Windows XP-you wanted horror stories? (1 Viewer)

[Chris Bardon]

There was an XP horrow stories thread that was started a while back, but this deserves a new one. Let me preface this by saying that XP did last longer on my system than 2000 did by about five minutes, but that 2000 was only on there for half an hour until I ran into problems and just gave up on it.

I was actually impressed with the installer, but it was when I actually tried to DO something that there were problems. First-the mouse kept stalling, and it actually seemed like the OS was stalling quite regularly. I'm running a p3-450 with 384 Mb of ram...this should not happen. Second, it was slow-very slow. Where 98 was quick to do almost anything, XP lumbered.

Finally, and this one is important enough to merit its own paragraph, there was the stability problem. When I use windows, I like to do more than one thing at once. Call me crazy, but I've actually embraced this whole multitasking idea. So when I get XP installed, I go to the windows update site and download the inevitable driver and critical OS updates, and while that's happening start poking around. In the midst of this-explorer crashes, the start menu disappears, and things look bad. Ctrl+alt+delete and select shut down-nothing. So, BRS (Big Red Switch) it is.

Try again-windows update, download...explorer crashes-ctrl alt delete-same effect.

Last attempt-actually letting it finish downloading and doing its thing. Then, install pocket pc stuff...ok so far. Then, synch pocket PC and try to copy files from backup cd-crash.

Needless to say that the next step was a bootdisk, a format, and a reinstall of win 98 SE. I've run windows 98 for three years, and I don't think that explorer has crashed more than a dozen times on me. XP did it three times in 35 minutes.

More stable my ass....

 

[Michael Silla]

I don't know what to say. I heard that XP may have troubles with some older motherboards and yours *might* fall into that category. Windows XP has been nothing but a positive experience for me. I have never encountered a more stable Windows OS (I've had Win 95/98/Me all on my computer at one point or another).

When you installed Win XP, did it generate a list of possible hardware/software conflicts for you?. Perhaps one of your components may not have a proper Win XP driver for it. You might also want to see if there is an updated bios for your motherboard.

Good luck.

Michael.

 

[Carlo_M]

Sorry about your probs. PC problems can be the damnedest to troubleshoot and often take a long time to even figure out, let alone fix.

I'm no MS apologist, but I've put XP on 3 systems now, ranging from my Athlon 850 w/ 512MB RAM to a P4 1.5 GHz with 256MB RDRAM and haven't had any problems. I am using XP Pro (Corp. Edition since I am a techie at work and we have a site license with MS) so it might be a slight bit different from the retail version, but I doubt it. Have had all 3 do the WinUpdate from the Web. No probs there either. One was a prebuilt Dell, one was a generic "we build 'em for you" PC, mine was a DIY job.

I do notice that because of the overburdened GUI, some functions take a split second longer (like clicking Apply usually takes a second now where it was instantaneous in 98/ME/2000) but nothing that I would consider a drag.

And surprisingly not many complaints from my friends in networking who tried it on their home PCs. We have a few hardcore gamers who always find something wrong with even the most established product lines. They had nothing but good things to say about XP which is what convinced me to switch over at home.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Chris, when 2000 was released a lot of people had similar problems to those you've experienced. Many of the issues boiled down to hardware incompatibilities. Some could be fixed quite easliy (many older motherboards required a BIOS flash) and in some instances certain bits of hardware had to be replaced.

I run two systems. The main is based around a PIII/Asus CUBX combo. The second was mostly constructed from parts I acquired through Ebay and is built around a Soyo Socket 7 mobo and AMD K6-III 450. That system needed a BIOS flash before 2000 would even look at it. Now it runs both 2000 and XP really nicely.

 

[Andrew Pratt]

I'm in the same boat as carlo with XP installed on several PC's on my home network and have had zero issues

 

[Chris Bardon]

Interesting-so nobody else has had explorer die the same way? What really got me about it was that even when it died, it wouldn't recover. If explorer conks out in 98, it just kills all of its windows and loads up again-xp just sat there.

As for an "older" MB issue, I got my Acer board at the same time as the CPU (roughly 2 years ago) and wouldn't consider it "old".

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Well, 'older' was probably a bad choice of word but it does sound like your system has a real hardware/NT incompatibility issue. Have you checked for BIOS updates for the mobo?

2000 and XP are fundamentally more stable the 9x/Me but the hardware constraints are also tighter.

 

[Carlo_M]

Bios updates can be very important. I had crash problems a while back and BIOS update fixed it. Of course I have a very aggresively times Abit board, so that doesn't help the stability issue...

And the only hang I've had on XP (something was extracting), I simply forced a reboot and ran the executable again and all is fine (this was a week or so ago).

Good luck on your situation, though. Maybe hit the PC newsgroups if your board manufacturer doesn't have BIOS updates for you.

 

[Steve_Ch]

Don't know about XP, but I run 4 W2K systems, 3 laptops and a desktop, from PII 333MHz to PIII 600MHz, 3 different manufacturers, all systems are heavily used, direct connect to internet with boardband, and I think the last time I have to reboot any one of the systems (outside of installing upgrades) was in May of this year, and I am not even a fan of MS (hence refuse to look at XP).

 

[Ryan Spaight]

For what it's worth, XP has been an absolute solid rock for me on a P3/800 with 384MB RAM. I've used every MS OS since DOS 1.1 (as well as IBM OS/2 and Red Hat Linux), and I'm very impressed with XP.

Ryan

 

[Randy Talbot]

Try PC Pitstop http://www.pcpitstop.com/xpready/default.asp website to see if your computer is Windows XP ready. It will check both your hardware and software to see if it is compatiable with Windows XP. It sounds like yours is not. Even software like Norton AntiVirus has to replaced with the new version of 2002 to work with Windows XP.