Please read - Windows Unstable??

[jfs_moose]

Hello all, thanks for reading this.
Im writing a report for my IT studies at TAFE (Australian further education college) and I wanted to obtain some feedback from people about their impression of Windows and its unstable image.

If you think Windows is an unstable OS what has lead you to conclude this?
Thank you.

[davebarnes]

"All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."

When I used Windows 98, it crashed 5-6 times each day. Why? Because programs would consume all the "system resources. You can't use Win98 and expect to run Photoshop, Ilustrator, Eudora, Word, Act, etc. simultaneously.

So, YES, Windows 98 is very unstable.

Windows 2000 Pro is better. My crashes are down to one a week. But, when the entire screen freezes and all you can do is reboot, I would call that unstable.

[redcircle]

win95, win98 were alright for me if I only ran 1 program any more than that and it would crash.

winME.. good luck it was a downgrade from win98.

Winnt was pretty good but the driver support was horrible. and I couldn't use anything USB

win2k was a god send. game compatibility was an issue tho.

winxp I have sexual thoughts about. it has made my life so much easier. I reboot once a week instead of once an hour. and I usually am running about 20 programs at a time ranging from PS, DW, FW and any other design program you can think of. It also runs as a test server so I can use my laptop for PHP development.

[rlrouse]

Unstable is relative. Compared to Windows 3.x, Windows 2000 and XP are rock solid. But compared to unix and linux...

[softwaresubmit]

Oh dear, oh dear... why do people always think, that if something is wrong, it is the OS? In most of the cases, and that is especially true for the NT-based (NT, 2k and XP releases) it is not the Windows itself that might crash, but:

- drivers (yes, sometimes they are written by MS, but mostly they are 3rd party). A good historic example would be ATI Diamond drivers
- poor written 3rd party software
- your hardware (especially when overclocked/overheated)

I consider Windows being a very stable system. There is only one "catch" - you have to look after it. It will pay off...

[netman4ttm]

My impression was that the problem for Windows was and still is the gui.

Unix (Linux) don't crash when the gui goes but Windows has no where to go but to the Blue Screen of Death!

[cpr-tx]

Well I think all Windows OS had some major quirk or another. 95 was a dog after awhile, 98SE was good and I have to agree ME was a serious downgrade of 98. NT and driver support was a problem along with 2000.
XP PRO is great running NTFS.. FAT32 is another animal all together. Initially I ran it in FAT32 and on every reboot it ate my login, so I had a login screen with no way to login. Eventually I converted to NTFS and had no more problems. XP is very friendly, new hardware detection is great, networking is painless and forced reboots are rare.
As long as you have more than 128 megs ram and a decent processor it runs great. Sure I like LINUX and UNIX Fantastic stuff but I hate to have dual boot systems.

[Sualdam]

I agree with softwaresubmit.

In my experience Windows 98 SE was stable after first installation, but as more applications and drivers were added that was when problems COULD occur.

Some systems I installed it on never showed a fault, but they were for light users who really never used the PC for anything other than simple tasks.

My installation always became more and more unstable until I was forced to do a clean reinstall. I ended up doing one every 6-9 months in the end. As softwaresubmit said, it was usually because of a certain file(s) crashing.

XP Pro has been much better (under FAT32), though it does seem to slow down somewhat after the same 6-9 months of heavy use (installing/uninstalling, etc.).

I only experience 'crashes' when I have too many apps running - but never the blue screen equivalent, just odd behaviour.

[redcircle]

I think this install of XP is the longest install of an OS I have ever had. Going on 7 months now without a reload(it's almost time tho.)

At one time with I think WinME I was doing a weekly re-install(thank god for images) I then scrapped ME and went back to 98. Then I was lucky enough to get a free copy of win2k pro at a M$ convention jumped back and forth between 2k and 98 for a while (need 98 for games) then XP came and I was saved. The best of both worlds.

[Peter]

I find Windows very stable especially XP and 2K.
Servers routinely run for 1000 hours or until I patch them.
Most often problems are down to hardware faults, mainly to overheating issues or hard drive corruption, which is due to insufficient drive overheads being left.
Other problems occur when people download some poorly written software and use coverdisks or software not deigned for the specific version.
The applications being run are the unstable element.

Anyway you have three camps on OS's The MS haters, the Unix haters and those who live in the real world.

The MS haters use Linux and Unix cause its trendy and hate MS for the monolpy they hold. The Unix haters run MS and get sick to death of Unix users always saying how great it is. And the final lot understand there are benifits in both and make rational desicions instead of listen to all the marketing hype and BS.

[pete61uk]

A student myself I can imagine you are putting a lot of software on your pc so you can study at home? That, if you are not on top of your pc maintenance, can exacerbate any os problems you get.

I’ve had:

Win98 – Forget it
Win98 2nd Ed – Great but needs constant maintenance
WinME - Ouch
WinXP (HomeEd) - Driver support is rubbish
Win2KPro - Brilliant, no problems (yet)

Most of the students here (UWCN), have gone through the above list so it’s a small consensus, and have settled on either Win2kPro or WinXPPro.

Good luck with your studies.

[mikmik]

I always make sure that all my unnecessary(help with spellling plaese wenwilder - lexiphobia!) services are shut off from starting as well as all programs except my anti-virus and a small registry monitor. I keep my system cleen with regular trips to empty the recycle bin, plus defrag etc.

I run both windows XP(Pro but used to have home) and win2k and have had exactli 2 freezes in 10 months. One of those times, I put Dreamweaver priority on 'Realtime' in taskmanager when it was already frozen (Dreamwvr, not windows) - please don't ask what I was trying to do!

These people are right, windows is stable , 3rd party software and to little memory notwithstanding.

[jordanmcclements]

I know you question was - 'Is Windows Stable'. This is maybe a bit off topic but, since the advent of Windows XP, every man and his dog who bought a new PC (apart from the minority of technically literate people) were infected by the blaster worm.

This caused their PC to shut down regularly, and caused a lot of panic and confusion.

So in the eyes of the average user - Windows XP was very far from 'Stable'.

[Sualdam]

I think mikmik has started a separate thread about the blaster worm (etc.).

Let's keep this one on-topic and away from any MS-bashing ;)

[drac]

With win XP systems are quite stable. I was able to run XP pro box for over a month without a restart. I saw blue screen just few times.

Its still not where Linux is, but the gap is very small. Can say win is now almost as stable as Linux. The only difference is that Linux is free and each distribution comes with a lot of free software while windows is expensive and comes with almost no software.

For a server platform it should be clear that Linux is a better solution since it can do all that windows box can at a fraction of the price. In today's economy businesses cannot afford to go for expensive solution while equivalent cheap solution is available.

As for desktop, windows is still the king and will be for some time. It will take time for all these nice programs to be ported to Linux platform. But one day it will happen.

In conclusion, some time from now MS will be part of history just like regular cameras are slowly giving way to digital ones. MS has to pay a lot of programmers for the product and cannot save a lot of money, thus it will always have to charge a lot of cash for its products. On the other hand, Linux is open source and no money is needed to continue its development.

Open source software, in short, is a new way of creating software with budget in mind. Instead of doing something by themselves people are teaming up and doing it as a group - strength in numbers. Each member of the group contributes and reap the rewards. Large number of contributors reduce the process to minimal cost per product unit.

[Sualdam]

drac, you made some valid points so I quoted this in a new thread about Open Source to keep this one on topic (i.e. about Windows) :)

[minstrel]

win95, win98 were alright for me if I only ran 1 program any more than that and it would crash. winME.. good luck it was a downgrade from win98.

(snip)

winxp I have sexual thoughts about. it has made my life so much easier. I reboot once a week instead of once an hour. and I usually am running about 20 programs at a time ranging from PS, DW, FW and any other design program you can think of. It also runs as a test server so I can use my laptop for PHP development.

You might want to schedule an appointment to talk about the lead-in to that last paragraph... :-)

Other than that, I agree totally. With Windows 95 and 98, rebooting several times a day was the norm. The only problems I have had with Windows XP are either due to a slow graphics card or have been solved by replacing less than 100% compliant drivers.

[minstrel]

I always make sure that all my unnecessary services are shut off from starting as well as all programs except my anti-virus and a small registry monitor. I keep my system cleen with regular trips to empty the recycle bin, plus defrag etc.

Excellent points, although I'd add a decent firewall to that list these days (yes, even on dial-up!).

I'd forgotten that Windows XP installed several services by default that I have no need for - forgotten because I disabled those as soon as I figured how to do it - that may make the difference in overall performance and stability.

For related articles:
System Setup Secrets For XP
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=12803122

Windows XP Services
http://www.blkviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

...or try a search on Google for any of the above.

I also use Mike Lin's freeware StartUp Control Panel 2.8 to make sure that programs that think they should be allowed to auto-start on boot without my say-so don't actually do that. I've mentioned this utility before - you can find it at http://www.mlin.net.

And, finally, converting to NTFS has pretty much eliminated the potential for file system corruption.

[Sualdam]

Minstrel, is it possible to convert to NTFS on an established FAT32 system?

[minstrel]

Minstrel, is it possible to convert to NTFS on an established FAT32 system?

Certainly - I did. However, I first backed up everything I didn't want to lose, and then aligned the FAT32 system to the 4k boundary, and only then converted to NTFS. I used Partition Magic 8.01 to do this.

I would add that I freed up a good 2-3 gigs of disk space after the conversion, although that will depend on a lot of factors, like the size of your hard drive, the ratio of small files to large files, etc.

[minstrel]

since the advent of Windows XP, every man and his dog who bought a new PC (apart from the minority of technically literate people) were infected by the blaster worm. This caused their PC to shut down regularly, and caused a lot of panic and confusion. So in the eyes of the average user - Windows XP was very far from 'Stable'.

Yes but anyone who (1) applied the Windows security update available about a month before Blaster hit, (2) had an up-to-date virus defense in place, and/or (3) had a decent firewall installed did NOT have to deal with Blaster. It's hard for me to see why Windows XP should take the rap for that...

[RicInACloak]

Different versions have widely different stability and lots of old versions are still in use, as justification for that statement see the OS percentages listed below (todays stats from my web site)
Windows XP 33.7 %
Windows 2000 27.2 %
Windows 98 9.5 %
Windows 95 6.6 %
Windows Me 6.5 %
Windows NT 1.1 %

Windows XP
I have never tried it but other replies indicate good stability.

Windows 2000:
I have found it reasonably stable although I did have problems on one machine where the virus scanner frequently caused a blue screen crash. One could argue that no application should be able to cause such a crash. although virus scanners by their nature need to 'dig in deeply' which is bound to be a weak spot.

Windows 98:
often not good, but a bit like 95 see below.

Windows 95:
Not bad if you can get a clean setup and then leave it alone, but it can quickly become unstable if you add new progs etc.

Windows Me:
very bad news, I never had good success with this one.

Windows NT:
I would still use this one if it had USB support


In general I reinstall windows about every 6 months, largely because the install and uninstall of programs is unreliable (leaving behind bad dll's and registry entries), and because the performance seems to degrade with time (probably same reason).
The MS idea of creating a common repository of DLL's for use by all programs was a good one in theory, but I think that in practice, it engenders instability. If I had a choice, I would write programs that never used a shared dll (i would rather create my own copy).

I write programs for a living, and I cannot count the number of times that my program works fine on 2 or 3 test machines, and then has problems when I get to the client. Often 70% of workstations are perfect, 20% require some help, and the last 10% cannot be fixed without an OS reinstall. I regard that as a problem with the OS. Worst of all the client usually thinks that its my companies fault (although you can see them realising its not when an OS reinstall fixes the problem).
As a result of WinOS performance/price/stability issues I am moving to Linux, It is possible that in a few years I may say the same about Linux, time will tell.

RicInACloak
http://www.littleriversoftware.com

[jordanmcclements]

Minstrel Wrote:

Yes but anyone who (1) applied the Windows security update available about a month before Blaster hit, (2) had an up-to-date virus defense in place, and/or (3) had a decent firewall installed did NOT have to deal with Blaster. It's hard for me to see why Windows XP should take the rap for that...

I would agree with you if Windows XP was sold only to IT professionals. But, like it or not, the majority of people who bought a new PC before the blaster outbreak were not technically literate, and (to cut a long story short), MS has done a good job of putting them off using the internet....

But I have also have to point out that I am not knocking Windows XP. I think it is pretty good (although a tad expensive).

Also, sorry Sualdam (I promise to do no more MS Bashing in this thread).

[Sualdam]

MS has done a good job of putting them off using the internet....

I'd hit 'reply with quote' before I saw the disclaimer :)

Seriously, since MS absolutely, definitely, and 100% for sure did not build in the security flaws deliberately you can't argue that they had 'done a good job [putting people off the Internet]'.

It was just a bunch of stuff that happens.

Anyway, let's keep it on topic - no more sideswipes at MS ;)

[minstrel]

I'd also add that since Blaster and Sobig, both Microsoft and (at least in my area) internet service providers have become much more proactive in trying to warn people who may not be technologically inclined about how to protect themselves from these sorts of attacks - this isn't mere altruism, of course: the ISPs have been hard hit by Blaster and Sobig. My ISP saw their servers almost paralyzed by floods of emails from unprotected and infected computers, up to 500 an hour from a single infected subscriber, according to their news release. They have gone to the extent of identifying the subscribers who are (unwittingly) hitting the servers, cutting off their access, and telephoning them personally to walk them through disinfecting their systems and installing antivirus and firewall protection. Microsoft has similarly launched a more public safety awareness campaign and is looking at ways to streamline patch applications.

It's like the impaired driving issue: teens today in this area are much more aware of the drunk driving issue than most adults and in my experience are again quite proactive in that regard - arranging for designated drivers, etc. I'm encouraged by the power of public awareness, even though it sometimes takes a generation to actually change behavior.