A Windows Rant 7

[Glenn9999]

This does have something to do with the topic, but I notice that it seems Windows presents itself as a continual obstacle to getting my work done. I've pondered back and it seems I'm always trying to troubleshoot a problem, or reloading my system, or doing some other thing other than productive work because Windows won't allow me to be able to do productive work, much of the time.

If this is the general case, then why does business, in general, tolerate it? Or anybody? This really has always been the case since Windows 3.1 days, so I can't say it's been a recent thing.

Things that crash all the time? Windows XP? Ding! Windows ME? Ding! Windows 98? Ding!

 

[Thadeus]

I run Windows XP Pro day in and day out... I don't know what an XP crash looks like. I've seen plenty upon plenty in Windows 3.1, 95 and 98, and many in NT4, but not in XP. I run Oracle Apps, MS Office, various SQL and reporting utilities and apps, spyware and anti-virus utility, instant messaging apps, and various media apps throughout the day and never have a crash.

Not to be flip, cause I have had my frustrating days [weeks] as well. Particularly when I was LAN and integration consulting on systems with NT4 and AIX... but I've always thought to myself: If there's a better way and I'm not creating/marketing it, then I'm the only one to blame. Please don't take that personally... Like I said, this is what I've told myself.

 

[BocaBurger]

Biggest problem with current Windows (servers) is that there are no real enterprise level tools to use if there is a problem with an application. As a vendor it is hard to ask a client to purchase MS .Net and install on a server so an issue can be debugged. UNIX has so many tools and functions that are not there for Windows.

BocaBurger
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The pen is mightier than the sword, but the sword hurts more!

 

[tazuk]

On the whole I've been pretty happy with Windows stability since Windows 2000. Barring the odd driver issue with my development machine I've had no real problems with my home pc, laptop or my company workstation - cue massive failure on all 3 no doubt lol...

Most stable version of Windows since 3.1 IMHO...

TazUk

Blue-screening PCs since 1998

 

[Kjonnnn]

Never had a windows xp home or professional crash .. in two years of switching over to it.

 

[phuzzy42]

2000 and XP are both very stable - setting them up correctly in the first place, restricting users from installing software, and locking down system parms make them run without problems. The only crashes I've seen were from hardware failures.

Most instability is caused by poorly written 3rd party software and drivers, that and people who insist on installing every piece of trashware, spyware, adware and crapware they can find. If a home has teenagers who can install software, it's almost guaranteed the PCs will get trashed - I make good money redoing those machines.

I started with DOS 3.2 back in 1982. That doesn't make me an 'expert' but I'm not a tyro either, and I do make my living repairing PC hardware and software. I'm not a Bill Gates fanatic either - I know my way around other OS's too and each have their good and bad points. Glen9999, if you're having lots of crashes then you need to take your PC to a tech who knows what they're doing.

 

[Kjonnnn]

Now that I remember .. I had one experience with XP constantly crashing and it was due to some bad memory added after the fact.

If you wanna find out whats going on .. reload windows. Load your various programs over time (days) and determine when and if it after installation of a particular software installation.

XP has be extremely stable.

 

[lespaul]

Once I installed a replacement memory my Blue Screen of Death issues with XP disappeared.

Leslie

Anything worth doing is a lot more difficult than it's worth - Unknown Induhvidual

Essential reading for anyone working with databases: The Fundamentals of Relational Database Design

 

[johnpoole]

the blue screen of death can be your friend.. it has made me a very happy man... repeat that 10 times... gates is our leader..gates is our... no no not the white coats...

welcome to the club, when an os runs your pc, life is great-until it breaks.. i still like dos.. config sys, autoexec dot bat... and only geeks could get on the net, (and it was black and white)

john poole
bellsouth business
columbia,sc

 

[rosieb]

Oh for the days when a Config.Sys was just 10(ish)lines long (Files=20) and an Autoexec.Bat wasn't much longer. So much less to get wrong!

Rosie
"Don't try to improve one thing by 100%, try to improve 100 things by 1%

 

[lionelhill]

And so much less to replace when the user deletes them...

Ah, but those were also the days when you had to format your floppies, and we all got trigger-happy "Y"-key fingers, and then DOS kept asking you
"Do you really want to format C:\"
"Y"
"This will erase all your data. Do you wish to continue..."
"Y"

... and you'd sit there looking at the conversation on the screen and thinking "how am I going to admit this to PC support?"

 

[dkediger]

Or that ever fun challenge of dinking with the order in which device drivers loaded in upper memory in order to get the absolute most into that space?

As to the OP, I can't recall the last Windows crash I looked at that wasn't hardware failure related in either my personal or corporate workstation/server experiences.

 

[MasterRacker]

From NT going forward, I've never had an unstable workstation or server that could be blamed on Windows. The NT family is pretty solid.

IMHO Windows biggest weakness is that it allows poor programmers too much leeway to write crappy, unstable code. I've seen plenty of nasty 3rd party applications. Where I work, I've trained everyone to use the term "crapplication" for these. ;-)

_____
Jeff
[small][purple]It's never too early to begin preparing for [/purple]International Talk Like a Pirate Day
"The software I buy sucks, The software I write sucks. It's time to give up and have a beer..." - Me[/small]

 

[Grenage]

Yup, windows 200/XP is prety stable! Most of the time an unreliable windows machine is down to poor hardware choices/fault equipment.


Carlsberg don't run I.T departments, but if they did they'd probably be more fun.

 

[pmonett]

I also have to chime in and say that XP has been, by far, the most stable and reliable Windows I have ever used (did I just say that ?).

With 95, 98 or 98SE, my PC could never run for more than 30 hours without either rebooting itself or requiring a reboot. Now I run my home PCs 24/7 and they hardly ever (by MS standards, meaning once a week) require a reboot. Until XP, it has been install/uninstall nightmare and repeated joyrides into the Registry (I wish I could strangle the guy that got THAT idea).
The one good point about 3.1 was that you could save the win.ini and sys.ini files, install whatever you wanted, test it and, if it didn't work, just reinstate the ini backups and all was said and done.
What did the Registry add that ini files in app folders would not have done just as well ? What other OS has a Registry ? How long did it take MS to evolve to XP, while all other OSes worked rock-stable with text files configuring everything ?
All that is past now, XP is present and, given its heritage, it is not a bad OS. It could be a lot better still, but it's a great improvement over what we used to have.

Now, as for why do people put up with this, I have one question : do you really think all those people that compose the public would want to know how to configure a Port Foreward ? Or how to schedule disk maintenance ? Or bother with KDE settings ?
They don't and they won't. To us, a PC is an intricate ensemble of complexe mechanisms that we try to keep as fit and healthy as possible. We're geeks, it's what we do. But to Joe Public, a PC is a magic box that will allow him to put his digital pics on a TV screen. What he's interested in is seeing those pics on TV, not seeing a myriad of options and settings and choices just to get the PC started.
That is why Linux in its actual state will never be a consumer OS - an enterprise one, probably, but not a consumer one.
With all its flaws, Windows has a Wizard that will take away the pain of thinking and give a general, normally-good-enough configuration following some questions that Joe User may or may not understand, but he will at least have the impression that he is not a total fool. And he might even be proud of having "configured" his PC "all by himself". Take the same guy and make him install a Linux distro and watch a grown man decompose.
And yes, I know Linux is a lot more user-friendly than it was 10 years ago, I followed its growth during more than a decade and it has progressed in leaps and bounds. But it is still not "user" friendly. It is geek-friendly.
Microsoft has understood that users do not want to understand the PC, they just want to use it for a few specific things. And Microsoft gives them a shiny package that allows them to do just that. It doesn't matter if the PC is a slow, resource-hogging monster full of spyware and botmasters. When the user notices how crappy his PC is, he'll either pay someone to reinstall it, or buy a new shiny thing, and he'll start over.
That is Microsoft's market, and it's doing damn fine in it.
Now, as for why businesses put up with this madness, well just go and talk with your manager for five minutes and ask him what he thinks about phishing, man-in-the-middle attacks and ID theft. I'm sure you'll understand pretty quick ;-).
A more objective answer is that businesses today are hamstrung by the fact that, fifteen to twenty years ago, Windows was the only choice for a company that couldn't afford a mainframe (remember those ?). MS is profiting from the fact that ALL business software has always been designed specifically for a Windows environment. And that is going to take a long, long time to change.

Pascal.

 

[BocaBurger]

If people really wanted easy, they would have purchased a Mac.

No registry!



BocaBurger
<===========================||////////////////|0
The pen is mightier than the sword, but the sword hurts more!

 

[Grenage]

Summed up perfectly, pmonett.


Carlsberg don't run I.T departments, but if they did they'd probably be more fun.

 

[eyeswideclosed]

There's no simple answers, Windows is fine if set up and mainained properly, and don't believe the myth of mac an linux superiority either, they'll blow up too if not used properly.

 

[KornGeek]

I recently began getting several crashes of my Windows XP laptop. The kind of crash where you look away for a minute, and when you come back, it's in the process of rebooting.

Coincidentally, these started right after I upgraded my version of iTunes. A couple of days later, I saw that another release was available. After installing that, the crashes have become much less common.

I hardly think I can swear at Microsoft over this issue. Don't worry, their flagrant disregard for security concerns gives us plenty to swear about.

 

[Welshbird]

If people really wanted easy, they would have purchased a Mac.

I couldn't agree more.... (typed on a MacBook Pro....)

Fee

The question should be [red]Is it worth trying to do?[/red] not [blue] Can it be done?[/blue]