cluberti

Problem is, the "baseline" box with 2GB RAM and a small hard drive (1) was $2,799!!! That's still about USD $1K more expensive, for FAR less (I don't care how good the hardware is, that's not enough hardware for way too much - 14GB RAM more for $1K less...).

So, as some of you know, I've been a MacBook Pro user for quite some time now, and I love it. I run Vista on it exclusively, but I've been woo'ed into the Mac laptop hardware and I don't think I can go back to my beloved Thinkpad line anytime soon. However, I'm in the market for a desktop replacement for my 3 year old AMD 3700 box w/2GB RAM, and I thought "hey, the Mac hardware for the laptop was great - let's check out the Mac Pro desktops". All I've heard is that, for a similarly configured machine on the high end, Mac hardware was close to PC hardware in price and that I should give the Mac a second look. Wow, that couldn't be more wrong... I spec'ed out a baseline Mac Pro, adding just 2GB RAM and hard drives (hey, I was thinking "high-end", right? So, this is Apple's "high-end" box, so let's configure it!): - Intel 2.8GHz quad-core proc - 4GB RAM - ATI Radeon HD 2600XT 256MB video card - 4x500GB hard drives - MacPro RAID controller ... for USD $4,249 (not including shipping/tax). Ouch. To be fair, I spec'ed out a 2.66GHz dual-core iMac with 1 500GB drive and 4GB RAM (not "high-end" in comparison, but I want to make sure I'm not being totally sensationalist), and that machine came out to $1,799 with a 20" screen - not bad. So, I did what I always do - spec'ed out a DIY PC, getting everything from newegg.com (just for the sake of ease of shopping from one vendor, so as not to seem to be shopping for the "lowest price" online - also, I want a "high-end" box, as I only do this once every 3 - 4 years, so it has to be ready for Windows 7 too with little or no tweaking): - Intel 2.66GHz quad-core (Q9450) proc - 16GB RAM - ATI Radeon HD 3650 512MB video card - 4x500GB hard drives obviously I also need a motherboard, case, and PSU in addition to the above to match the MacPro config (I would have to assume that for $4K it'd come with a nice case, mobo, and PSU ): - Cooler Master Cosmos S RC-1100-KKN1-GP case - Enermax MODU82+ PSU - MSI Neo-3 P45 mobo ... for USD $1,737.89 (again, not including shipping/tax). And had I gone with 4GB RAM in this box, I could have easily purchased a Viewsonic or Samsung 20" LCD and come in at just under $1,600 + $200 for Vista ultimate - and the tradeoffs on each (iMac has a widescreen 20" and this does not, and the DIY PC has 2 more CPU cores) make the DIY 4GB and iMac 4GB about equal once configured. So, I guess Apple's idea of a "high-end" PC equivalent that I hear about all the time being "the same price" is the iMac 2.66Ghz with a 20" screen (the 24" models get up to ~$2,500 with 4GB RAM, and the difference between a 20" and 24" monitor for the DIY box is not $900). I don't consider the iMac the equivalent of a "high-end" PC, and as soon as you go over 4GB (8GB, 16GB) or want a quad-core box, or RAID that doesn't cost $5K, you CAN'T get it in a Mac (at least from Apple). Maybe Psystar can sell me an OSX license to run on my new PC? So, now that I'm not buying a Mac Pro and I've thought about it, what can you do with USD $2,511.11???

Correct - which is why I suggested you'd have to reboot the machine and re-attach (install) the print queue again.

You said "number of processes goes up from 28 to 32 - 34" - what processes started? Perhaps a process explorer (sysinternals tool) monitoring the system when you install the update will give some clues as to what's firing up and not going away?

From that client, download and run cleanspl.exe (resource kit tool), making sure NOT to delete the Microsoft print providers (like TCP monitor, etc) but removing any HP or non-Microsoft drivers prompted (if not sure, google it ). Once you've done that, reboot the client and reattach the queue (hopefully you still have that queue set up to use a Windows 2003 inbox driver from the Windows CD.....), and see if it reproduces, or starts working again.

Does not work ... how? Won't install? Won't download?I'm not seeing any issues with the installer at the moment, but if you have trouble I can provide you with this version offline if the other links here do not work.

This is going to come down to a printer driver (or, more specifically, a print processor or monitor) causing problems inside spoolsv.exe. Would it be possible, next time you get the error (leave it up on screen) to get an "application hang" dump of the spoolsv.exe process?

Is it always the same printer they are using causing the problem, and once the problem occurs does it seem to affect all printers on that client? Also, once it occurs, if you restart the Print Spooler service on the client, does printing functionality resume?

Almost sounds like an LSP on the system is malfunctioning (did your antivirus vendor or 3rd party firewall software update recently? Those are the usual suspects).

I've generally found Vista and XP on the same (newer) hardware to perform basically identical since SP1. Also, I've found that the video card (and good drivers - I'm looking at you, nVidia...) actually make a HUGE difference in speed of the OS. When aero (dwm) is enabled, and the video card drivers are subpar, the CPU and memory subsystem have to make up the difference and thus the system will get noticeably slower. I've gotten a P4 2.4GHz 1GB system to perform almost as snappy as a quad-core 4GB system just by installing an ATI Radeon 2650 into a box that previously had an Nvidia 7600 card. Not that ATI drivers are great, but I gotta say nVidia Vista drivers have got to be some of the worst engineered pieces of software I've ever had the misfortune to be stuck with. Also remember that in 2001, when XP was released, a 733MHz single-core CPU with 256MB of RAM and a 15GB hard disk was considered "mainstream" from the big-box vendors, so it's not surprising that XP on double that RAM and 4 and 5 times the processor speed and 2 to 4 times the CPU cores will seem snappy. Vista was designed to use "mainstream" hardware from 2007, which means ~3GHz dual-core CPU with 2 to 3GB RAM and a 160GB hard disk. As to hard disk footprint, if you consider XP SP3 has a hard disk footprint of ~1.23GB on average (according to Microsoft) when system restore is disabled, and Vista SP1 has a footprint of 13GB for x64 (excluding the space eaten by system restore, which can be lowered to 1GB with a quick command), Vista actually uses right about the same % of disk space according to available disk sizes at release as did XP. 1.23GB is 8.2% of 15GB, and 13GB is 8.13% of 160GB.

Depends on how it was partitioned - I highly doubt the Vista install was used to do the partitioning, given the fact that this is new hardware. It's more likely a 3rd party tool (or the hard drive vendor shipped it partitioned this way), and the user just chose the C: drive already partitioned to install to during Vista setup. Best bet is to boot from the Vista DVD, delete the partitions from the setup, and then just choose the resulting 500GB empty space to do the install. Vista will partition and format the empty 500GB properly.

If the hardware specs are the same (same brand processor, Intel or AMD; same boot disk controller, etc), then it should boot up fine. However, unless you run a tool to change the SID of the ghosted machine, you will have issues on the network with two machines with the same SID.

At this point, yes, I'd say so. It would take a quite thorough debug of your running box to figure out where the exception is firing (this looks like OLE code running in .NET, meaning we are indeed doing inter-process communication in this procmon and something's misconfigured or something installed is getting it's mitts on the communication and screwing it up. If you don't mind backing up your data and reinstalling clean, that will be far easier (and quicker) than tracking this down.

It depends - if you install W2K3 on a machine (regardless of whether it's a clean install or an image from another box), you need to have a license to run it there. Now, if you are imaging this to new hardware to retire the old, then the license can move with the install as long as the machine you imaged is no longer in use - unless the version of Windows on that old machine is an OEM copy that came with the server. In that case, the license is indeed tied to the hardware, meaning you would need to purchase an additional license for the new server regardless. So, to recap: 1. If you plan on having both servers running at the same time, you need a license for server #2 from Microsoft. 2. If the license for Server 2003 is an OEM license (came with the server from the vendor, or was purchased separately as an OEM license from a retailer), then you need a new license for server #2 from Microsoft regardless of whether or not you are continuing use of the old server - OEM licenses become tied to the hardware they are on once installed for the lifetime of the license. You cannot move an OEM license, period. 3. If you are moving the install to server #2 and decomissioning the old server, and the license for Server 2003 was NOT an OEM license (you purchased it separately from the hardware and it is a volume or retail license), then you can move the license to the new server and bring down the old.

What driver are you using that it's cutting it off (and in which programs)? If you print to a generic/text print driver (or something like a PDF printer, like CutePDF), is it cut off there as well? Or just specific print drivers?

All you have to do is a little search with a search engine. Scalable has purchased the product recently, and re-released WinInstall 9.5 LE for free again. http://www.scalable.com/WinINSTALL_LE.aspx

Here where I live, the cost of electricity is ~0.10¢ USD per KWH (nuclear+hydro). That means that the 125W PC setup uses 3KWh/day, or 0.30¢/day. Making the assumption it's on 24/7/365, it's ~$110/year. ~$110/year isn't much, honestly, but if hundreds of millions of PCs were made more efficient (say, 25W/day vs 125W == .6KWh/day, or 0.06¢/day, or ~$22/year), we'd save a lot economically as a whole, not to mention using far less electricity (however it's delivered). Does it save the individual a lot of money, really? No. Does it really help the environment, even when we're generating nuclear, wind, or hydro power? Probably, although it's debatable as to how much. Should we do it if we can (and not everyone can, but I have a feeling most here can)? Honestly, why would we not?

Just private individuals like myself and yours, doing it in our own time.

Always better to use a lesser driver than a newer driver - if the Windows CD ships with a LaserJet 4000 driver, or 3300 driver, etc - use that.

The NT kernel has been highly multithreaded and built to run on SMP boxes since the beginning. Just because you see 50% CPU usage doesn't mean it's not "multithreaded". Sounds like the scheduler is keeping something running from overloading your machine, rather.

I could but its around 3.5GB. Not sure what Winrar will compress this to unless theres any other info i can give? Thanks Probably down to around 500 or so MB.

Well, I looked at it - there's definitely something very wrong with your box with regards to .net. I opened the task manager on 3 different x64 Vista SP1 systems, and get very different results - specifically, after loading the fonts and supporting .dll files for mmc.exe, your machine goes directly into attempting to open Microsoft.ManagementConsole.dll and querying the inprocserver for propsys.dll - my 3 machines instead load the GUI controls for displaying the window. Since your box does NOT ever go into this code, and propsys.dll is the properties hook dll file, I'd say you have something installed on your machine that's loaded probably as a shell extension that's causing the issue, at least from what I can gather without debugging (procmon isn't the greatest when the failure happens under-the-covers). Knowing that you're going directly into propsys.dll hook code, and we're doing shell extension and drive extension CLSID lookups, I'd say you've installed *something* that is causing mmc.exe to trampoline into code that causes a crash. What exactly is installed on this machine, and please tell me you didn't do anything like delete the SXS cache... .

If you can get in for a minute or so, even in safe mode, follow these instructions.

Yes, this is true in almost all cases. The driver model is the same between XP and 2003.

It appears so, yes. The HP 4xxx series of drivers are actually very, very problematic and I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw them .I would instead suggest uninstalling the driver itself, deleting any queues that use it, and create a new queue with a driver that is close to the one you are trying to use, but use one that ships on the Windows CD and is already installed. These are no frills PS or PCL drivers that shouldn't behave this way (and since you aren't using the advanced features anyway, there's no reason to add the HP bloat to your print server and clients).