Corporate versions of XP do not require activation.

I despised 2000 because the server where I worked ran it and the netcode was horrible. Hated XP because it was ugly, impractical and made the NT kernel mandatory (Which I never thought worked in some environments) and also looked like it was designed by a fat, middle-aged woman with chronic depression... You know, the sort who has woolly jumpers, scented candles and 50 little yapping dogs that you want to kick.

Probably worth mentioning, a lot of my software cannot be replaced. The MIDI sequencer, for example, is controlling equipment which is either incompatible or impossible to control correctly in newer applications. Similar reasons apply across the board.

Oh god, as a home user I LOVED Windows 2k. It was much more resilient to my brother and mother (and, of course, I was the one that had to fix any issues). I just set my brother as restricted account for even better stability (and less browser toolbars). Of course I set up dual-booting with Win98 for me to play with older stuff I couldn't make work. XP felt kindda pointless for a while, as it was just 2k, only looking like crap. You could still get Luna to look somewhat presentable using the silver color scheme and a more neutral wallpaper... Too bad the icons were still bubbly and flashy. Aero, though, is needlessly distracting. I'm glad it got replaced.

HighTreason wrote:

SSDs are for pussies 😜

WD RE in RAID, the only way to go.

I have always wondered how it is possible to actually make the operating system take up that much space.

Your experience is not typical... I use windows 7 on a 64GB SSD here, and I actually know how to easily "strip down" windows 7 and get it to only use 7GB total for the entire OS (before installing software) and get it to sit at desktop only using 500 - 600 MB ram. It's not hard at all. For you thinking win7 is "Bloated", I can get it as efficient as windows XP, and do this on all my systems, even my big i7 I strip it down.

Also About SSD's for "Pussies" ... I'll just leave this here, SSD's are kinda like this:

Two Samsung 850 Pro SSD's in raid-0.

64GB? What? Really? So, this is from, like, 2003 right? Rubbish.

SSDs are the way forward, they just aren't ready yet.

Furthermore (As to the OS), I don't have time to mess with things and why should I have to? It should work as advertised out of the box. It pisses me off the amount of third party crap I need to make useful stuff happen and the amount of time I have to spend removing other things - which Windows 7 bitches about all the way. Who gives a damn anyway? It's an obsolete system and I won't have to use it at all by this time next year.

HighTreason wrote:

64GB? What? Really? So, this is from, like, 2003 right? Rubbish.

SSDs are the way forward, they just aren't ready yet.

Furthermore (As to the OS), I don't have time to mess with things and why should I have to? It should work as advertised out of the box. It pisses me off the amount of third party crap I need to make useful stuff happen and the amount of time I have to spend removing other things - which Windows 7 bitches about all the way. Who gives a damn anyway? It's an obsolete system and I won't have to use it at all by this time next year.

I use a 64GB SSD (Brand new Patriot Blaze Sata-III Model bought this year), as OS drive in my 775 machine I run daily. Mainly because it was cheap. Bought it for $28 brand new a few months ago.

Even after windows is installed, all current with updates, steam, my browsers, browser histories.. trillian.. most of my usual programs and even about 5 modern games, It's still not very large usage and have almost half the thing free:

It's just unnerving to me that you're trying to claim win7 is "Bloated". After a little fixing it can actually be a very lean, and quite fast OS. And I use a lot of programs on it from 2000 that work great, even in the 64-bit version of win7, (GoldWave, ACDsee PowerPack 4, Getright, CuteFTP, MagicDisc, PowerISO, ETC). And if you would use a 32-bit version of windows 7, I bet most of your older 16-bit Win9x programs would work just fine too. It's the 64-bit version of win7 that removed 16-bit support.

By the way, the latest service pack for windows XP, you still have to turn off a lot of windows and microsoft background stuff to make it "lean and fast" too (system restore, hibernation support, firewall, search indexer, windows defender, etc).

Oh, great, a blind fanboy - fairly common in these parts and I've run into enough of them over the years, you aren't the first and won't be the last I am sure. This is trying the limits of my civility.

1. I cannot use SSDs, it is common for me to have files OVER 64GB in size. I have, right now, a single file which is OVER 250GB and is among others that are around half that size.
2. I actually want to get shit done, not play with obscure features in the operating system with a horrible, bloated interface.
3. What part of me not liking XP either is difficult to understand? Do you even think I rely on that outdated piece of crap anymore? My laptop is jumping ship to Windows 10 (From 7) and my workstation would be on 8 already if the hardware was supported but unfortunately it is simply too old and obtaining a replacement is difficult leaving me stuck at 7 in the meantime.

No, the programs I want to use do not work in Windows 7. PhotoImpact 7 has difficulties, Cake9 has problems and FrontPage 2002 does not work properly to name a few.

kithylin wrote:

Your experience is not typical... I use windows 7 on a 64GB SSD here, and I actually know how to easily "strip down" windows 7 and get it to only use 7GB total for the entire OS (before installing software) and get it to sit at desktop only using 500 - 600 MB ram. It's not hard at all. For you thinking win7 is "Bloated", I can get it as efficient as windows XP, and do this on all my systems, even my big i7 I strip it down.

Also About SSD's for "Pussies" ... I'll just leave this here, SSD's are kinda like this:

Two Samsung 850 Pro SSD's in raid-0.

It kind of depends on alot of things.

My main system in my signature has a 80GB intel SSD I bought the summer 2009, just before the full version of Windows 7 was released so I installled the RC version of Windows 7 Ultimate which I later registered without reinstalling.

The first year I used this Windows 7 install with alot of different hardware before I bought the EVGA SR-2 system since then I have tried perhaps 10 different video cards, both AMD and Nvidia, upgraded to SP1 and I have all available important updates. After a clean I can get the Windows directory down to 12-13 GB or something like that and this is without system restore, with all old update files cleaned inlcuding the service pack ones and using a few other tricks I know of without removing features. I clean my system every time the Windows directory gets over 20GB which seems to be about once every year or so.

My systems memory footprint is tiny as I only run ~28 processes whith no extra programs running. This system would work even with 512MB memory. I know I could get Windows 7 below 10GB disk space if I would do a reinstall I just never bothered.

The best thing is that I bought a large OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 PCI-E SSD with ~1000 MB/S transfer speed years ago but I have been to lazy to do a reinstall or system migration 😁. Even the 270-280 MB/s the old Intel SSD peaks at seems "enough".

I I have used the RevoDrive for a short benchmark session using another socket 1366 system and I found out that it diddnt like BCLK over 180MHz so I would have to change my overclock from 23x200 to 26x177 or 27x171 which would take days of testing so thats another reason I never get to it. Now would be a good time to try it out though as Im running stock at the moment.

Skyscraper wrote:

I have used the RevoDrive for a short benchmark session using another socket 1366 system and I found out that it diddnt like BCLK over 180MHz so I would have to change my overclock from 23x200 to 26x177 or 27x171 which would take days of testing so thats another reason I never get to it. Now would be a good time to try it out though as Im running stock at the moment.

You probably already know this but make sure you're locking PCI-E speed at 100 Mhz in bios when overclocking x58, my EVGA x58 board has this option and your SR-2 should too, I think. If you don't do that then BCLK pushed over overclocks pci-e too.

kithylin wrote:

Skyscraper wrote:

I have used the RevoDrive for a short benchmark session using another socket 1366 system and I found out that it diddnt like BCLK over 180MHz so I would have to change my overclock from 23x200 to 26x177 or 27x171 which would take days of testing so thats another reason I never get to it. Now would be a good time to try it out though as Im running stock at the moment.

You probably already know this but make sure you're locking PCI-E speed at 100 Mhz in bios when overclocking x58, my EVGA x58 board has this option and your SR-2 should too, I think. If you don't do that then BCLK pushed over overclocks pci-e too.

Yea it was not the PCI-E speed that was the issue but the drive simply acted "strange" when the system was running 180+ BCLK. It was with an Asus P6T Deluxe v2, perhaps it works better with the SR-2, sooner or later I will find out.

The P6T Deluxe v2 and the X5670 I used tops out at ~222 BCLK with full stability up to ~215 BCLK.

Even my old ECS board from a decade ago has that - they actually beat ASUS on that one to the point that paid reviewers had a very hard time justifying their recommendation to buy the ASUS instead - something they did even after the ECS destroyed everything but the competing DFI(I think, might have been Abit...) product in the benchmarks. 😉 It is called Synchronize PCI-E Clock on mine.

I think in reality, that the issue here is vastly different usage cases. Nobody is wrong per-se... Or I don't think so, having never tested the system outside of my own intended usage case.

For what I want to do, Windows 7 is probably the worst operating system possible and its flaws - which ALL operating systems have - happen to be ones that are triggered by or get in the way of things I want to do.

For what you want to do, Windows 7 may be great. Maybe if you want to, for example, play Half Dutyfield and burn CDs or something, it could be the best operating system in the world.

I am decommissioning the Core 2 Quad soon. It has been left on to share two drives whilst I backed up the IDE ones in the Pentium D. Backup is now done so the Pentium D will get its SATA drives back and the IDE ones will retire as they've been in it since 2005 and don't run so good anymore. I've explained this to enough people that I think I might grab a couple of SATA drives and make a video on why Windows 7 does not work for me, setting up a Dual-boot with XP or something just to demonstrate the difference between those two operating systems. I would cover things like the drop in drive throughput, loss of video performance and the stupid network performance to name a few... Probably also go on some long rant about why the interface is useless. May as well make the remains do something useful, because it never has yet and is going in the incinerator either way.

Windows Vista+ isn't all that great on old video hardware and other stuff. You need hardware it likes, or else XP has better performance all around. IMHO SSDs aren't for real work. Put one as a system drive but use HDDs for actual data. And for laptops either use Hybrid SSHDs for the superior startup times or stick to HDDs. SSDs do die and losing important data isn't fun. Also, when rendering videos I'd guess sequential performance is more important than random access performance, so a RAID is perfect for that.

I did not know about reduced drive throughput. Is this on all hardware or just older controllers?

ICH7 and especially ICH9. The host drive will have its performance cut in half (At least, on a RAID0 array, not sure about non-RAID or on other controllers, though the Silicone Image in the same system - board has two RAID controllers - showed similar results in a brief use of that one as the boot drive) for some reason. At least, according to BlackMagic Disk Speed Test (For convenience, I can Zip this up tomorrow if you like, it is available for free, but you have to get the entire BlackMagic driver and dick around to extract it) - I set a lot to store by that as the software for the capture card will use the same code to write I would assume, seems accurate anyway.

The performance loss on all other drives is marginal. Also, an interesting quirk. Get a VM and run an older Windows version. Initiate a network copy in Windows 7 to some other computer, a folder with loads of flies is a good candidate. Note the drop in speed over time, not good. Large transfers eventually level out at a few KB/s on Gigabit ethernet! Then, try the same with the same folder in the VM, it sure goes a lot faster, proving the hardware in the machine can do it and so can the network hardware outside. Really strange bug and VERY annoying when I have to move files like the one noted earlier sometimes. It also took days to move an image of an 80GB disk over to the Windows 7 system via the network. I always have a VM handy with extensions for this purpose as I can drag-and-drop files onto that instead of using the Windows 7 net code.

^I actually have had several problems with data loss on the ICH9, especially when coupled with Windows 7. Perhaps Intel is slightly to blame, but I had similar performance issues on a Phenom board (Generic cheap ASUS, Phenom II 920, other generic crap), though got shot of that long before there was any chance of data loss so can't speak for that. In short, files kept disappearing on the ICH9 systems (There were three) and eventually either a partition would disappear off the map, taking some files with it, or Windows would throw an NTLDR MISSING at boot. Not good. I had reason to think it may have started with a particular update, but as the problem did not present immediately I can't say which one or what it did.

Video card is a GTX460. Performance is not as good on my 730GT, though being a less powerful card that isn't really a major surprise.

HighTreason wrote:

ICH7 and especially ICH9. The host drive will have its performance cut in half (At least, on a RAID0 array, not sure about non-RAID or on other controllers, though the Silicone Image in the same system - board has two RAID controllers - showed similar results in a brief use of that one as the boot drive) for some reason. At least, according to BlackMagic Disk Speed Test (For convenience, I can Zip this up tomorrow if you like, it is available for free, but you have to get the entire BlackMagic driver and dick around to extract it) - I set a lot to store by that as the software for the capture card will use the same code to write I would assume, seems accurate anyway.
The performance loss on all other drives is marginal. Also, an interesting quirk. Get a VM and run an older Windows version. Initiate a network copy in Windows 7 to some other computer, a folder with loads of flies is a good candidate. Note the drop in speed over time, not good. Large transfers eventually level out at a few KB/s on Gigabit ethernet! Then, try the same with the same folder in the VM, it sure goes a lot faster, proving the hardware in the machine can do it and so can the network hardware outside. Really strange bug and VERY annoying when I have to move files like the one noted earlier sometimes. It also took days to move an image of an 80GB disk over to the Windows 7 system via the network. I always have a VM handy with extensions for this purpose as I can drag-and-drop files onto that instead of using the Windows 7 net code.

Do you know if Vista was also affected by that? And do you know if Windows 8+ is also affected? This seems to be too severe of a bug for MS to just leave it there unless there is a major architectural issue, specially because this would have also affected Windows Server 2008 R2.

I am taking some time off from actual hardware, in order to concentrate a bit on my blog about retro computing.

Got done refurbishing a couple of dual core Windows7 machines that will end up with Windows 10 installed and sold for a bit of profit. Already have buyers lined up yay!

Installed KQ4 on 5.25" diskettes on my Magnavox 386SX. Then proceeded to install Colonel's Bequest on 3.5 DS/DD diskettes on the same box. I also consolidated various boxes with parts / cables to 2 crates. It turns out whoever packed up my stuff in NY stole my FlipCam: another item for the claim to be filed.

I also installed a SB16 ASP in said machine.

For some reason I wanted to watch parts of Interstellar on a Pentium II. So hooked up my ancient 300MHz Klamath box and threw in the DVD copy of Interstellar that Paramount forced me to buy along with the BD. A few cool things I noticed:

-Win2000 correctly read my A/V receiver's EDID and set the resolution to 1920x1080. Man, does the classic Windows interface look beautiful and crisp on a 64" plasma display! I'm used to seeing 9x/2k at 1280x1024 on a curved CRT display, along with the CRT "blur" effect.

-I was able to get the old computer to output an AC3 bitstream from the digital coax jack, so the audio quality was just smashing.

Imagine that--an old 300MHz clunker outputting a 1080p video signal and 5.1 audio. Processor usage was quite high--around 80%, but playback was smooth. Such an old rig doesn't support 24 fps output, so I couldn't get completely judder-free playback, but hey, that's what madVR running on modern hardware is for!

Interstella 5555 is aw....wait a second you mean the matthew mconaughey one

What media player are you using?

I use MPC-HC for the least CPU usage (which is nice on a decade-old laptop on battery mode while on AC). I'm not watching DVDs on it though, just 480p livestreams at 30fps with hardly a frame drop. It can also handle watching saltybet at source quality with 60fps. 😜

I too have a Klamath 300MHz but I never put it through any DVD adventures.

Yesterday I installed the Quadro 2 Pro into my dual P3. Now I have tested it;

Seems faster than the Radeon VE for what I want to do with it. The VE will probably find a home in my K6, which currently has a Rage card - I don't really want to retire the VE as it has been good to me. I have no idea if the Quadro 2 is losing any performance due to the AGP 2X slot of the 440GX, but there is probably some loss there. Still, good little upgrade and it cost almost nothing, so worth it.

My GeForce 4 Ti is here too, so I may give it a quick test in something underpowered (The only AGP system I have readily accessible is a K6) as I really don't want to move the workstation right now. I am moving house shortly and will just wait until that is done, as the Athlon below it is going to be dismantled, its internal organs put away, and then it will be rebuilt with better hardware - in short, a cheap Chaintech board will be replaced with the 7VJL Deluxe, the CPU will be upgraded from an Mobile 1500+ to a Desktop 2600+ and the GPU will be upgraded (if all goes to plan) from a 440MX to a Ti 4800SE. RAM will probably be the one 1GB stick of DDR I have around, as the current board uses SDRAM. I will miss the ISA slot, but I'm sure the AWE64 will find something else to live in - probably my K6 as that had no sound card. The K6 currently lives in the K5's case with some of its hardware (Including its SB16) until the K5 motherboard can be fixed and I find a hard drive for the K6 - neither is high on the priorities list at the moment.

For anyone that cares, here's the BlackMagic Disk Speed Test I spoke about yesterday; https://www.mediafire.com/?3sskfckrv39gknk

brostenen wrote:

philscomputerlab wrote:

Yesterday I plugged my modern Thrustmaster T.16000M into my current Windows 98 machine and was surprised that it went ahead and installed drivers. Tried some games, and the stick works perfectly. I had no idea!

Shame there is no way to use a modern USB stick for DOS games, that would be awesome.

I have seen USB drivers for MS-Dos somewhere in the wild.
I am just assuming that they don't work.

A while ago I found some drivers: Can 90's-era joysticks work on modern comps? -> http://bretjohnson.us/
Sounds very promising, but I didn't test this yet. Might be useful for my older notebooks in DOS.