Windoze XP (post oppinions here)

I upgrated from win2k pro to winxp pro couple of days ago.
The installation goes smoothly and takes around 40 minutes,

The first thing that i notice is the more "comfortable" log on screen for users of the computers , instead of having to press alt-ctrl-del and write your user name and password it now offers you a menu interface were a user can see all the user names of the computer and simply click on the user name he wants to log on (needing the password of course)
This is something i did not like since i always log on as administrator on my computer and this menu only offers users other than administrator to log on.
But it is possible to change that and get the "old" win2k logon,actually you can customize winxp to have the excat look of win2k but that does not make it win2k

I log on as one of the other users of my computer that has admin rights and see a totally diffirent look of windows , they have now installed skins, the default skin (and the only one that comes with windows) is beutiful but way to bright for my taste. I then decide to see what other skins are available and find that windows only offer this one skin, you have to buy the microsoft plus package to get more skins.

There have been a few software incompatibilities and one hardware incompatability after this installation , the software that did not work is "Ctlauncher.exe" (that is the program that comes with soundblaster live soundcards and sits on top of your desktop allowing you to change the volume and other stuff regarding your soundcard, in case you didn´t know)
I went to creative.com to check for upgrated, win xp compatible program but did not find any... well no biggie i thought i´m sure they will make a compatible program soon.

The hardware problem i ran into was an USB problem (what else) my system has always had USB problems until i installed win2k
from win98SE, but now with Winxp i again have to plug in-and out my usb mouse every time windows starts to get it to work.

The integrated burning in winxp is nice and it also has built in firewall but that firewall does not prevent programs on my computer to access the net like zonealarm does so i am forced to have zonealarm installed wich makes the firewall that comes with winxp useless since i want to control what programs can access the net and two firewalls are a waste of memory.


My conclusion : WinXp is simply microsoft´s way of saying do not use non-microsoft software, buy our os and we will fulfill all your software needs , our new os comes with skins(that you have to buy) a firewall(not a good one) a program to edit movies yadyaydya .....
My adice : Don´t upgrate , there really is no reason, not yet at least.

AMEN!!

I thought MS finally got something right with win2k, I mean atleast I could run it for more than a day without a reboot. Hardware support and game support have finally come along well and then XP comes out, WTF. Yeah XP, more win2k, different looking, more bells and whistles. But..... why do I need 128MB of RAM and a 400 Mhz processor :eek:

I mean, I thought Win2k with 32MB and Pentium 233 was a bit high for system requirements. What will be next? Windows ABC, this new os is built off of Win XP that was built off of Win2k which was built of of Win NT which was built off of Windows 95, blah blah, but looks different. It requires 512MB of RAM a 2 GHz processor and 50GB of HDD. The advantage is that it looks neater and cost another $300 with built in hacker support with every port shared for relay and easy access to any file on the system, LOL.

Well I've been using XP Pro for quite awhile and haven't run into any problems that you have so far. I have a USB mouse and a Creative Soudblaster Live. If you did an upgrade instead of a full install it can cause some problems (thats what happened to me the first time). If you get the Win 2000 drivers from the Soundblaster website they work fine. As far as the USB mouse I ran into no problems at all. Read my post here for furthur info:

http://www.antionline.com/showthread...hreadid=116099

I have an extermly annoying promblem with winXP now, i did a clean install to see if the mouse problem would solve itself (it did not)

but now i have a problem with windows explorer , as you can see on the picture that there are no icons on the right side of explorer ... any ideas why ?

I have used every search engine on the web to fins info on this problem but they do not exist it seems i am the only one that this has happened to.

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SOLUTION :
Read my last post in this thread to view the solution to this ...it took alot of hassle to find out what caused it so you might want to read it just in case.

I agree. I ran both the beta 2 and RC1 versions of that OS, and I'm back on Windows 2000. That should say something. It seems to make the common user's life easier, but the administrator's job becomes a living HELL! I had it on a LAN, and couldn't get it to communicate properly with the rest of the coputers. I'm not at all satisfied with it.

I didn't have any problems w/ Windows XP though I am still in beta. Maybe its because my computer is a clone.

YEAH !! i have solved my WinXp icon problem ...

Be warned always ... always install winXp on a partition that is called C:\ if you do not windows explorer will not display the icons, this is due to some kinda programming error i was told.
There will probably be a fix when the first WinXp service pack is released(i hope)

this caused me to format my hard disk and re-install windows,
since computer managment doesnt allow changing the drive letters of the partition were windows is installed.

Partition magic allowed that and i thought what the heck , i´l try it and see what happens ... of course the computer then chrased. (p;

Just thought i would post this warning in case you are considering setting up winxp on another parition than c:

Quote:

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instead of having to press alt-ctrl-del and write your user name and password it now offers you a menu interface were a user can see all the user names of the computer and simply click on the user name he wants to log on

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This is a big mistake on Microsoft's part I think. The reason for the ctrl-alt-del was for added security - if something else was running, you would know. Granted, it is a pain, but now that it is disabled by default in XP, once again there will be plenty of programs made to grab login passwords. You can enable the ctrl-alt-del, but if it is disabled to begin with, very few will go and turn it back on...

I just found out that it is possible to get the "old" win2k login menu but pressing alt-ctrl-del twice in a row from the new menu.

But i kinda disagree with you ivan37, i think users that need security will change the default login , i think it was good for microsoft to implement this login screen since it allows variety.

As for your changing of drive letters on yoru main partition.
I think that any version of windows would have flipped out at that.

Lets say that you had windows installed in D:\Windows
or whatever,
If you change that partition's Drive letter to C:\
then all registry entrys would still point to D:\Windows.

During the loading of windows, one of the first things it would do would be to initialize the registry, and all the invalid links to D:\Windows.

Also, all the driver path's would be wrong, causing a hardware crash on bootup.

-8trak

Quote:

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Originally posted by 8trak
As for your changing of drive letters on yoru main partition.
I think that any version of windows would have flipped out at that.

Lets say that you had windows installed in D:\Windows
or whatever,
If you change that partition's Drive letter to C:\
then all registry entrys would still point to D:\Windows.

During the loading of windows, one of the first things it would do would be to initialize the registry, and all the invalid links to D:\Windows.

Also, all the driver path's would be wrong, causing a hardware crash on bootup.

-8trak

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Well if i do a clean install like i did that should not be a problem but of course it becomes a problem like you say if you change the main partition drive after the insallation, i just changed since i was gonna format anyway.
However some people have told me that they have installed winXP on another partition than c:\ and have not gone through the icon problem i described so i am inclined to think that something went wrong during my installation.
I have had Win98 win2k and linux on my machine at the same time and not had a problem, but now that i only have Xp i had a problem that tixed itself when i formatted and installed again.

The mouse problem has also been fixed, it turns out that the PSU was causing most of my problems i bought a new PSU and many things that have not worked properly have started working... from now on the first thing i am gonna check out when having unexplained problems i am gonna check the psu.