Which Windows XP Newsgroup?

In message , Ed
writes:
I know that this is a Windows 98 newsgroup and I have found massive
help here in the past.

But my daughter has problems with her Windows XP . What would be a
comparable group to this one where I could get similar expert help on
XP?

There are so many XP groups about and I can't work out which might be best.

Ed

I asked the same question here when I moved to XP, and was recommended
(all starting microsoft.public.windowsxp.) configuration_manage,
customise, and newusers.

m.p.w.c_m I found a bit specialised (as you'd expect).
m.p.w.n, at least, is still receiving posts.

(Though I agree with others that a Vista 'group _might_ be better for
your problem. Depending on what the actual problem it's causing, if any,
is.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
-Michel de Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)

wrote in message
...
On Wed, 3 Nov 2010 01:26:30 -0400, "glee"
wrote:

wrote in message
. ..
On Tue, 02 Nov 2010 13:04:32 +0000, Ed ex@directory wrote:

I know that this is a Windows 98 newsgroup and I have found massive
help
here in the past.

But my daughter has problems with her Windows XP . What would be a
comparable group to this one where I could get similar expert help
on
XP?

There are so many XP groups about and I can't work out which might
be
best.

Ed

What's wrong with your daughter's brain? Why would anyone in their
right mind use XP? I suggest you take her over your knee and spank
the **** out of her for using such a borked up operating system.
There are only TWO operating systems that work. Windows 98, and
Windows 95. (maybe Windows 2000 too). That's it. XP Vista Windows
7
are all JUNK. KILL THEM.....

jw, you really shouldn't be talking about his daughter's brain when
yours is unable to grasp the usage of even WinXP. XP works quite
well,
as well as Win98 or better, and certainly better than Win95. If you
think Win2K is a better OS than XP, the actual existence of your brain
is suspect! ;-)

I've refused to use any of the "NT" Windows since they first were
created. I saw a friend crash XP, and lose years of important
personal data. I never lose data with Win98. I the system fails, I
got Dos to help me fix it. That NTFS format from XP is one of the
biggest failures. I wont touch it.
snip

You saw one friend's system go down and lose data, so you condemn them
all? LOL!
I've seen countless 95 and 98 systems destroyed with most or all data
lost, and rarely see that happen on XP systems using NTFS. I'm not
basing it on one friend's system! Your friend almost definitely had a
hard drive failure, not a "crash" in XP, that caused all data to be
lost. Booting to DOS won't fix a hardware failure. What you can do
from a DOS floppy boot in Win98, you can do from Recovery Console or a
PE boot with XP, and get better results in most cases. Because you
don't know how to use the tools doesn't mean they don't exist.
--
Glen Ventura
MS MVP Oct. 2002 - Sept. 2009
CompTIA A+
http://dts-l.net/

In message , glee
writes:
[]
You saw one friend's system go down and lose data, so you condemn them
all? LOL!

Agreed, not too good a basis, but ...

I've seen countless 95 and 98 systems destroyed with most or all data
lost, and rarely see that happen on XP systems using NTFS. I'm not

.... you perhaps are also guilty? Really, "countless" (i. e. a large
number), with the data actually lost? (I've had a FAT system go doolally
_once_ [directories full of funny-named files of silly sizes], but been
able to recover most data - even from failing hard discs - on all other
occasions. I think the one that went bad would have been in '95 days, or
even 3.1/DOS.)

basing it on one friend's system! Your friend almost definitely had a
hard drive failure, not a "crash" in XP, that caused all data to be

(Isn't it fun how the terminology has evolved? The origin of the term
"crash" was indeed a hardware failure, when the "low-flying" head of a
disc drive actually crashed into the surface!)

lost. Booting to DOS won't fix a hardware failure. What you can do

Indeed not. (Though depending on the type of hardware failure, it may
help: if the hardware failure is just some bad sectors, then recovery
may be possible - with both FAT and NTFS - via an external boot method.)

from a DOS floppy boot in Win98, you can do from Recovery Console or a
PE boot with XP, and get better results in most cases. Because you
don't know how to use the tools doesn't mean they don't exist.

Yup - I'll own up to not knowing my way round recovery console (or,
much, PE). Useful that you've put it like that. (I think a large part of
the resistance to NTFS is that it is sufficiently complex that it needs
more than a floppy's worth of space to boot to where it is accessible:
this doesn't make it a worse system, though.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
-Michel de Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)

On 11/3/2010 11:35 PM, wrote:
On Wed, 3 Nov 2010 01:26:30 -0400,
wrote:

wrote in message
...
On Tue, 02 Nov 2010 13:04:32 +0000, Edex@directory wrote:

I know that this is a Windows 98 newsgroup and I have found massive
help
here in the past.

But my daughter has problems with her Windows XP . What would be a
comparable group to this one where I could get similar expert help on
XP?

There are so many XP groups about and I can't work out which might be
best.

Ed

What's wrong with your daughter's brain? Why would anyone in their
right mind use XP? I suggest you take her over your knee and spank
the **** out of her for using such a borked up operating system.
There are only TWO operating systems that work. Windows 98, and
Windows 95. (maybe Windows 2000 too). That's it. XP Vista Windows 7
are all JUNK. KILL THEM.....

jw, you really shouldn't be talking about his daughter's brain when
yours is unable to grasp the usage of even WinXP. XP works quite well,
as well as Win98 or better, and certainly better than Win95. If you
think Win2K is a better OS than XP, the actual existence of your brain
is suspect! ;-)

I've refused to use any of the "NT" Windows since they first were
created. I saw a friend crash XP, and lose years of important
personal data.

His data couldn't have been all that important, anyone who has important
data backs it up properly, those who don't are only asking for trouble!


I never lose data with Win98.

Anyone who has any considerable amount of experience around different
computer systems will refute your claim, I have seen more crashes and
data loss on W9x systems than I have ever seen on any NT system. W9x
was/is notorious for crashes, it can be completely crashed by almost any
user process, something that is very rarely seen on NT systems, you
sneeze and W9x crashes. We simply refused to have any W9x machines in
our business environment, they are plainly too fragile for business use.

John

John John - MVP wrote:

I never lose data with Win98.

Anyone who has any considerable amount of experience around
different computer systems will refute your claim,

As someone who has operated and supported a mixed Windows OS office
environment for 15 years, and specifically win-NT4, win-2K, Win-98 (from
1999 to the PRESENT) and XP (from 2005 to the present) and Vista /
Server 2003 / Server 2008-R2 / Seven (from 2008 to the present) I can
say that your comments about win-98 does not reflect usage on recent
hardware (circa 2004/2006) but instead probably reflects usage based on
hardware, drivers and specs that date from 1995 - 2000.

At the present time, half of the 2-dozen PC's in our office are running
win-98se on P4 2.5 ghz PC's (Intel 465 chipset, Nvidia AGP video cards,
512 mb ram, 80 gb hard drives) for our admin and production staff.

We have a few NT4 and win-2k servers (web-server, SMTP mail, exchange,
Jana contact data-base, shared storage, developer source-safe), XP-SP3
(software / hardware developer systems, sales staff). A few software
developers ran Vista for maybe a year, but about half are still running
XP and the rest are running Seven, and one developer is running 64-bit
Seven as well as an experimental system with server 2008-R2). I was
playing around with Windows Multipoint Server 2010 (which I downloaded
from the file-sharing service Rapid-Share) and was able to activate it
with one of our Server 2008 Technet product keys).

All of our win-98 and XP systems (and even some of the win-7 systems)
have the full-blown Office 2000 Premium SR1 installed on them (from our
MSDN subscription) so that is a really cost-effective way to obtain and
deploy Office software in an commercial setting (and I give the finger
to Microsoft by doing so).

Between 1994 and 1998 we had about a dozen PC's running wfwg 3.11,
win-95 and NT3.x / NT4. In 1996 we also had a Silicon Graphics Iris 4D
(which I think cost us $20k at the time).

We had a subscription to MSDN from about 1998 to about 2003, and a
technet subscription off and on for the past 5 years.

Over the past 10 years, we've built about 400 PC's which are used in
scientific research settings with special internal and external custom
hardware. About half of those PC's were shipped with win-98se, and the
other half were shipped with XP (we continue to ship new systems with
XP-SP3). Other than hard-drive mechanical failures in win-98 systems
with hard drives of 20 gb or less, none of the systems has ever come
back because of logical file-system problems. All XP systems were
shipped with 40 gb (or larger) drives, and there have been no hardware
failures with them.

So I / we have I have seen more crashes and data loss on W9x
systems than I have ever seen on any NT system. W9x was/is
notorious for crashes,

You obviously have no experience running win-98 on P3 or P4 systems with
more than 256 mb of ram or on motherboards and video cards with stable
drivers.

You are typical of most IT people when it comes to win-98: Your
experience is limited to pathetic systems with 32mb of ram, systems
built between 1996 and 1999, with buggy AGP cards and drivers. I agree
that the computer hardware available during those years was horrible,
and as soon as you could, you moved to Win-2K and XP, but along with
those moves came new and better hardware, but you attributed the stable
operation of 2K and XP to the OS and not the increased stability of the
hardware and the fact that there was a lot more installed ram in those
systems (the stability of any OS goes up when you give it more ram).

We simply refused to have any W9x machines in our business
environment, they are plainly too fragile for business use.

Clearly you or your organization did not have the technical ability to
build their own systems from scratch and install the OS from scratch
like we did. Because we do that, because we periodically buy new
hardware and re-install our OS's, we have learned what works.

And I can tell you definatively that our win-98se systems are extremely
stable in an office environment, and thus we are getting a great return
on our OS investment.

It's been an absolute pleasure to have to manage a set of PC's that
simply don't get viral or malware infections. Our win-98se systems have
not been infected by anthing for at least the past 6 years.

On 11/4/2010 10:41 AM, 98 Guy wrote:
John John - MVP wrote:

I never lose data with Win98.

Anyone who has any considerable amount of experience around
different computer systems will refute your claim,

As someone who has operated and supported a mixed Windows OS office
environment for 15 years, and specifically win-NT4, win-2K, Win-98 (from
1999 to the PRESENT) and XP (from 2005 to the present) and Vista /
Server 2003 / Server 2008-R2 / Seven (from 2008 to the present) I can
say that your comments about win-98 does not reflect usage on recent
hardware (circa 2004/2006) but instead probably reflects usage based on
hardware, drivers and specs that date from 1995 - 2000.

At the present time, half of the 2-dozen PC's in our office are running
win-98se on P4 2.5 ghz PC's (Intel 465 chipset, Nvidia AGP video cards,
512 mb ram, 80 gb hard drives) for our admin and production staff.

We have a few NT4 and win-2k servers (web-server, SMTP mail, exchange,
Jana contact data-base, shared storage, developer source-safe), XP-SP3
(software / hardware developer systems, sales staff). A few software
developers ran Vista for maybe a year, but about half are still running
XP and the rest are running Seven, and one developer is running 64-bit
Seven as well as an experimental system with server 2008-R2). I was
playing around with Windows Multipoint Server 2010 (which I downloaded
from the file-sharing service Rapid-Share) and was able to activate it
with one of our Server 2008 Technet product keys).

All of our win-98 and XP systems (and even some of the win-7 systems)
have the full-blown Office 2000 Premium SR1 installed on them (from our
MSDN subscription) so that is a really cost-effective way to obtain and
deploy Office software in an commercial setting (and I give the finger
to Microsoft by doing so).

Between 1994 and 1998 we had about a dozen PC's running wfwg 3.11,
win-95 and NT3.x / NT4. In 1996 we also had a Silicon Graphics Iris 4D
(which I think cost us $20k at the time).

We had a subscription to MSDN from about 1998 to about 2003, and a
technet subscription off and on for the past 5 years.

Over the past 10 years, we've built about 400 PC's which are used in
scientific research settings with special internal and external custom
hardware. About half of those PC's were shipped with win-98se, and the
other half were shipped with XP (we continue to ship new systems with
XP-SP3). Other than hard-drive mechanical failures in win-98 systems
with hard drives of 20 gb or less, none of the systems has ever come
back because of logical file-system problems. All XP systems were
shipped with 40 gb (or larger) drives, and there have been no hardware
failures with them.

So I / we have I have seen more crashes and data loss on W9x
systems than I have ever seen on any NT system. W9x was/is
notorious for crashes,

You obviously have no experience running win-98 on P3 or P4 systems with
more than 256 mb of ram or on motherboards and video cards with stable
drivers.

You are typical of most IT people when it comes to win-98: Your
experience is limited to pathetic systems with 32mb of ram, systems
built between 1996 and 1999, with buggy AGP cards and drivers. I agree
that the computer hardware available during those years was horrible,
and as soon as you could, you moved to Win-2K and XP, but along with
those moves came new and better hardware, but you attributed the stable
operation of 2K and XP to the OS and not the increased stability of the
hardware and the fact that there was a lot more installed ram in those
systems (the stability of any OS goes up when you give it more ram).

We simply refused to have any W9x machines in our business
environment, they are plainly too fragile for business use.

Clearly you or your organization did not have the technical ability to
build their own systems from scratch and install the OS from scratch
like we did. Because we do that, because we periodically buy new
hardware and re-install our OS's, we have learned what works.

What a fscking joke! We've been running NT systems since about 1996,
while you were going on thinking that Windows 98 was the only thing
available we were using advance CAD/CAM software on state of the art
workstations. Until a year ago you had never had an NT type computer so
you know nothing about NT operating systems, less than a year ago you
got an old NT4 server and you were too stupid to figure out than IIS had
problems on NT4 so you decided that the problem was with the NTFS file
system. You are no tech wizz... to say the least! No one with half a
brain would run W98 in a business environment in this day and age.

John John - MVP wrote:
On 11/3/2010 11:35 PM, wrote:
On Wed, 3 Nov 2010 01:26:30 -0400,
wrote:

wrote in message
...
On Tue, 02 Nov 2010 13:04:32 +0000, Edex@directory wrote:

I know that this is a Windows 98 newsgroup and I have found massive
help
here in the past.

But my daughter has problems with her Windows XP . What would be a
comparable group to this one where I could get similar expert help on
XP?

There are so many XP groups about and I can't work out which might be
best.

Ed

What's wrong with your daughter's brain? Why would anyone in their
right mind use XP? I suggest you take her over your knee and spank
the **** out of her for using such a borked up operating system.
There are only TWO operating systems that work. Windows 98, and
Windows 95. (maybe Windows 2000 too). That's it. XP Vista Windows 7
are all JUNK. KILL THEM.....

jw, you really shouldn't be talking about his daughter's brain when
yours is unable to grasp the usage of even WinXP. XP works quite well,
as well as Win98 or better, and certainly better than Win95. If you
think Win2K is a better OS than XP, the actual existence of your brain
is suspect! ;-)

I've refused to use any of the "NT" Windows since they first were
created. I saw a friend crash XP, and lose years of important
personal data.

His data couldn't have been all that important, anyone who has important
data backs it up properly, those who don't are only asking for trouble!


I never lose data with Win98.

Anyone who has any considerable amount of experience around different
computer systems will refute your claim, I have seen more crashes and
data loss on W9x systems than I have ever seen on any NT system. W9x
was/is notorious for crashes, it can be completely crashed by almost any
user process, something that is very rarely seen on NT systems, you
sneeze and W9x crashes.

I'm having a senior moment, and am trying to recall what it was about Win9x
that predisposed it to this behavior, so much more than XP (which as you
say, rarely crashes from most user processes). What does XP (and later)
have different in its design that eliminates so much of that problem?

I remember some limitations in Win9x due to system resources (with the 16
bit max heap values, for example), and also allowing almost direct code
access to the hardware for DOS apps, but I'm sure that's only the tip of the
iceberg.

"Bill in Co" wrote:


I'm having a senior moment, and am trying to recall what it was about Win9x
that predisposed it to this behavior, so much more than XP (which as you
say, rarely crashes from most user processes). What does XP (and later)
have different in its design that eliminates so much of that problem?

Just that user processes in XP are *much* better isolated from the OS
and from each other than they were in Win9x.

--
Tim Slattery

http://members.cox.net/slatteryt

Tim Slattery wrote:
"Bill in Co" wrote:


I'm having a senior moment, and am trying to recall what it was about
Win9x
that predisposed it to this behavior, so much more than XP (which as you
say, rarely crashes from most user processes). What does XP (and later)
have different in its design that eliminates so much of that problem?

Just that user processes in XP are *much* better isolated from the OS
and from each other than they were in Win9x.

But generally how was that accomplished?

On 11/4/2010 6:23 PM, Bill in Co wrote:
Tim Slattery wrote:
"Bill in wrote:


I'm having a senior moment, and am trying to recall what it was about
Win9x
that predisposed it to this behavior, so much more than XP (which as you
say, rarely crashes from most user processes). What does XP (and later)
have different in its design that eliminates so much of that problem?

Just that user processes in XP are *much* better isolated from the OS
and from each other than they were in Win9x.

But generally how was that accomplished?

Processes have a private 2GB address space where they are isolated but
on Windows 98 they also have the 2 to 3GB shared address space where key
parts of the Win16 code, which Windows 98 still uses, is also stored
along with DLLs and other shared objects, any errant or rogue
application can easily trash memory in this 1GB shared arena and bring
the whole system down.

On NT systems user processes have a private 2GB address space and no
shared address space. To make better use of RAM processes can share
DLLs and objects so these shared objects are only loaded into memory
once but each process uses its own private address space to map to the
shared objects, if the application mucks up these objects in its private
address space it doesn't affect other processes. There is no shared
address space on NT systems, each process is isolated in its private space.

John