OS Stability

[apollos]

How stable would you say your machine is?
Does it never crash or does do you think its on a timer that makes it crash every 5 minutes? What OS would you prefer stability wise?

Ive asked many people in Plymouth and a few of my friends / family members feel that XP is more stable. I'm not sure. I use XP and 2K but with SP1 XP seems way more stable and doesnt crash and freeze for me now (so far anyway)

I wanna see what you people feel

[squell]

XP is pretty stable, but my computer is starting to DIE i think, so it crashes like once a week, at least. actually, it crashes a lot more often then that depending on what you mean by "crashing".

[dylman]

I've just built a brand new system with XP Pro, it just doesn't crash.

Nice...

[whiteflip]

No WINME? My personally owned computers have WinME on them. Cuz keyboard controls are annoying with Win98. having to always push tab when opening a window. gosh narb it.

The More ram my PC's have the less they Crash
160MB - never crashes, win ME
64MB - crashes daily (mostly due to linksys wpc11 drivers suck) Win ME
16MB - crashes when running two things Win 98

i sold the other computers that suck. im getting a new one soon. (soon = within 6 months)

[dylman]

Originally posted by whiteflip

160MB - never crashes, win ME
64MB - crashes daily (mostly due to linksys wpc11 drivers suck) Win ME
16MB - crashes when running two things Win 98

1Gb RAM - Windows heaven

[LAVAB84615]

LINUX!

[Aeroe]

it's very stable on win2k/xp
the only crash was a stop error when i misconfigured my WD HDD. i probably had a few lockups with xp, one a week or so ago. which was the result of a game i was playing. only one lockup forced me to reboot, the rest i close the game and rerun explorer to get the desktop back up. that takes a couple seconds, no biggie.

i had a few more problems with mandrake 8.2. those too were software related, the kernel is very stable. what made it worse was that mdk takes for-fucking-ever to boot, like any linux distro.
but since i shutdown every night i really cannot compare lengthy uptimes.

[I am Jesus]

I use XP, it's pretty good.

[james]

Win2000 <-- rock solid
WinXP <-- gave up and went back to 2000 (not due to stability though )
Win98SE <-- pretty solid also

[manthabeats]

WIN 98SE on an 833 mhz pentium III with 128 md ram = One piece of shit computer. I suppose its not Window's problem but IBMs although they tell me different. Its a good computer when it wants to be, but a piece of shit 90% of the rest. Oh and one more thing, WA3 runs fine on my comp.

[apollos]

Sorry for forgetting the WinME option.

Ive heard that its the best OS for games. I used it for a few months and its a nice system. A few toys mixed with a bit of 2k and 98, what more do you need.

XP is pretty

http://download.com.com/3000-2139-10...ml?tag=lst-0-5

^^ I still can't believe that they put my comment there

[whiteflip]

Yo PIII 98 boy
Defrag
Scandisk
Run > MSCONFIG turn off all your start up shit

WinME is an awesome game system. and it almost never crashes when happy and tweaked. Once stuff is disabled or congifured like sysrestore and wimp it runs prefectly

[Oni-Dracula]

I run windows XP pro...only time it crashed was when I was f***ing with some cd's and didn't give it time to read em..

Athlong XP 1700+
512 meg DDR (PC2100?)
Geforce2 Ti from Gainward (pretty red)
MSI Kt3 Ultra Mobo

BTW if you give a win98/ME system more than 128 megs of ram it starts blowing things up. My experience, and the experience of Patrick Norton. But then again, ME just blows chunks...buggy little red head...

[InvisableMan]

[01:35] <InvisableMan> os[Windows XP Professional, Service Pack 1 (5.1 - 2600)] uptime[23d 5h 37m 49s] cpu[1-AMD Duron, 748MHz, 64KB] mem[Usage: 132/256MB (51.56%)*[|||||-----]] Network Interfaces[#1 (Realtek RTL8139 Family PCI Fast Ethernet NIC (100Mb/s) 628.38MB In, 4013.26MB Out)] screen[1280x1024 32bit 60Hz] dialup[none detected] mbm5info[*[||------] ] msg[ FOR GREAT JUSTICE!!!11111!!! ]

[kevinswindells]

My computer (Windows 98SE / IE6 / PIII-500MHz) used to crash hourley, but since i've switched to Mozilla as my web browser (from IE6) it rarlly crashes.
A reboot every 6 or 7 hours is all that is needed to make it run as smoothly as a baby's bum... oh and i keep an eye on the resources meter and as soon as it goes red i close a program or two....

[Oni-Dracula]

I only restart for windows updates and crap...

[Signal Box]

I have Windows 98 and my computer occasionally crashes due to some complicated error or software conflict. It's really annoying sometimes.

[InvisableMan]

my computer hasnt crashed since before i installed windows xp :-p

[fwgx]

Solaris has never crashed for me, much stabler than anything else your likley to find.

[InvisableMan]

exept debian

[james]

True... UNIX 0wns for stability, but you need some serious 1336 skillz to get it working how you want it
I'd run linux if I knew what I was doing, I'm happy with 2000 Advanced Server for now though
And NT4SP6, that's solid as a rock! I'm going to put it on my laptop, I think, which only has 32MB of RAM

[edit] typos [/edit]

[Montana]

i have windows 98se

/me will never upgrade to xp, and if i buy a new comp with xp installed, i'll format & install win98se

/me will never ever "downgrade" to ME, me sucks major,

/me considers to get win2k as it kicks ass,

my comp crashes & frezzes daily, but that's because
1. i have a crap computer,
2. i have a crap computer
3. i only have 64 mb ram

[fwgx]

4. You have a crap OS.



System crashes are not caused by bad hardware most of the time. 98% of the time it's the Os's fault. The rest is a dodgy device driver. Low ammounts of memory are not a problem it's the OS's procedure for dealing with small memory ammounts that's the problem.



Try a different OS that's got a reputation for being stable like some version of Linux / UNIX and see the differance. I'm thinking a lot of people are just used to living with Windows in a state that is very unstable that they now just say, 'well that's as good as it gets, must be my hardware that's at fault'. Not true, pretty much any computer should be able to manage ~6 months uptime.

[kevinswindells]

Originally posted by Phily Baby
Not true, pretty much any computer should be able to manage ~6 months uptime.

6 Months uptime doesn't matter if you turn the computer off daily...

but what is annoying is the unacaptable amount of time some OSes take to load (Linux Mandrake being the worst offender i've tried - and that was a clean install)...

I'm running Windows 98SE and will be switching to Windows 2000 soon. Linux will cost me more due to to amount of hardware i would need to replace, and time spent learning the thing.

I want to use the computer to do what i want to do (web design / surfing / e-mail) and not have to learn a whole new way of working - or even waiting an age for the system to boot - my win98se machine takes 7minutes including copying and zipping a load of files to my 4th partition to load.

and the biggest thing holding me back is compatability with uni's course which rely on Microsoft VB and Visual C++ for the main part...

[fwgx]

But if you're only restarting a maximum of once a day (as it should be if you turn it off at night) 5 mins is nothing. I find XP a lot faster on boot up that 98 with 2 NIC's installed.

edit: I hate having to have MS compatability to do Uni work. My uni especially is completly MS for everything, everything is either NT4 or 2000Pro running Visual Studio. There isn't one Linux / Unix machine anywhere in Uni. I think i'm lucky taking a year out working with Unix, otherwise in the real world after my course I'd have no non-MS experiance. A very bad departmental decision I think.

[kevinswindells]

Our Uni's the same - the only *ix machine's are our departments fileservers.

The rest is WindowsNT (changing to 2K this summer), even the apache webserver is run under NT.

I reboot my about three times a day - quick e-mail check in the morning [off] do some work early eve [off while i have me tea] play

What are NIC's?

Re your placement year - same here the company i'm at (IT User's) use Linux, except for a few specilist things where they can only get Windows software or need full MS Office compatability.

I'm an impatient sod and want the computer to boot as fast as my ex-itv-digital box i.e <45seconds.....

[fwgx]

code:




if (NIC != network _interface_card()) {



     printf("well what the chuff is it then?\n");



}



else {



     printf("it's a network interface card\n");



}

[ujay]

Using 98SE and have had few problems. Seems to be more a question of software mix than anything else. Now I have it set to my liking very little goes wrong, haven't seen a BSOD in months.
I sometimes do a defensive reboot if I'm about to use something that is resource hungry, but other than that it runs fine. About the only thing that screws up is IE6, but doesn't crash the machines.
Feel the need for something a bit stronger, some of the stuff I have now requires more than FAT32 and better resource handling.
Would that be XP or Win2000 anyone?

UJ

[fwgx]

Short answer: Either. I'm not sure if XP supports multi processor systems but 2k does. Both support NTFS, a FAR superior FS than fat32. I think XP is generally nicer than 2k to use as a standalone system. On a large network I can imagine it being the spawn of the devil.

[ujay]

Thanks Phily .
I think I'll try XP since it's easier to get hold of for me.

UJ

[dylman]

XP Pro supports dual processors but XP Home does not.

[flatmatt]

I'm on ME, and it only freezes while IE6 is running. So it freezes a couple times a day. IE6 will crash, then I get that stupid "Report this error?" window, then it tries to close IE, but it doesn't, and all I get is an iconless item in the taskbar, so I hit the reset button and half the time the internet connection goes out. DIE DIE DIE STUPID COMPUTER!

[Atmo]

WinXP home.

Last crash not caused by buggy software/bad drivers/unstable hardware = never. In nearly a year i have not experienced one crash that i couldnt explain...and none of the problems have been caused by microsoft. Most crashes have been caused by overclocking or 3rd party driver immiturity.

Then again i do keep my pc maintained, tweaked, and upgrade hardware often. But compared to how win98 used to run, its frigging brilliant.

I know a lot of people say that 2000 is more stable, and in theory i agree, but i cant see how it could be much better when it's been totally stable for me.

I'd strongly reccomend xp home for anyone still using 98/me, its just so much better (as long as you have a 500mhz processor and at least 128mb of ram).

[cyu]

Originally posted by Apollos
How stable would you say your machine is?
Does it never crash or does do you think its on a timer that makes it crash every 5 minutes?

I once saw that software that is like a virus making wizard. On there you can choose how many times the puter will crash in one day.

I have Win98SE. Only time it crashes is if I overload the RAM.

[Atmo]

Originally posted by cyu
I have Win98SE. Only time it crashes is if I overload the RAM.

Check your swapfile settings. Set it to a minimum of 1.5x your system ram (up to 128mb) if you have 256mb of ram, set it to a minumum of 256. Dont set a maximum. If it starts growing larger than the minimum setting, take note of what it size gets to over a few weeks, then add to 50mb to that and set it as a max.

Also, if you have more than one hard drive, make a partition at the start of the second drive (500mb should be heaps) as that will keep the swapfile from getting fragmented and will keep it in the fastest part of the drive.

Alternatively, buy more ram, its cheap nowdays anyway.

[jarsonic]

I haven't rebooted in 4 weeks.

- Jarsonic

[dylman]

I love the way XP runs multiple applications flawlessly... the processor can be running at 100% in the background running two instances of oggenc while EAC is ripping, winamp is playing, Outlook is minimised and I'm on the forums. I would never have even attempted something like that using ME.

XP has crashed only once, and that was my video card.

edit: I especially love the way the shortcut icons to my CD drives update to show what's in the drives (audio CD, DVD, etc...). It's the little things

[eleet-2k2]

Both my XP boxes hardly crash. The only time that my laptop has ever crashed was due to crappy nVidia-XP driver issues, and never as a result of any software I've run on it.

My main computer has had XP for about a whole 2 weeks and never crashed yet. It will occasionally crash due to ATI-WinXP driver issues as well, but rarely.

[rm']

Originally posted by Atmo
Last crash not caused by buggy software/bad drivers/unstable hardware = never. In nearly a year i have not experienced one crash that i couldnt explain...and none of the problems have been caused by microsoft. Most crashes have been caused by overclocking or 3rd party driver immiturity.

That seems to be the case with the majority of crashes, regardless of OS (I disagree with Phily here). Problem is, Linux software, as a general rule, is awfully written while Windows software is solid. Yes, the Linux kernal may be very reliable, but what is the use if your software is crashing it more often then in Windows? If you are only using your system for one use (i.e. webserver, router/internet gateway), you are fine because you are dealing with quality software. The problem arises when you try to use Linux as a desktop machine, for multiple uses in one day (i.e. run a graphics editor such as The Gimp to create buttons for your website, post your website to a server via FTP, create and edit a couple spreadsheets, do your taxes, and render a couple 3d images, all the while, listening to your favorite tunes). In this respect (a multi-use home machine), Linux sucks, primarily because the software for it sucks.

Just look at Winamp. Because it is so well-written, in it's default configuration, you are virtually assured 100% availability. You'll start to break things once you install third-party plugins. Just ask anyone who frequents the tech support forums: 99% of user complaints are due to poorly written plugins.

[eleet-2k2]

Actually rm, you'd be suprised at the amount of shoddily written Windows software. And I can attest to that being a 'developer' of software in VB and C/C++.