Another Victim

[Wicked Klown]

My mom became another victim of Windows XP. They bought it the other day and did an install don't laugh at this part and it was a Compaq they put it on. Now she has nothing but trouble with it. There would be no way she could save anything on her computer could she before they reformat.

[jbell]

WOW!! XP on Compaq?????


Dude it's your job to save people like that!!!!! I am truly sorry for the experience......

[rUfUnKy]

Originally posted by jbell
WOW!! XP on Compaq?????


Dude it's your job to save people like that!!!!! I am truly sorry for the experience...... I put WinXP on the Compaq I gave my girlfriend and it runs as smooth as butter.......(to my surprise of course ;) ) What model Compaq is it???

[takiwa]

if you have a spare HDD laying around, slip it in and copy your files over first, then reformat...

[xdroorsx]

i installed XP (doh! ) on my compaq (doh! ) laptop, and amazingly it's been a pleasure to work with. now my desktop rig, which i so proudly put together recently, has been another story. i think things are finally ironed out (stable as a rock), but it was a long time getting there. i still have the networking problem though that i can't figure out.... when i double click on a network adapter to check it's status and see what my IP address, dns, etc. are, no box comes up.... it just kinda flashes. beats me.

[nil_esh]

One of my friends upgraded from WinME to WinXP Pro on her Compaq laptop. It was locking up all the time with ME. Now she hasn't had a single complaint with XP and everything works!

[Yodums]

Never do an upgrade install its just brutal.

If you have a burner transfer it over and burn if you have a spare hdd transfer the files over.

Yodums

[Wicked Klown]

Thats what OS my mom had and it caused her nothing but trouble. So her husband bought Windows XP and now it`s worse then it was with ME.

[nil_esh]

Originally posted by Yodums
Never do an upgrade install its just brutal.


You'd think that, but the ME -> XP upgrade was flawless. We only had to update the DVD drivers, reinstall a few programs and after that, no problems. Though she's still using FAT32 I should tell her to change to NTFS. I heard NTFS is best when you start from scratch, though, ah well. It would've been a pain to reformat on that laptop, we had no network and no backup drives and a ton of installed software she was already using. Maybe could've done it with Partition Magic..

On the other hand, one of my friends upgraded 98se -> XP and stuck with FAT32. It was great at first, but after a few weeks it got REALLY ugly and the OS wouldn't boot at all in the end. He ended up doing a reformat and reinstall.

[Yodums]

Heres my OS recommendation.

Windows 2K w/ NTFS partitions and SP2 ...

As a second choice Win 98.

IMHO Win'Me and Win XP are mistakes.. they either kill system resources fast(Win ME) or eat mad ram(Win XP).

Yodums

[takiwa]

Yodems, me and you are gonna argue about this...:D If you disable the visuals offa XP, it eats no more RAM than 2K...that's all XP is...a prettier version of 2K!

[minoukat]

Originally posted by takiwa
Yodems, me and you are gonna argue about this...:D If you disable the visuals offa XP, it eats no more RAM than 2K...that's all XP is...a prettier version of 2K!

it's true that it eats no more system resources if the baby interface is disabled, but I can't really say it's "prettier" (I hate the new XP interface, I just think it's soooo ugly !).

Anyway, I installed XP on my Compaq once (check sig to see my system), and, although it worked well, I just couldn't stand it anymore !!! It was too slow and too big for this comp, plus some of my programs didn't work anymore, (talking about games, like NFS High Stakes), or didn't work as well as in other OSes (like NFS Porsche Unleashed, where the graphics were alot slower in XP and they were also a lot more ugly !), so now I'm with WinME, which works great.

[takiwa]

Yodems is a Win2K kinda guy...everyone is entitled to their own belief in what systems work better for them...I'm just pickin' on him, 'cause I like XP...:D And it is prettier, btw...:mad:

[Wicked Klown]

Well right now I'm stuck with 98S.E. and it`s a memory hog. So when I can I'm upgrading to W2K Pro.

[nil_esh]

Win2k Pro and WinXP Pro are both excellent. Its a tough choice between the two. I'm biased towards 2k because it's worked great for me, and I like to wait for the newer OS's to expose their bugs. I think in a year XP Pro is going to be the OS of choice. So you might save yourself an upgrade if you go the XP Pro route.

[Yodums]

In my opinion its definitely a ram eater because it runs so much through the background it requires like at least 512 ram to run straight.

With 384 I still felt lag through my stuff with the stuff it runs in the background.

It has to be tweaked to run right which doesn't suit my expectations as tweaking is meant to bring the Operating System beyond what it is like Win 98 tweaking.

Win2K runs fine on even on 64mb with minimum spikes.
With 128 it runs perfect..

I run it on 512 and I must say it is very perfect.

It is stable runs very fast, and very stable.

IMHO Win XP demands more ram and is very bloatware since it has to be tweaked to run right.

Or Win XP can be Win2K identical with a GUI look.

Yodums

[takiwa]

I can turn off the visuals (i.e., go to th windows "classic" look, just like 2K), and disable all programs from running at start-up (which should not be considered a tweak...I would do that on ANY system) and she'll boot up fine @ 64Mb...and run perfect @ 128. I don't understand why you had such a lag with it...I almost want to help you track that RAM losage down, because that is certainly not normal...:confused:

[Yodums]

I highly doubt it will even boot with 64 as Microsoft recommends 128 itself.

It may look like Win2K but may not run like Win2K as things running in the background can't be compressed down to run as small to fit 64megs of ram to run right you will end up with very bad OS... Worst than MacOSX :/

Yodums

[kd7aze]

Originally posted by Yodums
I highly doubt it will even boot with 64 as Microsoft recommends 128 itself.

It may look like Win2K but may not run like Win2K as things running in the background can't be compressed down to run as small to fit 64megs of ram to run right you will end up with very bad OS... Worst than MacOSX :/

Yodums
Hmmm. Sounding to me like someone doesn't like change, and will put down anything that doesn't require extensive fiddeling to get to work correctly.

I will be the first to say I don't like Microsloth, and I disagree with their business practices yadda yadda ad infinium.

But I will also be the first to say that XP Home has been the best investment for my computer aside from my 1ghz proc jump. Rock solid, 24 hour operation, proggies may crash but the OS keeps on rocking. And I, for one, like the new interface.

I also like OS X... I have a feeling I'm getting into the minority here. lol

Kid

[takiwa]

well, you say potatoe, I say cheesecake :D We both like different things about the OS's we run...no harm in that.

You are correct about the recommended RAM being 128Mb, but it is also stated that 64Mb is a MINIMUM requirement. I have never actually tried to run XP at 64Mb RAM...i did at 96Mb, though, with little problem...Windows mem usage in Sandra was 112% True Allocated Load...not bad, but nothing to scream about, either...

with 128Mb RAM, this is the benchmark posted on MSFT's website:

Performance Measurement : Commercial Benchmarks (averaged)
Windows XP enabling feature(s) : Overall system improvements
Performance Improvement : 36% faster than Windows 98 SE
and Equivalent to Windows 2000

(Statistics based on Windows XP performance study performed by eTesting Labs using Ziff Davis Media’s Business Winstone 2001 v1.0.1, Ziff Davis Media’s Content Creation Winstone 2001 v1.0.1, and BAPCo/MadOnion.com’s WebMark 2001)

pretty interesting stuff....:eh?: