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Do a clean install if you can - it always works better. Upgrades are supported - and yes RC2 is a BETA version, not a production version of the OS and as such is timed for 180 days. You will have bought it by then, as going back to 98 isn't really an option. You will have moved into a new world of computing.
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Good luck.
You can do this, but remember that 9X drivers won't work on XP. If all your hardware makers have XP drivers, or if XP has in-the-box drivers, you can at least get up and running, but you will likely leave files from 9X drivers lying around on your system. If at all possible, back up what you have, and do a clean install.
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From both a developer and home/work user it is a truly great OS. Have been using W2K at home, and XP addresses all the issues that we have had running kids software, multiple profiles/logins/passwds, etc... The PNP is great, the interface is very nice, you CANNOT crash it (I installed EZ CD Creator knowing it was not going to work and it blocked the bad drivers that would have brought it down). The subsystems are all updated - COM+, IIS, etc. They have done this one right. I have used a few 98 machines since W2K and XP RC2 and it's like going back to the bad old days. WPA is no big deal - just enter what country you are in, and you are done. Most of the hype is blown way out of line. Sorry Linux fans - got rid of my partition because there is no need or want for it anymore - it's a waste of space. XP is a quality OS that is going to be very successful.
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Damn - we lost another one to the dark side.
I call it X-Pile - it's a pile of excrement of unknown proportion.
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Do you really hate Windows (and/or Microsoft) that much, John?
(No offence; I'm just being curious)
--
Alex Marbus
www.marbus.net
But then again, I could be wrong.
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i don't blame him for hating microsoft & windows...
windows != qualityOS...never has been and probably never will be.
we will forever be bombarded will the blue screen of death for the rest of our lives if we don't introduce a strong competition in the Os market. linux is the only qualified contender, in my opinion, however.
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You need to qualify which windows you are talking about.
Not quality:
For home users:
Win 3.1 and earlier
Win 95/98/Me
For business:
NT 3.51 and earlier
NT 4 is a little rocky
Quality:
All Users:
Windows 2000 (less hardware/software compatibility than)
Windows XP
You would be hard pressed to disqualify W2K and XP from the quality bucket. You did read the HCL and aren't using crappy isa based hardware, right. On an HCL machine, you will have no problems other than the ones of your own making.
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Have you EVER seen "the blue screen of death" on Windows 2000? I have not.
I vote pro drink
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I have....
But, it might have been because I was playing around with some beta drivers.
- Anders
Money talks, but all mine ever says is "Goodbye!"
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I really do not believe you, for the simple reason that Win2K doesn't have a BSOD. In the worst case, you see a black screen with some kind of 'kernel panic'.
--
Alex Marbus
www.marbus.net
But then again, I could be wrong.
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Trust me Alex - W2K definitely has a BSOD.
I tried to install a Zio USB Smart Media reader on my Dell Laptop running W2K Server, and it turns that the combination of W2K Server and Dell laptops was the one combination that the drivers for the card reader didn't like. Result - one very blue screen
I don't know enough about drivers and W2K architecture, but surely it's possible for an OS to kick a driver out of memory if it fails instead of dying so comprehensively? I don't geddit...
cheers,
Chris Maunder (CodeProject)
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It's the same as a kernel panic in Linux or any unix. When a driver is running in critical sections of the kernel, the kernel has no choice but to dump core when the drivers go astray, which is what a NT BSOD is. BTW, there is a very neat core dump analysis in XP that sends your core dump to MSFT and they take a look at it. Have you ever sent a core dump to Sun or HP? Basically, forget it - you will never get fixed. Microsoft's core dump analysis section looks very promising. Nice feature - of course, this will probably be viewed as anti-competitive. What will all the core dump analysis companies out there do for a living now
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First off on a 1150DSL connection it took 5 minutes to get to the reply page when clicking on reply?!?! I wonder if my DSL provider is just sucking?
Anyways, there are companies that do core dump analysis? What are their names and web addresses? <-Really a serious question
Sam C
----
Systems Manager
Hospitality Marketing Associates
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Oops, I sure made a mistake saying Win2K doesn't have a BSOD. I was wrong, Win2K does indeed have a blue screen of death.
Nevertheless, BSOD's usually occur because of bad software/hardware or a combination of both. Windows itself will never display a BSOD out of the blue.
--
Alex Marbus
www.marbus.net
But then again, I could be wrong.
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Just to cheer yours and my day Alex, Windows 2000 BSOD hit me "out of the blue" just last week. I've not installed anything in the last few weeks.
It doesn't happen anything like as often as NT though.
Jon
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Yeah, you're right. I should have say that without doing some research first. I apologize.
Nevertheless, I'm still Pro-Win2K
(Forgot to login)
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Trust me, the screen is very blue...
- Anders
Money talks, but all mine ever says is "Goodbye!"
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You're right (see my reaction to Chris in this thread).
I apologize for making such a statement without doing some 'research'.
--
Alex Marbus
www.marbus.net
But then again, I could be wrong.
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Yup, I've also had one. Just the other day, in fact. I do tend to experiment with that machine, but as soon as I pressed F8 and restored the last known good config (even without the emergency disk) everything was OK again. W2K is a VERY good OS, better than Linux, IMHO. Linux has a problem... no-one will REALLY support it. Users, can't use it. With all the usability stuff the media are throwing at the industry, it's going to be a LONG time before a UNIX variant becomes mainstream.
Cheers,
Karim.
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Multiple times. I can write a program that will crash 2000. Yes I'm that good Several crashes were from bad hardware but some were not.
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I've had an even worse problem: spontaneous reboots, caused by a bad graphics driver, which caused source code files on my system to be corrupted, etc. This is on Win2K.
This was not a driver under development - it was the production ATI Rage drivers that came with my Dell. I was trying to debug graphics code and it turned out that certain types of memory leaks took the system down like a sub.
Fortunately a driver update solved the problem,but nobody at Dell could help me.
Point is: it might be hard to crash the new versions of Windows, but it's not impossible.
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I have installed Win2000 4 times. I had very bad luck with it. The OS would work for a while but on some gloomy morning I would turn on the computer and during the time of loading all of OS's VXDs and DLLs I would get an error message that the system registry file is corrupted. Dead. I wasn't able to recover from it. None of Windows recover utilities helped me. When I experienced this problem the second time I even had a back up of the file. So I went into this "terminal" mode and copied the corrupted file over. But still I had the same problem. That was a few months ago. From then on I stick with WinMe. It crashes time to time and svrmgr32 process sometime takes up to 5 minutes to startup, making my OS start so much longer. But at least it does not unrecoverable die on me.
Well this is my experience. If only HP-UX had a better user interface and cheaper hardware. I made this OS mad (didn't actually kill it, never have, never seen happened) only ones while debugging a multithreaded server and the debugger tried to return out of a method that was suppose to return a value but didn't and HP aCC compiler let it built.
Chhers,
Marat
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You can't blame the flakiness of Windows completely on Microsoft. The hardware/driver manufacturers had a BIG hand in the stability problems.
Like I said, Windows as a concept is a good thing for everyone, but I think Microsoft is no longer concerned with making Windows better than it was. They're more interested in the money they can extort from their users.
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> windows != qualityOS...never has been and probably never will be
Never is a very strong word - even when you are talking about Microsoft.
Even a blind dog finds a bone once in a while.
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I think Windows (as a concept) is a "good thing" (tm). It provides a common programming platform for developers, and it provides a somewhat standard user interface for end-users, and shields end-users from the intricasies of the DOS command line.
What I *don't* like is being told that I have to rent the OS, or that everything is a freakin web page. Before XP, we could upgrade pretty much when we wanted to. Once Microsoft gets everyone on the XP bandwagon, that choice is completely out of our hands. I also don't like the way Microsoft bullies its competitors, or failing that buys them out and shelves their products.
I don't know anyone that can truthfully say that the idea behind Windows is bad.
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