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Why I hate WinXP crap!


trodas

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true, - but what most forget is that a system partion should NOT be used for pagefiles.... and aren't ment for spead but for safety (as a system might nead re-installing, and you dont want to copy all your data away from your machine everyttime, reinstall is recomanded).

I've said this many times before, and I'll say it again - the pagefile SHOULD be placed on the system partition.

Here's the laydown of why we've got a pagefile in the first place. (Let's forget about 64-bit computing for the moment.) 32 bits means that we can access 4GB of memory (~2^32 bits). How much RAM does the typical computer have? 256MB, 512MB, or 1GB perhaps... nothing near what the system is capable of accessing. Instead of simply saying "Oh... I'm out of memory", Windows writes less frequently accessed chunks of memory (or pages) to the pagefile - which is on your hard drive. That way, it frees up RAM for another application to be used.

Everyone who's ever done any reading on computers will know that RAM is faster than disk - no question about it. However, let's suppose you've got 128MB of RAM and two partitions. You've got your pagefile set on the second partition. Windows loads - you've got perhaps 25MB of RAM. Now you want to open up Word - which needs 30MB of RAM. The system will start to read the files from the system partition in order to load Word, and then you run out of memory. The read head on your hard drive then has to move across the disk platters to the second partition (which is on a separate location on the hard drive), write the pages to disk, and then move back to the system partition to continue reading the files to load Word. The more pages that have to be read and written - the more back and forth your read head does. Not only does that take more time - but it also puts more wear on your hard drive. If you put the pagefile on the system partition, the read head travels less - and takes less time to do so as well. End result: your system works faster. :)

Even in multi-partition setups, Windows ALWAYS puts the pagefile on the system partition. If it was better to put it somewhere else - why wouldn't the guys in Redmond have implemented it? It's not that hard - choose partition E: instead of C: if it exists and is a disk drive.

@LLXX - what about all the built-in features in XP that simply don't exist in Win2K? Obviously the more stuff you put into an operating system, the more resources it'll require. Take for example all the options you've got in the Common Tasks bar when viewing pictures. You can simply click there and be brought to your favorite photo printing provider's website. All these little things that people might take for granted come at a slight performance hit.

@trodas - XP has more features to it than Win2K does. Chances are we don't use them all, but they're there.

When it comes to the Luna GUI - it's actually much better for new users than the Windows Classic. Telling people to click on the green start button is easier for the user to see rather than just the start button (think about someone who's never used Windows before). If you don't like the Luna theme - you can find another one or use the Classic. As far as I can tell - there's absolutely no difference between the look of the XP Classic and the Win2K classic (except for 32-bit icons). When it comes to the performance "hit" - you're talking about loading about 3MB of bitmaps into memory. Bitmaps of the size we're talking about take no more time to load than having Windows generate the gray taskbar.

When it comes to stability - I've also got a folding machine here at home. It's running XP Pro SP2 and the greatest uptime that I had was about 90 days. I ended up rebooting it to install a security update. The only time that I've had Windows be the cause of a crash was when I was removing a virus and hard deleted a file that was in use. After starting things up again, all was well. Any other BSODs that I've got have been either due to third-party programs or hardware failure.

In the end - you can choose to not like XP, but simply complaining about it and writing a list of all the things that you think are wrong... how is that constructive? In future, try to make a more positive statement instead of just saying "XP sucks".

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boooggy - yes, I did. Makes XP nostably smaller, tought the higher memory requirments prevail as well, as all these things I pointed out there. Yet you managed to hit the point no. 9 - yes, using nLite can strip winXP install size to reasonable about 800MB big one (still over 200MB+ over the W2k) with everything installed and ready for backup that mostly fit on CD flawlessly.

jondercik - you tell me much about yourself by the first line of reply. Anyway, to the discussion. Point no. 2. Volume licence is that much expensive, that is out of option for me. I rather buy a 7800GS card that support M$, who create only a trouble for us and pushed computers at least 20 years back. Hint - AmigaOS.

To point no. 3 - won't work for me on Zip 100 device, tough. Upon more experiments it looks like that very aggressive disabling of many services (epecially the disk related ones) seems to cure the problem, but still in testing. Looking hard enought, as you suggested, won't do anything - the requester is simple enought.

Point no. 4 - error reports sending. I buy functional products and I expect the maker pay well their betatesters to find most of at least critical issues. I won't sign up for unpayed betatesting + there is a huge security risk involved too. My personall stuff is my personall stuff. Period.

Point no. 5 is not about whatever I made mistake or not. Point no. 5 was about taking the control of the machine out of the user hands and place it into the OS hands. I can't accept that. I wans OS that bend by my will. Or I crush him :) Even I want delete file like shell32.dll, I simply want to do it. Period. Plus, there is not a option to prevent such things - maybe a register hack? Anyone?

You won't say anything usefull at all at point no. 7 - what I do and how I work is my problem, nothing that can concern you. What should concern you is, that XP greatly increased the resolution-demand by greatly increasing the minimal taskbar button size limit. Either come up with solution, or accept that W2k is better.

Point no. 9 - NTFS is better (read, faster) ONLY on bigger partions. Say over 6 or 8G. Windows always work faster with FAT32 system partion, because OS partion is small. Why small? To back it up easily. With Win2k the back file from 2G OS partion took only about 350MB. I can't say that for XP, but that is not the point.

You seems also have nothing to say for point no. 10, except useless insulting of person, you not know, and witch have compared to you superior knowledge and simply wanted to avoid the hassle and registration of terminal services pain for the W2k server by using XP...

About point no. 14 - I ran out of space many times and never had slight problem with it. As long, as you use fixed size swap file (with is also faster!), you can run winblows flawlessly on less that 10k free C: drive space :lol: Not that I would be comfortable about it, but you can. And again, this is about whatever you or your OS is controling the machine you own. For me, this is unacceptable. Especially it start at 200MB free space, witch is plenty! Another thing is, that checking for the remaining free space must take some resources. Not much, but it must. I don't want to waste Mhz on thing that only bother me... Luckily, MSFN bring me a register tweak to disable it, thanks! :thumbup

xpmaniac4ever - Linux has too many files, and are too big overbloated chaos to I can even consider it as alternative - not to mention programs. Sure, one can install another pile of bloatware to run some win apps, but only some and you end up of your system partion need to be 8G and containing millions of files, what you don't know what the hell they are there for.

Should I mention that the more files you have on your HDD, then slower the HDD access goes and therefore the slower machine you have?

moo - yep, some took it personally. Can't do anything about it, tough. I hope they rather tell me some fixes for these annoyances, so after while I could mod the XP to be like W2k, but some of them rather bashing or questioning my requirments for OS. Too bad.

But hey, thanks for supportive voice!

cyprod - hehe, you maybe should resist, because I mercilessly smash your arguments by my knowledge and experience. The fact, that XP like to destroy themselves come from their design. In order to make the system boot faster, M$ cache the OS state. So, very simplified - while W2k in boot only READ, XP does also WRITE, and since we are on unstable machine now - W2k hang, crash or reset only. XP write bad stuff on the HDD with various results. From damaged XP to damaged filesystem to unrecoverabely damaged HDD. Yes, even this I saw with my own eyes when my bro O/C older Jetway V266B board and the board killed the Seagate 40G drive...

So, point stays because of the XP design. W/O the caching, they will boot as slow, as W2k. And this will not be accepted by the majority of W95/W98 users, so M$ did it. Unless someone come with how to disable it - XP is not for a overclockers then.

About point two - I lack the "right friends", lack the extra cash too, and my hardware is mostly in costant motion. I have ATM 7 computers running, one waiting and 3 repairing. Swapping HW all around is normal thing for me. Now there is another proelm too. I don't like OS guarding me this way. It is way better to use illegal cracked versions w/o this crap, for performance benefit as well, as for peace of mind. It is enought bad when and win require entire reinstall of sound card, for example, when one swap it into other PCI slot...

About point 3 - witch one? I would love it! :thumbup Give me the tweak, please.

About point 4 - you well answered yourself there:

But then again, everything dealing with configuring security should always be handled by the individual and not some faceless company you buy the product from.

I could only say that one can disable the service to get rid of the potential security risks involved, but there is something else as well. M$ influence. Recently I moved to SB5100 Motorola cablemodem. It won't get online, no matter what I and ISP technicians did. I ended up walking with it to my ISP myself and 20min later the problem was fixed. My ISP in DOCSIS configs disabling some ports. Entierly well withing DOCSIS specs. Now Motorola SB5100 don't come up online EVER if the ports 137 and 139 are firewaled in the config...! This completely braking the DOCSIS specs! I have no words to exress my flustration of how even big company like Motorola afford in the latest and last SB5100 firmware break so openly the DOCSIS specifications (yet still dare to sell the modem as DOCSIS ones!) just to allow the M$ "phone home"...!

It's good to note that IIRC they say Asus modems do the same, but Scientific Atlanta WebSTAR ones don't, Elsa don't and so the list can go on. Previous SB4100 and SB4200 Motorola modems also did not do this...

About point no. 5 - where is the registry tweak you spoke about? Link, pls? :blushing:

Uh, oh, too much smileys and too much text. I continue later, guys.

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Open says me! :huh:

I'll admit there are several annoyances about Windows XP from start to finish. I've been there. Anyone that has done the migration has probably had similar questions/problems as well. :unsure: I'll start from the beginning.

When migrating to XP Professional, we aren't getting rid of the Blue Screen of Installation. That is something that only the Windows Preinstall Environment can get rid of and this area is created just to unpack it. The problem with the BSOI is the attendance. If you let your computer sit in this area for too long, some critical machine parts may start to overheat and this heating could possibly damage your computer. Since we're supposed to have sufficient cooling, it shouldn't be an issue. I take cooling instructions from Koolance Corp. but this still becomes a problem. This issue can even be emulated in vmware. Let it sit and it overheats. :lol:

Another issue is when you need to do an in-place upgrade and you don't format. Unless you've changed the name/location of the user documents directory, the Documents and Settings area is going to be dirty. I fix this by booting the XP OPK and clearing the whole directory. Vista's installation method shoves everything older into one big directory making the previous OS unusable. This could be a problem if you don't have something to move everything back to do a dual boot. The point is that XP gives you more freedoms which may or may not be a good thing. Some of the real annoyances are based on what you choose to install. I admit the OS license is expensive and it shoves everyone towards XP Home, but that's just adding to the drama when you really need XP Professional for what you do.

Some people that do this tend to take on the jobs of being a Video editor or Web Designer. The later can only lead to trouble. From the beginning, people have been asking me how I'm able to publish web content and I tell them that it's a component of XP. Is it in XP Home Edition? No. What is it? IIS. If you're doing any kind of web stuff that requires a great developer tool as well as some advanced publishing tools, you're either going to be using Cassini's Web Server or IIS. I'm an ASP.NET designer, so that pretty much locks me into using XP Professional and Server 2003.

Worse yet are these people that use XP Home on their notebooks and they're not able to connect to their domain controller at work. You already realize the problems that spread from here. So far Home Edition seems to be the quagmire that has gained so much popularity from being cheap. It doesn't stand alone though. I have a build of XP Media Center and it's designed off of the XP Professional binaries. I did some comparing with other people and their MCE seems to be based off of Home Edition. My build supports IIS and all that fun stuff. I'm not sure why it would be in a Media Center, but more power to me.

So far "XP" exists in the following variants:

Windows XP Starter Edition

Windows XP Home Edition

Windows XP Embedded

Windows XP Professional

Windows XP Media Center Edition

Windows XP Tablet PC Edition

Short of Home and bizarre Media Center builds, there should be no real problem.

This is already getting too long and I don't want to write more. x_X

The point is know what you're buying before you do so. Evaluate the build.

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xpmaniac4ever - Linux has too many files, and are too big overbloated chaos to I can even consider it as alternative - not to mention programs. Sure, one can install another pile of bloatware to run some win apps, but only some and you end up of your system partion need to be 8G and containing millions of files, what you don't know what the hell they are there for.

Should I mention that the more files you have on your HDD, then slower the HDD access goes and therefore the slower machine you have?

And how big of a difference are we talking here? A few milliseconds? Properly defragmented, you really shouldn't be noticing any difference in performeance between having 10GB of files and 20GB (given that you've got enough free space.

As for Linux - most distributions come with full software packages. When you install Linux - you install everything. There are ways to customize the installer to get just the core system to save space. Do you know what every single file on your Win2K system does? Every single one? I'm guessing that there are about 10,000 or so for you to dig though...

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Heh if this topic had title avoid Vista I would understand to some extent but XP...hehe it's with us for so long now, isn't it too late to avoid.

Btw max nlitement for xp is 86MB ISO, 200MB installed, while 2k is 66/170.

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I hear you, I just finished playing with 2005 mce SP2 built in and while it was more stable than past xp's, i still didnt feel safe running it.

I tried 2000, xp pro too and it wont be long till scandisk thrashes the works.

From normal shutdown to corrupt files in 60seconds, or less.

Thank goodness for 98SE :thumbup

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  • 4 months later...

And I got new reason why don't use XP:

17) on WinXP is not possible setup a D: root directory as the pictures directory (that what IE open as default save directory), but it must be any other directory that the root one, like D:/stuff. On Win2k is easily possible using TweakUI to set this dir as root one, not to mention I can't yet get rid of the pictures directory (and it's subdirectories) showing on XP with large thumbnails from the pics made :realmad:

Now since I even disabled most services, I still can't get rid of these thumbnails. Anyone can help? :unsure:

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@Trodas

I agree with you on your point 13

Do you know nlite ? You know the best thing to happen to pc since cd burner.

For me, nlite take care of annoyance of your point 2,3,4,5,6,9,11 and 14.

Maybe you should try it.

Win2k is good, But Xp is more recent and many thing need it. I dont use it by choice.

Using nlite make the experience tolerable.

:thumbup

Nlite rock, without it I would be a Linux Terrorrist

:)

Quoting Trodas: 'I using mostly over 50+ programs'

Before you, I though I was a computer freak.

gusfraba, gusfraba, gusfraba Trodas

Edited by albator
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