free AV apps work almost as well and use fewer resources. I use Symantec on my servers and AVG free on everything else. You also need an anti spyware/malware app. I can’t really recommend any one over the others. At work we have it built into the Antivirus, here at home I’m always running one of the MS beta’s. But I think using Firefox eliminates the vast majority of them. The third app I recommend is Ghost. Sure it costs money, but it’s easy to use and it’s reliable. Anyone can sit down; watch the tutorial, then create an image of their system. If you take the time to really learn how it works, you can even restore individual files from an image. I run DPM here at home, but I still use Ghost to back the DPM server up. I also keep a Ghost image of the base install for every box I have. If I need to do a demonstration of something for a customer, I can have a clean install ready in 10 minutes.

Your comment about signed drivers is somewhat dated and sounds like 2K experience. With XP, signed drivers are tested by MS and seldom cause problems. When Vista gets here, signed drivers will be the only ones that you can install from the GUI. Unsigned drivers will require cmd line switches to over ride the built in protection features.

For those of you who still have 9x games that you like to play, MS just dropped the price of Virtual Server to free. With VS you can host other OS’s virtually on your windows box, running them from a window more or less like an application. Down side is that it takes some serious hardware to do it well.

Re: OT: Computer\'s...gotta hate \'em.
 

Which is why my 166mhz, 48 meg, 2GB Lappy is awesome with 98 on it.

Re: OT: Computer\'s...gotta hate \'em.
 

"Your comment about signed drivers is somewhat dated and sounds like 2K experience. With XP, signed drivers are tested by MS and seldom cause problems."

I have never noticed any difference with signed/unsigned driver reliability in XP than in 2k, on any box I have worked on. Microsoft just tests to see that they function. They can't test every possible configuration and every possible case. I suppose if you always stick with the basic mass market stuff, you wouldn't encounter as many troubles...

Vista will not make the driver issues any better. It will just create even more hassles for the little guys. Unless, of course, Microsoft is going to provide testing and signing for virtually free...

"Out of curiousity, what OS do you run IF?"

I run 2k for gaming needs. 98 is good for older hardware, but it doesn't handle 200 GB drives and 1 GB ram and such very well. Can't be bothered with all the bloat and hassles of XP for no net gain.

Re: OT: Computer\'s...gotta hate \'em.
 

LOL Yep, I keep one of those too. Mines a 300MHz Celery with 64 megs.