Dejavu All Over Again?

[tjet]

Windows users fight to save XP

It seem like just yesterday that I was a new guy on TTV being told to get that XP off my machine and get me some good Windows like 98 or ME.

[JDoors]

Ya have to wonder if it's some psychological phenomena, and if it's particular to Windows or Microsoft users (does Apple get this kind of reluctance to upgrade?). Experience shows it's NOT the software, eventually most everyone upgrades. And then, like clockwork, it happens all over again.

Familiarity? Stubborness? Inbred hatred of having to make a major upgrade, with all that entails?

Personally, I've refused to upgrade to software that "requires" I contact Microsoft for "permission" to use it. I bought it, I don't care what they say, that GIVES me permission to use it. Like others, no matter what their reasons, I'll have to upgrade once I can't DO anything with my older software, but, like them, I'm gonna go out kicking and screaming!

[blim]

Now, I had so much trouble with Windows98 that XP was a dream!!!

My beef with Vista is the hardware requirements. For someone who isn't a "power user", it makes no sense to spend extra money on Ram. And the $299 celeron computer (including the monitor!) I'm typing on now is non-existant, sad for families on a tight budget.

Liz

[bozodog]

I know I sure don't need a POWER machine. This ole DELL is quite all I need with XP. Where does all that power go? Just to run Vista? Why? Jeesch, M$ must have stocks in computer hardware.

[Matt]

Did you just use 'good' and 'ME' in the same sentence?

Vista does have high hardware requirements. Unfortunately, people can't use XP forever.

[jcl]

Ya have to wonder if it's some psychological phenomena, and if it's particular to Windows or Microsoft users (does Apple get this kind of reluctance to upgrade?).

It's universal. OS X, Fedora, SUSE, and FreeBSD, for example, have had releases that provoked similar responses. With apologies to Bjarne Stroustrup, there are only two kinds of programs: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.

[Bubba Bob]

OS's are like cars. They've made their giant leaps of improvement towards efficiency and style. Now it's baby steps untill a big break through comes along that will revolutionize the way it operates. (obviously not Vista, or the new Toyota Tundra ) Also similar to cars, they've become more bulky, "easier to operate" (AKA, harder to fix), and everything that used to be out in the open is now tucked away behind a nice shiny piece of plastic. Remove this, unscrew that, pull off this: "oh look, there's the fuses";"oh look, there's the error log".

Edited April 15, 2008 by Bubba Bob

[irregularjoe]

OS's are like cars. They've made their giant leaps of improvement towards efficiency and style. Now it's baby steps untill a big break through comes along that will revolutionize the way it operates. (obviously not Vista, or the new Toyota Tundra ) Also similar to cars, they've become more bulky, "easier to operate" (AKA, harder to fix), and everything that used to be out in the open is now tucked away behind a nice shiny piece of plastic. Remove this, unscrew that, pull off this: "oh look, there's the fuses";"oh look, there's the error log".

"Also similar to cars, they've become more bulky, "easier to operate" (AKA, harder to fix)"

You've got that right!

My recent $1000 Lexus repair is a good example.

[JDoors]

... My beef with Vista is the hardware requirements. For someone who isn't a "power user", it makes no sense to spend extra money on Ram. ...

But that happens with EVERY OS upgrade. My Windows 3.x computer needed more memory to run Windows '98, the hard drive was barely adequate, the video wasn't up to the task, I needed updated drivers, etc.. Just like every OS upgrade.

Back then I was an upgrade-aholic (and I had the money to spare) so I kept up, but, in addition to my moral quibble with having to ask permission to use something I've paid for, I don't have the money for a new system. Would I like to have Vista? I bet I would! It's more secure than ever, looks great, and everything's designed for it now. The whole "does not work with Vista" issue is more and more becoming "requires Vista." Does Vista require massively more sophisticated hardware? Yup. Would I, or you, or anyone eventually get used to THAT level and moan about the next upgrade that obsoletes it? Yup.

It's universal. OS X, Fedora, SUSE, and FreeBSD, for example, have had releases that provoked similar responses. With apologies to Bjarne Stroustrup, there are only two kinds of programs: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses. [emphasis added]

Huh-LARE-ious! Good to know it's apparently at least partly due to Human Nature.

OS's are like cars. They've made their giant leaps of improvement towards efficiency and style. ... they've become more bulky, "easier to operate" (AKA, harder to fix), and everything that used to be out in the open is now tucked away behind a nice shiny piece of plastic. Remove this, unscrew that, pull off this: "oh look, there's the fuses";"oh look, there's the error log".

And, like cars, eventually everyone comes to rely on that sophistication and wonders how they ever lived without it.

Could I go back to the previous version of Windows (assuming it would still be somewhat useable)? I doubt it.

[tjet]

Like I said, it all sounds familiar from when I bought a machine with pre SP1 XP on it because my A+ texts were all about XP.

Myself, I am deciding if my economic stimulus check will go for upgrades or a new machine.

I have seen many new ones running Vista for $500 and Staples is featuring a laptop with dual core 64 bit processor, 1GB RAM and a 160GB HD for $449.

Matter of fact I saw where Staples is having a sale on PNY RAM.

I can get a gig for this for $68.

[JDoors]

Like I said, it all sounds familiar from when I bought a machine with pre SP1 XP on it because my A+ texts were all about XP.

Myself, I am deciding if my economic stimulus check will go for upgrades or a new machine.

I have seen many new ones running Vista for $500 and Staples is featuring a laptop with dual core 64 bit processor, 1GB RAM and a 160GB HD for $449.

Matter of fact I saw where Staples is having a sale on PNY RAM.

I can get a gig for this for $68.

Ooo ... I hadn't thought about using the check to upgrade ... No, gotta pay down debt (repeat).

With prices the way they are I am not as inclined as some to complain about inflation. Bread may cost twenty cents more per loaf, but you can buy an entire computer for a quarter of what you'd think it would go for.

[tjet]

Speaking of the good 'ol days, some of you might know why the kiddies got me riled here

[TheTerrorist_75]

Speaking of the good 'ol days, some of you might know why the kiddies got me riled here

512 MB of RAM equals 768/1536 for the VM. Seeing as onboard video is reducing the available RAM to 504MB the VM should be 756/1512. The OP does suck at math as well as the other members who didn't note what was posted..

[jcl]

Speaking of the good 'ol days, some of you might know why the kiddies got me riled here

They're right about fragmentation: it shouldn't affect maximum VM or drastically affect VM performance. Even if it does, file-level defragmentation isn't going to solve the problem: the page file is internally fragmented (i.e., the pages belonging to a given process aren't stored contiguously), non-copy-on-write pages mapped from files (e.g. EXE and DLL code segments) are backed by the mapped files rather than the page file, and paging is non-sequential.

But that was probably lucky guess on their part.

Edited April 26, 2008 by jcl

[TheTerrorist_75]

Speaking of the good 'ol days, some of you might know why the kiddies got me riled here

They're right about fragmentation: it shouldn't affect maximum VM or drastically affect VM performance. Even if it does, file-level defragmentation isn't going to solve the problem: the page file is internally fragmented (i.e., the pages belonging to a given process aren't stored contiguously), non-copy-on-write pages mapped from files (e.g. EXE and DLL code segments) are backed by the mapped files rather than the page file, and paging is non-sequential.

But that was probably lucky guess on their part.

I use PageDefrag from Windows Sysinternals.

The Windows XP Page File

[jcl]

I use PageDefrag from Windows Sysinternals.

The Windows XP Page File

That doesn't reduce fragmentation of the contents of the page file: even if the file is physically contiguous, the pages aren't guarantied to be ordered within the page file. You'd need to sort and compact the page file after every page (de)allocation to prevent logical fragmentation. (Or reserve 2 GiB/8 TiB for each process and hope that the page file is sparse enough that you don't run out of disk space.)

Edited April 27, 2008 by jcl

[tjet]

NT/2000/XP uses the object oriented approach to memory management.

The application or device driver say only "I want memory".

It cannot tell windows which physical memory or which memory addresses it wants, or even the range of addresses it want to fall within.

Windows uses virtual memory manager to interface between the application or driver and the physical or virtual that it controls.

Memory is allocated in 4k segments or pages.

Applications or devices written for Windows NT/200/XP only know how many pages they have.

The the virtual memory manager takes care of the rest.

It is free to store these pages in RAM or on the hard drive in the swap file named Pagefile.sys.

The Defrag command detects and repairs fragmentation.

Fragmentation occurs when a single file is placed in several cluster locations that are not the directly next to each other.

The clusters that make up a file are together called a chain.

When a hard drive is freshly formatted, the Windows OS writes files to the drive beginning with cluster 2, placing the data in consecutive clusters.

Each new file begins with the next available cluster.

Later, after the file has been deleted, the OS writes a new file to the drive, beginning with the first available cluster.

It the OS encounters used clusters as it writes the files, it simply skips these clusters and uses the next available one.

In this way, after after many files have been deleted and added to the drive, the files become fragmented.

On a well used hard drive, it is possible to have a file stored in as many as 40 locations.

Fragmentation is undesirable because when the OS has to access many locations on the drive to read a file, access time slows down.

Why does it slow down?

Because it places more demand on memory which causes it to shuffle active processes to the VM.

Which causes the drive sectors assigned to VM to fill up.

And the sectors asigned to VM could be widely scattered causing the pagefile system to request more RAM to run which causes more active processes to transfer to VM.

Thus causing the low virtual memory warning to appear on the screen.

Until someone proves them wrong, I will believe what MS says about their own OS.

Edited April 27, 2008 by tjet

[jcl]

The application or device driver say only "I want memory".

It cannot tell windows which physical memory or which memory addresses it wants, or even the range of addresses it want to fall within.

Kernel-mode drivers can map specific physical address ranges with MmMapIoSpace() or ZwOpenSection() and ZwMapViewOfSection().

Fragmentation is undesirable because when the OS has to access many locations on the drive to read a file, access time slows down.

Which is unavoidable for VM. The pages aren't even stored in a single file, let alone sequentially and contiguously. Even the pages in the page file can't be contiguous because processes can share pages. [Edit: Unavoidable, blast it. Fixed.]

Edited April 27, 2008 by jcl

[tjet]

Kernel mode drivers?

"Drivers can be written in either user mode (also called version 3 drivers) or kernel mode (also called version 2 drivers). In Windows NT 4.0, drivers were moved into kernel mode to improve performance. However, when a kernel-mode driver fails, it can crash an entire system, whereas the failure of a user-mode driver causes only the current process to crash. Because of this difference, and because performance enhancements were made in Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003, native drivers on Windows 2000 and later run in user mode."

Mebbie you need to brush up on your XP also.

[jcl]

That's an article about printer drivers. Printer drivers are indeed user-mode drivers (now).

Edited April 27, 2008 by jcl