CoffeeFiend

I don't really see a difference. Actually, it's even faster on many things (like the GUI, thanks to GPU acceleration much like Mac OS X's Quartz, or tasks like deleting thousands of small files -- it's several times faster than XP on that!) It doesn't. It takes about 5 to 6x the space XP does here. And again, that's due to several things, like having WAY more drivers included (about the size of a XP install), keeping more copies of DLLs in its WinSxS store (takes up about the size of 2 XP installs here). If you subtract those, that leaves you with an OS that's perhaps twice the size of XP or so, which is not bad at all considering all the new features and such And then again, all new versions of windows have used up more disk space. This is nothing new. Again, not the case. Vista (without any weird stripping using vlite or such) boots with 365MB of RAM usage here. That's about twice as much as my XP box does. XP did take a fair bit more than 2k too and such. Again, nothing new here. I dunno why you keep spreading such FUD. It's just not true at all. I found exactly 0 apps that don't work on Vista so far, as in NOT ONE! To quote something I said earlier: "Adobe CS3 suite? Works. Visual Studio? Works! MS Expression apps? Works! SQL Server? Works too. MS Office and OOo? Works. Installshield works. So does VMWare workstation and server. And Apache. And MySQL. And Nero and imgburn. And Firefox, Opera, Newsleecher, ftprush, CopSSH, fineprint, pdffactory, foxit, k-lite, mkvtoolnix, MPC, avisynth, DGIndex, besweet, lame, wireshark, nmap/zenmap, PowerGUI, PrimalScript, ultraiso, isobuster, serv-u/g6/filezilla, snagit, winrar, acdsee, unlocker, inkscape, feeddemon, musicbrainz, diskeeper/perfectdisk, nod32, truecrypt, winamp, dvbdream, mytheatre, etc etc etc." and many, many more that I just can't be bothered to list, and that's just the stuff I've tried, it's hardly an exhaustive list. Yet, you keep making it sound like nothing runs on it. BTW, many apps have needed updates to run reliably (or at all) on other versions of windows, or even for specific service packs (like SP2 for XP), so why blame Vista now? OS'es change, apps get updated, such is life. Because it's windows, you're running as an admin, and you're clicking on every .exe from anywhere? I don't even run an AV real-time myself (Vista or not). An ounce of prevention (as in not running any .exe from untrustworthy sources blindly) is worth a pound of cure. Like what exactly? Sounds like more FUD. Seemingly for some people it's a lack of education and/or understanding, combined with the unwillingness to read up on it.

I wouldn't exactly recommend using HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Version Vector as it doesn't even exist on my box (not on this one anyhow, haven't checked the others). You could do something like this: const HKLM = &H80000002 strComputer = "." Set oWMI = GetObject("winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & strComputer & "\root\default:StdRegProv") strKeyPath = "Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer" strValueName = "Version" oWMI.GetStringValue HKLM,strKeyPath,strValueName,strValue MsgBox "IE Version: " & strValue if you prefer a jscript, or powershell version, or whatever else, just ask Keep in mind IE8 is coming out soon too (beta 1 is already out), so testing for IE 7 only might be shortsighted. I find .cmd/.bat works best for very simple things, but as soon as it's past basic command lines, a scripting language is far better (more versatile/powerful).

It should work exactly as it implies, only scanning files that can be infected (.exe, .dll, etc), and not others (like .mp3 .avi and such) Not that I use AVG heurictics usually finds more viruses (on any AV), but it also means a LOT more false positives (and AVG is already bad enough at that!)

Crashing how? BSOD? Failed to copy file? Maybe it creates a log file while installing. Otherwise, try logging the install with process monitor perhaps. Maybe a file is missing or such (seen that plenty of times). Anything extra would be useful, screenshots, log files, minidumps if it's a BSOD, etc

Try this instead

I never tried the RTM, might have been awful, no idea! Sounds like driver problems, which is very plausible, especially for RTM (early stages of drivers, I heard loads of them sucked hard). Could have been a bug with RTM, no idea. Some incompatible drivers are known to block the SP1 install. Check the service pack installation log files, you should be able to find exactly why it failed -- just like for a SP on any version of windows. I'm not saying no one had issues, that it's perfect or anything like that. But Vista with SP1 works great for a LOT of people... It's certainly not half bad as a lot of people make it out to be (i.e. ME 2)

I always find it funny how most people who complain about Vista never actually tried it. Most experts and geniuses I know and trust seem to be running Vista nowadays without any real complaints -- I'm talking about people like Mark Russinovich, Bryce Cogswell, Matt Pietrek and Scott Guthrie (aka ScottGu), as well as long timers and editors like Paul Thurrott, the better MVPs like John Barnett (mind you they seem to hand those out to anyone these days, or some ppl found theirs in a crackerjack box), and most of the more knowledgeable MSFN forum members, like cluberti, puntoMX, Zxian and geek. If it's good enough for them...

D) All of the above. All OS'es inherit code, design, behaviors, ideas, methods, behaviors and such from others (mainly from older ones). You don't get it. Cars are not software. If you took the same parts from the previous model and molded it into the parts for the newer model, maybe you'd have a case. But this is software, and each OS version was made from the previous one. That's why they're versions! No... You don't get it. First, it's an analogy, of course cars aren't software. But to make this years' model, they use the previous model's parts' design (like the source code for the previous release of windows), and then they make some changes to it (change/modify/edit/write some more code), and that's this year's/latest model of that car (latest version of windows). No difference at all.

That's the "advaced features that almost no one uses" I was talking about (IIRC they also support 3D stuff and such too). In many many years of using PDF documents, I've never seen one of either kind. It's understandable most people don't create such documents too, because they don't work in most PDF viewers (like foxit, likely most linux readers, etc -- anything non-acrobat), and they're typically created with acrobat pro (the most expensive solution of them all). That's the whole point. It's lightweight/darn fast, whereas acrobat reader in the last few years has gotten slower and slower (not sure how the latest are, it's been a while since I've used it), to the point where it takes as long as photoshop to open pretty much, whereas with foxit, the app is open and your document is displayed in like 1 second. Oh ya, also, foxit doesn't even need to be installed (and doesn't leave traces behind or anything -- only thing it does, is associate itself with PDF files if you tell it to, no shell extensions and files everywhere and such). Whereas acrobat reader has an installer that takes a while (thanks to FEAD/NOSSO for pointlessly making things even slower), is slower to load, uses way more space (the installer is almost 100MB -- just look at %Temp%\Adobe Reader 8\ during install, or ~125MB installed. that's a lot of space for a simple viewer -- about 25x more space than the others) and all.

There is no such thing as acrobat reader pro! It's either: -acrobat reader or -acrobat pro (or standard, or pro extended) The first is just a reader, just like foxit reader. You can view PDF files, and that's about it. Foxit is a LOT faster, very lightweight, but it lacks some advanced features that < 1% of the population uses. Pro is to make PDF documents, but that's $450(!) and truly overkill for most people. There are plenty of other solutions out there to create PDF files that don't cost an arm and a leg, some are even free. I like fineprint pdf factory myself ($50). Foxit PDF Creator is $35. Acrobat Pro has the most advanced features (that most people don't use), it's the most expensive of them all (and by a long shot), and it's pretty much a full CD whereas most of the others are only like 5 to 10MB.

That you don't understand what is improved, how it works or such, doesn't make it "not better". Neither does an opinion from the average uneducated user. Besides, who gets to pick what counts? Just because you decided so? Classic theme (or disabling the theme service altogether) looks plain enough: Looks like Win2k all over again. Besides, "skinbois" seem to be using windowblinds and such more than anything.

FF3 rocks. Except for the totally non-awesome bar. It's not awesome at all... For those who like to deploy easily, or that think about repacking, usually there's no need. FrontMotion keeps their free MSI installers here. There's no FF3 MSI installers yet, but it's just been released a handful of hours ago. They should have the new ones online soon. Edit: They are now online

That totally reminds me of this i.e. I've seen plenty of guys doing just the same (hundreds), yet nobody goes "you know how men are dumb" when they did it...

Nice troll! You know the impossible to please crowd? That's exactly you! The type that says they should improve the kernel and such, and add new features -- because that's why we should buy/upgrade OS'es for (and screw the eye candy). And then, you proceed to completely ignore all the hundreds of such improvements of every new version and act like they're not there (need examples?) And then you just pretend it's basically a new skin for windows 95 (or NT 3.1 perhaps) or such. You don't want eye candy, and you ignore all the new features. They deliver on the whole line -- kernel upgrades and various new improvements (the parts you chose to ignore) and eye candy as well (the only part you seem to notice, and then proceed to complain about). That sounds strangely like the crowd that likes to complain about everything to me. It's funny how those people only notice eye candy, and say they don't want it, and want whatever new features instead (that actually are there). They just can't win. Feel free to upgrade to windows 3.1 then, because it had a GUI too (that's all windows seems to be according to you). Actually, there were some others too that you could use, on top of plain old DOS. Or an Apple II even. Mouse support, icons and all! You will be thrilled I'm sure. 100% disagree there. There is so much more to it, it's not even funny. You picked 2 totally irrelevant things - irrelevant nowadays anyhow. Network has been a non-issue for years. So is stability these days (if you're getting BSODs, you have broken hardware or broken drivers. And no, nobody needs five 9's of uptime on a desktop). Newer OS'es have SO many new and useful features, and I sure wouldn't go back.

Code-wise, it pretty much is. It's XP with more network and server features. Version-wise, it's called by everyone, including Microsoft, WinNT 5.2. Don't fool yourself in thinking these are completely new products. NT also used part of VMS's design (itself being based on RSX-11), and OS/2 (which more than likely shared some of DOS' old code), disregarding parts like the TCP/IP stack that came from BSD (with other ancient roots too). And the other lineup of windows, wasn't even an OS at first, it wasn't much more than a GUI for DOS, which itself was more or less a copy of CP/M (which likely reused parts of other earlier designs) So by what you're saying, Win ME is just an update to CP/M, and Vista is merely an upgrade to... RSX-11 perhaps. Similarly, you could say this year's models of whatever cars are an upgrade to the last years' and so on, which are all basically upgrades to a fairly generic car model with combustion engine, which comes from earlier steam machines, which comes from carriages and so on. Hardly anything nowadays is genuinely 100% new (never been done before, not inspired from anything). Doesn't mean they're not new products in any way.

Way to break VMware networking, disabling tons of apps from running (any SQL server of any kind, Apache, most FTP servers, RAID software, etc), most defragmenters, most AVs/firewalls, licensing for various apps, most systray mixers, and a whole lot more things. NOT good advice at all! Most services that can be disabled by most users, are Windows' own (that you did hide) -- n00bs can look at Black Viper's guide. msconfig sucked even on windows 95... If you want an app for startup stuff, look at autoruns (it's top notch, like most sysinternals apps) Besides, the vast majority of problems about PCs being slow these days are spyware/virus related (so many IE users out there and people that don't patch anything)

That's mainstream support. Mainstream support for XP ends in 2009. And support doesn't end there, it goes on for another 5 years (extended support ends in 2014). So extended support for Vista will end in 2017 at the earliest. As for the not working properly, I don't see to have those problems you might be referring to... I've had 0 issues with Vista so far (mind you I wasn't an early adopter, only been using it since SP1 came out) Vista Ultimate here is $200 too, not 300 (home premium is only 117$) I totally agree. An upgrade to XP was WAY overdue.

Most of them wouldn't care. Windows 98 could still be supported for 150 more years, and they still wouldn't care/make apps for it anymore. The market share isn't there, and most ppl still running win98 are either: 1) people in 3rd world countries, still using P1's and such (no money to make selling them software basically) -- which is likely the most part of them or 2) the kind of people that won't run your app, because it either takes more than 5MB of disk space or uses more than 5MB of ram, no matter what it does, what features it has, or how well it works (a tiny and nearly impossible to please crowd). People that use a 10 year old OS (and often on 10yo hardware too) -- not spending anything (and usually stuck in their old ways) aren't the people likely to buy your apps. Nevermind there's basically no money no make from such a minuscule user base... They'd rather add new features, work on the next version, refactor old code, fix bugs, work in the GUI, enhance the documentation/website and such to improve their product, in hopes of making more $. Most users wouldn't have a use for a linux kernel in the first place. Perhaps a distro, but even then, first thing they'd do, is try to install their (or their kids') games, quicken, photoshop, income tax app, their GPS software, etc -- and find out none of it works, then throw a copy of XP on the computer, or just return it to the store. And most companies just have too much legacy apps, in-house apps, and need too many windows-only apps (financial software and what not)... And if you think all the developers would all of a sudden move from VB, VB.NET, C#, Delphi and what have you universally to GCC, ditch MFC/ATL/WinForms/WPF and such for GTK/QT and the like, and also ditch DirectX support for OpenGL and all that... In most cases, it would be just too much work (basically have to rewrite all from scratch). Not counting employee training & new hires, new software licenses that might be required (not everything is free, even on Linux), etc. And that's assuming there's even a market for your app on Linux in the first place. Making apps for linux often would mean having to change your business model altogether too (dual license, or sell support or such). That's just not about to happen anytime soon. Windows isn't going anywhere.

You do realize you just replied to a thread that's a year and a half old, without any updates from the initial poster (or about the app in question, and still no forum, etc), right?

Bad RAM often goes unnoticed for a good while like that. That's why I mentioned memtest86+. It's tiny, and only takes a few minutes to try. I haven't noticed any real changes when it comes to mass storage adapters so far. Having different mass storage adapter drivers (SATA or not) shouldn't affect things. Not that I'm saying it's definitely not related, just unlikely.

You make that sound like a bad thing. It's not like drilling for it would bring down the price of gas at all. You guys would still be importing most of it, and whoever would drill for it, would surely sell at the market price. Using up other countries' oil reserves first isn't a bad thing. This way you have some left for when things get really bad. Would you like an enduro bike to go with that smartcar of yours? J/K But yeah. We got to use other energy sources, and not make everything from plastic seemingly. Gas is at a nice $5.25/gallon here (1.389$/liter), and there's no signs of it going down anytime soon. Seemingly it's over $10/gal in some european countries too. @gamehead200: oh yeah. They totally PLANNED on that server catching fire!

setupdd.sys errors are usually incompatible hardware, or bad ram. You didn't give a full error message, or memory dump, so we're pretty much guessing here.

I would try running memtest86+ on your PC first.

Indeed. By some metrics, Win98 lost 55% of it's already few users in the last 10 months. And there's no signs of it slowing down at all. Just look. And there's even less Windows ME users (they're also declining at about the same rate, around 55% in 10 months), and there's basically no Win 95 users left. When all of win9x combined accounts for 3/4 of 1%, and it's on a fast & steady decline, you can't exactly be surprised nobody really cares about or develops for your platform anymore. Another 10 months at that pace, and all of Win95/98/ME users combined are going to account for about 1/3 of 1% (significantly less than Linux, NT, or both flavors of Mac OS) You can hope all you want for apps to keep supporting Win9x (OOo included), but don't really be surprised when it fails to happen, and that the market share of win9x keeps shrinking at this amazing speed...

Well, it's just more apparent at that angle, but even 10 degrees off and it's already easily noticeable IMO. I can't stand it. And that BenQ you linked to isn't the one I got (FP241W, the one in my previous link)... But yeah, the v2400w looks awful too, it's TN based, so no surprises there. Yes, the FP241W is more expensive, but it's still a LOT nicer (I'd invite you to have a look at it, but it's a bit of a drive -- about 4000km I think)