XP SP2 crashes

prius04,

Yeah, I really can't come up with anything truly *NEW* that has come from the kind folks at Redmond. The concept of the GUI was (I think) born With Xerox, who practically gave it away to Apple, which paved the way for MS and IBM to uh, be 'inspired' by it in the development of the early versions of Windows (1.x-3.x) and OS/2.

DOS? No, they bought that from some guy...

The web browser? No, they didn't even invent their own since it was just easier to buy Mosaic.

A preemtive multitasking OS? No, by the time Windows 95 rolled around in August of 1995, the venerable Amiga OS had a preemtive multitasking OS FIVE YEARS earlier in 1990 with AmigaDOS 2.0. Meanwhile, Apple was still using cooperative multitasking. Yuck.

Even recently, MS has finally introduced some anti-spyware/malware offering... purchased from another company. Ironcally, it's a program that attemps to combat malicious code that can only exist because of the holes in Windows What would be REALLY funny and insulting is if they started to charge for it... Hahahaha... uh... wait... they ARE planning to charge for it.

 

It's a bit naive to think that consumers can have an affect on MS's practices. The level of initiative that such a thing would require just cannot be expected.

American's used to fully understand the perils of monopolies on the marketplace. And I think this thread points to some of those perils.

And because American's understood the threat, we created anti trust law and a government that enforced that law. That's the only way that this can work and history tells us so. But those days are gone.

MS, GM, GE, and other megacorporations all give us adequate products and make their owners super rich. That's the model in the USA now and it's not going to change soon. We pretend entrepreneurs are welcome, as long as they don't encroach too much on the big guys, but even then, we make it very difficult for small business people.

All we can hope for is that the world still has some corporations like Toyota, and that they don't morph into the "monopolist" style. And that entrepreneurs still work super hard even though they might find MS or GE or some other "big guy" co-opting their dreams and successes.

That's the way we went down the hybrid path, and that's the only hope for solar and wind and other research directions. GM didn't go down the hybrid path because they didn't think the profits were there. Toyota showed everyone that they are, so the scramble is on.

Hopefully, some genius will demonstrate a viable solar or comparable path, and when that happens, GE will scramble to co-opt it. The research money will pour in. Or some genius will invent another "Netscape" or similar, and MS will co-opt it, again, in will pour the money for research.

It's not as promising as a truly free market, one without monopolies that seem to care more about the next quarterly report than creativity and "dreams", but it's not about to change in our lifetime. And it's not totally bad, it's just not the best way.

So the supremacy of Windows XP (or I think the next version is called "Longhorn") as well as the the gas guzzlers of GM, are here to stay.

So thank you Toyota, and thank you to all the future geniuses out there, some of whom might even work at GM, GE, Ford, or MS, etc..

 

Daniel,

You do buy MS products. You did it when you bought the computer. Windows XP was not on that machine for free. Whoever made your machine paid MS, and they passed that cost on to you. But I'm sure you know that and you were talking about other buying from MS.

It's nearly impossible to purposefully avoid MS unless you are extremely computer literate, and have a rather high degree of initiative.

And then there's your employer. Not you personally necessarily, but employers in general.

Mark

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(snarfo\";p=\"63602)</div>

Yes Xerox PARC Invented not only the GUI, but the mouse, Object oriented programming and Small Talk but desk top computing ( OK it was the whole desk) and Either Net. The sad thing is that thy gave it all away, the glad thing is that they gave it all away. Steve saw it and built Lisa. I saw Lisa in 82 at a promo at A.P.P.L.E. at a Seattle meeting and knew that it was the computer solution I needed. I could not justify the cost. In 1984 the solution for dyslexic's like my self was revealed the Macintosh. The computer for "the rest of us" I have never turned back. I have struggled through command line OS's but it is hard when reversing 2 letters creates havoc. I feel bad that Xerox never made the return on its investment, but it proved that when you gather the best of the best and turn them loose the bread,cast upon the waters is returned seven fold. I would refer you to "A Time for the Stars" by RA Heinlien and the Long Range Foundation. If I were Bill Gates I would retire get a job and leave everything to the Long Range Foundation. The concept is the foundation of civilization.

 

Macs come with a host of software for common, everyday use. Web browser (Safari), word processor (AppleWorks, now iWork), instant messenger (iChat), music managment (iTunes), photo editing (iPhoto), etc.

OSX is just inherently more secure. If you're still using OS9, it's time to move on. I'd bet that those IT problems were due to OS9 or early variants of 10. The current version of OSX is quite stable and very secure.

At this point, there's no question in mind that the Mac is the way to go.

 

Yeah, OSX is more secure (because it's a niche, almost hobbyist, market which gets little attention from virus/malware writers) and it's a very pretty *nix shell, but I'll stick with XP, warts and all. I can run everything I want with Windows, and of course aside from the MS monopoly, Windows has an absurdly huge edge in 3rd-party applications and gaming. Apple has its dozens of 'i' products, but not a lot of outside developer support when compared to Windows.

In fact, last night I had a debate with one of my coworkers who is a Mac slave. He would never even consider another product, even if it's superior. I'm not locked in to that mindset. If Apple makes the best product (for my needs) in a market segment, I would buy it. He got an iPod, and after comparing a couple dozen mp3 players, I got a Nomad--- because it does everything an iPod does, it has a bigger hard drive (60 gigs), and it's cheaper than an iPod. No-brainer. He suggested I try out iTunes for Windows since it's such a great music management program. I did try iTunes and it doesn't come close to serving my needs as well as a little program (now apparently abandoned, but I still use it) from wensoftware called Music Library. It has an excellent id3 tag editor, cover art display, lyrics display, powerful database with a huge number of customizable sorting and views, etc. iTunes can't hold a candle to it... but he uses iTunes because 1) he really has no other choice and 2) it's an Apple product.

The only Microsoft products I use are Windows and Office. Everything else comes from 3rd parties.

...and of course, I just don't like the Mac interface. I really think Windows is vastly superior in that regard. XP is pretty enough for me and doesn't get in the way of my work and fun. Oh, and Microsoft doesn't charge for service packs

 

microsoft is used extensively because its the best out there.

if apple was so wonderful then why cant they increase their market share???

i know people and there is no OS that doesnt have problems.

now dont get me wrong, i believe their business practices are hideous and they deserve much more than a slap on the wrist from the US government and its beginning to look like the only progress will be made at the state level since the feds dont have the balls.

also Internet Explorer is one of the worst products i have ever used, but only slightly worse than Outlook Express. but then there is Active X, etc...

why they hung on to DOS for so long ill never know... they are getting better and better every day. to introduce new updates that are expected to work with all existing hardware is a pipe dream and WILL NEVER HAPPEN.

so if this fails or that fails, simply settle for the fact that your hardware was written for the OS of the time and will no longer function because the hardware manufacturer is too lazy to get off its nice person and update the firmware or BIOS to work with SP2.

dont blame microsoft for things they did right...if you want to do something, install Mozilla.

 

Daniel:

When you got the Stop message, did it also generate a Dump file? This file should be found in c:\windows\minidump. Usually, the Stop message points to a fairly specific file or driver. You can go to technet.microsoft.com to search for the specific Stop message.

Not the most recent update, but that one about a month or so ago, gave me random Stop's with PFN_List_Corrupt. PFN is Page Frame Number. Sometimes I got PFN_Share_Count. These Stop messages indicated incompatible new hardware, though I had not installed new hardware.

I unplugged all my USB devices and reinstalled them, The PFN_Share_Count went away but PFN_List_Corrupt would sometimes show up. I rebooted with Last Known Good and the error messages went away. I then ran Norton Utilities Win Doctor and it fixed a bunch of problems in my registry. No problems since mid December.

Overall, based on the very limited consumer development work I've done, I prefer Windows over Apple or another flavor of Unix. The embedded RTOS work that occupies most of my time is done on a Windows XP Pro machine, the RTOS is VxWorks or Neutrino.

Unix has been hacked before, and it appears Linux in default configuration is more easy to hack than Windows. Don't say it's impossible, a good programmer can hack any system.

At the last major MSDN conference I attended, I received a beta DVD of Visual Studio 2005. I'm impressed with Whidbey, so far the beta has only crashed twice. But I'm impressed with anything that makes my job easier.

As far as Microsoft, I doubt most major IT departments have become lobotomized by Microsoft ads. I've used MacOS for specific scientific and engineering programs, especially those from Wolfram Research. For those uses, MacOS works well.

For general office environments, it's hard to beat Windows XP with Office. As stated above, warts and all.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DaveinOlyWA\";p=\"63705)</div>

SUVs have a bigger market share than the Prius. Does that make them better cars? There are a lot more cockroaches than humans. Does that make them higher life forms?

I would say they're not. They may be "best" by measure of quantity, but not necessarily by quality.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(deh2k\";p=\"63730)</div>

SUVs have a bigger market share than the Prius. Does that make them better cars? There are a lot more cockroaches than humans. Does that make them higher life forms?

I would say they're not. They may be "best" by measure of quantity, but not necessarily by quality.
[/b][/quote]

ummm lets compare dinosaurs with humans ok??

dinosaurs walked the Earth for hundreds of millions of years. humans have been here barely a million or two. does that mean dinosaurs are better???

or does it simply mean that dinosaurs were simply here first and we havent finished our turn??

i think the comparision can be applied to the point you are trying to make

 

I find it hard to understand that MS is the best out there because lots of people use it. And that if Mac OSX was really better, everyone would use it. This argument misses an entire set of issues.

For a company to stick with one software provider it costs X dollars every year. For them to go with a whole new provider, one that is incompatible with everything that they already have, it would take 10 times X, and probably a lot more. So OSX would need to somehow save a company 10 times the money for a company to consider it.

Then when you include that since MS owns 93% of the market, any employer can be reassured that new employees are more than likely to already have some knowledge of their software from day one. If they have an entirely different system, then there would be additional yearly costs. This is probably good for another 5 times x costs.

Thus, to go to Mac OS from windows xp, Mac OS would need to be 15 times better for it to be worthwhile. And even if it WERE 15 times better, it would have to SAVE 15 times X dollars. There may be Macaphiles that DO think it's 15 times better, but I'm not sure if there are many CFO's who believe that.

Thus, I suspect MS keeps it's 93% share not because it's a lot better than any other OS, they keep it BECAUSE of the market share.

And yes, XP does keep getting better, but I think the reason it gets better is because of the threats that other OS's sometimes give it.

To sum it up, MS is in business to make money.
Toyota is in business to make cars.
And when you see how excited Steve Jobs gets about the Mac, I expect he has more interest in his product than he does in making money.

That's the difference that makes companies, and Countries, great.

 

im sorry but apple was here first. microsoft basically came in and kicked their nice person.

out marketed them, out hustled them, and out smarted them and is still doing that.

lets face it. apple knows it and is now making money doing other things.

i see them getting more expensive and proprietary in the future as their focus continues to shift toward consumer electronics and entertainment.

the two companies dont really compare anyways. other than a very short period of time, their customer base has had very little overlap. apple is around now because they took a small segment of the market, concentrated on doing a few things very well, and succeeded well enough to make enough money to go out and do what they do now, and that is entertain.

 

There is no doubt that MS kicked Apple's nice person, just like they kicked Netscapes nice person. But my whole point is that it was not done with superior software. It was done with superior marketing. (And if their software was sometimes superior, it only stayed superior until the competition was destroyed. Then they could go back to counting their money.)

That's all I'm trying to say.

MS is one of the greatest marketers in the history of commerce. They are fantastic at selling and making money. They did not get that way because what they made was or is the best.

MS does not make horrible software, but it's only "good enough" so that no one is willing to make the massive investments to go somewhere else. And whenever there appears a threat that people might go somewhere else, MS makes their OS a little better. Again, just better enough to keep their market share.

Great for profits, but not so great for computer software innovation.

And this same marketing philosophy is at play at GM, GE and every other megacorporation. And just like MS is not good for software innovation, GM is not good for automobile innovation, and GE or similar corporations are not good for solar innovation and Exxon is not good for fossil fuel innovation.

If you want real innovation, you need to get rid of the megacorporations that have become monopolies. We used to do that in this country and I think it worked. The 20th century saw the greatest progress the world had ever seen. But those days are gone. And sadly, I think that the consequence of this is that American supremacy in commerce is on it's way out. Toyota will be passing GM soon, and who knows whats next.

 

And another thing. I think we can all expect an upgrade to IE soon. Is that because MS feels that they can make IE better?

No.

The reason IE is about to get a new version is because so many are using Firefox. Once Firefox is "put in it's place", rest assured that IE will again stagnate for 5 years.

 

You are comparing Apples to Oranges (pun intended).

Apple caters to people to care how well their computer looks like, how quiet it is, how well applications are integrated and how sleek is its user interface. Microsoft caters to the mass market of beige boxes. full of roaring fans, wheezing hard drives and bunches of random cabling.

If [your favorite high-end expensive car brand here] is better, why don't everyone drives it? Because it is expensive, partially because of limited production, partially because of more engineering hours spent.

Why Apple iPod captured 65% of the existing market which already had tens of MP3 player models? Because it looked cool and was convenient. Now no one wants to be caught dead using Creative Zen because iPod turned into a status symbol. In fact, now Apple can start charging more for iPods exactly like BMW or MB does. You want status show? Expect to pay more.

However, Microsoft has an edge in video with Portable Multimedia Centers and with its penetration with Windows Media Video format. Apple didn't come up (so far) with any video devices. QT is not used in high-definition video, at least not that I know of. WMV movies are available at least in limited quantities, many DVD/CD players play WMA and decode WMA Pro multichannel. I haven't heard about Apple formats in this area.

Microsoft has Windows Media Edition. However, WME runs, again, on ugly plastic Dells that don't look right next to sleek Plasma TVs and cost $1000. If you want nice quiet WME PC, expect to shell out $2000-$3000. I think with Mac Mini at $499 Apple tries to get to the media market. However, it does not have as good integrated home media offering as Microsoft. In fact, it does not have one at all, at least for now.

Bottom like: Apple is superior with user interface design, nice looking machines and sleek displays. Microsoft is strong at Joe Radom User market. People who buy Macs will never buy PC because most of them look ugly and Windows UI is obsolete. Joe Six-Pack is not looking for nice look, it looks for cheapest box. So Mac is out of question for him.

As a side note: I worked with both Apple and Wintel and don't really have personal preference to any of them.

 

Back to Daniel's initial question of Windows stability:

After using, installing, developing on and supporting Windows OSes for the last (Oh, Christ!) 15 years, my strongest recommendation for keeping your Windows PC running without problems is:

Install as little new software on it as possible; and INSTALL AS LITTLE NEW HARDWARE ON IT AS POSSIBLE!!

This is a gross generality, but the people who run into the most Windows problems are the one who install any old software or hardware product they get.

I try to keep to do this as little as possible; and when I am confronted with the need for a particular program, I do a good deal of research to find out what kind of problems users have had when they install it.

Side note: I was initially wary of installing XP patches as they came out; but I have to say that (at least with XP), I've yet to have problems when a patch is installed. Frankly, I'm surprised -- but as you say, Daniel, give the Devil his due.

Having some insights into the Windows kernel helps to know how "deep" a particular product can get into the guts of Windows; but as a rule, be cautious.

To paraphrase the old WWII saying... "Is this software really necessary?"
[hr:ac44213770]
As to my political leanings in the Windows/Mac/Linux camps: I always say, there's nothing like writing Windows applications for 15 years to make one really despise Microsoft.

 

Here's something to ponder. Due to the ubiquitousness of Windows and PCs, most of us Mac users (please, don't call us "slaves", although I don't mind cultist, since we're all Prius cultists here ) have extensive experience using PCs. On the other hand, most of the PC supporters have only used PCs and maybe some Linux. So, in your opinion, who would be better qualified to compare the user experience between the two platforms?

Ultimately the choice is yours. All we can do is try to enlighten.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(LazyBear\";p=\"63846)</div>

If the thing is sitting where it is virtually concealed who cares what it looks like, though? For example, my ugly plastic Dells with WME are on the floor under a computer workstation (where all computers belong, IMHO) and, thus, are virtually invisible. All I see is my mouse, KB, and CRT display.