OS's and overclocking, tweaking, etc...

I normally prowl the Intel CPU section of this forum, because I am an overclocker. However, anfter reading a few post in this section, a thought has been raised that I must rant about.
It seems (to me, anyway) that most, if not all, of the problems occuring with Windows OS's happen AFTER someone tries to tweak the settings. Windows is a very unfriendly tweaker OS (yes, even XP...), so it usually crashes to reject someone trying to tell it to do something different than what it was programmed to do (XP has people tricked into thinking you can tweak it, and when you try to...boom!)
I never hear anyone complain about Linux...even though several of my friends use it, and can never stay booted more than a day or two without having to re-configure something. But no one ever says anything about down-time, or reboots, or crashes, because that is the nature of the system.
My mom ran Win98, and now 2K, for her business (selling AFLAC) and she never had one day of problems. Why? Because she was afraid to defrag, for god's sake! She NEVER touched any setting on her computer, and it never fought her.
I think if someone has a problem with a Windows OS, start by telling us what settings you've played with...and we can trace the problem from there.
This is just my thoughts...anyone feel the same, or different, or what?

P.S. For clarification...9X systems will hang for no reason from time to time...such is the nature of the 9X Kernel, it was unstable. But, if you still use 9X in the age of NT...you should not have a problem with unstability...you are used to it, and apparently happy with it, or you would be running Win2K or XP!

personaly there are many tweaks that you can do to make windows a better OS and keep stability, Out of the box it is more prone to crashes and just being slow then if you tweak a few things, I run Me and with a few tweaks i have a perfeclty stable OS that is rather snappy and i'm happy with it. From spending quite a bit of time here most of the problems i see are not from people tweaking but from hardware issues or from that fact that Windows is not perfect [far from it] and need quite a bit of help from time to time to keep its engine running smooth. As it is now i run Seti 24\7 and i never get any BSOD's, freezes or any other hick-ups other then a shutting down problem but this is only 1 out of 30 times and i have found a way to even keep this from happening, i have also seen others with the same problem and i'm quite sure there OS is not set up anywhere near like mine.

I guess I should have stated out of the box that I am a Windows fan...I love Bill, and if it weren't for the fact that I am a guy, I'd marry the man. It just seemed to me that so many people are complaining about crashes when they are pushing the working envelope of the OS. Some tweaks are good, and believe me, I employ all of them. I wrote a review on downloads.com about tweaking your modem in Windows, and have gotten 1000+ responses to it. But most people do not know very much about the art of tweaking, and when introduced to a better way of doing things, they either cower from it (bad) or jump straight in with very little knowledge about it (worse), and you get crashes, BSOD's, etc. Then, they want to whine about it being Windows' fault. If it weren't for Windows, and the IE/WE monopoly, and .NET, and everything else you can think of bad about Microsoft...we would even be typing messages on this forum right now. Home computing would still be 5-10 years away.
All I'm saying is...a tweakless Windows is ALOT less prone to crash than one that has been toyed with...especially by someone who shouldn't even own a toy...

Also, I realize I didn't address one of the issues you raised in your reply. Hardware problems, in my opinion, are not near as common as software problems are. Most people will install a product, pop in the CD that came in the box, and click "Next" until the install is done. Then, when that hardware doesn't work, and a few other settings start acting screwy, they look around crazy as hell for a few minutes, and then blame Windows. True, it is as much Windows as it is the company that made the software (which they probably did on purpose to undermine Microsoft)...but you should know more about that $2000 machine in front of you. Go to Add/Remove Hardware, and install the drivers from a location...don't let Windows search, and don't install the (mostly useless) software that was bundled with your hardware...these are common sense issues, that most people don't know about until after the fact. I am appalled at the lack of computer education being taught in the US right now...it is amazing that someone hasn't accidentally crashed the Internet by now...

Two words.
Learning Curve.

Around here most people are either experienced "tweakers" or somewhere on the road to becoming one!

While I do see your point about MS operating systems being more stable at defaults than with tweaking, I think it should be "more stable out of the box than it is with inexperienced tweaking" or something along those lines. Many of the tweaks I use increase stability, and they do work. I have not had a crash caused by something other than me or a loss of power at the circuit in months. And I tweak all my rigs' software and hardware.

Someone who is experienced at the ins and outs of tweaking will do some research before applying a new setting, or shutting off a service, so that they have a better knowledge of what may be affected. And judiciously applied tweaks can improve performance and stability greatly!

Badly done changes to vital system settings can result in an unstable or unusable system- been there, done that, many times! And THAT is how I learned to tweak!

Do I blame MS for that? No. But I have plenty of other complaints for them!

point well made, and taken....



I think the biggest issue is that some people forget that little step before walking...i think its called crawling

But I will make a statement about your last comment...Windows is not a tweakers OS, but you have alot of complaints with the OS because you tweak...why not just download a compiler, or resource hacker, and change the things about it you don't like? There's no sense in complaining to Microsoft, because they didn't build Windows to run like that...do you see where I'm coming from?

The complaints I have about Bill's Empire actually have less to do with the operating systems they make than the way they do business:

My biggest single complaint, just to give you an idea, is that MS seems to believe in Alpha, Beta and Charlie testing their software.

Alpha testing being the very limited, mostly in-house versions of the os.

Beta testing is the fairly widespread distribution to a number of trusted users that will help to develop stability and refine the os.

Charlie testing is when they sell the operating system to consumers knowing full well that there exist any number of bugs that have not been fixed!

MS is not alone in this practice, it has become all too commonplace.
But as the leader in desktop operating systems I think they should be BETTER than everyone else: they have the talent, they can afford the short-term losses they might incur and they would improve their rep. In addition, they might just start a trend of not releasing their code until it is actually "ready for prime time!"

This is MY complaint, for what its worth! ( I don't touch a MS OS until it has been released for at least one year btw.)

spoken very well...I fully agree with you...btw, lol at the Charlie testing!!!