Windows 7
Number33
I currently am using win xp pro and believe that I need a full install on
Win 7.
If I buy a new (2nd) hard drive can I install it onto that and will my
system be a dual bootable one?
I have 1 hd and 2 dvdrws at the moment.
If I get a 2nd hd which should be slaves and masters etc and I am using IDE
connection.
Conor
Yes it'll work as you describe although why you'd want to stick with XP
is beyond me.
--
Conor
www.notebooks-r-us.co.uk
I'm not prejudiced. I hate everybody equally.
phil dittupp
>>
>> I currently am using win xp pro and believe that I need a full install on
>> Win 7.
>> If I buy a new (2nd) hard drive can I install it onto that and will my
>> system be a dual bootable one?
>> I have 1 hd and 2 dvdrws at the moment.
>> If I get a 2nd hd which should be slaves and masters etc and I am using IDE
>> connection.
>
> Yes it'll work as you describe although why you'd want to stick with XP
> is beyond me.
>
> --
> Conor
> www.notebooks-r-us.co.uk
>
> I'm not prejudiced. I hate everybody equally.
Do you rate Win7 as better than XP, Conor?
Vista is a haemmorhoid, but is 7 so much better?
Strange lad
--
Nothing is ever so simple it can't go wr0ng. Al O'Peesha
Conor
>
> >> Hi all
> >>
> >> I currently am using win xp pro and believe that I need a full install on
> >> Win 7.
> >> If I buy a new (2nd) hard drive can I install it onto that and will my
> >> system be a dual bootable one?
> >> I have 1 hd and 2 dvdrws at the moment.
> >> If I get a 2nd hd which should be slaves and masters etc and I am using IDE
> >> connection.
> >
> > Yes it'll work as you describe although why you'd want to stick with XP
> > is beyond me.
> >
> > --
> > Conor
> > www.notebooks-r-us.co.uk
> >
> > I'm not prejudiced. I hate everybody equally.
>
>
> Do you rate Win7 as better than XP, Conor?
>
> Vista is a haemmorhoid,
It isn't. Thats mostly FUD put around by clueless halfwits. XP suffered
the same comments for its first 12 months.
> but is 7 so much better?
>
> Strange lad
Not really. XP has more security holes than swiss cheese. There are also
many things it does badly.
Johnny B Good
from Conor <co...@gmx.co.uk> contains these words:
> In article <hftcdn$vl1$1...@energise.enta.net>, Number33 says...
> >
> > Hi all
> >
> > I currently am using win xp pro and believe that I need a full install on
> > Win 7.
> > If I buy a new (2nd) hard drive can I install it onto that and will my
> > system be a dual bootable one?
> > I have 1 hd and 2 dvdrws at the moment.
> > If I get a 2nd hd which should be slaves and masters etc and I am
> > using IDE
> > connection.
> Yes it'll work as you describe although why you'd want to stick with XP
> is beyond me.
And me too. If you're into seeing the equivilent of a 4 year hardware
development induced performance boost (which is what XP gives over
win7), why not go the whole hog and make it a whole 8 year's worth of
such performance enhancement and install win2kSP4 instead? ;-)
--
Regards, John.
Please remove the "ohggcyht" before replying.
The address has been munged to reject Spam-bots.
Johnny B Good
from Conor <co...@gmx.co.uk> contains these words:
> In article <WXtUm.10994$wc4....@newsfe20.ams2>, phil dittupp says...
> >
> > >> Hi all
> > >>
> > >> I currently am using win xp pro and believe that I need a full
> > >> install on
> > >> Win 7.
> > >> If I buy a new (2nd) hard drive can I install it onto that and will my
> > >> system be a dual bootable one?
> > >> I have 1 hd and 2 dvdrws at the moment.
> > >> If I get a 2nd hd which should be slaves and masters etc and I am
> > >> using IDE
> > >> connection.
> > >
> > > Yes it'll work as you describe although why you'd want to stick with XP
> > > is beyond me.
> > >
> > > --
> > > Conor
> > > www.notebooks-r-us.co.uk
> > >
> > > I'm not prejudiced. I hate everybody equally.
> >
> >
> > Do you rate Win7 as better than XP, Conor?
> >
> Unreservedly/
> > Vista is a haemmorhoid,
> It isn't. Thats mostly FUD put around by clueless halfwits. XP suffered
> the same comments for its first 12 months.
And, for a damned good reason. Unfortunately, the priviledged few users
of win2k were so pitifully few that their highly accurate observation
that winXP was a festering PoS was dismissed by the gullible majority as
the rantings of a lunatic fringe group (exactly as MS had hoped).
> > but is 7 so much better?
Win7 is some improvement (how could it be otherwise? :-) but more to do
with "percieved" performance and a slightly smaller footprint
(allegedly).
The big difference, this time around, is that most of MS's target
market have been using winXP and so have a benchmark (admittedly a shite
benchmark, but a benchmark nevertheless) by which to spot the repeat
exercise of producing a replacement OS that is _yet_another_ order of
magnitude worse that its predecessor (only they don't realise that this
is the second time that MS have pulled this trick in the NT product
line).
The consequence is that more than just a small minority are decrying
Vista and win7 although MS's PR department are doing their best to
discredit such vociferous crticism of their latest "Wonder Product".
> >
> > Strange lad
> Not really. XP has more security holes than swiss cheese. There are also
> many things it does badly.
No disputing that (compared to win2k) but Vista and win7 is no great
improvement either. In all cases, since the ruination of windows95 by
the incorporation of the web browser code into the kernel of win98 as a
ploy to defeat the netscape legal case against them, all subsequent OSes
have had to carry the web browser source of security holes ever since
(regardless of whether an alternative, such as Opera, is employed).
MS have a long history of "Giving What The Public Wants" at the expense
of their well being in regard to security (as well as usability) in a
pointless attempt at emulating the "Idiot Experience" of Apple
Computers' user experience, effectively insulting the intelligence of
their customer base to no good end.
Microsoft missed a golden opportunity to raise 'computer awareness' in
their customers' minds which was already present in the days of MSDOS
and thus elevate their customers above the level of an Apple Computer
moron customer.
Handled correctly, this could have been a powerful marketing tool but
MS decided to 'take the easy way out' and turn their customers into
"Apple Computers' moron customer fodder" making them even more likely to
fall into the clutches of that rival company.
The worst of all this exercise in making windows appeal to the Apple
computer minority market was a raft of features that made windows ever
so appealing to the hacker community.
It also doesn't help that MS decided to do exactly the opposite of what
other software companies were doing with regard to the question of
deciding on an optimum set of defaults for the various configuration
options in their (freshly) installed product.
Looking at all the cockameemee default settings of a freshly installed
MS product (hearking right back to the days of windows 3.1[1]), I can
only assume the following scenario:
Final kernel development team meeting at MS HQ to discuss the question
of default system settings.
Team Leader:
"Right! We now have to decide on the optimum default configuration
settings. Any ideas?"
Wagg #1:
"Why bother? After all, it's not as if we've got any competition in this
market."
Wagg#2:
"You're only right! I bet you we could get away with any old settings!"
Wagg#3:
"I bet we'd even be able to pick the worst possible settings and get
away with it, I mean, what do those morons know anyway?"
Wagg#4:
"Alright then, let's have a competition to see who can come up with the
most cockameeme set of defaults? What say you Team Leader?"
Team Leader:
"You know, boys, I think you just may have a point. Ok, have your
submissions ready for tomorrow's meeting, ten O'clock sharp. Good Day,
gentlemen."
And the rest, as they say, was history.
I wouldn't mind betting that that scenario is a very close
approximation to whatever the actual process that was used to determine
the default behaviour of windows.
[1] What _sane_ person would think that a "dynamic" 'swapfile' /
'pagefile' was a 'good idea'? No sane person would consider anything
other than a fixed sized swap/page file (or, better yet, partition) for
this function since, without the disasterous effects of resizing and the
inevitable fragmentation, this is already a slow enough process (by
around 3 orders of magnitude) without making it even slower still.
Jaimie Vandenbergh
<jcs.comp...@plugzetnet.co.uk> wrote:
>[1] What _sane_ person would think that a "dynamic" 'swapfile' /
>'pagefile' was a 'good idea'? No sane person would consider anything
>other than a fixed sized swap/page file (or, better yet, partition) for
>this function since, without the disasterous effects of resizing and the
>inevitable fragmentation, this is already a slow enough process (by
>around 3 orders of magnitude) without making it even slower still.
Other operating systems seem to get by okay with dynamically sized
swapfiles, none of the Unixes I've ever managed had a problem or
slowdown from doing so. I suspect it's down to intelligent disk space
allocation, so that when the kernel asks for another 256meg of swap
space it gets it as one unit.
Rather than Windows' habit of splurging the extra space over quarter
of a million scattered blocks.
Cheers - Jaimie
--
"The answer to the second question," said Merry, "is that we could get off
in an hour. I have prepared practically everything. There are six ponies
in the stable across the fields." -- J R R Tolkien
PeterC
>> Not really. XP has more security holes than swiss cheese. There are also
>> many things it does badly.
>
> No disputing that (compared to win2k) but Vista and win7 is no great
> improvement either. In all cases, since the ruination of windows95 by
> the incorporation of the web browser code into the kernel of win98 as a
> ploy to defeat the netscape legal case against them, all subsequent OSes
> have had to carry the web browser source of security holes ever since
> (regardless of whether an alternative, such as Opera, is employed).
Personally I wouldn't even try Win 7 until it's had a year/SP or 2 to
fester.
When I get the tuit, I've a spare PC with XP Pro SP3 installed - it has no
OE, WMP or IE at all, so it'll be interesting to see what [doesn't] work/s.
ATM, IE has almost everything Disabled or Ask and is blocked from
t'interweb by the firewall.
--
Peter.
The head of a pin will hold more angels if
it's been flattened with an angel-grinder.
R Gower
"Conor" <co...@gmx.co.uk> wrote in message
news:MPG.258c835a4...@news.eternal-september.org...
XP is stable, Vista is resource hungry and 7 is an improved version of
Vista.
I would be interested in knowing about the security holes with XP you
mention -
what are they and which ones have you experienced?
Conor
> XP is stable,
Good.
> Vista is resource hungry
Wrong. Google "Superfetch"
> and 7 is an improved version of
> Vista.
And uses the same resources.
> I would be interested in knowing about the security holes with XP you
> mention -
> what are they and which ones have you experienced?
Take your pick - the internet is awash with exploits that work on XP but
not Vista or Win7.
pete
> In article <hftcdn$vl1$1...@energise.enta.net>, Number33 says...
>>
>> Hi all
>>
>> I currently am using win xp pro and believe that I need a full install on
>> Win 7.
>> If I buy a new (2nd) hard drive can I install it onto that and will my
>> system be a dual bootable one?
>> I have 1 hd and 2 dvdrws at the moment.
>> If I get a 2nd hd which should be slaves and masters etc and I am using IDE
>> connection.
>
> Yes it'll work as you describe although why you'd want to stick with XP
> is beyond me.
>
If the machine in question is old enough to be running XP, then it may not
have sufficient processing power or memory (or graphics board capabilities)
to give a good experience with W7. Further, it could have cards or peripherals
that are no longer supported under W7.
Daniel James
wrote:
> And, for a damned good reason. Unfortunately, the priviledged few
> users of win2k were so pitifully few that their highly accurate
> observation that winXP was a festering PoS was dismissed by the
> gullible majority as the rantings of a lunatic fringe group (exactly
> as MS had hoped).
A trifle OTT ... and I think the real problem is that those switching
from Win9x to XP (Home, probably) had never experienced Win2k so they
didn't understand what was being said.
XP offered very real advantages in security, robustness, and reliability
over '9x (under which banner I include the tartload of curds known as
ME) and was a dramatic improvement to the '9x user -- so would Win2k
have been, but MS chose not to market that in a 'Home' edition at a
price that would compete with '9x.
We Win2k users may have been disgusted by the "Fisher Price colour
scheme" and the licensing/activation measures in XP, as well as a few
GUI changes, but some of us also welcomed it for its improved security
and support for new hardware. There ARE very significant increases in
security in XP, over Win2k, including (for example) some clever
technology that defeats some classes of buffer overrun attacks by
protecting stack frames from modification from outside a process, and
prevents malicious code from being executed.
Microsoft are in a difficult position -- when they make a significant
improvement in their OS they (understandably) want to be able to make
some money by selling it as an upgrade. They believe, rightly or
wrongly, that the average user won't cough up for an upgrade unless they
get something new and shiny to look at for their money. I think that
this is patronizing in the extreme and that MS are insulting the
intelligence of their users and that they should just sell the improved
OS as an improved OS /without/ adding a cartload of unnecessary,
resource-consuming, timewasting eye-candy ... but MS don't see it that
way.
This is the great irony of Windows -- whenever MS do something to make
it better they also add something that makes it worse in order to get
the public's attention.
> Win7 is some improvement (how could it be otherwise? :-) but more
> to do with "percieved" performance and a slightly smaller footprint
> (allegedly).
Win7 has some improvements, of course, but they're mostly under the
covers. It isn't materially faster than Vista and doesn't have a smaller
footprint (though some of the betas did, because they weren't complete,
which has given Win7 a reputation for being lighter) -- it's just Vista
with some of the more egregious nastinesses papered over.
> > Not really. XP has more security holes than swiss cheese. There
> > are also many things it does badly.
>
> No disputing that (compared to win2k) but Vista and win7 is no great
> improvement either.
It's the same story -- two steps forward one step back. Vista has a lot
of security enhancements over XP that are well worth having, but in
order to get them you have to suffer the extra eye-candy, the
disfunctional search, the extra resource use ...
UAC is a clever idea -- unfortunately it was broken enough in the first
release of Vista to open up more security holes than it closed. I
believe that's to some extent fixed in Vista SP1, and I certainly hope
it's fixed in Win7. It also produced so many pop-ups that a lot of
people turned it off, which is unfortunate (I'd suffer almost any number
of pop-ups if it really did mean that I got a more secure system).
> In all cases, since the ruination of windows95 by the incorporation
> of the web browser code into the kernel of win98 as a ploy to defeat
> the netscape legal case against them, all subsequent OSes have had
> to carry the web browser source of security holes ever since
> (regardless of whether an alternative, such as Opera, is employed).
That's unfortunate, yes. There is no way that browser code needs to be
part of the OS and the courts really should have told MS to stop taking
the piss.
Now we have Windows Update that uses IE code (whether or not you have IE
configured as your browser) ... and the MS Update website doesn't work
with other browsers. I'm surprised the European Court didn't pick that
up when they made their recent rulings about bundled browsers and insist
that MS make their update mechanism work with the likes of Firefox,
Seamonkey, Chrome, Opera, and Safari.
> MS have a long history of "Giving What The Public Wants" ...
I don't think the public does want what MS thinks it does, in many
cases. MS has always been driven by Bill Gates's dream that computer can
make everything easy for everyone -- and unfortunately that has meant
easy for crackers and virus-writers as well as the licensed users. You
have to accept a bit of "hard to use" if you want anything secure -- if
you don't lock your front door strangers can come in and steal your
silverware, if you don't use a strong password strangers will come in
and use your PC (your online accounts, etc.)
At least, with Vista onwards, users are not administrators by default.
The next step should be to make it impossible for users to carry out
some day-to-day tasks (browsing!) from an Administrator account, so that
people would HAVE to use a non-privileged account for those high-risk
activities.
> ... a pointless attempt at emulating the "Idiot Experience" of Apple
> Computers' user experience, ...
It's all part of the "making it easier" thing ... I don't actually
accept that Windows is "pointless". I find using a GUI to be a
productive way of using the computer (partly because I'm a crap typist
and I can never type long pathnames without at least one mistake.
I don't agree, either, that it is a copy of Apple; The original GUI work
was done by Xerox and copied by everyone -- there haven't really been
any innovations in GUI design since (unless you count the Office 2007
ribbon, which I find an infuriating timewaster) -- it's all ringing the
changes on the original Xerox work. When Windows 1 came out there were
other systems around, notably DRI's GEM, that were all copies of the
Xerox work. Apple was certainly not the only influence on Windows, and I
doubt that it was the greatest.
Cheers,
Daniel.
Smurf
What I like about Apple, is its design philosophy around the development of
OSX. Continuous small steps forward, with each release bringing something
new, you cant fail to be impressed with the movement from PPC to X86, or the
move to 64bit, or the realistic and reasonable pricing of the software
updates.
Johnny B Good
from "Smurf" <sm...@smurf.com> contains these words:
I think they've rather lost heart over the question of "World
Domination". ;-)
Johnny B Good
from Daniel James <dan...@me.invalid> contains these words:
> In article <3130303037373...@plugzetnet.co.uk>, Johnny B Good
> wrote:
> > And, for a damned good reason. Unfortunately, the priviledged few
> > users of win2k were so pitifully few that their highly accurate
> > observation that winXP was a festering PoS was dismissed by the
> > gullible majority as the rantings of a lunatic fringe group (exactly
> > as MS had hoped).
> A trifle OTT ... and I think the real problem is that those switching
> from Win9x to XP (Home, probably) had never experienced Win2k so they
> didn't understand what was being said.
Agreed.
> XP offered very real advantages in security, robustness, and reliability
> over '9x (under which banner I include the tartload of curds known as
> ME) and was a dramatic improvement to the '9x user -- so would Win2k
> have been, but MS chose not to market that in a 'Home' edition at a
> price that would compete with '9x.
I believe MS had another axe to grind. They probably thought the
uncluttered clean looks of win2k's GUI hinted more of win95 rather than
win98 thus sending the 'wrong' message.
> We Win2k users may have been disgusted by the "Fisher Price colour
> scheme" and the licensing/activation measures in XP, as well as a few
> GUI changes, but some of us also welcomed it for its improved security
> and support for new hardware. There ARE very significant increases in
> security in XP, over Win2k, including (for example) some clever
> technology that defeats some classes of buffer overrun attacks by
> protecting stack frames from modification from outside a process, and
> prevents malicious code from being executed.
I'll take your word on that but it does surprise me that any such
security improvements in winXP weren't also applied to win2k via the SP4
update and subsequent security patches.
> Microsoft are in a difficult position -- when they make a significant
> improvement in their OS they (understandably) want to be able to make
> some money by selling it as an upgrade. They believe, rightly or
> wrongly, that the average user won't cough up for an upgrade unless they
> get something new and shiny to look at for their money. I think that
> this is patronizing in the extreme and that MS are insulting the
> intelligence of their users and that they should just sell the improved
> OS as an improved OS /without/ adding a cartload of unnecessary,
> resource-consuming, timewasting eye-candy ... but MS don't see it that
> way.
A rather more sympathetic view than what MS deserve imho. MS have
decided to give the public what it wants by dictating 'what the public
wants', rather than by giving the public what it needs.
MS are, quite evidently, hell bent on world domination. Each successive
OS has incorporated more and more built in features which subvert the
need to install third party software. Assuming this trend continues,
they'll end up squeezing out all bar a few specialist third party
software businesses and achieve their goal.
> This is the great irony of Windows -- whenever MS do something to make
> it better they also add something that makes it worse in order to get
> the public's attention.
All part of the 'Big Plan' :-(
> > Win7 is some improvement (how could it be otherwise? :-) but more
> > to do with "percieved" performance and a slightly smaller footprint
> > (allegedly).
> Win7 has some improvements, of course, but they're mostly under the
> covers. It isn't materially faster than Vista and doesn't have a smaller
> footprint (though some of the betas did, because they weren't complete,
> which has given Win7 a reputation for being lighter) -- it's just Vista
> with some of the more egregious nastinesses papered over.
That seems about right (I've only tangled with Vista - not seen a box
with win7 on it yet).
> > > Not really. XP has more security holes than swiss cheese. There
> > > are also many things it does badly.
> >
> > No disputing that (compared to win2k) but Vista and win7 is no great
> > improvement either.
> It's the same story -- two steps forward one step back. Vista has a lot
> of security enhancements over XP that are well worth having, but in
> order to get them you have to suffer the extra eye-candy, the
> disfunctional search, the extra resource use ...
> UAC is a clever idea -- unfortunately it was broken enough in the first
> release of Vista to open up more security holes than it closed. I
> believe that's to some extent fixed in Vista SP1, and I certainly hope
> it's fixed in Win7. It also produced so many pop-ups that a lot of
> people turned it off, which is unfortunate (I'd suffer almost any number
> of pop-ups if it really did mean that I got a more secure system).
> > In all cases, since the ruination of windows95 by the incorporation
> > of the web browser code into the kernel of win98 as a ploy to defeat
> > the netscape legal case against them, all subsequent OSes have had
> > to carry the web browser source of security holes ever since
> > (regardless of whether an alternative, such as Opera, is employed).
> That's unfortunate, yes. There is no way that browser code needs to be
> part of the OS and the courts really should have told MS to stop taking
> the piss.
But they didn't. Money really _does_ talk in the land of the brave.
> Now we have Windows Update that uses IE code (whether or not you have IE
> configured as your browser) ... and the MS Update website doesn't work
> with other browsers. I'm surprised the European Court didn't pick that
> up when they made their recent rulings about bundled browsers and insist
> that MS make their update mechanism work with the likes of Firefox,
> Seamonkey, Chrome, Opera, and Safari.
Unfortunately, MS can raise legitimate security issues in this instance.
> > MS have a long history of "Giving What The Public Wants" ...
> I don't think the public does want what MS thinks it does, in many
> cases. MS has always been driven by Bill Gates's dream that computer can
> make everything easy for everyone -- and unfortunately that has meant
> easy for crackers and virus-writers as well as the licensed users. You
> have to accept a bit of "hard to use" if you want anything secure -- if
> you don't lock your front door strangers can come in and steal your
> silverware, if you don't use a strong password strangers will come in
> and use your PC (your online accounts, etc.)
Using focus groups based on the teenage demographic (rather than the
cynical demographic) allows MS to effectively dictate 'what the public
wants'
> At least, with Vista onwards, users are not administrators by default.
> The next step should be to make it impossible for users to carry out
> some day-to-day tasks (browsing!) from an Administrator account, so that
> people would HAVE to use a non-privileged account for those high-risk
> activities.
That would be too close to the *nix security model for MS's liking.
> > ... a pointless attempt at emulating the "Idiot Experience" of Apple
> > Computers' user experience, ...
> It's all part of the "making it easier" thing ... I don't actually
> accept that Windows is "pointless". I find using a GUI to be a
> productive way of using the computer (partly because I'm a crap typist
> and I can never type long pathnames without at least one mistake.
I wasn't referring to the GUI/mouse pointer thing. I was referring to
the idea of 'sanitizing' file names in explorer so as to avoid confusing
the hell out of any Apple Mac refugees.
This one setting alone (hide registered extensions) should have been
enough for a massive class action against MS over the matter of 'A Care
of Duty, lack of' with its persistance into winXP (by which time, a
defence of 'ignorance of the consequences' would have been a dead duck).
Sadly, such a class action failed to materialise thus saving MS from
bankruptcy.
> I don't agree, either, that it is a copy of Apple; The original GUI work
> was done by Xerox and copied by everyone -- there haven't really been
> any innovations in GUI design since (unless you count the Office 2007
> ribbon, which I find an infuriating timewaster) -- it's all ringing the
> changes on the original Xerox work. When Windows 1 came out there were
> other systems around, notably DRI's GEM, that were all copies of the
> Xerox work. Apple was certainly not the only influence on Windows, and I
> doubt that it was the greatest.
I only ever got to see a(n elderly) PC with windows 2 installed on it
just the one time. My first thought was "Why isn't Peter Norton suing
the ass off this mickey mouse company?". I mean, it _did_so_ look like a
dead ringer for PC Tools.
The main annoyance with Vista's GUI is the treatment they gave to
explorer which basically makes it a right pain to navigate the file
system. At least with winXP you could revert it back to a very close
approximation of the classic look in win2k.
It failed to fully emulate the win2k experience in one major (and very
important) aspect. This was the folder window sizing algorithm used when
opening previously unopened folders in the 'open each folder in its own
window' setting. Win2k had an intelligent algorithm to resize such
folder windows according the number of objects it contained. The winXP
version of explorer suffered a 'lobotomy' making it 'brain dead'
regarding this mode of displaying folders in individual windows.
All things considered, I can't see any justification for such a
backward step in what is sold as 'an improved OS'. It's as if MS don't
want to make it easy for users to play with files. The trend developed
into Vista suggests that this is, in fact, the case. Obviously all part
of the "Dumbing Down" exercise in MS's great marketing strategy to
achieve world domination.
In view of the seeming fact that the majority of 'civilised' humanity
is quite happy to sell its soul for a few shiny baubles, I'm pretty sure
that MS will eventually achieve this goal by which time even the digital
rights owners will be regretting the day they 'got into bed' with MS.
It's not the fact that MS will have market dominence that concerns me
so much as their being able to 'call the tune' and disenfranchise home
computer users. The OS will eventually become a straightjacket,
admittedly, a pleasant and comfortable straightjacket so that most
users wouldn't recognise it for what it is, but a straightjacket
nevertheless.
Now I do realise that each 'improvement' in life comes with a cost,
usually the loss of some 'freedom'. Until recent times, the trade off
has usually provided a net benefit but I rather doubt this will be the
case with MS's ultimate "Final Solution"(tm) OS.
Surfer!
<jcs.comp...@plugzetnet.co.uk> writes
> MS are, quite evidently, hell bent on world domination. Each
>successive OS has incorporated more and more built in features which
>subvert the need to install third party software.
And that's what the average user wants. They don't want to have to
spend time and effort installing readers for this, that and the other,
tracking down something to write an ISO to a DVD, and so on.
--
Surfer!
Conor
So you think paying ￜ40 for a service pack is reasonable?
Smurf
> In article <7oirjjF...@mid.individual.net>, Smurf says...
>>
>> Daniel James wrote:
>>> In article <3130303037373...@plugzetnet.co.uk>, Johnny B
>>> Good wrote:
>>>
>>> I don't agree, either, that it is a copy of Apple; The original GUI
>>> work was done by Xerox and copied by everyone -- there haven't
>>> really been any innovations in GUI design since (unless you count
>>> the Office 2007 ribbon, which I find an infuriating timewaster) --
>>> it's all ringing the changes on the original Xerox work. When
>>> Windows 1 came out there were other systems around, notably DRI's
>>> GEM, that were all copies of the Xerox work. Apple was certainly
>>> not the only influence on Windows, and I doubt that it was the
>>> greatest.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Daniel.
>>
>> What I like about Apple, is its design philosophy around the
>> development of OSX. Continuous small steps forward, with each
>> release bringing something new, you cant fail to be impressed with
>> the movement from PPC to X86, or the move to 64bit, or the realistic
>> and reasonable pricing of the software updates.
>
I would rather they continue to update and improve their software, then
release a brand new operating system. I am not an apple fan boy, but their
progression with OSX has been impressive. I think i would have preferred
windows XP service pack 6, rather then windows 7. Many of the changes within
OSX through its product line have been enormous, but every release makes it
more stable and reliable then the last.
Is the move to snow leopard from leopard, really much different then Vista
to Windows 7?
Conor
>
> Many of the changes within
> OSX through its product line have been enormous, but every release makes it
> more stable and reliable then the last.
>
news.
Snow Leopard completely wiped out user accounts, Finder hung or crashed
and Airport connections dropped. The wiping out of user accounts bug is
completely inexcusable and just shows a complete lack of any kind of
testing whatsoever.
Daniel James
Conor wrote:
> So you think paying �40 for a service pack is reasonable?
Apple releases pay-for service packs where Microsoft releases pay-for
'new' OSes. The difference is that MS seem to feel the need to change
the look and feel of the 'new' OS to make it noticeably different from
the 'old' one while Apple are honest enough to admit that they're just
charging for an incremental improvement. The trouble with the MS
approach is that if you stick with the 'old' OS because you prefer its
look and feel you miss out on the improvements that really are
important for security, etc..
Not all MS's cosmetic changes have been bad -- I quite liked the change
from NT 3.51 to NT 4.0 -- but most have been at best pointless and at
worst harmful, increasing the load on the machine and/or demanding more
powerful hardware.
You could at least make XP look and feel much the same as Win2k by
selecting the 'Classic' theme ... if you try to do the same with Vista
it doesn't look a lot like the classic OS it's supposed to emulate.
You could say that Apple charges for incremental upgrades while
Microsoft charges for excremental ones.
Cheers,
Daniel.
Daniel James
> security improvements in winXP weren't also applied to win2k via the
> SP4 update and subsequent security patches.
I'm sure exploitable bugs were fixed in that way, but new security
measures were introduced in XP the Win2k didn't have. These have not
been retro-fitted to Win2k.
This is entirely consistent with Microsoft's usual practice of not
adding new functionality in service packs, but rather holding it back
until the next release. Some enhancements get through the cracks --
mostly, one suspects, to get them some real-world testing -- but most
don't.
> MS are, quite evidently, hell bent on world domination.
I'm not sure that one has to go so far as world domination to explain
MS's behaviour -- they're a big company with big operating costs and a
need to make big profits to survive. I think they genuinely believe that
their products are the best and have some selective blindness towards
their products weaknesses. I also think that they feel somewhat
threatened by the competition as the Mac is (finally!) making some
significant inroads into their traditional market, as is linux. I'm sure
the corporate suited types at MS find it hard to understand how a FREE
system can begin to be as good as one that costs money (especially when
they see how much their own annual R&D spend is) -- and they must find
that scary indeed!
> Each successive OS has incorporated more and more built in features
> which subvert the need to install third party software. Assuming
> this trend continues, they'll end up squeezing out all bar a few
> specialist third party software businesses and achieve their goal.
That has happened, certainly -- I remember the Stacker / DoubleDisk /
DoubleSpace / DriveSpace fiasco well -- but nowadays I see MS licensing
low-end versions of third-party tools for inclusion with their products
and leaving the third parties in question to sell more elaborate
versions of their software as upgrades. This happens at all levels --
from the horrid little disk defrag utility in Windows (that can't even
make all the free space on the disk contiguous) to the third-party
ribbon control that is made available free with Visual Studio.
Personally I wish MS /would/ provide their own versions of these things
because their own code usually works better than the freebies that they
bundle.
> > That's unfortunate, yes. There is no way that browser code needs
> > to be part of the OS and the courts really should have told MS to
> > stop taking the piss.
>
> But they didn't. Money really _does_ talk in the land of the brave.
<tone type="shock, irony">
Surely you are not suggesting that our political masters and/or the
European Courts can be *bought*?
</tone>
> > I'm surprised the European Court didn't pick that up when they
> > made their recent rulings about bundled browsers and insist
> > that MS make their update mechanism work with the likes of Firefox,
> > Seamonkey, Chrome, Opera, and Safari.
>
> Unfortunately, MS can raise legitimate security issues in this
> instance.
There are certainly security concerns associated with the whole business
of online updates, but I can't see how using another browser could make
the update process any less secure. They use an ActiveX control, after
all, and that in itself is just about the least secure thing you can do
on a website.
> > At least, with Vista onwards, users are not administrators by
> > default. The next step should be to make it impossible for users
> > to carry out some day-to-day tasks (browsing!) from an
> > Administrator account, so that people would HAVE to use a
> > non-privileged account for those high-risk activities.
>
> That would be too close to the *nix security model for MS's liking.
Cynic!
Though, actually, it's not too far removed from what the effect that MS
get in Vista when one uses an Administrator account with UAC enabled.
You may think you're an administrator but you can't actually DO anything
that requires administrator rights without OK'ing a UAC pop-up.
Of course, the fact that almost every user just clicks OK without
thinking makes the whole exercise more than a little pointless.
> I wasn't referring to the GUI/mouse pointer thing. I was referring to
> the idea of 'sanitizing' file names in explorer so as to avoid
> confusing the hell out of any Apple Mac refugees.
Leaving off the file extension, you mean? That is unhelpful, yes. I
wouldn't say it was taken from Apple, though, there are other systems
that don't have (or don't use) file extensions at all (except for
compatibility). I think I'm right in saying that RiscOS is one, and
EPOC/Symbian is another. I agree, though, that it ranks alongside
allowing separator characters (aka spaces) inside filenames as one of
the grosser pieces of rank stupidity to have been inflicted on the
public (not that Windows is the only system to do that).
> I only ever got to see a(n elderly) PC with windows 2 installed on it
> just the one time. My first thought was "Why isn't Peter Norton suing
> the ass off this mickey mouse company?". I mean, it _did_so_ look
> like a dead ringer for PC Tools.
Maybe because PC Tools and the Norton Utilities were separate products
from two different companies? (Two companies that both eventually got
bought, sucked dry, and tossed aside by the vampires at Symantec -- they
keep the Norton name but bugger all else that was any good).
> The main annoyance with Vista's GUI is the treatment they gave to
> explorer which basically makes it a right pain to navigate the file
> system.
Oh don't remind me! I have to use it every day at work so I've got
fairly used to it (and it's no more annoying, really, than Nautilus on
Gnome). It just rankles that it replaced something better.
I've even stopped switching the menu to "always shown".
> At least with winXP you could revert it back to a very close
> approximation of the classic look in win2k.
Yeah, XP's 'Classic' theme made it look almost acceptable -- but that's
not really the same issue as Vista's explorer. The trouble is that in
Vista MS have pushed the UI model further along the path they started
down when they introduced "My Computer" and "My Documents", etc., and
started to display folders whose names weren't part of the hierarchical
filesystem. In fact, "My Documents" is conceptually very similar to the
home folder in linux but the way it's presented to the user is very
different.
I've always partitioned my DOS/Windows hard drives so that I have C: for
the OS, D: for applications and E: (and higher) for data ... so it
really annoys me that MS want my data to go into a directory on C:
(whose real location they hide behind an alias) -- especially as I try
to keep C: fairly small. I used to allow 2GB on NT4, but Win2k needed
more. I recently had to enlarge the C: partition of an XP machine from
6GB to 10 because I'd run out of space (where doe sit all go?) and with
Vista I daren't let it have less than 20.
On one machine I moved "My Documents" so that it pointed to E:\Daniel,
but that didn't stop Windows referring to it as "My Documents" all over
the place, so I gave up. I store my files in E:\Daniel, but I don't
bother making "My Documents" point at the same place any more.
> ... MS's great marketing strategy to achieve world domination.
>
> In view of the seeming fact that the majority of 'civilised'
> humanity is quite happy to sell its soul for a few shiny baubles,
> I'm pretty sure that MS will eventually achieve this goal by which
> time even the digital rights owners will be regretting the day they
> 'got into bed' with MS.
Quite a few people have speculated that MS doesn't just want to be the
provider of choice for DRM soultions, it wants to be the rights owner.
It wouldn't surprise me to see MS launch an iMovies product/store (a la
iTunes) that let you pay to download films that you could watch only
once, and only on the PC on which you downloaded it (all controlled by
the TPM chip on the motherboard). Probably illegal in the UK given the
"fair use" provisions of UK copyright law, but that won't stop them.
Few people realize just how evil the existence of DRM in Vista is, and
even fewer seem to understand that this undesirable "feature" of Vista
is just as present in Win7, and is just as undesirable there.
Cheers,
Daniel.
Conor
> Apple releases pay-for service packs where Microsoft releases pay-for
> 'new' OSes. The difference is that MS seem to feel the need to change
> the look and feel of the 'new' OS to make it noticeably different from
> the 'old' one
Thankyou for demonstrating you know nothing about Windows. Vista was a
complete rewrite.
Jaimie Vandenbergh
wrote:
>You could say that Apple charges for incremental upgrades while
>Microsoft charges for excremental ones.
I am *so* adding that to my sig collection! May I? Would you like
credit?
Cheers - Jaimie
--
"In the beginning, there was nothing, which exploded." Terry Pratchett
Jaimie Vandenbergh
Then the average user would be better served with a Mac, which has a
far better basic suite than Windows 7.
Cheers - Jaimie
--
Whilst holidaying with the sprogs and watching Favourite Teddy Bear
trundling through the x-ray, I speculated on the fun that could be had
with a teddy bear containing a radio-opaque teddy-bear skeleton.
- K, asr
Jaimie Vandenbergh
wrote:
>In article <3130303037373...@plugzetnet.co.uk>, Johnny B Good
>wrote:
>
>> I wasn't referring to the GUI/mouse pointer thing. I was referring to
>> the idea of 'sanitizing' file names in explorer so as to avoid
>> confusing the hell out of any Apple Mac refugees.
>
>Leaving off the file extension, you mean? That is unhelpful, yes. I
>wouldn't say it was taken from Apple, though, there are other systems
>that don't have (or don't use) file extensions at all (except for
>compatibility).
Entertainingly, this is now out of date. Leopard (10.5) and before
used the File Type and File Creator (really File Opener) codes to
associate individual files with whatever app you liked, no messing
around with extensions. We liked this, although it causes interop
problems when you mail someone a .doc without a .doc extension.
But! Snow Leopard (10.6) now uses file extensions as the primary key
for application association, though you can still set a MIME-style
extra attribute as the secondary key to hold the creator if you want
to tag an individual file to open in an alternative app. This is
generally considered a step backwards, as it gets lost when you move
it by mail.
And even worse, to make this bad idea of using extensions less obvious
individual files have a "hide extension" attribute that is set by
default by many apps. You can disable the hide system-wide though.
Bag'o'shite.
There is one good thing that OSX recently nicked from Windows though -
you can now hover a file over a Dock icon and that app will pop to the
surface so you can drop the file onto the right window.
Cheers - Jaimie
--
I hope I live long enough
to vindicate my pessimism -- http://www.boasas.com/?c=1108
Dr Zoidberg
> Many of the changes within
> OSX through its product line have been enormous, but every release makes it
> more stable and reliable then the last.
>
have problems like that ever since it's release.
It's one of the key points that they always use to demonstrate it's
superiority over Windows.
How can it have become more stable and reliable if it was always perfect?
--
Alex
"I laugh in the face of danger, then I hide until it goes away"
Jaimie Vandenbergh
<AlexNOOO!!!!!!@drzoidberg.co.uk> wrote:
>Smurf wrote:
>> Many of the changes within
>> OSX through its product line have been enormous, but every release makes it
>> more stable and reliable then the last.
>>
>Odd then that Apple Fans have been insisting that OSX doesn't crash or
>have problems like that ever since it's release.
>It's one of the key points that they always use to demonstrate it's
>superiority over Windows.
>
>How can it have become more stable and reliable if it was always perfect?
Perhaps Smurf is wrong, rather than all those fans?
I've been using OSX since the last days of 10.3 across seven Macs, and
they've been kernel-panicless during that time *except* when using
beta versions of Parallels and VMware which hook into the kernel, or
when some hardware has gone south. So no, it hasn't changed in
stability over that time.
I had a problem where boot wouldn't complete on a service pack once,
10.5.4 I think, which was down to a corrupt font cache. Fixable via
ssh from another machine, just deleting the whole system caches
directory.
Here's something to make the Windows fans think: 10.6 feels and
benchmarks faster on the same hardware than 10.5 which is faster than
10.4...
Cheers - Jaimie
--
I like nonsense. It wakes up the brain cells. -- Dr. Seuss
Smurf
> Smurf wrote:
>> Many of the changes within
>> OSX through its product line have been enormous, but every release
>> makes it more stable and reliable then the last.
>>
> Odd then that Apple Fans have been insisting that OSX doesn't crash or
> have problems like that ever since it's release.
Of course it crashes, its just rare thats all (though crashes on my xp
machine are quite rare as well), OSX has the inbuilt advantage of being a
closed system, while windows works on something microsoft has no control
over.
> It's one of the key points that they always use to demonstrate it's
> superiority over Windows.
OSX has aspects that are superior, i find it quite relaxing to use, security
is something you dont need to worry about in the same way as windows, but i
am still a windows person at heart.
> How can it have become more stable and reliable if it was always
> perfect?
Only a numpty would claim it was perfect, by all accounts 10.1, 10.2 and
10.3 had serious issues, but 10.5 and 10.6 seem pretty darn reliable. Always
room for improvement.
Bernard Peek
> Quite a few people have speculated that MS doesn't just want to be the
> provider of choice for DRM soultions, it wants to be the rights owner.
> It wouldn't surprise me to see MS launch an iMovies product/store (a la
> iTunes) that let you pay to download films that you could watch only
> once, and only on the PC on which you downloaded it (all controlled by
> the TPM chip on the motherboard). Probably illegal in the UK given the
> "fair use" provisions of UK copyright law, but that won't stop them.
I think it's established in European law that although you may be
permitted to make a backup copy there's no obligation for you to be
given a mechanism to do that.
--
Bernard Peek
Johnny B Good
from Daniel James <dan...@me.invalid> contains these words:
> In article <3130303037373...@plugzetnet.co.uk>, Johnny B Good
Well, I wasn't referring to world domination in the "Nazi Germany"
sense, just the corporate global market sense. Either way, it's always
bound to end in tears.
> > Each successive OS has incorporated more and more built in features
> > which subvert the need to install third party software. Assuming
> > this trend continues, they'll end up squeezing out all bar a few
> > specialist third party software businesses and achieve their goal.
> That has happened, certainly -- I remember the Stacker / DoubleDisk /
> DoubleSpace / DriveSpace fiasco well -- but nowadays I see MS licensing
> low-end versions of third-party tools for inclusion with their products
> and leaving the third parties in question to sell more elaborate
> versions of their software as upgrades. This happens at all levels --
> from the horrid little disk defrag utility in Windows (that can't even
> make all the free space on the disk contiguous) to the third-party
> ribbon control that is made available free with Visual Studio.
> Personally I wish MS /would/ provide their own versions of these things
> because their own code usually works better than the freebies that they
> bundle.
I rather thought the loss of 'anality' over consolodating free space in
the NT version offered a significant gain over the win9x version which
would obsessively deal with this by moving gigabytes worth of defragged
files just a few allocation units worth of disk space simply to close
the gaps.
I'm with you on the feebleness of their disk checking utility. I've
been rather bemused often enough by CHKDSK's refusal to repair an
"unrepairable" FS that was still in good enough shape for a Knoppix
session to allow all the user data to be retrieved to another machine
over the network.
Also, what's with the "Suddenly Invisible FS syndrome" on USB connected
drives whereby it's not even an option to check the FS after such an
event? I no longer risk using NTFS on any of my win2k connected external
hard drives. I use Ext2 now just so I have a means to recover from any
USB or firewire induced FS corruption without having to rely on a 70
dollar "Sledgehammer to crack a nut" data recovery solution which relies
on having a spare second similar sized drive and 11 hours of my life to
hand. The FSCK session rarely goes over half an hour to undo the USB
induced FS errors.
> > > That's unfortunate, yes. There is no way that browser code needs
> > > to be part of the OS and the courts really should have told MS to
> > > stop taking the piss.
> >
> > But they didn't. Money really _does_ talk in the land of the brave.
> <tone type="shock, irony">
> Surely you are not suggesting that our political masters and/or the
> European Courts can be *bought*?
> </tone>
> > > I'm surprised the European Court didn't pick that up when they
> > > made their recent rulings about bundled browsers and insist
> > > that MS make their update mechanism work with the likes of Firefox,
> > > Seamonkey, Chrome, Opera, and Safari.
> >
> > Unfortunately, MS can raise legitimate security issues in this
> > instance.
> There are certainly security concerns associated with the whole business
> of online updates, but I can't see how using another browser could make
> the update process any less secure. They use an ActiveX control, after
> all, and that in itself is just about the least secure thing you can do
> on a website.
I know, I know! But, that's how MS want to do the job. They're simply
pointing out that the bundled browser is the more secure option,
assuming it never gets used to actually browse the internet beforehand
(and that the firewall is enabled before all else too).
> > > At least, with Vista onwards, users are not administrators by
> > > default. The next step should be to make it impossible for users
> > > to carry out some day-to-day tasks (browsing!) from an
> > > Administrator account, so that people would HAVE to use a
> > > non-privileged account for those high-risk activities.
> >
> > That would be too close to the *nix security model for MS's liking.
> Cynic!
> Though, actually, it's not too far removed from what the effect that MS
> get in Vista when one uses an Administrator account with UAC enabled.
> You may think you're an administrator but you can't actually DO anything
> that requires administrator rights without OK'ing a UAC pop-up.
> Of course, the fact that almost every user just clicks OK without
> thinking makes the whole exercise more than a little pointless.
That's a rod of their own making ('ease of use' above all other
considerations).
> > I wasn't referring to the GUI/mouse pointer thing. I was referring to
> > the idea of 'sanitizing' file names in explorer so as to avoid
> > confusing the hell out of any Apple Mac refugees.
> Leaving off the file extension, you mean? That is unhelpful, yes. I
It's worse than unhelpful. It's effectively a "Bill Gates Freeby" to
all those scumware hackers (including script kiddies) just waiting to
spread their warez via email attachments (most famously, the LoveBug
virus).
> wouldn't say it was taken from Apple, though, there are other systems
> that don't have (or don't use) file extensions at all (except for
> compatibility). I think I'm right in saying that RiscOS is one, and
> EPOC/Symbian is another. I agree, though, that it ranks alongside
> allowing separator characters (aka spaces) inside filenames as one of
> the grosser pieces of rank stupidity to have been inflicted on the
> public (not that Windows is the only system to do that).
Blank spaces aren't the main issue, it's allowing multiple instances of
the full stop (period) seperator character in the LFN format. This, in
conjunction with hideable extensions, is what gave the hackers a nice
simple way to masquerade attachment names as being of a harmless nature
(eg. renaming "Nasty Evil Trojan. exe" to "Naked lady.jpg.exe" where, by
default, it would appear as simply "Naked lady.jpg".
Unfortunately, changing the fileview setting to reveal registered
extensions is not entirely enough to guard against the masqueraded
filename exploit since it seems the OS is so feckin' dumb as to not
apply any sanity checks on the .PIF and .LNK shortcut extensions which
are rendered invisible by "DoNotShow" registry settings.
I've changed this so all my shortcuts end in either, mostly .LNK or,
more rarely .PIF. Although it makes renaming them a bit more of a hassle
and lends an element of clutter to a shortcut name, I much prefer it
this way. At least if a trojan capable of resetting the "DoNotShow"
values does manage to get on the system, the sudden shortcut name
changes will be an instant giveaway. :-)
> > I only ever got to see a(n elderly) PC with windows 2 installed on it
> > just the one time. My first thought was "Why isn't Peter Norton suing
> > the ass off this mickey mouse company?". I mean, it _did_so_ look
> > like a dead ringer for PC Tools.
> Maybe because PC Tools and the Norton Utilities were separate products
> from two different companies? (Two companies that both eventually got
> bought, sucked dry, and tossed aside by the vampires at Symantec -- they
> keep the Norton name but bugger all else that was any good).
I'm quite aware of the evilness of Symantec in that regard. I'm pretty
certain the desktop file explorer by Peter Norton was originally called
PC Tools (BICBW) and Symantec simply repurposed the name they'd bought
to a completely different Peter Norton product within their portfolio.
I too partition my drives so as to place the OS in a nicely tight
fastest partition space, with another one for the bulk of my 'run of the
mill' apps (no hard and fast rule as to where an app will be stored)
with the bulk of the drive space allocated to a third NTFS partition.
The second drive is only split at all on account of the need to have a
FAT32 partition space to allow my elderly copy of PQDI ver 3 to be able
to save and restore drive C images otherwise it would have just been a
single large NTFS partition.
It's quite simple to change the pretentiously named "My Documents"
folder location to another partition. In my case, I have it use drive G,
that large NTFS space on the second drive I mentioned. The 20GB of FAT32
space that precedes it is also used for the fixed 3GB pagefile which was
the first file ever created on that disk volume so remains unfragmented
at the very beginning of the drive space to this day.
Vista allows you to do the same thing. However, it's not only the
users' documents folder that can be relocated. Unfortunately, if you
want to maximise the benefit, you need to repeat the process on each
account for all eleven folders relating user data (eg 'Desktop' for
one). I have never come across a 'Wholesale Method' to do the lot in one
go.
I've relocated my 'Desktop' folder, but it's a rather tedious business
involving a whole bunch of registry changes. You'd think there'd be a
suitable utility to automate this process by now (and there well might
be one by now - I just haven't searched for one) but it seems unlikely
one would be forthcoming for such an esoteric need.
> > ... MS's great marketing strategy to achieve world domination.
> >
> > In view of the seeming fact that the majority of 'civilised'
> > humanity is quite happy to sell its soul for a few shiny baubles,
> > I'm pretty sure that MS will eventually achieve this goal by which
> > time even the digital rights owners will be regretting the day they
> > 'got into bed' with MS.
> Quite a few people have speculated that MS doesn't just want to be the
> provider of choice for DRM soultions, it wants to be the rights owner.
> It wouldn't surprise me to see MS launch an iMovies product/store (a la
> iTunes) that let you pay to download films that you could watch only
> once, and only on the PC on which you downloaded it (all controlled by
> the TPM chip on the motherboard). Probably illegal in the UK given the
> "fair use" provisions of UK copyright law, but that won't stop them.
> Few people realize just how evil the existence of DRM in Vista is, and
> even fewer seem to understand that this undesirable "feature" of Vista
> is just as present in Win7, and is just as undesirable there.
I agree. It speaks volumes that this most insidious evil of all remains
largely unspoken of, yet it is undoubtedly a major contribution to the
bloat and lacklustre performance as well as driver software development
costs if it is ever fully implement as advertised.
There would appear to be some hope that Vista and its close inbred
cousin W7 will achieve what WinXP failed to do which is an increased
interest in the *nix alternatives.
To say I was disapointed with the insignificant effect of winXP in
terms of an increased takeup of Linux and its close cousins would be an
understatement. I'd failed to take account of the 'comfort zone effect'
in the minds of MS's target market. It seems this market sector is a
hardy bunch when it comes to hanging on to their 'Security Blanket' no
matter how soiled it may have become.
I'm probably going to be in for some more disappointment despite the
obvious rumblings of discontent in MS's target market. My only small
comfort in this regard is that the MS junkies will get exactly what they
so richly deserve for their blind faith in the 'Goodness of MS'. I guess
I shouldn't complain since I make a living out of fixing the damned
boxes.
Johnny B Good
from "Smurf" <sm...@smurf.com> contains these words:
> Dr Zoidberg wrote:
> > Smurf wrote:
> >> Many of the changes within
> >> OSX through its product line have been enormous, but every release
> >> makes it more stable and reliable then the last.
> >>
> > Odd then that Apple Fans have been insisting that OSX doesn't crash or
> > have problems like that ever since it's release.
> Of course it crashes, its just rare thats all (though crashes on my xp
> machine are quite rare as well), OSX has the inbuilt advantage of being a
> closed system, while windows works on something microsoft has no control
> over.
Although it's not immediately clear, I know what you're saying. Since
Apple make both the hardware and the OS, they can work around any
unexpected hardware issues, unlike MS who have to trust to the PC
manufacturers to make sure the hardware conforms to spec despite the
whole world and their dog being involved in the manufacture of the
myriad parts that can be found within a PC box.
In spite of this advantage, it was surprising how often folk would
report the Apple kit as being more crash prone in a mixed hardware
office environment were both PCs and Apples were used.
At one level, it seems the quality of the cheaper PC components had no
choice but to be of a better standard than the Apple hardware in order
to be able to approach a similar level of reliability with MS and Open
source OSes and the very much wider range of application software that
could be thrown at a PC system.
> > It's one of the key points that they always use to demonstrate it's
> > superiority over Windows.
> OSX has aspects that are superior, i find it quite relaxing to use,
> security
> is something you dont need to worry about in the same way as windows, but i
> am still a windows person at heart.
> > How can it have become more stable and reliable if it was always
> > perfect?
> Only a numpty would claim it was perfect, by all accounts 10.1, 10.2 and
> 10.3 had serious issues, but 10.5 and 10.6 seem pretty darn reliable.
> Always
> room for improvement.
I have to say that a major benefit to my upgrading from win95OSR2 to
win2kSP4 nearly 6 years ago was the much improved stability,
particularly true in the case of errant software induced application
crashes.
Although it was pretty rare for win95 to actually crash or freeze once
I'd weeded out all the flaky apps (and fixed that file cache induced
memory leak common to both win95 and win98) and was only running
properly written software, I'd still suffer the odd system freeze on,
thankfully, only rare occasions.
I've still experienced the odd system crash over the past 5 years with
this win2k box, but they almost always involved that most execerable of
all interfaces, USB.
The first thought that comes to mind if such an event takes place is to
wonder what hardware issue is going to be the most likely culprit.
Recently, the last couple of crashes I experienced last week have
reminded me that it's high time to either replace the bulging caps or
even upgrade the whole shebang (it's seen over five and a half years of
hard service after all).
In view of the system's speedy performance (even compared to much
better specced boxes running winXP), I'm inclined to repair the board
and wring another year or two's life out of my investment. The longer
you can put off a radical system upgrade, the bigger the bang for your
buck, hence my inclination to repair rather than replace.
The only problem with putting off such an upgrade is that I might be
forced to ditch win2k due to lack of driver support (a repeat of my
experience with win95 and that major upgrade nearly six years ago). I
might land up having to host win2k in a VM on a Linux based OS. Whatever
happens I might still go the VM route anyway. It's really a case of
crossing that bridge when I get to it.
I can't picture myself using W7 (or whatever new OS might shortly
succeed it), and I'd much prefer to host any VMs under Linux rather than
under an MS windows OS.
Jaimie Vandenbergh
<jcs.comp...@plugzetnet.co.uk> wrote:
> I've relocated my 'Desktop' folder, but it's a rather tedious business
>involving a whole bunch of registry changes. You'd think there'd be a
>suitable utility to automate this process by now (and there well might
>be one by now - I just haven't searched for one) but it seems unlikely
>one would be forthcoming for such an esoteric need.
TweakUI will do it in one go.
Cheers - Jaimie
--
It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca, 'Epistles'
Johnny B Good
from Jaimie Vandenbergh <jai...@sometimes.sessile.org> contains these words:
> On Sun, 13 Dec 2009 22:05:10 GMT, Johnny B Good
> <jcs.comp...@plugzetnet.co.uk> wrote:
> > I've relocated my 'Desktop' folder, but it's a rather tedious business
> >involving a whole bunch of registry changes. You'd think there'd be a
> >suitable utility to automate this process by now (and there well might
> >be one by now - I just haven't searched for one) but it seems unlikely
> >one would be forthcoming for such an esoteric need.
> TweakUI will do it in one go.
Are you sure it will do _that_? I've always been suspicious of it
having seen its effect on some systems I've had in for repair. I always
thought it was simply a tool that gathered all the (scattered) standard
settings into one easy point of access.
I suppose it won't do any harm to check out its features with google, though.
Jaimie Vandenbergh
<jcs.comp...@plugzetnet.co.uk> wrote:
>The message <9g4ci5lt6lhfmqv3l...@4ax.com>
>from Jaimie Vandenbergh <jai...@sometimes.sessile.org> contains these words:
>
>> On Sun, 13 Dec 2009 22:05:10 GMT, Johnny B Good
>> <jcs.comp...@plugzetnet.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> > I've relocated my 'Desktop' folder, but it's a rather tedious business
>> >involving a whole bunch of registry changes. You'd think there'd be a
>> >suitable utility to automate this process by now (and there well might
>> >be one by now - I just haven't searched for one) but it seems unlikely
>> >one would be forthcoming for such an esoteric need.
>
>> TweakUI will do it in one go.
>
> Are you sure it will do _that_?
Yup. Since maybe 2003 I've used TweakUI to repoint My Docs, Desktop,
Favorites (sic), and SendTo over to another drive - the latter three
as folders within My Documents (or D:\JaimieDocs\ as it really is).
>I've always been suspicious of it
>having seen its effect on some systems I've had in for repair. I always
>thought it was simply a tool that gathered all the (scattered) standard
>settings into one easy point of access.
Not at all, about two-thirds of the settings it exposes are only
registry-tweakable otherwise.
> I suppose it won't do any harm to check out its features with google, though.
Installing it has absolutely zero affect, only changing settings and
saving them.
Cheers - Jaimie
--
Imagine there were no hypothetical situations.
Dean
I have only played with OSX on and off over the past couple of years.
Admittedly most of that has been with hackintosh rather than real Apple
hardware and, since much of the fondness seems to be for the hardware as
much as the OS, I am probably missing out on the full experience.
I was curious about OSX because of the BSD married to a consistent, well
designed desktop/multimedia platform and I found the result disappointing.
The GUI part of the OS would seem to hide too much whilst using the
underlying Unix tools was awkward and at odds with desktop view of the
system. IMO Linux combines the two far better and OSX's popularity is more
down to the appeal of the hardware (ipod, iphone etc included) than the OS
itself.
Johnny B Good
from Jaimie Vandenbergh <jai...@sometimes.sessile.org> contains these words:
> On Mon, 14 Dec 2009 11:47:07 GMT, Johnny B Good
> <jcs.comp...@plugzetnet.co.uk> wrote:
> >The message <9g4ci5lt6lhfmqv3l...@4ax.com>
> >from Jaimie Vandenbergh <jai...@sometimes.sessile.org> contains these
> >words:
> >
> >> On Sun, 13 Dec 2009 22:05:10 GMT, Johnny B Good
> >> <jcs.comp...@plugzetnet.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> >> > I've relocated my 'Desktop' folder, but it's a rather tedious business
> >> >involving a whole bunch of registry changes. You'd think there'd be a
> >> >suitable utility to automate this process by now (and there well might
> >> >be one by now - I just haven't searched for one) but it seems unlikely
> >> >one would be forthcoming for such an esoteric need.
> >
> >> TweakUI will do it in one go.
> >
> > Are you sure it will do _that_?
> Yup. Since maybe 2003 I've used TweakUI to repoint My Docs, Desktop,
> Favorites (sic), and SendTo over to another drive - the latter three
> as folders within My Documents (or D:\JaimieDocs\ as it really is).
I've googled and found a reference to ver 1.33 for win2k and the later
version 2.10 which seems to be for winXP/server 2003 but not, by
implication, for win2k.
I downloaded the ver 2.10 installer but it falls flat on its face and
the 1.33 version _doesn't_ list any option to relocate _anything_. What
I did see, didn't impress me at all (no wonder the few tweakuid systems
I'd seen were so broken).
> >I've always been suspicious of it
I haven't seen anything to change my mind on that score.
> >having seen its effect on some systems I've had in for repair. I always
> >thought it was simply a tool that gathered all the (scattered) standard
> >settings into one easy point of access.
> Not at all, about two-thirds of the settings it exposes are only
> registry-tweakable otherwise.
> > I suppose it won't do any harm to check out its features with
> > google, though.
> Installing it has absolutely zero affect, only changing settings and
> saving them.
Yes, I'd worked that out. However, although the 1.33 version duly
appeared in the Add/remove programs list, clicking on its uninstall
option merely removed it from that list, failing to remove its cpl file,
leaving it active in the control panel. I had to delete the tweakui.cpl
from the system32 folder to get rid of it (and, for good measure search
out the rest of the tweakui files and delete _them_).
All in all, a not impressive performance. Unless the later version is
not incompatable with win2k as implied _and_ I can find a way to install
it, it looks as though tweakui is a bit of a non-starter.
It doesn't help one bit that I haven't been able to find a
comprehensive list of all of its features to check whether it's even
worth bothering with. The only reason I know that a version of tweakui
offers this facility at all is from your post.
This begs the questions: "Which version?" and "Is that version
compatable with windows 2000 as well as windows 2003 and windows XP?"
davesurrey
"Johnny B Good" <jcs.comp...@plugzetnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:3130303037373...@plugzetnet.co.uk...
Interesting.
I have Tweak UI v2.10.0.0 which says it's for XP (SP1 and higher) and server
2003.
Mine was installed months ago on a standard xp pro and did it's job of
moving various folders, as Jamie tells above, without any complaint.
As they say YMMV.
Dave
Jaimie Vandenbergh
<jcs.comp...@plugzetnet.co.uk> wrote:
>The message <dgcci5lus7v4s133u...@4ax.com>
>from Jaimie Vandenbergh <jai...@sometimes.sessile.org> contains these words:
>> On Mon, 14 Dec 2009 11:47:07 GMT, Johnny B Good
>> <jcs.comp...@plugzetnet.co.uk> wrote:
>> >The message <9g4ci5lt6lhfmqv3l...@4ax.com>
>> >from Jaimie Vandenbergh <jai...@sometimes.sessile.org> contains these
>> >words:
>> >
>> >> On Sun, 13 Dec 2009 22:05:10 GMT, Johnny B Good
>> >> <jcs.comp...@plugzetnet.co.uk> wrote:
>> >
>> >> > I've relocated my 'Desktop' folder, but it's a rather tedious business
>> >> >involving a whole bunch of registry changes. You'd think there'd be a
>> >> >suitable utility to automate this process by now (and there well might
>> >> >be one by now - I just haven't searched for one) but it seems unlikely
>> >> >one would be forthcoming for such an esoteric need.
>> >
>> >> TweakUI will do it in one go.
>> >
>> > Are you sure it will do _that_?
>
>> Yup. Since maybe 2003 I've used TweakUI to repoint My Docs, Desktop,
>> Favorites (sic), and SendTo over to another drive - the latter three
>> as folders within My Documents (or D:\JaimieDocs\ as it really is).
>
> I've googled and found a reference to ver 1.33 for win2k and the later
>version 2.10 which seems to be for winXP/server 2003 but not, by
>implication, for win2k.
That's right - 1.33 is the one to have for Win2000, I still keep a
copy of it in my software tree. It does exactly what I said it does,
plus other folders besides. It's in the "My Computer" tab.
1.33 works in XP as well, btw. I'd completely forgotten that it was a
control panel applet back then - apologies for that, mea culpa.
Add/Remove uninstalls 1.33 correctly here, btw - but that's in an XP
machine, which may be different.
> It doesn't help one bit that I haven't been able to find a
>comprehensive list of all of its features to check whether it's even
>worth bothering with. The only reason I know that a version of tweakui
>offers this facility at all is from your post.
Even the help file doesn't detail which folders it can move. So I
will:
Common Program Files
Desktop
Document Templates
Favorites
Installation Path
My Documents
My Music
My Pictures
My Video
Program Files
Programs
Recent Documents
Send To
Start Menu
Startup
Some of those I don't know (or care) what they are; one or two of the
others look like they'll cause a world of pain if you dick with them.
Cheers - Jaimie
--
"If hard work were such a wonderful thing, surely the rich would
have kept it for themselves." - Joseph Lane Kirkland
Daniel James
> I am *so* adding that to my sig collection! May I? Would you like
> credit?
Glad you like it -- feel free.
Cheers,
Daniel.
Daniel James
> Vista was a complete rewrite.
It may have been a substantial (not complete) rewrite, but in order to
remain (largely) compatible with earlier versions it had to carry much
of the same baggage.
My point stands: MS chose to make out that Vista was 'new' in order to
charge for it while maintaining the illusion of not charging for
service packs. They would have served their user base better by
introducing genuine improvements and not screwing around with what did
work. I'd certainly have been happier to pay for a better XP than for
Vista (and for a better Win2k than for XP).
Cheers,
Daniel.
Daniel James
> Snow Leopard (10.6) now uses file extensions as the primary key
Interesting ... thanks for that.
> ... you can still set a MIME-style extra attribute as the secondary
> key to hold the creator if you want to tag an individual file to
> open in an alternative app. This is generally considered a step
> backwards, as it gets lost when you move it by mail.
Apple software does some very strange things when things are sent by
mail ... picking apart the MIME structures for files that are sent as
attachments along with their resource forks (two MIME attachments with
the same name but different MIME types, IIRC) and trying to save the
attachments meaningfully or usefully on a non-Mac system is not for the
faint-hearted.
I'm not saying Apple do this wrong, just that they (because of the
nature of the their filesystems) have to do it differently from
everyone else, and that causes pain.
> Bag'o'shite.
Sounds it, yes. I wonder why they changed ...?
Cheers,
Daniel.
Daniel James
> space in the NT version offered a significant gain over the win9x
> version which would obsessively deal with this by moving gigabytes
> worth of defragged files just a few allocation units worth of disk
> space simply to close the gaps.
You have a point, certainly.
I'm not a great fan of defraggers -- NTFS manages to be reasonably quick
even when badly fragmented anyway. I found that the built-in defrag
didn't collect free space on some occasion when I wanted to do something
nasty and low-level (like shrinking a volume, or maybe doing some very
primitive imaging) ... It wouldn't have to collect free space EVERY
time, just when asked to.
> I no longer risk using NTFS on any of my win2k connected external
> hard drives. I use Ext2 now just so I have a means to recover from any
> USB or firewire induced FS corruption ...
I use FAT32 ... for the same reasons and because I'm not convinced of
the quality of Windows ext2 drivers that I've seen. If you know of a
really good one I'd like to hear which it is?
> Blank spaces aren't the main issue, ...
No, blank spaces are a different issue that I brought up to show how
little people think about what actually makes sense ... you're right
that the multiple occurrences of dot characters in pathnames are what
(along with hiding extensions) leads the trojan problem. The *real*
issue here is the turning off of extension display, not he multiple
dots, though.
> ... gave the hackers a nice simple way to masquerade attachment
> names as being of a harmless nature (eg. renaming
> "Nasty Evil Trojan. exe" to "Naked lady.jpg.exe" where, by
> default, it would appear as simply "Naked lady.jpg".
It's worse than that ... some versions of Windows software (IIRC it was
an OutHouse variant, not Windows itself) would, when told to open "Naked
lady.jpg", look inside the file and discover that it had the format of
an exe file and not of a jpg, and would execute it anyway -- without it
even having a (possibly hidden) .exe extension.
Really bright!
> I'm pretty certain the desktop file explorer by Peter Norton was
> originally called PC Tools (BICBW) ...
WIYF: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Tools_(Central_Point_Software)
In June 1994 Central Point was acquired by their top competitor
Symantec who ultimately discontinued the product line. PC Tools
was the main competitor to Norton Utilities, which Symantec had
acquired in 1990.
That was it: Central Point Software. I'd forgotten the name.
> ... and Symantec simply repurposed the name they'd bought
> to a completely different Peter Norton product within their portfolio.
Not sure about that ... are you perhaps confusing this story with
another one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Tools_(company) ?
> To say I was disapointed with the insignificant effect of winXP in
> terms of an increased takeup of Linux and its close cousins would be
> an understatement. I'd failed to take account of the 'comfort zone
> effect' in the minds of MS's target market. It seems this market
> sector is a hardy bunch when it comes to hanging on to their
> 'Security Blanket' no matter how soiled it may have become.
I think it will take more than the ever-increasing awfulness of Windows
to persuade the great unwashed to look beyond the OS that is installed
on their PC when they buy it. I'd love to see a law making it illegal to
preinstall OS software or to bundle it with hardware -- so everyone
would have to acquire an OS DVD as a separate item when buying a PC, and
could choose linux for the cost copying or Windows for �60. Then we
might see some movement. It'll never happen, though.
The other thing that will make some difference is what happens when
content providers actually start to make use of the DRM facilities that
are now available ... but I don't see that happening while there is
still the danger that the public will still be using XP (or earlier) and
so not have the DRM facilities (so the content would either not work at
all for them, or the rights to it would be unmanaged).
> I shouldn't complain since I make a living out of fixing the damned
> boxes.
I make a living out of programming them, so I'm in much the same boat.
Cheers,
Daniel.
Johnny B Good
Ok, I missed it the first time around. I've re-installed it and clicked
the dropdown list.
> 1.33 works in XP as well, btw. I'd completely forgotten that it was a
> control panel applet back then - apologies for that, mea culpa.
That's ok. I figured that's where it must have landed up when I
couldn't see a link in the usual places. Looking at what it can do, I
think that's the most appropriate place. I dragged a shortcut onto the
desktop but after taking a more in depth look, decided that that wasn't
a good idea.
> Add/Remove uninstalls 1.33 correctly here, btw - but that's in an XP
> machine, which may be different.
Quite possibly my hand rolled custom rearrangement of system folders
might have had something to do with that. In any case, it's quite easy
peasy to manually do what the uninstall routine failed to do so I'm not
too bothered about that minor glitch.
> > It doesn't help one bit that I haven't been able to find a
> >comprehensive list of all of its features to check whether it's even
> >worth bothering with. The only reason I know that a version of tweakui
> >offers this facility at all is from your post.
> Even the help file doesn't detail which folders it can move. So I
> will:
> Common Program Files
> Desktop
> Document Templates
> Favorites
> Installation Path
> My Documents
> My Music
> My Pictures
> My Video
> Program Files
> Programs
> Recent Documents
> Send To
> Start Menu
> Startup
> Some of those I don't know (or care) what they are; one or two of the
> others look like they'll cause a world of pain if you dick with them.
Thanks Jamie. That list conforms to what I found in the dropdown in the
My Computer tab, a dropdown I neglected to, well, er dropdown on my
first looksee :-(
I agree with you on the inherent dangers with some of those options.
I'd already relocated the My Pictures and Desktop folders the 'hard way'
a few years ago. The My Documents move is a piece of piss to do without
using TweakUI, it was the other folders that were the difficult ones to
shift.
I'm tempted to relocate the Program Files folder but I suspect I'd have
to duplicate the existing drive C folder first to maintain continuity. I
suspect I'll hit the access denied error with a few of those files.
However, there's always a Knoppix boot session to deal with that sort of
problem if needs must. ;-)
Rather than risk my own box, I think I'll experiment on a test box
first. That'll give me a chance to get the feel of how Tweakui actually
deals with such relocations.
Incidently, the shortcut icon manipulations don't impress me,
particularly the counterproductive option to remove the little arrow.
For some reason, this option seemed to be the most attractive to the
uninitiated and I found such 'tweaked' systems really annoying to work
with when trying to distinguish desktop shortcuts from misplaced
downloads of various installers the user had accumulated over the years.
The desktop is no place to _keep_ such files in permanent storage. I
think one of the reasons for this is down to the advice often given in
regard of downloading a file from an internet source where the desktop
is suggested as first choice without adding the rider that it aught to
be moved to a better location afterwards. I think this stems from the
fact that in IE, a download doesn't start until _after_ you've selected
an appropriate destination folder so the time saved in using the desktop
as a destination becomes a significant consideration.
If you're using Opera to gather downloads, this stops being an issue
since it starts the download the moment you've chosen the save option
but haven't yet decided on the target folder (or even its very
existence!). You can afford to take the time to pick your 'spot' or even
create a new folder and another folder within that if required to create
a logically defined location in the FS within which to store your
download(s).
This is how I deal with MoBo driver downloads, creating an appropritely
named folder within which I'd typically have folders named BIOS,
Chipset, VGA, Sound, LAN and any other folders deemed necessary. For
example:
"G:\General downloads\J\Jetway\V600DAP\BIOS"
is the path to the BIOS flash utility and rom image files for the
V600DAP Jetway board I'm currently using in this win2k box.
When the filename of the download rarely gives you any clue as to which
motherboard or device it belongs to, you can't afford to let it get it
muddled up with similar files for other motherboards so it pays you to
avoid using the desktop (even if only as a halfway house) for this sort
of 'shit'.
I've accumulated over 60GB's worth of downloads in that General
downloads folder over the last decade so it has to be highly organised
if I want to retain any hope of ever finding them again.
A desktop cluttered up with downloaded files has never struck me as
pretty yet this is an all too common sight on a lot of the systems
brought in to me for repair. IME, there does seem to be some correlation
between the state of the desktop and the amount of malware that has
taken residence.
I suppose the user who does take some pride in keeping their desktop
clear of random downloads is someone who is paying attention and
therefore more likely to spot the effects of malware and deal with it in
a timely fashion before it all gets totally out of hand.
Anyway. getting back on topic, when you see a desktop full of arrowless
icons you just know that yet another clueless user has got his hands on
the Tweakui utility and 'Did Something Cool' (and probably a few other
things besides to make life difficult). I think this above all else is
why I've regarded Tweakui with some disdain. It's like giving kids
sticks of dynamite to play with on Bonfire Night.
Bernard Peek
>
> I'm tempted to relocate the Program Files folder but I suspect I'd have
> to duplicate the existing drive C folder first to maintain continuity. I
> suspect I'll hit the access denied error with a few of those files.
> However, there's always a Knoppix boot session to deal with that sort of
> problem if needs must. ;-)
It appears that Windows hard-codes the location of each program file as
the program is installed. You can change the location of "program files"
without making any changes to any existing files. If you were to copy
existing files to the new location I am sure that you would break things.
>
> Rather than risk my own box, I think I'll experiment on a test box
> first. That'll give me a chance to get the feel of how Tweakui actually
> deals with such relocations.
TweakUI is one of the first programs I install on any new system. I've
never had any problems as a result of my use of it. But there is a
reason why MS don't install these tools on every system.
[...]
> This is how I deal with MoBo driver downloads, creating an appropritely
> named folder within which I'd typically have folders named BIOS,
> Chipset, VGA, Sound, LAN and any other folders deemed necessary. For
> example:
If I download any drivers for hardware I make a point of keeping a copy
on drive C: of the systems that use the hardware. I've occasionally lost
network connectivity during OS reinstallations/repairs.
--
Bernard Peek
Johnny B Good
from Bernard Peek <b...@shrdlu.com> contains these words:
> On 15/12/09 03:46, Johnny B Good wrote:
> >
> > I'm tempted to relocate the Program Files folder but I suspect I'd have
> > to duplicate the existing drive C folder first to maintain continuity. I
> > suspect I'll hit the access denied error with a few of those files.
> > However, there's always a Knoppix boot session to deal with that sort of
> > problem if needs must. ;-)
> It appears that Windows hard-codes the location of each program file as
> the program is installed. You can change the location of "program files"
> without making any changes to any existing files. If you were to copy
> existing files to the new location I am sure that you would break things.
I think that's a function of the individual program's installer which
just simply picks up the system's default program files folder location
from the "CommonProgramFiles=" system variable.
I saw a suggestion to change this to save on having to use the browse
option to change it on a case by case basis. Unfortunately, this buggers
up the workings of bundled core apps such as IE and OE so didn't turn
out to be a good idea after all.
However, since such a change is in that dropdown list, I'm assuming,
for now, that it handles it in the same way as I'd expect it to in the
case of the "My Documents" folder relocation which is also to offer to
move the files as well.
Since it isn't clear whether the "My Documents" relocation works the
same way as it does when you right click that folder, select properties
and edit the drive letter, click apply then get a prompt to move the
files to the new location, I'd like to try these options out on a test
box first.
> >
> > Rather than risk my own box, I think I'll experiment on a test box
> > first. That'll give me a chance to get the feel of how Tweakui actually
> > deals with such relocations.
> TweakUI is one of the first programs I install on any new system. I've
> never had any problems as a result of my use of it. But there is a
> reason why MS don't install these tools on every system.
> [...]
> > This is how I deal with MoBo driver downloads, creating an appropritely
> > named folder within which I'd typically have folders named BIOS,
> > Chipset, VGA, Sound, LAN and any other folders deemed necessary. For
> > example:
> If I download any drivers for hardware I make a point of keeping a copy
> on drive C: of the systems that use the hardware. I've occasionally lost
> network connectivity during OS reinstallations/repairs.
I generally prefer to download MoBo drivers to my own machine first
then either copy via the lan connection or sneakernet it via a pen drive
if it's a vista system that can't recognise the NIC (no built in support
for my SMC usb ethernet adapter which is present in winXP).
Either way, I get to keep a copy of the drivers which saves me the need
to repeat the downloading exercise if and when another such system
crosses my threshold. Also, I find it much quicker to use my own machine
anyway to search out and download the necessary drivers.
I try to avoid drive C on the target PC if possible. If the restore
partition happens to be a visible one (HP are guilty of this), there's
usually plenty of space for my "Toolkit (win2kXP)" folder's worth of
utilities as well as the MoBo drivers. That way, even if I have to do a
factory restore, those folders will still be available.
You might think a factory restore would solve all driver issues but
this isn't guaranteed. I knocked a Mesh PC back to factory and, despite
the Nvidia graphics driver being 'pre-installed' the graphics adapter
still behaved as though the driver software hadn't been installed at
all.
I had to use a utilty to clear out the driver files and track down the
graphic adapter manufacturer's website from which to download their own
specific driver. The Nvidia installer, rather ineptly, claimed it
couldn't detect suitable hardware despite the fact that there most
patently was, as confirmed by the UnknownDeviceIdentifier.exe utility!
Why the Nvidia installation routine failed so miserably to detect the
hardware it was specific to remains a mystery to me. This isn't the
first time I've had such problems but it seems typical of a defunct
manufacturer's factory restore mechanism. When it goes wrong, the
obvious straightforward fix turns out to be problematical as well. :-(
Bernard Peek
> However, since such a change is in that dropdown list, I'm assuming,
> for now, that it handles it in the same way as I'd expect it to in the
> case of the "My Documents" folder relocation which is also to offer to
> move the files as well.
No. New programs are installed to the new location but existing programs
are not moved.
--
Bernard Peek
Jaimie Vandenbergh
<jcs.comp...@plugzetnet.co.uk> wrote:
> However, since such a change is in that dropdown list, I'm assuming,
>for now, that it handles it in the same way as I'd expect it to in the
>case of the "My Documents" folder relocation which is also to offer to
>move the files as well.
>
> Since it isn't clear whether the "My Documents" relocation works the
>same way as it does when you right click that folder, select properties
>and edit the drive letter, click apply then get a prompt to move the
>files to the new location, I'd like to try these options out on a test
>box first.
It doesn't for any of them, you have to move stuff manually. TweakUI
just changes the path(s) in the registry, it doesn't hand hold.
Cheers - Jaimie
--
Far away is close at hand in images of elsewhere
Johnny B Good
from Jaimie Vandenbergh <jai...@sometimes.sessile.org> contains these words:
> On Wed, 16 Dec 2009 02:36:51 GMT, Johnny B Good
> <jcs.comp...@plugzetnet.co.uk> wrote:
> Cheers - Jaimie
All the more reason to test the consequences of using it on a test box
just to see whether any of its options are likely to cause mayem if the
wrong follow up actions are taken.
I don't mind leaving the core default apps where they are if they don't
respond very well to being moved elsewhere. In fact, I prefer to install
additional 'core' apps, such as winzip7, on drive C rather than on drive
D as I do with most of the more sizeable 'standard' type of app
(anything very large such as a half gigabyte or more game tends to get
installed in either drive E or G, the large NTFS volumes).
Tweakui is definitely one of those 'suck it and see' type of utilities.
I suppose that as long as you can always back out of any of its changes
without too much difficulty, it can be a useful system tuning tool. I'll
have to see how it works on a test setup before I make my mind up over
this.
Dean
Jamie, on a related note, do you know of a tool or tools that can:
a) do a search and replace within a specified branch of the registry.
b) find invalid paths in a specified branch of the registry.
A couple of times of late it would have been helpful to be able to either of
these (applications that leave redundant entries or after I move stuff
around).
The Comodo firewall, for instance, stores application rules in the registry.
Some of these are not purged by the user interface. Also editing paths via
the interface is long winded.
Cheers
Jaimie Vandenbergh
>Jamie, on a related note, do you know of a tool or tools that can:
>a) do a search and replace within a specified branch of the registry.
None that I've used. Your best bet is to export the branch to a text
.reg file, search&replace with your favourite text editor, and import
it back in again. Remember to keep a backup copy of the original
export in case you have trouble.
>b) find invalid paths in a specified branch of the registry.
I've a vague memory that there are functions to do this stuff in some
registry cleaner I've looked at long ago, but frankly I've never
trusted them (or 3rd-party uninstallers) enough to let them near the
shambling mass that is a Windows registry!
Cheers - Jaimie
--
My swerver room, my patch panels. By the time they figure out why none of the
ports on their floor box work anymore I'll be done, dusted and down the pub
with a pint of something brewed with yeast that was smarter than they are.
-- Matt S Trout, asr
Dean
>On Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:24:11 +0000, Dean <d...@spamfree.com> wrote:
>
>>Jamie, on a related note, do you know of a tool or tools that can:
>>a) do a search and replace within a specified branch of the registry.
>
>None that I've used. Your best bet is to export the branch to a text
>.reg file, search&replace with your favourite text editor, and import
>it back in again. Remember to keep a backup copy of the original
>export in case you have trouble.
>
>>b) find invalid paths in a specified branch of the registry.
>
>I've a vague memory that there are functions to do this stuff in some
>registry cleaner I've looked at long ago, but frankly I've never
>trusted them (or 3rd-party uninstallers) enough to let them near the
>shambling mass that is a Windows registry!
I had the same concerns. It's been a while since I've used any of the
registry 'cleaning' tools myself and why I wanted to avoid global search and
replace.
Exporting a branch to text file, deleting it, then editing & importing
sounds like the safest but most tedious option :-(
Albert Ross
<jcs.comp...@plugzetnet.co.uk> wrote:
> Although it was pretty rare for win95 to actually crash or freeze once
>I'd weeded out all the flaky apps (and fixed that file cache induced
>memory leak common to both win95 and win98) and was only running
>properly written software, I'd still suffer the odd system freeze on,
>thankfully, only rare occasions.
I found it particularly annoying that M$ software, especially Excel,
produced the most crashes and lockups on Win95. Even worse than some
versions of Corel Draw.
Since SP2 XP hardly ever falls over, even if certain programs
misbehave they don't bring down the whole system.
I have a spare copy of XP laid down for any future boxen not running
Linux, though it would surprise me little if by the time I came to
install it M$ refused activation.
Albert Ross
<jcs.comp...@plugzetnet.co.uk> wrote:
> It's not the fact that MS will have market dominence that concerns me
>so much as their being able to 'call the tune' and disenfranchise home
>computer users. The OS will eventually become a straightjacket,
>admittedly, a pleasant and comfortable straightjacket so that most
>users wouldn't recognise it for what it is, but a straightjacket
>nevertheless.
Plus the fact that they trample all over standards. Not only html/css
but the likes of email programs that don't understand .mbx files, etc.
Albert Ross
<jcs.comp...@plugzetnet.co.uk> wrote:
> You might think a factory restore would solve all driver issues but
>this isn't guaranteed. I knocked a Mesh PC back to factory and, despite
>the Nvidia graphics driver being 'pre-installed' the graphics adapter
>still behaved as though the driver software hadn't been installed at
>all.
>
> I had to use a utilty to clear out the driver files and track down the
>graphic adapter manufacturer's website from which to download their own
>specific driver. The Nvidia installer, rather ineptly, claimed it
>couldn't detect suitable hardware despite the fact that there most
>patently was, as confirmed by the UnknownDeviceIdentifier.exe utility!
>
> Why the Nvidia installation routine failed so miserably to detect the
>hardware it was specific to remains a mystery to me. This isn't the
>first time I've had such problems but it seems typical of a defunct
>manufacturer's factory restore mechanism. When it goes wrong, the
>obvious straightforward fix turns out to be problematical as well. :-(
That's the sort of crap that drives me batchy: like you I download
drivers, program installers etc. into a directory tree on a different
partition, but some of them appear to be hardwired only to run from
the desktop or only to install to Program Files.
This makes me tend to avoid such products.