I hate XP

[mikeford]

3 weeks ago my trip to hell began. I bought a cpu/motherboard combo at Fry's, and thought what the heck I have XP still inthe shrink, time to give it a spin. System was simple to assemble, MSI 645 with a P4 1.7, GeForce3 ti200, and 20 GB Maxtor and a single stick of 512 mb memory.

XP took a bit to install, time that is waiting, not any brain work. First thing I notice is that it sure takes a LONG time to boot, maybe 3 to 5 minutes (I don't wait for it anymore). Only non MS item installed is Diablo 2, and it crashes with a hard freeze maybe 3 times in a 6 hour evening session.

All crashes are hard freezes, ie nothing works except pressing reset on the front of the PC. The cartoon image that comes to mind is a service counter guy looking at a PC and saying, "but nobody ever wears out the reset button, oh you have XP, never mind".

 

[Derango]

that HAS to be some type of hardware issue. Try it with a different OS.

 

[mikeford]

I just may try to put my old fav on it, 98se this weekend.


One sideways thought I have had is that "maybe" some kind of memory test is running each time and the 512 mb is an issue, but its the windows xp moving dot screen during all but 2 seconds of the boot.

 

[Farfrael]

sounds indeed like a hardware problem ....
is everything recognized and working well (any IRC conflict etc ?) ?
did you check your mobo / CPU temperature when it crashed ?

my 0.2$

 

[Nothinman]

Yep that's not XP (unless you have a really bad driver), XP boots in ~30 seconds on my Inspiron 4100 notebook and it hasn't given me any problems (minus the fact that it's extremely large).

 

[GrumpyMan]

It boots in 45 seconds for me.

 

[nihil]

<<
(any IRC conflict etc ?) >>



yeah, there's always PLENTY of those aren't there? heheh

 

[Nothinman]

yeah, there's always PLENTY of those aren't there? heheh

Apparently you'd be surprised to find out how many cards or drivers are bad enough that they don't share IRQs well.

 

[nihil]

well he said IRC not IRQ. i was making a joke. no one got it though =\ either that or it was just corny.

 

[Dreadogg]

maybe try some windows updates! Or you have gave up already! Go ahead and install 98 SE bet you will get a blue screen 15 mins after bootup, Unless you update! And why not change the title of your post to "I need help getting XP running stable on my system" instead of your noobie XP but bashing a perfectly fine OS!

 

[kovert]

Perfectly fine my ass..... I have uninstalled XP on two machines in favor of 2000. Don't get me wrong, there were a lot of things I liked about XP, but the fact that my scanner wouldn't work if I printed, unless I rebooted. Stupid little driver issues that haven't been fixed yet. I do miss the ability to switch users without logging out though.

I'll wait for at least SP1 before I venture back that way.

-kovert

 

[Mem]

<< Perfectly fine my ass..... I have uninstalled XP on two machines in favor of 2000 >>



I`ve been using WinXP for gaming for last 6 months now, yes it`s that stable for me & have about 16 games installed at the moment that run fine,infact my old 98 PC which is also stable is collecting dust,anyway lets try and help him out, it sounds like a hardware or software problem rather then XP,I would like more info but anyway your board is a SiS chipset so have you installed the latest SiS drivers?

Few bios tweaks like disable all video shadowing,disable system bios cacheable,set AGP size to 64 or 128mb,XP should not take that long to boot,I would try some more games to see if it`s just Diablo 2 or if all games that are effected.

List all the hardware that you`ve installed on that board as well please.

you can get the latest SiS drivers from here for XP .

 

[Escalade]

Before installing *any* OS it's always a good idea to run the compatibility check... FIRST! In Win2k there is a command line switch (which escapes me at the moment) where it will give you a full report of the hardware found and any issues it may have. I?m sure WinXP has a similar function.