Andromeda43

Dang, that's a hard act to follow. I learned 30+ years ago, with DOS 2.0 to not let my expectations exceed the capability of the OS. It was what it was. I didn't like the OS of the Commodore 64 very much either, so I re-wrote the dang thing. Then it worked pretty good. But when I started using DOS, I said to myself, "learn to use it the way it was written, and don't worry about it too much". So I did! The writers of MS products, all the way back to DOS 2.0 have been very optimistic about what kind of a lame system someone would try to run their OS on. For instance the Dell desktop that came out with only 128 meg of ram and a 4 gig hard drive. In MY world, that would be cause for legal action, but they got away with it without ever any court action at all. People bought that POC machine and ran it as if they really had something to brag about. To this old tech, that PC belonged on a manure pile somewhere. So MS wrote into their OS's all sorts of what we in the business call "Safe Defaults" so their OS could run on even the POC Dells, ect. The trick today is to know how to reprogram the OS to bypass the SAFE Defaults to get down to the real OS that will run at it's maximum performance. I can reprogram a brand new PC today and at least DOUBLE its performance. So don't gripe about any OS until you've learned how to tweak and tune it for its maximum performance. Eh? Out of the box, every OS will run at about 30% of its possible performance. I'm speaking of Windows.....all versions. Cheers mate! B)

The latest version of "Classic Shell" does not actually disable the Win-8 UI, but it politely bypasses it and allows a boot to go right to the desktop, which then can be customized to look pretty much like you want it. My own desktop, under the Classic Shell, looks just like my windows XP desktop. http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/ I highly recommend it! Andromeda43 B)

I shut down about 24 services on XP, around 40 on Win-7 and it looks like Win-8 will have even more, to either shut down (Disable) completely or at least put into "Manual" mode. Doing it manually takes way too much time, so I wrote a batch file, to do it in about two seconds. B)

I made the upgrade, from Windows 98 to XP about 12 years ago, skipping Windows ME all together. When Vista came out, I tested it and determined It was not for me. Likewise when Win-7 came out, it too went seriously wanting. It won't run the programs that I use every day. Now I'm testing Windows 8, both 32 bit on a laptop and 64 bit on a desktop. Again, I find it seriously lacking. So it looks like XP-Pro-SP3 will continue to be my OS of choice till they drop me in a hole and kick dirt in on top of me. Long Live XP Fanatics! B)

WOW! And I thought I was OLD SCHOOL! My vote is for Firefox, and I set it up to AUTO Update. It's a collaborative effort, from programmers worldwide and will be updated often. Firefox 12 is working just GREAT with Windows 8 pre release versions. Don't hobble yourself though,,,, go ahead and install the latest Flash, Shockwave and even Java to get the most out of your Browser. Both Ad Block + and I.E. Tab work great with FF 12.0. Cheers Mates and Happy Browsing! B)

One nice thing about Win-8 is it's an easy download and it's FREE. When did you ever get an OS from MS that was free. I've installed it about eight times now, so I have a little experience with it. First, if you install it on a system that already has an OS on it, Win-8 will try to install as an update. This has caused untold grief for the untrained user. So after several aborted installs, I've come up with a formula for a faultless install. Download the ISO and burn the Install DVD. Then prepare a HD for the install by wiping it clean. I used my DOS boot disk and the DOS FDISK program to remove old partitions and create just one new one, for the Win-8 install. Don't worry about the format, the installer will take care of that. If you have an existing OS on another HD, disconnect that drive so the Win-8 Installer can't see it. For the beginner I suggest to set up just one user, with NO password. Without a touch screen, the Metro UI which looks like a cell phone touch screen, is pretty useless. There is a very simple registry tweak that turns off the Metro UI theme and restores the desktop to one that looks a lot like XP Classic. I downloaded the City Lights theme from MS and my desktop looks great! I have my last install of Windows 8 running on a six year old Compaq desktop, running a P4 CPU, just 2 gig's of ram, and a 200gig SATA II hard drive. All be it a little slow, Win-8 is running just great on that old PC. I have many software titles running on Win-8, even Sol from Windows XP. The entire subject is discussed in a lot more detail on the www.windows8forums.com I run Windows XP-Pro-SP3 as my everyday OS and probably will till I die. I will never run Win-7. It a huge beast and much slower than Win-8. Win 7 will totally get it's bum kicked when Win 8 hits the market in 2014. Happy New Year Mates! B)

I read that and it struck a note with me. My Acer One netbook has a lot of capability, but booting from an SD card is NOT one of them, however it boots from a USB stick just fine. So, if I want to boot from a bootable SD card that I made on my main PC, I just put it into a little SD card reader that plugs into a USB port. Voila, booting from the SD card. The Netbook also does not have a CD/DVD rom drive. but if you connect one via a USB adapter, the CD/DVD drive can boot up the system and write to it. Just a little more ancient history.... different Flash Drives seem to have different read/write speeds. I have an older 6 gig flash drive that is slower than a floppy disk. I don't even use it, because it's do dang slow. I've recently bought some "Data Stick Pro" flash drives (8 & 16 gig) from Tiger Direct. They are really fast, compared to some older FD's I have. Good Luck and Happy Holidays! B)

I have all the versions of Dot Net Framework, stored on DVD. I tried to install 3.5.1, but it would not install till 2.0 was installed. This was on my test setup of windows 8 DP. Every version of DNF, is based on previous versions. No version stands alone by itself. Cheers mates! B)

The new SSD's may be faster at data access, but they still have to move it to the CPU via the hard drive interface chips, which become another bottleneck. Enough! this argument is going nowhere. Happy Holidays Everyone! B)

No way in H***! They will have to pry my web site and my server out of my cold dead hands. Tyranny only survives when good people do nothing. Spybot Search & Destroy is still a good tool against Double Click and many other malware titles. It's still FREE and not under the control of Google. Happy Holidays Everyone! B)

XP-Pro-Sp3 is my daily driver, but as a tech, I have to keep up with what's going on in the OS business. Vista is a has-been, almost not even worth talking about. Another Windows ME! Win-7 has left many PC users in a real funk. I'm now testing Windows 8, which is reported to have much better compliance with older software, hardware, etc. I've shut off the "Metro UI" and reverted to a very Classic desktop, that closely resembles the classic 98-XP look and feel. And I did that without having to install a "Classic Shell". I'm pretty sure that the final release will be quite different than the currently available version. But for me, "So far, So good". My hardware is not new, some of it is seven years old, but when Windows 8 installed it picked up all my hardware, even my Epson Workforce 500 printer. I didn't have to install one single driver to get my entire system up and running. Apparently, Windows 8 is coming out of the box with a hefty driver pack and lots of backward compatibility. So it shouldn't be too hard for XP users to make the jump to Win-8, on the same hardware. Only time will tell. Cheers mates! B)

I'll still be running XP-Pro-SP3 the day they throw dirt on my casket. Being a Computer Tech, meant I had to learn Win-7 and how to tweak it and tune it for Optimum Performance, but there's nothing that says I have to use it for my everyday OS. Simple little things that I can do in XP, with just a few mouse clicks, take forever with a lot of digging, to do on W7. I'll never understand why they had to change things that worked great. They even screwed up my all time favorite game, 'Solitaire'. So I found a way to transplant Sol from XP to Win-7. And what's with disabling Windows Mail? Cheeech! Well, I found out how to re-enable that too. Nah! XP ain't dead yet! B)

I have a gripe, but let me post it just as an observation. Eh? Before a person is ever allowed to post on any forum (even mine) they should have to completely fill out their Control Panel, including their location. It's pretty non-productive when a person comes on with something like, "my computer won't start. what's wrong". Then we, who would like to help them, have to play "Twenty Questions" with them.

Not meaning to be argumentative, but........ IDE drives ran at a max speed of 133. SATA I ran along at 1500, while SATA II doubled that, to 3000 and SATA III doubled that again to 6GBM. I have one of the new SATA III hard drives, but my motherboard can only drive it at SATA II speed. I've tried two different SATA III controller cards, (PCIe) but neither of them seem to want to work with Windows XP. Go figure. One safe default MS stuck us with was that they left the Kernel (a critical part of the OS) on the Old-Slow hard drive, because initially all PC's had very little RAM. Now with most PC's running multiple gig's of ram, the Kernel can be loaded into FAST RAM on bootup, greatly improving system performance. I do this with a Registry Hack for myself and all my customers. It does make a difference. Think of a Ferrari compared to a horse and wagon. Another big hit is taken by all the dozens of Services, loaded and running on the average PC, that no-one will ever need. Another Default. So gain a little more performance by disabling every Service you don't need. A complete list of services for each OS is available on the "Black Viper" website with recommendations as to what can be disabled and what can't. I just put all the services that can safely be Disabled, into a batch file, so I can shut them down in about three seconds. Then there's those leaches that jump into your Startup folder, every time you load a new program, like Adobe Reader, Java, Real Player, or whatever. So make sure there's nothing in your Startup folder that you don't absolutely HAVE to have running all the time. Deselect everything else. I could go on and on, but then I don't want to give away ALL my little Speed Secrets. :lol: Cheers Mates! B)

On just about every system, it's truly a combination of factors, most of which have already been mentioned. But high on my own list is all the SAFE Defaults that MS built into Windows, so it will run on a system with a slow HD and very little ram. XP for instance, will actually boot up and run, with only 128 meg of ram, but not very well. For years I've tried to identify and eliminate as many SAFE Defaults as possible. A good for-Instance, is the 30 second boot delay, and the number of CPU's set to a default of "1" even if you have two or more. I won't go through my entire list, but it's significant. I can just about double the speed of any PC from the way it runs, right out of the box. Thirty years ago, I re-wrote the OS for the Commodore 64, because it had so many safe defaults in it. I could load a game in 20 sec's that had previously taken six minutes. I hate SAFE Defaults, especially when the authors of the OS give you no choices to easily disable them. I've committed most of my performance tweaks to batch files and registry scripts, for ease of application. Bottlenecks? Windows is full of them. B)

MS really doesn't want us using XP anymore, so it's no wonder that so many people are complaining about MS Updates corrupting their OS. I permanently solved the problem on my own XP system by just shutting off Auto Updates. No problemo! Then don't use I.E. ever again. Just a thought from one Old Timer B)

I think many of us have already created what might be called an SP4, by tweaking and tuning XP for our own use. Putting everything into a 'distributable' file, might incur the wrath of the Licensing Police. Remember Orwell's 1884............. "Big Brother is Watching!".

The script (batch file) in post one, looks a lot like a takeoff on my own XPCleanup.bat program that I've posted before, and even have on my private web site for download. The clinker in that batch file is that "Deltree.exe" is not a part of Windows XP or any later OS. I guess it was deemed 'too dangerous" by MS and they eliminated it. If used improperly, it can delete an entire HD, with never a whimper. For that batch file to actually work as written, "Deltree.exe" would have to be copied from an older OS like 98 or ME and installed into XP in the C:\Windows\System32 sub directory. It's an 'external' DOS program and will run just fine in XP, but in Vista and Win-7, not so much. On those OS's, instead of Deltree, I use "Echo Y| Del " followed by the path to the files I want deleted, inside quotes. Indiscriminate? A properly written cleanup batch file would only delete things that really should be deleted anyway, like temporary internet files, temp files and other garbage that will build up in the HD forever, or till it fills up and crashes the HD. A little common sense needs to be used with any batch file that can delete files. My own XPCleanup.bat program is pretty generic and safe and I put it in the startup folder for every one of my customers. On my own PC, I get a bit more detailed, including my Firefox cache files and unnecessary files generated by my AV and AS software. I even include the virus vault. CCleaner? It rendered my own HD NON-Bootable, , , twice. I don't want that program anywhere near my PC. Apologies to all yous CC lovers. Both "Easy Cleaner 2" and "AVG Tune-Up" work great and are completely safe. Cheers Mates! B)

If that camera was a Kodak, the software was definitely the problem. I've had to recover many PC's after Kodak software was installed. Love the camera, but hate the software. Since that bit of experience, I've bought several cameras, but I NEVER install their software. I have Photo management software that I know to be good and that's all I ever use. Cheers Mates! B)

Have you tried, contacting Microsoft, to see if they would be willing to give you some relief? If your concern is to remain 100% legal, with an OS that MS does NOT want to still support, then that would probably be your best recourse. At the risk of being reprimanded, I won't discuss alternatives. OK? The Legal Key is what is important, not the CD/DVD itself. So if you can just get a copy or the loan of a CD of the same version as your key, you could use that to reinstall Windows. Put in your legal key during the install, return the borrowed CD and you're done. * MS really doesn't care what CD you use, it's the Key that's important. But, you must use the same version of Windows as what's stated on the Key label. ??? did you ever tell us WHY you want or need to re-install Windows??? good luck Andromeda B)

Just a possibility: Instead of running the program from a command prompt, which does open a 'DOS' window, till the program closes, you might try making a simple one line batch file to run that program, then create a shortcut (on your desktop) to run the batch file. In Properties for that shortcut, you can specify "Run Minimized" so it only shows up in your task bar, and not on your screen. I've done this before, for certain things I want to run in a batch file, but I don't want displaying on the screen. Good Luck to you, B)

It may be helpful to note...... Access to the bios, either by pressing an "F?" key or the Del key at boot is very short lived, just mere seconds. Once Windows starts loading there is NO way possible to get into the bios.* * The bios is not accessible from Windows. Every IBM compatible computer has a bios, and every one has a key on the keyboard to access the bios, but not every computer (motherboard) uses the same key. USUALLY.... on the very first screen that comes up on a cold boot, there will be instructions on the bottom of the screen telling you what key to press, to get into "Setup", which is the BIOS. That key must be pressed IMMEDIATELY, while the instructions are still on the screen. If you have an old CRT type monitor, that is slow to warm up, you will probably miss that screen and have to quickly reboot, to see those instructions. I've not seen that problem with the new digital monitors. Once in the bios, you would be looking for something like "Boot Order". That wording too, may be different on different motherboards. When you have changed any setting in the BIOS, be sure to SAVE your settings by pressing the appropriate key when leaving the BIOS. Sometimes that's "F10" but on some motherboards other keys are used to exit and save. Everything is dependent on your particular Motherboard. Instructions for that will be somewhere on the screen, usually at the bottom of the screen. Good luck to you on getting your boot order changed. Please let us know when you get it done. Cheers Mate! B)

And why not just use Team Viewer? I've used it to tune up PC's a half a world away. It's a fabulous program. And, it's FREE. B)

I kinda got the impression from his first post, that he wanted to boot Windows directly from a flash memory card. I'm not aware that's even possible. But I am aware that the card reader is not the same as a USB port. I did mention that my own Netbook WILL NOT boot from a flash card in the card reader slot, but if I put the same bootable card in a card to USB adapter, it works. If the computer is not set up to boot from the card reader, it won't make any difference what you do to that card it's still not going to boot the computer, to DOS, or to Windows xx, or anything else. Good Luck, B)

No-place did you mention formatting the flash card as a boot disk. It must contain the three DOS boot files in order to boot to DOS, if that's your desire. Also, the motherboard must be able to boot from cards and/or USB devices. Many won't do that. * There is a program from HP that will format any Flash Drive or SD Flash memory card. I've done both. But you have to have the three DOS boot files available, for the program to put them on the card, flash drive, etc. and you must tell the program where to find those files. Originally I used a DOS boot floppy disk. Now I have the three boot files in a folder on my HD. I've also put them in a zip pack, on an internet FTP server, for easy download. * Then again, some motherboards will not boot from a flash card. My Acer One Netbook, will only boot from a Flash Drive in a USB port, not from a formatted SD Flash Memory Card in its card reader. However, I can boot from my SD Flash Card, if I first put it into a memory card to USB adapter. Go figure! Please be more detailed in what you've done and what you want to get done, if you want us to help you further. I probably have all the answers, if I only understand the questions. I've done this stuff a lot. The Doctor B)