Windows XP - U Either Love It or Hate It

[MikeP]

Hi All: I consider myself quite an IT expert. But my desktop which has 98SE on it for years is great and stable. Never a crash.

Last year I bought a Compaq Evo N115 laptop with XP pro preinstalled. It was always freezing i.e. cannot get out by using Alt Cont Del etc. It was much better when I installed SP1, stable a lot of the time. However again mainly when I install windows security updates etc. it can become unstable. And I mean literally freezes and only the power switch reboot will get it back. Now I am aware of msconfig.sys and the start up groups and what should be running etc. I also use defrag regularly and programmes like Norton Win Doctor and things like Easydesk registry cleaners. Never a problem. I am sure there are many things that can cause freezes. But is there any obvious things to check.

Hope to get feedback before I throw it out of the window!

[DaveXP]

Yer most people just wait for the sevice packs it much stable then it steed of hotfixes.

[darkkavenger]

It can come from hardware. I'm as well what could be defined as an IT expert, and we purchased 6 months ago an HP Omnibook XE3. The input controls (keyboard, trackpad) were freezing, while the system kept running. We had to hibernate the system and restart it to get control again. This was a BIOS problem, who was fixed after 3 months.

You can check on Compaq/HP forums, there should be other users with the same problem as you. Don't neglect bios/firmware updates, in case of notebooks it can be pretty useful.

Regards,

Max

[DaveXP]

Will SP1 and its updates have been know to casue freezeing and an unsable OS because i had these problem before i silpstreamed SP1 to my windows CD works much better now.

[MikeP]

Thanks for your input guys.

Darkavenger: Yes I know, I immediately used a separate mouse to elliminate the tracker pad.

Also I check compaq site for updates.

Also I am on a LAN with a desktop but all the machines have had manual IPs put in.

One point to note, is that I always recommend that you take screen shots of things like services menu in msconfig.sys and IE6 advanced settings - because I have known service update patches to change things!

Fortunately when ever I get things stable I image the whole drive in PowerQuest Drive Image! However as MS preach about the wonders of XP, BUT a lot of IP pros still use win2K!, its a pity its not a stable as it should be.

Mind you it has so much in a combined platform for professionals as well as gamsters, its no surprise that its not perfect. Any further tips would help.

Mike

[darkkavenger]

Our whole network is DHCP/Windows 2000, and only notebooks are with XP. It's not bringing anything special to me, even now i'm running Win2K3 on my own server, though it's just a nifty version of Win2000.

For your problem, maybe there is a mismatch setting in Power Management ?

[MikeP]

I would be interested to know whether any one else using windows xp pro has a problem with the system totally freezing for no real reason.

As a help, when it goes, the hard drive light just kicks out and everything just freezes, you cant even use alt_ctrl_del to bring up the task manager.

Usually this happens after software has been added or removed. It usually happens anytime, on just boot, or particularly doing defrag.

If I do a selective reboot using msconfig to disable startup and services, then its ok if i carry out a defrag operation like that. So it could be a change in the settings.

Once I get it right its ok. WHy is XP so sensitive, if MS keep preaching that its the best thing since sliced bread, then why to a lot of guys prefer to stick to their 2000 or 98SE!!

[vcant]

from my experience i find windows xp the most stable version ever...

the first time i used it it was a beta version that i got from MSDN subscription and i remember that it ran without a crash for 6 months on my work computer...

however the more stuff you install on the system the less stable it gets, so i would advise to reinstall windows and if this doesnt help it is probably a hardware problem...

[MikeP]

Fortunately I can reimage back to a stable period. My problem is that I spend more time frigging about with it than using the programmes! However XP should be intelligent.

[neophyte]

BUT a lot of IP pros still use win2K!, its a pity its not a stable as it should be.

Mind you it has so much in a combined platform for professionals as well as gamsters, its no surprise that its not perfect. Any further tips would help.

Mike

Yes, a lot of "IT Pros" still use Windows 2000, but it may not necessarily be simply because it may appear to be more stable.

It could be because their software install lifecycle hasn't come around yet.

I know of several large companies that have only recently moved over to a Windows 2000 base, after running Windows NT 4.0 and 98SE for over 5 years.

Sadly, your view on Windows XP's stability is not perfectly accurate, as Windows XP can be stable, as well as unstable. So can Windows 2000.

I recall having several issues with Windows 2000 that I simply could not fix, yet Windows XP ran like a dream on the same hardware.

Of course, the reverse is also true.

Given that there is a lot of hardware out there, and the amount of combinations that can be created, it is a little "unfair" to call something "unstable" if you've only ever used it for a brief period of time on a very small PC base.

All in all, the probability of Windows XP and Windows 2000 crashing, is equal, as is the probability of it not crashing.

[MikeP]

I have just found the hp communities site. I may have been premature in criticising XP. It would seem the EVO115 may have been a bad choice for laptop. There are multiple other customers with the same prob. In particular hardware/firmware incompatibilities. For instance most of us add memory from Crucial or others and not Compaq (which is Winbond anyway) There seems to be a problem with memory incompatibility not matching added memory by manufacturer. Although normally if Crucial says theres is compatible, i.e. speed, latency etc u would think it was OK. Who would buy memory from compaq at the price they charge?

Of course as the computer is now about a year old, they dont even want to provide us with further firmware upgrades!

[MikeP]

Well I might have slagged XP off a bit prematurely. Doing research I have found that my added memory to my Evo N115 laptop was excessive as 256+256, specs only recommend 384 RAM. But as I put it in at the same time I bought the laptop I have always had the problem - and it varied with XP security patches.

Anyway now ive edited my boot.ini file to restrict the memory to 384 loading and its just great now - Ive tried my best to hang it but it still goes on. But having now reported the fact I hope it still behaves

Thanks for the comments.

Mike