XP Pro .......S...L...O...W...!

[AMIGA-FAN]

I think I have the solution for all of your XP problems:

http://www.linux.org

 :-D  :-D  :-D  :-D

[DonnyEMU]

The first thing I would do is go here and run a free safety scan. Let it run through (yes I know depending on your connectivity and hard drive size it could take a long time)..

Windows Live Safety Scan

Follow the suggestions it gives you..


If you are having problems with keeping your hard disk defragmented, I recommend diskeeper (http://www.diskeeper.com/defrag.asp)

[AMIGA-FAN]

Confirmed by personal experience: nothing else would beat PUPPY LINUX (as an example) installed on a bare USB pen drive.
It would boot in a matter of seconds!

Another really nice (as far as GUI look is concerned) LINUX distro one could try is ELIVE.

Try it out!

http://www.elivecd.org

 :roll:  :roll:  :roll:  :roll:  :roll:

[AMIGA-FAN]

Confirmed by personal experience: nothing else would beat PUPPY LINUX (as an example) installed on a bare USB pen drive.
It would boot in a matter of seconds!

Another really nice (as far as GUI look is concerned) LINUX distro one could try is ELIVE.

Try it out!

http://www.elivecd.org

 :roll:  :roll:  :roll:  :roll:  :roll:

[hamtronix]

look for TinyXP

[swift240]

To bo honest I dumped XP for this reason, and I went over to Linux/Ubuntu 7.10
I have got more memory back, its just as fast, all programs are free unlike XP buy every thing under the sun.
Its free and legal. It takes far less space on your HD.
It gives full updates.

The support community are very friendly.

Am I glad I dumped XP for this?  yes I am and I don`t regret it.
So now I have a dual boot system Ubuntu 7.10 on one HD and WIn2000 on another.
Why Win2000 and not XP?  because I see Win2000 as a lot less troublesome.

Some people may or not say that Linux is a pile of crap, but believe me its come a long way and its very good.

So IF you go the Linux way then go Ubuntu 7.10.
Oh yes and as far as Virus is concerned then Ubuntu don`t need to worry.

You can download it and put it on ISO file on a CD or order it FREE and they will send you a copy FREE you DON`T pay a thing.

Mike.

[AMIGA-FAN]

Yeah! I can't even remember how many times I've had to clean up things on my PC: countless hours spent to identify problems and such: I still use Windows but just for those apps (such as Video Editing and games) for which there are no suitable counterparts on other platforms. For the rest, Emails, INTERNET, Office work and productivity I just keep using my (several) LINUX distros. One of those is ELIVE (it uses Enlightement as Window Manager) and it is sooooo STABLE that on their site there's a report of one user not having rebooted its system for over a year. Can you imagine any XP system running for such a long time without slow-downs in performance?

P.S. I haven't re-installed any of my Linux system for over two years. They just keep going fine.

Windows IS a monopoly!

 :madashell:  :madashell:  :madashell:  :madashell:

[LoadWB]

whabang wrote:

I'll never learn that language to perfection. I keep harrasing our customers until they speak properly. ;-)

For business customers, yes, I have them mostly trained.  By fly-by-night home users, nearly impossible.

My favorite calls when I worked at an ISP: "What email program are you using?"  "You guys!"

We talked about making a new MAPI front-end and calling it "You Guys."  We'd have been rich!

I stay mainly with businesses, but I will make the exception of doing home work for employees of the business.  The reason is general education.  Most of my business customers are technologically savvy; often more so than they admit.  Home users, OTOH, often need repeated assurance and training and do not or cannot pay well (and those that don't generally don't call professionals, anyway.)  There are much better qualified people than me to work with them.

Anyway, I generally don't like to generalize, and the conclusions herein are based solely on my experience.

(Although, and after-thought while previewing is that when I worked at the ISP, I had somewhat unlimited resources and had a good number of our customers educated and trained.  People really are smart, whether they like to admit it or not, but technology can often be daunting at first glance.)

[swift240]

@LoadWB.

What was that all about?


Mike.

[stopthegop]

@Loadwb

You kind of lost me there too.  You said a lot but didn't really say anything?  :/

[Shamus_]

swift240 wrote:
Why Win2000 and not XP?  because I see Win2000 as a lot less troublesome.

Some people may or not say that Linux is a pile of crap, but believe me its come a long way and its very good.

Mike.

I agree with you re: Win2k. I still use it on most of my machines for its simplicity, stability and usability. It's a great OS. I use XP on a couple out of necessity and it ain't great. Still, it's better than Vista which lasted about an hour on a cheap laptop I bought a few weeks ago. It's truly horrible.

Re: Linux - I've played with heaps of distros over the years  just for the hell of it. Killed most of them doing things I still don't understand. Great fun.  :-)  I'd love to find one that's simple enough to use as a cheap fileserver I'm going to build. Do you think Unbuntu could be easily set up  with JBOD/RAID compatibilty for use with SMB (PeeCees/XBox)for a linux newbie? Opinions? Anyone?

[swift240]

Out of a lot of them, I would go Ubuntu 7.10.

For what you want to do.

Mike.

[Damion]

DonnyEMU wrote:
Look I am just going to say it to you folks, keeping windows up and running nicely isn't that hard, whether it's XP or Vista.. Many people do it, that's why it's in so much use (not because the company has a monopoly). People don't use bad products. period. They disappear fast from the market.

I own many PCs, a few Macs, a few Amigas and a few Linux boxes.  I don't have viruses or malware slowing down my machines period.. This isn't rocket science or hard labor..

There are Mac people here and a few Linux enthusiasts that would have you think there machines are without their own challeneges and hurdles and that's simply not true.

A lot of Amiga users in the classic days HATED CLI/SHELL and couldn't even learn to use it.. I heard many users come into the dealership (if you can remember those days) and say it was much harder than DOS (which always left me speechless)..

Your computer will work fine if you avoid sites that have malware (that's most porn sites by the way) and p2p sharing and illegal download sites..

If your computer is running slow check out Windows Defender, Ad-Aware, and others. For all the complaints about Vista I don't hear anyone complaining about viruses or malware on it, most of that is thanks to IE protected mode which runs the web browser in a sandbox and keeps the rest of the machine separated from things running in it. Other operating systems and browsers that I know of don't even come near that level of protection..

Simple maintainance is all required to keep XP happy and running fast.. Vista takes even less time.. I have been using it for over a year..

For the person earlier on the thread, X64 drivers aren't really a problem anymore, most everyone has them.. If you need help locating any of them just PM me..

All excellent points and worth noting :pint:

[amigadave]

Sorry DonnyEMU, but I totally disagree.  Windows is crap compared to what it should be and I only use it because of the MS monopoly controls what most programmers will write to due to the monetary return on their investment of time.  If the few programs I have and must use were available for MacOS, Linux, or my preferred OS, on the Amiga, I would not own any Windows, or MS software.

I have uninstalled everything with the name Norton and Symantec from my PC now and installed AVG and Sunbelt Personal Firewall (full version for only $9.95).  I am still not happy with my performance and must sift through all the suggestions here to further fix my PC.  I don't surf to dangerous websites with this PC, it is for work and I have uninstalled my Son's games, I do not install other programs just to see what they do, I have defraged and run a registry cleaner several times already.  All this hassle is unacceptable, I wish I had never bought this Dell PC and saved my money until Apple came out with Intel Macs so I could run the Windows only apps through Parallels or VM and not deal with Windows the rest of the time.

Actually, I wish we all could go back in time and somehow change history of Amiga marketing and management from day one, so the world would all be using Amigas for business, creativity, and fun too. :-(

[stopthegop]

@amigadave

Amen!

[daverobev]

Ok, in no particular order:

WindowsXP is pretty much Windows200 v 1.1. Those saying W2k is simpler... I'd say it's some nice tweaks, but you can set it all back to "classic" should you wish. I wouldn't install W2k over WXP given the choice, but the differences are fairly minimal.

I find Mac OS 10 more sluggish than Windows XP. I have used 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, and now have 10.4 on a MacBook.

If you have more than 26 running processes on a desktop with no programs open (ie after boot), you can lose some stuff. Pointless tray icons, services, whatever. If you have a laptop, it's probably 30, with the power management stuff the manufacturers provide.

"Nobody buys rubbish products" good god did you ever use windows 98?!? Now THAT was awful.

Linux is complicated, flaky and so disjointed in some things - truly not ready for normal users. Hello, changing screen resolutions when you plug in a new monitor? Awful! Sure, if you know what you're looking for. Dependency hell, one-thing-breaks=another. OS X is unix done right (except compiled for size, not speed, and too much UI over responsiveness - but then I want a computer to respond as I click, not after a small delay).

Windows XP on, oh let's say a 1.5GHz desktop with 512Mb or more and a half decent 7200 rpm hard drive shouldn't be sluggish. It isn't sluggish. If it is, then something else is the cause. Clean out, defrag, uninstall, disable.

Oh don't get me wrong, I go through anti MS phases, but the fact is they are so big it's like being anti-government - you can dislike some bits, but most people are probably at least trying to do a decent job. A micro-civilisation. Not "evil" just "human"... demonising them doesn't help.