stupid xp morons

[Guest]

i used to be fine with 98SE, I swea

now, with the freaking xp I'm so frustrated I cannot handle myself..

in the beginning I thought my productivity would go down and show,
but then again everyone here in the office has the same problems..

and we are not doing anything unusual, just day to day operations..

there is no way in hell I'm putting xp at home, nor to any of my friend
and relatives, this sucks so bad only Win-me could stand up to it..

the complaint I have today is "when I kill a freaking process,
I want it dead, no questions asked

Processes die, one time is windows explorer, one is internet explorer,
things that shouldnt happen but they do. They go to "non-responding"

When I END the process or program, I expect them to die and mysel
to have back control of the stupid xp sob, instead of having to reboot
or restart every time..

people here have started talking about linux... lately I found myself
stop arguing with them... and I have shares in ms, i am not tryin
to bad-mouth them or anything...

 

[purplehaz]

Well it's clear that your knowledge of computers is limited. XP is simply
the best os MS ever made. 90% of the people would agree with me and it runs
better and is more stable than ever. If you have probs like explorer
crashing it is something on your system that causing it. In general, xp does
not work as you describe. Believe me I see a bunch of xp boxes every week in
my business and probs are 95% of the time caused by the user and the user
alone. The other 5% of software and updates. If explorer crashes and does
not restart, there is no need to reboot. All you have to do is open task
manager and start a new task of explorer.
If you would like to try to fix your machines, instead of whining, then post
some more specifics about the prob and your hardware configs. A repair
install may help as well.

 

[Scott M.]

I couldn't agree more with purplehaz's response.

If you are seriously trying to tell us that your copy of 98SE and/or ME was
more stable than XP, then you are going to have to try much harder that
this.

XP is built on top of Windows 2000, which was (and is) extremely stable. In
fact XP improves on the stability of 2000. I have 6 machines that run 24/7
(and have been running XP Home & Pro. for 2 years straight) and while I
wouldn't say that I never have a process lock up and stop responding (it
does happen), I will say that I can't recall any of the machines EVER
needing a reboot in order to unlock it.

If you are experiencing problems with such basic processes as Windows and
Internet Explorer, then you should first look at your hardware (CPU, hard
disk, RAM) to see if you are asking an out of date machine to run a state of
the art OS. Second, make sure that all device drivers are up to date for XP.
If you are on a network, then a mis-configuration in the network settings
could easily be a reason for lock ups.

I guess the bottom line is that there really is no case to be made that XP
is inferior to ME or 98, there's just no factual proof of it. It is always
hard moving to a new environment and XP is quite different than what you are
used to. Give it some time and learn how it works and how to correctly set
it up and use it.

 

[Dave]

but then again everyone here in the office has the same
problems...

Then my guess would be that everyone in the office has
installed the same faulty driver or service.

Windows XP is inherently far more stable than 98 but
anyone can muck up any computer.

No offense, but based on your complete lack of details in
your post, I think you're probably not ready to maintain
a Linux system. Linux can be very stable too but it
tends to assume you know more about computers than
Windows does.

 

[Guest]

I would have listened to you, but you were quick to pass personal judgment
from the very beginning...

Well it's clear that your knowledge of computers is limited.

Try NT certified systems engr, try oracle 8i cert developer, try ms office 97 cert expert,
try sr software engr and sr tech instructor, oh, about 15 years now...

WHERE IN HELL was anything other clear to you???
Why didnt you just SHUT UP about me personally, and didnt you just
try to stick to the issues???

XP is simply the best os MS ever made.

BS! You lost with just about anything you could possibly say,
and now you are trying to pet mama...

In general, xp does not work as you describe.

In general, you have no idea what you are talking about!

Moreover, you dont know how XP works in OUR MACHINES,
so why do you bother about ME all the time?

XP works exactly as I described it, here, so please,
stay home and garden some flowers or something...

Believe me I see a bunch of xp boxes every week in my business
and probs are 95% of the time caused by the user and the user alone.

My response, I DONT CARE. I dont care if I caused the problem,
or the hardware did, or some planetary lineup.
I repeat: Once apps die, then if I kill them, I should have back
control, as opposed to just stay there in a locked-up mode
and wait ... oh, till next meeting or so...

If explorer crashes and does not restart, there is no need to reboot.

Says WHO? YOU ???

There is no other way! I wouldnt reboot if I didnt have to!
Applications dont die when I kill htem, they blank out their screens
and stay there till you decide not to make personal attacks....

All you have to do is open task manager and start a new task of explorer.

Amazing! Magic!

NOTHING OPENS UP, you hear me? NOTIN!!!

If you would like to try to fix your machines, instead of whining, then post
some more specifics about the prob and your hardware configs.

Fine, but before I post any specifics, you just stay out of personal attacks,
and read what I wrote, ie that doing same stuff under 98SE gave us
no problems whatsoever.

A repair install may help as well.

Yeah, but then again, it may not.
On the other hand, reinstalling 98SE, now, that would do it!

 

[purplehaz]

Idiot............ not even worth a response. If you have all those certs
that you say you do then you should be able to fix your own problems. XP is
based on nt, whats the problem? You passed judgement on xp based on your
experiences, not how the os performs for the masses. So I passed judgement
on you. Anyone that says xp sucks because their computer is having probs is
clueless. That's like me taking a porsche out for a test drive, crashing it,
and then saying the car stinks because it crashed. Gee it not like the
person driving it had anything to do with it......duh. I calls it as I see
it. You're clueless and I have no time for fools. You get no help from me
now. Cya.

 

[cquirke (MVP Win9x)]

On Thu, 12 Feb 2004 09:56:09 -0800, Sam

i used to be fine with 98SE, I swear
now, with the freaking xp I'm so frustrated I cannot handle myself...

the complaint I have today is "when I kill a freaking process,
I want it dead, no questions asked"

Methinks a desc on how tasks are ended will clarify here...

Processes die, one time is windows explorer, one is internet explorer,
things that shouldnt happen but they do. They go to "non-responding".

Indeed, these things should not be happening, and are not happening on
a number of XP PCs. So first order of business is: Why are these
things happening? This is NOT standard mileage, so your general
complaint narrows down from "XP sucks" to "our XP systems suck".

If you just want to vent, go ahead, but if you'd be interested in
non-sucky XP mileage (as most of my clients enjoy) then cough up some
detail and we'll try and help you troubleshoot this.

Quick guesses:
- are you patched against Lovesan/Blaster et al (RPC)?
- have you enabled the firewall on your Internet connection?
- did you install XP fresh, or over an older OS?

When I END the process or program, I expect them to die and myself
to have back control of the stupid xp sob, instead of having to reboot
or restart every time...

In Win9x, when you use Ctl+Alt+Del and choose to End Task, the process
starts by politely asking the selected task to close itself. If the
task does not comply within a few minutes, you will see a dialog pop
up that basically says "look, I've asked this task to b*&&3> off, and
it hasn't. Do you want me to fire a steel bolt through it's skull?"
to which you click "oh yes, please!" and bang, it's killed.

The same thing happens in XP, but with one additional wrinkle; if
you've used the whole user accounts and permissions thing, you may
find you don't have sufficient rights to end the task. If that's the
case, there is an arcane command line statement you can enter that
will kill the task anyway, but I don't know the details.

Most "gah! the task won't die!" issues go about not waiting long
enough for the "asked it nicely" phase to run its course. As I don't
use the accounts and rights thing, I've never seen the second issue.

I have however seen this problem in XP:
- you try to End Task
- a new task called End {problemappname} appears
- this task also goes "not responding"
- you end the End {problemappname} task
- that works OK, but, when you try to end the original task...
- ...you repeat this list from the top all over again

people here have started talking about linux... lately I found myself
stop arguing with them...

Not a bad idea. Arguing with ppl about Linux is right up there with
putting mascara on all the cat's-eyes on the M1, or sweeping the sand
off the beach, in terms of useless activity

and I have shares in ms, i am not trying
to bad-mouth them or anything...
;-)



---------- ----- ---- --- -- - - - -

Consumer Asks: "What are you?"
Market Research: ' What would you like us to be? '

 

[Tony Talmage]

I used 98 for years, and was quite comfortable with it. I changed to XP
when it came out, and honestly I don't miss 98. I won't say that XP doesn't
have it's problems (I've been forced to format/reinstall 5 or 6 times in the
past 3 years), but overall it's been my experience that it's quite stable
and user-friendly in most aspects. I have had explorer.exe crash about
every 10 minutes for the past couple days, but I'm sure it's something
that's been installed (anyone else see this trouble associated with
BitTorrent? only software installed recently). Most of the non-fatal
problems I've had with the OS have been my doing.

Is it possible to do a reinstall? I understand you're more used to 98SE,
but as support is limited at best and soon to vanish, plus the lack of
various helpful features available in XP (ICF, for one), it may not be
beneficial to do an office-wide downgrade. It sucks that you are having
these problems, but honestly this type of behaviour has not been my
experience on any installation of XP I've worked with.

I see that purplehaz mentioned the fact that it's possible to restart
explorer by opening Task Manager and creating a New Task pointing to
"explorer.exe". I've used this many, many times in the past week or two
(refer to previous statement about Explorer), and it's always worked for me.
You mentioned that it did nothing for you; is it possible that maybe a
system file/setting/control/whatever could be corrupted, or maybe you have
malware/viruses? It might be helpful to do a full scan with malware/virus
software on one machine exhibiting this behaviour, if you have not yet
already.

Other than that, I can't think of anything else that might be causing what
you're experiencing. I hope your situation with XP improves and that you
decide to stay with it, but obviously do whatever you deem to be the most
reasonable choice.

--
Tony Talmage
Web Developer
Graphic Education Corporation
http://www.graphiced.com
(888) 354-6600

 

[purplehaz]

PLONK

I hope you typed a real long reply and it took a long time to do it, because
I will never read it.

 

[Guest]

Finaly, a descent answer..

----- Dave wrote: ----
Then my guess would be that everyone in the office has
installed the same faulty driver or service.

Windows XP is inherently far more stable than 98 but
anyone can muck up any computer.

No offense, but based on your complete lack of details in
your post, I think you're probably not ready to maintain
a Linux system. Linux can be very stable too but it
tends to assume you know more about computers than
Windows does

None taken, I agree, besides, I dont maintain things,
I write code, I'm mostly an oracle developer.
See, these are the things that get me
How can anyone make an assumption for which they
cant possibly be certain about, and then, based on tha
assumption, produce conclusions??

OK, to the point now, sorry about above
See, the thing is that we had the same hardware before, updated the drives etc,
and ... no cigar. My complaint was not detailed, because its general
When a process ends, forcefully by me killing it,
I want control back of the OS.

Now tell me, what does that have to do with whether the proces
hang because of hardware, software, or Janets exposed breast
What difference does it make? Sure, we could have a faulty disk,
an old drive, a bad connection, anything...

Sure a process could die, for whatever reason, me driving the porsche,
or the porsche driving in auto... The thing is, when and if that happens,
I WANT MY SYSTEM BACK

Anyway, never mind all the trouble, its been a long day..

 

[Sams worst nightmare]

Sam takes it in the a$$. He's got a gerbil stuck up there
right now, that's why he's so cranky.
Mmmuuuuuuhhhhhaaaahhhhahhhhhahhhhaaaa

 

[The Devil]

Sams a$$ is bloody and raw. He takes it in the a$$ by a
dog.

 

[Scott M.]

It's clear Sam, that you are not going to be happy with any response that
anyone makes here except if you wanted to start a bitch session.

I tried to help and address your issue (no, I didn't miss the point on a
process getting killed) by providing several possible things for you to look
at (you provided us no specifics as to your hardware/software/network
configuration). Your response to each piece of advice was insulting and
confrontational.

The superiority of XP over 9x versions of Windows is not subjective. It has
been benchmarked and tested over and over again. There are many reasons why
you may be experiencing the problems you are, but they are most probably
configuration or hardware related. You said you were working on new (fat)
Dells, so I would assume we are dealing with software/configuration.

Your specific issue about a process not dying that you have tried to kill is
most probably a software issue. It does sometimes take a 2nd or 3rd try to
kill the process and sometimes you just have to wait a few seconds. If the
process won't die after trying repeatedly and waiting sufficiently for it to
die, then you have a software problem. If this is happening with Windows or
Internet Explorer (as you indicated in your first message), then something
is conflicting with these apps. There are so many things to look at before
blaming the OS:

Antivirus software is notoriously known for causing conflicts with other
software
Firewall software can cripple any app. that needs network or Internet
connectivity (Win. and Internet Explorer especially) if not configured
correctly
Adware/spyware/viruses of course can muck up the works
Changes to the group policy of the computer can cause conflicts
Misconfigured network adapters can kill communications and cause an app to
hang
Bad drivers are one of the first things to check
3rd party software can easily bring another application down (In fact, I'm
using an application developed by NASA to view the Mars mission data in
real-time and it keeps crashing my network!)

The point is, you haven't told us anything about your status with the above
items and I'm guessing you haven't check them ALL either?

You indicated that you are working on machines that were recently upgraded
to XP. You don't want to take advice from those of us with several years
experience with XP and in my case with Dell in particular. You just seem
like you want to yell at us for not giving you the golden answer you seek.

I have to say that I have a great deal of experience in computing and with
MS products in particular. I own and operate an IT training company and
(without trying to sound condescending) it has always been my experience
that a response like yours comes from someone who doesn't fully understand
what he/she is working with (be it Windows, Outlook, Visual Basic or .NET).
This is not an insult, it is my observation over years and thousands of
students experience.

If you really want help with your issue, please feel free to reply. If you
just want to yell and insult the people offering advice, good luck in your
travels with the issues you face.

 

[JAX]

Sounds like they need a new administrator.

JAX

Sam takes it in the a$$. He's got a gerbil stuck up there
right now, that's why he's so cranky.
Mmmuuuuuuhhhhhaaaahhhhahhhhhahhhhaaaa

 

[Dave]

When a process ends, forcefully by me killing it,

I want control back of the OS.

That always works for me. However, I've only had to do
it about 5-7 times in the last year. It's worked more
reliably for me than it did in Windows 9x. (The latter
frequently shut the OS down with the app ;-))

I would be more concerned that you seem to need to do it
a LOT than the fact that it isn't working right - though
that's a concern too.

See, the thing is that we had the same hardware before,
updated the drives etc,

Here's something that may or may not apply:

I recently retied from one of the largest PC component
suppliers. When I left I was a product line manager so I
had had plenty of meetings with our customers (OEMs).
The OEMs care about every nickle of cost and will fight
forever. Sometimes it's just "honest" bargaining but
they also frequently requested that we defeature our
products to make them cheaper. (While keeping the same
name for marketing reasons.) Most customers never get
past the "first level" of specs and few make it past the
second. For example, most only care about how much RAM
and only a few will care about the bus speed and VERY few
know that higher speed RAM with a longer CAS latency is
actually slower overall. Likewise things like video cards
and modems are ID'd by most people solely by name though
they may actually have a dozen optional features that get
stuffed in various combinations for various OEMs.

So we often defeatured our products and supplied
appropriately defeatured drivers for them. This stuff
works great for awhile but eventually, a new release of
Windows comes out and either MS writes the driver and
never saw one of these particular defeatured versions or
we write the driver and we forget about one of them.
Ooops. It affects very few people because most never
upgrade their OS.

Personally I build all my own PCs because I find it
easier to keep them going for a long time.

You might consider hiring someone to figure this out for
you. It's as much a question of attitude as experience.
You need someone who enjoys solving puzzles.

 

[PA Bear]

Right, blame the messenger, Sam.

Check your systems for "hijackware":

Dealing with Hijackware
http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/unwanted.htm
http://www.mvps.org/inetexplorer/Darnit.htm#tshoot
http://aumha.org/a/parasite.htm

CoolWebSearch Chronicles
http://www.merijn.org/cwschronicles.html

You *must* seek updates for Ad-Aware, Spybot, etc., before each and every
use, even "right out of the box". But even then, they can't catch
everything. When all else fails, HijackThis
(http://www.merijn.org/files/hijackthis.zip) is the preferred tool to use.
It will help you to both identify and remove any hijackware/spyware. **Post
your files to http://forums.spywareinfo.com/ or the Spyware forum at
http://forum.aumha.org/ for expert analysis, not here.**

Also update your virus definitions and then run a full system scan. From
now on, do both daily.

So How Did I Get Infected Anyway?
http://boards.cexx.org/viewtopic.php?t=957

You also need to see this page:
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/spellcheck.htm.
--
HTH...Please post back to this thread

~Robear Dyer (aka PA Bear)
MS MVP-Windows (IE/OE), AH-VSOP

AumHa Forums
http://forum.mvps.org/

Protect Your PC
http://www.microsoft.com/security/protect

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Greetings --

Do you have any specific problem(s) that you need help with, or
are you just venting? Why do you prefer to blame the OS, rather than
the individual(s) who obviously botched the installation and
configuration?

It sounds like an issue of incompatible/sub-standard/defective
hardware, or device drivers, or defective/sub-standard wetware.


Bruce Chambers
--
Help us help you:



You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on
having both at once. -- RAH

 

[Michael Stevens]

i used to be fine with 98SE, I swear

now, with the freaking xp I'm so frustrated I cannot handle myself...

in the beginning I thought my productivity would go down and show,
but then again everyone here in the office has the same problems...

and we are not doing anything unusual, just day to day operations...

there is no way in hell I'm putting xp at home, nor to any of my
friends and relatives, this sucks so bad only Win-me could stand up
to it...

the complaint I have today is "when I kill a freaking process,
I want it dead, no questions asked"

Processes die, one time is windows explorer, one is internet explorer,
things that shouldnt happen but they do. They go to "non-responding".

When I END the process or program, I expect them to die and myself
to have back control of the stupid xp sob, instead of having to reboot
or restart every time...

people here have started talking about linux... lately I found myself
stop arguing with them... and I have shares in ms, i am not trying
to bad-mouth them or anything...

Although I have a problem with a few of your complaints, I have experienced
some of the same problems. The main complaint with your rant is most of the
problems you cite are due to the lack of applying criticle updates. I do
agree that XP and W2k is looking too increasingly vunerable and I am not
completely satisified with the speed MS is or has addressed the problems. I
am sure the open source community of Linux distrubutions have very similiar
vunerabilities, but the media attention is not as focused at this time. I
have a couple distros of Linux installed, and every day I get critical
updates that need to be applied.
--

Michael Stevens MS-MVP XP
(e-mail address removed)
http://michaelstevenstech.com
For a better newsgroup experience. Setup a newsreader.
http://michaelstevenstech.com/outlookexpressnewreader.htm

 

[francis gerard]

productivity is over-rated ;-)
we have become the tools of our tools... but i digress

as for XP being an exercise in frustration, i mostly agree, compared to
Windows 2000, XP is not nearly as reliable and the GUI can be rendered
unresponsive much too easily.

as for linux, there is no comparison, they are completely different
technologies, one is robust and performs well enough to run most servers on
the net... and the other is unstable and bloated with crappy code... you
decide which one. ;-)