The five stages of XP grief
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| Steven_Rosenber Apr 30, 2008 8:57 AM EDT |
1) I get a new box with Windows XP. After suffering through years with an average processor (Celeron 400 MHz), miniscule RAM (32 MB ... and no, that's not a typo), Windows 98 (not even SE) and IE 5, any damn thing is an improvement. A 3 GHz Pentium 4, 512 MB of RAM and sweet, sweet XP. OK, so there's a lot more at play here then Windows XP, but if you're comparing XP to 98, you can bet I said more than a few times, "XP is pretty good." 2) OK, I've got my antivirus, my anti-spyware ... but I'm locked out of the administrator account and can't even defragment my drive. Oh well, they say NTFS doesn't need so much defragmenting. They must be right. Hey, I've even got OpenOffice. What's this OpenOffice? 3) Man, does this IE 6 stink. Maybe I'll finally stop ignoring those incessant upgrade messages and get IE 7. 4) Damn. IE 7 is much worse. Sure, I've got tabbed browsing, but does it have to be so slow. ... Oh well, I've got Firefox. And how come when I get a dozen windows open in XP, the whole box gets sludgy on me? Wait, it never used to crash this much ... I would reinstall, but I don't have the disc ... 5) Hey, you mean I can get OpenOffice, Firefox and 10,000 other applications with one system -- and from one place? All I have to do is open a package-management window and check off what I want? I never have to defragment? Backup software won't cost me anything? Viruses, trojans, malware and spyware won't bother me? I don't have to pay for upgrades? I can choose from dozens of different operating-system distributions with dozens of different desktop environments to suit my hardware and work needs? And it's all free, I can see the source code whenever I want? |
| flufferbeer May 01, 2008 9:21 AM EDT |
I'd put somewhere around 2), the strange fact that I somehow cannot read and write files from my XP's NTFS boot partition using the a full LiveCD (MEPIS, KNOPPIX, even SLAX...)
Hmm.... I used the correct mount options, what's going on here? |
| Steven_Rosenber May 01, 2008 11:41 AM EDT |
I went through the five stages again last night. I was at work until 12:30 a.m. ... and the box pretty much gave up on me at 11. Sure, I rebooted and brought it back, but it just can't stand the heat. |
| tracyanne May 01, 2008 1:11 PM EDT |
At work I have an XP box, it has a 3.2 Gig Processor, beefy video card, 2 Gig of RAM heaps of freeDisk space, and i runs like a Dog with 3 legs. I actually know what the problem is (other than it's Windows, no that actually is the problem, all other problems stem from that fact), but I'm not about to do anything about it, you see it's suffering from file fragmentation issues, in fact they are now so bad the OS can't locate continuous free disk space into which to grow the virtual memory cache file, so the machine spends a lot of time chewing up cpu and generally going no where. My boss's solution is to, as he puts it, repave the computer. The fact that the machine is badly fragmented also means that applications take forever to load. I could run the defragmenter, but gee I'm just not used to such a concept, I use Linux, and you never have to do that on Linux, and it just wouldn't occur to me. |
| jdixon May 01, 2008 1:30 PM EDT |
> ...it's suffering from file fragmentation issues, Well, if the install is more than 6 months old, that's a given with Windows. :( It sounds like yours is a lot older than that though. If you have imaging software on hand, imaging the machine up to a server or second hard drive and back will usually do a better job of defragging the hard drive than using the defragmenter. |
| Steven_Rosenber May 01, 2008 1:43 PM EDT |
My 80 GB drive has about 13 GB free. You'd think that would be enough. |
| rijelkentaurus May 01, 2008 3:37 PM EDT |
I like the fact that Windows rot sets into a server as bad as on a workstation. Some of my clients have Server 2000 boxes that can no longer defragment at all...it's all red, the defrag runs, it says it done and doesn't need anything else done, and it's still all red. Yuck. And things are slow, etc. The only way to fix Windows rot is to flatten the server and start over...which causes so much trouble in an Active Directory domain, especially since a lot of our clients run Small Bullsh...I mean, Small Business Server. That's a pain in the rump. |
| jdixon May 01, 2008 4:07 PM EDT |
> The only way to fix Windows rot is to flatten the server and start over... The only complete way, yes. But see my comment to tracyanne above about reimaging the machine. Since most imaging software rewrites file by file, it tends to defragment the filesystem fairly well. |
| tracyanne May 01, 2008 5:12 PM EDT |
Quoting:will usually do a better job of defraggin But I'm not interested in fixing it. |
| rijelkentaurus May 01, 2008 5:29 PM EDT |
Quoting: But see my comment to tracyanne above about reimaging the machine I'll keep it in mind...I have a few clients who could benefit from it. I am imaging on old Citrix server onto new hardware soon...perhaps that will improve the performance more than just the new hardware alone will. I'll do a defragmentation analysis on both machines and let you know the results...I'll get a screen shot of both. Quoting: But I'm not interested in fixing it. You'll be pleased to know that my way of fixing my Windows install is to boot into the other partition, Mandriva 2008.1. :) I install 4 billion programs on Mandriva, it just marches on...Windows just gets heavier and crappier...I need to reinstall after less than 2 months!! Oy! |
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