When, Oh When will we get a stable OS?? 6

[guestgulkan]

Back in Win95/Win98, I must have done hundreds (dozens really) of clean OS installs to get the OS out of a mess.
In spite of the much hyped stability of WINXP and WIN2000 and WINNT, I still hear the dreaded phrase 'I've done a clean install' or ' do a clean install' all too often.
Millions of hours must be lost each year in computer downtime because of this.

To me this is nonsense, the OS should be able to protect, detect and repair itself. In other words have some sort of builtin immune mechanism.

 

[drdebit]

Garwain:
I had to smile when I read this:

Most of the re-installs I perform are due to either the user installing every piece of spyware/adware/useless junk they can get their hands on, and deleting files at random.

Guilty as charged.

 

[palbano]

Guestgulkan said
I still hear the dreaded phrase 'I've done a clean install' or ' do a clean install' all too often.

dilettante said
Many "clean installs" are the result of using marginal software and/or playing around with "tweaks."

Here is my “real” experience that adds another dimension. My friend asked if I could help his sister with her computer problem. It seems that after upgrading from modem to cable ISP her favorite internet sites didn’t work any longer.

I asked for more detail and discovered that she had also spent several hours with her ISP tech support where they installed the latest version of IE among other things to solve the problem unsuccessfully. Professional technician #1 goes down in flames.

After a local consultant (I use that term loosely) made a house call he estimated that the system would need to be “re-loaded” to the tune of around $300.00 US. Professional technician #2 goes down in flames.

Now I come to the scene, and believe me, I’m the last person you want trying to fix your PC! So I ask some questions and find out that she can get to the site but that there are some “games” that don’t work on the site. So I have her navigate to the page for the game and sure enough there is a javascript error. So I go to the Microsoft download for the script engine and install the latest script engine and the problem is solved. Took me about 10 minutes.

So is software perfect, no (well ok some of mine is LOL), are OS’s perfect, no, but there are a lot of loose nuts between the chairs and keyboards out there as well.

-pete

 

[drdebit]

Even if I have to reboot win98 twice a day (which I don't usually), it's still better than a McBee one-write system.

 

[lionelhill]

don't be too modest palbano. I'd rather have you fixing my PC than either of the characters you describe.

I think the clean install is the software equivalent of the hardware "well I turned it off and on again and that didn't help, so lets give it a kick..." - it's what you do when you can't think of anything more useful. But it has the advantage of sounding nice and technical.

 

[KimberTech]

Ghost/driveimage and data backups are a wonderful invention...

One giant UNDO button. Members of Tek-Tips provide answers to questions based on the information given. For the best answers, post detailed descriptions of the issue. Use the search features of the site to see if your issue was already addressed in another thread.

 

[drdebit]

so should m$ incorporate ghost as a stability feature?

 

[Tarwn]

Every machine should be ghosted/backed up at least once, this isn't an OS dependant thing. It's like always saving a document your working on before going on lunch break or putting your seatbelt on before driving somewhere.

Are you implying you don't believe Windows to be stable? _{01010100 01101001 01100101 01110010 01101110 01101111 01101011 00101110 01100011 01101111 01101101}
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[manarth]

If everything worked, I'd be out of a job <marc>[ul]help us help![li]please give us feedback on what works / doesn't[/li][li]not sure where to start? click here: faq581-3339[/li][/sup][/ul][/sup]

 

[Stevehewitt]

If I went out tomorrow, got a HP server with all genuine HP componants, I installed Win2k Server on it and left it standalone with no modifications, no installed apps - I would put money that a year later it would exactly how I left it. The last 3 years M$ have really started to listen. If you actually look at the reasons the OS dies its cause of a application error, bad drivers, dodgy coding in a app, bad clustering. Its hardly ever a proper OS problem.

The OS software its self is stable. Theres two things that make its unstable:

1. Bad intergration. E.G. Hardware (as in crappy drivers), poorly written code in apps.
2. Mis-configuration. Nobody knows everything about a OS. Misconfigs happen. Its a human error though, you can't blame the OS!

Steve Hewitt
Systems Manager

 

[edfair]

If you left it on, then you might have a chance. Turn it off and on once or twice a day and I would bet it wouldn't last 30 days.

Stability also requires repeatability. That it comes up and shuts down in sequences that don't change outcomes.

I fought the battle with Dell laptops. And I lost.

Ed Fair
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[guestgulkan]

I was preparing a comeback to SteveHewitt
but Edfair got there before me.

I would also like to bring Windows OS security into question - it seems that 90% of the 'live updates' are to plug some security hole.



------------------------
Two strings walk into a bar and sit down. The bartender says, &quot;So what'll it be?&quot;
The first string says, &quot;I think I'll have a beer quag fulk boorg jdk^CjfdLk jk3s d#f67howe%^U r89nvy~~owmc63^Dz x.xvcu&quot;
&quot;Please excuse my friend,&quot; the second string says, &quot;He isn't null-terminated.&quot;

 

[lionelhill]

hmmm.... maybe that would explain why instrumentation manufacturers keep telling me to shun windows updates like the plague. Updates that plug the hole by which the instrument used to communicate with its controlling computer can be very anoying!

(by the way, like the null-terminated joke above!)

 

[palbano]

Steve,

We got a brand new HP server to add to our old one. The boxes for the manuals were twice the size of the box for the server! Two weeks later (14 working days) the combined forces of three of our experts still didn’t have it booting up!

Oh yeeeaaaah baaabbbbyyy LOL
-pete

 

[edfair]

Pretty good average, but not a record.

Just can't pass up the opportunities.

Ed Fair
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[dilettante]

Lets just say you may see something very like &quot;ghost&quot; in a future Windows server OS. ;-)

 

[Stevehewitt]

I'm sorry, but if you have an OS that runs on 90% (ish, OK, maybe 80 - 70 now that Linux has taken off) then what do you expect. Come on, most people in this forum have dabbled with programming, even if its just Access! Its bloody hard, and as much as I am annoyed at the amount of patching that I have to do, compared to other OS's that are on the market I would choose M$. Nobody can get everything right. Instead of criticising M$ we should try the hackers and crackers that try to break into the networks.

Steve Hewitt
Systems Manager

 

[drdebit]

Steve
I think the basis of some of your arguements is flawed.

&quot;I'm sorry, but if you have an OS that runs on 90% (ish, OK, maybe 80 - 70 now that Linux has taken off) then what do you expect. &quot;

By extension
An auto manufacturer may deliver a faulty product without concern if they control more than ____% of the market

A kidney dialysis machine can deliver a possibly faulty machine without particular care for the patients if they control ____% of the market

????????

There may be a reality that some percentage of market control permits a business to behave in a certain fashion, but that does not necessarily mean that that behavior is ethical in terms of relationship to customers/human beings.


&quot;Instead of criticising M$ we should try the hackers and crackers that try to break into the networks&quot;

The presence in the environment of unethical users of any product does not absolve the manufacturer of the product of unethical behavior in regard to its creation/distribution.

 

[Craig0201]

Steve makes a valid point about business in general. If I have a product which is, in the main, stable and costs less to have a problem than it costs to fix it, what would your company do? Let's spend that $1 000 000 to fix something that costs $1 000 once a year? It doesn't happen, in any business unless there is a legal imperative on the company to do so (i.e. a medical device directly affecting patient care).

MS do a grand job. Simple to use, straight from the box, high uptime, low maintainence. Does it have bugs? Yes. But what software doesn't? Same with the analogy of cars up above. Do they have problems? Yes. But are they cheaper to fix than the legal costs? If not, let's be sued. Remember the Ford Explorer......

Craig

 

[Stevehewitt]

Exactly. Even a car or a kidney dialysis needs maintance. But remember, what really is more complex? As little as I know about mechanics I really think that a £6000 Dell Server with Win2000 is more complex to get ready serving 100 users that a Ford Escort traveling 1 - 4 people from A to B. And cars arn't 100% reliable anyway. Its a poor comparision. The reason cars are slightly more reliable that a properly configured OS is that a car can kill people, servers don't.

Also, most people in this forum (including myself) have mentioned patching. Most of the patches that I get from the MS site are security holes in Internet Explorer and IIS, not the OS.

Coming back to drdebit: &quot;The presence in the environment of unethical users of any product does not absolve the manufacturer of the product of unethical behavior in regard to its creation/distribution.&quot;

When has M$ been unethical in its creation and distribution of its OS's? OK, I think the prices are crappy (even more so the fact you need CAL's! - Don't get me started!;-)) but theres nothing unethical about M$ software.

I think Craig0201 hit the nail on the head:
Simple to use, straight from the box, high uptime, low maintainence...

Steve Hewitt
Systems Manager

 

[guestgulkan]

Well craig0201, if you want to throw numbers around
let's use some more realistic figures.

Say M$ sells 300 million copies of WinXP at $100 or so.
That's some 30 billion dollars.

If it would cost $100 million over time for bug corrections - that represents only some 0.3% of total sales.

Peeannuts!!!!!!!!!!

OK so software can't be made perfect and they will be bugs - Are you telling me that costs for bug fixes are not already factored into the sale price of the software?????