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Reply 60 of 124, by appiah4

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MarkP wrote on 2022-11-25, 09:55:
appiah4 wrote on 2022-11-25, 09:02:
MarkP wrote on 2022-11-24, 17:04:

The NT cmd shell has been in existence since NT 3.0.

But please continue....

If you are comparing the NT CMD Shell to something like bash then you are absolutely clueless.

I am not so you are just making a baseless accusation and insulting a Vogons member. Please go read the Vogon rules for members conduct dude.

If you are not comparing them, then I am not making a baseless accusation because I made a fairly simple and conditional statement that is not valid in that case. Regardless, being clueless is not an insult. Neither is calling someone clueless an accusation of any sort.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 61 of 124, by MarkP

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appiah4 wrote on 2022-11-25, 10:42:
MarkP wrote on 2022-11-25, 09:55:
appiah4 wrote on 2022-11-25, 09:02:

If you are comparing the NT CMD Shell to something like bash then you are absolutely clueless.

I am not so you are just making a baseless accusation and insulting a Vogons member. Please go read the Vogon rules for members conduct dude.

If you are not comparing them, then I am not making a baseless accusation because I made a fairly simple and conditional statement that is not valid in that case. Regardless, being clueless is not an insult. Neither is calling someone clueless an accusation of any sort.

I am really sorry for you. Honest.

Reply 62 of 124, by appiah4

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MarkP wrote on 2022-11-25, 11:28:
appiah4 wrote on 2022-11-25, 10:42:
MarkP wrote on 2022-11-25, 09:55:

I am not so you are just making a baseless accusation and insulting a Vogons member. Please go read the Vogon rules for members conduct dude.

If you are not comparing them, then I am not making a baseless accusation because I made a fairly simple and conditional statement that is not valid in that case. Regardless, being clueless is not an insult. Neither is calling someone clueless an accusation of any sort.

I am really sorry for you. Honest.

Thank you, I appreciate it 😀

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 63 of 124, by Cosmic

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Here are my thoughts on the shells in Windows over time.

Of course we've got to start with DOS. You have your classic DOS commands, DIR, ATTRIB, COPY, MOVE, MKDIR, etc. I wish they lined up better with Unix commands, e.g. you have to use COPY instead of cp and RENAME instead of mv. You can pipe commands, e.g. DIR | MORE, and you can redirect output, e.g. ECHO hello > HI.TXT. Commands can be put into .BAT files for scripting.

The Windows 95 and 98 shells are basically just DOS in a Window and function about the same. Now you can double-click a .bat file on your desktop.

The NT shell retains most of the original DOS commands, but now they're proper 32-bit executables and other NT-only commands have been added, like ipconfig, net, sc, diskpart, etc.

The syntax for the scripting the NT shell can be pretty obtuse in my opinion, like this example from Wikipedia:

C:\>cmd /V:ON
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\>set foo=bar ^| baz
C:\>echo !foo!
bar | baz

It looks pretty "magical" to my eyes, but you could do a lot if you understood the syntax well.

Starting with Windows 95 build 950a, it's also possible to use Windows Script Host to run VBScript code which is totally separate from the DOS and NT shells. It afforded more scripting flexibility and could automate tasks in Office products like Excel and communicate with Windows COM APIs. I believe it was enabled by default in XP at one point and a common security tweak was to disable WSH altogether. VBScript could be bundled inside of Office documents which gave rise to a bunch of malicious documents. In modern Office today, opening a file from an outside source will put Office into a safe/read-only mode to help prevent malicious code from running.

And lastly we arrive at PowerShell. Early versions (I think either 1.0 or 2.0) can be installed on XP. PowerShell is an all-new shell designed to give deeper access to Windows from the CLI and to improve automating tasks in Windows. It can tap into WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) to automate common IT tasks like patching, pushing software, doing some task on a pool of remote hosts, etc.

PowerShell can do most things that Bash can do on Linux, but usually with a longer syntax. One benefit is its concept of objects, so you can pass and iterate over objects that have properties and methods, instead of being limited to passing strings around. Another benefit is it can tap into .NET functionality for more performance.

For example, working with a multi-gigabyte file, one might do something like

ForEach ($Line in Get-Content $BigFile) { ... } 

But it will stall on Get-Content, waiting for it slurp the whole file into memory, which isn't an option for some files. Instead,

 ForEach ($Line in [System.IO.File]::ReadLines($BigFile)) { ... } 

This will read the file line-by-line and give a massive performance boost working with large files. Sometimes I work with millions of records at a time and PowerShell is a pretty reasonable tool when you use .NET functions in the right places. And it spares me from having to use Visual Studio to do my tasks. The syntax can be weird, but if you use it enough you will "get it", just like with any language.

Reply 64 of 124, by MarkP

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Cosmic wrote on 2022-11-25, 17:48:
Here are my thoughts on the shells in Windows over time. […]
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Here are my thoughts on the shells in Windows over time.

Of course we've got to start with DOS. You have your classic DOS commands, DIR, ATTRIB, COPY, MOVE, MKDIR, etc. I wish they lined up better with Unix commands, e.g. you have to use COPY instead of cp and RENAME instead of mv. You can pipe commands, e.g. DIR | MORE, and you can redirect output, e.g. ECHO hello > HI.TXT. Commands can be put into .BAT files for scripting.

The Windows 95 and 98 shells are basically just DOS in a Window and function about the same. Now you can double-click a .bat file on your desktop.

The NT shell retains most of the original DOS commands, but now they're proper 32-bit executables and other NT-only commands have been added, like ipconfig, net, sc, diskpart, etc.

The syntax for the scripting the NT shell can be pretty obtuse in my opinion, like this example from Wikipedia:

C:\>cmd /V:ON
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\>set foo=bar ^| baz
C:\>echo !foo!
bar | baz

It looks pretty "magical" to my eyes, but you could do a lot if you understood the syntax well.

Starting with Windows 95 build 950a, it's also possible to use Windows Script Host to run VBScript code which is totally separate from the DOS and NT shells. It afforded more scripting flexibility and could automate tasks in Office products like Excel and communicate with Windows COM APIs. I believe it was enabled by default in XP at one point and a common security tweak was to disable WSH altogether. VBScript could be bundled inside of Office documents which gave rise to a bunch of malicious documents. In modern Office today, opening a file from an outside source will put Office into a safe/read-only mode to help prevent malicious code from running.

And lastly we arrive at PowerShell. Early versions (I think either 1.0 or 2.0) can be installed on XP. PowerShell is an all-new shell designed to give deeper access to Windows from the CLI and to improve automating tasks in Windows. It can tap into WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) to automate common IT tasks like patching, pushing software, doing some task on a pool of remote hosts, etc.

PowerShell can do most things that Bash can do on Linux, but usually with a longer syntax. One benefit is its concept of objects, so you can pass and iterate over objects that have properties and methods, instead of being limited to passing strings around. Another benefit is it can tap into .NET functionality for more performance.

For example, working with a multi-gigabyte file, one might do something like

ForEach ($Line in Get-Content $BigFile) { ... } 

But it will stall on Get-Content, waiting for it slurp the whole file into memory, which isn't an option for some files. Instead,

 ForEach ($Line in [System.IO.File]::ReadLines($BigFile)) { ... } 

This will read the file line-by-line and give a massive performance boost working with large files. Sometimes I work with millions of records at a time and PowerShell is a pretty reasonable tool when you use .NET functions in the right places. And it spares me from having to use Visual Studio to do my tasks. The syntax can be weird, but if you use it enough you will "get it", just like with any language.

Thank you for that.

Reply 65 of 124, by MarkP

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theelf wrote on 2022-11-21, 12:25:
Hi! greetings, sorry myu english,im still using XP as my main OS, i dont use windows vista+ or linux or whatever, just XP. H […]
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Hi! greetings, sorry myu english,im still using XP as my main OS, i dont use windows vista+ or linux or whatever, just XP. How many people still use as main os?

My main problem right now is web browsing. For now we have Chromium 86 (360browser 13.5) & Firefox 68 (Mypal 68) , but this browsers will be outdated soon, and no one, have DRM support (netflix for example). For netflix still regular firefox+silverlight still work... but how long?

Of course if no project for more modern web browsers happens and project like one core api did not grow up fast, will be a big problem for any XP users that need to use the computer for everyday work and web browsing

I thinking ideas, VMs i dont like, too much resource lost, slow, etc

How about a secondary mini computer running linux + xwin server in XP? how will be the speed of xwindows rendering?

VNC is too slow

Any other ideas?

MicrSofts own VM software works wonderfully on XP with 512 megs of ram. I was running OS/2 v4, Red Hat 6.2 and MS Dos 6.x with no issues at all.

Reply 66 of 124, by GemCookie

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My Core 2 Quad PC has been running Windows XP x64 since last year. However, I've been using Windows NT 4.0 and 2000 more often recently.

gerry wrote on 2022-11-21, 13:01:

i use XP on 32 bit machines sure, but not online ever

why would you? there are some other options among linux for 32 bit and plenty for even modest 64 bit pcs

Linux is not a magic pill. Recent Linux distributions are nowhere near as responsive as Windows XP.

zyga64 wrote on 2022-11-21, 20:39:

There is a reason, that now we have Firefox 107 and Chrome 107. Compared to last versions compatible with Windows XP they are much faster !

Rendering is much better, no screen tearing in Youtube, better Javascript engines, etc. Besides, TCP/IP stack in Windows XP is less efficient than in newer versions of Windows or modern Linux.

I wish I had noticed.

zyga64 wrote on 2022-11-21, 20:39:

Well, I have one Windows XP XP3 (with TLS1.2 patches) machine connected to internet (Core2 E8400, 4GB RAM, Geforce 7300). Even with Mypal 68 internet browsing is far from comfortable.
Contrary to this, Debian 11 on this machine (with integrated GMA3100 GPU) was perfectly usable for web browsing.

On my Core 2 Quad PC, I didn't notice any difference in performance between Mypal 68 on Windows XP and Firefox 91 on Linux.
I compared Mypal with Firefox on another PC. Firefox 91 on Debian and Firefox 104 on Windows 7 were painfully slow, while Mypal 68 ran surprisingly well – definitely usable.

mihai wrote on 2022-11-21, 23:24:

Windows 7 32 bit does anything XP does, with the added bonus of still being officially supported.

Didn't support end in January 2020?

theelf wrote on 2022-11-21, 23:49:

Windows 2000 is just Windows XP but without the theme. I don't understand the 2K snobs.

The silly animated dog says it all.

lepidotós wrote on 2022-11-25, 02:40:

the Inspiron is currently running Haiku, which I found even faster than XP -- and much faster than Puppy was.

Haiku is fast, has a clean user interface and shows potential. However, it's completely broken right now – I can't install any software because the package manager asks for "Beta 4" which isn't even out yet.

Asus Maximus Extreme (X38) | Core 2 Quad Q9550 | GTX 750 Ti | 8 GiB DDR3 | 120 GB SSD + 640 GB HDD | Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium | WinXP64, 7, 11
Fujitsu D1215 board | P3 866 | Riva TNT2 M64 | 256 MiB PC133 CL2 | 120 GB HDD | WfW 3.11, Win95 OSR2, XP SP3

Reply 67 of 124, by Joseph_Joestar

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mockingbird wrote on 2022-11-22, 00:02:

Windows 2000 is just Windows XP but without the theme. I don't understand the 2K snobs.

To get into a bit more detail, Windows 2000 + SP4 = Windows XP + SP1 without the theme.

This has some advantages if you are using an older machine and don't want the increased memory requirements of WinXP + SP3. Win2K is a lot snappier in that case, but then again, one could just install WinXP + SP1 and use that instead. To be clear, I mean as an offline retro machine, not as a daily driver connected to the internet.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 68 of 124, by RayeR

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Hi, I'm still on XP as main OS on my home PC (also online everyday). I just tested latest Mypal 68.125 beta and I have problems with BSOD in win32k.sys. It triggers quite easily after a few minutes of browsing, always at the same address. According to suggestion of other user at MSFN I disabled multiproces in about:config so only one instance of mypal.exe is running and BSOD didn't appear yet. I was just able to crash mypal silently itself after 16-20 tabs opened with max mem utilize about 1.5GB. But is seems useble some way.

For the win32k.sys BSOD i suspect maybe a race condition in some calls e.g. on graphics driver? My system has nvidia GTX 670 while a friend use ATI and he's not getting BSOD even with multiproc. So to collect more info, could those with BSOD could you post what kind of VGA you have?

Btw also Win7 starts to suffer with unsupported apps. I just tried new QEMU 7.x and it doesn't run anymore because of 1 missing DLL. Fortunately there's a hack project at github that implement this dll on Win7 that makes QEMU running, also Blender and maybe new Python. But it shows that it doesn't worth to mess with obsolete w7 anyway and I can just skip it (same as vista and w8) and go with w10/11...

Last edited by RayeR on 2022-11-30, 14:25. Edited 1 time in total.

Gigabyte GA-P67-DS3-B3, Core i7-2600K @4,5GHz, 8GB DDR3, 128GB SSD, GTX970(GF7900GT), SB Audigy + YMF724F + DreamBlaster combo + LPC2ISA

Reply 69 of 124, by RayeR

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mockingbird wrote on 2022-11-22, 00:02:

360Browser has a memory leak and MyPal BSODs with layer acceleration is enabled.

what option disables the mentioned layer acceleration?

Gigabyte GA-P67-DS3-B3, Core i7-2600K @4,5GHz, 8GB DDR3, 128GB SSD, GTX970(GF7900GT), SB Audigy + YMF724F + DreamBlaster combo + LPC2ISA

Reply 70 of 124, by dr_st

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GemCookie wrote on 2022-11-30, 11:30:
mihai wrote on 2022-11-21, 23:24:

Windows 7 32 bit does anything XP does, with the added bonus of still being officially supported.

Didn't support end in January 2020?

It did, but there are Extended Security Updates (ESU) still going (will end finally in January 2023). These are officially only for customers who have purchased an ESU subscription, but there are unofficial ways to get them to install on any Win7 build (and even Vista, but only x64 flavor of Vista, as it goes through the Server 2008 path).

https://cloakedthargoid.wordpress.com/ - Random content on hardware, software, games and toys

Reply 71 of 124, by mockingbird

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RayeR wrote on 2022-11-30, 14:24:
mockingbird wrote on 2022-11-22, 00:02:

360Browser has a memory leak and MyPal BSODs with layer acceleration is enabled.

what option disables the mentioned layer acceleration?

You want to focus on the following settings:

gfx.blacklist.layers.direct3d9
layers.acceleration.force
layers.acceleration.force-enabled

By the way RayeR, did you have any time to look at adding support for the Asus P3B-F (ICS9250CF-08) and your SMB app? I sent you an email in September and you said you'll get back to me later. No pressure 😀

Thanks

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Reply 72 of 124, by bakemono

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RayeR wrote on 2022-11-30, 13:37:

Hi, I'm still on XP as main OS on my home PC (also online everyday). I just tested latest Mypal 68.125 beta and I have problems with BSOD in win32k.sys. It triggers quite easily after a few minutes of browsing, always at the same address. According to suggestion of other user at MSFN I disabled multiproces in about:config so only one instance of mypal.exe is running and BSOD didn't appear yet. I was just able to crash mypal silently itself after 16-20 tabs opened with max mem utilize about 1.5GB. But is seems useble some way.

For the win32k.sys BSOD i suspect maybe a race condition in some calls e.g. on graphics driver? My system has nvidia GTX 670 while a friend use ATI and he's not getting BSOD even with multiproc. So to collect more info, could those with BSOD could you post what kind of VGA you have?

I've been using Mypal 68.12.3, which is the latest one on mypal-browser.org, on Windows 2000 with default settings. There've been a few BSODs, always when closing a tab. One time I looked at the bugcheck info and it was an access violation at 0xF1BAA763. I don't know if that is the gfx driver. I have a GTX 660 with the 310.70 driver.

I only tried it briefly on an XP laptop and had no BSODs there. The laptop has ATI Radeon 1150 integrated GPU.

again another retro game on itch: https://90soft90.itch.io/shmup-salad

Reply 73 of 124, by RayeR

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mockingbird wrote on 2022-11-30, 17:44:

gfx.blacklist.layers.direct3d9
layers.acceleration.force
layers.acceleration.force-enabled

I checked this settings but it's disabled by default. Even when I enabled it I cannot trigger the BSOD.

About the PLL, it was you, sorry not yet, a lot real-life things goes on this year...

Gigabyte GA-P67-DS3-B3, Core i7-2600K @4,5GHz, 8GB DDR3, 128GB SSD, GTX970(GF7900GT), SB Audigy + YMF724F + DreamBlaster combo + LPC2ISA

Reply 74 of 124, by mockingbird

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RayeR wrote on 2022-12-01, 15:35:

I checked this settings but it's disabled by default. Even when I enabled it I cannot trigger the BSOD.

About the PLL, it was you, sorry not yet, a lot real-life things goes on this year...

Thanks. I got a board with the ICS9148-26 in the meantime, but it would still be very cool if the P3B-F could be supported.

As for making it crash... What do you have showing for the following for you in about:support (mind you, this is with Windows XP)?

mypal.png
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I asked the author for Direct3D 9 support on the MSFN forum, and he did it in one release. That brought in on parity with Serpent, but with the same things enabled (Direct3D9, WebGL, WebGL2, Multiprocess), it would BSOD on me. Then he removed Direct3D 9 support in the next release, so I am back to using Serpent and waiting to see if he produces something new.

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Reply 75 of 124, by RayeR

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I'll post it later. Do you think that D3D is broken itself? I wonder why didn' see such bsod with games or other 3d software, just the mypal...

Gigabyte GA-P67-DS3-B3, Core i7-2600K @4,5GHz, 8GB DDR3, 128GB SSD, GTX970(GF7900GT), SB Audigy + YMF724F + DreamBlaster combo + LPC2ISA

Reply 76 of 124, by Miphee

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I laughed a little when I read the title but realized that I'm still using W7 and it's about to lose browser support so I may have to switch to Windows 10 soon.

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Reply 77 of 124, by The Serpent Rider

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Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-11-30, 11:40:

To get into a bit more detail, Windows 2000 + SP4 = Windows XP + SP1 without the theme.

I think, drivers support for XP SP1 is still better. And of course you don't need workarounds for anything that has more than 2 threads. Including period correct hardware, like double S603/S604 Xeon.

Miphee wrote on 2022-12-01, 18:36:

I laughed a little when I read the title but realized that I'm still using W7 and it's about to lose browser support so I may have to switch to Windows 10 soon.

Browser support won't be an issue, because we have workaround emulation. DX12 for games is also not a big issue, because it can be redirected to Vulkan API, which works fine on Windows 7.
If only Windows XP had Vulkan support...

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 78 of 124, by mattw

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I am still using it, because "ClearType" makes my eyes hurt and causes me headaches. Interestingly, it's not just me - if I google "ClearType" together with eyes hurt or headaches there are many complains but most of them circa 2005-2007. I guess people no longer have big CRTs like 20+ inches to see the big difference and how blurry is the so-called "ClearType". I must say for me "ClearType" is psychotropic conspiracy, MKUltra-type experiment that is going on for decades now.

Reply 79 of 124, by theelf

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mattw wrote on 2022-12-02, 20:48:

I am still using it, because "ClearType" makes my eyes hurt and causes me headaches. Interestingly, it's not just me - if I google "ClearType" together with eyes hurt or headaches there are many complains but most of them circa 2005-2007. I guess people no longer have big CRTs like 20+ inches to see the big difference and how blurry is the so-called "ClearType". I must say for me "ClearType" is psychotropic conspiracy, MKUltra-type experiment that is going on for decades now.

I dont like cleartype neither, sometimes get difficult to read