The Solutor wrote on Today, 11:33:

That's sometimes true, but doesn't remove the fact that sane minded people 30+ years of GUI "evolution" had to end in typing som […]
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ElectroSoldier wrote on Today, 10:42:

Its so much faster and easier sometimes

That's sometimes true, but doesn't remove the fact that sane minded people 30+ years of GUI "evolution" had to end in typing something on screen to interact with PCs.

This is how things worked, say, in KDE 0.x in 1997 or so, but KDE 0.x had already a sane start menu.

Perhaps Win11's is a lame imitation of the above, given in *nix any executable is in the path, while windows apes that using an indexed search engine just to do that basic job.

Last but not least PCs aren't just PCs, they are connected to big screens in HTPC, they are in automotive, embedded systems, totems, kiosks and so on, so even if a poor start screen can be workarounded using the Unix way, is not said that this is applicable in a keyboardless system

Yeah well yeah I mean its a problem thats for sure...
In many ways is the a very Microsoft problem really isnt it.

Personally I thought the systems you are talking about operated in kiosk mode of Win11 IoT and so it doesnt matter about changes to the start menu, however I do take your point that if those devices are not using the correct version of Windows and it isnt configured properly then problems to do with changes to the start menu might happen...

The Solutor wrote on Today, 11:51:

Again mudding waters using stupid semantic tricks? […]
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ElectroSoldier wrote on Today, 10:32:

This is 100% backwards. Gavotte Ramdisk **strictly requires PAE to be enabled** to touch the unmanaged RAM above the 3.25 Gb/4Gb line. It is physically impossible for it to work with PAE disabled.

Again mudding waters using stupid semantic tricks?

If people say PAE disabled intends a precise thing: a system that cant see more than the usual 3~3.3GB.

May not be not strictly correct, but I'm sure every reader here understood that, except you.

If I say "I installed Linux" is pretty obvious to everyone that I'm speaking of the whole OS, even if strictly speaking Linux is just the kernel.

When PAE is disabled, the CPU runs in legacy 2level paging. Page Table Entries are strictly 32 bits wide. The highest address a 32bit pointer can express is 0xFFFFFFFF 4.0 Gb. The chipset remaps the RAM hidden by the MMIO hole *above* the 4 GB line starting at 0x1_0000_0000. If PAE is off, the CPUs MMU has no 36bit addressing capability those physical addresses are electrically unreachable by any driver or code on the machine.

Assuming you're correct here, and I don't know, I don't care. You're talking of EXPLCITLY disabling a feature, which is different from not enabling it.

But even in that case, what changes then? The point doesn't change by 1mm. Gavotte can take use of the memory the OS can't use.

This is the valuable info for people who never heard of it.
Not a wall of technobabble (no matter if correct or not)

Gavotte’s driver explicitly included a "UsePAE"=dword:00000001 registry flag.

That's an internal setting of the program, and obviously the coder used a meaningful name. Could have been called it "UseMikeyMouse" and nothing had changed, as long as the code was written to understand that string.

impossible years or decades ago.

True but tweakNT and NTswitch were things way before XP was released (as the name implies), let alone XP SP2, and when XP2 was released, they were ready to do the first obvious way to get the stolen RAM back, switch XP to the server flavor SKU . Something that doesn't patch a single file, but still lead to the wanted result.

Its not semantics
/PAE allows addresses over 0xFFFFFFFF to be mapped. Without it you can not map it.
Nothing can because 36bit addressing isnt enabled system wide.

disabled PAE is not turning it on in SP1a. It was already on by default in SP2/SP3, and in those it had to be enabled to allow NX Bit to run.

Gavotte can indeed address the RAM over 0xFFFFFFFF that the XP HAL refuses to when unpatched yes. and it does that using PAE, it does not as you said do it when PAE disabled, because when PAE is disabled it cant physically addresses the RAM over 0xFFFFFFFF because of the lack of 36bit addressing.

"This is the valuable info for people who never heard of it.
Not a wall of technobabble (no matter if correct or not)"

Yeah well yeah...
Their RAM is, in modern systems, there and always has been. They just dont know how to get to it. Its just that the XP HAL wont because of the clamp on an unpatched system.

ElectroSoldier wrote on Today, 12:01:

In many ways is the a very Microsoft problem really isnt it.

The Problem of MS isn't that. the problem of MS is that they started to ape the idiotic ideas of Steve Jobs (that can be summarized in downgrade the OS, instead of of upgrading the users) , MS ruled since the day 95 was released and humiliated everything else with its powerful yet incredibly easy to use GUI innovations.

Then they kept refining it until Win7, then Apple started making money with the Iphone and everything went downhill, MS forgot that Windows was Windows, because it was windows, people appreciated it because it WASN'T masOC (or OS2)

and started apeing, concepts that were aliens to windows and that merged poorly in to it.

It's like an Italian that moves in the US to open a restaurant, and start to serve spagetti with ketchup or pizza with ananas, just because he believes can make more money.

It's clearly not a good idea. The moment you start serving spaghetti with ketchup you're not an Italian restaurant anymore, your restaurant becomes an abomination.

Likewise the moment you stick an iphoneish GUI on top of windows you're an abomination as well.

Gnome and other Linux GUIs did even worse, but that doesn't make the MS choices any better.

The Solutor wrote on Today, 12:47:

The Problem of MS isn't that. the problem of MS is that they started to ape the idiotic ideas of Steve Jobs (that can be summari […]
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ElectroSoldier wrote on Today, 12:01:

In many ways is the a very Microsoft problem really isnt it.

The Problem of MS isn't that. the problem of MS is that they started to ape the idiotic ideas of Steve Jobs (that can be summarized in downgrade the OS, instead of of upgrading the users) , MS ruled since the day 95 was released and humiliated everything else with its powerful yet incredibly easy to use GUI innovations.

Then they kept refining it until Win7, then Apple started making money with the Iphone and everything went downhill, MS forgot that Windows was Windows, because it was windows, people appreciated it because it WASN'T masOC (or OS2)

and started apeing, concepts that were aliens to windows and that merged poorly in to it.

It's like an Italian that moves in the US to open a restaurant, and start to serve spagetti with ketchup or pizza with ananas, just because he believes can make more money.

It's clearly not a good idea. The moment you start serving spaghetti with ketchup you're not an Italian restaurant anymore, your restaurant becomes an abomination.

Likewise the moment you stick an iphoneish GUI on top of windows you're an abomination as well.

Gnome and other Linux GUIs did even worse, but that doesn't make the MS choices any better.

I think Microsoft has never understood why Apple products are attractive to the people who buy them and so try and use elements of them in their own products to win over customers...

About their faults to do with design I would agree with you. I have no idea why they are trying to copy a company whos users seem to like their products mostly because they are not yours. That they also work well is a smaller detail. Or thats what it seems to be to me.
But this conversation departs from the topic of the thread.

The MS Surface in 2012 was when it started to go wrong. MS deliberately made the Windows desktop experience as unpleasant as possible to drive people to buy a Surface.

I think this was the first time MS became actively user-hostile. (People with longer memories may disagree.)

Errius wrote on Today, 21:02:

The MS Surface in 2012 was when it started to go wrong. MS deliberately made the Windows desktop experience as unpleasant as possible to drive people to buy a Surface.

I think this was the first time MS became actively user-hostile. (People with longer memories may disagree.)

The Surface is what happens when the panic set in.
It wasnt to stop peoples desktop experience bad is so much as it was to combat the iPad boom of the time.
At the time can you remember how many Windows tablets there were?
Thats why the UI made no sense to most people, because there were none, or not as many as required to combat the iPads rise. The OEMs didnt make them as Windows didnt really support them...
I mean how many of you have heard of XP TPC, or used it... have a copy of it etc...
Not many I suspect. This is a retro PC forum but do you know what PID triggers the TPC install?

Tablets were not a Windows thing but that was the way the market was shifting at the time and Surface was a clutch response to it.
Bill Gates himself said in the early 2000s that tablet PCs were going to be a thing, but Microsoft did little to nothing about it and then when they did because they had to it was a disaster for them.
The OEMs objected to Microsoft making their own hardware to compete with them, they objected to the new UI making their existing hardware look disjointed to the software. People object because of that too.
In the years between the two events the technology just didnt support the vision, and even when it did the software was lacking in that it was a desktop OS with tablet like friendlyness slapped on top of it. Thats why Windows 8 and 8.1 is a UI disaster.

I dont think there is any evidence for it to be as an unplesant an experience as possible when you look at what was going on at the time and what have been happening, or not happening with regards to development of software that could take full advantage of the technology that was emerging. And at the time of the iPad release it wasnt released into the PC market anyway... Which is why you got the Surface to give the OEMs a swift kick up the backside to get them into a market that was ignored, but was clearly, going by iPad sales, wanted by the customers.

If you want to have a go at microsoft then there is much ripe fruit there...
The dumbing down of hardware requirements of Vista to shift PCs off store shelves...
Or lowering the hardware requirements of Vista to allow Intel to sell off its junk 945 chipsets... that was a lawsuit case!
Including IE in Win98 to kill Netscape! By which I mean IE was hardcoded into the OS and couldnt be removed on purpose! SO as to prevent law suits because its baked in!
I mean how many people in the mass market had a less that stella experience of the early internet and eCommerce as a result of that decision?

Microsoft has a lot of skelingtons in its closet... Roll some of them out instead of making out like the Surface was designed to stop people using PCs or the 4Gb HAL clamp was there only to screw people over... Or get people who want more RAM to buy mambojambo enterprise grade hardware, I think was the actual idea.