Reinstalling Windows
Jerry West
finally found how to get a Windows installation going that you can not start
in a DOS environment. Now that I have, after copying the files for
installation for an eternity (no Smart Drive on my boot disk), after reboot,
I get a STOP error. It tells me the Windows install I was trying to perform
has stopped. It tells me several things that could be the issue, i.e.
viruses, hard drive controllers, etc. Well, the thing is, it is a freshly
formatted FAT32 drive. Nothing is on it. So there can't be an issue with
viruses, etc. So now I have a laptop that I can't install a OS too! Makes
the piece of junk even more worthless. What am I missing? What could be
wrong here? Is the disk bad? Anybody have any insight to this perplexing
problem?
JW
Barry Watzman
to install XP on a system with SATA drives (you didn't say if this was a
SATA or IDE laptop), you need to use an "F6" driver disk, which REQUIRES
a floppy drive, there is NO substitute (although a USB floppy drive MAY
work). The ONLY other option is to make a new XP installation media
(CD) that has "slipstreamed" SATA drivers. All of this can be far too
complex for a lot of people (most people).
Of course, none of this applies if you are using IDE drives.
But you didn't give us much information to go on.
Bert Hyman
<Watzma...@neo.rr.com> wrote:
> Windows XP has no knowledge of or support of SATA hard drives. In
> order to install XP on a system with SATA drives (you didn't say if
> this was a SATA or IDE laptop), you need to use an "F6" driver disk,
> which REQUIRES a floppy drive, there is NO substitute (although a USB
> floppy drive MAY work). The ONLY other option is to make a new XP
> installation media (CD) that has "slipstreamed" SATA drivers. All of
> this can be far too complex for a lot of people (most people).
That's odd.
I installed XP on the machine I'm using right now which has 3 SATA
internal HDs and 2 internal IDE DVD drives, and used no additional
drivers at install time. I used the copy of XP Pro that I bought at the
same time as the pieces from which I built the machine.
The machine doesn't even have a floppy drive.
--
Bert Hyman St. Paul, MN be...@iphouse.com
BillW50
Bert Hyman typed on 12 Dec 2009 18:54:41 GMT:
Some manufacture's Windows XP disc contains the SATA driver, like most
Dell discs do. Another possibility is that the BIOS has the SATA
drive(s) set for legacy (ATA) mode. Which doesn't require the driver.
Although the throughput will be less than maximum.
And yes, USB floppy drives works fine for F6 drivers.
--
Bill
Asus EEE PC 702G8 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC
Windows XP SP2
Sjouke Burry
Barry Watzman
thinks it is dealing with an IDE drive when it's not. Not all computers
(laptop or desktop) do this, and on some machines it's an option that
can be enabled or disabled (in the bios).
However, the base statement ("Windows XP has no knowledge of or support
of SATA hard drives") is still correct.
None of this applies to either type of drive run through a USB or
Firewire port (those, interestingly, are often (although not always)
seen by the OS as SCSI devices).
Barry Watzman
I have never yet seen that, although the 2nd part of that paragraph is
"sort of" true ("the BIOS has the SATA drive(s) set for legacy (ATA)
mode. Which doesn't require the driver"). I don't like the terminology
you use, which I think is technically wrong, but yes, many BIOS have
built-in SATA to IDE emulation.
Re: "And yes, USB floppy drives works fine for F6 drivers"
That is absolutely not universally true; it depends on the BIOS.
GENERALLY, if the machine can boot from a floppy drive (or, for that
matter, from any USB device) you can use it for an F6 driver. However
lots of older machines (more than about 4-5 years old) don't have that
capability.
BillW50
Barry Watzman typed on Sat, 12 Dec 2009 14:17:59 -0500:
> Re: "Some manufacture's Windows XP disc contains the SATA driver"
>
> I have never yet seen that, although the 2nd part of that paragraph is
> "sort of" true ("the BIOS has the SATA drive(s) set for legacy (ATA)
> mode. Which doesn't require the driver"). I don't like the
> terminology you use, which I think is technically wrong, but yes,
> many BIOS have built-in SATA to IDE emulation.
Yes that is the *big* selling point of Dell machines. Which they
including a real Windows install disc vs. a recovery disc only. And as
an added bonus, Windows XP with SATA drive(s) has the driver on this
disc as well. I don't know of other manufactures who does this, but they
should. Including Microsoft's retail packages.
In a sad note, I am hearing reports that Dell is now dropping the
installation disc (for at least some models) for the recovery disc
(which is just an image of a factory install). And sometimes not even
including this, but only allow you to make your own recovery disc (just
like many other manufactures).
Terminology... yes well depending on the BIOS manufacture, they call it
many things. Sometimes they get it correctly and sometimes not.
> Re: "And yes, USB floppy drives works fine for F6 drivers"
>
> That is absolutely not universally true; it depends on the BIOS.
> GENERALLY, if the machine can boot from a floppy drive (or, for that
> matter, from any USB device) you can use it for an F6 driver. However
> lots of older machines (more than about 4-5 years old) don't have that
> capability.
Yes of course. I assumed that was a given. As if the BIOS is unaware of
any USB drive at POST, it wouldn't do you much good then.
BillW50
BillW50 typed on Sat, 12 Dec 2009 13:38:12 -0600:
>> Re: "And yes, USB floppy drives works fine for F6 drivers"
>>
>> That is absolutely not universally true; it depends on the BIOS.
>> GENERALLY, if the machine can boot from a floppy drive (or, for that
>> matter, from any USB device) you can use it for an F6 driver. However
>> lots of older machines (more than about 4-5 years old) don't
>> have that capability.
>
> Yes of course. I assumed that was a given. As if the BIOS is unaware
> of any USB drive at POST, it wouldn't do you much good then.
Oh yeah... another thing I meant to add was any machine that doesn't
support USB drives at boot (older machines) most likely has a built in
floppy drive anyway. Since the change over happened about the same time.
Another thing to add, any laptop with a SATA drive would likely support
USB floppy drives anyway. As SATA type isn't that old anyway. When did
they come out? In 2005 wasn't it?
Barry Watzman
There are VERY few manufacturers who are still offering XP at all,
period. And Microsoft never produced a retail XP package, as far as I
know, with even SP3, at all.
BillW50
> Re: "I don't know of other manufactures who does this, but they should.
> Including Microsoft's retail packages."
>
> There are VERY few manufacturers who are still offering XP at all,
> period. And Microsoft never produced a retail XP package, as far as I
> know, with even SP3, at all.
Lots of places sell Windows XP SP3 Generic OEM versions like Newegg and
TigerDirect to name two. I never saw a retail version of XP SP3 though.
And those two plus others still sell XP machines. I don't know if those
SP3 OEM versions has the SATA driver. That would be nice though, eh?
--
Bill
Gateway MX6124 ('06 era) - Windows XP SP2
Mike S.
In article <hg0q9b$605$1...@news.eternal-september.org>,
Barry Watzman <Watzma...@neo.rr.com> wrote:
>Re: "Some manufacture's Windows XP disc contains the SATA driver"
>
>I have never yet seen that, although the 2nd part of that paragraph is
>"sort of" true ("the BIOS has the SATA drive(s) set for legacy (ATA)
>mode. Which doesn't require the driver"). I don't like the terminology
>you use, which I think is technically wrong, but yes, many BIOS have
>built-in SATA to IDE emulation.
>
>Re: "And yes, USB floppy drives works fine for F6 drivers"
>
>That is absolutely not universally true; it depends on the BIOS.
>GENERALLY, if the machine can boot from a floppy drive (or, for that
>matter, from any USB device) you can use it for an F6 driver. However
>lots of older machines (more than about 4-5 years old) don't have that
>capability.
Actually the ability (or not) to use a particular USB floppy drive to add
drivers via F6 depends not upon the BIOS but upon the XP installer's
ability to recognize it as a USB floppy drive. THAT depends on whether
it's PnP ID string is contained in the textsetup.oem file on the XP
install disk.
See http://www.msfn.org/board/using-f6-driver-usb-floppy-t82711.html
for a definitive discussion of this issue.
BillW50
Very interesting Mike. Thanks very much!
Jerry West
used Partition Magic before I simply used a startup disk for Win98 this
time. After formatting I went through the whole disk copy thing again with
no SmartDrive. After it finished copying over all the files it rebooted.
Again, it had the same error message after reboot. Some craziness about how
it could be due to a virus, a improperly configured HD or some corruption on
the HD. Okay, clearly none of those are the problem. It is a freshly
formatted disk that has been working just fine since I purchased it. WFT?
What can a guy do at this point to salvage what will turn out to be a
worthless piece of junk if I can't install an OS to it!
JW
"Jerry West" <j...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:2qmdnYU8QLkau77W...@giganews.com...
Barry Watzman
any OEM could add them, but that's from the OEM, not MS).
It is amazing how little MS has updated retail and OEM products.
Although they add service packs, there are virtually no new drivers
added from the original release through SP1, SP2 and even SP3.
I'm also not sure how universal SATA drivers are. SATA is part of the
chipset, and obviously you not only have many chipsets from each chipset
maker, but all of the various chipset makers. Presumably it's possible
to make a "generic" SATA driver that works with all or almost all Intel
and AMD (ATI) and NVidia and other chipsets. But how "efficient" that
driver is compared to chipset specific SATA drivers is something I am
not sure of.
Jerry West
nothing amiss. I just don't get why the install just quits on reboot when
nothing is wrong with the drive.
JW
"Jerry West" <j...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:_rSdnX5hA5o6_LnW...@giganews.com...
BillW50
> No version of XP from Microsoft has SATA drivers built in (obviously,
> any OEM could add them, but that's from the OEM, not MS).
>
> It is amazing how little MS has updated retail and OEM products.
> Although they add service packs, there are virtually no new drivers
> added from the original release through SP1, SP2 and even SP3.
>
> I'm also not sure how universal SATA drivers are. SATA is part of the
> chipset, and obviously you not only have many chipsets from each chipset
> maker, but all of the various chipset makers. Presumably it's possible
> to make a "generic" SATA driver that works with all or almost all Intel
> and AMD (ATI) and NVidia and other chipsets. But how "efficient" that
> driver is compared to chipset specific SATA drivers is something I am
> not sure of.
How hard can it be? As Vista and Windows 7 already include generic SATA
drivers in the retail versions. Also most Linux distros already includes
them too.
> BillW50 wrote:
>> On 12/12/2009 5:28 PM, Barry Watzman wrote:
>>> Re: "I don't know of other manufactures who does this, but they should.
>>> Including Microsoft's retail packages."
>>>
>>> There are VERY few manufacturers who are still offering XP at all,
>>> period. And Microsoft never produced a retail XP package, as far as I
>>> know, with even SP3, at all.
>>
>> Lots of places sell Windows XP SP3 Generic OEM versions like Newegg
>> and TigerDirect to name two. I never saw a retail version of XP SP3
>> though. And those two plus others still sell XP machines. I don't know
>> if those SP3 OEM versions has the SATA driver. That would be nice
>> though, eh?
>>
ghelf
could not be located. Somebody suggested my DVD drive might need replacing.
I did replace it and the installation went smoothly. I've had problems with
DVD drives before. They seem to fail gradually. You may have a marginal DVD
drive. Try to reload from an external DVD drive.
"Jerry West" <j...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:_rSdnX5hA5o6_LnW...@giganews.com...
John Doue
issues when the cause might be basic. Take a hard look at that
possibility ... and of course consider the dvd you are using might be
marginal, too ...
Besides this, on a more general level, this thread shows how little
consideration MS has for its customers. Granted, in its opinion, XP is
history, but the fact is, it will remain for many years to come the most
prevalent OS among Windows users.
--
John Doue
BillW50
Whoa! Everybody back up here. First you can install Windows XP from a
DOS environment. Just run WINNT.EXE from the \i386 folder. Installation
will seem to take forever without SmartDrive though.
And yes, your DVD drive could be flaky. Although you can have a BIOS
setting that is blocking the writing of the MBR. This is to stop boot
viruses from infecting your system. It also prevents Windows from
installing as well. You should check this feature to disabled if you
have it. Then turn it back on for the added protection after Windows is
installed.
John Doue
>
> Whoa! Everybody back up here. First you can install Windows XP from a
> DOS environment. Just run WINNT.EXE from the \i386 folder. Installation
> will seem to take forever without SmartDrive though.
>
> And yes, your DVD drive could be flaky. Although you can have a BIOS
> setting that is blocking the writing of the MBR. This is to stop boot
> viruses from infecting your system. It also prevents Windows from
> installing as well. You should check this feature to disabled if you
> have it. Then turn it back on for the added protection after Windows is
> installed.
>
Nice wake-up call Bill. Indeed, it had also escaped my mind you CAN
install Windows from DOS. I do remember that it will take almost a full
day to get thru the install without smartdrive.
I personally never came across a Bios that would optionally block
writing to the MBR but indeed, it is a nice safety feature ... if you
know and remember about it!
--
John Doue
Jerry West
install? I mean, it doesn't need any special drivers or anything, right?
Can't imagine that it does when setup has no problem copying the install
files to the disk.
JW
"Jerry West" <j...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:4-ydne4FpdRi_7nW...@giganews.com...
BillW50
> Would the fact that the drive is a SATA drive make any difference for
> install? I mean, it doesn't need any special drivers or anything, right?
> Can't imagine that it does when setup has no problem copying the install
> files to the disk.
>
> JW
Oh yes! It makes a big difference! You have two choices:
1) Press F6 to load the driver from a floppy drive (USB should be ok)
2) Toggle IDE support (legacy) in the BIOS if your BIOS supports it
Ryan P.
But if the SATA support is native to the motherboard, wouldn't the
drive be recognized anyway? A few months ago, when I built my new
system, I was debating between XP and Windows 7 (RC), and installed XP
first (forgot how much of a resource hog XP is compared to old PC) onto
the system, and didn't encounter any issues, and didn't do anything
special to the BIOS. Perhaps if the MB supports it, legacy IDE is
active by default so normal people can install Windows.
BillW50
Not that I am aware of. The BIOS has to see it before the OS can do
anything with it. That is step one. The second step is that the OS has
to see it. But Windows XP doesn't have SATA drivers built in (some OEM
versions do like Dells). So you either need a driver or a toggle in the
BIOS to tell the operating system it is a IDE drive. Not all BIOS allows
this though. And it works, but you will get slower performance in this mode.
Jerry West
drive with no special instruction from me. So does that mean that this isn't
an issue?
JW
"BillW50" <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote in message
news:hg3lg4$m1i$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
Jerry West
Autodetect/ATA. That allowed setup to start versus giving me the error
originally I posted about. So what does this mean in the end? That I need
special drivers during the installation process to make Windows "see" the
drive? This is clearly a big clue to what has been going on. Can I change it
back to the faster setting after Windows completes the install? Does this
mean I need to go find new SATA drivers for the DOS portion of install for
XP?
JW
"BillW50" <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote in message
news:hg3lg4$m1i$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
Barry Watzman
that are optimized and work well. Every version of every OS displays an
image on every video card with no board- or chip-specific drivers
installed at all. But none of us would use a computer like that (see
what happens when you drag a window).
Barry Watzman
option.
Barry Watzman
from SATA drives) is not automatic on all systems. Sometimes it's
present, sometimes it's absent, sometimes it is a bios option whose
default can be either on or off.
Ryan P.
> Believe me, what you are calling "SATA support" (emulation of IDE drives
> from SATA drives) is not automatic on all systems. Sometimes it's
> present, sometimes it's absent, sometimes it is a bios option whose
> default can be either on or off.
Hmmm... I'll have to go back and check the BIOS then. I'm not a
performance fanatic, but if I'm losing a significant part due to
something so simple, that's just silly...
Barry Watzman
the whole area is specific to the BIOS, the chipset, the SATA and IDE
controllers (MOST boards today have a dual mode SATA/IDE controller IN
ADDITION TO the controllers (yes, usually plural ... multiple, distinct
controllers) within the chipset). So I'll take some time to try and
explain it. BUT YOUR SYSTEM IS PROBABLY DIFFERENT.
Let's take a typical system with an Intel ICH10R chipset (the EXACT
description I am going to give applies to many Gigabyte and Asus
motherboards).
ICH10R has two distinct controllers within it: A 4-port and a 2-port
controller. But since it has NO IDE at all (none of the Intel chipsets
for the past couple of years have had any), MOST motherboards have an
additional controller, most commonly a JMicron part that has both still
more SATA ports and an IDE port.
There is one thing that is absolute: WINDOWS XP DOES NOT NATIVELY
RECOGNIZE SATA DRIVES. AT ALL. PERIOD. (OEM distributions may, however).
BIOS' ***MAY*** provide an emulation of IDE drives from SATA drives. Or
they may not. If the emulation is provided you may be able to turn it
on or off (or it may be always on). If you can turn it on or off, the
default may be .... EITHER on or off.
With the emulation on, XP installs easily, but the emulation is inferior
to using the SATA drives as SATA drives (which XP doesn't natively
support). In order to install XP on a true SATA system using the drives
as sata drives (and keep in mind that all of this applies to laptops
also), you must install an "F6 Driver" very early in the Windows setup
process. THIS REQUIRES A FLOPPY DRIVE ... no, you can't do this ...
ever ... from a flash or other drive. However, if the system
(motherboard) supports booting from a USB floppy drive, it will likely
work for this purpose also. [Another option that will work is to
integrate ("slipstream") an XP installation CD with F6 drivers and make
a new XP installation CD that now has native SATA support included.]
The question often comes up "I installed XP using the emulation, can I
later switch to true SATA mode?"; the answer is that it EXTREMELY
difficult, but not necessarily impossible. There are many writeups on
the web discussing how to do it (again, it's not easy). And every one
of them that allows feedback and comments has about an equal number of
"it worked" and "it failed" comments. And if it fails, you may be left
with a corrupted system that won't boot at all.
Ok, so if we have that much .... we are about half done.
Most chipsets and other (JMicron) controller support 3 major modes of
operation for the SATA ports:
1. Raid
2. Native SATA (most commonly called AHCI)
3. IDE emulated from physical SATA
Unfortunately, there are not completely uniform names for either 2. or 3.
Further, in a development that many missed, there are now two kinds of
IDE (either physical or emulated):
A. "Legacy IDE"
B. "Native IDE"
And, again, although these terms are common, they are not universal.
Legacy IDE is good old right out of about 1990 IDE.
Native IDE is a newer standard for the IDE controller that lets the
controllers use many newer PCI bus features, including in particular
much more flexible interrupt assignments with both variable interrupts
and shared interrupts (legacy IDE requires fixed IRQ 14 and 15 interrupts).
So, often, you will have two BIOS settings for the drive ports in ICH10R
(the Intel chipset), corresponding to the two categories above
(Raid/AHCI/IDE and Legacy IDE/Native IDE).
THEN YOU WILL HAVE ANOTHER SET OF MORE OR LESS CORRESPONDING CHOICES FOR
ANY ADDITIONAL STORAGE CHIPS (e.g. for a JMicron Chip that provides REAL
(physical) IDE ports, AND more SATA ports, which can be used in a RAID
array). Or that additional chip can be disabled totally and entirely.
[BTW, it's a really good idea to understand which SATA connectors go to
the Intel chipset and which go to the non-Intel storage controllers (if
any). They are usually color coded.
Also note, if you want to do the installation on a drive connected to
the non-Intel storage controller (say a JMicron chip), you need ... AN
F6 DRIVER (this MAY apply even to IDE drives (real from the IDE port or
emulated from a SATA drive, since this is not the chipset, but the BIOS
may (or may not) integrate support for this chip so that it is as
complete as the ports in the chipset). But wait ..... it's a DIFFERENT
F6 driver from the one for the ports on the Intel chip.
Anyway, hope that helps and answers some of your questions. It's become
a LOT more complicated than it used to be.
Barry Watzman
USB ports is usually not all that great. It's there, but usually not
significant.
~misfit~
Can you please show (via cites) that running a SATA drive in IDE Emulation
Mode is slower?
I have been involved in a few debates about this in several forums in the
past and the consensus was that there's no appreciable difference in speed.
--
Shaun.
"Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day. But set fire to him and he's
warm for the rest of his life." Terry Pratchet, 'Jingo'.
Barry Watzman
benchmarks that test disk access time, but you will never sense it in
actual use, with the exception of boot time, which may improve for
another related but different reason. Without using SATA in SATA mode,
you can't use AHCI (advance host controller interface) and NCQ (native
command queing), which improve performance. But in normal use, the
improvement is undetectable although benchmarks can show it.
HOWEVER, in my case, it cut my boot time by over a minute. When I was
in IDE mode, for reasons that I do not understand, there was a long
pause during boot while the system was looking for "something". I
changed to AHCI SATA mode and disable ALL IDE controllers (ALL of them
... obviously you need all SATA drives, including optical drives) and
the pause disappeared. Since I don't know what the pause was, I can't
be clear on what happened, but it made a huge difference, more than a
minute. Also, pause aside, bootup seems to happen more quickly. But
bootup is a VERY disk-intensive operation, almost totally bound by disk
I/O. So it's one of the places were improved disk performance can
become perceptable. In that regard, however, it is an exception.
John Doue
This thread has become very technical, probably too much for me. Still,
a few remarks:
- Just checked one of my own machine, the MBR protection is called here:
Virus Warning. Not obvious for some users I guess.
- The same SATA machine came new with Vista, which I hated immediately
(or probably even before!). In a first step, I made place on the disk,
installed System Commander, hid the original C partition, and installed
XP from a CD, created before SP1 even existed. Never had any problem due
to SATA (but plenty others since it took me 3 days to put my hands on
all the XP drivers I needed).
Was I just lucky?
When trying to summarize all I have read in this very interesting
thread, I end up thinking:
- obviously, installing smartdrive before attempting to install Windows
is worth some effort unless you are a very patient soul.
- getting your hands on a slipstreamed disk of XP with SP3 might well be
worth the effort. Relatively simple instructions are all over the Internet.
- it is ridiculous to make life so difficult for users. Manufacturers
and MS share responsibility in this situation. If this type of problem
is stimulating for us geeks, it is a big nuisance for others!
--
John Doue
~misfit~
> That's pretty close to what I said.
I didn't see your post, I'll go back and look. I was interupted when reading
this group so just sent my post and didn't finish reading. Of course, on
opening it now I checked replies to my post first....
> You can show a difference in
> benchmarks that test disk access time, but you will never sense it in
> actual use, with the exception of boot time, which may improve for
> another related but different reason. Without using SATA in SATA
> mode, you can't use AHCI (advance host controller interface) and NCQ
> (native command queing), which improve performance. But in normal
> use, the improvement is undetectable although benchmarks can show it.
>
> HOWEVER, in my case, it cut my boot time by over a minute. When I was
> in IDE mode, for reasons that I do not understand, there was a long
> pause during boot while the system was looking for "something". I
> changed to AHCI SATA mode and disable ALL IDE controllers (ALL of them
> ... obviously you need all SATA drives, including optical drives) and
> the pause disappeared. Since I don't know what the pause was, I can't
> be clear on what happened, but it made a huge difference, more than a
> minute. Also, pause aside, bootup seems to happen more quickly. But
> bootup is a VERY disk-intensive operation, almost totally bound by
> disk I/O. So it's one of the places were improved disk performance
> can become perceptable. In that regard, however, it is an exception.
I changed both my desktop and my laptop from IDE emulation to ACHI so I
could take advantage of NCQ. In both cases I used a work-around with an
existing install that required some voodoo registry stuff as well as
installing the drivers and there is no noticable difference with either.
Seems your system had a problem implimenting IDE emulation. Did you try a
BIOS upgrade to see if it fixed it?
--
Cheers,
~misfit~
> emulated USB ports is usually not all that great. It's there, but
> usually not significant.
Emulated USB?
--
Shaun.
"Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day. But set fire to him and he's
warm for the rest of his life." Terry Pratchet, 'Jingo'.
> Ryan P. wrote:
~misfit~
> because the whole area is specific to the BIOS, the chipset, the SATA
> and IDE controllers (MOST boards today have a dual mode SATA/IDE
> controller IN ADDITION TO the controllers (yes, usually plural ...
> multiple, distinct controllers) within the chipset). So I'll take
> some time to try and explain it. BUT YOUR SYSTEM IS PROBABLY
> DIFFERENT.
> Let's take a typical system with an Intel ICH10R chipset (the EXACT
> description I am going to give applies to many Gigabyte and Asus
> motherboards).
>
> ICH10R has two distinct controllers within it: A 4-port and a 2-port
> controller. But since it has NO IDE at all (none of the Intel
> chipsets for the past couple of years have had any), MOST
> motherboards have an additional controller, most commonly a JMicron
> part that has both still more SATA ports and an IDE port.
But... This is a laptop newsgroup.
I've attempted it twice, once for my Asus mobo'd desktop with ICH9R /
JMicron controllers and once for my IBM T60 ThinkPad (ICH7-M/U) and both
times it worked just fine, all done in 15 minutes.
--
Shaun.
"Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day. But set fire to him and he's
warm for the rest of his life." Terry Pratchet, 'Jingo'.
> Ok, so if we have that much .... we are about half done.
Adrian C
>
> The question often comes up "I installed XP using the emulation, can I
> later switch to true SATA mode?"; the answer is that it EXTREMELY
> difficult, but not necessarily impossible. There are many writeups on
> the web discussing how to do it (again, it's not easy). And every one
> of them that allows feedback and comments has about an equal number of
> "it worked" and "it failed" comments. And if it fails, you may be left
> with a corrupted system that won't boot at all.
Install the SATA/RAID drivers, reboot, change BIOS emulation & done.
--
Adrian C
Barry Watzman
Barry Watzman
SATA/RAID hardware is not present. There are ways around this, but they
involve registry editing, manual copying of driver files, and multiple
restarts with recofiguration of the BIOS in between. Yes, it's usually
possible, but it's not easy.
BillW50
Oh really? That is news to me. First time ever hearing about there is no
difference. It is on my long list of things to experiment with.
~misfit~
> SATA/RAID hardware is not present. There are ways around this, but
> they involve registry editing, manual copying of driver files, and
> multiple restarts with recofiguration of the BIOS in between. Yes,
> it's usually possible, but it's not easy.
I've done it more than once with only one re-start but with registry changes
and of course driver installs.
--
Shaun.
"Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day. But set fire to him and he's
warm for the rest of his life." Terry Pratchet, 'Jingo'.
> Adrian C wrote:
~misfit~
Not so. Every time I've done it registry changes are required. Some aren't
simple and can be easilly messed up if you're not careful.
Still, it only takes 15 minutes once you've done all the Googling you need
to do, found the method and downloaded the correct drivers.
~misfit~
I'm told that the only time there is an appreciable diference is when
multiple I/O requests are stacked (such as a busy server environment) when
NCQ steps in and can speed things up *a little*. I read a few reviews that
agreed as well as forum stuff.
Barry Watzman
problem that they could not find. They called in a consultant, he
studied the turbine, put a mark on the housing, drilled a 1/4" hole at
the mark and the vibration stopped.
He sent them a bill for $100,000.
The accounting department asked for more detail.
He sent them a new bill:
1. Drilling the hole $5.00
2. Knowing to drill a hole and where: $99,995.00
This is like that. It's not the file copying or the registry editing
that takes the time or effort. What takes the time and effort is the
RESEARCH to find out WHAT to copy, and where, and WHAT changes to make.
A trained chimpanzee could make the actual changes ... if it knew what
they were. Typing, per se, is not all that difficult, it's knowing WHAT
to type.
Richard Bonner
> I'm trying to re-install Windows XP to my laptop. After much effort I
> finally found how to get a Windows installation going that you can not start
> in a DOS environment. Now that I have, after copying the files for
> installation for an eternity (no Smart Drive on my boot disk), after reboot,
> I get a STOP error. It tells me the Windows install I was trying to perform
> has stopped. It tells me several things that could be the issue, i.e.
> viruses, hard drive controllers, etc. Well, the thing is, it is a freshly
> formatted FAT32 drive. Nothing is on it. So there can't be an issue with
> viruses, etc. So now I have a laptop that I can't install an OS to!
(Snip)
> JW
*** If it turns out that you can't install Windows without some sort of
recovery disk, think about installing DOS or Linux, if either will do
what you need.
--
Richard Bonner
http://www.chebucto.ca/~ak621/DOS/
BillW50
Richard Bonner typed on Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:00:21 +0000 (UTC):
> *** If it turns out that you can't install Windows without some
> sort of recovery disk, think about installing DOS or Linux, if either
> will do what you need.
I believe for most people, DOS or Linux just doesn't cut it. Kind of sad
how DOS support went downhill very quickly when Windows 3.1 came out.
And there are too many Linux distros (versions) out there all in
competition with each other and hurting them all. If someday there were
only one, then more people would take Linux more serious I would think.
--
Bill
Asus EEE PC 702G8 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC
Windows XP SP2
John Doue
issues remain:
- the graphics quality of Linux (at least, those I tried sometime ago)
often leaves to be desired.
- the installation requires clear notions of disk organisation and
acceptance of the Linux inpenetrable language
- absence of a recycle bin which saves your bacon, one day or another,
quasi-impossibility to "undelete" files
- it does not take long to realize the complexity of the system behind a
more or less smooth interface interfers with almost the simplest action.
Of course, the opposite can occasionally be true.
Those problems could be solved with better drivers and an interface
designed for users, not geeks. There, the advantage of a unified
standard would go a long way.
But the killer here is, most people think Linux is a very strong and
solid system, the proof being in its numerous commercial uses.
Well, it does not take long for Linux users to realize this is not
really true. In fact, Linux systems are not that strong, and worse, when
they crash, it takes a very qualified technician or user to get them
back online. Often, the average user (if there is such a thing!) will
not be able to recover.
So, although I am not at all a Windows admirer, I have to say that XP is
a very rounded system and that it does not take a lot of expertise to
recover a crashed system. Of course, this is especially true if you
still use FAT32 file system. NTFS may be more solid - not that much more
- but the big difference is, being much less complex, a FAT32 problem
can be much more easily cured, especially in view of the abundance of
tools available.
But this might be opening a can of worms and getting OT ...
--
John Doue
the wharf rat
John Doue <not...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>- the graphics quality of Linux (at least, those I tried sometime ago)
>often leaves to be desired.
What exatly do you mean by that? I can set up a much more
comfortable desktop environment in Linux, in terms of virtual desktops
and so on, than I can in Windows. They run at the same resolution as a
Windows desktop...
>- the installation requires clear notions of disk organisation and
>acceptance of the Linux inpenetrable language
Is that like Perl? :-)
>- absence of a recycle bin which saves your bacon, one day or another,
>quasi-impossibility to "undelete" files
cat >$HOME/bin/pretendtoboewindows >>EOF
mv $1 $HOME/recyclebin
exit $?
EOF
alias rm $HOME/bin/pretendtobewindows
See, that's the real beauty of the linux environment: you
can do things Redmond didn't think you'd want to do. **Easily**
>- it does not take long to realize the complexity of the system behind a
>more or less smooth interface interfers with almost the simplest action.
If you think linux is complex try and write hello, world
in visual c++.
>the advantage of a unified standard would go a long way.
They could call it POSIX.
>
>Well, it does not take long for Linux users to realize this is not
>really true. In fact, Linux systems are not that strong, and worse, when
>they crash, it takes a very qualified technician or user to get them
>back online. Often, the average user (if there is such a thing!) will
>not be able to recover.
>
That's just silly.
Because of such modern technologies <sarcasm> as a journaled
file system and privilege separation when a linux box DOES crash it almost
never takes anything more complicated that rebooting. You almost never
have to, say, spend two hours reloading the operating system then the
rest of the evening scouring vendor sites for missing hardware drivers...
>So, although I am not at all a Windows admirer, I have to say that XP is
>a very rounded system and that it does not take a lot of expertise to
>recover a crashed system. Of course, this is especially true if you
>still use FAT32 file system.
You're kidding, right? Not only is it pathetically easy to fatally
munge FAT32, but the whole Windows house-of-cards boot process has only
one failure mode: "Please waste some time trying to recover with the
recovery console, then end up having to resinstall anyway." I ghost any
windows system I even think about adding hardware to...
>- but the big difference is, being much less complex, a FAT32 problem
>can be much more easily cured, especially in view of the abundance of
>tools available.
You've got that backwards. There are so many 3rd party tools
because it's almost impossible to recover a failed FAT32 without searching
the entire drive looking for things that might be data blocks.
BillW50
"the wharf rat" <wr...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:hgddmd$q0f$1...@reader1.panix.com...
> In article <hgcn6i$ple$1...@adenine.netfront.net>,
> John Doue <not...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>
>>- the graphics quality of Linux (at least, those I tried sometime ago)
>>often leaves to be desired.
>
> What exatly do you mean by that? I can set up a much more
> comfortable desktop environment in Linux, in terms of virtual desktops
> and so on, than I can in Windows. They run at the same resolution as
> a
> Windows desktop...
Really? I only have two virtual desktops under KDE and unlimited under
Windows with Altdesk. And I can drastically change the Windows desktop
with either Aston1 or Aston2 shells. I can't even add widgets to KDE
under Linux. Of course Linux applications are generally third rate
anyway. So there isn't much to work with.
>>- the installation requires clear notions of disk organisation and
>>acceptance of the Linux inpenetrable language
>
> Is that like Perl? :-)
>
>>- absence of a recycle bin which saves your bacon, one day or another,
>>quasi-impossibility to "undelete" files
>
> cat >$HOME/bin/pretendtoboewindows >>EOF
> mv $1 $HOME/recyclebin
> exit $?
> EOF
> alias rm $HOME/bin/pretendtobewindows
>
> See, that's the real beauty of the linux environment: you
> can do things Redmond didn't think you'd want to do. **Easily**
No I don't see the beauty of Linux. It is much easier to hit the DEL key
in Windows than to open up the terminal window and to type in about 100
characters.
>>- it does not take long to realize the complexity of the system behind
>>a
>>more or less smooth interface interfers with almost the simplest
>>action.
>
> If you think linux is complex try and write hello, world
> in visual c++.
You don't have to be a programmer to use Windows though. Under Linux,
you can't do much of anything unless you are a programmer.
>>the advantage of a unified standard would go a long way.
>
> They could call it POSIX.
>>
>>Well, it does not take long for Linux users to realize this is not
>>really true. In fact, Linux systems are not that strong, and worse,
>>when
>>they crash, it takes a very qualified technician or user to get them
>>back online. Often, the average user (if there is such a thing!) will
>>not be able to recover.
>
> That's just silly.
Not really! Just yesterday Linux toasted one of my music files when the
Music Manager locked up when I was checking for updates. Why does Linux
write to a file that it is only supposed to be reading only? Am I going
to have to write protect my flash drives whenever I use them with Linux?
> Because of such modern technologies <sarcasm> as a journaled
> file system and privilege separation when a linux box DOES crash it
> almost
> never takes anything more complicated that rebooting. You almost
> never
> have to, say, spend two hours reloading the operating system then the
> rest of the evening scouring vendor sites for missing hardware
> drivers...
Nonsense! My Xandros corrupted itself and when I rebooted, do not pass
go, go directly to jail. No other option at all and the recovery process
started immediately and no option to stop the process. When finished,
everything was gone! Windows at least warns you something bad is going
to happen and allows you to opt out, but not Linux.
>>So, although I am not at all a Windows admirer, I have to say that XP
>>is
>>a very rounded system and that it does not take a lot of expertise to
>>recover a crashed system. Of course, this is especially true if you
>>still use FAT32 file system.
>
> You're kidding, right? Not only is it pathetically easy to fatally
> munge FAT32, but the whole Windows house-of-cards boot process has
> only
> one failure mode: "Please waste some time trying to recover with the
> recovery console, then end up having to resinstall anyway." I ghost
> any
> windows system I even think about adding hardware to...
I haven't seen a corrupted file system since the old DOS days. If you
experience one, then you probably did something you shouldn't in the
first place. Or you must be using Linux.
And even a ghost copy of Linux didn't help. As Xandros saw it as corrupt
and kicked in the recovery mode without options. With no means to stop
it. A ghost image of Windows I have choices and Windows doesn't decide
to wipe everything out without warning. So no need to make backups for
Linux as they don't work anyway.
>>- but the big difference is, being much less complex, a FAT32 problem
>>can be much more easily cured, especially in view of the abundance of
>>tools available.
>
> You've got that backwards. There are so many 3rd party tools
> because it's almost impossible to recover a failed FAT32 without
> searching
> the entire drive looking for things that might be data blocks.
Linux didn't even offer any options at all. As it automatically kick in
recovery mode and everything was lost. At least with Windows, I could
use a boot disc and fix it or back things up or something. Not Xandros
Linux though, it doesn't like something, it just wipes it out without
any warning. And there are no Linux tools around to save your bacon in
this case either.
--
Bill
Windows7 Ultimate (build 7100)
Gateway MX6124 - 2G RAM
John Doue
expressed some views, being a fairly advanced Windows user who tried
several times to prepare for a switch. Each time, I ended up giving up,
because, being reasonably competent in Windows, I wanted to experiment
and not be limited to the few automated possibilities of Linux.
I never managed to go beyond what is considered as basic in Windows and,
admitting I was too limited in my "programming" abilities, I ended up
giving up.
Of course, my experimenting on Linux lead once or twice to a crash, and
as Bill experimented, to the total loss of my installation. Admittedly,
because I was not smart enough to recover.
So, what I am saying, is, given an identical level of experience in
computing, Windows is far easier (your post makes this very clear!) to
use and more importantly, to maintain.
But I regret this situation and wish things were different!
--
John Doue
BillW50
John Doue typed on Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:04:05 +0200:
> I did not intend to start a war between pros and cons of Linux. I just
> expressed some views, being a fairly advanced Windows user who tried
> several times to prepare for a switch. Each time, I ended up giving
> up, because, being reasonably competent in Windows, I wanted to
> experiment and not be limited to the few automated possibilities of
> Linux.
> I never managed to go beyond what is considered as basic in Windows
> and, admitting I was too limited in my "programming" abilities, I
> ended up giving up.
>
> Of course, my experimenting on Linux lead once or twice to a crash,
> and as Bill experimented, to the total loss of my installation.
> Admittedly, because I was not smart enough to recover.
>
> So, what I am saying, is, given an identical level of experience in
> computing, Windows is far easier (your post makes this very clear!) to
> use and more importantly, to maintain.
>
> But I regret this situation and wish things were different!
I don't see it as a war, but as experiences. Some people love Linux. And
I think it is great. I have tried three different distros of Linux and
all of them were unstable. And even if you know what you are doing,
Linux will still toast itself and everything else close to it.
Linus Torvalds is said to be the father of Linux. And in his book, he
doesn't seem to even like Linux too much and uses Windows. And he was
recently found at the Windows 7 booth giving the big thumbs up. Now if
the father of Linux isn't too impressed with his own child, how can the
rest of us be?
http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/2057/torvaldsoffersathumbsup.jpg
AJL
>I have tried three different distros of Linux
Only 3 out of hundreds?
>and all of them were unstable.
Try a few more. If a 100 are unstable you will have something.
>And even if you know what you are doing,
How can you know what you're doing after only 3?
>Linux will still toast itself and everything else close to it.
I'm surprised at you Bill. That statement sounds like one from a
religious zealot, not a trained engineer.
>if the father of Linux isn't too impressed with his own child, how can the
>rest of us be?
Much of the commercial world runs on Linux based systems. Google is
about to make much $$$$ using Linux. Linux may not be as user friendly
to the general public as Windows but it will probably not be
destroying the world anytime soon... ;)
the wharf rat
BillW50 <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote:
>
>Really? I only have two virtual desktops under KDE and unlimited under
>Windows with Altdesk. And I can drastically change the Windows desktop
>with either Aston1 or Aston2 shells. I can't even add widgets to KDE
Lol. So if you buy a third party application you can do pretty
much what you want, huh?
Anyway, you can have all the widgets you want to KDE. Some starting
points are extragear-plasma or the long list of widgets at
www.kde-apps.org. Not to mention the "add widgets" menu on the desktop :-)
BTW, I have 6 desktops on this box. It's a Thinkpad T23...
>Of course Linux applications are generally third rate
So why are you even bothering? Go buy a nice new Windows 7 :-)
>No I don't see the beauty of Linux. It is much easier to hit the DEL key
>in Windows than to open up the terminal window and to type in about 100
>characters.
You've been seduced by the dark side. Preprogrammed black box
gui's are fine as long as you only need to do what the gui designer
was able to predict you'd want to do. There's nothing like a programmable
interactive shell for getting work done. Hey, you mean to tell me that
an old hand like you never opens a dos box just to be able to do something
more complicated than "Are you sure you want to send foo.exe to the recycle
bin?" ??? :-)
Another big advantage of Linux is that it runs well on minimal
hardware. So I can refurbish 10 year old laptops and be able to do anything
I can reasonably expect a laptop to do, thus achieving financial, ecological,
and computational economy all at the same time!
>>>they crash, it takes a very qualified technician or user to get them
>>>back online. Often, the average user (if there is such a thing!) will
>>>not be able to recover.
>>
>Just yesterday Linux toasted one of my music files when the
>Music Manager locked up when I was checking for updates. Why does Linux
No chance that could be user error, huh? :-) Anyway, accidentally
deleting an application file is very different from "needing an expert
to get back online", isn't it?
It's trivial to completely protect your important files on a usb
flash drive, even from the administrator. That is, it's trivial if you
use Linux :-) Just mount the device read only. You can do something
similar in Windows but you need to edit the registry. 'Cause Redmond
never figured that anyone'd need to mount a drive read-only, see?
>
>Nonsense! My Xandros corrupted itself and when I rebooted, do not pass
>go, go directly to jail. No other option at all and the recovery process
>started immediately and no option to stop the process. When finished,
>everything was gone! Windows at least warns you something bad is going
>to happen and allows you to opt out, but not Linux.
>
I honestly have trouble with the idea that any operating system
"just corrupts itself". Anyway, the Xandros on the Eeepc is not Xandros
but something Asus developed itself. No normal linux even has the capability
to do that kind of automatic reinstall. I agree that it shouldn't do that
but it's a vendor issue.
>
>I haven't seen a corrupted file system since the old DOS days. If you
>experience one, then you probably did something you shouldn't in the
>first place. Or you must be using Linux.
>
I saw a lot less of that stuff on DOS, except for floppies. There
was less going on I think, so less chances for error.
But I see plenty of bad file systems on XP systems. It's almost
never a Windows problem. Typically there's a disc or power error during
boot or shutdown resulting in a missing system file or registry, or a corrupted
registry. The recovery console will claim that there's no previous
Windows or that it can't read drive C: or whatever. Less often an upgrade
goes south with similar results. Sometimes there's buggy hardware.
Like, one that drove me nuts was a readahead bug in some of the
Via socket 754 chipsets. Windows would run for a while then gradually take
disc errors and then refuse to recognize the file system... My favorite
file system corruption story is actually an NTFS one, though:
Nice big NT 4.0 server with a nice big raid 5 array. It passed
smoke test and ran for about a week in production before a disc failed
and the array went into degraded mode. Ok, no problem, right? Of course
a second disc failed during the, like, 24 hour rebuild... Now the FS is hosed
so we RMA the drives, replace them, rebuild, restore, and go back to work.
For about 3 days. Then a disc fails, the array goes into degraded
mode, a second disc fails, so we RMA the drives... This sucks, huh? But
stuff happens, so we get it fixed and go back to work.
For about 3 days. Then a disc fails... Etc. Now we're really
pissed. We RMA the drives, yell at IBM, call the vendor, yell at the
vendor, replace the drives, rebuild.... Sure enough, we go back to work
for about three days when it happens again. This time a light goes on.
Let's RMA the backplane this time, too.
We replace the "bad" drives AND the backplane, and as far as I
know that machine's still running.
>And even a ghost copy of Linux didn't help. As Xandros saw it as corrupt
>and kicked in the recovery mode without options. With no means to stop
Well, go yell at Asus. No production linux behaves that way.
You can't blame linux for stupid vendor design. But... are you sure you RTFM?
>So no need to make backups for Linux as they don't work anyway.
Now you're just being silly.
>Linux didn't even offer any options at all. As it automatically kick in
>recovery mode and everything was lost. At least with Windows, I could
You could have booted a cd and repaired it. Linux runs fine from
a cd (unlike windows :-). The next time you find yourself in this situation
boot an ordinary Linux cd and use "linux rescue", or boot a cdrom linux
like knoppix and proceed from there.
>And there are no Linux tools around to save your bacon in this case either.
You could have booted linux in rescue mode and repaired the superblock
bitmaps using adb. <-- kind of a joke, but I knew a guy who'd do that to
save himself the trouble of reinstalling...
Or just run fsck -y I bet :-)
the wharf rat
BillW50 <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote:
>
>all of them were unstable. And even if you know what you are doing,
>Linux will still toast itself and everything else close to it.
>
commercial computing sites in the world, including Google.
>recently found at the Windows 7 booth giving the big thumbs up. Now if
That's because he's not an OS bigot. Windows is good for
*some* things... :-)
BillW50
AJL typed on Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:54:36 -0700:
> "BillW50" <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote:
>
>> I have tried three different distros of Linux
>
> Only 3 out of hundreds?
>
>> and all of them were unstable.
>
> Try a few more. If a 100 are unstable you will have something.
I wouldn't be a Windows user today if the first couple of Windows
versions didn't work.
>> And even if you know what you are doing,
>
> How can you know what you're doing after only 3?
I was an OS/2 expert only after two versions of OS/2. And I rolled my
own video drivers.
>> Linux will still toast itself and everything else close to it.
>
> I'm surprised at you Bill. That statement sounds like one from a
> religious zealot, not a trained engineer.
It is a scientific fact! I have proved it in experiments. Remember I put
Ubuntu Live on a flash and ran it on my EeePC 4G and it corrupted the
Windows registry. I couldn't believe it. So I fixed the registry and
booted Ubuntu two more times with the very same results. Today I won't
run Ubuntu Live if the machine contains a drive with Windows on it. I
didn't see this problem with Puppy Linux, btw.
>> if the father of Linux isn't too impressed with his own child, how
>> can the rest of us be?
>
> Much of the commercial world runs on Linux based systems. Google is
> about to make much $$$$ using Linux. Linux may not be as user friendly
> to the general public as Windows but it will probably not be
> destroying the world anytime soon... ;)
How is Google planning to make big bucks using Linux? Many use Linux as
a server, but virtually any OS makes a good server. Linux is probably
used a lot here because it is cheap and not much good for anything else.
BillW50
the wharf rat typed on Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:04:45 +0000 (UTC):
> In article <hgdngj$90m$1...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> BillW50 <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote:
>>
>> all of them were unstable. And even if you know what you are doing,
>> Linux will still toast itself and everything else close to it.
>>
> That's nonsense. Linux is used in some of the largest
> commercial computing sites in the world, including Google.
Linux makes a good server, no secret there. But even a very weak OS
makes for a good server as well. Nothing that complex about streaming
data around.
>> recently found at the Windows 7 booth giving the big thumbs up. Now
>> if
>
> That's because he's not an OS bigot. Windows is good for
> *some* things... :-)
Really? You wouldn't say that if you ever heard him talk about the Mac.
He wasn't too kind either in his book.
BillW50
the wharf rat typed on Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:02:34 +0000 (UTC):
> In article <hgdh7u$e16$1...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> BillW50 <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote:
>>
>> Really? I only have two virtual desktops under KDE and unlimited
>> under Windows with Altdesk. And I can drastically change the Windows
>> desktop with either Aston1 or Aston2 shells. I can't even add
>> widgets to KDE
>
> Lol. So if you buy a third party application you can do pretty
> much what you want, huh?
There are also free virtual desktops too. One of them from Microsoft
themselves.
> Anyway, you can have all the widgets you want to KDE. Some starting
> points are extragear-plasma or the long list of widgets at
> www.kde-apps.org. Not to mention the "add widgets" menu on the
> desktop :-)
Thanks, I'll check it out.
> BTW, I have 6 desktops on this box. It's a Thinkpad T23...
I use five on this Gateway laptop as well on my other laptops and
netbooks.
>> Of course Linux applications are generally third rate
>
> So why are you even bothering? Go buy a nice new Windows 7 :-)
I have Windows 7 evaluation version on this computer and on one netbook.
Although I also preordered two Windows 7 Upgrade versions 6 months ago.
These evaluation versions quit working in May 2010. And those two
Upgrade versions sit unopened on the shelf. And after next May, they
still will be unopened. As I fall into the 20% camp that isn't that
impressed with Windows 7.
>> No I don't see the beauty of Linux. It is much easier to hit the DEL
>> key in Windows than to open up the terminal window and to type in
>> about 100 characters.
>
> You've been seduced by the dark side. Preprogrammed black box
> gui's are fine as long as you only need to do what the gui designer
> was able to predict you'd want to do. There's nothing like a
> programmable interactive shell for getting work done. Hey, you mean
> to tell me that an old hand like you never opens a dos box just to be
> able to do something more complicated than "Are you sure you want to
> send foo.exe to the recycle bin?" ??? :-)
I used too all of the time. And it was funny working on somebody else's
computer years ago and pop up a DOS window and start typing. And I would
get comments like wow, I never seen that screen before. But that was in
the days when Windows ran in a DOS shell. Nowadays this isn't the case
and there is virtually no need to go there anymore.
> Another big advantage of Linux is that it runs well on minimal
> hardware. So I can refurbish 10 year old laptops and be able to do
> anything I can reasonably expect a laptop to do, thus achieving
> financial, ecological, and computational economy all at the same time!
You're kidding yourself. Linux can't even play videos in full screen on
a modern netbook, while Windows can without problems. Also I have two
Toshiba 2595XDVD which are 10 years old. One has Windows 98SE and the
other has Windows 2000. And no, they would make very poor Linux
machines.
>>>> they crash, it takes a very qualified technician or user to get
>>>> them back online. Often, the average user (if there is such a
>>>> thing!) will not be able to recover.
>>>
>> Just yesterday Linux toasted one of my music files when the
>> Music Manager locked up when I was checking for updates. Why does
>> Linux
>
> No chance that could be user error, huh? :-) Anyway, accidentally
> deleting an application file is very different from "needing an expert
> to get back online", isn't it?
User error? Well if the user is to blame of trying to multitask was the
error, well ok. And this isn't the first time Linux corrupted an audio
file that was playing either. And I have had Windows for 16 years now
and Windows never did such a thing.
> It's trivial to completely protect your important files on a usb flash
> drive, even from the administrator. That is, it's trivial if you use
> Linux :-) Just mount the device read only. You can do something
> similar in Windows but you need to edit the registry. 'Cause Redmond
> never figured that anyone'd need to mount a drive read-only, see?
No need for either. Just flip the write protect on the flash card. Also
on the Windows side, Microsoft has EWF which will protect any drive of
your choosing. Although usually it is the system drive that you use this
on.
>> Nonsense! My Xandros corrupted itself and when I rebooted, do not
>> pass go, go directly to jail. No other option at all and the recovery
>> process started immediately and no option to stop the process. When
>> finished, everything was gone! Windows at least warns you something
>> bad is going to happen and allows you to opt out, but not Linux.
>>
> I honestly have trouble with the idea that any operating system "just
> corrupts itself". Anyway, the Xandros on the Eeepc is not Xandros but
> something Asus developed itself. No normal linux even has the
> capability to do that kind of automatic reinstall. I agree that it
> shouldn't do that but it's a vendor issue.
How do you explain Ubuntu Live on a flash corrupts the Windows registry
on the main drive? I personally didn't believe my own eyes and tried it
two more times with the same results.
Very interesting story! You must have a lot of those I bet. ;-)
>> And even a ghost copy of Linux didn't help. As Xandros saw it as
>> corrupt and kicked in the recovery mode without options. With no
>> means to stop
>
> Well, go yell at Asus. No production linux behaves that way.
> You can't blame linux for stupid vendor design. But... are you sure
> you RTFM?
>
>> So no need to make backups for Linux as they don't work anyway.
>
> Now you're just being silly.
Not when you are talking about Xandros on the EeePC. And you better make
Windows backups if you want to try Ubuntu Live on a Windows machine.
>> Linux didn't even offer any options at all. As it automatically kick
>> in recovery mode and everything was lost. At least with Windows, I
>> could
>
> You could have booted a cd and repaired it. Linux runs fine from
> a cd (unlike windows :-). The next time you find yourself in this
> situation boot an ordinary Linux cd and use "linux rescue", or boot a
> cdrom linux like knoppix and proceed from there.
Actually Window does have a Live version. There are two kinds, like
BartPE and WinPE for one. And Windows Embedded as the second.
>> And there are no Linux tools around to save your bacon in this case
>> either.
>
> You could have booted linux in rescue mode and repaired the superblock
> bitmaps using adb. <-- kind of a joke, but I knew a guy who'd do that
> to save himself the trouble of reinstalling...
>
> Or just run fsck -y I bet :-)
--
the wharf rat
BillW50 <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote:
>
>I wouldn't be a Windows user today if the first couple of Windows
>versions didn't work.
>
Lol.
Windows didn't start "working" until '95.
>I was an OS/2 expert only after two versions of OS/2. And I rolled my
>own video drivers.
Now, OS/2, that was some good stuff. I still have a couple of
machines running OS/2. Shame about the way that worked out.
the wharf rat
BillW50 <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote:
>
>But even a very weak OS
>makes for a good server as well. Nothing that complex about streaming
>data around.
>
That's a very naive statement. First of all, even in a small
office environment the ease of management is as important as the simple
feature set. For instance, you shouldn't have to reboot a server to
perform routine administrative tasks. You should be able to manage the
device without a physical console. It should be easy to expand the hardware
or software. Most versions of Windows fall down very badly on management.
To keep this on topic, a good laptop makes an excellent small
office file server! It has a built in UPS, doesn't use much power,
doesn't require much maintenance, is quiet... Think about it. Thing is,
most laptop Windows versions are deliberately crippled. You might have
to run Linux to get the system's full potential in this role. Or you can
use a server version of Windows if you have the licensing...
Secondly, there's a lot more to "server" than "streaming data".
Hell, there's a lot more to "streaming data" than "streaming data"!
Frankly, I have trouble considering an operating system that STILL
hasn't figured out how to provide two processes simultaneous file access
properly a server quality OS.
the wharf rat
BillW50 <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote:
>
>> Another big advantage of Linux is that it runs well on minimal
>> hardware. So I can refurbish 10 year old laptops and be able to do
>
>a modern netbook, while Windows can without problems. Also I have two
>Toshiba 2595XDVD which are 10 years old. One has Windows 98SE and the
>other has Windows 2000. And no, they would make very poor Linux
>machines.
>
Lol.
I've done it on an Acer... In fact, the Acer AA1 ships with Linux.
I have 4 Dell CS400's. These were truly excellent units, titanium
cases, state of the art displays, PII-400's, AND 256MB of memory! (No
kidding, awesome stuff for 1998 :-) I got them in 1999. They came with
Windows 2000, but when I replaced them for desktop use I installed Linux.
I use them as a portable test network. They're almost exactly equivalent
to that Toshiba, and other than the fact that useable batteries are getting
hard to find they're a perfect portable Linux environment.
BTW, they do run XP albeit slowly and with more than a little fuss
over drivers. They're much more useable in Linux.
I've also got a Thinkpad 360 I put gentoo linux on as a project.
I cheated a bit though and upgraded it to 32MB ram, more than was available
when they actually sold the thing :-) I used gentoo because it will still
boot from floppy.
>
>Actually Window does have a Live version. There are two kinds, like
>BartPE and WinPE for one. And Windows Embedded as the second.
>
WinPE is pretty limited. Bart's looks good but IMHO (I'm not
a lawyer) you're violating your license by doing that. Embedded doesn't
count because you can't really get one to use that way... Come to think
of it, is there any way a normal end user could get WinPE? Legally I mean :-)
Richard Bonner
> Richard Bonner typed:
> > *** If it turns out that you can't install Windows without some
> > sort of recovery disk, think about installing DOS or Linux, if either
> > will do what you need.
> I believe for most people, DOS or Linux just doesn't cut it. Kind of sad
> how DOS support went downhill very quickly when Windows 3.1 came out.
*** Only MS-DOS support went down - and it came back once they realised
how PC and DR DOS were moving ahead. Eventually, MS had to force it and
the competiton out with their "DOS is Dead" campaign.
> And there are too many Linux distros (versions) out there all in
> competition with each other and hurting them all. If someday there were
> only one, then more people would take Linux more serious I would think.
> --
> Bill
*** Perhaps. What would take would be proper Linux distros in the
stores on new computers, but MS threatens dealers who try to do that.
Richard Bonner
> BillW50 <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote:
> >I wouldn't be a Windows user today if the first couple of Windows
> >versions didn't work.
> Lol.
> Windows didn't start "working" until '95.
*** I would put it at WIN 98 SE.
> >I was an OS/2 expert only after two versions of OS/2. And I rolled my
> >own video drivers.
> Now, OS/2, that was some good stuff. I still have a couple of
> machines running OS/2. Shame about the way that worked out.
*** I have an OS/2 buddy. It would be his prime machine if he could get
all the apps he wanted for it.
AJL
>AJL typed on Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:54:36 -0700:
>> "BillW50" <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote:
>I wouldn't be a Windows user today if the first couple of Windows
>versions didn't work.
I have never had a real copy of Windows. I always got the OEM copy
when I bought the machine. And that was always stable. But judging
from what I read about people trying to install Windows on a strange
machine, it doesn't always go so well either...
>
>>> And even if you know what you are doing,
>>
>> How can you know what you're doing after only 3?
>
>I was an OS/2 expert only after two versions of OS/2. And I rolled my
>own video drivers.
Is OS/2 based on Linux?
>>> Linux will still toast itself and everything else close to it.
>>
>> I'm surprised at you Bill. That statement sounds like one from a
>> religious zealot, not a trained engineer.
>
>It is a scientific fact! I have proved it in experiments. Remember I put
>Ubuntu Live on a flash and ran it on my EeePC 4G and it corrupted the
>Windows registry. I couldn't believe it. So I fixed the registry and
>booted Ubuntu two more times with the very same results. Today I won't
>run Ubuntu Live if the machine contains a drive with Windows on it. I
>didn't see this problem with Puppy Linux, btw.
If you had said Ubuntu did something bad to you and gave specific
complaints that would make sense. Trashing all Linux generally makes
absolutely no sense...
>How is Google planning to make big bucks using Linux?
The upcoming Chrome OS and current Android OS are based on Linux.
the wharf rat
OS/2 was an IBM product, a PC operating system that was competition
for Windows. It was much more stable and advanced, and could also run
Windows programs (!), but IBM failed to market it properly.
AJL
>*** Perhaps. What would take would be proper Linux distros in the
>stores on new computers,
I don't know about other Linux laptops but the Xandros on my Eee PC
netbook couldn't have worked better out of the box. It came with
around 40 applications for office, school, multimedia, and internet.
It recognized virtually anything I plugged into it, mice, DVD drive,
external HDD, SDs, thumb drives, printers ect. All worked flawlessly.
Asus hid the real OS from the public with a shell that was very easy
to use and virtually impossible to get into trouble. How much better
could they have made it? Yet the public still voted for Windows...
>but MS threatens dealers who try to do that.
I doubt that MS threatens anyone currently. They came close to being
broken up over being a monopoly so are most careful these days. What
they did do was bring the price of netbook OEM XP down to US$20 which
in turn brought almost the same netbook selling price for both XP and
Linux laptops. And the public voted for Windows, or at least I think
they did since I don't see any Linux laptops in the big box stores
anymore...
AJL
Thanks, but that was a rhetorical question. I wondered how Bill could
claim expertise on Linux after trying only 3 distros. He answered that
he was an expert on OS/2. I didn't see the connection...
the wharf rat
BillW50
the wharf rat typed on Fri, 18 Dec 2009 14:31:33 +0000 (UTC):
> In article <hgg1po$7c5$1...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> BillW50 <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote:
>>
>> I wouldn't be a Windows user today if the first couple of Windows
>> versions didn't work.
>
> Lol.
>
> Windows didn't start "working" until '95.
Actually it was Windows 3.1 which turned everything around. Some say it
was Windows 3.0, but I don't think so. As GEOS was kicking Windows butt
back when Windows 3.0 was around.
But GEOS stayed with 16 bit while Windows was moving to 32 bit. And
there were many more advantages with a 32 bit OS. And Windows was off
and running. GEOS just failed to keep up and disappeared off of the
radar screen.
>> I was an OS/2 expert only after two versions of OS/2. And I rolled my
>> own video drivers.
>
> Now, OS/2, that was some good stuff. I still have a couple of
> machines running OS/2. Shame about the way that worked out.
It was IBM's own fault. They wanted it all and lost. Also OS/2 is still
alive in the Windows NT generation. As that was the next planned
generation of OS/2 anyway.
BillW50
the wharf rat typed on Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:04:02 +0000 (UTC):
Really? You don't remember all of those Commodore BBS from the past, eh?
Even a Commodore 64 can take the place of a server OS. We don't have
Commodores anymore, so we use Linux instead. Something simple that Linux
can handle.
BillW50
the wharf rat typed on Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:51:55 +0000 (UTC):
I ran Xandros on a EeePC with an external 1440x900 monitor. Played a
music video in full screen. And the frame updated like once every 5
seconds. That is just awful. I had to make the window only about 2
inches big before the videos could play correctly. Barry says this is
because Linux has nothing like DirectX. And that makes sense to me. And
Windows XP on the same setup played them flawlessly in full screen.
I can honestly say I never seen anything on Linux that has impressed me
yet. Which is far different than Windows. Which continues to impress me.
<grin>
>> Actually Window does have a Live version. There are two kinds, like
>> BartPE and WinPE for one. And Windows Embedded as the second.
>
> WinPE is pretty limited. Bart's looks good but IMHO (I'm not
> a lawyer) you're violating your license by doing that.
There are no clear answers from anybody. But I guess I am covered in any
case as I have two unused Windows XP copies (with license) on the shelf.
> Embedded doesn't count because you can't really get one to use that
> way...
Sure you can. I have most of my Windows machines have the EWF files from
embedded. To learn how, just Google it.
> Come to think of it, is there any way a normal end user could get
> WinPE? Legally I mean :-)
Paragon has products that uses WinPE as a boot disc for one. <grin>
BillW50
AJL typed on Fri, 18 Dec 2009 14:57:58 -0700:
For starters I am *not* a Linux expert and even if I used over 100
distros I still won't be. Although it is totally different for other OS.
For example, it is very easy to become an expert on the following:
CP/M
MS-DOS
Commodore
Mac
Windows
GEOS
OS/2
etc.
Adrian C
>
> But GEOS stayed with 16 bit while Windows was moving to 32 bit. And
> there were many more advantages with a 32 bit OS. And Windows was off
> and running. GEOS just failed to keep up and disappeared off of the
> radar screen.
Though in 1996, Nokia managed to use GEOS at the GUI/OS for their 9000
and later 9110 communicator mobile phones, which respectively used
embedded 386(intel) & 486(AMD) CPUs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_9000_Communicator
On my 9110, I managed to get to a DOS prompt, install some FreeDOS
utilities and run some games with it. Doom IIRC.
--
Adrian C
BillW50
Adrian C typed on Sat, 19 Dec 2009 14:53:05 +0000:
Hi Adrian! GEOS seemed to die after about this time. I thought GEOS was
great at the time and they had some very clever programmers. And they
got over 1000 bucks from me and then disappeared.
I can't figure these companies out? They start out great, the money
starts rolling in, then they just sit on their butts and then let their
stuff rot. It is like once the money starts to roll in, they just
continue to party until they run the company down the tubes. So many
companies seem to operate this way. Anybody remember DR-DOS free
lifetime support? They forgot to mention it was only for their lifetime
and not yours. <sigh>
the wharf rat
BillW50 <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote:
>>>
>>> But even a very weak OS
>>> makes for a good server as well. Nothing that complex about streaming
>>> data around.
>>>
>> That's a very naive statement.
>
>Even a Commodore 64 can take the place of a server OS. We don't have
On the off-chance that this wasn't a failed attempt at a joke,
you DO realize that there's a world of difference between handling four
1200 baud dialup lines and, say, providing network file service to a CAD
workgroup?
Don't you?
Or do you honestly believe that I could replace a Sun M3000 with
a 386 driving an VESA bus token ring card? And it's not simply a case of
porting Solaris to..what was it, a 6502? in that thing??
Great Ghu....
the wharf rat
BillW50 <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote:
>
>I can honestly say I never seen anything on Linux that has impressed me
You need to get out more...
the wharf rat
>embedded. To learn how, just Google it.
>
Yes, you have to illegally extract and install the three necessary
files from the trial version of Xp embedded. Then you have to create three
registry keys and set 8 or 10 values including that class gid thing correctly.
Then you have to edit the registry settings for the volume you want to
protect. THEN you have to reboot and run an esoteric and poorly documented
command line executable.
Good thing you don't need to be a programmer to run Windows :-) This
is much easier than mount -o ro :-) :-)
I'm glad you like Windows. Personally, I think it's pretty weak
for most things. I don't even run it on my laptops.
BillW50
the wharf rat typed on Sat, 19 Dec 2009 17:10:04 +0000 (UTC):
Ah... I guess you missed the point that I was trying to make. As the OS
doesn't have to be fancy or anything for a server. And all a basic OS
does is to play as the interface between the applications and the
hardware. You don't really need an OS per se, but having applications
handling this task gets a bit redundant and not very beneficial for all
of the other applications.
Thus picking one OS over another isn't very meaningful for a server.
Just because just about any basic OS will do just fine. And no, we don't
use MOS 6502 CPUs and CBM-DOS anymore. But rather more to more updated
OS and hardware.
The reason why Windows isn't used everywhere is because Windows contains
far more support for other things than you really need for a server OS.
So something cheap and basic like Linux is usually all you really need
for a server.
BillW50
the wharf rat typed on Sat, 19 Dec 2009 17:11:01 +0000 (UTC):
Well there is youtube. Any interesting videos there on impressive Linux
things? As I see Linux as a poor substitute for a general purpose OS.
But I am willing to see evidence to the contrary. <wink>
BillW50
the wharf rat typed on Sat, 19 Dec 2009 18:25:59 +0000 (UTC):
> In article <hgikl9$nb4$1...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> BillW50 <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote:
>>
>> Sure you can. I have most of my Windows machines have the EWF files
>> from embedded. To learn how, just Google it.
>
> Yes, you have to illegally extract and install the three necessary
> files from the trial version of Xp embedded.
Illegally? I think that is debatable. Downloading trial versions isn't
illegal for one. Secondly you are only using a few files from it. And
nobody from Microsoft has complained about it yet. Not even a peon from
Microsoft.
> Then you have to create three registry keys and set 8 or 10 values
> including that class gid thing correctly. Then you have to edit the
> registry settings for the volume you want to protect. THEN you have
> to reboot and run an esoteric and poorly documented command line
> executable.
That is the hard way to do it. Using "EWF Tool Version 1.0 BETA" does
all of that for you. So simple that anybody who can point and click can
do it.
> Good thing you don't need to be a programmer to run Windows :-) This
> is much easier than mount -o ro :-) :-)
There are two ways to do things under Windows. The hard way or the easy
way. Picking the hard way and complaining about it doesn't get you many
points.
> I'm glad you like Windows. Personally, I think it's pretty weak
> for most things. I don't even run it on my laptops.
Funny I am on the other side of the fence and I see just the opposite.
As Linux makes a very poor general purpose OS. The part that it fills is
a small niche is easy for me to see. And websites that monitor what OS
is accessing them always shows Linux at less than 1%. Which makes
perfect sense since I see Linux as nothing more than filling a niche
anyway. And the data shows just the same. Even the Mac is far more
popular than Linux machines for browsing. And that isn't saying much
since the Mac is far behind Windows. So how do you explain this?
the wharf rat
BillW50 <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote:
>
>That is the hard way to do it. Using "EWF Tool Version 1.0 BETA" does
>all of that for you. So simple that anybody who can point and click can
>do it.
What's that? Some kind of open source hack? I can't
find any mention of it on technet, but I *did* find
"Hey all, here is an interesting article from someone trying to use
enhanced write filter (EWF) on top of the desktop version of XP Pro. I can't
advocate doing this because I'm pretty sure there are licensing restrictions
preventing it plus there are no official tools or processes to enable it in a
supported way, but I thought it was an interesting experiment -"
That's per Aaron Stebner, BTW.
>There are two ways to do things under Windows. The hard way or the easy
>way. Picking the hard way and complaining about it doesn't get you many
>points.
I'd rather type mount -o ro than run unsupported unlicensed
underground hacks on systems that I'm responsible for.
>
>And websites that monitor what OS
>is accessing them always shows Linux at less than 1%.
Lol. 45% of active web servers run Linux. 68% of active
web servers run Apache.
>popular than Linux machines for browsing. And that isn't saying much
>since the Mac is far behind Windows. So how do you explain this?
>
By pointing out that the error in your logic is so commmon
that it even has its own Latin name: argumentum ad antiquitatem. It's
also called the appeal to common practice. Your claim is that Windows
is obviously superior because everyone believes it is. Sort of like when
Mom used to ask "If everyone jumped off a roof would you jump off a roof too?"
the wharf rat
BillW50 <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote:
>
>Ah... I guess you missed the point that I was trying to make. As the OS
>doesn't have to be fancy or anything for a server. And all a basic OS
>does is to play as the interface between the applications and the
>hardware.
You've got that completely backwards. A robust operating system
is *especially* important for a server, because there are many users
using the system at the same time. You need to protect the users from
each other, protect the hardware and system data from the users, and fill
many requests for I/O and processing time without starving any of resources.
OTOH a simple task switcher is adequate for many single user systems.
>The reason why Windows isn't used everywhere is because Windows contains
>far more support for other things than you really need for a server OS.
Windows isn't used everywhere because it's expensive, difficult
to manage, difficult to scale, unstable, and either so secure nothing works
or so insecure you might as well deface your own web pages. Windows makes
an excellent desktop and a good small-campus backoffice server. It's not the
best choice for large scale web application or processing array deployments.
I don't like it for database work, either, but that's more of a religous thing.
Oh, yeah, comp.sys.laptops... :-) IMHO Windows isn't the best
choice for small portable systems, precisely because of its monolithic
fullfeaturedness. Case in point: MS had to resurrect a special small
footprint XP to have something that it could install on netbooks...
BillW50
the wharf rat typed on Sat, 19 Dec 2009 23:44:58 +0000 (UTC):
> In article <hgjmr8$tik$1...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> BillW50 <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote:
>>
>> That is the hard way to do it. Using "EWF Tool Version 1.0 BETA" does
>> all of that for you. So simple that anybody who can point and click
>> can do it.
>
> What's that? Some kind of open source hack? I can't
> find any mention of it on technet, but I *did* find
It was here the last time I checked:
http://www.computa.co.uk/staff/dan/?p=5
> "Hey all, here is an interesting article from someone trying to use
> enhanced write filter (EWF) on top of the desktop version of XP Pro.
> I can't advocate doing this because I'm pretty sure there are
> licensing restrictions preventing it plus there are no official tools
> or processes to enable it in a supported way, but I thought it was an
> interesting experiment -"
>
> That's per Aaron Stebner, BTW.
Disclaimers are everywhere. Remember there was a time when ordering
coffee didn't have a disclaimer saying coffee is hot? Or don't use the
hair drier in the shower? If you listen to all of them, you can't even
eat or breath. So you need to use some common sense instead.
I guess I should add a disclaimer that being an idiot is normally a bad
thing, except when you can sue somebody else for megabucks. Then of
course, you must give most of it to the lawyers that helped you in the
first place. But then again, you are still the idiot in the end.
Although maybe with a few extra bucks in your wallet.
>> There are two ways to do things under Windows. The hard way or the
>> easy way. Picking the hard way and complaining about it doesn't get
>> you many points.
>
> I'd rather type mount -o ro than run unsupported unlicensed
> underground hacks on systems that I'm responsible for.
That may work for not corrupting my WMA files created under Windows. But
let's say someday I get Linux to create them, then what? Wouldn't it be
simpler to just use Windows in the first place?
>> And websites that monitor what OS
>> is accessing them always shows Linux at less than 1%.
>
> Lol. 45% of active web servers run Linux. 68% of active
> web servers run Apache.
Lol. Servers are a niche for one. What is it like one out of a thousand
computer users run servers or higher? And yes, on the Linux side, Apache
is the clear winner. So let's see with the benefit of doubt, one out of
a thousand was 0.1% I believe. So you ignore 99.9% and use 0.1% as some
sort of evidence?
>> popular than Linux machines for browsing. And that isn't saying much
>> since the Mac is far behind Windows. So how do you explain this?
>>
> By pointing out that the error in your logic is so commmon
> that it even has its own Latin name: argumentum ad antiquitatem. It's
> also called the appeal to common practice. Your claim is that Windows
> is obviously superior because everyone believes it is. Sort of like
> when Mom used to ask "If everyone jumped off a roof would you jump off
> a
> roof too?"
Does Latin have a phrase for the word hyperbole? A statement that is so
ridiculous that it can't be true? Surely there isn't a problem with
people jumping off of roofs are there? Or coffee drinkers spilling hot
coffee in their laps and being awarded millions? Sure it happens once in
a blue moon. But if Linux were any good, surely it would break the 1%
barrier you would think. But even so, the Mac is still kicking its butt
by 5 times and more. Nowadays the Mac can run Windows, so those figures
are only probably going to get worse.
BillW50
the wharf rat typed on Sun, 20 Dec 2009 00:27:09 +0000 (UTC):
> In article <hgjbe6$pdm$1...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> BillW50 <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote:
>>
>> Ah... I guess you missed the point that I was trying to make. As the
>> OS doesn't have to be fancy or anything for a server. And all a
>> basic OS does is to play as the interface between the applications
>> and the hardware.
>
> You've got that completely backwards. A robust operating system
> is *especially* important for a server, because there are many users
> using the system at the same time. You need to protect the users from
> each other, protect the hardware and system data from the users, and
> fill many requests for I/O and processing time without starving any of
> resources.
>
> OTOH a simple task switcher is adequate for many single user systems.
You're kidding right? Even a lonely Commodore BBS had different levels
of control and access. As if you logged on as the Sysop, you were the
Administrator (in Windows talk) or the root (in Linux talk). And you
could create just about as many levels as you can think of. And this was
for just a simple 8-bit computer with a 16KB OS. So it isn't a real big
deal, as it is so easy to do.
>> The reason why Windows isn't used everywhere is because Windows
>> contains far more support for other things than you really need for
>> a server OS.
>
> Windows isn't used everywhere because it's expensive, difficult
> to manage, difficult to scale,
Well I give you that much. But difficult to manage is a bit of a
stretch. Although I will give it to you for argument sake.
> unstable,
Whoa! You have that backwards, don't ya? I have lots of tales about
Linux servers locking up. The first one was from the 90's with a guy who
totally ran a local dialup ISP and ran it out of his house. I picked
this guy because the price was cheap. Well it would work pretty well for
a time and then nothing would work. No big deal back then, I just hung
up and called back in a few minutes. It wasn't like I was streaming
video or anything. Sometimes I had to call his support number to wake
him up.
Well one of these times, I had a spare phone on the dialup line and it
rang. Amazing! Who in the world would call me on this line? Lo and
behold, it was the clown who ran that dialup ISP. And he proceeded to
tell me how great Linux was and how wonderful it runs, but when a
Windows user like me logs on how the whole system would just crash. Then
he proceeded to tell me where to download Linux and to use that instead.
Yeah right! If it can't handle a Windows user (a Commodore BBS could),
then Linux can't be too bright, now can it?
Not sure of his reasons why, but soon afterward this ISP went belly up.
But my guess is there were more and more Windows users locking his Linux
system up.
So about 15 years ago I first got cynical about the wonderful claims
about Linux. After all, there was Commodores, Apples, DOS, UNIX, and
what have you running servers back then. But only Linux servers didn't
like Windows users. But other servers worked fine with Windows users. So
give me a break about wonderful claims about Linux. Sure Linux no longer
will crash with Windows users (well AFAIK). But it was a long hard fight
to get there. Yet other OS had no fight at all. That should be a clue
right there.
> and either so secure nothing works
Okay that is possible under any OS.
> or so insecure you might as well deface your own web pages.
Okay that is a bit unfair. As any idiot running a Linux server or a
Windows server could end up the same. It isn't the OS, but the idiot at
the controls.
> Windows makes an excellent desktop
Good golly! We agree on something. <grin>
> and a good small-campus backoffice server. It's not the best choice
> for large scale web application or processing array deployments.
Well I agree, but I bet for different reasons.
> I don't like it for database work, either, but that's more of a
> religous thing.
Well databases are more of an application vs. application thing than has
anything to do which OS you run them under. Well except under an 8-bit
OS it was a bit different. As you were probably just screwed as it was
going to be so slow anyway. Although if you needed to multitask like go
shopping or something, you probably should be okay. As it might be ready
by the time you got back. If not, go to lunch. See how much you can get
done anyway? <grin>
> Oh, yeah, comp.sys.laptops... :-) IMHO Windows isn't the best
> choice for small portable systems, precisely because of its monolithic
> fullfeaturedness. Case in point: MS had to resurrect a special small
> footprint XP to have something that it could install on netbooks...
You have that backwards. Linux couldn't fill the need for small portable
systems (remember the first netbooks were Linux only) and Microsoft in
their wisdom came and filled in the missing hole. So where was Apple? Oh
asleep as usual (the last I heard they still are). Nothing new here.
<grin>
the wharf rat
BillW50 <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote:
>
>http://www.computa.co.uk/staff/dan/?p=5
>
Lol, turns out it's not really write protecting the disk. It's
spooling changes to memory then disgarding them on shutdown...
>Disclaimers are everywhere. Remember there was a time when ordering
You can't use untested beta software from unknown developers
on production systems.
Richard Bonner
> AJL <3...@fakeaddress.com> wrote:
> >Is OS/2 based on Linux?
> OS/2 was an IBM product, a PC operating system that was competition
> for Windows.
*** Originally, it was an IBM/Microsoft project.
> It was much more stable and advanced, and could also run
> Windows programs (!),
*** It could also run DOS programs.
> but IBM failed to market it properly.
*** Sort of. Microsoft wanted a monopoly operating system, so it and
IBM parted ways. At that point, IBM seemed to have dropped the ball. It's
too bad because more competition at that time would have meant less
bullying of the consumer by Microsoft.
Richard Bonner
> ak...@chebucto.ns.ca (Richard Bonner) wrote:
(Re: Selling Linux to the Public)
> >*** What it would take would be proper Linux distros in the
> >stores on new computers,
> I don't know about other Linux laptops but the Xandros on my Eee PC
> netbook couldn't have worked better out of the box. It came with
> around 40 applications for office, school, multimedia, and internet.
> It recognized virtually anything I plugged into it, mice, DVD drive,
> external HDD, SDs, thumb drives, printers ect. All worked flawlessly.
> Asus hid the real OS from the public with a shell that was very easy
> to use and virtually impossible to get into trouble. How much better
> could they have made it? Yet the public still voted for Windows...
*** Because they were used to it and didn't want to switch. A buddy of
mine got one of the first e3PCs with Xandros. He spent some time to get
used to it and likes it now.
> >but MS threatens dealers who try to do that.
> I doubt that MS threatens anyone currently.
*** Google "dealers in England" and "selling computers with no operating
system". I think that issue was just within the past few years.
They came close to being
> broken up over being a monopoly so are most careful these days. What
> they did do was bring the price of netbook OEM XP down to US$20 which
> in turn brought almost the same netbook selling price for both XP and
> Linux laptops. And the public voted for Windows, or at least I think
> they did since I don't see any Linux laptops in the big box stores
> anymore...
*** Were they even much there to begin with? At one point Staples in
Canada sold them but apparently were bullied by Microsoft to stop.
Richard Bonner
> > BillW50 <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote:
> > Windows didn't start "working" until '95.
> Actually it was Windows 3.1 which turned everything around. Some say it
> was Windows 3.0, but I don't think so. As GEOS was kicking Windows butt
> back when Windows 3.0 was around.
> But GEOS stayed with 16 bit while Windows was moving to 32 bit. And
> there were many more advantages with a 32 bit OS.
*** I see advantages with 32-bit applications, but 32 bits isn't needed
for an operating system unless it bloated.
> And Windows was off and running. GEOS just failed to keep up
> and disappeared off the radar screen.
> --
> Bill
*** Is that correct? I thought Windows did not go 32-bit till 1995.
Richard Bonner
> I can't figure these companies out? They start out great, the money
> starts rolling in, then they just sit on their butts and then let their
> stuff rot. It is like once the money starts to roll in, they just
> continue to party until they run the company down the tubes. So many
> companies seem to operate this way. Anybody remember DR-DOS free
> lifetime support? They forgot to mention it was only for their lifetime
> and not yours. <sigh>
> --
> Bill
*** You have not taken into account Microsoft's marketing tactics.
Digital Research was doing very well until Microsoft's "DOS is dead"
campaign. That and some other sleazy moves effectively killed them off.
It's too bad, because they were consistently ahead of MS in DOS technology.
Another factor was the recession of the 1990s. That hurt a lot of
computer companies.
AJL
No. To begin with (last 20 years or so) I saw no Linux laptops in the
big box stores in my area (Phoenix). When netbooks arrived most were
Linux. (I got mine at Target.) Now we're back to no Linux.
>At one point Staples in
>Canada sold them but apparently were bullied by Microsoft to stop.
I doubt that MS bullies Target or Walmart much. If the Linux netbooks
and laptops had sold well I have no doubt they would still be there
today...
the wharf rat
Richard Bonner <ak...@chebucto.ns.ca> wrote:
>
>*** I see advantages with 32-bit applications, but 32 bits isn't needed
>for an operating system unless it bloated.
>
64 bits gives you the ability to address very large memory
spaces. That's an advantage to things like enterprise database systems.
BillW50
AJL typed on Mon, 21 Dec 2009 09:36:37 -0700:
The MS bullying always comes up. But it doesn't wash with the facts. For
one, when Microsoft and IBM broke up, IBM stopped shipping IBM machine
with Windows and put OS/2 on them instead. As IBM had to pay for each
Windows and didn't have to with OS/2. Well that didn't go over too well
with IBM customers. And IBM started to have many cancellations and
complaints. Thus IBM had no choice and had to start putting Windows back
on their machine once again.
It wasn't just IBM who had tried this. But there was a company in
Australia that did the very same thing. They stopped selling machines
with Windows and would only sell computers with something else on them.
The company president hated Microsoft so much, he would just never give
in. And that company only lasted a year or too and went out of business.
Microsoft can't and don't bully anybody selling computers on eBay. And
some used ones at least states comes without an OS, although most does
comes with Windows. Yet the ones that comes without one, you would think
if Linux were any good, sellers would at least slip one of the versions
of Linux on them. As that would be a good selling point you would think.
It has to be better than selling a computer without an OS. But you never
find a computer for sell on eBay that originally came with Windows,
reformatted and Linux put on it.
So it isn't MS bullying, it is just Linux (or OS/2 for that matter) just
doesn't sell computers. And frankly, I don't see it ever changing until
you convince people that Linux is just as good as Windows. Sadly, I too
am waiting to be shown as well.
BillW50
Richard Bonner typed on Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:49:32 +0000 (UTC):
Nope, users were switching over to GUI OS. And all Digital Research had
was GEM. But GEM wasn't anything really. So Digital Research and GEOS
teamed up. And this was supposed to overcome Microsoft with its DOS and
Windows OS. Although GEOS didn't move the 32-bit and Digital Research
didn't either. And that is what killed them both off. It wasn't
Microsoft.
BillW50
Richard Bonner typed on Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:42:29 +0000 (UTC):
No Win32 started in Windows 3.1x. Both IBM OS/2 and Windows made the
move to 32 bit at the same time. And this gave both the ability to use
Intel's protect mode that required 32-bit OS to operate under. Parts of
Windows 3.1 were still 16-bit. That is until Windows 95 anyway.
BillW50
Richard Bonner typed on Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:33:39 +0000 (UTC):
> the wharf rat (wr...@panix.com) wrote:
>
>> AJL <3...@fakeaddress.com> wrote:
>>> Is OS/2 based on Linux?
>
>> OS/2 was an IBM product, a PC operating system that was competition
>> for Windows.
>
> *** Originally, it was an IBM/Microsoft project.
Microsoft developed it and IBM owned it.
>> It was much more stable and advanced, and could also run
>> Windows programs (!),
>
> *** It could also run DOS programs.
It wasn't that stable with either DOS or Windows programs. And to run
Windows programs, you had to have a Microsoft version of Windows to make
it work. Okay an IBM version of Windows would work too. But Microsoft
still owned Windows and somebody had to pay Microsoft for them.
>> but IBM failed to market it properly.
>
> *** Sort of. Microsoft wanted a monopoly operating system, so it and
> IBM parted ways. At that point, IBM seemed to have dropped the ball.
> It's too bad because more competition at that time would have meant
> less bullying of the consumer by Microsoft.
> --
> Richard Bonner
All wrong! It was just the opposite! Microsoft was perfectly happy with
the idea that OS/2 was IBM's and Windows was theirs. But IBM wasn't
happy with this idea. So IBM demanded that Microsoft handover Windows to
IBM as well. Thus IBM owns everything.
Worse, IBM wanted later versions of OS/2 to only work with *real* IBM
only machines. Thus this would put Windows out of business, all third
parties, including all clones. Thus if it weren't for Bill Gates, there
only would be one company making both the hardware and software and
nobody else allowed to play. And that one was Big Blue.
BillW50
the wharf rat typed on Sun, 20 Dec 2009 18:16:21 +0000 (UTC):
> In article <hgk29l$sev$1...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> BillW50 <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote:
>>
>> http://www.computa.co.uk/staff/dan/?p=5
>>
> Lol, turns out it's not really write protecting the disk. It's
> spooling changes to memory then disgarding them on shutdown...
Exactly! This allows you to run Windows from a DVD/CD, ROM, or whatever.
Just like those Linux Live versions. And you have the option of not
dumping them, but saving it. Which is better yet. This allows occasional
writing. And this also stops viruses, malware, and what have you. As
they can't get any of their hooks into the OS since it is write
protected.
>> Disclaimers are everywhere. Remember there was a time when ordering
>
> You can't use untested beta software from unknown developers
> on production systems.
You don't have too. As you also have manual directions to do it the
other way.
the wharf rat
BillW50 <Bil...@aol.kom> wrote:
>
>It wasn't that stable with either DOS or Windows programs. And to run
>Windows programs, you had to have a Microsoft version of Windows to make
>it work. Okay an IBM version of Windows would work too. But Microsoft
>still owned Windows and somebody had to pay Microsoft for them.
>
Sure about that? Every version I installed seemed to run windows
programs just fine all by itself...
BillW50
Yeap, very positive about it. Many sound cards either had access to
either OS/2 or Windows applications. Worse, if one Windows session
grabbed the sound card first, all other Windows sessions could not.
And many video cards at the time was limited to 8 bit color under OS/2.
While under Windows you had 32 bit color. And about 10% of Windows
programs that ran fine under the real Windows, crashed under Win-OS/2.
Under OS/2 DOS, many DOS games won't run. And as far as DOS applications
goes, copy and paste caused the whole OS/2 to become unstable. For about
two years I was told I was crazy. That is until IBM finally admitted,
yes this is true. Last I had heard, it has been never fixed to this very
day.
And any DOS program that wanted direct control of the hardware, printers
comes to mind. But COM ports, etc. included, couldn't under OS/2.
--
Bill
Asus EEE PC 702G4 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC
Xandros Linux (build 2007-10-19 13:03)