Zugg Software :: View topic - Calling for a boycott on Microsoft Windows XP

Posted: Tue Nov 20, 2001 4:06 am

OK, at first all of this XP hype was funny. I've posted a few jokes about it over in the Beta forum.

But tonight, I actually attempted to upgrade Chiara's Win98 system to WinXP. What a mistake that was. I do not know why the magazines are not racking Microsoft over the coals and why they are giving Windows XP good reviews. As a computer expert who has installed every Windows update in the past and has been doing this since the PC was first invented, I can tell you first hand that upgrading your Win98 machine to WinXP is probably a bad idea.

Here is my upgrade experience. Chiara's machine is about 2 years old. It uses hardware that you'd think is pretty common and standard: NVidia TNT2 Ultra graphics card, 3COM 3C509 network card (one of the most popular network cards ever produced), Soundblaster 16 (the most popular sound card ever made). Her Win98 system has been running fairly well, except for hangs in Microsoft Outlook now and then, which I also see on Win2000, so I think that's Outlook's fault. Oh, and her disk drive is partitioned into 2GB chunks since that was the common partition limit for a long time. In addition to Win98, she has Office 97, Outlook 2000, Frontpage, IE5 installed on the C: drive, and Asheron's Call installed on the D: drive.

OK, so I start the XP upgrade. First I run the compatibility wizard to see what it says: 813MB free disk space required (only have 200MB free), and the Network card and Soundblaster card are listed as possible problems. Hmm, but these are common pieces of hardware! I figure that it's just being extra careful. After all, it also complains about eLicense, but we know that works fine with XP.

So, now I have to free up 813MB on a 2GB disk. That's not easy. I copy all of the personal files and images in My Documents to another drive. I remove everything I can think of. I clean up Internet files and temp files. Finally, I get 850MB free. I run the installer.

After about 10 minutes, it asks if I want to save Win98 to be able to rollback. Since this requires another 280MB, I decline. It then complains that I do not have enough disk space. Now it says that I need 920MB. Sigh. OK, I close the installer. I delete Frontpage, figuring I can reinstall later. I move the Outlook mail files to a different drive. Now I have 950MB free.

I run the installer again. Wait 10 minutes. Decline the saving of Win98. Boom...not enough disk space. Now it says that I must have 987MB free. What's going on here??? How stupid can this get. OK, fine, I go and try to uninstall Office 97. Can't uninstall...some past uninstall file is missing. Fine...delete the entire Microsoft Office directory...I'll just reinstall it later. I end up with 1.1GB free.

Run the installer again. Wait 10 minutes. Deline the rollback. Finally it seems satisfied. Wait about 40 minutes for the install to finish. Reboot the system.

Windows XP runs. Asks to select a User Name. I enter "Chiara" since that's the login name that she was using before. "Sorry, Chiara is not a valid user name". What??? OK, just leave it blank. "Sorry, you must enter a user name". Grrrrr. OK, enter "Zugg"...it must already have Chiara set up, I think, and is asking for additional accounts.

Windows XP loads. I go to the User account setup. No Chiara account exists. All I have is Zugg. All of Chiara's user-settings are gone. Grrrrrrr! I discovered much later that the name of the computer had been set to Chiara, and it doesn't let you initially create a user name the same as the computer name. Of course, it let me rename the Zugg account to Chiara, so what's the point! And even though it kept the computer name across the upgrade, it didn't remember the workgroup name, and it didn't create the Chiara account, even though it existed before. What a mess this crap is.

OK, so I'm finally running XP. In hindsight, I should have just done a fresh install of XP to a new disk and reinstalled the apps. After all, I had to *delete* all of the apps to free up enough disk space for the upgrade, and now I have to reinstall them anyway! A new install would have saved a lot of grief. So:

RECOMMENDATION #1: If you are going to mess with XP on a Win98 system, don't use the upgrade option unless you have a partition much larger than 2GB. If Win98 is installed on a partition 2GB or less in size, get a new disk and do a new install of XP to the new disk and don't touch the Win98 stuff.

OK, back to the nightmare. Run Internet Explorer. No network connection. Go to the System Control Panel (after setting control panel back to the classic view so that I can find anything in it). Open Device Manager. No network card. Nothing. Not even an entry with an exclamation point or red X. No entry at all. I go to the 3COM site and look up the 3C509. "Windows XP does not support ISA cards". Grrrrr. Where did it say this in the upgrade docs? No ISA cards? Just PCI? What kind of compatibility is that? This might as well be Windows NT! OK, go to the store. Buy a new network card for $20. At least they are cheap. Come home, install network card. Now it's listed in the Device Manager.

But of course, all previous settings for the old network card are lost. So, I re-enter my IP address, submask, gateway, DNS, etc, etc. Spend 10 minutes searching for where the name of the Windows Workgroup has been moved. Finally get the network running. Internet Explorer now works. Good, at least I can get new drivers for stuff now.

Back in the Device Manager, I notice a yellow exclamation mark next to the NVidia TNT2 entry. What?? How could that be. Grrrr...OK, go to the NVidia site. Download the latest reference drivers which claim to work with WinXP. Remove the old drivers. Install the new drivers. Reboot. No change. Still Error 10, cannot load driver. Go to the Guru (forget the URL) site to get a newer driver. Download. Remove old driver, install new driver. Reboot. No change. Grrrr....looks like I've got to go buy a new graphics card.

OK, fine, let's try something else. Sound. Gee, where is my Soundblaster in the Device Manager. You guessed it "Windows XP does not support ISA cards". Grrr again. OK, add a new sound card to my shopping list.

Let's try something else. Open Control Panel, Open Printers, select Add Printer. Select Network Printer. Select my HP 2000C color printer attached to my Windows NT print server. OK, it's added. Print a test page. "Error printing test page". Go to HP web site. Look for new driver. No XP support for HP2000C printer. Ahha! I remember this...when I installed Windows 2000 last year, the HP2000 driver wasn't available for Win2k, but everyone just said to use the HP2500 drivers. That worked in Win2000! OK, go to the HP2500 page. No drivers for XP. Read about XP on the HP site: "Windows XP ships with drivers for the printers". OK, so why don't they work? Perhaps we just use the Win2000 drivers? Download, install. Add printer. "Cannot add printer because driver not compatible with Windows XP". OK, so the Win2000 drivers don't work (what?? they changed drivers again??? I thought the whole idea with XP was to use the drivers from 2000. Stupid). OK, so how to I restore the HP2500 driver that came with Windows. Anyone. Anyone. Bueller? Who knows, I sure can't figure it out. Adding the printer, changing the driver and responding "yes" to Overwrite existing drivers doesn't fix it.

Fine. Try something else. How about email? Reinstall Outlook 2000. That's seems to work. Hmm, it even looks like it searched all of my disks to find the previously saved mail files. All mail gets loaded. Good thing that's where I wanted to put the mail files. Never found any way to move them off the C: drive in the past (used to be in C:WindowsLocalSettingsOfficeOutlook" of all places...why applications decide to put critical user-specific files in the WINDOWS directory is beyond me. Stupid.) At least now they are stored on my larger D: drive.

So, what do we have after 10 hours of torture: A computer with big fancy icons and a color scheme Chiara hates. She can surf and do email. She can't print. She can't run Asheron's Call until we get a new graphics card. She can't get any sound till we get a new sound card. I still need to reinstall Frontpage and Office 97 and hope for the best. And we paid $99 for the *privelege* of running this new operating system.

Do not let Microsoft get away with this. In all of the upgrades I have done, this is by-far the worst. Win2000 was bad when it first came out, but it was nothing compared to this fiasco.

RECOMMENDATION #2: If you want Windows XP, buy a new computer that has it preinstalled. Hmm, then again, perhaps this is what Microsoft wants you to do. Perhaps it's all a conspiracy with the hardware makers to force us all to upgrade. After all, I'm going to be out over $350 by the time I'm done buying new hardware (oh, and don't forget the new RAM. I had already installed 128M in prep for this).

Oh yes, I checked the free disk space on the C drive. 500MB free. So why did I need to free up 1.1GB? Grrrr.

I'm sure some people will be lucky enough to get Windows XP to work. Those that get it to work probably have brand new systems. If you have an older system, run away. Don't do it. If you have any ISA cards, you'll have to replace them all. You'll have to buy new software (haven't even gotten to buying new virus protection, etc, yet).

Microsoft should not be able to make money on crap like this. Chiara is very unhappy with her computer. I'm tired and frustrated and still have at least another day's work ahead of my with graphic cards and sound cards. So, speak with your wallet and avoid this mess. If your computer basically works, leave it alone. There aren't any exciting features in WinXP except for supposed stability. For me, stability wasn't worth the >$350 extra upgrade cost, time spent, or lack of driver support.

Sorry for such a long post. And sorry for ranting so bad, but I'm *really* mad about this.

OFFICIAL STATEMENT: While Zugg Software products appear to basically work with Windows XP, I am not going to officially support Windows XP in it's current form. Perhaps in several months or a year when all of the problems are worked out and there is better driver support, then I'll support it. Till then, if you insist on using Windows XP, you are on your own.

Novice Joined: 20 Nov 2001 Posts: 35 Location: USA

Hmm.. Wow. What a rant huh?

Well, I can't say I had the same problems as you did Zugg, but I did not try to install XP on an older machine. I agree with you on one point. If the system is running ANYTHING other than win ME/2K DO **NOT** under ANY circumstances upgrade to XP unless you have all PCI stuff, and can afford to completely wipe the drive out and do a clean install.

XP *is* based on NT, which is why there is a ton of things it doesn't support. I upgraded from ME, and I think it's a world better. Also, you can set everything back to classic view, including the start bar and the menu's, it's just a matter of finding it. (Took me close to an hour to get it all the way I wanted it.) Also, be prepared for the fact that XP "takes away" things from your start menu if you don't use them a lot. You can get them back, by clicking the double arrow, but it gets to be a pain every once in a while.

Also, don't try to customize your start menu too much. For some reason, if you want to delete stuff, or move it around or whatnot, half of it doesn't show up under the start menu in explorer - (The place where you can add/remove/sort start menu items). Don't ask me why.

I have not noticed ANY problems with zmud, or any zugg product under XP, but then again, my install was not as "painful" as Zugg's.

Good luck with XP in the future!!

Novice Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 39

I upgraded my computer from ME to XP, first by formatting the partition ME was installed on and my only rant is that an updated video driver was offered on the windows update site that caused my computer to hang occasionally... Other than that its been a dream, I can now run my system for a week or longer, when I had to reboot every day or so with windows ME.

And the reason for the strange start menu behavior is because of the way the new windows handles multiple users. The start menu is for everyone is stored in "Documents and SettingsAll UsersStart Menu" or something similar, but if you modify it too much it assumes you want the changes to affect only the current user, so navigate through the documents and settings folder to find your personalized menus.

GURU Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 1116 Location: USA

*comf* Sorry to hear about all the troubles Zugg. I usually stay away from new versions of windows until at least the 1st SP. Even then I'm weary. The only reason I upgraded from win98 to win2k was because I had a system crash that killed my registry, heh, so I figured that it was the best time to upgrade to win2k. :P I haven't had any problems, thank god, and it's been rock solid, which was something I could not accomplish w/win98. Hopefully SP1 will come out soon for winXP and helps w/your dilemna.

OT, if you go to Best Buy, they've got the geForce3 ti200 on sale for $99. Well, it won't go on sale until the day after Thanksgiving, but what you can do is buy it now, for $199, then go in on friday afternoon with your receipt and ask for the $100 price difference. I've already got mine. :)

Best of luck w/winXP!

Iljhar

Newbie Joined: 20 Nov 2001 Posts: 5 Location: Australia

CONS:
I've found most of those things to be true with XP as well. I use it on a high-end system and it runs like a dream. However, it's a nightmare for anyone who tries to run it on anything older than a year or two. On my computer, it takes exactly 1.15gb (this precision is most likely coincedence, I think) as it has the same habit that all of the versions of windows I have used had, which is taking up more space over time. I have heard that the upgrade feature was only introduced last minute, but that's only rumour. I do know that it's extremely buggy and often reports problems that do not exist, and more often than not doesn't report ones which do. There is little or no support for ISA cards, let alone other older types of cards. It has a firewall bundled with it, which I tried at first. It obviously believe the internet is a threat to me, as I could not find a single thing it didn't block - internet explorer and outlook included.

PROS:
Oh good lord, the gaming! =]

=====
Tokai

"Life is white and I am black,
Jesus and his lawyer are coming back"
- Novacaine for the soul, by The Eels

Newbie Joined: 15 Dec 2000 Posts: 7 Location: USA

although i haven't had any problems with win xp ... i am having problems getting zmud to accept my elicense .. i keep getting error 17 ...which would mean (imho) that my 3 computer limit is full ..which is inaccurate i have only used zmud on win me ...but now that i have a dual boot on the same computer me/xp it would let my license go through so im forced to use the trial ...which is really erkin' me . Assistance please.

++Talon

James W. Short

Apprentice Joined: 14 Nov 2001 Posts: 100

I agree wholeheartedly, Zugg. My friend's roommate *had* to have windows XP, so I went over to help her install it. Followed everything to the letter, reboot, starts up fine (OK, Ill admit it started up faster, but if you're really stoked about how fast your computer reboots, perhaps you should be fixing the things that MAKE YOU HAVE TO REBOOT?) Speaking of rebooting, I wonder what happens if the only username is the same as the computer name. ANYWAY

In all honesty, your driver woes were nothing. The only drivers that actually worked were for the OS, the monitor, the keyboard, and the mouse. Printer? Gone. Sound card? Gone. Graphics card? gone. CD burner? Gone. DVD player? Gone. Scanner? Gone. Perhaps we can use the PC speaker to send out morse code for help?

On top of that, for some strange reason, everything non-microsoft now shows as not being installed, as well. Which really sucks, because I have already spent like 10 hours over there trying to fix all this garbage(the stuff I CAN fix without upgrading hardware, anyway), and I will probably spend another 2 or 3 just to teach her how to properly uninstall/reinstall stuff in such a way that windows XP will HOPEFULLY enjoy.

To be honest, I never was a big fan of windows. It has a lot of memory management issues that seem to me have been coded by someone who has never used a computer before. However, this new 'improvement' just takes the cake. Thank god I decided to keep win98 from the old days. It works great if you use a RAM management utility and use Eudora instead of outlook for email. Security may not be the best, but I'm not hiding any government secrets.

On a related note... any idea if we can look forward to zMUD for Linux next year?

~~Deca

Wanderer Joined: 06 Nov 2000 Posts: 80 Location: USA

Regarding zMUD for Linux:
http://www.zuggsoft.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=4279&FORUM_ID=7&CAT_ID=1&Topic_Title=zMUD+for+Linux+%2D+Official+Latest+Word&Forum_Title=zMUD+General+Discussion

Master, seventh circle of idling

Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2001 7:51 am

Interesting. So the release version of Windows XP a) doesn't support ISA cards and b) doesn't allow installing of Win2K drivers until proper XP drivers are brought out? It's very strange, since Windows 2000 can do both of those things. Perhaps anyone thinking of upgrading to XP should pick 2000 instead - all of the advantages with none of the disadvantages.

--
Dan Jackson

Wanderer Joined: 02 Oct 2001 Posts: 76 Location: USA

Anyone else remember the days when a whole operating system ran off less than 50 megs? You play games off DOS, and they ran fast(as fast as possible back then). I think that the fact that all the new computer that come out have 60+ gigs of HD space, that the programmers of these operating systems have just gotton so lazy as to have it take up 1.1 gigs. Hell, 5 years ago if an operating system was 1.1 gigs, there goes half your flocking computer. I had no problems with windows 3.1, I guess simplicity just works for me.

Apollyon
Always confusing, never confused. :P

Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2001 6:51 pm

Those were the days :)

And yes, Danj, that's exactly why I'm not touching my Win2000 development system. I don't see any real advantages, and my Win2000 system is so important for software development and has so many tools installed, that reinstalling everything would be a major headache and time-sink. If they hadn't changed the driver model from Win2000 to XP, I might have considered it. But since none of the Win2000 drivers I've used on XP have worked, XP isn't going near any of my other computers.

Besides, I'm still made at their expensive licensing. I'm all for copy protection, but I think $99 for ONE upgrade license is ridiculous, and I don't plan to give Microsoft any more of my money.

GURU Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 4379 Location: USA

I stopped giving Microsoft money a long time ago. My last "paid" OS from them was Win98 and that was because it came with the computer. Win2k Pro was hanging around my mom's office, so I decided to get me a copy and use it. After that, when XP Pro came out, I decided to try it, so I downloaded it from Morpheus. No activation, no copy protection

Upgrading from Win2000 didn't give me any problems and the only compatibility problem was carried over from 2000 - my Lexmark printer installs but won't communicate with my computer. Of course, I'm sure that it helped that my computer with XP on it is fairly new. All in all, there really is no reason to upgrade if you already have 2000 since there is basically no new stuff that's worth it. However, as long as it is free...

Kjata

Newbie Joined: 22 Nov 2001 Posts: 4

Nice rant. I could have told you some of those probs were coming.

I never EVER upgrade windows, I've never had it work quite right for me.

They should have made it more clear that they don't support ISA cards (I did not know this BTW), admittedly, but then MS's PC[year] specs have been trying to do away with ISA cards since like '97, so it doesn't surprise me much. It's even hard to get a new mobo that has ISA slots anymore.

The RAM was a given, you probably needed the new RAM to make it to the min req for XP (which is insanely high, BTW).

You're telling me that the vid card wasn't working actually surprised me. I have an nVidia card (a GeForce 2 MX to be exact), and I had all kinds of problems until I installed the current Detonator XP drivers (21.83), and that solved all my problems.

As for the space issues, although I realize that 2GB parts were common back when (my first box had a 32MB HD), if you were running Win98, why weren't you using FAT32? Having one big FAT 32 partition would have really helped the installation a LOT.

The default skin SUCKS, btw, I agree with you wholeheartedly on that, but it can, fortunately, be turned off. I turned it off immediately, but kept the new-style start menu.

I could always point out that Linux for some odd reason always had problems with PnP ISA cards. Having to run a couple utils, then hand edit config files was never my idea of fun when setting up hardware...

As for my being the devil's advocate here, don't think that I love XP or MS, I haven't bought a version of win since 3.1, unless you count my getting a free upgrade to 95 with a machine I bought (last box I bought pre-made, BTW). I just sorta, err, pick them up when the time comes...

Adept Joined: 12 Nov 2000 Posts: 268 Location: Canada

Nice rant zugg..

I use Windows Xp, I did a clean install even though I was running 2k..It seems more stable..but I would never pay for it. 95/98 were the best os m$ made..but they dont work with everything, and aren't as stable as xp (3 month uptime (since I installed it basically) )

But M$ should fix those stupid installer things...i agree...please never make zMUD act like xp does on install :p

Novice Joined: 07 Nov 2001 Posts: 45 Location: USA

I will hold no opinion that will go for or against Microsoft, but I would like to know if the unlimited installation portion of the warranty (That is if it is a legal retail version) is being utilized.

I will agree with the proverb of Old wine in a new wine skin, and there are some things that happens in a change of platform that sometimes takes help in getting through.

For instance: In using Windows 95 and upgrading to Windows NT 4.0 I am still going to have to change drivers on alot of my devices, and in some instances if I don't have those drivers ready when I do the installation, the computer won't boot when I am finished.

I don't want to get into a long debate on the "yeah, buts" because like I previously stated I don't hold a swaying opinion either way.

Here are a few things that some might want to check out before they begin:

ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/services/whql/hcl/WinXPHCLx86.txt

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/howtobuy/upgrading/default.asp

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/howtobuy/upgrading/default.asp

If all esle fails contact MS at (425) 454-2030

On the upgrading point most issues could be resolved by checking the applicable pages listed above to the requirements that are needed.

One point is that WINXP asks for a free space of 1.5gigs to upgrade. I would say you were lucky if you got it to install with less than a gig.

Being a service technician of many years now, I can admit that I know your pain, but the pain has always been the same when changing an operating system. I guess it is because of this that I can keep an objective point of view.

Perhaps Microsoft isn't the answer, but then what is? Linux? There is one OS that has a difficult Hardware compatability list, and I don't know of too many people giving away their hard work for nothing. So is the answer with a Mac? Some would say so, but if that is the case why is MS doing better worldwide than Mac?

I have given up on trying to answer the question of "What is the meaning of life?" and just deal with it the best way I can.

When at first you don't succeed, ask someone else until you do.

Newbie Joined: 16 Oct 2001 Posts: 8 Location: Germany

quote:
OFFICIAL STATEMENT: While Zugg Software products appear to basically work with Windows XP, I am not going to officially support Windows XP in it's current form. Perhaps in several months or a year when all of the problems are worked out and there is better driver support, then I'll support it. Till then, if you insist on using Windows XP, you are on your own.

I love that. I run XP professional on a T-bird 1.2GhZ with 256Mb of RAM, and I did a clean install (I already had 10Gb partitions) and It was rather nice. I personally like it, although I think that MS should be hanging their corporate juggernaut heads in shame for releasing this horrendously taxing operating system. THe ISA thing's a pain in the neck.

Falkore LeNoir

Wanderer Joined: 02 Oct 2001 Posts: 76 Location: USA

this about sums up windows XP

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2001-08-03&res=l

Beginner Joined: 01 Nov 2001 Posts: 21 Location: USA

hi,
I had a friend of mine that upgraded from 2k to XP and ended up losing all his data on the drive, including his Zmud stuff, and .mud files. He was furious, and that kept me from rushing out and upgrading.

Typically i usually wait 6 months or so after new OS are released to avoid any of these problems, but XP looked so kewl i almost did it early :). (damn glad i didn't)

Drakus of Aardwolf
aardwolfmud.org 4000
Happy 5th Anniversary Aard!

Newbie Joined: 01 Nov 2000 Posts: 1 Location: USA

I find Windows 98SE to be the best of them so far. I've used it for years without reinstalling. Window's Me is alright. Windows 3.1 and 3.11 were nice for their time. Never had a problem with them. Windows 95 is not that good. DOS, I always liked. Never liked the Mac not enough games. Unix i like that one. FreeBSD and OpenBSD are nice for security reasons anyway.

Windows XP is the worst yet. Sloppy drivers support. The activation is a pain to work with. After enough hardware changes another activation. You trade compatibility for stability. It's one messed up OS. The RAW sockets protocol is enabled. That bypasses your tcp/ip. RAW socket's allow in and out connections with no monitoring. This will make you vulnerable when hackers make some progs to shut windows xp down ,but there is hope with just that problem. http://www.grc.com/ is a nice place to help with that and help you improve your security for your windows as well. All versions included in that lineup. XP needs alot of work.

Now on to your normal windows OS's. Stability isn't a problem with the right settings and tweaks. Know what your doing and you got some good times ahead. Tweaking the registry as well as the bios helps. Memory Defraggers work nicely. Turning active desktop off and all effects ,but leave maximum colors for icons on. Doing that helps the reaction speed of the OS a bit. Since you can't use jpeg's for the wallpaper just use Printkey Pro and crack it. You can convert that .jpeg to .bmp with little trouble. Custom refresh rates, try to go as high as you can get. Don't overclock it's a waste of time. A few mhz makes VERY LITTLE difference. Decreasing the life of your cpu and possibly stability isn't worth it.

RAM to spare is a plus. RAM is cheap right now. Need to try getting some before they go back up. That earthquake some years back brang the prices up for awhile. Plenty of ram factorys just ones in the usa didn't get hit that time. You want try getting the most RAM on one board as possible less bus search time. When you have plenty kill virtual memory. It's annoying and real slow to use virtual memory. Only turn it off when you have at least 384 megs. Make sure that memory defragger is installed before you use straight RAM.. It will help alot when going straight RAM. Straight RAM is the way to go for better reaction time of the OS.

BIOS setting's i would leave those alone unless you know plenty about what your doing. Powertweak prog is for those who don't have the extra BIOS settings. The BIOS can give much better reaction time when set right. Yes, it's stable as well with no problems. Fast back to back write transactions gives quite a bit of push for reaction time on the memory.

Video Card's, most of us know this area. Geforce works pretty good for speed and nice overclocking abilitys. The progs for tweaking the Geforce can be nice too. The good ol voodoo card's were good. Compatibility was the best for them. Speed was good enough. 3dfx may have gone down ,but the people keep going. The x3dfx team is trying to get all they can out of the card. Their 3dfx tools has plenty of tweaking options. Voodoofiles is a nice place for tweaking progs. The OS is only as good as the weakest link,(The user). Keep making some good zmud versions zugg. See yeah guys.

Apprentice Joined: 18 Sep 2001 Posts: 175 Location: USA

Win2k baby.. works 4 me.. But I still gotta format to make room for sum linux.. w00t :)
In which, linux will overcome microsoft in 4 yrs or less.. balee dat

For tomarrow is another day, and other days come but 6 times a week.

Novice Joined: 17 Dec 2001 Posts: 34 Location: USA

I am more of a Microsoft Lover, but than again that's just because i haven't ever had any compatibility problems. Don't see why people partition drives anymore, (unless they are having part of it being storage but than why not just keep it all together????) But yes, on my comp. XP installed with about 1.34 gigs from what it looks like. Second, with problems with the cards, I understand that you are angry but comeon, how many people STILL use those cards? If you are wanting to upgrade to the next level of OS, maybe you should consider upgrading your hardware first. It costs a bit of money, but in the long run it is worth it. Anyways, if you ever have trouble or think about installing something that may go faulty, give me a buzz and i'm able to help!

Peace out.

Hey meet my character:
Prince Basher, Of Que-Hagan.

At http://www.hakarren.mudservices.com port:7777!

Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2001 12:46 am

alot of everyones problems are derived from -upgrading- the OS. 2k has a compatibility check built right in for an upgrade, and im sure XP does too. did any of the upgraders bother checking the hardware compatibility list BEFORE they installed? did anyone run the compatibility software BEFORE they upgraded?

no...thought not...

read the reviews, guides...everywhere says "clean install for no issues."

Why oh WHY did I have pass door on...

Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2001 9:04 am

Funnily enough, some people don't like changing their hardware every time they upgrade their software.. I change mine when it's broken, or too full, or whatever..

And another point.. Why on earth do they provide an upgrade from <someother win-system> when it doesn't work? It's ok to say 'everyone says install from scratch'.. but the **** thing should at least work, if they provide it.. Otherwise they shouldn't bother to sell upgrade versions at all.

Anyfish, I'm definitely not installing XP, there will probably be another 5 versions along before I _need_ to upgrade..

Lady C.

Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2001 9:19 am

strangely enough, i've had the same hardware for about 18 months, maybe 2 years...celeron 733, 640meg ram, 32meg video card, creative vibra soundcard, 10x8x32x cd burner (recent purchase, before xp was on the horizon), usb intellimouse...
and my biggest hassle? via's 4-in-1 drivers.

before i installed xp cleanly, 9x died at the drop of a hat...oops, i farted, over it goes...damn, seti turned itself on and killed it...another reboot. over and over, all the tweaks in the world didnt help. (subtle hint, dont use memory/ram scrubbers...you WANT the os to load into ram, making windows run from a pagefile while IE runs in ram is kinda stupid)).

if you have the hardware and the willingness to research IF you can run xp, try it. nooooo bsods since october...go figure.

Why oh WHY did I have pass door on...

Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2001 9:24 am

I haven't seen more than about 5 bsods in my win95 in the last .. umm.. 4 years.. :)

Lady C.