CoffeeFiend

Which like PC_LOAD_LETTER said, were mostly imaginary or trivial -- and I would add, plain old hearsay from haters (based solely on pre-SP1 issues, a large part of which would be due to drivers, much like your XP x64) and also "being different" from the old XP they're used to, after using it for ages. Neither will run great on an ancient box, both will run great on a modern box. On average hardware, Win7 will run somewhat better. There are 2 versions, yes. It all depends on how good the x64 drivers are for your particular hardware. As for slowdowns, if your computer is any good (and it likely is, being 64 bit capable), both Vista and Win7 would run just fine.

That this guy is making a lot of big accusations, based on very little evidence, and draws bad conclusions. Right off the bat, I can't reproduce his MMC issues. Sounds like he just discovered how bad nvidia drivers really are...

CCleaner is great, to remove crap in general, but as for making things faster, you never heard me claim that. It just keeps things tidy. I used to use batch files way back in the Win9x days, but that was a PITA in general. You had to keep track of every location, which changed with software versions (e.g. browser caches), and batch files were pretty limited (forget about MRUs). I can also recall the batch terminating unexpectedly sometimes, or throwing loads of error messages on files it couldn't delete (e.g. temp files in use that couldn't be deleted). With CCleaner, it just works, it does it all quite well, somebody else takes care of updating the locations (file & registry) for you already and the interface is pretty good too (there's even a preview of what'll get nuked)

That's not what I said. I said that once they create a new user on that box, those new users will still have to go through all this. Settings chosen via IEAK (last I checked at least) will also work for new users. As for updates, I've stopped using IE for that a couple years ago too (Vista & Win 7 don't use IE for that anymore).

-X-: the thing about those settings is, they'll only work for the current user. Not newly created users. Personally, I only use IE as a Firefox downloader, so no idea (and at work, I force IE settings using group policy)

Hell no. Meta keywords used to be big, but these days most search engines (including google) mostly disregard them as they've been thoroughly abused for SEO purposes. Just look at what google indexes. keywords ain't on that list, and like it says at the bottom: "Just remember that Google will ignore meta tags it doesn't know."

XP 64 bit was always like that, plagued with driver problems and what not. Vista SP1 (and SP2) x64 runs great, I've had no problems with it whatsoever. Win7 x64 also runs just fine.

It's not so much divx related, as much as 99.99999% of video stuff these days (MPEG4-based, be it ASP or AVC, like divx, xvid, x264 and almost everything else) isn't supported by your CPU. Besides, your CPU is likely too slow to play such files at normal speed using ffdshow or anything else using the libavcodec lib (w/o dropping a lot of frames and getting severe audio lag problems, even with all post-processing disabled), while most other codecs will flat out not work like you've discovered. As for converters, I normally use VirtualDubMod (along with avisynth), but the odds of all that supporting your CPU are near 0% too. As for DVD Shrink, that's not encoding, that's transcoding (MUCH MUCH faster), and 11h isn't exactly what I'd call fast. My 2 year old box (using the 2nd cheapest CPU you could buy at the time) encodes a full movie in xvid (good profile too, and with pretty good avisynth script) in about 30 mins (with a newer CPU, it would be closer to 10). Converting to divx or xvid would likely take over a week on your box, and it couldn't even play them back afterwards (too slow).

Actually, it matters a great deal. I believe that's your issue right there. Such a very old CPU (Socket 370, from 1999 era) doesn't support any SIMD instruction sets beyond MMX (no SSE, SSE2, etc), hence the illegal instruction errors. Most video stuff these days is optimized for SSE2 at least. You might be able to use some xvid builds instead, but either ways it'll be extremely slow (the latest DivX in H.264 mode would brutal too). That also explains your other crashes. Most likely, all the newer codecs will give you issues. BTW, Win2k is not supported either, and a mid-range P4 is recommended for SD (even then, still slow). Long story short, you're WAY overdue for an upgrade.

0xC000001D means illegal instruction. I don't think that would be a missing runtime problem, besides, the divx requirements page doesn't say anything about it and if it needed it, it would likely bundle & install it anyways. I'd still go over that requirements list. Anyways. We basically have almost nothing to work from. You didn't really state much, and we'd need LOTS more infos -computer hardware (CPU, etc) -OS used (SP?) and if you're using any particular protection (AV, etc), and if you have the latest video/sound drivers and directx -if you have any codecs or codec packs installed, and particular versions of each -which app you're using to encode -does the VOB files play without crashing in any old media player? -does it encode fine if you pick another codec? -which version of divx is that? ... Right now, we can't even tell what's actually crashing. Could be the encoding app, the MPEG2 codec trying to decode to decode the VOB files, or the divx codec, or a number of other things (muxer/demuxer, some bad filter loading itself like the dreaded mmswitch.ax, bad PIDs in the MPEG2, stream errors, etc). And without knowing what crashes for sure, it's hard to guess why it does it, and how to solve that. Then again, I haven't used the divx codec in a lot of years. I would try xvid instead and see if that works. More advanced tests could be done using graphedit.

IEAK

You're not alone having that problem, and normally disabling offloading fixes it. I'd make sure it's also disabled in the VMs.

Yeah, proper video drivers for Vista 2 years late -- right in time for Win7 Similarly, it seems to be almost only nvidia NICs getting these problems. As for the reported Realtek, I've had no such issues, with either 8111/8169 or 8168C(P), on several boxes, using the drivers on the disc or from windows update.

Try disabling TCP checksum offloading. I bet that'll do the trick.

Might be a problem with your profile, an addon, a corrupted install or something along those lines. 3.5.2 is working just fine here. I'd say give us a network trace, but there would be infos in it so there's not much we can do, until we can reproduce the problem on our end.

Just how many times do you plan on posting the exact same thing? I'm listening to: Slayer/Seasons in the Abyss/Dead Skin Mask.

That's more or less what came across my mind: "I guess I'll just keep running XP in vmware for such things" (until I get my next box that'll run Hyper-V, which also requires VT/AMD-V, so it'll be AMD too) However, your Q6700 supports VT. You're lucky.

"Before you download Windows Virtual PC requires a CPU with the Intel® Virtualization Technology or AMD-V™ feature turned on." That sucks, especially for most people with Intel CPUs i.e. anything pre-Core 2, and even in that era, there's a lot of them that don't support it e.g. the entire E2xx line, most of the E5xx line (only the versions introduced a month ago do), most of the E7xxx line (only the versions introduced a month ago or so do), the entire Core 2 Quad Q8xxx series seemingly, a LOT mobile C2D's too, all the Pentium D 8xx series, all P4's (save for like 2 specific models), all Celeron and Celeron D series, and all Pentium M's. That's not exactly great (and that's half the reason my next box is going to be AMD as well). I'm definitely not buying a new CPU for that -- doubly so when it has to be a "premium" CPU (read: more expensive than what I really need) to support it. I'd have to spend like $200 for something that has it and that matches the performance of my old CPU. And at that point, I might as well get a quad instead, but then it has to be a Q9xx to get VT, which basically costs as much as a i7, only, you're still stuck with the old crappy architecture (Socket 775, FSB, etc). And going i7 also means a new expensive motherboard and DDR3 (more $$$ I don't have). Thanks Intel for the price gouging and crippling your affordable CPUs! That means my kids (who don't need it) can use it on their AMD boxes, but not me on our fastest box (C2D w/o VT)... That's a pretty big deal breaker for many. None of our computers at work that are a year old or less support it either (nevermind the older ones and laptops). Edit: Similar story for VMWare. You can't have 64 bit guest OS'es even if your host CPU is 64 bit and you also run a x64 OS, unless your CPU also has VT. Thanks Intel!

The Win9x lovers aren't listening, like usual, just regurgitating their non-points. I invite them to check older posts in this very thread, in which the Win9x users have successfully rebutted their non-points many times. If it's that easy to find such infos that proves us wrong, you're also welcome to copy/paste them here. So far those "points" Win9x'ers have made have been for the most part delusional nonsense (the latest bit being that "With proper configuration and patching, NT systems can be just as secure as any 9x system out there." that JustinStacey.x already quoted - I laughed out loud) Not if you use EFS or BitLocker. It's no help at all then. Yep, only game over for Win9x. Oh wait, you didn't even need to pop in a CD for that. And BTW, double ctrl-alt-del doesn't actually do anything in Vista/Win7 either (don't have a XP box anymore, can't check for sure)

Indeed, NOTHING to do with them. The filesystem itself hides NOTHING. It could be hiding in plain sight right in the root on a FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, EXT2, EXT3 partition or anything else just fine. It's the code (the rootkit) that hides the files by hijacking your OS functions, NOT the filesystem, which is irrelevant here. That's how rootkits work. And like I said before, DOS isn't protected from any of this in any way. Of course you haven't seen code that does this nowadays, as nobody writes viruses for DOS anymore.

As in, willingly self-rickrolling?

It won't be of any help for avi files and youtube and that kind of thing, as the mp3 sound (or similar codecs) will be decoded by your CPU anyway. AFAIK all that stuff is also done in software, so no help there either. Although the SB Live will have better sound quality for sure, over an old low-end stereo-only AC97 codec. Edit: Well, if it's not even a Live series card (Ensoniq ES1373 based)... It'll likely have a slight edge over the onboard codec, but not by much. But seriously, even this $8 card has better audio than both (that's the absolute cheapest card I've ever seen). Or for $11 you can have 8 channel 96/24 playback, with support for recent codecs (DD EX/DTS ES ) and more.

Nice black and white view. Although very true in Win9x' case. As for NT, different story. In the real world, people will run into malware now and then, and when it happens, the layered security truly helps. From techs to make the exploits not work at all (e.g. DEP), to making them run trapped in a sandbox (no system access whatsoever), and ACLs greatly limiting exposure. It's not the same at all. Which only shows you know nothing about the subject. Routers aren't magical, or all powerful. They're really just crappy little embedded processors (read: cheap, and very often with exceptionally poor and truly appalling build quality), running a very basic kernel and something like iptables on top of that. Like most Linksys, which use Linux (or VxWorks) and iptables indeed (with a crappy broadcom that overheats, almost no flash, and not much RAM). In fact, some routers don't even have firewalls but are rather just dumb NAT boxes (very limited protection). If you want a great firewall (with actual rules, not just a dumb NAT box), then pretty much all the best options are software, like ISA Server, pfSense, m0n0wall, ipcop, smoothwall, etc (although there are some decent "hardware" firewalls like sonicwall makes). Says you. It only seems that way because you missed my point entirely. Which I'd like you to list and explain for us to thoroughly debunk. FUD. Which only shows, like JustinStacey said, that you have no idea what you're saying. There are standard features to elevate permissions, which require the password or the hash, neither of which the exploit would have. It's exactly like the sudo mechanism on Linux or Mac OS X. You're essentially saying those are vulnerabilities too, and trivial to bypass. Except, rootkits are totally not a NT-only thing, and it doesn't come from there either. They also exist on Linux, OS X, BSD, Solaris and others. Win9x is not safe either. Even in the MS-DOS era, viruses were using similar techniques to hide themselves (e.g. hooking int 21 and filtering the results of functions like 4E/find first file and 4F/find next file, plus hooking int 13 and always returing "clean" bootsectors and so on). In fact, most OS'es on this list offer a decent level of security against those (like ACLs preventing installing one, without having to enter admin pwd or getting "access denied" errors), save for Win9x. Except, it has nothing to do at all with the filesystem.

That's what I was saying at the beginning. 94% prefer ClearType, but the others either don't care (1%) or don't like it (5%). Looks like you fall in that 5%. Some people prefer aliased fonts, nothing wrong with that. ClearType looks much better IMO, a LOT easier to read, even at 1920x1200 on a 24" LCD.

Not at all. Like I said, anything that uses the network is affected by buffer overflows and such exploits. That was merely one example. If you say so They certainly are, be they software, or software running on a specialized box (*all* firewalls are basically software). But hey, you keep thinking that. According to you, perhaps (BTW, Ranum's ideas are quite funny). The rest of us live in the real world, where bad things happen now and then, and have to be fixed. Just like we have hospitals in case you break your leg. You're right, it's security by incompatibility (based on obsolescence) and not being a target. It has nothing to do with obscurity. The OS certainly needs it, just like the browser (many users in this section are still using IE6 too) and plenty of other software. Your own extremely limited view of security seems to rest solely on having network services or not (being featureless), disregarding everything else, especially when the rest is so full of holes that there's practically only air left.