*&^%$ Windows XP

These are the real bane of the PC, and one of the advantages of running a MAC.

Part of owning a PC is having to deal with software and hardware conflicts, its a consequence of the huge number of seperate manufactors and software developers.
Even companies like DELL, who custom order most of thier own hardware parts still get issues with hardware conflicts.

I guess I've missed out on the experience, then. My XP system has no conflicts, nor does it crash.

The other day, while I was online, some pop-up message showed up with a warning that my computer was being updated and that I should wait. Well, BULL! It was no Microsoft message, so I knew it was up to no good. Security warnings were active.

I immediately killed the online session and closed the system down. Then I brought the system back up and did a disk cleanup to rid it of those half-transferred temp files.

Net result. No problem.

---Bob Gross---

Then its either exceptionaly well built and maintained, or its very boring

Given your appreant experiance Im guessing its the former.


MY PC is conflict free, except for a known fault on the motherbourd which shows as a conflict, but has no effect on the performance or operation.
(the m/b was withdrawn from production, I unforunatly got one of the first int he country, and never bothered to get it replaced).
But Iv had conflicts before, especialy on my last PC, two many USB devices used to cause problems.
I think every member here will be able to tell of a device that would only work in a certian port, or when another device wasn't plugged in etc etc etc.

When thousands of manufactors are building thousands of differnt products all to varying standards there are going to be conflicts.
Same with software manufactors.

Windows XP is the best version of Windows until now.

Some of the versions before XP were really crappy and buggy (ME, 98, 95). I've never had any problems with XP.

For user ease, yeah Winbloze is great.But well yeah, it's all buggy, and jsut moved a hard drive to a new pc (motherboard bombed) and then all of a sudden i must reactivate my windows? who's business is it if I change machines? Not MS for sure so why this feature is built in is a mystery to me, I mean you allowed a max of 3 hardware changes apparently. www.microsuck.com has a great article on why MS is so evil, worth a read

Windows XP is great, 2000 was really good as well - but they both depend on the user to buy good hardware with good drivers. Most people don't.

Older versions of Windows wasn't as good, but IMHO still better than Mac OS, since those machines still crashed even if the hardware was controlled by Apple. Every Mac OS version prior to version 10 was crap. On the other hand, Mac OS X is great! It's the best of both worlds: a stable Unix in the background, with a really sweet user interface on top. As I haven't used Macs a lot, so I have some issues with it, but it's more me than the OS' fault

I just wish they would release Mac OS X so I could use it on my PC... maybe someone will make a hack for it when Apple has made their switch to Intel. That would be great

Dont know what it was and I may be wrong to blame XP. All I know was that whatever the error was, it had cascaded on to the backups and it took a fresh install from the original XP Pro disks to right it. Whatever it was was enough to stop it booting far enough to do anything even in safe mode.

I have done something similar and loaded 2 pc's, from scratch with the SAME CD and the same machines, bought same time, same supplier, one was giving endles hassles, the other was fine, so yeah not sure how to explain that

I've never seen a BSOD on any of my XP machines (Pro and Home). So long as you get quality hardward and know not what to do you'll be perfectly fine. Of the problems that I've seen among friends its always software that they've installed that they shouldn't have or it was a very low cost 3rd party part that didn't have good driver support etc. MAC's success party lies in the limited hardware options which helps keep the number of variables down...you can do that with PC's too by sticking to high quality parts but then the price goes up and most people want ultra cheap. That's fine just don't complain when things go south and don't complain that its the OS's fault.

This is the age old question. Does hardware or software kill your machine? I built 5 machines for a company with XP on all 5 machines. Two of the machines were used as cash registers, and the other 3 in the main office. All of them performed flawlessly, with the exception of one. This one was the machine from the valley of eternal darkness. Everything that could go wrong with this machine did. Hardware and operating system problems constantly. The final solution for me and the company, I built another machine, and gave it to them. The old machine -- scrapped for parts. Two and a half years later, the motherboard manufacturer admits to a manufacturing defect in their boards.I guess one out of five isn't bad. Of my past experiences, the number one failure of XP to operate properly comes from corruption of the operating system from various sources. Oh, and there is my father-in-law, who has to reload his operating system every four to six months. But this is because he loads every piece of software known to mankind on his machine, just to see if he likes it.
BTW - Andrew has some great pics on his gallery!

Home built PC running Media Centre Edition (XP Pro effectively) with F-secure Firewall and Virus, Microsoft antispyware, Mozilla EMail and Web client, OpenOffice applications, PSE3

Apart from some 'issues' when building it that led me to have to reload the OS 3 times (all my fault) it has not coughed once.

Regular System Restore Points whenever I add a new application, a 20GB Windows only partition, an Image of that partition on a physically separate HDD and daily backups of all the important files...

All sweet as a nut. Just about to go Wi-Fi to my Broadband too...

Apparently an early beta of the version of OS X for intel processors has already shown up, cracked, on the internet. So now bored 14 year old 'hackers' who could never afford a mac can get one from their favorite torrent site, install it and start to poke and play. I wonder how many new vulnerabilities and exploits will start to show up.

Source please?
This is totally not true.
Once again windows users show ignorance!

Just look at the compilation of Mac-related news articles listed on macsurfer.com. About every week a rumor pops up that OS X for Intel has hit the Internet. Fresh one today. The early ones were hoaxes. Today's might be real but I haven't had time to research it fully and I must run to a meeting right now...

Me too