Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

ratfink wrote:

getting off-topic, but whats up with sp3?

I hope we're not hijacking this thread, but many people say that SP2 is actually more stable than SP3.

I noticed no decreased stability due to SP3. I now install from nlited media with SP3 and the more recent hotfixes. No problems so far 😀

I never install XP on a machine thats below 800Mhz and/or below 512MB RAM nowdays. I do create install media especially for slower machines but also with SP3.

On another note, is there any particular reason to install 2k instead of XP? They seem equally slow to me, I'd rather install ME on machines below 800Mhz and 512 RAM it's way WAY snappier.

Tetrium wrote:

On another note, is there any particular reason to install 2k instead of XP?

A whole lack of bloat doesn't come as standard in 2k. 😀

Your perception of its memory usage is a bit off - you can get stock 2K going reasonably on 64mb, and 2K SP3+ on 80mb+. 2K only really starts to SUCK when you go to 56mb or lower... it doesn't require a lot of CPU either, it's even fine on Pentiums.

leileilol wrote:

SP3 is a bad idea 😀

Unfortunately, most new software that still supports XP requires SP3, so it's almost a mandatory upgrade if you want to stay as current as possible without moving up to Vista or 7. 😖

Anonymous Freak wrote:

When XP first came out, I installed it on my Sony PictureBook C1X. Pentium MMX 266 MHz, 64 MB RAM, 6 GB hard drive.

It ran acceptably. (Although I have always used "Classic Mode" visual theme, even on fast computers.)

I wouldn't dare run XP SP3 on anything slower than a Pentium III now, though.

I had XP on a PIII 550 and it was dog slow but 2k on my dual P-Pro 200 is good. Go figure.

I find that it's just important to have, at the bare minimum, 192MB of RAM for XP. Win2K is rather RAM heavy too compared to say 9x, but XP does need a bit more. But other than that XP seems to run faster than 2K to me. I don't really see a reason to choose 2K for anything anymore.

How do you stand to use Windows 98? Are you only using it for games? We used to have it at work 10 years ago and wasted all kinds of time due to blue screen of death and crap like that. We should have been using NT Workstation at least.

catatonic wrote:

How do you stand to use Windows 98? Are you only using it for games? We used to have it at work 10 years ago and wasted all kinds of time due to blue screen of death and crap like that.

Quite honestly, I myself *HATE* WinDoZe XPee! The *only* reason that I'm running it is simple that I couldn't find drivers for my new(er) PC that I currently use.

(unlike some of the horror stories that I've read, as well as a few customers' PCs that I've worked on) ALL of my W98SE PCs have had that OS installed only *once*... never had to do a reinstall (short of a hard drive failure), and any BOS/lockups/etc... were 99.999% caused by *me* <grin>.

Also (game related), quite honestly, if it weren't for DOSBox, I'd still be on my old AMD550 with W98SE 😀

What do you hate about XP, when compared to 9x? The theme? That can be fixed. Look up uxpatcher and find some easy to install replacement themes.

I would never want to be on 9x again for any real work. It is inherently unstable, an OS designed simply to cater to the wimpy low-RAM hardware we had back then. From how it uses memory and how it is gimped by its native support for 8/16-bit DOS and 3.x apps, and the unstable VXD driver system, it's just ugly. I only use it for my retro game rigs.

Even just burning CDs on 9x is scary because of how flaky it is. Remember the days before the "burnproof" buffer underrun protection? I used to burn coaster after coaster due to random IDE DMA flakyness. Uhg. :D

So many weird quirks and problems went away with the move to 2K/XP once the drivers got mature. 2002 or so I'd say. The jump to 9x from 3.x was huge, and the jump from 9x to consumer NT was just as big. MS can't really figure out a way to do that again and that's why XP is still popular today even though it has been replaced twice!

Unfortunately, most new software that still supports XP requires SP3, so it's almost a mandatory upgrade if you want to stay as current as possible without moving up to Vista or 7.

Not to mention that XP SP2 has gone out of support with no more security updates. IMO there is no reason not to update to SP3 if possible.

BTW, as a side note, WinVista and later won't run without ACPI support, which I think kills all motherboards based on chipsets released before 1997.

"What do you hate about XP, when compared to 9x? The theme? That can be fixed."

Yeah, you can upgrade it to look like OS X. 😜

yuhong wrote:

BTW, as a side note, WinVista and later won't run without ACPI support, which I think kills all motherboards based on chipsets released before 1997.

So much for trying to run them on a system that just meets the minimum specs, then. 😒

swaaye wrote:

What do you hate about XP, when compared to 9x? The theme?

Nope, not the theme... I could care less what it looks like <grin>. There are a bunch of things, but here are a few that pop into my mind:

Directory dates; why the hell does NTFS stamp the current date on any directory that has been modified (files copied to or deleted from)? A royal pain, as I've always used directory dates as an idea of when I had originally installed a program or started a project.

File dates; the files on every single CD that I own or have created usually has the file and directory dates off by either 5 or 10 hours. Now, I understand why NTFS does this, but man...

NTFS; while NTFS is a much better and more stable file system, my previous hard drive backup scheme/method is now unusable. Under FAT32 I'd use Windows Commander and a spare hard drive (already partioned and bootable to match my regular hard drive) to copy the entire hard drive in verbatim to the backup drive. I'd use those removable hard disk "caddys", and pop in my backup drive anytime I wanted to completely back up my working drive... select all files/directories in WIndows Commander, F5, and have lunch 😀 Can't do that with an NTFS file system.

The infernal taskbar; why, in Bill Gates infinite wisdom, does the taskbar have to "jump up" everytime a program requests attention? Another annoyance...

No real DOS; I understand that NTFS doesn't support this, but there was a lot of things I could do in native DOS that I can't under WXP. One that comes to mind (at least on customers' PCs) is the ability to virus scan or scandisk from a DOS bootup... the *best* way to do these sorts of things (virus scan; boot from a CD or floppy to a sterile envrionment, scan disk; from DOS without having Windows thrashing the hard drive).

No real DOS #2; and of course, all of my DOS games. Like I posted before, if it weren't for DOSBox <grin>...

swaaye wrote:

I would never want to be on 9x again for any real work. It is inherently unstable

Like I posted previously, I've had very few problems with W98SE throughout the years.

swaaye wrote:

and how it is gimped by its native support for 8/16-bit DOS and 3.x apps

To me, that's a selling point 🤣!

swaaye wrote:

Even just burning CDs on 9x is scary because of how flaky it is. Remember the days before the "burnproof" buffer underrun protection? I used to burn coaster after coaster due to random IDE DMA flakyness. Uhg. 😁

I've used NTI CD Maker Pro for (maybe) over a decade... never had a single problem with it, short of low-quality CD blanks. Heh, I was so dead set on using that version at the time (verses something newer such as Nero), I had made several hacks to the program so that it would recognize any newer/faster CD burner that I had bought <grin> 😀

swaaye wrote:

The jump to 9x from 3.x was huge

Heh, I went straight from W311WFWG to W98SE... totally skipped the W95/W95B/original W98 thang/era <grin> 😀

swaaye wrote:

MS can't really figure out a way to do that again and that's why XP is still popular today even though it has been replaced twice!

This I must agree with. Even though I dislike XP, Vista and 7 is an abomination IMHO.

Anyhow, that's only a few... I could prolly think of a bunch of other gripes I have about XP, but it's a bit late here <grin>.

swaaye wrote:

What do you hate about XP, when compared to 9x?

The inability to run certain "Windows 98-only" games. 😁

Seriously, backward compatibility problems aside, I think XP is a fine O/S. My only gripe with XP is the 4GB RAM limitation, which forces people to move to Vista or Windows 7 if they want to use more than 4GB RAM. I don't see any technical reason to not implement large RAM support for XP, since Windows 2003 Advanced and Datacenter can support more than 4GB of RAM.

32-bit OSs that access >4GB of RAM use PAE. The apps have to be designed for it too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension

It's just a kind of workaround though. We're better off with real 64-bit software.

There is Windows XP 64-bit edition which can use over 4GB.

Windows XP can be set up on a FAT32 formatted partition, and in that case it can dualboot with real DOS.

Edit; Me, I did not like windows 95 much when it was new, the compaq plaza stuff on our PC did not help much either. Later I kinda grew on Windows 98. It crashed allright but usually that was because I was running/programming dos applications at my own risk. Then I switched to windows 2000 because certain apps required it. Now XP is similar but supports some modern applications better. I am at least glad it is still well supported and at the core still configurable to be used as a no-nonsense windows.

It is impossible to run Windows XP on a processor older than a 75 MHz Pentium, because it requires CMPXCHG8B instructions and at a absolute minimum, you would need no less than 24 MB of memory and a 2 GB hard disk with no less than 1.5 GB of free disk space. I don't think that Windows XP would work with anything less than 24 MB of memory.

This PC for five years had Windows XP Home Edition (up to Service Pack 2) before downgrading to Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 earlier this year. Win2K was the last operating system to run on a 486-based PC despite the requirements called for a 133 MHz Pentium or better.

ppgrainbow wrote:

It is impossible to run Windows XP on a processor older than a 75 MHz Pentium

Well...it is kinda possible, but you won't like it! 😁

http://www.winhistory.de/more/386/xpmini_eng.htm

XP....24MB RAM.... 😳 😳 😳 😮 😲 😲

Thanks for the link! 😁