Operating systems... a recipe for frustrations!!

[Invincible]

Hey all.
I think I've come here to vent, then possibly pick up some useful info to help me out.
I've been having nothing but trouble with several OS's. Each OS has their own problems. Becuase of that i can't decide which one to stick with! (or two)

I was with Win98SE, then I wanted to try win2kpro. which I did. First thing I noticed once I finally got it installed, was that for whatever reason it would take ages to boot up! Right now I'm dual booting with Win98se and 2kpro, but I don't even go into pro any more because of all the things screwing up in it! Here are some of my symptoms:

- Net doesn't work anymore - I'm on ADSL. It works when it wants to. sometimes you boot, it will work, majority of the time it wont IE just sits there and goes no where. I was ready to blame the isp when I realised it worked in win98se.... wierd.
- as I said before, it takes forever to boot - sometimes. sometimes it's 'normal' (still onger then win98se) but other times it literally takes 5 minutes or more to boot!!
- the other day, went to print soemthing, get bsod and reboots on it's own... so much for a stable oprating system.. I can no longer print!

There are numerous things that are malfunctioning in it, and obviously it's time for a reformat. I just don't know what to put on when I do!

Win 98 seems to conflict somehow with Cool Edit 2000, tell it to do anything, and while it is processing, it hardlocks like 2 saeconds in.
I have 512MB of ram, and though I admit I'm a heavy multitasker, there is no reason windows and my programs should be using 400+ MB of ram. Sure you can use proggies like maxmem, but before you know it it's right back up there again. And my resources get as low as -1%... that's right negative....
When it's low as well... (even the 40%) explorer hangs for long periods at a time when trying to access folders or move data around, which is really a pain.

Then there's XP. I can't even get the thing to install on this computer!! It installs fine on my 266, though I lost 300 3dmark 2000 points over win98se... I don't know if I should even bother trying to get XP to work. I really wish I didn't have to dual boot, but it looks like I'm going to have to stick with win98 just for gaming, and decide from 2k or xp for the other os. With the major probs I've been having, it seems almost a good idea to have another os to fall back on. Are the Radeon drivers any good for XP? does anyone have decent Radeon/XP 3dmark scores?

Sorry for the long post, but ppl complain when you don't explain the situation well enough. So, I guess my main things I would like to know, is if anyone has any ideas as to why 2kpro takes ages to boot, and the net doesn't work, and why XP won't install? should I bother trying to get it to?

Here are my specs:
t-bird 1333 no o/c currently
Abit kt7a-r (original bios - i know i know...)
512mb pc 166
Radeon 32ddr
ibm 60gxp 40GB
Dlink 538tx nic (to adsl modem)

Other potentially useful info:
XP, if I remember correctly, got as far as installing, but when it reboots to enter the os, it gets some stop error which I think I may have written down at some point.
Sorry again for the essay, any help would be appreciated.

 

[ineedsleep]

You have to understand that any windows 9x or ME will always boot way faster than NT or 2K. I believe that the times when it boots normally... say under a minute or two is when the Net (ADSL) is working. When it takes 5 minutes or longer, I would bet the net isn't working. Check and see if this is true.

If it is, it's because the DHCP client is timing out when contacting the server (NET). It takes a while for it to time out...

If the statement isn't true, try shutting down some services... such as IIS, DNS, Workstation, Server - assuming that you don't need any of them.

I assume that the NET is setup correctly... I really couldn't tell you where to begin... maybe someone else can help. And with the XP issue, I would need a bit more information... what does the error say? We'll need to know to help...

Hope this helps..

 

[Invincible]

you know, I think you're right about the net... since it takes time for the modem to initialise... actually, I had suspected seomthing like that before, but didn't think tha'd be it.
I'll look into that!

And flipping through some pages here... I found one of the errors I was having. But I'm not sure if this was when I was having probs with 2k or xp. It's been a while since I tried this... I had just given up, now I think I'll try again as soon as I can clean out a partition. If I remember right though, this was the error:

c0000218 Registry File Failure
The registry cannot load the hive file
\SystemRoot\System32\Config\Software or it's log or alternate.
It is corrupt, absent, or not available.

yes, I just confirmed it, that was the error I got.
After it was all installed.