According to a NYTimes article, Bill Gates says that 5% of all Windows installations crash more than twice a day. Elsewhere, at Silicon.com Microsoft CEO talks on the Longhorn ‘big bang’, $49bn cash mountain and more. Our Take: We should not forget that about 40% of the world’s computers still run Windows9x code instead of the NT/2k/XP line which are known to be much more stable.
I am going for vacations soon and so I prepared my old laptop to take it with me which can only run Windows9x. BeOS also runs but the only hardware it doesn’t support is its modem, and I need the modem functionality while away. New Linuxes are not a solution as are very slow on this AMD K6 300 Mhz, 128 MB RAM (older laptops were generally slower than a same desktop system).
So I had to deal with updating that Windows 98SE installation and install some new software. It was a nightmare. Explorer.exe gets unstable, the background stops refreshing when I empty the trash or when I copy/delete files around, while WMP 9 is pretty much unusable (mp3s will choke while any browser is rendering a page). Oh, and the mouse wheel won’t work, no matter which of my 4 mice (USB and PS2) I tried or what drivers I installed. A mess.
Highly recommend to upgrade to XP if your work or hardware requires you to run Windows. I am running Windows XP PRO for more than 1,5 years now, and haven’t seen a single crash or weird behavior. It just works well for the simple things I do with my computer (mostly listening to radio stations, browsing and emailing really). And Windows Sever 2003 seems to be even better than XP in my experience.
What exactly constitutes a “Windows crash”?
Are we talking applications, parts of windows known to be unstable such as Explorer (Both the Windows and Internet varieties) or the whole damn system crashing and burning?
only 5%? right.
Actually Windows doesn’t crash very often since Win2k was released, XP is rock solid as OS for personal use.
The crash related problems was many, many years ago with Win95, Win98 and all that.
Yup, this is what I wrote too in my commentary. To my experience, XP and Win2k3 are rock solid.
The only crashes that a user might see in the new MS OSes are third party driver related. Which is not something that MS can fix, as people just download Win9x drivers for their XP. And then kaboom! Drivers are running in the kernel space, so if a driver crashes the OS goes down with it. This is true for _all_ comsumer OSes, including Linux and OSX.
Well, I hate to burst your bubble, but NT, especially 4.0 (any service pack) was very prone to crashing, especially if you actually used your machine a lot during a normal work day (I use the heck out of my machines). And let me tell you this, Windows 2000 Pro is a lot more stable than NT, but I STILL have major stability problems, both at work and at home, and I reboot my work computer every morning (I stopped using Win2K at home for large projects, unless I couldn’t help it).
I can’t attest to the stability of XP, because I only use it on a limited basis, but if it shares the same kernel with 2000, it probably has similar problems.
One thing I’ve noticed, Windows applications (or maybe Windows itself) doesn’t release hugh chunks of memory correctly, which tends to make the system unstable after a relatively short period of heavy use. Anyone else experiencing similar problems with Win2K?
Actually, I think the service isn’t even in Win 9x. I believe it’s the one that pops up when an app crashes asking if you want to send a report to MS.
Since you can click “no”, the info is pretty useless.
I agree with Eugenia. WinXP is a damn stable OS. My last blue screen was so long ago, I can’t even remember how long it’s been. I guess it was about a half year ago.
If WinXP crashes on a regular basis, you….
a) … have defect hardware.
b) … have buggy drivers.
c) … do very stange things with your PC.
d) … lie.
My biggest complain about Windows (XP) is that it does not behave very well in case of 100% CPU utilization. If an application goes crazy and uses all your CPU performance, it’s very difficuilt to close the app. In those cases, I often need to hit Reset, but the OS itself did not crash. If you have at least 10 minutes, you can open the task manager and kill that app.
I heard that Win 2003 does a better job in such cases, but I cannot confim this.
I use both platforms (Win2000 only) on laptops.
Apple’s vertical integration means that I can run the latest OSX, though a bit slow or v9.2.2 without problems on the “old” 300mhz G3 PowerBook and I don’t have to give up anything. It runs fine, is fairly fast and is a perfect machine for backup or instant travel where I don’t want to worry about a more expensive machine.
There are significant efficiency benefits to working with Apple. Things just work.
Now back to SolidWorks on my Dell with Win2000.
Bo
I’m one of the proud 5%.
I have 2 Windows boxes that crash more than once a day occationally.
Anyone else experiencing similar problems with Win2K?
Actually, I had the opposite problem. Other than a big problem with EZ-CD Creator, Win2K was freakishly stable (As was Win95 for that matter.
XP was horrible. problem after problem. It would spontaneously reboot. My DVD player wouldn’t recognize DVD’s. File listings in the open and save dialogs would not sort into alphabetical order. It would freeze. It was something new every day.
>It was something new every day.
Obviously hardware problem then. When completely random probelms are happening, it is most of the times, a hardware problem.
that does not seem good.
My HP laptop running XP-home crashes quite frequently… once or twice a week maybe. I’ve never gotten a BSOD, but it completely locks up so I have to do a forced hard-reboot. As far as I know, it could be a hardware issue, so I won’t lay the blame on xp entirely…
I just got a new box at work with XP, which after a week of use, is much more stable than the Win2K box it is replacing (both Dells).
The Win2K machine was starting to crash 2-3 times per day. I’m not talking IE crashes, I’m talking blue screens. At first, it would typically blue screen when doing streaming video, whether it was watching videos from cbsnews.com, news.com, or ifilm.com. Then it began to crash when doing ordinary tasks, like switching to another window/app by clicking on the taskbar. Seriously. This was Win2K with no unusual software installed, which used to work fine at first, but the OS progressively began “decaying” over time to the point where it became virtually unusable (or at least a huge pain in the butt).
XP is nice by comparison, but even Win2K is obviously very flawed in terms of stability. We’ll see how XP holds up after a year of use, though.
Dualbooting Linux and WinXP. WinXP is only used for some games. Out-of-the-box package with no patches or anything (tried with patches and latest drivers for everything, was worse) and it crashes about every 30-60 minutes with a bluescreen followed instantly by a reboot. I have no idea, what’s wrong. Linux, however, works perfectly and I’ve had no problems with it. Also ran BeOS on this machine for three months daily and it was nice. Some crashes, but all were explainable and fixable thanks to BeTips and some frienly people on IRC. Eventually, I had a rock-solid BeOS system which had an average top uptime of about a week usually.
I doubt it’s 3rd party drivers, since I only have the base system installed. It could be hardware, but everything works perfectly under Linux, so I don’t know.
Bottom line: WinXP is not a rock-solid OS. If you have used it for months and it hasn’t crashed, you’re either very lucky or a complete idiot that uses it only for minesweeper and solitaire.
Obviously hardware problem then. When completely random probelms are happening, it is most of the times, a hardware problem.
Except that it was perfectly stable after putting Win2K back on. XP didn’t like the computer for some reason. And yes, I had all of the latest drivers.
I’m sure beating the odds. This box crashes 4 times in a typical day. . . doesn’t seem to be the hardware as I’ve swapped each individual part out and used it reliably in other comps.
If you have a 2k or later box that crashes more than once a month, something is wrong and it ain’t Windows.
A properly configured Windows box (with decent hardware and proper drivers) simply doesn’t go down easy – same with a Linux box. However, it is possible to make either OS unstable – I’ve seen others do it with Windows and I was able to crash most of the modern Linux distros within 30 minutes after installing them.
Stability problems, IMHO are more because of improper setup/use (ie – bad drivers, rogue spyware, trojans, Wine, etc) than anything else.
and here i am visiting my brother, 6 machines running XP or 2k, and in 2 days i have seen 6 crashes.
but the 2 linux machines have several month uptimes, and my ibook had only a single crash until the day i left it where the two year old could reach it…… (i am not sure, if you break the screen off of the ibook, is that a “crash?”)
but hey, if you like those MS numbers, as well as their bloated prices, you should feel good you crash mopre than any other OS. got to have something windows does best.
95% of all windows installations crash 4 or more times a day.
Eugenia – I thought you just recently bought an iBook – why don’t you take that?
P.S. Have a good vacation, you will be much missed by everyone during that time
I don’t know how you guys use WinXP, but for me it crashed maybe 2 or 3 times since I’ve been using it (ever since it came out).
And no I dont use my os only to play solitaire, I develop games and business applications in .NET, download tons of stuff all the time, watch movies, edit movies, constantly listen to music, play counter-strike. One thing that does crash though is the 3rd party application that I use with my os. But I usually just need to kill the app and restart. My pc runs 24/7 and I reboot maybe 2 times a week.
With that said, I also use linux for what it does best, as a server. My linux box doesn’t have a monitor, mouse or keyboard, its just “there” and I control it via ssh. From my own personal experience, linux is still years behind XP as a viable desktop environnement. KDE 3.1 runs like s**t and application like nautilus (equivalent of windows explorer??) takes like half my system resources, that is not acceptable.
Off with my rant
>Eugenia – I thought you just recently bought an iBook
Yeah, it is a 12″ Powerbook.
>why don’t you take that?
Because I want to leave that AMD K6 laptop to my brother in Greece and I don’t want to carry two laptops away. He recently did the very stupid move to sell his PC in order to buy a… motorcycle, then he ended up spending all that money and not buying anything and now he asks… me for a computer. So I decided to give him my old laptop. You know how young brothers are.
> Have a good vacation, you will be much missed by everyone during that time
thank you!
Hmm. All these claims that Win2k/XP crash hardcore while Linux doesn’t seem more like unfounded trolls and zealots getting pissy. I’ve been running Windows 2000 on my desktop, and it’s been just as stable as the NetBSD server I was running. Neither required a reboot unless I made large changes to the installed software, or unless I felt like it (and then there was the few times the power went out… meh). The record uptime on my Win2K box was 81 days, and that was with regular everyday use (software development (Java makes my PC sad), web browsing, and playing games). The only reason I had to reboot was because of a Winamp visualization that went bad… not an OS crash, an application crash. That is a substantial difference, and I think a lot of the people that want to say their box crashes that much aren’t making the distinction. YMMV -_-
you know what is odd…my mom has a PC that had ME on it. it has…well had…a DVD drive in it, everything worked fine. when she went to install XP, the install would start and then spin for ever…the guy she took the computer to (she lives 3 days away from me) said the disk spun for 36 hours. they took the drive out and installed a CD-rom drive. boom, it installed.
weird.
but hey, if you like those MS numbers, as well as their bloated prices
An apple user complaining about MS’s high prices ? Thats hilarious!
I can afford to drop a few bucks on software since I saved a good $1000 by not buying an apple. I’ll deal with the $75 price dif between XP and OS X. No problem at all!
XP just automaticly does a hard reboot now and does not show the blue screen when a BSOD occurs.
so if you get any weird reboots, it was a BSOD.
explorer.exe sometimes takes 147 megs of memory for some reason!!!
The only reason I had to reboot was because of a Winamp visualization that went bad… not an OS crash, an application crash. That is a substantial difference, and I think a lot of the people that want to say their box crashes that much aren’t making the distinction.
If you had to reboot, the difference is not substantial. The OS should be able to kill a wayward app. The failure may have been started by an app, but the OS failed also.
17-20 MBs here. Never seen it taking more than that…
do I have to stop reading anything on OS News!!!!!
shut up about the flame wars over Apple/PCs
if you constantly buy less feature-full hardware so you can buy bottom of the line PCs, or you still think that 1.5GHz is not as good as 3 GHz, then shut up and be happy that 95% of the computer using populace agree with you or don’t know any different, or just don’t care!!!
if you are an Apple user, then shut up and be happy that you get a vertically well integrated product that has really nice end user software included in a nice OS!!!!
either way, the FUD both of you parties spread about each platform (pro and con) is pure shit and you know it.
each platform is nice, accept that and move on, not everyone is like you and the world would be very very boring and depressing if it was.
I have seen it on a couple of computers at home. I doesnt crash Windows but it makes it swap to the disk often.
Another problem with explorer.exe is the bad cluster affair. Windows supposedly marks the cluster has bad but still when explorer hits that file with the bad cluster explorer.exe goes to hell(swap file grows to enormous size and suddently PC is locked up).
Stability isn’t the issue with MS OSes in the vast majority of cases, so long as it’s the desktop and lowend servers you are talking about.
The issue is:
1) performance: NTFS is a terrible pig as far as storage IO is concerned. The minimum system requirements for XP is completely rediculous for just the OS itself let alone the additional requirements of the apps on top.
2) security: MS Softwares are impossible to audit and properly secure. MS has publicly admitted that it’s OSes are so full of bugs that opening the source code in itself would reveal so many flaws to make it a big threat to security in any situation.
3) productivity: the Windows GUI got in the way with the old desktop, it’s even more of a pig in XP, a very poor and anti-intuitive layout
4) compatibility: unless you are using Server 2003, Windows XP is practically incompatible with previous Windows servers and that makes it close to useless with many corporate customers
1) performance: NTFS is a terrible pig as far as storage IO is concerned. The minimum system requirements for XP is completely rediculous for just the OS itself let alone the additional requirements of the apps on top.
True. The gamers who wants faster loading time all format in FAT32. NTFS is a slow dog. And not to mention the high fragmentation problem. Microsoft’s older filesystem (HPFS and HPFS386) didn’t have this fragmentation problem.
So far, XP is extremely stable, just as much so as Linux on my Athlon T-bird 1.33 with 256MB ram. My last BSOD in XP was caused by a faulty video driver, reverted to official drivers, now no problems. As for boot up speed, RedHat 9, Windows XP and Windows 98SE all boot about the same speed. Nothing unreasonably slow.
It is running iptables, mailservers, webserver, mysqlserver, samba (act as a pdc for my home network and a public share), nfs, bootp, dhcp for my diskless media-computer.
[degen@a35:~] uptime
11:17pm up 121 days, 3:45, 1 user, load average: 0.12, 0.03, 0.01
[degen@a35:~]
Linux just rocks, *not a single crash*
But hey, I can’t run Visual Studio on it
“Apple’s vertical integration means that I can run the latest OSX, though a bit slow or v9.2.2 without problems on the “old” 300mhz G3 PowerBook and I don’t have to give up anything. It runs fine, is fairly fast and is a perfect machine for backup or instant travel where I don’t want to worry about a more expensive machine. ”
Eh how are you giving anything up with a 300mhz laptop, she could install XP on it to. XP will run on pretty much anything. Can run it on a PI but slowly. it runs fine on 400mhz computers. Also how long you can run the latest versions of OSX on that laptop is getting short, later versions of OSX will not run on old G3’s soon, unless apple changed that plan. I really don’t see how your apple vs you pc laptop had much of a differance, both get old, but in time get to slow for latest OS, both in time probably won’t be supported at all.
I’ve used them all.
XP is solid. No doubt in my mind.
Linux is also solid.
I’d have to agree, anyone talking about XP stability problems has 1) bad software, 2) improper configuration, 3) a virus, 4) bad hardware, 5)isn’t running XP.
I run Linux 50% of the time, XP 50%.
They both are nice OSes.
I’m just a Linux fan
“>It was something new every day.
Obviously hardware problem then. When completely random probelms are happening, it is most of the times, a hardware problem.”
Yes, two people I’ve known have had the same problem with XP. For one, it was a hard drive that, under XP, was incompatible with the MB (under 98se, it was fine). With the other person, I believe it was the mother board itself, though I don’t recall exactly. At any rate, each replaced the offending hardware, and now they run XP very happily.
Is fragmentation actually worse under the NTFS than FAT32?!
it happened to a friend of mine, I went over to his place and ran adaware, it detected over 200 entries, of wich around 40 where running processes, he had all sort of weird crap running. it’s not that that windows xp crashes more than linux, it’s just that most windows users don’t have a clue.
I know many people with a different experience than mine, but so far for me, Windows XP is the least stable operating system I use. (I also use Mandrake Linux (and a few live-CD linux versions) and Mac OS X).
The poor behaviour of the system, whether it is applications crashing incessantly (Word, Outlook, Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer) or user interface items acting inconsistantly (tooltips showing up behind there owners, taskbar dissapearing, taskbar not hiding, program buttons on taskbar bringing up wrong programs, desktop icons scattering all over after rebooting. and on and on…).
For me, no other operating system behaves as poorly as Windows (XP). And yet, the very same computer will boot in Knoppix or the liveCD Suse without any noticeable problem (being use for the same tasks).
I have given Windows the benefit of the doubt for too many years. It will take alot of convincing for me to put trust in the stability of Microsoft products again.
I use OS X and it has never crashed on me and what is nice is it doesn’t break down like on ME where the DVD stopped working, Adobe Acrobat Reader never worked right, and it couldn’t make use of the more than 128 MB RAM. Increasing it didn’t effect performance at all. My mom and I use use the same model (100 mhz different) eMac and mine has 1 GB RAM, while hers only has 384 MB and mine is much faster. I only have to wait a couple seconds to start an application or do intenive graphic deisgn. I think XP might be usable stability wise as long as you don’t network it or use the Internet with it, since security on Windows is virtually non existent. But I guess that isn’t a problem if you are using Windows, because you spent so little on your computer that you must not be doing anything that important with it, so it probably doesn’t matter to you if you get a virus and it destroys all your data.
You had better correct Mr. Gates with your claims of “my XP is rock solid” – he is the one who said “5% of all Windows installations crash more than twice a day” 🙂
This number should not be surprising when you consider the amount of older hardware out there running older versions of Windows. Anyone think that their old 386 will still function with the same reliability that it used to?
I have WindowsXP on my notebook and it is NOT rock solid, however it runs reasonably well and certainly better than Windows9x/ME. I find Linux to be a more stable platform, and Linux allows you to recover more easily from failures. I also find MS Windows update to be intollerable, it takes way too long to install an update. These are some of the things that caused me to switch to Linux. Also, as a student learning how to program, I feel that there is more security on the Linux platform from the vendor, and much more freedom to learn.
>And let me tell you this, Windows 2000 Pro is a lot more >stable than NT,
No, it’s exactly the the opposite for me. 1 or 2 freezes of NT in 2 years, W2K reboots 2 or 3 times a month. (same hardware, same application software, same environment, fresh install)
Ok, 2 or 3 times is not very often for everyday use, but the Software is W2K *PRO*. I would expect a much more professional software from a company that sits on $50bn.
application like nautilus (equivalent of windows explorer??) takes like half my system resources, that is not acceptable.
That’s funny, nautilus only takes up 19.3 MB of RAM on my Red Hat 8 machine. That’s about the same as Win2k takes up on my other comp. Unless you only have 40 megs of RAM that’s not a problem.
xp is rock solid.
if you disagree you:
a) are an iddiot b) are using bad hardware c) are lying
XP hasn’t impressed me at all in my limited use. It refused to read from the floppy drive the other day without a reboot. Reboot and it’s happy again. Ok, maybe not a crash, but that’s improvement?
If my apps were available on linux, I’d already be there!
Greg
I started using Windows with ’98, and that was the reason I didn’t use Windows for 3 years. Now I have an XP (pro) installed, which is the first Windows which is not completely crap (don’t know about 2000, though).
BUT, though the kernel _is_ rock solid, the VM (virtual memory) could be better (just personal superstition), and explorer.exe crashed around me every other day (not while doing the obvious, but those things were reproducible crashed and should have been caught during two weeks of serious product testing; probably MS just didn’t bother to fix them, like that dozen of unfixed security holes…)
No, really. For a product _that_ expensive it still is crap.
I only use Windows when I have to (and for multimedia) because it really keeps gnawing on my nerves. Otherwise I use NetBSD which doesn’t annoy me a bit.
Now if there would be a reasonably powerful Mac for the price of my PC (passively cooled P3-700 from ebay for $300 some time ago)…
Yup, this is what I wrote too in my commentary. To my experience, XP and Win2k3 are rock solid.
I hate to be negative, but I don’t find this to be true. In fact, I had XP die on me twice today.
Bagdad Bob, you dont understand something. When Gates was quoted, he was talking about from the software that has talkback features (IE6 + WinXP + and Office) If you think about it, he is excluding the main OS for home users, Windows 98!
“It’s a hardware problem” Lets face it folks XP is not the best thing since sliced bread. If it was, when I went to Windows Update I would see that there were patches available (there are) instead of it telling me that I’m patched. I’ve already proven to you folks using Microsoft’s knowledge base that XP is not the 100% rock solid OS that you guys dream it is. Do I need to rehash old arguments to prove it again? (no)
Posted using Mozilla on Windows 5.1.2600 (SP1)
This is just my experience…
Win2K/XP are just as stable as Linux/*BSDs, when:
1. You use good quality hardware, (no Soltek/Jetway are not good hardware).
2. You ensure that you are running stable drivers (not BETA).
3. AV and Anti-spyware on Win, (even though I’ve had AV be the actual casue to the problems).
4. The person using the box, actually knows what’s going on and knows how to setup and use the OS correctly, (which just seems to more common in the Linux/BSD camp).
Simple…
Just my 2 cents…
Since I am running Windows 2003 on both my laptop and desktop system I have yet to see a single crash. I installed win2k3 on my laptop a week after Eugenia’s article and on my desktop about a month ago. I am amazed that it has never crashed, even games work better on my windows 2003 desktop instead of on my previous installation of windows xp on the same desktop. Whereas I have a couple of problems with windows xp, there were only few. The stability of Windows 2000 is between Win2k3 and winxp by my experience. please note that the only non-win2k3 authorized driver on my desktop is the nVidia driver for win2k/winxp, but I have no problems with it.
I regularly support most versions of Windows including Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000 (both at the desktop and server level), XP and Windows Server 2003.
Anything from the Windows 9x line is definitely unstable and this is a well known fact — no need to rehash it here or claim that it’s a huge problem.
In fact, Windows 2000 has been available for more than 3 years and is extremely stable. Windows XP has built on this and is even better. And, dare I say it — Server 2003 is much better than 2000. (I don’t compare XP to 2003 because they have totally different uses and user bases)
I use XP constantly — both a laptop and multiple desktops) and generally don’t turn off my machines. The ONLY time I’ve seen a blue screen in XP was when I had a hardware failure. And I very seldomly have to reboot. When I do, it’s because I’m going away for an extended period and don’t want to leave my systems on.
As for my Windows 2000 & 2003 servers — very solid. Yeah — I have to reboot one or two every few months. That’s what maintenance windows are for.
I’m not a casual Windows user. I generally push the hardware pretty decently. With 1.5GB RAM, I run a number of virtual machines under VMWare, Word, Outlook, IE and a screen capture utility without even so much as a blip.
Scott
Since I am running Windows 2003 on both my laptop and desktop system
So, you have 2 copies of a server Os on your desktop and laptop PC, Did you pay $1600 for them?
cost $800 each, just wondering.
There is no perfect OS! There is no rock solid OS! No matter what, you will never find a perfect OS running on perfect H/W with perfect drivers! There is NO system with NO problems, no matter how good your H/W or drivers are! You can turn it the way you want to .. there is NO “rock solid” OS. Get over it, and stop claiming that your OS is “rock solid” … People with a bit of brain and common sense won’t buy it.
There is nothing perfect in this world, absolutly nothing.
Is there an absolutly perfect car? Are there absolutly perfect houses?
BTW, only God is perfect! Only Jesus is perfect and when he comes back he will re-establish a perfect world for those who have accepted Him as their Saviour. Have you?
In Windows XP I experienced regular crashes caused by a USB modem, every time it was disconnected the OS locked up. In Linux I’ve had crashes when trying to get software suspend working and I’ve never managed to get a system with a dual headed display working reliably. My point is that even the most stable operating systems can become unstable because of drivers or bad hardware.
This has baffled me for a long time. Two of the main reason that are mentioned in support of the superiority of Windows over all other operating systems are:
Easy of use/installation/setup
Hardware compatibility
So when the terrible behavior of Windows XP is demonstrated by the many who have eXPerienced it, the response is almost always, “Don’t expect it to work properly on crappy hardware” and “It works when set up by someone who knows what they are doing”.
It can only be concluded that hardware compatibily is NOT a feature of Windows XP (it fails drastically on much hardware that Linux does not) and ease of installation/setup are also not a featuer (again, next to no detailed setup other than following instruction works for Knoppix and SUSe Live-CD but fails for Windows XP).
The only reason for Windows XP that stands up to scrutiny is that there are many games for it.
As Manager of an I.T. Department I receive feedback on
and provide technical support to many corporate PC users
and a variety of private individuals.
My experience is that the Windows NT/2K/XP operating
systems suffer from less minor crashes than W9X.
However, W9X crashes are usually non-fatal and even
serious crashes can be repaired easily, whereas NT/2K/XP
crashes are more likely to be terminal and require a
complete O/S reinstall.
Overall, I have to admit that the W9x family requires
a much lower level of support commitment than NT/2K/XP
To be honest, I would not consider any of these operating
systems to be suitable for any mission critical applications
If you need a bulletproof O/S then you should be looking
at something like OpenVMS.
Wow only 5%. well I can’t blieve that.
Drivers.
The No. 1 problem with Operating systems today. I would have to say that in general with Linux I seem to get better written drivers especially where my Sound Hardware is concerned and ironically these are from a 3rd party not the hardware vendor. Most of my blue screens have been from my Sound Hardware and its stupid drivers. Great hardware but crap support from the manufacturer, go Hoontech.
Another grip I would have with Windows 2k pro or XP is that when you update the system like I did recently with DirectX 9.0b it changes something so my settings (you guessed it) for audio have to be changed to get it functioning again. I wish there was a better platform for Audio other than Windows and Mac. Both suck.
Still waiting Zeta/Linux when will the software companies step up to the plate and release something like Cubase SX for Linux or BeOS? With of course all the nice VST’s that make a good audio workstation possible.
Maybe Kernel 2.6 will bring some inspiration for Steinberg to write for Linux. Must admit tho, running MP setup under Windows and Linux is great. Nice to be able to terminate errant apps rather than have your CPU hogged.
Now what is all this crap about SCO? can someone do something about them so the world can continue moving forward.
First, no operating system is perfect.
We have to bounce our win2k servers (1,000+) every week (if they don’t decide to beat us to it
On the desktop end (30,000+) they don’t BSOD often, but most experience some application crash every few days that require a system restart to recovery (sometimes hard, sometimes soft) the system to a usable state.
Some of our Solaris boxes have been up for close to 2 years now (older applications that don’t support system patching
The others (200+) stay up until brought down for necessary patching (every 6 months or so)
We have a few scattered linux boxes that have uptimes of 7+ months.
At home, my wife’s middle of the road hardware (micron athlon) winxp box would inexplicitly crash every few days (no funky software/hardware). This was replaced with an iLamp running OSX, which hasn’t crashed since purchased 8 months ago. The interesting thing is about 3 months ago, the power supply on our firewall began screaming. Instead of changing the supply, I set up my wifes old machine as the new firewall (dns, dhcp, proxy etc…). With linux on it, it’s been up for ~100 days.
I personally run OSX for everything desktop/workstation related, between my workstation and my laptop, I’ve had 3 real crashes and have never had to reboot to recover from a bad app. This is over the course of a year, and I beat the crud out of my systems. I’ll explain why I use the term real crashes. Earlier I said that no operating system is perfect, well OSX is no exception. If you want to see a system crash, simply, as root, launch a kernel trace against nmap, then execute it again when your prompt returns. A crash every time.
From my experience, I would have a very hard time saying that windows comes anywhere near the stability of most of *nix’s.
I have noticed that the two versions of XP seem to vary quite a bit on stability. It seems like everyone I know, including my wife, has problems with stability in XP Home Edition as oppossed to those who run XP Pro.
I do know of one machine that loves to crash on XP Pro…the one I have at work.
P4 2.53 Ghz
256 DDR – Yes more ram…I know
80 GB HD
NVidia GeForce 4 MX 64 MB card
It doesn’t seem to me that this system should crash when my slower system at home with a lower-end video card and the same amount of ram (just RDRAM) runs just fine.
To top it off…they are from the same manufacturer…Dell (don’t start).
I know that XP OVERALL is more stable than the 9x series…but still…the OS shouldn’t flip out upon boot-up without any apps loaded.
Point taken.
Most of the time I can’t be bothered to allow my system to inform microsoft of a crash. Sometimes I get a little annoyed at how frequent it happens and I start firing off the crash reports to microsoft. I have fired off at least one hundred reports concerning Outlook and Word crashing. If this is the crashes that Mr. Gates is refering to, then for sure my system is in the 5%.
I also had a linux firewall/router/…
It was coyote linux. I ran it continuously for over 3 years with only one planned downtime – to upgrade the version of coyote linux and clean the dust bunnies out of the machine 🙂 The unplanned downtime events were entirely due to power outage. This little puppy had never crashed!
I had to replace it with a Linksys Router otherwise my company would not support my vpn connection. I had to switch from DSL to Cable because my Linksys would periodically renegotiate my DHCP (“keep alive” strategy) which would kill my vpn session. Periodically the router forgets what it is supposed to do and I have to reboot it to get it up and running again. I miss my coyote linux!
A properly configured Windows box (with decent hardware and proper drivers) simply doesn’t go down easy
if you disagree you:
a) are an iddiot b) are using bad hardware c) are lying
I worked on a Win2K deployment of 3000 machines where every machine was the same model Dell, pretty much the same apps, with an identical OS image on each system.
Some were very stable, some had minor problems, some had major problems, and many had to be reimaged. The configuration and hardware were identical, yet the results were different for each machine.
As with most things in life, your mileage will vary. Considering the sheer amount of hardware and apps that Windows has to support, I’m surprised it works as well as it does. However, it’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination.
Just because your machine is “rock solid”, doesn’t mean that everone else has the same experience.
Windows 98 used to drive me nuts. Win2k was a lot better, but I still would get the BSOD now and then. With XP, I had trouble with a bad video card that caused the BSOD. New card – no problems.
I have used Linux for about a year now and have seen a lot of improvements in the OS. I think my attraction to it has to do more with the idea of being involved with something that is new and growing. The biggest reason for checking it out had to do with $$$ and hating to “activate”. I wanted to purchase a new Full version OS and when I discovered how much they wanted for Win2K and XP I almosted choked. I am not that rich. I don’t buy my computer’s from DELL, I piece them together for myself. The fellow in the IT Department where I work as a Janitor slipped me a linux disk and I’ve never been the same. I have three P4’s and only one of them runs windows (XP). I prefer the Debian based Lindows 4.0 out of all the Linux distro’s I’ve tried. Libranet and SuSE are also pretty darn stable. Lindows 4.0 is stable, recognizes all my hardware, actually plays my store bought DVD’s without any tweaking. My Olympus camera is recognized. I like the idea of choices. My sister uses Mac, and it has done good by her. I still will use Windows, but I do 95% of my computer stuff on Linux.
Variety is the spice of life.
With load 0.12, 0.03, 0.01 it ain’t very strange your computer has been up for that long
Eugenia in the W2003 review, you said that W2003 feels fast and to prove your point you said:
> OpenOffice.org 1.1b2 loads in 7 seconds [in W2003](version
> 1.0.2 under Red Hat needs 13 seconds, even with DMA on).
Well, one of the “feature” of OOffice1.1 vers OOffice1.0 is that it loads faster (I haven’t installed OO1.1 myself, but some preview have said so), so this particular point is meaningless and IMHO even deceiving!
I don’t deny that W2003 may be fast, I also think that WXP feels faster that Linux (well the last Linux I tried that is to say Mandrake 8.0), I’m just pointing that this comparison is misleading IMHO.
I can make win 2003 server crash very fast. Its not stable. Ok I cant take down the whole system, but I can make it go to its knees. Why do people say its better? I fired up explorer and made it crash in the first 5 minutes of surfing. I made explorer (the backgound ap not the internet surfer) crash in about 15 minutes. And talk about lousy networking! This is supposed to be a server? God Damn Windows Sucks! Yet I use win 2000 at work and it is so solid! Whats up with that?
stop whining…if all you can do is complain about this OS don’t do it…just go talk somewheer in a linux thread or something…
I dual boot Debian GNU/Linux -Unstable and WinXP Home….
Linux:
X crashes randomly when I go into 1280×1024 resolution
Otherwise very stable and speedy.
WinXP:
Never crashes anything.
I play games such as Enemy territory and Unreal Tournament 2003 on both operating systems, as well as program in C/C++. on Linux I run an Apache server and no-ip.com client. Windows XP is used for printing(my Lexmark z65p is not linux compatable) and playing games which are not native to linux and do not run well under Wine/WineX such as Command & Conquer: Generals.
I installed Windows XP on a new computer system I built myself and it crashed about 20 times in the first week. I was really starting to get sick of it. I downloaded every update patch from the MS website and finally downloaded the latest video driver from Nvidia.
This computer has not crashed at all in any form for over a month. Ripping DVD’s for 3 days in a row… whatever it can do it without crashing.
I hate Microsoft so I hate to say it.. XP is solid.
Driver problems are actually quite easy to solve too. If you stick on a driver and notice problems you just roll back to the last one. It seems to work well.
….microsoft forged %95 of statistics data i guess. –: ))))
I use GNU/Linux on my own computer for one year. Now I’m using the XP boxes of my parents (I’m back in my family for the vacations without my computer).
Before using Linux I was using XP, and I must say : it was fairly stable. But its performances suck! My parents have two computers (PIII 800, 128mo && athlon xp 1400 256mo), and they are damn slow! I’m used to have a lot of programs running at the same time, but XP doesn’t deal well enough with it. If you want to run a game, you have to close every running program, it takes hours to kill a program.
hum, this is a very stupid comment.
I suppose that you tried to install a GNU/Linux distrib 5 years ago, didn’t you?
Now, Gnome and KDE look better than xp, full fonts anti-aliasing, lots of themes…
Have a look at this screenshots :
http://www.kde.org/screenshots/images/3.1/fullsize/8.png
http://vhost.dulug.duke.edu/~louie/screenshots/2.2/10.jpg
http://www.ximian.com/images/screenshots/desktop/browsing-windows-n…
http://www.ximian.com/images/screenshots/desktop/gaim.png
http://www.ximian.com/images/screenshots/desktop/evolution-fullscre…
I have run win98 (very unstable), win 2000 pro (zero crashes in over a year) and XP Pro (zero crashes in about 4 months).
XP Pro was intially quite unstable until I downloaded new nVidia detonator drivers the it was rock solid.
Windows applications crash frequently – I noticed a lot of codec packs cause problems. I founf FLaskMPEG to be particularly bad. But the sytem (kernal)doesn’t crash at all.
Don’t use shareware. Don’t use systems utilities except those that come with the OS. Buy decent hardware (inexpensive but reliable is ok).
> I use OS X and it has never crashed on me and what
> is nice is it doesn’t break down like on ME where the
> DVD stopped working,
It’s not difficult to do that, if you have control over most of the machines hardware.
What about the XBox? Microsoft has complete control over the hardware and OS. I haven’t heard of any crashes. Any crashes would probably be caused by bugs in the games anyway.
My previous PC could sometimes crash, but it also crashed in Linux because of a hardware problem.
I have experienced application crashes and sometimes the computer became unresponsive for a minute, but I have always managed to kill the process, and continue without problems.
With all the different hardware and software configurations out there, it is impossible to test each combination. Look at all the drivers and applications that are available for WinXP. Combine that with the different types of hardware, and you will experience problems in some situations.
Every new release of Windows comes with a crowd of comments about how much better it is then the previous release. That MS has finally achieved stability in their OS.
I’ve found that when I run it,
and give them concrete examples of the problems the OS has,
then they start backpedeling and start talking about the Next Release.
I’m done with this MS BS.
Win2000 has serious problems with Windows Explorer.
Outlook has a great bug, where if you have Dev Tools installed,
if you send an email, it freezes Windows Explorer
Thankfully, Windows 2000 didn’t crash. But, that’s small comfort for a bug we’ve lived with for 3 years, from sp1 thru sp3..
WordPad has issues with large files: 20Meg,
Open two files of this size, and the OS starts complaining about Virtual Memory shortages.
We are required at work to shut down our boxes at the end of the day,
to give relief to the support desk staff which can’t keep up with the problems.
Do us all a favor Windows Lovers, stop lying.
Start writing down the problems you conviently forget,
and be honest with yourself, because, that’s the only person you are fooling.
I’ve switched to Mac OSX.
I don’t have to deal with the bugfest anymore,
nor, the constant virus assault.
It’s a huge relief to be off the MS platform.
agree with Eugenia. WinXP is a damn stable OS. My last blue screen was so long ago, I can’t even remember how long it’s been. I guess it was about a half year ago.
If WinXP crashes on a regular basis, you….
a) … have defect hardware.
b) … have buggy drivers.
c) … do very stange things with your PC.
d) … lie.
False! I think you should consider Windows Explorer as a part of the OS and not as a third party thing. And with XP without Service Pack 1, almost everytime I tried to shut down my machine, I got an “End Program” dialog box telling me that there’s something wrong with Explorer and I had to press an “End Now” button to proceed. With Service Pack 1, things look better but still I see that annoying window every some often. Was that much too hard for Microsoft guys to release such a simple application with no bugs or at least remove such highly visible bugs? Should I upgrade to the next version again when it becomes available, only because they state in their advertisements that “our latest version is god damn stable” but then again to see lots of new annoying bugs?
Hmm thats a big percentage of people considering all the doz-users. Maybe Bill better “switch” to OS X or Linux
Mike… I am sure there are simular problems with Mac OSX.
Mac Hardware is expensive, but the plus point is that Apple only have to support a limited amount of hardware so their is really no excuse for their OS crashing. I have seen Macs crashing a lot! I hear good things about Mac OSX, but if we are going to be picky and talk about WordPad not being able to handle 20mb files then we may as well say that Linux is no good because Gnome just gives up and trunks the files in a directory if it’s over 65,000 (from memory, it might have been less, and that was Red Hat 8) in the directory.
Anyway I hate MS, and I don’t like windows, but it doesn’t crash. Applications crash, but the system stays up. That’s not a lie, it’s fact. Some people say that Xp crashes all over the place for them, sorry to hear that. Some people say that Macs are slow as shit… I guess we all have an opinion, does that mean we are liars?
I am currently saving like a loon though. As soon as I have 3000 euro saved I’ll get a G5 Mac, until then I’ll have to make do with my 300 euro PC, that’s probably nothing like 10 times slower. (1.8Ghz Athlon XP, 80Gb Hard drive, etc)
And why would you want to leave your computer running all night? Is electricity free in your country? Or do you just not care about the environment?
Sorry mate… that last post looked a bit harsh… I didn’t mean it to come out quite like that.
We used to think of BSOD as a really bad thing. Ballmer is talking “Big Bang”. Anybody know what “The Big Bang” was?
It was the explosion of the universe. I doubt Microsoft has quite that capability, but I think immolation of entire server rooms is certainly possible. Do you realize how long it took for the universe to form after the Big Bang? Think about what this analogy must correlate to when attempting to recover your Longhorn server and data, probably anything Microsoft connected to it too. Maybe it’s triggered upon detection of an NT 4 box or Samba server, who knows? I think Microsoft is either on a suicidal revenge tactic or will release new support pricing just before the event horizon. Be afraid, be very afraid.
I have used it for months, and got exactly two problems. SP1 installation would display a dialog with the text “%REMOVE_NODIR_ERROR%”, I clicked OK, nothing happened and it didn’t bother me anymore later. The second thing is the bluescreen I got yesterday. I always disable the automatic reboot because I want to see the debug information that the bluescreen offers. It was kind enough to tell me where the illegal instruction had fux0red up the system, it was inside atidrv.dll (hint: “ati”). Windows XP is unstable? Look closer.
My opinion…
1 / Mac is for people with way too much money
2 / Linux ( any distro ) is way cool but often not user friendly enough for normal humans BUT stable…
3 / I have about 600 w2k machines running at work and they are stable… ( I installed ’em so… 😎 ) nice os…
There are windows users (or administrators) arguing feverishly that because their workstation(s) appear to work, that everyone else must be lying. In the corporate world, I find this infantile reasoning especially prevelant amongst new hires fresh from college. Seasoned IT professionals do not usually regress to this childish behaviour.
When their system doesn’t work they blame it on something else or try to explain it away. Why on earth must defence mechanisms (denial, intellectualization & rationalization) be employed when talking about software?
Microsoft uses instability and unreliability as a selling point when they compare the new version of windows to the old version, when they are marketing a new version of windows. Microsoft is willing to admit to the defects when they feel it is to their advantage.
Of course, this behaviour is also prevelant in the OS/2, Linux, BSD, Mac, … worlds.
In the end what is really being said is “I like my system, and not yours. Defects in my system are permissible, but not yours. To save face, I will minimize or hide the defects in my system, but exploit or expose the defects in your system. I will flame those who defend any system that is not mine.”
> There are windows users (or administrators) arguing
> feverishly that because their workstation(s) appear to
> work, that everyone else must be lying. In the corporate
> world, I find this infantile reasoning especially
> prevelant amongst new hires fresh from college. Seasoned
> IT professionals do not usually regress to this childish
> behaviour.
And the other way around? Do you think because some people have negative experiences and some have positive, the people with the negative ones have a better right to judge the OS than the others?
Seriously, if Windows was as horrible as some people tend to say, it wouldn’t be the mainstream OS. I do even think Bill’s statement at the top is exaggerated. I can only tell long-time experiences considering my machine, but I have seen a lot of Windows systems, none of them was unbearably unstable, not even the Win98 machines at my school. They’re no servers (before you ask, the server runs Linux) and run great for the 30 minutes two or three times a day they’re supposed to run.
Ballmer: “There needs to be periodic big bangs,” he said. “That’s how we think about Longhorn.”
He’s talking about giving a whole new meaning to the acronym “WMD”!
In our experience at work, windows 2000 and XP encounter problems in multitasking. When users use several large apps at the same time, after a few hours, the computers slow down a lot, application become unresponsive and sometimes do not respond at all anymore. Those machines have ample memory so it is not the problem, they also have the same tested configuration and users are not allowed to change it (hardware/software). It is definitely an OS problem not the application.
So these machines need to be rebooted regularly (once a day) which is not good. BTW we are not the only ones with the problem. It just seems that most people are using their machine with a single app running.
I just beleive that multitasking is not well implemented in Windows contrary to Linux, MacOS X and ofer *nix.
While Windows multitasking could be better. I think the problem you are encountering is one of memory management.
First, keep in mind that the more memory you have, the more Windows has to manage. Sometimes REMOVING memory will speed up the computer.
Second, Windows is notorious for bad memory management. Versions of Windows have a sweet spot for installed memory (more than 128Mb for Windows 95 is pointless, over 256Mb for 98 is pointless, over 512Mb for an NT 4 WS is usually pointless).
Third, Windows, to some degree, depends on the application to manage the memory it uses. Many programs have memory “leaks” because some programming methods make the assumption that the operating system is going to handle the task (as it should).
For example; the email program in use at my company has a serious memory leak problem. If you open and close it a who bunch of times during the day the system will eventually become wedged (hang), requiring a reboot. This is because each time the application is opened it grabs some memory. Each time it is closed it does not release all the memory it grabbed. It’s better to just leave it open all day.
I have the same problem. I have no idea why but i have the same problem. I’d also point out that there are a lot of unstable audio drivers out there for windows xp, that might not be MS’s fault though.
I know that some programs have memory leaks. However, when any of the program we use run on their own, they can go on for weeks without any degradation of performance. This clearly indicates that this is not the problem. Furthermore when many other people using different programs have the same problem, you have to rule out that all of them have memory leaks!
Windows multitasking plainly sucks compared to other OS. It has been so for ages.
The fact that people find XP and 2000 so reliable is also a testimony of what usage they make of their computers: no multitasking.