Win ME vs XP

[Dalton]

Trillian is not a window for popups.

I'm referring to the Network Messenger service in XP that's automatically turned on.

I know. I was saying that if you use it, you can trade for Trillian and kill MSNIM.

It's not related to MSN Messenger.

[Shinova]

To Howedar:


Messenger, as listed under Services under Administrative Tools.

[Slartibartfast]

Trillian is not a window for popups.

I'm referring to the Network Messenger service in XP that's automatically turned on.

I know. I was saying that if you use it, you can trade for Trillian and kill MSNIM.

Messenger Service != MSN Messenger

It's the little window that you use in any network that says "Message from ADMIN at 1:30 - TO EVERYONE, IM SHUTTING DOWN THE SERVER IN 5 MINUTES PLZ SAVE YOUR DATA"

Double posted deleted - Phong

[Pu-239]

Someone obviously doesn't install all of the Windows security updates when they come out. You'll never get three-month uptime on Windows if you install all those patches, most of which require a reboot in order to work properly.

Oddly, my RH9 box never had that kind of uptime as RH kept informing me of kernel-level security updates that required a reboot...

Restarts are indeed annoying, though (especially if you have a huge AD box that needs a loooong while to reboot)

Rebooting after I manage to screw up a kernel installation (eg forget to run lilo) or daemon(which then hangs on init, example of screwing up would be piping syslog stuff to psad, and starting syslogd before psad, which is default), since I have to reboot at least 4 times- after installation, after failed boot, after inserting bootdisk, and after repairs made, assumming that it was done right. Normally it would be fine, but the video card takes 5 seconds to start, and the ATA controller takes 10 seconds to start.

Leaving the computer on though wastes power, since my computer's acpi/apm support is broken~ can't see anything on monitor when going out of standby. Also, X tends to hang when the system is overly loaded- ie compiling prog, browsing 20 sites at a time, 5 terminals with running progs opened, you get the idea. Too lazy to hit alt+ctrl+backspace, and alt+ctrl+delete, so I just hit reset( have reiserFS, so damage will be minimal(doesn't fully journal, so yes, it will be damaged somewhat)).

Longest uptime I've ever had on any computer was 4 days on a PI-120 HP with a barebones linux disto, but that actually had a working APM bios. No-name brand motherboards suck.

[Howedar]

Dalton: Okay.
Shinova: Okay.
Slobartifest: Okay.

[Lord Poe]

Poe, the reason ME gets so much crap is that its the last OS based on the win9x kernal and never should have been released (its basicly win98 3rd edition, with some extra 'features')

Ah...

Well, the only problems I've had lately is if I use too many paint programs at once, along with a memory hog like Simpose. Then I get a freeze up if I don't restart.

[Lord Poe]

Thanks for the info, Vertigo1!

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Poe, the reason ME gets so much crap is that its the last OS based on the win9x kernal and never should have been released (its basicly win98 3rd edition, with some extra 'features')

Ah...

Well, the only problems I've had lately is if I use too many paint programs at once, along with a memory hog like Simpose. Then I get a freeze up if I don't restart.

Yeah, that's one of the biggest problems with Windows ME. It has a memory leak the size of a small nation. Which meant that whenever a program ran, not all the memory it used was returned to the memory pool. So the memory available got lower and lower and lower, until the system ground to a halt.

And there were only two ways to fix the problem. One was the old three-fingered salute. The other was to pick up some sort of utility to do the garbage collection that Windows should've been doing. An example of that is here.

[Xon]

I just made the Me to XP Pro upgrade and I'm impressed.
Win XP has crashed once. Only once. During installation, of course. I've even tried overloading XP to see if I could crash it. The worst I could get was that it slowed down and refused to open another program until I closed at least one of the open ones.

My verdict: XP is good. Me can be ok, if you are able to do the few regular adjustments to keep it stable.

Did you do an upgrade install or a full reinstall?

Cos if you did the upgrade it will keep all the crap left over from ME, including any broken or mangles registry enteries. Nor does it update the drivers 100% of the time correct.

If you just have the Upgrade version, you can still do a full re-install. You just have to feed it a valid Product ID for a previous version of windows.

[Xon]

Poe, the reason ME gets so much crap is that its the last OS based on the win9x kernal and never should have been released (its basicly win98 3rd edition, with some extra 'features')

Ah...

Well, the only problems I've had lately is if I use too many paint programs at once, along with a memory hog like Simpose. Then I get a freeze up if I don't restart.

I used to have a Win95 & win98se boxes and since I do programming, I was periodically rebboting 4-5 times a day when I did any development work.

For development work, Win9x is hidiously unstable.

I once caused an app to cause an unrecoverable BLoD every time it started up.

I eventually found out I was passing a nul pointer to DirectSound for a list of drivers. And somehow the sound driver got for that address, without the DirectSound detecting a invalid address which was easy to detect. Took about 1/2 dozen to a dozen reboots before I found the general location that was causing the error, Then a few more to figure out the exacts of what was actually causing the problem.

Needless to say, I never ever looked back when I switched to WinXP (My old Win98se box I reformated & installed win2k on it. That was fun, the BIOS didn support booting from CD...)

[Shinova]

(My old Win98se box I reformated & installed win2k on it. That was fun, the BIOS didn support booting from CD...)

For others with this problem, there's a bootdisk creation utility on the win2k CD, and you can download the boot disk creation utility for WinXP from the internet.

[Vendetta]

I've been using XP, Home mindyou (Unlike most, I'm not using a stolen copy, and XP Pro offers absolutely nothing above home for a desktop OS at all), for about a year now, and I've NEVER seen it bluescreen. Once.

[Shinova]

and XP Pro offers absolutely nothing above home for a desktop OS at all)

There was something like a page-worth of stuff left out of Home that's in Pro.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Yeah, that's one of the biggest problems with Windows ME. It has a memory leak the size of a small nation. Which meant that whenever a program ran, not all the memory it used was returned to the memory pool. So the memory available got lower and lower and lower, until the system ground to a halt.

And there were only two ways to fix the problem. One was the old three-fingered salute. The other was to pick up some sort of utility to do the garbage collection that Windows should've been doing. An example of that is here.

How well does something like that work? I don't know if I frequently encounter that sort of problem (although I probably have...), but I'm both interested and slightly wary about just installing something like that.

[TheFeniX]

and XP Pro offers absolutely nothing above home for a desktop OS at all)

There was something like a page-worth of stuff left out of Home that's in Pro.

Click Here for Home vs Prof

[Vendetta]

and XP Pro offers absolutely nothing above home for a desktop OS at all)

There was something like a page-worth of stuff left out of Home that's in Pro.

Click Here for Home vs Prof

Read carefully. For a desktop OS, Professional's extra features are just so much wasted disk space.

For a workstation or network terminal, they're useful, for a single user desktop (especially a games/internet PC, like mine), they are utterly irrelevant.

The only difference I would see if I had Professional is that the loading bar would be blue, and I would be £90 poorer.

[Shinova]

Read carefully. For a desktop OS, Professional's extra features are just so much wasted disk space.

For a workstation or network terminal, they're useful, for a single user desktop (especially a games/internet PC, like mine), they are utterly irrelevant.

The only difference I would see if I had Professional is that the loading bar would be blue, and I would be £90 poorer.

Multi-processor support - Windows XP Pro supports up to two microprocessors, while Home Edition supports only one.

Is this basically what hyperthreading is?

If it is, then it's one good thing for Pro over Home, if you have P4 or equivalent.

[Vendetta]

Trillian is not a window for popups.

I'm referring to the Network Messenger service in XP that's automatically turned on.

I know. I was saying that if you use it, you can trade for Trillian and kill MSNIM.

And He was pointing out that the Windows Messenger service and MSN Instant Messenger are completely different things. Removing MSN Messenger will have no effect on shite delivered through Messenger Service, and stopping Messenger Service will in no way affect MSN messenger.

Understanding now?

[Vendetta]

Multi-processor support - Windows XP Pro supports up to two microprocessors, while Home Edition supports only one.

Is this basically what hyperthreading is?

If it is, then it's one good thing for Pro over Home, if you have P4 or equivalent.

No.

SMP support is where you use two (or more) seperate CPUs. Hyperthreading is a single processor pretending to act like two (almost, occasionally, ish).

Hyperthreading is supported equally by Home and Pro. (IIRC, it requires SP1 to be insalled on both)

[TheFeniX]

There was something like a page-worth of stuff left out of Home that's in Pro.

Click Here for Home vs Prof

Read carefully. For a desktop OS, Professional's extra features are just so much wasted disk space.

Hey, don't look at me. Information was asked for and I provided.

Multi-processor support - Windows XP Pro supports up to two microprocessors, while Home Edition supports only one.

Is this basically what hyperthreading is?
If it is, then it's one good thing for Pro over Home, if you have P4 or equivalent.

No, this is actually having two physical CPU's in your PC. For a home user, this would only help out on programs that could take advantage. I think Photoshop will use dual CPU's with a patch, but I've never tried it.

Although, with some tweaking XP can be used to split up work between the separate CPUs. I'm not entirely sure (I've only installed Dual CPU systems on FIle application servers where it wasn't needed), but I think you could setup one CPU to handle all the background work, and the other to handle actual applications. With how advanced and fast CPU's are getting though, it's probably not even worth the money.

[phongn]

For a workstation or network terminal, they're useful, for a single user desktop (especially a games/internet PC, like mine), they are utterly irrelevant.

I do like RDP a lot, though (VNC is much slower). For those who don't have single-user machines, ACLs and Group Policy is a godsend.

[phongn]

Although, with some tweaking XP can be used to split up work between the separate CPUs. I'm not entirely sure (I've only installed Dual CPU systems on FIle application servers where it wasn't needed), but I think you could setup one CPU to handle all the background work, and the other to handle actual applications. With how advanced and fast CPU's are getting though, it's probably not even worth the money.

Bah. SMP is nice and smooth - you can continue doing tasks while the other processor is doing intensive stuff. I have a single-CPU box, but have played with dual-CPU desktops.

I can't recall if XP Home supports two logical processors (on a single physical one) or not - if SMP support was totally removed than HT won't work, period. It's unlikely, though.

[phongn]

SMP support is where you use two (or more) seperate CPUs. Hyperthreading is a single processor pretending to act like two (almost, occasionally, ish).

Well, SMP is a method for supporting multiple processors, usually having a shared memory pool. There are other methods, like NUMA (which Opteron and PPC970 use, for example).

Hyperthreading allows a processor to execute multiple threads at once rather than single ones.

[Vendetta]

I can't recall if XP Home supports two logical processors (on a single physical one) or not - if SMP support was totally removed than HT won't work, period. It's unlikely, though.

It does. Both versions of Windows XP support HT, as does Linux kernel 2.4.x onwards.

Windows 2000 and .NET server don't and won't.

[Shinova]

It does. Both versions of Windows XP support HT, as does Linux kernel 2.4.x onwards.

Windows 2000 and .NET server don't and won't.

I think the newest SP of Win2k supports hyperthreading.