Windows ... the greatest BUG ever??

Well, I opened up a topic on AO and clicked on the "quote" button on the last reply and typed in my opinions (actually a question to be frank). It took me a complete 18 hours to post that reply. Guess why? Of course, the title says it all: The reason was Windows XP.... the greatest software BUG ever created by a company which is said to be the richest and the most enfluencial in the whole world, namely MICROSOFT.

I was not able to find out even a single clue as to why this happened! The only SIN I commited was to click on the "Quote" button in one of the AO's page. I trust AO more than the software says me to. After clicking the button, the OS hanged ( a regular problem most users would face on Windows). I waited for almost 10 minutes for the system to come back and do something. But then I realised that the mouse pointer (the arrow on the screen) has stopped responsding to the mouse displacements. After about two minutes, I turned off the power (as I always do on most hang conditions). I restared the machine and was surprised that upon the reboot, Windows did not allow me to do anything at all! It just shwed me the desktop. When I clicked on an Icon, that would be the last option if I clicked on the start menu, that would be the last action. In short, the first action wuld be the last action. I trie everything from the aplication reinstall in safe mode to a system restore and then ultimately tried to repair Windows installation and huh! nothing worked.

Upon calculation, I found out that I have reinstalled Windows XP more than 50 Times in last 2 years. Now thats a huge number. With hundreds of Hours wasted in instaliong drivers and other application only to see the light of the day for 1 month or so, Windows kills me!

All my software were fully updated. My antivirus (Avast 4.7) firewall (Kerio firewall) and Antispyware (Defender) were running and were up to date. I never open any suspicious sites and the system was all clean. There are just 5 programs that can access the internet (firefox, yahoo messenger, google Talk, IE (which I almost never use) and the update services of my antivirus).

I tried all that I could but failed. Ultimately, I had to boot from UBUNTU 7.04 CD, back up my docs and other data into USB ZIP drives and reinstall.

Now can anyone please tell me what could be the reason for such an abrupt corruption of the OS? What files would have been responsible and what can be done to it?

Now I have decided to buy a VMWare license and run Windows on top of Linux (well that enables me to get more OSes working too!) and then use my devices virtually. Would that be a nice Idea?

I also have seen on openSUSE site that version 5.5.3 of VMware workstation would cause some problems. So I have decided to get version 6 of VMware workstation (for Linux) which I hope due to its increased support will not throw away errors. Has someone here tested this piece of software onm openSUSE 10.2? And do I suppose to get help if something goes wrong?

Sounds more like a b0rk3d install to me..
Can you boot to safe mode?

My laptop has been running XP for well over 2 years now. Not a single reinstall needed.

Might want to check this thread at the VMTN Forums: http://www.vmware.com/community/mess...ssageID=663907 in regards to Workstation 6 and OpenSUSE. The VMTN Forums are probably the best resource when it comes to support for VMware products, particularly the hosted variations.

Running virtual is always a nice idea, IMO. ;) But I'm biased.

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Originally Posted by SirDice

Sounds more like a b0rk3d install to me..
Can you boot to safe mode?

My laptop has been running XP for well over 2 years now. Not a single reinstall needed.

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Well thats not something I would have not boasted about too. I too have run Windows for a long time, even not as much as you did. I ran Windows for 1 year without any problem. That very installation went into problem when I tried to install SuSE 9.1 on my machine and being a newbie, I accidently damaged my MBR.

As far as safe mode is concerned; Yes, I was able to boot into it. I tried everything from LOGS to policies and what not. Tried to check the system services of some new ones would have been installed or for a new entry in the "system startup" section at all points including the entries in the HKEY_USERS key in regitry. Nothing helped. As far as my small mind goes, the problem was not with the Windows XP core files but on the upper layers like SHELL32.DLL or so. I say so because I was able to launch programs from the CMD. I created a batch file to open notepad, MS word and Firefox and put it into the Startup folder in the start menu. When I booted back into normal mode, they all came up with their respective windows and were working fine.

The problems came up when I tried to interact "MANUALLY' with the "WINDOWS" (not some application's) interface.

One point though: I had installed Visa Transformation Pack. I know that this plays around with the SHELL32.DLL file. can that be a problem?

There are machines in the room in front of me with 4 year old installs of windows. Even at the height of windows suckiness (win 98 with desktop enhancement) I never had to reinstall windows more often than a couple times a year, certainly never into the double digits. Is it a legal copy of windows? I ask because experience tells me that cracked software is rarely as stable as legitimate versions. How old are the hard drives? are they likely to be getting corrupt?

Wow! 50 times in 2 years!? There has to be something abnormal with your setup. Maybe you have some hardware problems. I've run stable versions of m$'s OS for 6+ years. I *still* have versions of XP Pro that were installed when it was not even SP1 that are still running without problem. (They've all been kept up to date with patches and SPs and some regular maintenance.) I've run several stable 2000 Server installs for just as long too. I just recently replaced a 2000 Exchange environment after running it without significant problem for 6+ years. (ok, one hard drive failure about 1 year into the install... but restored from backup and it's been fine since.) Not to mention NT4... I'm not proud to say it, but I just replaced a NT file/print server that ran for about 10 years... The last 5 years of it's life were just for print serving... but still! I would go 1 or more years without a reboot because it was no longer being patched! lol Please don't confuse me with some m$ fanboy either. I use linux too. I've just been more or less *forced* to use m$ at work until recently. I've run linux for test systems and projects along with at home on laptops and computers for a while. I started with Redhat 6...

Dear phishphreek,

I forgot to tell you (or anyone else for that matter) that most of them were the result of my experiments with the system. However without any experiments I am not able to run Windows more than 4 months or so. I do understand the time when my own hands play with the system files. But I have faced this type of issues for more than 15 times. For almost 10 other times the reinstalls were because of a HUGE amount of software install-uninstalls which made the OS so slow that it became a PAIN to work with it... so the reinstallation was needed.

If we leave all those MANUAL occasions, what happened for around 15 times when Windows went whoooosshhh!! without giving any hint? I am not n IT professional, just a student. I do not have much resources to track down things using specialized costly software. I am not able to figure out the rest of the occasions when that happened.

This is a time when I think I understand much about Windows NT systems than normal (except the networking Issues) users. I tried each and everything that I could think of or have read sometime on a forum on net. But nothing helped.

This is the reason I call Windows a BUG in itself. I did nothing wrong. No HUGE softwares and it was a freshly installed system just 25 days old! Installed all updates and still... and that too for a silly apparant reason of clicking a "quote" button!?


EDIT: Frankly, windows copy is not legitimate. However Microsoft calls it genuine for the reason of the CD key. The CD itself was copied from an Original one. This is the same CD whose installation has served me almost an year without problems. There are two hard drives: one is 3 years old and the other is 1.5 years old. The OS is installed on the newer one. I Use the old one only for media file and to install the Linux system where I do not put any imp. data.

ah, but software installs/uninstalls leaving stuff behind is a fault with the software not windows. Windows just breaking 15 times without warning is very unusual. We have had that occur 3 times that I can remember on a network of 200 machines.

As for expensive software, adaware, spybot and ccleaner are all free to use and will do wonders for cleaning up installs and other nasties. (www.filehippo.com)

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Originally Posted by Aardpsymon

ah, but software installs/uninstalls leaving stuff behind is a fault with the software not windows. Windows just breaking 15 times without warning is very unusual. We have had that occur 3 times that I can remember on a network of 200 machines.

As for expensive software, adaware, spybot and ccleaner are all free to use and will do wonders for cleaning up installs and other nasties. (www.filehippo.com)

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Oh brother, I use them all. As far as legitimate copy is concerned, well, I have used it for the "free period without registration" on the same system also and that installation lasted for about 35 days. And even after using all those temp file cleaners, defragmenters, antiadwares and antispywares, Nothing happens. What could be the reason? I never change things in the registry or other system files I am not sure about (Now I do that on VMware Virtual Machines).

Hmmmm,

Are we talking about clean installs here?..............like reformatting as well?

Three things come to mind:

1. A slightly damaged CD and/or dirty CD drive causing corrupted installations

2. Windows Defender not playing nice with something?

3. The Kerio firewall has become corrupted? You might try uninstalling it and using the free edition of Zone Alarm as a fault finding exercise?

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Windows ... the greatest BUG ever??

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I think the usual response to this sort of stuff is that you're not smart enought to operate a computer with Windows XP installed. Install Linux instead.

Pfffft ...
n00b.

you have a dodgy copy of windows
it fails
and you reinstall the dodgy copy

am I missing something here :?

what age is the desktop ?
I wont ask about workload, as it is apparent you are heavily into farting around / research with your PC

I would have opted to try a different CD to install off
try putting on W2000 it's cheap now

you have ran chkdsk
and when you were installing it WAS to a fully flattened HDD
with a fresh partition

it's not just the NOS's that like a clean bed

the only other option that is springing to mind, is a good old fashioned PICNIC fault
it has to be something you have omitted
50 times in the lifetime of a box is ridiculous

and to save time why didn't you ghost the image when it was up and limping along

something's not quite right here
it sounds too much like a 'let's bash MS' thread
just remember, if it wasn't for billy boy, we wouldn't have all these wonderful PC's to trash

for me, a failed install gives me a reason to replace the HDD too, I use a volume copy to install too, and I look after the CD's
you are playing with em a LOT
so keep some spares available

50 fails is just WRONG on so many levels
you are holding something back

OK, I agree the thread name sounds as if it is a "Let's Bash MS" thread. However when I wrote down the thread, I was really really frustrated by another failure of Windows. I agree that to some extent I have been researching with my PC too much. About half of the reinstalls were due to my "PLAYING AROUND" with system files and things as such. Some other 25% (percent) were done when there was no one to tell me that what to do when the PC goes slow and I myself was a newbie ... I didn't even know that defragmenting will increase the sped upto some extent.

But since last 1 year or so, I have been something most people call a 'power user' of Windows. I too agree on the fact that there MUST be something really wrong with the installs. As far as BUYING the software is concerned, I had tried for it, but I lived in a small place in India and there are NO dealers for SOFTWARE.... leave alone the question of the Windows.

AS far as 50 times in the life of a machine is concerned, I DO NOT think that it is ridiculous considering that most of them were done by me due to "KNOWN" mistakes. Reducing the number to NORMAL failuer will bring it down to around 8 times or so. And those 8 were COMPLETELY UNEXPECTED failures. It is not the first time this has happened. There have been times when the OS crashed on me when I clicked on "Insert --> Picture" in OO, click opened the 'My Documents' etc.

@rlt : Yes I do run openSUSE as my OS for most other uses and have been understanding the OS slowly and steadily. The only problem I have on that one is the inaccessibility of the Internet due to my modem which is a GPRS enabled Mobile phone connected to the system by USB.... and almost all Linux users know that USB has got a bad life on Linux.

@Nihil : Yes, we are talking about clean installs which include the formatting of the whole hard disk.

1> I have tried more than 1 CDs. They all have same results. I used a CD without SP1, then I used one with SP1 on it and then I slipstreamed SP2 onto it. I even installed HOME edition form my friend (he had original one) and the results were same. On the other hand an installation which ran SLOW under normal conditions live on the same machine for 1 year without any problems. I am unable to undertand why this happened.

2> I am not sure what Windows Defender did. All I know is that it was running in the background. However i think that I did not open any suspicious sites which could make USE of the Defender. Again, I use firefox, not IE.

3> All reinstalls were failures in case of Kerio firewall. Each time I tried it, it said that the UNinstallation was successful but then the Kerio services were visible in the Services section! What about that?

I am not flaming Windows or MS in particular. Windows for sure is a good OS but it crashed upon me on many occasions. My question is not on Windows. My question is on "what went wrong with ME?"

Were the CDs burned copies or originals? Did you try a different CDRom? (possible hardware issue)? Have you done a diagnostic on the hardware and memory check?

XP requires good hardware....and alot of resources.

I have been running it for almost 3 years on several machines and have not had any of the issues you describe other than
Issues with

3rd party applications
Mutiple versions of MS Office :roll:
poorly written drivers
Scumware
falling hardware
people and\or apps mucking with the registry and\or system files

What kinda hardware you got this installed on.

You sound like me when I was first learning NT 4.0

I swear I had to reinstall almost every week....

Mostly due to drunken registry editing :(

MLF

Yes Morgana~ it does sound as if it could be a resource issue as it sounds like it ran slow from day 1?

If you then factor in three interactive antimalware/firewall apps that may not be playing nice together..................?

Firefox is also quite a resource hog on its own ;)

EDIT:

If there is a setting in the BIOS for "AGP aperture size" try values of 32Mb and 64Mb, as this reduces what is available for the system/applications, so a smaller value might give better performance.

OK, Here is what happened:

I bought my machine from compaq/HP (it is branded and there is nothing I can do with BIOS) All I have done is to add another hard disk, a DVD writer and some memory. The box did not come with an OS.

@MsMittens: Yes, I have changed CD roms from pirated to an orginal and the CD rom as well (actually used the another DVD writer insted of the previously installed DVD combo drive). The problem persisted.

@morgan : I seem to be on your way or the other way round!

@Nihil: I have tried many options. But every 3 months o so, I face a data loss. Even though I do dnot have any important or sensitive data on my desktop. But, I really hate to lose my emails, and documents created overnight. Yes, after going onall through the thread, I too think it is a resource issue. But what could be that 'resource'?

Well if it is crashing that often you have a hardware problem...or a bad driver.

The additional hardware is obviously using more power...so it could be that.

OEMs offer Bios and driver updates so you may want to check Compaqs site for updated drivers, chipset updates and BIOS updates.

The event viewer may give you some ideas on the errors occuring when it crashes.

Also you can turn off automatically restart when crashing so you can get the exact bugcheck error

something like IRQ_NOT_EQUAL and alot of hex...it will usually list dlls and apps running at the time of the crash.....and the file that cause dthe exception.

My gut says unstable hardware\driver

MLF

Well, somewhere you are right! Actuallu your "IRQ_NOT_EQUAL" thing reminded me that the OS started getting towards an unstanble state after some sort of crash. On the BSOD, I have seen that "IRQ_NOT_EQUAL" thingy. What is that?

I think and as far as I remembr, I got a link of some intel developer documentation (in PDF format) from this site only (I think NIhil was the poseter). I have seen that term in the document. But I could not understand it as it is towards the end of the doc which I have not read till now. SO is that related to the processor?

And if that is really related to the processor, do I take it as a driver issue?

IRQ is usually a driver issue...

are you sure you have enough power for all your devices...?????

Make sure your devices have updated drivers and XP SP2 is installed...oh and dont forget the 80 or so post SP2 patches

:)

MLF

OK... I have the XP SP2 installed. I will get back after a driver update from the site. And why do you put up a 'happy' smiley after remindng of the 80 patches??? It blows off my mind... to download Autopatcher ... to install it takes more than an hour....HUH!

Anyway thanks for that.

The smiley is my sick sense of humour...and a jab at MS for not releasing a sp...

;)

MLF

Hi jock~,

Can you give us the exact hardware specifications of your machine?........... that will save us asking any more questions and help eliminate some possibilities ;)

I would NOT install Kerio and the Microcrap anti spyware applications.

Get the free ZoneAlarm firewall and use Avast 4.7. I have that combination running on several XP and Windows 2000 boxes, so I am happy that it works.

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All I have done is to add another hard disk, a DVD writer and some memory

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That should not cause any power issues unless your PSU is faulty or was at the limit of requirements to begin with.

Is all your memory of the same specification? I mean speed and clock latency (CL) Mixing it can cause instability problems.

Also, make sure that your video monitor has a separate mains power supply, rather than drawing it through the computer's PSU.

In your BIOS there should be an option to "fast boot"..........turn it OFF. There should also be an option called something like "restart on error" turn that OFF as well. That will make sure that you see any error messages ;)

Turn OFF the "power saving/power management" option.........in Windows, turn off any power management options like "snooze", "hibernate" or whatever. Set screensaver to "none". You want the machine "on" all the time, and no background monitoring processes running.

Good Luck!

If you are having IRQ issues its perhaps worth checking that the bios is assigning them automatically and not manually. Or if you want to assign them manually make sure they are set the way they are supposed to be.

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Originally Posted by nihil

Hi jock~,

Can you give us the exact hardware specifications of your machine?........... that will save us asking any more questions and help eliminate some possibilities ;)

I would NOT install Kerio and the Microcrap anti spyware applications.

Get the free ZoneAlarm firewall and use Avast 4.7. I have that combination running on several XP and Windows 2000 boxes, so I am happy that it works.



That should not cause any power issues unless your PSU is faulty or was at the limit of requirements to begin with.

Is all your memory of the same specification? I mean speed and clock latency (CL) Mixing it can cause instability problems.

Also, make sure that your video monitor has a separate mains power supply, rather than drawing it through the computer's PSU.

In your BIOS there should be an option to "fast boot"..........turn it OFF. There should also be an option called something like "restart on error" turn that OFF as well. That will make sure that you see any error messages ;)

Turn OFF the "power saving/power management" option.........in Windows, turn off any power management options like "snooze", "hibernate" or whatever. Set screensaver to "none". You want the machine "on" all the time, and no background monitoring processes running.

Good Luck!

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Let me answer the questions one by one:

1> I have enough power for all my devices. Although I do not know the power rating of the SMPS, I asked the compaq/HP support over chat and they told me twice that the power supply is sufficient.

2> As far as the KERIO is concerned, I have switched to it quite recently. I used zonealarm previously and the same problem made me switch to Kerio. So that shouldn't be a kerio problem instead. This has happened since I didn't have an internet connection (and hance no firewall). I use Avast 4.7 (Home edition) already and it works like a charm. It never crashed till now in any of the Windows installs.

3> Yes, memory is of same latencey and frequency. I had checked this twice before upgrading the memory.

4>My PC is branded and hence no advanced options are there. "Fast Boot" thing is just not present anywhere.

5>I am not concerned about my electricity bills. I live in a hostel and my college pays for it; so no question for power management. As far as screensaver is concerned, I use a TFT monitor which won't get bad just because a prticular picture was displayed for a loooooong time. So I ALWAYS keep it at 'none'.

@Aardpsymon: I do not have control over the IRQ. They must of course be set by the BIOS automatically.

Well, in my opinion, this is a corruption problem of the CD itself. May be that all the CDs that I used till now had some sort of error with at the time I got them. I do not think that it is a problem that I would be able to solve so easily over AO. I think ... it is not possible to track things back untill it happens one more time... which I would really hate more than ever.