That's a crock of Sh*t what Leythos the Stalker has posted. If software
developers only test their software on clean installs then they would go out
of business real fast. No manufacture ever suggest that you do a clean
install of windows in order to use their software. It never happens, tests
are done in real life situations that's the only way to find the bugs.
What a dip PCBUTTS1 is, I didn't say one should ONLY test on a clean XP
system, but if you're not testing applications on a Virgin XP (OS)
system with just OS Vendor updates then you're possibly not seeing the
actual working of the application. Many vendors install DLL and such in
IMPROPER places, they don't always remove them when you uninstall their
applications, your application may be impacted by them or not.
There is also the real chance that some other vendors app, one that you
don't use in your development facility, has been installed on the users
computer and that settings changes or changes to the underlying OS cause
problems for your application, but, if you are not testing on a clean
machine then you don't know where to start.
In all my years as a developer, I've seen non-clean machines be the
downfall of applications thousands of times. A typical issue is when a
Developer modifies/creates code that he's checked out of the library and
then doesn't update the library, he does the QA on his machine and it
passes fine, but, it's released in a rush and the Installation set is
built from the library - the modified DLL is missing and the
installation creates problems for any user installing the new version of
the app. Had the QA process been done on a "Clean" machine there would
not be any custom DLL's installed, testing would have found the missing
modified DLL and prevented customer problems.
The same is true with many AV/Antispyware packages - you test your
application on a clean computer with no AV installed, then you move to
testing it on a machine with the leading vendors AV apps installed....
This is done with what you can reasonably expect to be in the field that
might interact with your application.
To only QA your machine on unclean machines is a disservice to your
customers. This is why people like PCBUTTS are not respected, they don't
really have a clue about application development, don't have a clue
about QA to Production life cycle management, don't really have a clue
about things larger than their single computer environment.
