Francesco
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Posts posted by Francesco
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WHat language are you using? I will have start with English as the default. Seems a few languages aren't recognized.
I'm using the italian language.
I've gave a look at the code (the error is in the core.js file) and I saw that for some weird reasons WPI can't access the Win32_OperatingSystem class members, probably something that I installed on vista broke that stuff.
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Did you install nero7?
No it's not installed (or I would simply get a mshta crash).
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Some weeks ago WPI on Vista RTM was working fine, I ran it today on Vista and I got this weird error ('OSLanguage' is null or it's not an object) . Any idea?
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Hello. Awesome work!
But - is there a list of xpsp2 hotfixes for systems WITHOUT IE7? Hell, I am never gonna install that crap...
I understand this list is slightly different to IE6 installation.
What's the problem with IE7? With it and WMP11 at least you have less hotfixes to integrate.
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You could have a look at the C:\WINDOWS\setup*.log files.
Another thing to look at would be the ACPI settings, the Computer Type field in nLite. I problems with that if I had that on the wrong settings.
I think it depends on the computer settings (because sometimes the install works even on the same PCs where previously an install failed), I think it's a bug in the windows installer that happens randomly when detecting some piece of hardware. I'll now give a look at the logs to see what happened, thanks.
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It's definitely not nlite's fault. Check your BIOS settings, it's usually that, search the net about it.
This happens not only on PCs but also on virtual machines. Also this happens randomly: sometimes the install goes fine, sometimes it doesn't even on the same PC/virtual machine. It looks like it's a bug in the windows setup or something like that (a driver problem maybe). Isn't there any install logfile that the installer saves on the partition where I try to install windows so I can see where the install hangs)?
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Sometimes when I install windows with my unattended CD (both on real PCs and virtual machines) the installation hangs (the setup animation still works so it's just an installation problem) when detecting peripherals always at the same point.
This doesn't happen all the times, most of the installs runs fine.
Any idea? Is there any log to check or something like that to find out where the problem is?
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Have you checked out the windows power settings to see if standby/suspend/turn off screen is turned on?
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The prices are higher in all Europe. I remember reading on an italian website that it's up to the vendors to decide the price and that they can lower it up to 60%. If you want to buy the ultimate you can buy the american version and then download the localized language pack (you can find them on windows update).
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This is a bug that happens even when there's nobody using the connection sharing. ICS is simply bugged.
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=267461 here's the thread on the Microsoft's Channel 9 forums.
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No, the cause is a bug in the ICS service that sometimes blocks the creation of new connections for a while. I'm just looking for somebody else with the same issue.
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I'm having weird problems with the networking on Vista, pratically some times I have sort of "internet blackouts" during which I pratically can't open any web page, while other applications (messenger for example) still continue working.
Am I the only one or did somebody experience this too?
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I have a problem with my Acer TM8100LMi.
My battery lasts about 50min on power saving in Vista. However the battery indicator shows from 100% to 97% and then all of a sudden pops up "critical battery" warning at 6%. There is no indication in between. Why is this?
Buggy bios? Vista supports a newer ACPI revision, that maybe your bios implements but in a buggy way.
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Vista support
WPI on Vista RTM already works fine. If it crashes it's because you installed that buggy nero.
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Read the changelog and the manual....
Oops I didn't see the %reboot% feature, I'll give it a try right now. Thanks.
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I have a feature request that is really messy. Pratically there are some applications that need reboot in order to work: could it be possible to add a checkbox to have wpi reboot after the installation of a certain applications and resume the install of the other applications during the next boot?
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>> Haven't you ever noticed that if you shut down your pc without shutting win98 at the next reboot windows scans the partition for errors? That doesn't happen on XP if you use NTFS (it happens if you use FAT) because NTFS has some extra integrity checks.
Well, i have a computer at work which shows chkdsk _everytime_. Everytime it finds enormous amount of errors and fixes them - but finds a lot more next time. And with FAT32, all was ok...
FAT32 is scanned only if windows is not shut down correctly while NTFS instead is scanned when the ntfs driver in windows finds errors in the filesystem integrity so even a byte written in the wrong place could make the NTFS scan trigger.
That problem is probably caused by a bad ide or chipset driver or any driver that prevents windows from shutting down correctly. It is still a single case however, I haven't seen other XPs doing that without reason.
Would you please explain me why would viruses add useless metadata to the files?!?!?Well, virus can add itself into alternate file stream for notepad.exe, for example. It won't be visible in standard Windows Explorer, so it is almost no chance to remove it without using additional programs.
But then the virus would still need a launcher that extracts the data and runs it and that launcher would still be detected by the AV because it would be a part of the virus.
Guess what? It's so crappy that on many tests it blows the other AVs out of the water.Guess what? It eats all memory (edit: &CPU), perfoms disgusting sounds
and didn't helped me even once at work, while freeware tools could.It may be slow and that piggy sound isn't much great however but it has the best virus detection around. If you use NTFS and use the "scan new and changed files only" feature it scans a lot faster than other AVs because it just checks if the file has been altered or not by using the additional ntfs streams. And also thanks to AOL there's a free rebranded version of KAV called Active Virus Shield.
I imagine you saving your entire work only 1 time a day, especially in the same exact moment your PC shuts off.You sure have good imagination
However, that wasn't once, was randomly and was terrible. Fixed somewhere in SP1...A random rollback? Rollbacks are done only at startup (when the NTFS is mounted) and only on the last interrupted file operation so I don't think that the rollback feature could be the responsible. In order to have your data rollbacked the system would have to crash in the exact moment you save your work because only the last unfinished operation is canceled.
>> It is more than paranoid, it's pure FUDTime will tell.
Vista is already available so people can already tell if this performance hit caused by DRM is there or not. I haven't seen any noticeable performance loss especially with the latest drivers in fact now i'm using vista as my main OS without problems.
>>A week after ATI released newer drivers that are a lot faster and solved all of the problems.Well, can't speak for newer ATI drivers. I've tried newer NVIDIA drivers that were released today and perfomance still suck: GDI/overall responsibility is still 3-10 times slower. I guess all-new driver architecture is rotten, however, time will tell.
Nvidia drivers for vista still have plenty of problems and are estremely slow also the last ones that were released today have a "7 december" creation date so they're still pretty old, ATI drivers instead are a lot more mature. In fact most vista benchmarks were made on PCs running ATI videocards.
>>Yeah but it still has plenty of problems that alternative browsers like Avant don't have because Firefox setup doesn't install the associations correctly.Well, does Avant makes it correctly? New 'you silly negro, select program for your internets' API is not used in current programs. Maybe only via XP compatibility mode...
They had plenty of times to implement vista support. Firefox team was also invited to redmond to get better support on vista ( http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-6109455.html ) so it looks like they didn't went there at all
>>The new audio stack has its advantages, for example now it natively supports 5.1/7.1The only things i've seen in forums about new audio stack is: jerky sound and completely unability to support more than 2.0 sound.
Probably it's because of the drivers, the realtek integrated audio card I'm actually using works perfectly with the RTM. Also the SiS integrated audio I have on another PC works fine too (and it uses the rtm drivers).
>>That same thing could have happened on 9x so I don't understand what would the sense of that story be.Well, 98 is dead, and XP is in mainstream and still have critical bugs. They haven't offered a hotfix for my russian XP, and english can't be installed (even though it doesn't contain any localizable resources). And remember, all 'shutdown correctly' patches for 98 were released publicly.
Are the dll/exe of the patch localized? If it's language neutral and doesn't contain any localized text string inside probably you can just copy the files by hand. BTW what's the patch number?
>>BTW as long as I remember that vulnerability is just a double free() so as long as I know it could just hang the system.No, it was a strcpy( asLocal.Buffer, asLocal.Buffer+4 ); and is exploitable.
According to http://www.determina.com/security.research...-harderror.html it's an exploitable double-free bug. I really don't understand how can they exploit a double-free bug, it's very strange.
>>Even AmigaOS didn't have a decent memory protection so what?Well, your point was about 1992 OS/2. I'm speaking about 1999 Mac OS. So, 9x wasn't the last.
Well the first AmigaOS with (limited) memory protection came out just a few days ago (26 december) so even MacOS isn't the last. But however that doesn't change the fact that since most of the OSes have implemented that feature it means that it's very important for the OS stability.
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You've got to be kidding. Stop posting in the Win98 forum if you don't like it!
So I should give you always the last word because according to you I shouldn't be allowed to post in the 9x forum if I don't like it? Yeah it's easy to counterdict other people and just finding a lame excuses to avoid the the other person to answer, isn't it?
Why don't you stop coming out with absolute answers like "NTFS better than FAT? Nope." and irritating answers like "XP more stable? lol" instead? I was trying to make a constructive discusion but thanks to arguments like those this discussion is starting sound more and more like a flame.
1) ntfs has more security checks, has additional streams that can be used for example, like kaspersky does, to extremely speed up antivirus scanning
2) windows uses less ram to read ntfs drives because it doesn't have to keep all the structure loaded, like it happens with FAT32
What's the point since XP sucks up the whole ram anyway.
Maybe because you can have much faster AV scans because the AV avoids rescanning files it has already scanned plenty of times thanks to checksums stored in additional streams?
Oh by the way, trying to change argument? If you don't like XP ram usage there's still 2k (and NT for very old PCs).
7) ntfs can have smaller cluster sizes on small (<= 8gb) hard drives
8) ntfs has a small storage of files data in the directory to speed up directory accesses making directory accesses faster because the OS doesn't have to read all the file record chains
9) ntfs supports sparse files that allows applications like emule to avoid allocating all the space for the files at once
You said it yourself. Fat32 is faster so no point alleging speed improvements.
I said that Fat32 is faster on some file operations, not on all the operations.
10) ntfs is optimized for indexing while fat32 is not
Great! Another reason not to use it.
Oh sure, have fun with slow non-indexed searchs.
Chkdsk is more powerful and all the extra security feature for data integrity in NTFS are used to enhance the filesystem repair. Also chkdsk needs a reboot because it needs write access to the filesystem and you don't have to reboot if you just want to scan for errors, you have to reboot if you want ALSO to fix the errors.Yeah. Very usefull to scan but your disk BUT NOT fix it...
Yeah nobody can manage to reboot their system to fix the filesystem (and by the way, with NTFS corruption appears a lot less often than with FAT32 when you shut down properly thanks to the rollback features I talked about before)... reboot takes too much time!
Well, this means you can't use it easily from any other platform.Maybe if you plan using other platforms maybe you should think about keeping your data stored in a shared partition? On XP you can mount a fat/ntfs partition as a folder if you have problems organizing your stuff in other partitions.
Believe me, everything I tried was unsuccessful.EasyRecovery can find erased files, rebuilding all the correct directory tree by reconstructing the partition from both the structure data and journal and has also filesystem-independent raw recovery so I really doubt that you tried it because with it you can recover almost everything even if the partition structure and journal is completely destroyed (for example you formatted before recovering).
>> By the way, you can install XP on a FAT partition if you want. Nobody forces you to install XP on NTFS.What do you think I do? ;p
Maybe this explains why after XP crashes you have to reinstall: filesystem without journal, rollbacks and additional integrity checks?
What can anyone say after reading that. If you're fine with all that crap, then you really shouldn't be here.I said that it's mandatory for hd-dvd and blu-ray support and that all that crap is activated only when viewing hddvd/blu-ray so I don't see why should I complain for that: would you prefer a windows with hd-dvd and blu-ray support or one without?
By the way, secure audio path (the audio protection included in XP) was also included in windows ME but as long as I know nobody ever complained. Strangely now that vista included a similar protection for videos everybody started screaming with no reasons: this protections are enabled only when viewing hd-dvd or blu-ray, they're turned off when you're not viewing them so I don't see where all the problems are.
Yeah, report to M$ function... Another kind of bloat will all wanna use! (I thought Vista was so stable anyway, why would you need to report your crashes...)Because not all the drivers are actually stable, the release is the 31 january and the hardware producers are still releasing beta drivers. Oh, by the way, error reporting it's a service that was present also on XP that can be easily disabled.
You give the answer yourself: retrocompatibility. We can use DOS program or any old games. Xp can't. Besides, everything that makes 98 blue makes XP show BOSD despites you're beloved memory protection (which is far from perfect and is the reason for crashes as well).You can use dos emulators for dos programs and you can use a dos emulators, sound emulators or simply keep a separate dos partition for dos games. DOSbox probably now runs more games than the ones that you can actually run from windows 9x (unless you reboot to dos mode).
It's simply not true that everything that makes 98 crash makes also XP crash, normal applications can't make XP crash, only buggy drivers or faulty hardware can. If you watch the XP forum you can see that people make entire posts about their crashes: in fact on XP the crashes are so rare that people ask for help to find out the driver or the piece of hardware causing the problem.
You didn't get my point. It doesn't need any since ports are closed naturally!Naturally??!?! Windows 98 by default has the following ports open: 137, 138, 139. I've just checked on a clean win98 install on a virtual machine right now. Want a screenshot of the "NETSTAT /NA"?
XP is a danger out of the box. 30secs to get infected. Even yourself advise to immediatly disable most services by hand!Using nlite is an obligation if you don't want tons of risky bloat.
And you don't need an AV on 98 more than on XP.
Risky bloat? Since XP SP2 enables by default the firewall there have been 0 remotely exploited bugs. Also on win98 there has been a bug where people could access your shares from remote without even having to know your password ( http://www.securityfriday.com/Topics/share_passwd.html ) so pratically everybody who had a network with shared files could get infected. Not even win9x so was immune from remotely-exploitable exploits.
Really. Enough now. This is a Win98/95/ME forum and other OS fans are not welcome to flood it. Do we trash XP/2k forums? No. Do we come to Vista forums to say how bad it is? You've made your choice? Fine. We've made ours and this thread is here to explain why. Not to read your 100 posts.I'm not flooding it's you guys that answer me all together and you pretend me not to answer saying that I'm in the wrong forum or that i'm flooding. Why don't you put a "Windows 2K/XP users not allowed" as a sticky post in this forum then?
I have tried to close the question but you guys continuosly come repeating the same arguments plenty of times, especially because you don't read the precedent posts and just come here answering to the latest ones.
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>>1) ntfs has more security checks
Slowing access to files. And easy enough to bypass.
I didn't mean permissions, I meant extra checksums that allow windows, for example, to detect for example if the file is corrupted.
Haven't you ever noticed that if you shut down your pc without shutting win98 at the next reboot windows scans the partition for errors? That doesn't happen on XP if you use NTFS (it happens if you use FAT) because NTFS has some extra integrity checks.
Obviously none of this protections can save the file data if it gets corrupted but they were planned to make it easier for windows to detect problems and repair a broken ntfs volume.
>>has additional streams that can be used for example, like kaspersky does, to extremely speed up antivirus scanning
More often used by viruses.
Would you please explain me why would viruses add useless metadata to the files?!?!?
Oh and have i said that kaspersky is crap?
Guess what? It's so crappy that on many tests it blows the other AVs out of the water.
http://www.virus.gr/english/fullxml/defaul...d=82&mnu=82
"1. Kaspersky version 6.0.0.303 - 99.62%
2. Active Virus Shield by AOL version 6.0.0.299 - 99.62% (this is a rebranded KAV)"
this says it all. The only other decent AV is nod32 because of the heuristics but surely it isn't brilliant when we're talking about real-life virus detection.
>>windows uses less ram to read ntfs drives
Oh? NTFS wasn't included in 9x, because it eated too much RAM. FAT32 structures are never loaded into memory completely while MFT do.
MFT is loaded in memory? what? Maybe the MFT index may be cached but I don't really think it is always kept in memory.
>>4) ntfs supports compression and encryption without needing extra software
Which noone in right mind uses.
Why not? It's completely transparent and pretty fast. Or do you think that win98's doublespace is better?
>>5) ntfs has a rollback system that automatically undoes interrupted operations if for example your pc powers off while the ntfs is being written
Oh, i remember XP SP0 rolled back my entire work day.
Oh yeah, sure. I imagine you saving your entire work only 1 time a day, especially in the same exact moment your PC shuts off.
>> Oh yeah sure, all the DRM in vista... really I'm scared if the windows DRMK.sys drives polls my videocard drivers to check their integrity 30 times in second ONLY while watching an HDDVD
Better read: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt However, it is paranoid enough.
It is more than paranoid, it's pure FUD, like all that palladium and TCPA stuff. I'll tell you a few things:
1) XP had already some kind of DRM support built in the audio drivers and I haven't seen people screaming everywhere about that feature.
2) The new audio stack has its advantages, for example now it natively supports 5.1/7.1 (multi-channels) without the need to buy expensive audio cards. It also features some microsoft filters to enhance audio and also has many cool features like microphone-arrays supports (for better voice recognition) and automatic input/output detection and configuration (you plug a jack and windows recognizes what kind of device it is: nothing new but now it's built in).
3) HDMI is required in order to play what your txt describes as "premium content". If MS didn't add the HDMI (and HDCP) protection then vista wouldn't have had been able to play HDDVD/blu-ray movies ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_Constraint_Token ).
That URL is full of fud, claiming that people will be forced to upgrade to HDMI because of microsoft but the reality is that they'll be forced to upgrade because of that stupid AACS protection of HDDVD/Blu-rays that was wanted by those damned majors. Even the standalone hd-dvd/blu-ray players will have the same limitation when HDDVDs/blu-rays with the image token constraint turned on will begin coming out.
>> In my case it solved some crashes with firefox (asking me to update),There is no crashes in current Firefox versions which are solved by upgrading. Oh noes, i recalled: Mozilla had to release a Firefox 2.0.0.1 just to make it work with Vista...
Yeah but it still has plenty of problems that alternative browsers like Avant don't have because Firefox setup doesn't install the associations correctly.
>>media player crashesO RLY?
Yes, RLY, because the xvid beta I was using didn't support vista (or wmp11, I don't remember).
>> video driver crashes (that made aero restart) telling me to upgrade my catalyst driversAgain, there were no Catalyst updates. And that means they've included buggy driver into RTM.
I won't tell how ugly Vista is and how pathetic it comes perfomance-wise.
I wasn't using the rtm drivers, I was using the drivers I got from ati website that were newer. A week after ATI released newer drivers that are a lot faster and solved all of the problems. By the way the performance problems on vista are mostly caused by non-optimized drivers (vista is coming out the 31 of january so the hardware producers have still time). And by the way the RTM drivers of XP were also pretty slow because obviously who produces the drivers turns off all the optimization in order to keep the drivers stable (if the OS was crashing or not booting due to RTM drivers how could people manage to update them?).
>> Oh and XP?I'll tell you funny story:
Recently, i had to install XP on a modern Sony Vaio.
After installing it and fully updating, it kept hanging on shutdown or standby.
After several support calls and mass hysteria i've found a fix that must solve this problem.
And guess what? It does not exist for Russian XP version (however, it was found 2 years ago), nor it was available for public.
I had to hack file in Safe Mode just to install 'hotfix' for an 5-year-mature OS which hanged on shutdown.
That same thing could have happened on 9x so I don't understand what would the sense of that story be.
By the way, on http://hotfix.xable.net you can find all the non-official updates (and you can use applications like reshacker to copy the localizations from a dll/exe to another).
The only fact that the NT kernel has memory protection makes it way more stable than 9x.
Oh, and didn't you heard a recent story where one simple MessageBox caused memory corruption, privilege elevation and BSOD on 2000-XP-Vista?Applications can't make XP crash(It is still not fixed)
That doesn't change the fact that an application should have been designed to exploit that messagebox. Or do you think that any application starts using messagebox with malformed strings?
BTW as long as I remember that vulnerability is just a double free() so as long as I know it could just hang the system.
>> On 9x any buggy applications can make the system crash just by writing in the wrong memory spot, because on 9x the memory is not protected.Mac OS < X didn't have a decent memory protection too.
Even AmigaOS didn't have a decent memory protection so what? That doesn't change the fact that any OS without memory protection allows any badly-programmed application to screw the entire system up.
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Francesco. This is like your 20th post in only a few days. Now you even post several times in a row. You have to stop that.
Again, the question was to understand why we stay with Win98 and you're not helping.
Win98 is our chosen OS. We've explained why. You don't agree? Fine. But you've posted your opinion now so stop floading our forum !!!
I'm not flooding I'm answering to other posts.
So, according to what you say, people in this post should be allowed to contradict me as much as they want and I should just shut up and ignore them because if I answer them I flood? Oh yeah!
NTFS better than FAT? Nope.
So we should all give up using NTFS because you can scan and fix fat32 without rebooting and because it FAT is maybe faster in some operations (how much faster? 0-5,1%?)...
Who cares if:
1) ntfs has more security checks, has additional streams that can be used for example, like kaspersky does, to extremely speed up antivirus scanning
2) windows uses less ram to read ntfs drives because it doesn't have to keep all the structure loaded, like it happens with FAT32
3) ntfs can use the MFT to speed up accesses to small files
4) ntfs supports compression and encryption without needing extra software
5) ntfs has a rollback system that automatically undoes interrupted operations if for example your pc powers off while the ntfs is being written
6) ntfs doesn't have to be checked each time you don't shut off your pc correctly because as I told before it can automatically rollback interrupted operations
7) ntfs can have smaller cluster sizes on small (<= 8gb) hard drives
8) ntfs has a small storage of files data in the directory to speed up directory accesses making directory accesses faster because the OS doesn't have to read all the file record chains
9) ntfs supports sparse files that allows applications like emule to avoid allocating all the space for the files at once
10) ntfs is optimized for indexing while fat32 is not
11) ntfs can mark automatically the bad sectors while it's writing
12) ntfs usually gets less fragmented
Power down with you FAT32 drive writing? Just run scandisk and you're done. NTFS crash? chkdisk is no way as powerfull and it needs to restart your computer.
Chkdsk is more powerful and all the extra security feature for data integrity in NTFS are used to enhance the filesystem repair. Also chkdsk needs a reboot because it needs write access to the filesystem and you don't have to reboot if you just want to scan for errors, you have to reboot if you want ALSO to fix the errors.
And as BenoitRen mentionned, it's a closed proprietary format even if unofficial programs exist to read it under DOS or Linux.
And? Even if it is closed now linux has fully working read/write drivers (and even chkdsk-like utilities to scan and fix) for NTFS so I don't see where all this problems would be.
And when it really crashes, there's no way to recover (even Partition Magic can't even do anything about it).Partition magic doesn't have recovery features. There are applications like getdataback and easyrecovery that support NTFS and work perfectly to recover your data. Did your partition disappear from the partitions list (it may happen when the partition table is corrupted (and that can happen independently from the filesystem you are using))? You can still use acronis recovery expert that detects and supports NTFS perfectly.
By the way, you can install XP on a FAT partition if you want. Nobody forces you to install XP on NTFS.
DOS: "MS didn't remove DOS. MS removed from the NT the ability of applications to access directly to hardware like they could on DOS to increase stability."So you're ok with this M$ babysitting? Fine. Good for you. Obviously we're not. This was just the first step to Vista where you can't access anything without DRM checks.
And the alledged stability increase?
Yes I'm ok with M$ babysitting. Oh yeah sure, all the DRM in vista... really I'm scared if the windows DRMK.sys drives polls my videocard drivers to check their integrity 30 times in second ONLY while watching an HDDVD (because in those URLs full of FUD against vista they want to give the impression that vista constantly checks for driver integrity while in reality it does that only when playing protected media)! My usb laser mouse in comparison is always polled just a few thousand times in a second but who cares...
Oh by the way that DRM crap is needed by HDDVD and Blu-Ray (know anything of Protected Video Path?), you should thank the majors if all that mess is mandatory in order to reproduce that media. Hddvd/blu-ray probably won't ever come to 9x for the simple reason that newer video cards (with HDMI) don't support windows 9x or if it will come it will become useless when the majors will activate the Image Token Constraint protection (that forces the content to be played over HDMI).
About stability... Vista has user-mode drivers this means that many drivers that have problems can be restarted without system crashes and not even linux and OS X have this feature.
Vista also lets you send crash data for microsoft and thanks to the application "Problems reports and Solution" you can check for solutions to your crashes (and not only system crashes, even application crashes). In my case it solved some crashes with firefox (asking me to update), media player crashes (telling me that there was a newer xvid codec version that was vista-compatible) and video driver crashes (that made aero restart) telling me to upgrade my catalyst drivers. This feature makes vista probably the best-supported MS OS ever, because if you have crashes finally MS can get in contact with you to investigate the problem and get it fixed without you having to scream for help on MS forums: for example the application can ask you to make extra operations (memory scan, gathering system data etc) and send back the results. And they don't only support their own OS, they also support third-party applications (in my case xvid and firefox).
Oh and XP? I have some PCs at home that have been running CPU-intensive (seti@home and folding@home) applications in background for entire months without ever being rebooted (because all of my pcs shut down with hybernation) while my parents and my sister were using them to burn dvds, browse the web, listening to music and using media center most of the day. Entire months without being rebooted, all the CPU constantly used and not even a single crash, slowdown or any sort of problem. On 2k and XP I haven't seen a BSOD for ages. And if you don't believe me you can ask in the XP forum if people had problems that weren't related to faulty hardware or drivers because that's pretty hard.
XP more stable? lolOh yeah, "lol", what a great argument! The only fact that the NT kernel has memory protection makes it way more stable than 9x. If OS X, BSD, linux, beos, solaris and pratically any other decent OS have memory protection while 9x doesn't there must be a reason, don't you think? Even Microsoft's own OS/2 (an amazing OS that was planned to be windows 3.11 successor) had memory protection back in 1992!
The reason why MS didn't add memory protection immediately was because of retrocompatibility (because many DOS applications used direct hardware access) however any developer can tell you that an OS without memory protection won't never be as stable as an OS with memory protection because any application could make the system crash. And as you may know bugs may exists in almost every application.
You're comparing it to the original 98FE without any update? Updated, I've never seen a BSOD on 98SE. But I've seen quite a few on XP. And then, you're good to reinstall.All the bloat that comes with XP is not good for stability anyway (Only a few features are usefull on GBs of install)
Since I fix PCs I have installed and use all the editions of 98 (FE and SE) and even windows ME. I've used windows 98SE for ages before switching to XP (I didn't switch to 2k for reasons similar to many other people here: bad boot times, bad games performance because of early drivers) however after seeing XP stability I never went back.
I still have all the win95 discs (a,b,c) 98 (fe, se) and ME since I keep them for very old PCs (or for people that don't want to upgrade) and when I install them I always install the latest updates but surely all those updates can't help for 98's lack of memory protection that is the main source of the crashes.
The only stable win98s I have ever seen were the ones used by people running only office applications, sometimes a web browser and nothing more.
All the XP crashes that I have seen instead were caused by faulty drivers or hardware but once fixed the problems nobody has ever come back complaining again of crashes for now (except 2 cases of broken HDDs).
BTW If you say that you have crashes on XP and then you're forced to format it probably means that you have problems with your ide/sata controller.
And personnaly, every program that made my win98 crash made XP crash the same way (bad programs are just bad programs).Applications can't make XP crash unless you run them with real-time priority or unless those applications install kernel drivers or simply are applications designed to make XP crash (for example by eating up all the memory). On 9x any buggy applications can make the system crash just by writing in the wrong memory spot, because on 9x the memory is not protected.
XP safer?Install Win98 with just the internet and get online: no open ports -> No risks. Install Firefox and get a firewall and you're safe.
Now install XP: millions of services and open ports begging for an attack. In less that 30 seconds you'll be infected.
XP has a firewall turned on by default that just closes the ports (and because of that its cpu usage is ridicolously low). Unlike some third-party firewalls that you are forced to install on 9x if you want one, because 9x has no firewall.
Sure, you can disable useless services, get a powerful AV, use nlite to get rid of all the bloat that comes with XP, use BartPE instead of DOS... but if you have to do all that to make XP usable, what's the point?XP is already usable out of the box: you need to disable the services only if you have a PC without much ram. Also removing stuff with nlite is mostly useless unless you have a very small HDD, because you can obtain similar results by disabling services by hand.
You don't need to keep an AV running because like you do on 98 you can just install firefox and install an antivirus (like the free AOL virusshield that is a rebranded kaspersky KAV 6) and disable realtime scan and use manual scan for the files you've downloaded.
Unless you're forced to have XP (like I am for latest games), don't use it.The point is that XP is more stable and since it's mainstream hardware and software producers support it more than they do with 9x, giving you more updated and stable drivers and applications.
This thread is getting really anoying. So we had a 2k fan, a linux defensor, now a XP lover? What next? an OSX friend?...OS X runs only on Macs (unless you use OSX86, but we'd better not let anybody here know) so we're safe for now.
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spool32 isnt always active i can delete without windows complaining and it isnt displayed in process viewer app 4
but tapisrv isnt running
what does pstores do
It's strange spool32 is supposed to be always active for printing support. Same for TAPIsrv but maybe you disabled it somehow. On cleans 98SE install usually tapisvr is always running. PSTORES.exe is used mostly by IE to store passwords etc (I don't remember other applications using it).
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how many people do you know that use remote registryt?Since most of those services are needed for advanced features (network shares etc) I don't see why they should be turned off by the default. It's up to the user to disable the services he doesn't need.the average user doesnt know about services.
I didn't say that services are configured perfectly they're configured to offer all the features enabled out-of-the-box. However they're surely easier to disable than a hunt-for-the-hidden-process on win98.
Oh well i've been using pqmagic plenty of times since the first versions with NTFS support and never got a problem. If linux now has a full read/write driver it means that ntfs has been reverse-engineered more than enough.linux ntfs isnt perfect though, it's still buggy
No it's pretty stable now. http://www.linux-ntfs.org/ you can find the driver with full read/write support here.
What about TAPISRV.exe? Do I need it when connecting to the internet using a lan connection?What about WMIEXE.exe usually invoked by SYSTRAY.EXE? Do I really need it?
Do i need spool32 if I don't have a printer?
What about PSTORES.exe?
What about MTASKS.exe?
than dont use systray or use rplite7
spool32 only starts if you try to print something
whats tapisrv i dont use it
Spool32 is always active even when you're not printing. Tapisrv is used for dial-up connections (so if you connect through the LAN you don't need it at all).
I didn't say that they're useless I just said that they aren't as much needed as one may think.
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Again, why bother with that when you can just ghost a hard drive that already has all the drivers?
Because I can install windows from the same cd on completely different PCs and all would have the latest up-to-date drivers. And sometimes the results are even better then installing all the drivers by hand (because the driverpacks include drivers that probably the end user wouldn't even know they are updatable).
Hah! If only it was that easy...That easy? Have you read the tutorial? http://www.collewijn.info/xpe/main.php It doesn't seem all this hard to me however there are plenty of pre-made XPEs cd on the web.
Yes and no. For one, it doesn't prevent you from using badly-coded applications.But it prevents badly-coded applications from harming the OS. And like you may know almost all applications have bugs.
All this nonsense is really a laugh. Thousands of people migrating to XP, noticing that M$ removed all of DOS, and then people make all sorts of utilities to get it all back.MS didn't remove DOS., MS removed from the NT the ability of applications to access directly to hardware like they could on DOS to increase stability. This is why most games don't work, especially those that want to monopolize the CPU by using protected mode (because as you may remember protected mode was introduced in 386s and DOS, for compatibility with older CPUs, wasn't supporting that mode).
If any application could directly access memory, CPU and all devices then an OS wouldn't ever be really reliable.
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Then ScanDisk runs and fixes whatever is broken, which is hardly ever significant stuff.
So you really think that scandisk can fix more errors on a fat32 than chkdsk can on a NTFS? Then it would mean that you assume that a journaled filesystem is pointless. Which is not.
Then it's a bad driver. Duh.What if the problem... is the OS?
http://www.microsoft.com/Windows98/downloa...017/Default.asp
Oh please. I'll lose just that one date. What a disaster... Again, ScanDisk does the job.No you won't lose just that one date: if you turn off an HD while it's writing usually the HD heads will mess up some of the data after the location where they were writing (because there's still power in them and because the platters are still rotating). If it wasn't for crashes or hardware that messes up when not powered off correctly then journaled filesystems wouldn't exist.
By reverse-engineering, which on something as important as the file system, is not perfect. The actual inner workings aren't known, and things could break before you know it.Oh well i've been using pqmagic plenty of times since the first versions with NTFS support and never got a problem. If linux now has a full read/write driver it means that ntfs has been reverse-engineered more than enough.
Yet I haven't had any problems in 8 years that ScanDisk couldn't fix.Yet I fixed plenty of PCs with corrupted windows 9x with windows directories completely disappeared due to corruption. Most of the times I fixed windows 2000/XP PCs instead there were problems with corrupted files but I hardly saw the same level of corruption I have seen on some FAT partitions.
Not in a thread that asks for the PROs, because CONs are off-topic.When some of those PROs are inexact or myths I don't see why I shouldn't answer to clarify things.
Irrelevant. That doesn't disprove that games belong on consoles.Oh yes? What console does Hellgate: London runs on? Where did the games of the year 2006 (Oblivion) and 2005 (half life 2) came out?
Gaming hasn't never belonged only to consoles. Consoles are mostly cheap alternatives but you won't never have the power and the flexibility of the games on the PC (and by the way pc games are even cheaper).
You're bypassing what the actual comparison is about, which is OS performance, not driver performance. So the drivers have to be the same. Don't claim that XP is more performant when you're talking about your shiny drivers.So what about the winstone benchmarks being much better on XP because of prefetch?
Should all give up XP because it scores 34/4188 (1/123) less than 98 on the SiSoft sandra CPU benchmark on a more than 2 years old benchmarks page?
Who cares if P4s hyperthreading is not supported, who cares if cores in dual cores CPU remains unused, who cares if most of the producers now release only slow legacy drivers for win98...
Software should come with good settings. I shouldn't have to turn off all the bloat, it should come without it! Defaults are important! Bad excuse.Since most of those services are needed for advanced features (network shares etc) I don't see why they should be turned off by the default. It's up to the user to disable the services he doesn't need.
There are no 'hidden' Win9x processes. They are all needed. Only 7 on my system at the moment that are not applications.All needed?
What about TAPISRV.exe? Do I need it when connecting to the internet using a lan connection?
What about WMIEXE.exe? Do I really need it?
Do i need spool32 if I don't have a printer?
What about PSTORES.exe?
What about MTASKS.exe?
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and didn't helped me even once at work, while freeware tools could.
However, that wasn't once, was randomly and was terrible. Fixed somewhere in SP1...
running .bat files from WPI
in Windows Post-Install Wizard (WPI)
Posted
If you want a suggestion use pushd and popd.
pushd %0 at the start of the .bat file and popd at the end.