A common attitude with Windows users here

[A4000Bear]

Hmmm....Over the 10 or so years I have been using Windows, I have had nothing but constant problems.

At one stage it was so bad, (win98) I was spending an hour fixing the PC each time I needed to use it!

As of two weeks ago I have fixed all Windows problems - permanently. I removed my XP18000 M/B and put an AmigaOne in place of it. Its running Linux quite nicely now.

Some of the previous Windows problems I have had include:

Win95: Icons on desktop are suddenly rearranged in alphabetical order. I could rearrange them - but only until the next time I reboot. The only cure I found was a complete reinstall of Windows. This would last for a few months and then it would happen again. This happened on a number of different computeres.

Win98: Machine would suddenly freeze. It was more likely to do it if I was actually doing nothing with it. I would come back to the PC after an hour or so and 50% of the time the mouse pointer had frozen. Of course, I would be chastised for not shutting down my computer properly when I rebooted. I was never able to locate the source of the problem, as both Linux and WinXP would not exhibit this behaviour on the same hardware.

WinXP: Actually quite stable, but there is a really annoying habit where it boots up, then I have to wait a few minutes before I could launch an application. During this period, the hard drive is not being accessed. I was never able to find out why this was happening. Linux did not exhibit this behaviour.

In all the above cases, these problems were on newly installed computers with only windows installed. No other software to cause conflicts.

Maybe Microsoft is employing Mr Murphy within their organisation.

One amusing incident I remember was when I was with a friend who insisted I was "doing something wrong" as he never, ever, had Windows problems. He went to show me something on his PC, and as he moved his mouse to get rid of his screensaver, it promptly crashed! I had a grin a mile wide when I saw it!

[A4000Bear]

Well, I never found out why XP took forever to boot, however, there was nothing else installed on the machine - just XP. I even formatted and reinstalled three times in an attempt to clear the problem. It never went away. The PC, by the way was an Athlon XP1800. No unusual hardware, just the usual things like a Radeon 7000 video card, 512MB RAM etc...

Having said that, XP was quite reliable - almost as good as my A4000T which (seriously) very rarely crashes (It has crashed once in the last month of heavy usage)

[A4000Bear]

Hammer,

The slow XP boot was on my old PC - an Asus A7V266 m/b with an Athlon XP1800 CPU. Windows was XP professional, SP1. No unusual hardware in the PC, no other software of any description installed. Settings were default (it was exhibiting the problem on first boot after installation)

Windows would come up in about 30 secs, however, if I tried to launch anything - or even shut it down immediately, I had to wait about 3-5 minutes before anything happened. During the wait, there was no hard drive access. After the wait period expired, there was some hard drive activity, then the selected application would launch. Subsequent attempts to launch applications would be normal, with no wait period.

Now that I have a USB flashcard reader on my A4000, I no longer have a need for Windows, and I have since broken that PC up for parts. The only operable PC I now have is a Bridgeboard in my A4000, which is used only for burning EPROMS.

Maybe I have some sort of "aura" when it comes to PCs - I just have to look at one and it will crash!