I freaking hate Windows

[chernabog_ca]

Alright I need to vent...

I haven't done a format and clean re-install of XP in over a year so I'm somewhat to blame but this is just nuts. I had been wanting to do one for awhile now but I'm in the process of upgrading (something I haven't done in over 3 years) and wanted to wait till I did it. Should be end of December.

We just bought a colour laser printer for the house on Friday night. Got it unpacked and installed it on the network as my dad had a large colour print job that is due Monday morning. Last night before I go to bed I decided to install the printer on my machine. Now for some reason you just can't install it as a network printer and you need to use the HP setup software. No problem, I install it but it can't see the printer cause Norton and Windows Firewall start bitching. Finally get it to find the printer (set-up went without a hitch on dad's laptop and mom's machine) and installs. I get prompted to reboot but I was going to bed so I just shut down the machine. This morning I turned my machine on and it hung after the POST. I gave it some time and then I got a blue screen and an error about a memory dump. Although very rare I have encountered this before so I just reset the computer. I then get that message saying that Windows didn't start properly last time and what would I like to do. I tell it to start Windows normally. Again the machine hangs with the XP Loading screen. I just leave it until it reboots itself. I then select Safe Mode with Networking. Same thing. I select just Safe Mode. Same thing!!

I grab my Windows XP CD and throw it in thinking I'll just repair it. Well then I run into my next little problem. Both of my drives are SATA and I need to load a third party driver for the drive controller so Windows can see it. After a little while I find the disk and load the driver okay. Then I select repair and Windows Setup tells me it's going to examine the drive. This goes on for 20 minutes and I don't hear any drive activity and I know that the last time I did this it didn't take this long so I reboot the machine and start over again. Next time it finds the drives and goes to the next step. I select repair installation and it starts coping the files over. Gets to 2% and tells me it can't copy file A. Then file B, file C, file D, and so on. I figure there's something wrong with my CD so I take it out, wipe the surface, and try it again (this is a legit copy btw). Same thing! I ask my dad for another XP cd and try that one. Same thing!!

Finally after about my fifth attempt, I get it going but now set-up is telling me that it can't repair XP because now it's not fully installed anymore. So I tell it to just install without a format. It goes ahead and starts deleting everything that's currently in my Windows folder, which I really don't care because I'm at the point where I just want to get the damn machine up so I can go ahead and grab stuff off of it and then do a format (no I don't back up on a regular basis). I've got the TV on and American History X is starting so I figure I need a break from all this and I'll watch that thinking that the install will be done when I come back. Well 2.5 hours later, it's still freaking deleting files!!!! I can't believe it! As I'm typing this, it's been going for 4 hours and it's still only deleting the Windows folder!!!

I've never had this much trouble before and what really gets me is I have no idea what happened. I can't believe that installing a printer driver and some software would have this kind of effect but that's the only thing I changed yesterday.

I so want a Mac!

[j7wild]

Yup Windows XP really sucks!!

I installed a game a few weeks ago, its system requirements well below what I have on my PC but everytime I run it, it does a compatibility test and it tells me I have 0 GHZ processing speed and the game requires 1.6 GHZ to run.

My PC is Dual Processor combined for 3.2 GHZ; then when I still go ahead and run the game, it would sometime play fine for hours or crash after just a few minutes.

How does it crash?

During parts with a lot of audio and visual special effects (explosions and weapons fire audio, graphics intensive on the screen), the game crashes and I cannot even ALT F4 or ALT TAB or CTRL ALT DEL;

sometime it crashes and then reboots the computer by itself.

I know it's not a memory issue because the game only requires 512 MB of memory and I have 2 GB; I also have a 128 MB video card and the game only asks for 64 MB.

So I think it's a Windows XP issue yet the game is Windows XP compatible.

Oh it also won't let me save games; it says game saved when I save my progress but if I quit the game, go back to desktop, come back later - I have to start over from the first mission!!

[chernabog_ca]

I'm curious as to what game that is.

Funny thing is XP has been rock solid for me for years until recently. Makes you wonder with all these updates every Tuesday if Microsoft is doing something to get everyone to upgrade to Vista. j/k

I'm getting a copy of Vista when it launches as part of the package I bought from Intel for my upgrade but I'm leary to install it given Microsoft's great track record.

[j7wild]

The game is Delta Force Extreme from Novalogic



I am staying away from Vista if I can help it!!



But I can run games that have higher system requirements like Brothers In Arms and Call of Duty on my PC with no problems!!

[wirm]

Yup Windows XP really sucks!!
My PC is Dual Processor combined for 3.2 GHZ; then when I still go ahead and run the game, it would sometime play fine for hours or crash after just a few minutes.

How does it crash?

During parts with a lot of audio and visual special effects (explosions and weapons fire audio, graphics intensive on the screen), the game crashes and I cannot even ALT F4 or ALT TAB or CTRL ALT DEL;

sometime it crashes and then reboots the computer by itself.

I know it's not a memory issue because the game only requires 512 MB of memory and I have 2 GB; I also have a 128 MB video card and the game only asks for 64 MB.

So I think it's a Windows XP issue yet the game is Windows XP compatible.

Oh it also won't let me save games; it says game saved when I save my progress but if I quit the game, go back to desktop, come back later - I have to start over from the first mission!!

I'm going to guess that the random reboots have to do with an over-loaded power supply. Do you know how many watts it is? Make sure that it is strong enough to support everything (processor, ram, video card, etc). Both PSU and overheating can cause problems like random reboots. Either that, or your video card could be failing...

What kind of video card do you have? The amount of RAM is not always a great indicator of its effectiveness. There are 256 MB cards (like the FX 5200) that can't even come close to cards with 128 MB.


As for save games, I can't help you there. Those things are usually specific to the game. For example, most first person shooters let you quicksave (while others like HALO use checkpoints). And some games don't let you save during a mission at all.

[j7wild]

Well it doesn't act up when I play more graphic intensive games like Call of Duty and Brothers in Arms so I don't think it's the video card (ATI Radeon 9800).

I built this PC myself and I know the Power Supply is 600W and I also put an extra fan over the video card and another over the motherboard.

I think there is a compatibility issue with Delta Force Extreme;

the only time the PC goes into random reboots or crashes or freezes is when I run the game.

The game is supposed to Auto Save your progress when you have completed a Mission so when you come back the next time, you will start with the next mission but it doesn't do it.

I have tried installing the game on Drive C, Drive D, Drive G; all drives have full Administrator privileges.

[chernabog_ca]

Well I think my machine is FUBAR. I got up this morning and Windows XP won't install, even after I gave up and did the format. It can't copy files over and this is off an original MS CD. So the next thing I was left to try was installing the copy of Vista RC1 that came with the new mobo & cpu I got. It installs fine but won't boot!!! I have no idea what it could be. I'm thinking it's the drive but I ran a checkdisk and it came back fine. I've got most of the pieces ready for my upgrade but I was waiting till after Christmas to buy the rest but I might be forced to do something now. Not happy!

(I dont' know if this thread should be in Tech Issues or not. If so can one of the MODs move it?)

[j7wild]

will it reboot if you tried a clean boot?

[chernabog_ca]

Nope, it hangs at the loading Windows splash screen. There's something that's not loading and causing it to hang. Not sure if it's a driver or not. I'm still playing around with, I won't give up this easily.

[corfy]

chernabog_ca, I had similar problems trying to fix a friends PC. He asked me to look at it, because he thought it might have a virus. A quick check showed that the 90-day trial anti-virus that came with his computer expired 3 years earlier. He didn't have "a virus", he had 96 of them. Not to mention tons and tons of adware and spyware. But in the process of fixing that, something got corrupted, and I had to do repairs and reinstalls. It took me a week to get it running again.

After a week off, I decided I didn't want to have to put up with that anymore, so I installed an old harddrive into my desktop computer and installed Linux on it. I had been wanting to try Linux (and wanting to move away from Windows) for a while, but that was the proverbial straw. I still have XP, but I rarely use it at home anymore. I typically fire it up about once a month to get the latest updates, and maybe a few more times to print something (my printer doesn't have Linux drivers).

BTW, Linux should run on the same hardware you have now, and HP printers are well supported in Linux. And if you are curious about Linux, I recommend Ubuntu. It is free, easy to use, and powerful. Just download it, burn it on CD, and you boot into the CD without having to install it to try it out. Or, if you don't mind waiting a couple of weeks, you can order a free CD from them (you don't even have to pay shipping). I have Ubuntu installed on 3 computers, my home desktop computer, my wife's laptop, and my work laptop (all dual-boot with Windows).

[chernabog_ca]

Well it's back up and running. Don't know what it was but it's back and working, for now. I've got two SATA controllers on my mobo. I switched controllers and it worked. Don't know if that means the other one is toast or what. Now I've got to find a good data recovery program and see what I can off the drive.

[st39.6]

I have never had problems with Xp (home edition), so I cant speak ugly bout it. Even tho I think it slowly gets lower speed, but that more a problem of me not giving it defregmentation (its a shame, but I didnt more then a year....). Tho I run a lot anti-virus and anti-spyware progs on it and do get rid of registry sh*t time after time...and my baby PC works just fine.

[chernabog_ca]

It's insane how much faster my machine is right now with nothing on it

[Jake]

I'm waiting for Vista since I have to reinstall windows and I'm already using 1 license on 3 machines lol.

My system is just stretched to the max, too much crap to clean up, needs a nice little format.