does windows have a half life?

[otispunkmeyer]

thanks for the input guys, i will be trying to get some of your suggestions done this weekend, maybe even a full reformat....university is back up and in full swing again now so my free time is minimal

 

[Seeruk]

Originally posted by: otispunkmeyer

*autorun doesnt work
There are a ton of programs that disable autorun, especially disk mounting tools like daemon and burning apps. I dont know your level of expertise... so forgive the question... have you actually got autorun enabled in the drive's properties?

*nvidia firewall no longer functions correctly
Perhaps the most horrendous piece of software I have had the stupidity to install in recent years. Get rid, just use XP's firewall its fine.... if I remember rightly it was responsible for my fathers BSOD's when entering standby

*i get a message every time i switch on telling me windows has found new hardware in the form of a IDE controller

Have you installed your forceware drivers properly?

*my tv card no longer synchs video and audio allowing the audio to get about 10mins ahead.

Nothing to do with windows, more likely the software you use for recording or playback

*i cant use standby mode because i get BSOD and a restart.

See Nvidia Firewall above

thats since decemeber, it'll probably tail off soon.....things will stay go wrong but more slowly

 

[Link19]

If properly and well taken care of, Windows 2000/XP/2003 should be very stable and run for a long long time without any problems.

Now on the other hand, POS Windows 98/ME have a half life, if not a 1/100th life. Those operating systems were horrible, inferior pieces of garbage

 

[dnuggett]

Originally posted by: xtknight
It was possibly just a rumor but didn't even Microsoft themselves say you should do a repair installation once a year?

That is quite possibly a rumor. If you believe this is true.. well I have a 95 disk I'll sell you for $100.


D

 

[Cerb]

To answer your title question: no. This PC I am on now had Windows installed in 2003. It is a common desktop (right near the dinig room and living room), runs 24/7, etc., etc.. It has not, however, had tons of little pieces of software installed and removed over time. Lots of upgrades, but not (install-then-remove)x100. It is on its 2nd HDD and 4th actual PC. It runs as fast and stable as a new install.

As far as your problem...when doing the re-install after making sure it isn't RAM, don't use the NV firewall.

 

[ShadoWing]

it might probably be the cd that's jus effing up

 

[alfa147x]

as far as i know u can install it if you whant

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: xtknight

Originally posted by: Philippine Mango
While I can definately agree with you on what you're saying, in this case it's probably due to poor hardware and or drivers..

I apologize for being overly belligerent, but it's obvious software can play a role in problems. What I meant to say was software, not Windows I guess.

I'm just saying, Windows has idiosyncrasies and to just blame it on the hardware is a little premature without any evidence of it, don't you think? I really meant Windows as in the whole software "ecosystem". There's plenty of times when sporadic issues like this are caused by software (mainly incompatibilities), just as much as hardware from my experience. Overall, after you install so many things and default DLLs that "aggressive" installers love to replace, the whole thing effectively does have a half life unless you are extremely careful.

You don't really know what you are talking about. Go try and replace a system DLL on Windows XP and see what happens.

Not mentioning flaky drivers (software) as a possible cause of this is ridiculous (MrChad didn't in his original posting). But now he did so that's fine (was evidently just an honest mistake). I really do agree with the OP that after awhile the whole thing will degrade unless you are really aware of every last thing you're installing, etc. Granted I don't have the problem because I use PCs on a "religious" basis, but that's another story. It was possibly just a rumor but didn't even Microsoft themselves say you should do a repair installation once a year?

No, Microsoft did not say that. Where are you pulling this crap from?

There is nothing in the original post that points to any problem with Windows itself. It does not degrade over time. You show me someone formatting on a regular basis to "clean up" Windows and I'll show you someone who is an amateur at XP.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: Smilin
You don't really know what you are talking about. Go try and replace a system DLL on Windows XP and see what happens.

Um, go install a service pack and see what happens? It copies the DLLs to hard disk, and replaces corresponding ones in %SYSTEMROOT%\* on the next boot. At the end of the day, you have a default DLL replaced. The VC6 runtime (used by LOTS of programs) is not protected by Windows File Protection. Any application can kill all handles to it and replace it whenever it wants. And since the DLL is probably already in memory for the programs that need it, it doesn't even have to kill any handles to it.

And besides, even it was "protected", ejecting any WinXP source media, deleting some DLLs in %SYSTEMROOT%\system32\dllcache along with any left in %SYSTEMROOT%\RegisteredPackages doesn't take a rocket scientist. But the majority of the time it is just replaced on the next boot-up.

The other day, just like the OP, I got stuff saying I had a new sound card. That's bogus. The drivers were all intact and a simple reboot fixed it. The cause? Since my sound card has worked ever since and has never failed at all on Linux, it's probably Windows.

There is nothing in the original post that points to any problem with Windows itself. It does not degrade over time. You show me someone formatting on a regular basis to "clean up" Windows and I'll show you someone who is an amateur at XP.

I didn't mention anything about reformatting.

If you install Windows and never run anything other than what's already there by default, it probably won't have a half-life, no. If you actually do stuff, junk buildup is inevitable, unless you want to thouroughly audit every installer that you run for files and registry entries it adds/replaces. A codec pack could easily interfere with capture devices as they run under the same subsystem DirectShow. They both need some of the same devices.

My point is not that all of a sudden the CPU gets retarded and thinks 1+1 is 3. My point is that applications easily interfere with each other.

 

[Smilin]

No, a service pack install does not MERELY replace DLLs (nor does smss.exe with a pendingfilerename at boot). It is also updating the catalogs to reflect the signature of those DLLs. If some application comes along and updates MFC42.dll or some other shenanigans from Windows 95 "dll hell" days the system will detect this and roll it back.

Yes you can deliberately break this process by fooling with dll cache but any installer code writer clever enough to understand this process is also going to understand not to do something so stupid. I've never seen anything touch dllcache before.

If you install Windows and never run anything other than what's already there by default, it probably won't have a half-life, no.

I'm glad we agree on this. I'll also agree that if you load a bunch of sh1t on your machine you should expect your machine to have sh1t on it. Don't blame the OS.

I build my machines properly, load correct drivers, stick to WHQL when possible and generally don't have any problems. Because my machine runs right all day every day if I put some junk on it that introduces problems it's easy to identify and correct.


As for your new sound card issue.. don't ignore that, troubleshoot it. If you see something appearing in your windows\setupapi.log it means your hardware is reporting something to Windows. Not a good sign if the hardware was already there to begin with.

 

[xtknight]

I do wish things were easier to debug in Windows. Like "{GUID} did not register with DCOM"? (paraphrased)

I find with all the developer IDE crap I have on here everything gets so bloated...

Here's my experience with this "half life". I haven't rebooted in so long I don't recall every last thing I did in the last session, and all of a sudden I find Windows stuck at "executing wlnotify.dll" at login. So with msconfig I use diagnostic mode and it boots fine. I don't feel like going through all however many of my services and disabling each until the system boots fine again without taking 5 minutes to fail to register to it's "DCOM server". It's a lose-lose situation. IMO a lot of things are needlessly complicated for basic end-user functionality. If said things weren't so complex it wouldn't be nearly as bad. Stuff loves to go apes**t sometimes. I did google that error a lot. I came to the conclusion any component could be doing it so it was hopeless.

Why does stuff like "Network Connections" just hang (it did before I just reinstalled)? That really pisses me off. Timeout for CPU-dependent operations should be measured in CPU cycles, not seconds. Pardon me, actually after a while everything hung, start menu, search, whatever shell operation I needed, it all hung.

Then my computer specs don't show up in System Properties (but user name, key, etc. do). Just stuff like this, jesus, how do you debug it? I probably could have salvaged it if I had the patience to disable every service and find out which one is causing the problem. But I don't (nor do I think most people).

BTW, I'm not advocating that Linux is perfect either. I like 'dmesg' though. I'm not blaming Windows exclusively (most of it is probably not Windows' fault but we'll never know). The Event Log is not nearly verbose enough to find out what's actually going wrong. The whole situation is so complicated it's bound to fail somewhere along the line.

Sooner or later they just need to make an OS that fixes itself based on all the available knowledge base information. Should I have to disable every service by hand? Why doesn't Windows do that for me and figure out which one is causing the problem?