[Hippo]

Win 98
4+ crashes a day (normaly involving internet stuff)
(also minimizng the wrong thing)

[Nico]

Originally posted by LtNarol
I usually have my PC running whenever I'm home (and supposed to be awake), which means about 8 hours a day during the school year and about 14 hours a day durring the summer.  Keep in mind that until 3 weeks ago this was on a 550mhz processor and 128mb of 'normal' ram.

My PC runs 24H a day, 365 days a year, with lots of resource intensive progs running together. Get the picture?
XP can handle it fairly well, 98SE couldn't. Simple as that.

[kasperl]

i run win98SE, 800mhz PIII and 192MB-Ram, i got BSoD's a lot, especially before my latest format. i haven't had a crash since (since is 3 days ago).
anyway, win98SE is nice and stable for internet, winamp, MSN, office, PS7 (bordercase), but don't try TS, PS, or heavier stuff.

[IceFire]

I was able to keep Windows 98 at a paltry 1 crash every two days.  My computer and I had a high level of karma established to prevent crashing

On Windows XP...I never crash (except in one old OpenGL app).  Never ever ever ever.  But then I have nothing installed that should cause a crash.  And the only things running in the background that are luxury pieces of software is Trillian...a wholy more stable and memory efficient piece of programming than the bloat that is ICQ

[LtNarol]

Originally posted by kasperl
but don't try TS, PS, or heavier stuff.

Funny, because I run TS, LW, and an assortment of other thing all the time, usually at the same time.  Never had a problem with it.

[Tiara]

Heavier programs don't depend on the OS but on the specs of the comp they're run on.

[Flaser]

I used XP and I had just as much trouble with it as with 2k.

To tell the truth, did any of you do the same mistakes you used to do on your previous install of windows?

I guess not...

What do I mean?
Install those "security"  patches, updates...
DirectX 9.000000000....
ASPI for NT....
....
Codec mania - trouble with the Nimo pack....

Installing 1000 programs.

Any system that has undergone the use of moths of work is nothing like the original clean install.

I "clean" my OS every once a week.

It is a Windows 2000 Server.

It crashes when you do the following:
-Run Glide programs with faulty emulator
-Run DOS programs with faulty emulators, that do irregular calls, incompatible with your Pentium or AMD processor
-Run programs not written for Windows 2000, but 98 and ignore the problems you experience and keep trying.

I used Windows XP.
My problem was not the fact, that it was overly stylished.
My problem was that once again Microsoft forced me to manage my PC trhough 11 control panels, and find out things necessary for any true user the hard way.

[Grey Wolf]

Here's a pic of the current GUI for whoever wanted it: http://www.winsupersite.com/images/reviews/4015_051.png
GUI wise, it appears there will be 3 settings: Windows Classic, a light version of the Longhorn GUI, and the full version. From the sound of it, I'd probably go for the light version.

And about Palladium, it sounds like it has to be enabled in both software AND hardware for it to work. Here's hoping nVidia will make it optional....

And #3, seems to me that the main reason to go for Longhorn is going to be PCI Express and x86-64 support being native to the OS.

[Admiral LSD]

Originally posted by Maeglamor
[color=66ff00]I can't believe anyone could choose asthetics over usability, that just doesn't make sense when it comes to operating systems.[/color]

And why not? We spend more time looking at the desktop than any other part of our PCs so it's no suprise we expect it to look halfway decent. Do you change the default colour scheme and/or have a wallpaper on your desktop?

In this respect I find win2k to be vastly superior to XP.

That's not a judgement you can make after only using it for 15 minutes. Go and use it day in, day out as your only OS for over a year and a half and then come back and start *****ing.

LSD you claimed that 2k was an alpha? How can an OS that's so clean and stable be an alpha? Have you had a bad experience with using it?

[/B]

2000 is an Alpha, it's an Alpha of XP. MS made lots of promises for Windows 2000 but the rush to get it out before the end of 1999 caused them to fail in making good on a lot of them. Examples include 2000s woeful out of the box application compatibility (almost half the apps I installed had to be "massaged" into working right) and crap hardware support (name me one other OS you can plug a USB wheel into and have your PS/2 mouse stop stone cold dead until you turn your PC off and then on again). XP is the OS that MS should have released instead of 2000, it still isn't perfect but it's a hell of a lot closer to fulfilling a lot of those early MS promises than 2000 ever was.

XP IMHO is a system hogging monster, what is the point of installing an operating system which actually degrades from your ability to use a computer? Half those 'bells and whistles' M$ installed are completely redundant hard drive fillers used to try and vilify an increase in price.

XP hasn't degraded my ability to use my computer in the least in fact, it's enhanced it in some cases. Virtually all of the major operating precedures I learned in 2000 (many of which had to be re-learned after NT4.0) work exactly the same way in XP and those that don't work better. In over 5 years, XP has to be the most worthwhile MS OS upgrade I've ever made.

[diamondgeezer]

Narol - you may have somehow installed an uncrashable version of 98, but you are the only one in the whole world to have done this. 98 is, was, and always shall be ridiculously crashy on everyone else's systems.

I'm keeping my death-grip on my XP Pro disc... after all, even its faults are forgivable given that I got it at a SUPER DUPER DISCOUNT PRICE


*unrelated mental note - buy more CD-Rs*

[Thorn]

Originally posted by mikhael


They did. It was called Windows2000. Best OS Microsoft ever put out.

I'm with ya there... as nice as XP is, 2000 does have it beat...

[Kamikaze]

Ah, all the windows horror stories...

I used to run win98se and it crashed immediately after getting itself setup after login. Win2k periodically crashed for no reason and programs could often go off and force a reboot, very annoying.

Now I'm on linux and it hasn't crashed a single time, and I reboot very, very rarely. And I don't see why you all complain about how you can't do this and that on linux, I can chat (I type in one line and that's about all the work it involves to set it up) in ICQ/IRC/MSN, I can listen to music, browse the internet all faster and more stable than windows. My user interface is more configurable as well.

And all these complaints about gaming is silly too, nowadays people port many games to linux and additionally I can use a compatibility application (WINE, no not an emulator) to run pretty much any windows application.

[IceFire]

Originally posted by Kamikaze
Ah, all the windows horror stories...

I used to run win98se and it crashed immediately after getting itself setup after login. Win2k periodically crashed for no reason and programs could often go off and force a reboot, very annoying.

Now I'm on linux and it hasn't crashed a single time, and I reboot very, very rarely. And I don't see why you all complain about how you can't do this and that on linux, I can chat (I type in one line and that's about all the work it involves to set it up) in ICQ/IRC/MSN, I can listen to music, browse the internet all faster and more stable than windows. My user interface is more configurable as well.

And all these complaints about gaming is silly too, nowadays people port many games to linux and additionally I can use a compatibility application (WINE, no not an emulator) to run pretty much any windows application.

All fine and good...does it run IL-2?  Raven Shield?  FreeSpace 2?  WarCraft 3? C&C Generals?  If the answer is no to any of these then the answer is no to Linux.  When that situation changes, I will be there

[Kamikaze]

FS2 - icculus project
Warcraft 3 - http://daily.daemonnews.org/view_story.php3?story_id=3355 on FreeBSD, but it's a unix variant

Unfortunately you gave a few hard ones    So I can't say whether there's support for the rest, (I know for a fact IL2 doesn't work with standard install procedure, maybe with copying the uncompressed data... I'd try it if I had a copy) but there are quite a few games working and officially supported by software

http://www.transgaming.com/dogamesearch.php?order=working&showall=1

I recommend people with large hard drives at least dual boot and try it....

[Bobboau]

how would I go about dual booting, this 'Linux' intreags me
I have XP and the hourly crashing is anoying to say the least, is there a replacement for windows explorer, it seems to do about half the crashing (not IE I want to know if there is a way to replace MS's entire interface system)

[Bobboau]

is there some way to lower XPs crashiness, like some setting that would let little things go without crashing

[Tiara]

XP doesn't crash for me at (Besides the rare crash when I do something wrong). Nor does WinExpl causes any crashes for me. You sure the XP install is good or the registry set up correctly, specs are good to run XP?

[Admiral LSD]

XP doesn't crash normally for me either. I think you can still count the number of BSoDs I've had on the fingers of one hand. The only time XP ever seriously crashed on me was when I installed the 2000 driver pack for my SBLive, a mistake I quickly corrected and have never made since (although I did make the mistake of installing some of Creatives later driver packs. While not making my system quite as unstable, it did cause kernel memory usage to go through the roof (60Mb+ where 20-30 was more common) slowing my system to an absolute crawl).

[IceFire]

Originally posted by Bobboau
is there some way to lower XPs crashiness, like some setting that would let little things go without crashing

Who installed the OS for you?  The company?  What did they load on?

If you can...format, do a clean install (no upgrades - note: even the upgrade version will do a full install provided you have an old Windows CD lying around for verification).  Then, let Windows XP configure itself...do not install any video or sound drivers unless it automatically does so.  If not, wait till later.  Then, get the latest (or best working) video and sound drivers for your particular hardware and install those.  Do not install anything from Gator, do not install any fancy shell integrated systems (Creative labs, Microsoft, and Corel love to do this) so on and so forth.  The damage caused just by installing this stuff is astronomical.

A quicker fix that doesn't involve formating is to do this.  Star > Run > msconfig

Click on the services and startup tabs and uncheck suspicious and uneeded services and startup applications.  When in doubt, leave it, but if it doesn't look essential then remove it (again, unless you know you need it).  The best thing is that if you screw it up...just run msconfig again and check things back in till it works nicely.

Another thing to look out for is Quick Time...I find that causes crashes sometimes...even in XP.  But Bobboau, a hourly crash from Windows XP means that there is something VERY wrong with the drivers, the OS install, or the hardware.  I crash perhaps once weekly and as Tiara puts it - only when I've done something stupid to make it crash.   normal operations doesn't cause any instability...its usually testing a FS Open EXE or something that will force me to reset and its never a hardcrash requiring the reset button.  , on this computer, I have used reset twice

[Grey Wolf]

You might want to check your ram timings and all your voltages, too. I had one interesting experience when I lowered the CAS Latency of an onverclocked stick of Crucial PC2100 RAM to 2 from 2.5
Boot, attempt to run a program, computer reboots.
Boot, attempt to connect to the internet, computer reboots.
Boot, sit and stare at the computer, computer reboots