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After having Windows 2000 take a nose-dive today, I put on Windows XP. I don't think it's an improvement at all, but hopefully it'll be a bit more stable (yeah, right...windows stable! Ha ha ha! I kill me...).

So fess up...who HATES Windows?

I'll be putting Linux (Mandrake, for those who care) on later today. The only downside: My burning software, DVD software, and newsreader (the programs I use the most) don't work under Linux...which kinda defeats the purpose of having Linux.

Kind of a useless survey since you don't provide any place for someone to put a positive or neutral response.

Since Win2K, I think windows has taken a turn for the better.

First question... did you install SP1, SP2, SP3, SP4? You sure it wasn't a hardware issue? You sure it wasn't user error? In my experience as a MS Systems Engineer, most of the problems I've found are due to application conflicts, user error (like registry editing) or hardware failure before the OS is truly to blame.

XP is harder to screw up for the average user, provides about the same level of gaming performance, takes up a bit more resources and has a couple extra features that make it nice.

Yeah, it is kinda a pointless survey. Just a little upset at the data I lost. At least most of the data wasn't on the main drive (one advantage to having 5 drives in the system).
The system was up to date, with the latest service pack and everything at Windows Update. My guess for the crash was Sonic MyDVD 4.5 (which came with my LiteOn 401S burner). After installation, I'd get a BSOD right before the logon-prompt. Happened in Safe Mode, too. I tried deleting the Sonic folder and still got the same result. Tried to find all the .DLL's it installed, and delete them, but it didn't help. Tried to reinstall Win2K, got the message it couldn't install the boot loader. So, wiped the drive and put XP on. Sigh. Oh well; Win2K was proving to be a bit unstable anyway. Too many weird problems (like apps not starting, but showing up in Task Manager). Yes, 99.999% sure a software, not Windows, problem, but, Windows can't touch Linux in stabilty. Hey, even Microsoft switched their server for www.microsoft.com to Linux

BurninMan921 wrote:I'll be putting Linux (Mandrake, for those who care) on later today. The only downside: My burning software, DVD software, and newsreader (the programs I use the most) don't work under Linux...which kinda defeats the purpose of having Linux.

You might want to look into dvdrtools. I currently use that for my dvd burning needs. It's kind of misleading, since they are simply patches to the cd burning tools to support dvd's (cdrecord, mkisofs, etc), but they work well. Also, there are many gui frontends to cdrecord, my personal favorite being Eclipt Roaster. Nautilus (gnome's file manager) also has built-in burning support. As for news readers, Mozilla's mail client has a built-in news reader, and Pan is also a good news reader. I don't use KDE much, but a KDE news reader is called Knode.

BurninMan921 wrote:After having Windows 2000 take a nose-dive today, I put on Windows XP. I don't think it's an improvement at all, but hopefully it'll be a bit more stable (yeah, right...windows stable! Ha ha ha! I kill me...).

I don't know about everyone's experiences, but XP is the most stable version of Windows that I've ever used (I've used pretty much all of them except for 2000). It's not perfect, but it's a big improvement over anything else I've used.

Socheat, I have downloaded the dvdrtools, but for my news reader I *HAVE* to have Agent

For some reason I can never get WINE to run it. Oh well...
Plus, no DVD-Shrink Or ACDSee (which, along with Agent, is one of the
"Can't Live Without" apps).

But hey, dual-boot works great!

As far as which Windows is most-stable, to date, I'd have to say 2000. However, I have not used the XP+SP1 (what I have installed now), so hopefully it'll be better. Most of 2K's problems that I had seemed to be traceable to software conflicts. So far with XP, everything seems to be working ok. I have no plans to reinstall Nero 5 or 6, and without it it seems to have cleared up a slight glitch with my burning software (CopyToDVD). The little combo of Zone Alarm+McAfee antivirus did NOT work out very well, under XP or 2K, so, back to NAV for now. Although I've still got to try out AntiVir...

At least that's not needed under Linux!!

The little combo of Zone Alarm+McAfee antivirus did NOT work out very well, under XP or 2K, so, back to NAV for now. Although I've still got to try out AntiVir...

Try AVG 6 free edition from www.grisoft.com. It's not very obtrusive and is very up to date, unlike NAV which hogs system resources. As for a firewall, the only software firewall I've found to be worth a damn is 8signs firewall. http://www.8signs.com/firewall/index.cfm (it's distributed as visnetic firewall as well if you want to check out the screenies. I put one up at http://junkmail.i8.com/misc/vfw.rules.png ) You can see it actually lets you restrict ports, etc. Quite nice.

At least that's not needed under Linux!!

Yet... once we get the immeasurable number of nooberts on Lindows or another pre-rooted distro, you're in for just as much of a world of pain as windows, except it's even harder to fix.

As far as AVG is concerned, check out this test:
http://www.hackfix.org/miscfix/icons-av-all.shtml

Not sure how accurate that test is, but a 64% detection rate... Think I'll pass.

I'll check out that firewall, though. I always thought that Zone Alarm was the "de facto" standard, but I'm open to suggestions! At least it ain't microsoft

I like XP. But you have to have a decent machine to make it work. My laptop doesn't like it too much, since the screen saver alone makes the wall paper go away...

BurninMan921 wrote:As far as AVG is concerned, check out this test:
http://www.hackfix.org/miscfix/icons-av-all.shtml

Not sure how accurate that test is, but a 64% detection rate... Think I'll pass.

Now there's an up-to-date website, lol.

tazdevl wrote:Kind of a useless survey since you don't provide any place for someone to put a positive or neutral response.

Since Win2K, I think windows has taken a turn for the better.

First question... did you install SP1, SP2, SP3, SP4? You sure it wasn't a hardware issue? You sure it wasn't user error? In my experience as a MS Systems Engineer, most of the problems I've found are due to application conflicts, user error (like registry editing) or hardware failure before the OS is truly to blame.

XP is harder to screw up for the average user, provides about the same level of gaming performance, takes up a bit more resources and has a couple extra features that make it nice.

I agree taz.

Sure, I have had my share of issues with previous versions of Windows.
However, I now have XP Pro, and honestly can't remember the last time I had a crash or problem, even though I have a good number of programs and devices installed.
I LOVE the System Restore (first seen in 'Win me') and the 'Rollback Driver' features.

True, older Windows operating systems (95, 98 and me) had issues - conflicts, crashes, used to have issues with memory not being returned to the OS after an application terminated (probably also due to ineptitude on the developer's part).
Even Win 2K had occasional problems when I used it (e.g. a certain font in a Word doc made the OS reboot the PC, among other issues), although it was MUCH more stable than any previous Windows OS.

XP is a remarkably stable and powerful OS IMO, especially when you think about how complex it is, and how powerful and large today's applications are.
Nothing is perfect, but I think Windows XP works very well as a modern day OS.

Just my two cents.

I'm currently using 98 and win 2k mostly win2k havent experinced a problem under 2k I can't say the same for 98 though.

WinMe is the worse OS I've experienced and this one I really hate.

The best OS in order personally are: Win2000, Win98, WinXP and WinME. I never experienced WinNT4.

Win2000 is a great OS and hardly any problem.

You may find me as strange rating WinXP lower than Win98 and this is based on my experience as terrible. Not as bad as WinMe though.

I can’t print using WinXP as not compatible with the laser printer and this is one of the reasons why I am using Win2000.

You may not agree with me and these are based on my experience. The bad points using WinXP: restrictions in access, too much demand on the computer, the slowness and incompatibility of some programs.

I know WinXP has a much higher RAM recommendation of 256 MB and this is something to do with it.

Microsoft can’t please everyone and this is a fact of life.

Win98 is a very good OS and I am still using it. This is an old computer, 5 years now and near to its end. Microsoft recently stopped supporting Win98. I still occasionally get updates from Windows Update for Win98. The updates are mostly for WMP7, IE6 and now recently the DirectX 9.0b on security.

I wouldn’t update this old computer any further as too old and its RAM and CPU is too low at 64 MB and 380 MHz.

I do find WinXP Home Edition not so good and I think WinXP Pro would be much better OS.

My next OS is likely to be after WinXP. I just wait and see.

I like my Windows XP. It's features are much improved over windows 98 that I was using on my old machine.