XP Is Terrible

[Wiglaf]

Just had a massive crash while on the internet. On reboot, the mouse was extremely sluggish, the start menu turned the default white, and for whatever reason the task manager kept popping up. A third reboot fixed the problem somehow, but not after fifteen minutes of confusion and about an hour of work were totally lost. Save often, Smash.

I guess browsing the internet with Word in the background is far too much for it to handle.

Needless to say I haven't seen a crash this bad on any mac post 8.6. For XP to be completely unable to handle such a simple task (it quits out from time to time, etc) really is a huge pain in the ass. And don't get me started with the compatability mode...now there's one very odd creation. It seems to work at random. Check out some PC gaming sites/forums, some will say "works for me under 95 compat mode" and others will say nothing, not any mode of emulation, helps.

OSX and even OS9 are far and away superior to XP in every way, shape and form except for the number of available software titles. So while PCs are still the gamer's choice, for everything else (using Word, for one ), there's no one who does it better than apple.

[Asher]

I wonder if this is like your Troll in the Off-Topic about how the US should have gone to war with Korea for causing that crash in short-track speedskating.

Try posting this in the correct forum so you'll be flamed appropriately.

Everyone else finds it extremely amusing that you're having so much trouble while others aren't. Makes you wonder if you're even telling the truth, especially with your really, really long track record for bull****ting everything under the sun in the OffTopic.

[Wiglaf]

So XP's never crashed on you asher?

[Asher]

Once, in beta 1 about a year ago, because of beta Nvidia drivers. When the computer rebooted it told me the display driver caused system instability. So I sent the error report, and rolled back the driver. Literally no crashes since, and my computer's on for 24/7 and weeks at a time, where I reboot it for updates.

Then on my P3 600 computer, my brother said it locked up on him once in Half-Life using beta Radeon drivers, and other than that no stability problems.

Which is why it's so outlandish that you seem to be having so much trouble with it, also taking into account your history...

[Wiglaf]

Either Time or Newsweek had some article covering XP's launch, calling it amazing and revolutionary and whatnot. But (and I told you this around the time it was printed), the article also mentioned that XP was a gigantic leap in stability from earlier versions of Windows to the point where it might actually last three or four days without a reboot (something along those lines).

Like that's impressive coming from a Mac.

There's got to be something you're doing that no one else is. To say that XP is completely unbreakable in every way like that is obviously bull****....no operating system is....so, unless for whatever reason you got the limited perfect edition, I can't really believe you.

There's never a random crash on or to the desktop? Never a loss of settings? Emulation is overly effective? Nothing ever goes wrong? Amazing...MS should really swing its ad campaign around to reflect that rock solid programming job any day now.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Wiglaf
Either Time or Newsweek had some article covering XP's launch, calling it amazing and revolutionary and whatnot. But (and I told you this around the time it was printed), the article also mentioned that XP was a gigantic leap in stability from earlier versions of Windows to the point where it might actually last three or four days without a reboot (something along those lines).

Like that's impressive coming from a Mac.

Oh please, MacOS wasn't much more stable than 98SE, and definitely less stable than Windows 2000, until OS X came out. That's based upon just the design of the OS: FAR more things can take down MacOS prior to X than can take down Windows 2000.

There's got to be something you're doing that no one else is.

One thing I do is run on entirely dependable hardware. It's one of the most overlooked things PC buyers aren't aware of. Never buy Value Ram if you want a stable system.
Never buy cheap video cards and cheap sound cards, or from vendors with a record for unstable drivers.
Maintain your Windows by having scheduled things like DiskDoctor and WinDoctor run weekly or so.

But hardware is the big thing. And up to date drivers.
My friends with VIA-chipset motherboards tend to have far more stability problems, in any OS, than I've had. Not to mention compatibility problems.
Intel chips and chipsets are, by and large, the "safest" you can do. You should see all the testing they put these babies through.

To say that XP is completely unbreakable in every way like that is obviously bull****....no operating system is....so, unless for whatever reason you got the limited perfect edition, I can't really believe you.

That's what's called a strawman argument.
Nobody said it was unbreakable.
In fact the only product I know of that anyone claimed was unbreakable was Oracle. Right after he said it hackers broke it...several times over.

There's never a random crash on or to the desktop?

Crashing to the desktop is not XP's fault. You still don't seem to understand that. When a program crashes to the desktop, the program crashed and the OS handled the exceptions properly.

I've never had the actual computer crash in WinXP other than that Beta driver in XP Beta 1. By actual computer crash, I mean a lock-up, a BSOD, frozen input, frozen output, or anything like that.

When I installed the bad drivers, the OS locked up on bootup during the welcome screen. When the computer rebooted Windows detected a serious error, asked me if I wanted to roll back to the last known settings that worked properly, and it did it. Then it booted me back into Windows, told me it was the display driver, and I sent the error report. Did some research on the leaked beta drivers I installed and found they had a serious issue with the i815E motherboard (what I used), which caused the crash.

Never a loss of settings?

Nope, I've never had a loss of settings (it's hard to see how that could happen, considering they're written to the disk...)

Emulation is overly effective?

There is no emulation in Windows XP. That's another thing you're talking out of your ass with.
There is a compatibility mode, but all that does is trick the program into thinking it's running on a different Operating System. Many programs have lines of code inside them that ask which OS it's running on, and disable things if the OS is any form of NT. Prior to Windows 2000 and XP, NT couldn't do a lot of stuff 9x could. That's why games have that kind of code in it.

Windows XP isn't perfectly backwards compatible with your older software, particularly DOS. Which is why MS actually recommends people get it when they buy a new computer, rather than upgrading.

Nothing ever goes wrong? Amazing...MS should really swing its ad campaign around to reflect that rock solid programming job any day now.

No, things go wrong.
There's minor bugs in IE that bother me, there's a few bugs in Windows Explorer, and with the taskbar. Nothing serious, and no crashbugs for me.

[Gatekeeper]

Wiglaf, Asher:

Look, this forum may be a quiet one most of the time, but it is for Macintosh Civilization gaming discussions and related Mac issues. Comparing XP and X can be interesting on multiple levels, I imagine, but a better place to do so at Apolyton, IMHO, is:

1. OT
2. PM
3. IM

The platform and OS wars have been going on for years. Take it outside, gentlemen.

CYBERAmazon

[Wiglaf]

Few quick points.

Look, this forum may be a quiet one most of the time, but it is for Macintosh Civilization gaming discussions and related Mac issues. Comparing XP and X can be interesting on multiple levels, I imagine, but a better place to do so at Apolyton, IMHO, is:

We can't talk about OSX stability vs XP stability in a general mac gaming forum?

Oh please, MacOS wasn't much more stable than 98SE, and definitely less stable than Windows 2000, until OS X came out. That's based upon just the design of the OS: FAR more things can take down MacOS prior to X than can take down Windows 2000.

Like what? OS8.6 was the last Mac operating system that ever gave me any major troubles, and it's pretty old now anyway. What sort of crashes exactly have you had with OS9?

Crashing to the desktop is not XP's fault. You still don't seem to understand that. When a program crashes to the desktop, the program crashed and the OS handled the exceptions properly.

I never said the transition always went "properly". I've had a slow mouse, poor keyboard response time, etc after getting the error message. Once it worked fine, I left it at the desktop for a half hour, got back and had a total lockup on my hands...nothing worked at all. That doesn't happen all the time, but it's a considerable pain in the ass when it does.

Which reminds me, how exactly do you get out of a non-responsive keyboard/mouse situation? That had to have happened at least once or twice in all your experiance.

Nope, I've never had a loss of settings (it's hard to see how that could happen, considering they're written to the disk...)

Fine... Any loss of desktop pattern? Start menu color? Taskbar glitches?

One thing I do is run on entirely dependable hardware. It's one of the most overlooked things PC buyers aren't aware of. Never buy Value Ram if you want a stable system.
Never buy cheap video cards and cheap sound cards, or from vendors with a record for unstable drivers.
Maintain your Windows by having scheduled things like DiskDoctor and WinDoctor run weekly or so.

According to you, don't macs ship with those same budget video/sound cards and RAM types? If so, how come I haven't had all the major screwups I've had with XP on a simple iMac G3?

[Asher]

Cyberamazon: Yes, I agree it should be in the OT. I said in my first post that's where it should be.

Originally posted by Wiglaf
We can't talk about OSX stability vs XP stability in a general mac gaming forum?

The title is "Civ-Macintosh".
This is not about Civ, nor is it entirely about Macintosh.

Like what? OS8.6 was the last Mac operating system that ever gave me any major troubles, and it's pretty old now anyway. What sort of crashes exactly have you had with OS9?

Quake 2 locks it up every couple hours on my friend's iBook during school (don't ask )

I never said the transition always went "properly". I've had a slow mouse, poor keyboard response time, etc after getting the error message. Once it worked fine, I left it at the desktop for a half hour, got back and had a total lockup on my hands...nothing worked at all. That doesn't happen all the time, but it's a considerable pain in the ass when it does.

What does this have to do with crashing to the desktop?

Which reminds me, how exactly do you get out of a non-responsive keyboard/mouse situation? That had to have happened at least once or twice in all your experiance.

I'm not sure what you mean. I've never (ever) had the keyboard/mouse stop responding while the OS was still functioning. I've had the entire things stop responding (called a freeze), OS and input and all, in Beta 1 with the leaked beta Nvidia drivers with a major known issue. I believe I already covered that. It locked up the computer on the welcome screen, when the driver was loaded, so I hit the reset button, rolled back the driver.

Fine... Any loss of desktop pattern? Start menu color? Taskbar glitches?

Desktop pattern? Nope. Mine's on auto-snap-to-grid and icons are always where I leave them.
Start menu color: Err...no? It's always the same color with the theme I use.
Taskbar glitches? Yeah, there's a few. I already mentioned that. Sometimes two application icon "buttons" will both look "pressed down" when only one actually is. That annoys me.

According to you, don't macs ship with those same budget video/sound cards and RAM types? If so, how come I haven't had all the major screwups I've had with XP on a simple iMac G3?

I have no idea what type of RAM macs ship with, nor sound cards. They ship with pretty good video cards these days, but I'm not sure how stable the Mac drivers are for them.

With the price premium you pay for Macs you should hope they ship you premium components, which I expect they do. That could explain why you've always had a more pleasant experience on Macs: Using el cheapo generic PC parts and premium parts on your Mac.

The only RAM I buy is Micron if it's SDRAM, Samsung if it's RDRAM. I've had no issues whatsoever with those RAM types, but they're also some of the most expensive RAM types you can get. Value RAM is made far more cheaply, you see. There could be bad sections of the chip that don't save data like they're supposed to, and corrupt it: Then your programs try to access that memory, it fails, and *CRASH*.

If you want real stability make sure you buy ECC (Error Checking & Correction) RAM. But there's a small performance penalty with that stuff.

[bradman]

Originally posted by Wiglaf
We can't talk about OSX stability vs XP stability in a general mac gaming forum?

You _can_, but it wastes everyone's time who comes here for constructive discussions. If I wanted to read Mac/PC advocacy bull****, I can find hundreds of places to go to do so. The last thing I want to find is to come on here to find you and Asher going round in another endless cycle of Mac vs. PC. And to be quite blunt, I don't like the fact that you of all people started this topic here - of all places - after all the other endless threads about Mac vs. PC that have literally nothing to do with Civ on the Mac. As far as I'm concerned, you are every bit to blame as Asher about this (and even he realizes that it's OT).

The fact that this Civ-Mac forum continually degenerates into this kind of crap (in addition to the various problems the server seems to frequenly have) make this place one of the last places I visit any more for Mac Civ3 posts. I find the forums at civfanatics.com plenty full of actual on-topic discussion to want to bother with here.

Brad

[Wiglaf]

You _can_, but it wastes everyone's time who comes here for constructive discussions. If I wanted to read Mac/PC advocacy bull****, I can find hundreds of places to go to do so. The last thing I want to find is to come on here to find you and Asher going round in another endless cycle of Mac vs. PC. And to be quite blunt, I don't like the fact that you of all people started this topic here - of all places - after all the other endless threads about Mac vs. PC that have literally nothing to do with Civ on the Mac. As far as I'm concerned, you are every bit to blame as Asher about this (and even he realizes that it's OT).

The fact that this Civ-Mac forum continually degenerates into this kind of crap (in addition to the various problems the server seems to frequenly have) make this place one of the last places I visit any more for Mac Civ3 posts. I find the forums at civfanatics.com plenty full of actual on-topic discussion to want to bother with here.

Actually after we got Mark to bunch all the dead civ mac forums lying around into one, we decided (IIRC MacUser and me) that both general and civ topics would fit in the mother forum. The three branching forums are for 100% game-specific material, in here is General Mac/CivIII. It's always been like that. And if you'll check up on EIF's thread (http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=29753) you'll find that you might've gotten in on a bit of the "OT" action as well in the past...

Civilization III discussion is also not slowed or stopped in any way by this post or similar ones. If you want to hear about your game, simply avoid the general topics ("XP Is Terrible" or "New iMac") and look into the ones you find interesting ("Performance Issues" or "Resolution Requirement on iBooks?") They won't ship off to the second page anytime soon, so I don't see what the problem is.

And I'm sorry you don't visit here anymore because of the server problems, although they were fixed about two or three months ago.

Quake 2 locks it up every couple hours on my friend's iBook during school (don't ask)

Please be more specific.

I'm not sure what you mean. I've never (ever) had the keyboard/mouse stop responding while the OS was still functioning. I've had the entire things stop responding (called a freeze), OS and input and all, in Beta 1 with the leaked beta Nvidia drivers with a major known issue. I believe I already covered that. It locked up the computer on the welcome screen, when the driver was loaded, so I hit the reset button, rolled back the driver.

You've only had one major crash? In all those months? Try IE5.5 for a couple hours and you'll run into at least one...or just leave it on for a while at the desktop...? Dunno what to tell you.

Start menu color: Err...no? It's always the same color with the theme I use.

I had it on orange Coughdrop yesterday. Today it's the default Windows classic style. God knows why.

With the price premium you pay for Macs you should hope they ship you premium components, which I expect they do. That could explain why you've always had a more pleasant experience on Macs: Using el cheapo generic PC parts and premium parts on your Mac.

So you're now saying mac parts are better off the shelf than your everyday $999 Dell or whatever it is they sell cheap? That'd make a computer with "mac-like stability" on the PC side cost around $2000 as well. There goes the price issue you used to love.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Wiglaf
Please be more specific.

He's playing the game. Then all of the sudden the framerate stutters, then stops responding completely. Locks up the system.

You've only had one major crash? In all those months? Try IE5.5 for a couple hours and you'll run into at least one...or just leave it on for a while at the desktop...? Dunno what to tell you.

Um. Yeah, only one crash in all those months, in a beta version XP with a beta version of Nvidia drivers with known issues.

You don't use IE5.5 on XP. It comes with 6.0, you can't downgrade.

Although our PC labs at school use IE5.5 & Windows 2000 (Dell Precision workstations), and they're extremely stable as well, especially considering all the stuff the students do to it.

I had it on orange Coughdrop yesterday. Today it's the default Windows classic style. God knows why.

God knows why indeed. Maybe someone in your household is changing it? Are you logged in as a different user?

It doesn't change by itself.

So you're now saying mac parts are better off the shelf than your everyday $999 Dell or whatever it is they sell cheap? That'd make a computer with "mac-like stability" on the PC side cost around $2000 as well. There goes the price issue you used to love.

No, that's why I said Dell is usually good. My Dells all have Micron RAM in them, Hitachi CD-ROM drives, etc. Name brand stuff. Compaq, HP, etc all put cheap crap in them.

And I said I didn't know what was in the macs, but you should get premium parts for the huge price they charge you.

Your argument is flawed because you can still get high-quality parts on the PC and still have it much cheaper.

[bradman]

Originally posted by Wiglaf
Actually after we got Mark to bunch all the dead civ mac forums lying around into one, we decided (IIRC MacUser and me) that both general and civ topics would fit in the mother forum.

What a very poor decision that was then. This forum desperately needs a moderator to rein in all the non-Mac, non-Civ3 crap. As it stands now, it's practically a wasteland, with the most lively topics being those that are not Civ or Mac related. How sad is that, given how stridently you argue for the Mac cause? What is so hard about taking a blatantly off-topic post to somewhere more reasonable?

The three branching forums are for 100% game-specific material, in here is General Mac/CivIII. It's always been like that.

Certainly not always since Civ3 is a relatively new product. Perhaps the bigger issue is that there is no Mac-Civ3 forum, not that it matters much given the small percentage of on-topic posts here any more.

And if you'll check up on EIF's thread (http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=29753) you'll find that you might've gotten in on a bit of the "OT" action as well in the past...

For which I am filled with a deep regret, given the current state of this forum. This will be the last off-topic thread I'll post to on this forum - that is a promise.

Civilization III discussion is also not slowed or stopped in any way by this post or similar ones. ... They won't ship off to the second page anytime soon, so I don't see what the problem is.

The problem is that all this confrontational crap is turning people off, including myself. Granted this forum wasn't exactly bustling before, but it's pretty sad now compared to some of the other Civ3 forums on the net, especially the one at civfanatics.com. Take a look around and ask yourself what benefit this thread has being here. If you'd like, put it up to a vote of the regulars here and get their opinion. If you don't care, don't be surprised if this forum continues to waste away.

Brad

[Wiglaf]

Brad: Believe me, the last thing this forum needs is to be turned into an annoyance. However there are many many general mac issues nowadays and ignoring them completely is foolish IMO. The only alternative would be to split the forums up further, which given the small community would completely kill discussion as it did before.

To solve this I'm all for two branching forums (Mac-PBEM and Mac-CivIII) and leaving the mother forum "General". Or maybe making General a subsection and putting CivIII discussion as the mother forum. Either should work well.

He's playing the game. Then all of the sudden the framerate stutters, then stops responding completely. Locks up the system.

Hm. I guess given that the iBook (is it one of the original toliet seat ones? with OS8.6?) has one of the older Rage cards installed it's probably no wonder. But you still haven't given me enough info...you tried force quit? Cleaned up the extensions and everything?

It doesn't change by itself.

I guess it does. No one's changed it and there's only one account.

No, that's why I said Dell is usually good. My Dells all have Micron RAM in them, Hitachi CD-ROM drives, etc. Name brand stuff. Compaq, HP, etc all put cheap crap in them.

I'm talking about a solid Dell system when I list all these major crash bugs. It's probably not a hardware problem at all.

[Asher]

Hm. I guess given that the iBook (is it one of the original toliet seat ones? with OS8.6?) has one of the older Rage cards installed it's probably no wonder. But you still haven't given me enough info...you tried force quit? Cleaned up the extensions and everything?

It's not my notebook man, I don't ask questions.
It's 2 months old, came with OS X and OS 9 on it.
I believe it's got a Rage Mobility chip in it.

He's had quite a few problems with it. The other day he said it "sounded like a chainsaw" so he turned it off. He turned it on a few hours later and it worked fine. He didn't even know the thing had a fan.

I guess it does. No one's changed it and there's only one account.

You're always logged in under Administrator?

I'm talking about a solid Dell system when I list all these major crash bugs. It's probably not a hardware problem at all.

It's definitely not a software problem, because your bugs are not reproducable on my system.

Maybe you have woefully crashy drivers?

Or maybe you're just bull****ting? That seems to be the most obvious answer with you.