You guys just want to keep here at the shop a bit longer today!

Moving ahead -

SP3 - If you are running XP, you should be at SP3+. Why? Because one day, most likely in the near future, (Windows 7 - 2010?) Micro$oft will announce the support cycle for SP2 will end. Most likely, they will "update" the Windows Update Site again and the folks running SP2 will not access.

Like SP1 - you will no longer receive all them wonderful security updates that Micro$oft sends to us on Patch Tuesday. Also, SP3 has a few patches that fix a few outstanding bugs XP has, not to mention a few security enhancements. It always good to keep your system as updated as you can!

Fast User Switching - Okay, MAYBE in "our" world - but again, read the first post - his Uncle asked him for help - meaning that he Uncle has limited knowledge of how XP works - his Uncle most likely knows how to turn it on, open Internet Explorer, check his e-mail, and do a little surfing -

In my experience most OEMs desktops start you off with auto log in as Administrator, set up as the default settings. Most people don't change this because they don't know how to or don't care to.

Is this true with this system? I don't know. Does his Uncle have an iPod? I really doubt it, but you never know. That's why I gave him not one, but two really good, expert level resources for all the information he could ever want or need concerning services - both sites spell it out like if you were a 4 year old, he couldn't go wrong. If he did, all he has to do was ping me a quick e-mail.

Two or more accounts for this system? Might be true, but I really doubt it. Speedemon86????

Remember, we are looking at a fairly under-powered computer - why would anyone set up additional accounts that equates into an additional burden on the hard drive, CPU, Ram, registry, etc.

Manual - I agree with JedMeister - BlackViper's Guide is pretty foolproof - manual or disabled services will speed-up boot times - less for the Hard Drive to put into Ram or page back to file...

Think of it this way: you have a very small car - an older one - from the early 1980's - with a hell alot of miles on it and hell alot of wear and tear - would you try to haul more or less weight?

Given today's HDD and memory capacities - "picky" - I have explained this too many times already - he doesn't have what we have in terms of a modern, desktop PC. Lets be frank here: he has what we all know is nothing more than a oversized paper-weight - but it is all he has - and all he has to work with.

To make this system run a whole lot better - and performance has been the key issue here - it needs to become a lean, mean, secure, tweaked, slimmed down, updated PC - to make it until the hardware finally gives out or XP finally becomes unsupported on April 14, 2014 or Windows 7 SP1 becomes available and then he can finally upgrade his PC - which is what I am telling all my XP SP3 customers - ride that horse until it either drops dead or something much better (hopefully) comes your way.

There is nothing "today" about this system - except a few software updates and a guy who needed a little help.

It been suggested that he should use Ubuntu, Puppy Linux, Fedora - he uses W2K and his Uncle's is XP Home SP2 and he said twice now that he is very happy with what he has - read the posts people!

Hosts File - You guys are going to drive me to drink! (or is that the plan?)

From the website: http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm

Editors Note: in most cases a large HOSTS file (over 135 kb) tends to slow down the machine. This only occurs in W2000/XP/Vista. Windows 98 and ME are not affected.

To resolve this issue (manually) open the "Services Editor"

Start | Run (type) "services.msc" (no quotes)
Scroll down to "DNS Client", Right-click and select: Properties
Click the drop-down arrow for "Startup type"
Select: Manual, or Disabled (recommended) click Apply/Ok and restart.

If he decides to use HostsMan / HostsServer - this is also highly recommended!

Currently, the updated MVPS Hosts File is 565kb with 18,201 entries.

At home, I have DSL and with HostsMan / HostsServer, OpenDNS, Speed Guide's TCP Optimizer, and a few well-documented changed system settings and the standard registry tweaks that appear at this forum: I actually have gained speed versus lost performance in my internet connectivity...

Again, its all about leaving as much resources available (Ram, CPU cycles) for other things to use - he has limited resources - kinda like going to the bar with only $20.00 bucks in your pocket - you can have only a few beers and then you gotta go home.

Here is a thought: Imagine simply setting his system so that the kernel stays put in Ram versus paging back to file - speeding up performance - what if the system couldn't do it because he has 20-30 services running and the 2-3MB needed for DNS Client? He only has 512mb Ram.

"Computer Cleanup" - If your case came into my shop and it was 3 years or older - I would spend the 15 minutes doing it. Besides, it impresses the customer!

I offer it as a part of a computer "tune-up" service - which also includes most of what I have painfully mentioned in all of my posts - all the programs are freeware - it just a matter of downloading them - they all should be included with most systems anyway...

If you take the time to teach your customers a thing or two about a thing or two - just the basics - they will always come back for more which equals billing hours!

I have one huge registry "tune-up tweak file" that merges most of the better known and proven registry tweaks - and removes most of the unnecessary garbage from the registry: like unneeded time zones (who cares what time it is in Korea? or Russia?), unneeded languages (tell me you speak Chinese or Arabic) windows classic color schemes (when the last time you used Rose, Wheat, Teal, Rust, or Pumpkin?) don't ya "love" them tool tips?, and to tighten down system security, especially with Outlook Express and the Windows Media Player.

I remove approx 17% of the registry - Yes, that is how much garbage is really in there - as well as I remove approx 50-70mb from the system itself in terms of deleting unnecessary folders and files, uninstall unneeded Micro$oft programs (Messenger, NetMeeting, Dr. Watson - there is a winner!), of course tweaking background services and changing a few system settings for performance, deleting a few unused cursors and a few unnecessary fonts, wallpapers (Autumn or Bliss?) and screen savers (I download a few cool ones ported back from Vista, like Bubbles!), hotfix uninstall backup files, interactive training files, and uninstall the many 3rd party "trial-wares" which are mostly adware / spyware -

I have achieved performance gains benchmarked by up to 40%! (versus a fresh, default OEM install)

I usually spend a day and a half with a client's computer - 12-14 hours - all this for $450.00 clams - less than half the price to purchase a modern, desktop PC with 2.0+ Gigs of Memory and today's ultra-fast hard drives to run Vista correctly.

Okay, I gotta run, it's almost 5:00pm here in the windy city - time for me to scoot home and see what my wife is up to and kick the dog...

Enjoyable as always, gentlemen.

poolsharkzz

Agreed 100%, Poolsharkzz. I've ran underpowered computer systems for a long while till i finally saved money to afford a proper rig. And i've learnt a lot this way.

It's funny how the mods of this forum reply to any affirmation not matching their views with "Are you drunk?" or "I agree, but what happens later?" I am a moderator of a forum myself. And when the admin promoted me for helping out people and being nice, i saw that as a huge privilege. And i still enjoy moderating to the day, and actually keep on topic, and when i give warnings or bans it's because they deserved it. Of course, to most of you i may count as "a kid", i'm only 17. But there's one thing you gotta realize - kids these days have so many more ways to learn, and learn faster. And you should never forget that you should never despise those that are, in some way, lower than you, because you can learn a lot from anyone in this world.

Me and Poolsharkzz gave on-topic advice. You come and say something that translates into "he should just get a new computer". What if he doesn't need a new computer??? What if he's happy with his current computer and doesn't want more?

As a matter of fact, i have a 24" flat CRT here on my dual-PIII. But it's a TV, and that means running 1024x768 on a display that can only do 720x576 natively. Just a few hours ago i popped the thing open and was tweaking focus so i could read text better. Because i can't afford a new monitor here at the moment, so i get by with what i can. Yesterday i was running around the house chasing and killing bugs.

Yeah, i do have a pretty high-end rig at home, but it took a while of running crap PCs to save money for that. And what do i get - 3 graphics cards fried in 8 months (warranty ftw), and my current HD3870 suffering from a design flaw which makes the memory overheat and artifact - it needs a new cooler. But why should i buy a new cooler to fix a flaw that shouldn't be there in the first place? Anyway, i realized i'm much more happy with my dual-PIII than my C2D. I tweak at it all day when it needs tweaking, but once i'm done tweaking it runs without a single hitch, for months on end.

So why should the OP's uncle get a new computer with Vista if he can check his email just fine on his current PIII?

Sorry, but this simply isn't true. The system in question has 512MB of RAM, which is plenty for a basic web-surfing, document-writing system with two or three users. My parents system was an Athlon 1GHz with 512MB of RAM, and they used this for years before changing to a laptop (they live off the grid now, so power consumption is a concern). An idle user in the background doesn't apply any "burden" to the system resources. If the system does need more RAM, idle pages will be written to disk, and then read back when needed. For the tasks that the OP's "limited knowledge" Uncle has, this really shouldn't be a concern.

Sure... so you remove the entire A/C system from the car (let's assume it's currently winter time) because you have no need for it. Then the summer comes along... you might be wanting that A/C back again, but the driver has no idea how to do that. Even worse, in cases like with nLited installations, the A/C system has been thrown out altogether!

The system described in the original post is a very typical 2000/2001 computer. Those specs are exactly what XP was originally designed to run on.

I suggest you check again. You're suggesting that a DNS lookup from a web server is faster than looking up that same entry from cache? Your hosts file might be helping things by blocking ads, but otherwise, the setup that you described will lead to slower page load times.

Erm... "only" 512MB of RAM? Look at the recommended system requirements! You're talking about "only" 512MB when that was the equivalent of modern systems with 8 or 16GB. 512MB was a LOT of RAM back then. My mother's system, with 256MB, boots up, and task manager reports 100MB free.

I'd like to see this "40%" performance gain. Benchmarking tools test raw CPU power, or memory access speeds, or disk access speeds - none of which are going to be affected by additional registry entries. There have been far too many discussions and reviews about this, and they've all been turned down. Read the results for yourself.

Wow... you charge people half the cost of a modern computer... to make their old computer slightly faster, if not more broken?


Please tell me if I've been rude or off-topic in any way here. I've simply been trying to debunk several myths that have been brought up by Poolsharkzz (which have come up time and time again over the past 7 years).

Again, I never suggested that he simply get a new computer, but rather that a default clean install of XP would probably do a world of good.

Your hardware troubles are the reason why I'm rarely a first adopter of new technology. Up until this past year, I've always worked on older hardware. My main workstation up until last summer was also a dual PIII 1GHz system with 1GB of RAM. My new computers were built, installed, and updated, and the only major problems I've had have been from a couple of sticks of bad RAM (hey - it happens).

I tend to use this a lot lately... are you guys drunk? (Zxian excluded)

Anyone who writes Microsoft with a $, refers to BlackViper and suggests turning off the DNS Client then replacing it with a hosts file shouldn't be distributing that kind of poor advice. Those are the people that drive systems into a mess that professional technicians such as ourselves end up cleaning up for people. You want a fast and reliable system? Clean install XP with SP3, install the latest drivers and upgrade the RAM and you'll have a wonderful system without the mess caused by those so called "tweaks". Increasing the amount of memory, even in an old system will outway the benefits of any possible "tweak" you can imagine.

Why do we all need to move up to 2GB RAM? XP's minimum requirement is 64MB btw, and it actually runs with lower than that. And his uncle's mobo doesn't even support more than 512MB.

Do you think everything that Microsoft makes is perfect? If it were, nobody would've been tweaking it as we would've been all happy with it out of the box. I've been a happy TinyXP user for 2 years and continue to be. My retail copy of XP (which i bought only after SP1 came out btw, i ran 98SE till then) has been sitting on the shelf for a lot of time. And my retail Vista Ultimate 64 has been nothing but a waste of money.

And what exactly did BlackViper do wrong? Explain please. And no, i'm not drunk. Why does everybody that tweaks his Windows OS have to be drunk? Oh, and i write Microsoft whatever way i want to. It's called freedom of speech.

No, I don't believe that everything MS makes is perfect, but having dealt with several OSes on various hardware, I'd say that it's better than the rest at a lot of things.


BV makes it seem as though you can disable those "unnecessary" services at will and not worry about the possible repercussions of doing so. The worst part of it all - if something breaks, you often don't know which service it is that is required without a lot of trial and error.

If you want to disable services on your own computer, go for it. If you're doing work for others, chances are you'll end up disabling something that's going to cause them problems later. While this might end up giving Poolsharkzz more customers in the long run, I think it's just wrong, and isn't worth the "OMG 3 seconds faster boot" that you get.

EVERY time I nlited my system or started tweaking services, something broke in the end. My laptop had a plain vanilla install of XP on it for two years. No tweaks, no services disabled, just plain XP and updates. Number of incompatibilities with software - zero. Number of times I needed to enable a service for something - zero. It worked. Plain and simple.

I'd bet you guys a beer that the OP's uncle would rather have a system that works reliably rather than one that's 10% faster. As you're typing your reply - is your browser that much faster at responding to your typing if you've twaked your system?

Such as? A lot of talk but no hard examples.



That happens if you don't read the service descriptions.



When i disable stuff on other peoples' computers i only disable those that i'm sure they aren't going to need, and ask about it. "Do you need LAN networking" "No, i only use the internet." 2 services less. And i leave a little batch file. "Well, if you're ever going to need it, run this and reboot." No one ever called me back saying stuff doesn't work, and i've done quite a few installs.



That's bad luck for you. The furtherly tweaked TinyXP Platinum 2 install i have here on my dual-PIII is 2 years old, and survived being moved from an IDE HDD to a SATA one attached to a PCI controller card, 2 CPU upgrades and one mobo swap. It still boots in 20 seconds. 17 processes at idle, that's including the Vista Drive indicator, ATi Tray Tools, and the two processes for my multimedia keyboard and special mouse buttons, so that's 13 Windows processes. It does everything i need it to do, and never had any software which didn't install. Oh, and i still get automatic updates.

And tell me, do you need the wireless monitor always running on a computer that will never have a wireless card? Or the Server/Workstation services on a computer that will never need to share files via LAN? Or even worse, Remote Registry??? Those are only potential security holes. The more you plug from the get go, the less you have to deal with later on.

You know what's wrong with what you're doing? Everything.

You want proof that there's nothing wrong with XP as it is? Try asking the MILLIONS of users that use XP as is without "tweaking" it. nLite/vLite are the busiest sub-forums of this entire forum, and they're not praise and celebration posts either. Most of the posts in the nLite/vLite section are posts about problems and complaints of broken parts of Windows after "tweaking" the OS. The same goes with complaints about BlackViper's "tweaks". It's funny, you never hear people complain that an up to date install of XP with up to date drivers doesn't work, because guess what, it just does.

Oh and yes, you can spell Microsoft any way you want, spelling it with a $ just proves your lack of education.

I can only agree with Zxian and jcarle here, on all points. Most of those tweaks do very little in terms of performance, and quite often people get problems from them later on -- just like we see everyday in the *lite sections (I've removed X, now how to add it back? what to keep so app xyz works? etc). Large hosts file can be a problem (and kind of suck, even for ad blocking), it's misusing it at best.

Anyone who actually charges customers large sums of money for doing such things to their PCs are only doing them a disservice. For $450 you'd get quite an upgrade (or an entire new computer even). Any competent tech or shop would sell them an upgrade kit for half that, which would actually give them a real performance boost, instead of charging a LOT of money for almost no difference and potentially breaking things/creating their customers more trouble.

While the thread is still a "healthy debate" and keeping an eye on the temperature...
I wanted to +1 this.

The focus appears to have been on components being stripping components from the install media, deselected during install or disabled post-install with a view to saving resources with the expectation that this implicitly leads to better performance.
Those "erring on the side of caution" are suggesting that care is taken to measure correctly that there is in fact any difference in performance and also that the end user is aware of and understands what was changed so that future issues that crop up can have their root cause identified more readily.
(In the corporate world this awareness changes more to "security hardening" and "group policies" having strange side effects - the latter at least can be filtered out for troubleshooting.)

Trying to increase performance through tweaks requires a good understanding of what the components do for you or the system, a simple paragraph that describes what a service does with a recommendation that "it should be okay to disable this - try it and see" doesn't cut it IMO.
I feel that Black Viper's list is a collection of such statements that people often follow blindly and acts as a placebo.

Performance needs to be measured accurately, with a baseline and changes being made individually to observe their impact - also as Zxian mentioned "startup times" are nowhere near as important as "operational speed" - with S3 sleep mode boot times become completely irrelevant for workstations and I see this being the future, and for most applications once they are loaded into memory their performance is unlikely to be affected by other consumers of virtual memory (as unneeded ones will already have been paged to disk anyway).

Trying to measure how optimized a system is based on the amount of memory (physical or virtual) is committed, how long it takes to start up or where CPU cycles are being spent (when not at 100% for long periods of time) can turn out to be inaccurate, so a false economy to try to "fix".

I don't follow BlackViper's guide blindly. Actually, when i first messed up with services i had no idea that such a site existed.

Okay, let me give you a real-world example. My dual-PIII used to take over 2 minutes to boot, and most of that 2 minutes the bar just scrolled and scrolled, with no HDD activity. I opened up Device Manager and disabled the onboard SCSI controller that i wasn't using since i have a SATA card. Now it takes 40 seconds, half of which are the hardware checks - Windows itself boots in 20 seconds.

In your opinion, should i be so nice to let Windows handle it, and enable the SCSI controller back so i have time for a snack till my computer boots? And unfortunately S3 doesn't work on this machine.

@ jcarle: If everything i've been doing was wrong, i couldn't have been able to type this post since a lot of people would be chasing me and trying to kick my butt.

Lack of education huh? Well, i still have a lot to learn, but i wouldn't put it that way.

At this point you should stop asking people if they read the thread. Honestly, out of the blue statements and derailing totally off topic.


I said it first but I still back you up.
As also stated by Zxian and by the OP (read the thread ?) the computer we are talking about is more than acceptable on the hardware level. People talk about their experience "from the times of Win3.11"... have you ever ran a properly installed XP on a PIII 800 with 256 RAM, sent mails or surf the internet with it ? Exactly, no problemo. So say "fairly under-powered computer" for this 1.2GHz-512, not at all.
I'm sure Black Viper knows an awfull lot about services, but I'm also sure he formats his PC at least 10 times a year. This is not what the OP is planning to do. This computer needs to be properly reinstalled, in a few hours, not 12-14, have a drink with the family up North. And maybe come back in 4 years and do it again.
Microsoft makes Windows XP the best they can to
1) make it look good so it sells (that's the unneeded bit for not so "hard core tweakers")
2) make it work out of the box for 99.99 % of buyers, this implies unneeded components, but does not translate in "making a bad product".
And it sure doesn't mean anyone replying here knows "the" uncle best than Bill Gates knows the uncle. None of us knows the uncle, only the OP, but maybe MS has a little understanding of their users and of their product.

I'm going off topic as well. I wonder why this thread is turning almost emotional for some posters. I'll stop here.

I don't see where i got emotional... Anyway, i'll be leaving. See you later.

nvm... had a post written, but didn't read the whole topic, rendering my post irrelevant.

In your situation I would have gone into the BIOS and disabled the unused hardware so it is not even presented to Windows when it comes to device enumeration.

The example you gave was machine-specific, and if there isn't an option in the BIOS to disable the onboard SCSI controller then sure, Device Manager would be the way forward - but that has zero impact on system performance and I would say the delay is down to the driver or BIOS, not the OS.

Any post-install customization takes you further from the "out of the box" configuration and into territory where all sorts of issues (possibly way, way down the line) can occur - disabling devices in Device Manager to me is a last resort, and disabling Windows services via the Services Control Panel applet is something to look at for servers to be deployed in DMZs or secured environments as a security hardening procedure, not for performance.

Yes, you can eke out a relatively small decrease in startup time and virtual memory consumption with knowledge of the OS, your system and what you have changed - but I wouldn't do this for other users' systems (only 3rd party service tweaking when they are causing problems, like someone who had Norton and Norman anti-virus installed at the same time which deadlocked the system ~30 seconds after startup and neither would uninstall properly).

This is further proof that you simply don't know what you're doing. It took me about 90 seconds to find page 4-27 of the manual for your Gigabyte GA-6BXDS. That includes the time it took for me to download it. After which, I saw that Mr Snrub had already beat me to my point, set "Onboard PCI SCSI chip" to "Disabled".

There are a several dozen ways you can increase a system's performance without doing anything to affect end user experience. Disabling services is not one of them.

Disabling un-used devices in the BIOS. Moving the pagefile to a 2nd physical drive if available. Changing the XP theme to Classic. Defragmenting. Those go a lot further than any service you can disable and don't change the end user experience.

Well, of course it was machine-specific. Are there any "generic" computers out there? As a matter of fact i had the SCSI controller disabled in the BIOS, but XP was still detecting it. And of course tweaking services takes you away from the "out of the box" configuration, it lets you set up your system the way you want it, and use only the parts that you really need.



I don't exactly tweak a lot on other peoples' systems, i said so above. I don't have time for that anyway, but i ask what they run and only turn off a couple of things they really don't need, and also leave batch files for re-enabling them, named "click here if you have trouble with (wifi, lan sharing, blah blah blah). Simple, fast, and effective.

It's basically the same reason why people tune cars. Some tune them for performance, some tune them for better fuel savings. If all cars would've been perfect, no one would need to tune them, and the ones who would try would eventually revert them to stock configuration as they ran better that way. Exactly the same goes for computers as well, regardless if it's software or hardware.

When you need to use all those services or have resources to waste, you just leave everything as it is (and install Norton ). Honestly, i had to disable more than half of Vista 64's "features" (retail copy, not pre-tweaked in any way) to have it feel right. I kept Aero (actually Aero and DX10 are the only reasons i run Vista), but disabled all its animations and stuff. And then i found myself doing half of my stuff in a 32-bit XP VM, because just about everything except Crysis, Opera and Solitaire, crashes under Vista. And no, it's not due to my tweaking, i reverted to out-of-the-box configuration yet it still does the same.

I don't mind a pretty interface as long as it's still functional and doesn't slow down my work. But when it does, it's time to trim it a little.

Edit: jcarle, i know my boards' BIOSes like i know the palm of my hand. Onboard SCSI IS set to Disabled yet XP still picks it up. Want a photo of that? And if you mention the classic theme, why shouldn't one disable the themes service entirely? The Classic theme is still sluggish compared to disabling the service. Please tell me a piece of software that explicitly requires the Themes service enabled.

I think there's a higher chance that you didn't disable the right items in the BIOS more then there are that XP was detecting disabled items.

I'm willing to bet if we interviewed any of those people, they'd pretty much say anything because they probably don't even know what they need or not in terms of windows components. I'm sure that if asked today they neither know what a batch file is nor do they remember where or what those icons you told them about are.

People tune their OWN cars, not their neighbour's. I don't walk around the neighbourhood trying to see if I can help one guy get an extra 2 miles a gallon on his drive to work. I'll help when something's BROKEN and I'll help repair it to it's original working state but that's nowhere near the same as what you're doing to other people's computers. People like cars because they open the door, they start the car and they drive. People want to do the same with they computers. People want to be able to go to the store, buy a webcam, plug it in and talk to their grandkids on MSN. They do NOT want to sit at their computer and get frustrated because their webcam doesn't install or doesn't work because of some service that you thought was wise of you to disable since they "didn't need it".

Vista does a fine job of adjusting itself to your hardware configuration but it can't make miracles if you're running it on underpowered hardware. People such as yourself always want to have all the latest and greatest but don't want to invest in the hardware needed to run it properly. It's funny, on my machine, I run Vista 64 Ultimate that has more "features" then any other version of windows. On top of that, I usually multitask to the point where I have over a hundred something processes running simultaneously. Not to mention that while I'm doing all of that, I'm often doing things like transcoding DVDs in the background. Yet, even with all that going on, Vista is faster on my machine then XP was. You take a F1 driver, throw him into a Pinto and expect him to win the world cup.

Fine, genius. BIOS shots coming right up. Point out what i did wrong.



You know what, i was lying about the batch files. I rarely do things like that, and only do them to people who know what this stuff is about. And if you leave a big "CLICK HERE TO MAKE THAT WORK" icon, you can be sure everyone's gonna notice it.



I don't walk around my neighborhood tweaking XP installs either. On the other hand, if someone asks me to, i do it.



Look at my sig, first computer. Do you think that is underpowered for Vista Ultimate 64? I don't have money for Raptors, but shouldn't a 3.5GHz dual core and 6GB RAM be enough? I'll get an E8400 soon and will take it over 4GHz, maybe that will be better. But other than this CPU upgrade i really haven't got money for Raptors, SSDs or the like. I REFUSED to upgrade to Vista till i got the extra 4GB RAM, i ran XP SP2.

I don't multitask to the point that i have 100 processes open (i suppose more than half of that are Windows processes in your case) but i do run a few BIG apps at the same time (Photoshop + Sound Forge + XVI32 on 20-200MB files), and 3 virtual machines. They work fine, but stuff like AVIPreview or VirtualDub (even the x64 version) or OllyDbg crash mysteriously, so i run them in the XP 32 virtual machine, which is considerably slower.

I didn't say Vista 64 is slower than XP. With all that RAM (and yes it is dual channel, 2x 1GB + 2x 2GB) it runs faster than XP 32-bit which would only be able to see half the RAM anyway, however it's much more buggy.

Edit: Here are the BIOS shots from my dual-PIII. If you'd kindly show me what i did wrong, i would really appreciate that.

Wow-whee, Zow-whee!!!

Sorry guys, I am on a different time zone than most, so I tend to get behind in all this discussion - Sooooooooo exciting!

For the record - Yes, we are all "professionals" here, some more than others - this is a very "healthy debate" - with different points of view - which is good - keeping an eye on the temperature is indeed quite prudent - keep sharing - but keep that in mind...

I agree with Th3_uN1Qu3 - older systems are fine - if you know how to take care of them. I ran for 9 years with Win ME on a Intel Celeron 633 Mhz with 256mb PC 100 Ram and a 14 Gig Hard Drive that I orginally purchased in 1998 with Win 98 - it did okay - a few BSOD evey now and then, lock ups, crashes, and the like that was all part of having Win ME - and Yes - super-tweaked and tuned for max performance and speed!

"Remove the entire A/C system from the car" - That would be like removing the spare tire out of the trunk - come on, now! I think you stretched that quite a bit farther (say from New York to LA) than I usually go - or tweak - or remove - for that matter...

Besides, do you really NEED the A/C system? No!

Do you really need the A/C system in a car for it to run properly? No!

By removing the entire A/C system from the car, will the car be a little bit lighter and thus you might get a little better fuel economy? Yes!

Would I remove the entire A/C system from the car without the owner's permission?

Do you see where I am going with this? You not compairing apples to apples.

All Operating Systems since Win 98 come "out of the box" with dial-up settings as the default internet connectivity settings standard - check it out next time...

MTU, TTL, MaxConnectionsPerServer, MaxConnectionsPer01Server, etc. - if I have DSL or a Cable broadband connection, I would want my system setup to handle such.

How about simply removing the registry key that calls out to the network looking for any shared folders or printer? Or changing the system's memory usage settings from "Programs" to System Cache"? Or removing most of the Visual Effects, DNS errors caching, enable smooth scrolling, Clear Type, and a whole hosts of things...

Properly tuning up an engine is a far cry from removing the entire A/C system.

nLite/vLite - Don't use them, I know very little about them, and don't see the need for them, and was never part of the original topic. At a later date, maybe I'll research.

"EVERY time I nlited my system or started tweaking services, something broke"

Again, I have to agree with Th3_uN1Qu3 - read the service descriptions - learn about them and what they do and how they fit together into the bigger picture.

* Microsoft has this amazing website stocked full to the rafters with all kinds of data that pertains to services, the registry, drivers, updates, Kbs, - the whole ball of wax...

Do you need the website address? It's www.....

Spelling it with a $ just proves your lack of education - Do you really want to go there? I really hope not - it would be quite silly on your part - you need to think about what you say before you say it - you will make yourself look like a fool...

Just because you cannot recognize what "Micro$oft" means does not give you the right to throw a punch...

Computers 101 - It's an "old school" saying in certian circles, meaning that at the time because Micro$oft was rolling out a new OS, what, every 6 months it seemed?, it would get expensive to keep up - and it did for some - and some got angry - thus the dollar sign.

Half way down the page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_political_spelling

Not too common to see it spelled that way any more - My hope was that there were a few "old schoolers" here at the forum.

"You want proof that there's nothing wrong with XP as it is?" Nobody said nothing was wrong with a default install setup of XP - nobody.

* Update: The XPize & Vise Projects

"For $450 you'd get quite an upgrade (or an entire new computer even)."

Oh Yes - you are correct - I totally agree - a substandard, under-powered processor, very minimum amount of Ram that's under-quality, MAYBE last year's HD Drive model - weak speed, FSB, and storage capacity - weak Optical Drive: CD read / burn maybe, no DVD Burn, no HD, no Flat Panel Monitor included, crap Video Card, crap Sound Card, crap Graphics Card, crap Network Card, no Speakers, just a 101 keyboard, a roller ball Mouse and Pad - and a whole lot of spyware / trialware...

call eMachines today!

To purchase a home system to run Vista correctly and properly you will pay in Chicago anywhere from $950.00 - $1,250.00 plus tax complete - or for a couple of hundred more for a few "extras" - this is a far cry from simply a tune-up or an upgrade...

Foobar to the so-called "Minimum System Requirements" for Vista - I know better, so should you.

Again, we have another person posting who cannot take 5 minutes and read the very first post - or understand the reports given in the first post - HE CANNOT UPGRADE HIS SYSTEM - it would not be in his best interest to do so $$$$$ - wise, the hardware is too out-dated - he would have to purchase a brand new one.

I would not recommend this to anyone, especially when they have everything they need sitting right in front of them. Will I sell a memory upgrade for an older system? Yes! If it's possible to do. Here you cannot - read the first posts!

"Those specs are exactly what XP was originally designed to run on." Yes - XP - before SP1 - we are at SP3+, the key word is "originally" - today is a different story.

"I suggest you check again / DNS lookup from a web server" Okay - if I lived 100,000 miles away from that server - it's located two blocks away from my shop.

Never had any problems with slower page load times - whether I use my ISPs or OpenDNS - I use OpenDNS for proactive security reasons - please read and learn:

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=214446

My ISP isn't patched yet - still, I haven't noticed any difference in page load times.

"Wow... you charge people half the cost of a modern computer... to make their old computer slightly faster, if not more broken?" - Again, you really need to read ALL the posts before becoming part of the peanut gallery...

What I do to a system is nothing more that what has been described at this forum:

http://www.msfn.org/board/Windows-Tips-n-Tweaks-f10.html

I have never had a customer come back into my shop and complain that their system is screwed up or "broken" as you put it. In fact, most of my customers are referrals - meaning they liked what I have done and are happy enough to tell someone else to use my services...

"Broken" TELL ME what I have broken? Describe in detail what I have broken for my review and our peers....

Can you? I doubt it. In fact, I know you can't. Case closed. Feeling a bit silly yet?

"Please tell me if I've been rude or off-topic" Your past that - which again shows that you have not read ANY of the past posts - or know what you're talking about.

"debunk several myths" Do I have to debunk the debunker again? Take a few minutes to READ the past posts! If you do not understand something - try learning!

"I tend to use this a lot lately... are you guys drunk?"

Th3_uN1Qu3, I couldn't have said it better! I have 1GB Ram in my system - I use only a little more than half at any given time - maybe 600mb max? Again - well, Th3_uN1Qu3 said it all!

"Do you think everything that Microsoft makes is perfect?"

Zxain, your response is the only thing you said last night that made any sense!

"Disable those "unnecessary" services" I have already discussed this - I am still looking for someone to answer whether his Uncle NEEDS any of the services I listed.

"is your browser that much faster at responding to your typing" Yes - because I installed a nifty little program called: Prio - Process Priority Saver

http://www.prnwatch.com/prio.html

I have the base priority of iexplorer.exe set at "High" and believe it or not there is a very noticable performance improvement all around - try it sometime!

Besides, I use all my systems in a multitasking environment: for word processing, invoices, payroll, taxes, accounts receivable / payable and the like...

I bought my system to run the best it can - so why not improve on what Micro$oft did?

I agree with Mr. Snrub execpt for a few points:

1.) We are not talking about the "corporate world" or "workstations" - this is a home-based system hooked directly into the internet that is very weak on CPU processing power and the Ram itself - not the amount - but the quality...

Which is key here - and I have said this all along - less is sometimes more!

2.) Yes - some folks just take BlackViper's word for it without research - that is why I gave him "The Elder Geek's" website which has detailed explanations - check it out.

In closing, forget all of these posts for a minute and look at the title of the very first post:

"Trimming down a less than reliable XP system"

I've made my point.

poolsharkzz

You still don't get it... if you need to leave an icon to make something work chance are the person doesn't understand what "THAT" is.

You can't expect your system to fly like a rocket when you have multiple VMs running concurently...

I hope you understand that it has nothing to do with Vista and is strictly due to the way those applications are written.

Vista is not buggy. That's the biggest misconception about Vista. Vista itself is incredibly stable. The problem are the drivers and the software. You can't blame the highways when your car breaksdown because of poor design. The same applies with Vista. As rock solid as it is, if the software people write are unstable and aren't respecting the guidelines defined by Microsoft then obviously the software's not going to work properly. The same goes with drivers. Companies aren't used to writing drivers in 64-bit and some of the driver guidelines have changed for Vista, especially in Video. So it's going to take time for companies to adjust just like the transition was difficult between 98 and XP.

Page 4-27 of your manual not only shows that "Onboard PCI SCSI chip" must be set to "Disabled" but also that "Channel A Termination" must be set to "None" to "Disable SCSI Device Support." (which you haven't done). It might also be a good idea to set "Channel B Termination" to "Disabled".

Actually, I'm a very big user of VirtualDubMod myself (I've used it a few hundreds times on this box), and so far I had 0 crashes. None with avipreview either. I didn't see anyone else mention those apps crashing on Vista before either. Sounds like he has codec problems or something along those lines.

Some people are VERY quick at blaming Vista for their hardware vendor's buggy drivers or for every little app glitch they've seen...

It has nothing to do with codecs. I admit i haven't tried VirtualDubMod, i'll try it when i get home, thanks.

jcarle, that was not my point. I rarely run all 3 VMs at the same time. And with this you're also contradicting yourself, you said that Vista runs well on your system even with a hundred processes running. My point is - i shouldn't need to do half my work in the XP 32-bit VM.

About the BIOS thing, i'll try that. And shall i hope that the Adaptec SCSI controller magically vanishes from my Device Manager? Edit: No it did not. And it still takes over 2 minutes to boot if i enable it.

And since i first learned what Windows is, i've always heard this. The problem is with the drivers and the software. It's never, ever, ever Microsoft's fault. Well, what would Vista, and as a matter of fact, any other OS not just Microsoft's, be without drivers and software??? It'd be nothing. I'm not quick to blame everything on Vista. It's just that these programs worked just fine in XP, and still work fine in the XP VM.

PS. If you lived in Romania you would've known how you can blame the highways for your car troubles.

Poolsharkzz, i agree with most of what you said so i won't lengthen my post anymore. Besides, can anyone blame you for making some fair $$$? I'd love to be in your place.

Thanks, hey, maybe one day you will?

The bottom line is that we helped speedemon86 as best we could and supplied him with more than enough information to put him down the right path to solve his Uncle's problems - whatever he decides to do with that system.

Nobody debated that - some got picky on the details, some got hung up on services, or tweaking, or slimming down, or couldn't read, and some crossed the line - and now feel a bit silly they did.

I wonder what speedemon86 is going to think when he comes back to these posts and reads all the hell he caused? LOL

Hey, I got one for you - can you help me out?

On the desktop / right-click / new / shortcut - and the new shortcut wizard should pop-up, right?

Well, I get a error dialog box that reads:

"rundll32.exe is not a valid Win32 application"

I hit "Okay"...

Then I get another error dialog box that reads:

"Unable to create file 'new shortcut'

File system error (16389)

As the second error dialog box appears, I get an system icon on the desktop named "new shortcut".

I ran the system file checker, googled my brains out, I checked Doug Knox's website, Kelly's corner, Microsoft's and tried what little I found but no luck fixing it...

No error codes listed in the Event Viewer. No other problems present.

Got any ideas?

I found this:

"You are missing a registry branch key. Export the branch from a working XP machine and import it on yours. The key-branch details are:"

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile

What does your look like?

Mine is:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile]
@="Application"
"EditFlags"=hex:38,07,01,00
"TileInfo"="prop:FileDescription;Company;FileVersion"
"InfoTip"="prop:FileDescription;Company;FileVersion;Create;Size"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\DefaultIcon]
@="%1"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shell]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shell\open]
"EditFlags"=hex:00,00,00,00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shell\open\command]
@="\"%1\" %*"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shell\Scan with Icon Catcher...]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shell\Scan with Icon Catcher...\Command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Icon Catcher\\IconCatcher.exe\" \"%1\" /single_instance"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shell\XQSHP]
@="&Boost with Advanced WindowsCare"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shell\XQSHP\Command]
@="C:\\WINDOWS\\system32\\cmd.exe /c start \"XQSHP\" /high \"%1\""

Could you compare with yours and tell me what I am missing?

poolsharkzz

Well, let's see if it'll be of any help. Here's how my registry key looks like:

Oh boy, I had missed that post...

Wow. You almost sound like you even believe what you're saying! Amazing.

One quick example: $324 will get you: a Dell Vostro 200, with a e2180 processor and 2GB of RAM. 16x DVD writer, a 80GB SATA drive and everything else. Everyday's normal price, no rebates or anything like that.

Substandard, under-powered processor? The E2180 would be a huge upgrade here. Very minimum amount of RAM? There's 2GB standard (4x what he's got). No HD? It has a modern SATA HD. No DVD burner? It has a perfectly good DVD writer. Yep, you're wrong on *all* counts, and on a box that's 3/4 of the price you'd charge. That box will run Vista just fine too, and it's not an eMachines (and it even includes Vista). It's vastly better in every aspect than his current box. Yet, you'd charge $450 to tweak that P3 instead? Either some customers are absolute morons (don't mind paying WAY too much for "tweaks" that take 5 minutes to apply), or you just like ripping them off big time. There's no way you need to spend "$950 to $1250" for a box that can run Vista well (and certainly not in the USA), unless the case has to be made of solid gold or something.

Also, you say they wouldn't get a monitor, speakers, keyboard and such out of it, but do you include those for free when you "tweak" one of those ghetto old P3's? Right, I didn't think so either. Yeah, others should feel silly


Again, we have another person posting who cannot take 5 minutes and understand the point had nothing to do with the first post, but just charging people a LOT for doing them a disservice.

Here's another one, straight off of NewEgg...

• Case : CoolerMaster Elite 330 - $39.99
• Power Supply : Antec EarthWatts 380W - $29.99
• Motherboard : Foxconn P45A-S - $119.99
• Processor : Intel E2180 - $69.99
• Memory : 2GB OCZ DDR2-800 - $42.99
• Video Card : EVGA 7200GS - $29.99
• Optical Drive : Pioneer DVR-216D - $29.99
• Hard Drive : 320GB Western Digital SE16 - $64.99

Total cost : $427.92

More then enough for anyone's average use.

You really have to stop, you are embarrassing yourself!

The Dell Vostro series is for small businesses ONLY - meaning that unless he has a State Tax ID Number on file that's already been confirmed with Dell's Small Business Sales Division, he could not purchase a Vostro from Dell.

Besides, what your describing is junk:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/136090/dell_vostro_200.html

Quote: Price When Reviewed: $1198

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2165031,00.asp

Quote: $899 Direct

I would suggest going to Dell's website, clicking on "For Home - Desktops and All-In-Ones" and then click on the Inspiron 530 Icon - and then on the right - click the green button - "build yours" - starting at $749.00 - (after $200.00 Instant Savings) and learn a little something 'bout a little something!

Even if you started on the left with the cheaper $279.00 setup - which is still junk if you want to run Vista correctly - you can easily get it up to $850.00 - plus tax - not including a printer.

Don't forget to add the 22 inch Flat Panel Monitor with the Webcam and Mic - that way he could have a few extra background services running!

Let me guess: You want to replace his current junk that is still usable today and will be still usable for a while longer (with the proper attention and care) with junk that is bottom-line barely usable today in which that junk will become outdated unusable junk sometime in the near future?

I've proved my point again.

Stop while you're ahead.

poolsharkzz


PS. Microsoft's Advice on How to Speed Up Vista - Direct from the Horse's Mouth:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...;displaylang=en

* Yes - There's even a section or two in there about disabling unnecessary services and shutting-off visual effects to speed up system performance! Wow!!!!

Th3_uN1Qu3 - Thank you for the registry entries - I'll look at it more closer tomorrow!

I see you enjoy talking to yourself!

Like I said, that was just an example. There's plenty of decent PCs from pretty much any company out there for dirt cheap. And you can build yourself one for cheap too, like jcarle said.


No it's not (nevermind you don't say how). It's certainly a million times better than those poor P3's you tweak.

And if one looks for deals like most OEMs and stores have year-round, or buy parts taking advantage of weekly specials, it can be even cheaper.

There's tons of sub-$500 PCs that will run Vista just fine -- including jcarle's example. No need to spend crazy amounts like you like to pretend. Besides, who said it had to run Vista in the first place?


More nonsense (we're getting used to that by now). You charge them $450 for 5 minutes of work, to make their P3 perhaps 5% faster. Whereas if they spend that same $450 on hardware, they'd have like a 1000% boost in speed. In either case, you're not getting a monitor (again, unless you give those for free?).


We got us a comedian! You're only proving one thing here (also by constantly using "Micro$oft" like most 15 year olds), as jcarle already stated before.


Talking to yourself again eh?

If I could, I'd give you the "most wrong ever" award. I've NEVER seen someone spout so much nonsense on this forum before in any thread... I very much doubt you work with computers, even at the A+ level (especially when your story doesn't even sound plausible, charging $450 for 5 minutes of "tweaks" that every 15 year old knows, especially when you look at the average IT wages these days)

I'll give you an example of how "tweaks" are costing a company more money and time (i.e. my time).

I've been asked to run IT for a small decor company (they do the decor for conferences, weddings, etc etc). They've got four systems around the office, of varying age and performance. I'll start with the "slowest" since it's most relevant to this discussion.

Remember all those people who swore that FAT32 was faster than NTFS? Look back to threads from when XP was first released and people migrated from Win98 to XP. You'll find countless reviews, threads, and articles saying that NTFS is slow and "bloated", etc etc. The previous IT setup the partitions on this system as follows:

C: - 1GB FAT - for pagefile
D: - 4GB FAT32 - for Windows installation, some programs
E: - 8GB FAT32 - for data and programs that didn't fit on D:

Now... the main problem - there's a measly 200MB of free space on D:, since the twit wasn't smart enough to allow enough space for the system. Secondly - why would you put the pagefile on a separate FAT partition? You're increasing the disk head travel time, slowing things down greatly. Finally, they're FAT/FAT32 partitions.

The guy had disabled the Network Location Awareness service, bringing up this exact problem for computers connected to the network. Honestly - why would you disable this?

Sure, I could also start taking any computer hardware and max out the specs to raise up the price. Let's all go configure Apple Mac Pro's to over $20K!!! jcarle's setup is still less than half of what you're suggesting, and would still blow it out of the water performance wise. It's pretty much exactly what I built the above mentioned company to replace one of their reception computers. Oh, and dispite the "low end components", it's possible to run Vista on that without too much hassle. My mid-line Inspiron 6000 from two and a half years ago runs Vista without a hitch.

@Th3_uN1Qu3 - If your programs don't work properly in Vista, you should also be talking to your devs to update their software. You're talkingabout making it all Microsoft's fault, like ZA tries to do here. Filezilla is one of the examples that I give to all my friends. The XML settings version threw up UAC warnings left right and center, since you're trying to write files to the Program Files directory. There are countless documents out there, direct from Microsoft to developers, telling them to save settings in AppData or in the user's registry (HKCU - not HKLM). Poor programming is the cause for most UAC prompts out there.

Heck, I had to rewrite part of my Windows Updates Downloader to fit within the Vista development guidelines, why should I start complaining and ranting and raving about how it's all Vista's fault because it won't let me store strings in the HKLM registry keys without throwing up in UAC. Vista's done nothing wrong, I'm the one who needed to change the way I store my application settings.

By putting the pagefile on the C: drive he put it in the fastest area of the drive. Having the pagefile all over the drive and fragged into a million pieces is slower than that. I do not agree with FAT32 usage on a XP system however.



The Network Location Awareness service? I never had a problem with my connection icons getting stuck to "Acquiring network address", since i have them hidden anyway. If you know your connection is fine, why have those blinking thingies there all of the time?



UAC? Well, i thought of it as a good idea. But when i saw it throwing prompts about confirming control panel actions, i said to hell with it and got rid of it promptly. In which way a million nags make the system more secure? Inexperienced users are going to click Yes anyway.

And... what if there are no more devs updating that software? AVIPreview is no longer under development, and my programming knowledge isn't enough to fix it, besides, my favorite debugger (OllyDbg) does not work in Vista! Also i have some older games that need the ADPCM codec (which worked fine under XP and Vista 32). Who's gonna patch those? Well, me. I started coding my own patches for those games, the progress is relatively slow but i reached the point where i know what i have to do, just have to finish the patch code (i work in Python).

Of course poor programming is the cause of most errors. The point is that those "poorly programmed apps" have worked for years on subsequent Windows versions and they suddenly stopped working on Vista 64.

It's defragged alright, but it still increases head travel by a lot beteen any files and the pagefile, also slowing things down a lot. It can be on your usual partition with your OS, and not be scattered all over the place (defrag works nice).

As for your handful of app compatibility problems, I'm not so quick at blaming Vista.

Like I said before, VirtualDub & VirtualDubMod work perfectly here. AviPreview is working fine too.

And from OllyDbg's home page:

Emphasis mine. And you're using a 64 bit OS, and blaming the OS for compatibility problems? (especially for something like a debugger) I don't use it often personally, but I had no issues on Vista x86.

Looks like most of your problems are related to the transition to x64 (you also mentioned your older games worked fine on Vista x86), and not Vista itself.

By putting it onto the OS drive it'll be after the OS files, there will still be head travel between the OS files and the pagefile, and on top of that it's also in a slower area of the drive. And it'll still not be any closer to any other files...



Well, partly yes. But Vista x86 is SLOW AS HELL, and can't use more than 3.25GB RAM on my machine. What i don't get is if WOW64 has the same files as Vista x86 (which it does), then why doesn't it work for 32-bit apps the same way Vista x86 did?

As about OllyDbg, yes, it's 32-bit. But how the heck am i supposed to debug 32-bit programs with a 64-bit debugger?

What's funny is that those games were coded in Visual C++ 6.0 and use the Microsoft ADPCM codec. Microsoft not supporting programs written with their own software. That's funny.

Hmmm, no. No defragmenter I've used in a lot of years is that horribly bad. It'll place it somewhere decent. Companies who write defragmenters just might know a bit about file placement, they only make a living out of it


Some, but definitely nowhere near as much as having it on another partition.


The inner part is somewhat faster, but when you increase the amount of seek drastically for every sector you need, you're not gaining anything, much the inverse.


Except, it is. Unless you use the worst defragmenter I've ever heard of.


I don't have any speed issues with Vista x86 myself, it's just as fast as XP on my box. As for not seeing all your RAM as you hit 4GB or more, sure, that's an issue. And the fix to that is x64, but yes, the transition isn't always smooth because of various issues (notice I'm not running x64 yet?) However, the x64 transition not being as smooth as you like doesn't make Vista itself "incompatible" (you'd have the same kind of issues with the 64 bit versions of Win XP or 2003)


It's not really that funny, nor surprising. Eventually they phase out some old things, and stop supporting them. In this case, a codec seemingly. With x64, they also stopped supporting other stuff, like the Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0 ODBC provider, or providing components like ntvdm.

You can't fit a fridge into a car but you can fit a dishwasher into a truck. How does this not make sense to you?

64-bit applications are aware of and are capable of handling 32-bit, but how can you expect 32-bit apps to handle 64-bit when there wasn't even such a thing back when most of this stuff was written?

"One common recurring problem is that some programmers assume that pointers have the same length as some other data type. These programmers assume they can transfer quantities between these data types without losing information. Those assumptions happen to be true on some 32-bit machines (and even some 16-bit machines), but they are no longer true on 64-bit machines. The C programming language and its descendant C++ make it particularly easy to make this sort of mistake. In most programming environments on 32-bit machines, pointers, "int" types, and "long" types are all 32 bits wide. However, in many programming environments on 64-bit machines, "int" variables are still 32 bits wide, but "long"s and pointers are 64 bits wide." - Wikipedia

Again, how is that Vista's fault?

OMG!!! That is almost better than what I have to use everyday!

I have an E2140 Bsel modded to 2143mHz
A (currently burned out) Motherboard It was a super cheap ECS P.O.S! That Foxconn is ALOT better than what I had
And a gigabyte 7300se
With 2 gigs DDR2 667 ram.

Hell that is better...

You guys still haven't given up yet, have you?

I mean, look at the score, if I was in YOUR shoes, I would have left the field long ago!

That's Okay, I am enjoying this! Why? I have to be honest, I've learned a thing or two (from Mr. Snrub - disable via Bios - I've never thought of that!) and I am sure you have....

Let's respond to a few statements:

One quick example: Dell Vostro 200 This was not a viable example, as I pointed out. You failed here - the low-end and high-end examples I pointed out are real world examples of a home-based system that I would only deal with. I'm sorry, what you described is junk.

The e2180 processor: Junk for my uses. While I will agree 100% that this processor would be a HUGE upgrade versus his PIII - It is not what I would recommend for Vista Home Premium or especially Vista Ultimate - I would not recommend these Operating Systems in the first place - I am not getting into why except when Microsoft had to release a 15 page PDF File explaining how to "tweak" performance out of a default Vista setup AND change the the so-called "Minimum System Requirements" for Vista - Foobar!!!!

When I am recommending hardware to a customer, I am not only looking at today, but I am also looking at tomorrow - meaning that I am looking at not today's OS (Vista) but tomorrow's OS (Windows 7) AND looking ahead at the next version of Windows (Windows "8"???).

Why? System hardware should last 8-10 years at a minimum - if you take care of it.

Hell, I have a box here that was built in May, 1996! (and still going strong!)

If you purchase top-end "today", "tomorrow" all you need to do is purchase the latest updated OS.

If the customer is dead set on an OS upgrade - then it's either Vista Home Premium or Vista Ultimate.

I have never had anyone ask for Vista Business. I've had very few ask for Vista in general!

Will the e2180 processor run Windows 7 well? or run Windows "8" well? - No, I really doubt it, not if Micro$oft keeps with it's history of bloated, buggy, newly released operating systems.

Will the e2180 processor run XP SP3 well? YES

What about the e2180 processor running Vista Home Premium or Vista Ultimate well?

"Without too much hassle" is too much hassle for me - or my customers!

"Systems straight off of NewEgg: I would NEVER use NewEgg or any other website like NewEgg for one reason - no one year support warranty as Dell offers. I do not want to deal with the daily drama.

Let's look at those prices in "my" real world:

If I went down that route, I would have to place a 25% mark-up on all components, add in the cost of shipping charges First Class from southern California, not to mention my hourly rates for putting the components together and setting up the system complete with security and maintenance programs, tweaking the security, internet connection, cleaning out the registry, disabling unnecessary services, slimming it down a bit, a delivery charge (trip charge) to the customers home, a set-up / installation charge, State and Local Taxes, and a basic overview "basic training" of what I did to their new system...

and we still haven't added in the extra costs of a decent printer! Are ya learning something yet?

For Chicago, the 3rd largest market in North America - in the neighborhoods that I mostly do business in - Gold Coast, Magnificent Mile, Streeterville, Lincoln Park, Down-Town, Up-Town, North & South Loop, Lake Shore Drive, Hollywood, Lake Forest, Highland Park, etc. This is not Canada nor is this Idaho -

My typical customer is 45+ years old, lives in a 500k (or more) home, usually drives a 70k car to his 55-60 hour per week senior management position, has 3 children and a "trophy" wife with fake boobs who loves to shop.

Your quotes of $427.92 and $324.00 and "sub-$500 PCs" are not my "real world" examples - not here in my market - not here for the majority of my customers - not here by a long shot -

They EXPECT to pay the amounts I describe - otherwise they feel they are not getting QUALITY - like I said: "junk".

I could only imagine what would happen to me if I sent one of them a box of components!

"Besides, who said it had to run Vista in the first place?" Are we now going backwards on the OS as well? You look forward to the next and future Operating System, as I already explained.

"especially when you look at the average IT wages these days" Best Buy's "Geek Squad" here in Chicago charge $150.00 per hour for home service, not to mention the $95.00 "trip charge"...

You see, I think you are equating your general area of Canada or Idaho with the rest of the world and not thinking that maybe things are a bit different in Chicago versus the coffee shop where you at!

Look here:

http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouth...IT10000048.html

and here:

http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouts...amp;x=0&y=0

http://salary.monster.com/salarywizard/lay...amp;x=0&y=0

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Loop

"I'll give you an example of how "tweaks" are costing a company more money and time" Now here is a real world example! Even though this example has no bearing on a home-based system - you are right, every XP system I have ever dealt with I converted it over to NTFS right away- it's part of my tweaking - and I find 9-10 of the systems set with the "default settings" of FAT32 - just another reason to tweak!

The Network Location Awareness Service for a home based system should be set to "Manual".

"that every 15 year old knows" Most 15 year olds are too busy "tweaking" their profiles on MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube - or creating cool Visual Styles.

UAC? is the biggest mistake Vista has - a million nags does not mean "more secure". Junk.

"Oh boy, I had missed that post..." This is because you do not READ the posts.

In closing, I was going to give you guys a general breakdown of my business, services offered, and how to go about it - giving you folks a way to effectively use some of that energy...

Instead I am going to suggest that you get off the couch that your brother left to you as a "hand-me-down" before he went off to college and instead of you joining him, you decided to spend a few years living in your parent's basement - go to the coffee-house, "sip on a latte", use the free WiFi, and tally up the score...

poolsharkzz - 1000 - perfect score! Well, I'm biased here, but I am still waiting for someone to tell me if his Uncle's system NEEDS any of the services I listed.

Th3_uN1Qu3 - 995 - I'm really impressed! and your what, only 18? - smart kid - some of you should take his lead.

Mr. Snrub - 998 - I have a feeling that you holding back on a wealth of information - sorry the debate became quite "unhealthy" - I didn't throw the first punch.

Zxian - 0 - "NEVER disable the DNS client service" - sorry, that and those out of the blue statements before reading the first posts really hurt you.

jcarle - 25 - +500! - the NewEgg quote really got you - bonus for giving solid advice to Th3_uN1Qu3 and a few bonus points for trying to play ball in my court without knowing anything about the court you're playing in..

crahak - 10 - +750! - Vostro 200 and "dirt cheap" is where you went wrong - bonus for looking a bit like Bret Hart's old tag-team partner - Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart - miss them guys!

Kelsenellenelvian - 0 - +250 - sorry, but you came in way too late in the 4th quarter to make any difference, but points for trying.


* Note to all:

I don't walk around my neighborhood tweaking XP installs either - I just was smart enough to make a living out of it!

Bashing what I do or how I do it or where I do it isn't going to make any bit of difference - I'm still gonna get paid! Are you?

"Queue" Donald Trump's theme song.... "Money, Money, Money, Money..... Money!!!!"

It's called For the Love of Money by The O'jays, you id***.

Which again was just a random example, which totally seems to go over your head.


Yes, you can only have the low-end as in a super old P3, or a box over $1000, nothing in between will do! And yet again, you fail to explain why it's "junk".


Junk? Are you out of your mind? It's a great CPU. I'm actually using a E2160 myself (OC'es quite nice, dirt cheap). What's junk about it? It's a big seller, lots of performance for not a lot of $. It's more than sufficient for 99% of daily tasks. I can run plenty of VMs at once, use photoshop, visual studio 2008, CAD apps, firefox, play & encode high 1080p video (in x264) and everything else I can think of. It's not junk by any stretch of the imagination.


And you're sorely mistaken here. That reminds me of that $3000 P133 I bought in '95, yes, it was a monster for the time, but only a couple years after, a P2 that only cost half the price TOTALLY slaughtered it. Expecting a computer to last 10 years minimum is crazy talk -- that would mean still using that P1 in 2005 and beyond (whereas it already sucked hard 3 years later). That sub-$500 box will last you a good 5 years, at which point you can spend another $500 that will last just as long, without being stuck with a 10 year old computer (and without sinking thousands in it up front).


Right, so explain why my $3000 P1 (was certainly top end for the time) ran Win98 like crap? Or Why I also needed to upgrade my other "top end" computer to run XP, or that a really top-end computer to run XP from XP's era (2001 -- top of the line being a P4 2GHz back then) doesn't run Vista worth crap and so on? Yep. Because it's just NOT the case.


Yes, it will. They've even said Win v7 will run on the same specs as Vista. Windows 8 isn't even being planned right now, no idea of release dates or anything. But I'd bet good money that even a $5000 system you'd build today will suck HARD by then (just as much as the E2180 will). At some point, hardware 10% faster is like double the price or more, and it surely won't last much longer. Buying top-end usually doesn't pay, at all.


And does it run Vista SP1 well? YES


So instead of buying $500 worth of parts, you make them waste $1000+ on a similar pre-built box. Assembling it? It only takes a few minutes, and most shops do it for only a few dollars, besides, where's the problem with you charging them say, $50 to assemble it to save them $500? Shipping? Pre-built also charge shipping, or it's included in their (articially inflated) price -- nothing saved there either. Setting up the system? That should be 5 minutes of work for any competent tech (unattended install). Security and maintenance programs? Those can be unattended too, and pre-builts don't normally come with any, and the odd times it does, it's usually garbage (like norton sh*t) -- no advantage there yet again. "tweaking the security, internet connection, cleaning out the registry, disabling unnecessary services, slimming it down a bit" -- yes, because that's any different when you buy a system pre-assembled from Dell? More nonsense yet again. Delivery? You're going to have to deliver both... Setup/installation? Same thing yet again, the Dell doesn't come with a tech in the box to do it for them. Still no difference. State and local taxes? Both pre-built systems and parts have taxes. Yet again no difference. Training? Ditto.

All you demonstrated so far, is that you're willing to make people spend hundreds of $$$ more on a pre-built so you don't have to spend 15 minutes to do it yourself.


Same thing as I said in my last 3 posts or such: neither the parts, nor the pre-built comes with one (unless they artificially inflate the price of the pre-built even further and "give" you one). TANSTAAFL.


That some people are lazy, yes.


That's 100% irrelevant (as usual). We were talking about doing 5 minutes of work on a P3 for $450 VS getting a $450 upgrade. You're the one that's talking about OS'es here.


You'd be surprised... There's a LOT of young geeks on here.


Ah, more trolling and no insight -- as usual! You should copyright that, you're certainly pioneering that field -- you finally found something you're genuinely good at for a change!

...


And that's only one example. But most don't have the time nor any reason to take this seriously.

Gentlemen,

I am sorry to say that our time together has to come to a close. I have asked the "powers to be" to close this thread after my response, which will be brief...

We not going anywhere with "debating" (I'm using that term loosely on all our parts) about mostly hypotheticals and points of view based on no knowledge of market, market conditions, economy, customer expectations, business philosophy, etc.

If I wanted to go on vacation from Chicago to Montreal or Quebec, I could take a plane, train, boat, drive, or hitch-hike - there are many ways to go about getting there - in the end, it's all the same - so as long as you get there, right?

I prefer a first-class seat on an airplane, you may decide to drive or hitch-hike - the decision on how to proceed is in the eye of the beholder.

Its been fun, lively, entertaining, and I've learned a few things - I hope you can say the say the same. If not, I'll say it again - read the posts!

Needless to say...

It's called For the Love of Money by The O'jays, you id***.

I was putting it in "simple, stupid" terms because I didn't know if you knew who wrote the song - making it easier for you to understand. This is one of the reasons I have requested to have this thread closed.

Need I say more?

Besides, in your haste to bash, you missed "Queue" - meaning: a type of data structure or Mail "queue", used by non-commercial SMTP e-mail servers to process incoming and outgoing e-mails. "Cue music, lights..."

TANSTAAFL

You are right - "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch" - or were you using the acronym as a quazi-response to the many negative claims towards the positive virtues of the free software / hardware movement?

And I was called an id***? Junk.

Typically, the kind/type of customer

You guys, seriously, you really need to read the posts! Especially if you are going to offer advice or help to others!!!

The first description was discussing the kind/type of customer that I've had experience with that had problems or issues with a system...

The second description was discussing the kind/type of customer that I've had experience with who was interested in purchasing hardware - or a new system.

Again, you really need to read the posts and understand the context in which they are placed, the bigger picture in which it's placed, and it's history - if not, ask "what do you mean by that?" - otherwise, you will make the same mistakes again!

I'm finished here. It's been a slice.

poolsharkzz

It was an answer to your numerous "they don't get a flat screen" or "they don't get a printer" points.

They don't get a free flat screen nor printer, no matter if they pay someone $450 for 5 minutes of work, or if they buy computer parts, or a $5000 pre-built tower. They aren't free, so no one gives them out (if you do seemingly get one for free "as a bonus", it's just included in the inflated price). They don't get what they don't buy (just like they don't get a new car, new couch, nor a new dishwasher out of it), so your point was totally irrelevant.

If their printer and monitor are working fine with their P3 (it's just the computer that's too slow), I see no real reason to change them. And if they're not good enough, then in all 3 cases you're going to have to pay to buy those regardless. Yet, you only added the cost of those items to the situation where someone buys or builds a new PC (as if you needed it then, but otherwise wouldn't), somehow making it much more expensive -- just like your "does it run Vista well?" point, which also seems to serve you as a purpose to make the hardware upgrade seem a lot more expensive. It's not like their P3 can run it at any speed, and a simple hardware upgrade of the P3 would have given their existing OS a GREAT speed boost regardless (a LOT more than any tweaks ever would)

That's all I was saying.

The OUTER part of the hard drive is faster. And HDDs read from the OUTSIDE IN, like old vinyl LPs and unlike CDs. Gotcha there.



Problem: The file exists. But it doesn't work.

The E2180 processor... It IS a piece of junk. Mine was running at 75C load and was crashing, regardless of how many times i reseated the cooler (Scythe Mugen). I lapped the IHS, still 75C load. I REMOVED THE IHS, still 75C load, **** it! A couple months later it just didn't turn on anymore. The E6550 i bought then runs at 60C loaded at 3.5GHz.

And you should stop arguing with Poolsharkzz. He isn't right in everything but he is pretty close to being. The point is he makes money out of this while you don't. Just one thing i should have to tell you Poolsharkzz, Dell SUCKS. But i agree from buying from a local hardware store when you need warranties, i do the same thing.

Edit: crahak, but what do they do if their old printer does not work with Vista?

Yep, I said inner when I should've said outer. Sue me


PEBCAK. Mine never gets this hot even though it's overclocked 85% and using the cheap stock cooler, even when at full load for several hours. And zero crashes so far. Didn't see any such reports by anyone else so far either, and they sell a LOT, so if they sucked this badly, we'd be seeing a LOT of such reports and everybody would say they suck, yet, you're the first I see that claims this.


I don't make $ overcharging people for this indeed, I'd sooner make money building them a box. Besides, I don't do that kind of thing for a living (not my job), so of course I ain't making money out of it.


Again, I never said they should move to Vista (much the inverse), and most printers work fine with it anyways, including my ancient HP LJ4+

Maybe i'm just an unlucky bastard, however, the E2180 was the first CPU that i ever had trouble with. Just curious, what temps do you get on that stock cooler when overclocked? I doubt they're very pretty.

You probably had a CPU that had poor contact between the die and the IHS. Lapping or switching out the CPU won't help there. I've got my E2160 in my server, running at 100% 24/7 (BOINC projects), and it's currently at 52C on both cores (passive cooling on a Scythe Ninja).

The point is that I too make my living this way!!! poolsharkz has given this topic nothing but FUD about modern hardware, and has shown us that he's too busy fixing old computers to be knowledgable about current systems. I make about $15K from my university stipend, and another $5K from working as a TA and a tutor. The rest of my income (which is my expendable income) comes mainly from computer repair and maintenance work. I don't have a shop, but I do housecalls for businesses and home customers. I can't name one reputable computer repair shop that actually recommends old hardware over new. I can't think of any large market where products made 10 years ago are better than those sold today...

Dell does not suck. My 2.5 year old laptop had a dud hard drive, and the system fan was starting to get noisy (not broken, just buzzed now and then). Here's what happened about a month ago.

• I called them on a Thurdsay. Told them the hard drive was broken and the fan was loud. We walked through about 5 minutes of their on-the-phone troubleshooting. They confirmed that the hard drive was dead, and said they'd take it in.
• Friday morning - Purolator delivers an empty box containing a return shipping label. I put the computer in the box, attach the shipping label, and call Purolator. They're at my door two hours later to pick it up.
• Monday - regular business day.
• Tuesday - Statutory Holiday - It was Canada Day. Pretty much EVERYTHING in the country, except essential services, closes.
• Wednesday - Computer arrives at my house at 9AM.

Let's look at that timeline again. One business day turnaround. ONE! Now, if you can say that other PC manufacturers can match that kind of service, I'd really love to hear it. Toshiba - forget it. Acer - nope. Lenovo - good, but not this good. LG - pfft... Sony - yuck.


In Canada, businesses can claim 30% depreciation on computer hardware purchases per year for three years. This means that according to the government (and all of their financial backings), the value of the computer has dropped to 10% of what it was initially after three years. Not five, not eight, and not ten. Three. No person in their right mind would pay $5000 in labour on a car that was worth $1000, so why would someone spend $450 on a computer that's worth less than 10% of that?

LOL you need to do some reading because just the e2140 alone runs all the time for A LOT of people at 3+gigs!!! With stock cooling.

I ran mine with the bsel mod for 8+ months on Vista ultimate without any lockup or crashes! What gave out? The **** mobo is what not the cpu not the ram. (temps of 50-60 on full load too with the stock intel cooler.)

2180 is more than enough to run vista ultimate. Look on Toms Hardware and other places for reviews and serious results not just CRAP sayings, ACTUAL results!

Toms Hardware thread = http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/245296-29-e2180-overclock

Xtreme view = http://xtreview.com/addcomment-id-3247-vie...erclocking.html

hardware canucks = http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/overc...xperiences.html

Hell they are everywhere. I am using one of the lowest dual cores possible and the proccesor got a 5.1 On the performance index. Get that a 5.1!!!

You are really blowing smoke provide actual results not just your opinion.

If you read the whole paragraph, i had removed the IHS entirely, yet i was still having the same issue.

Dell's laptops are pretty good. Their desktops suck balls. Toshiba sucks in every aspect, Acer used to suck hard now they semi-suck, Lenovo isn't what IBM used to be, and that's about it.

Benchmarks... Bah. All Core chips score high numbers. But no benchmark is able to measure the "feel" of the system. For the end-user that only does basic tasks with their computer, that's what matters the most. And WEI scores are so easily faked.

43C and 45C, after over 9 1/2h of encoding a HD movie in x264 (pretty slow using these settings w/ deinterlacing, fancy avisynth script and all -- yes, I do need a quad core). And that's @ 3.4GHz (it's a E2160 though, not a E2180). See the pic.

Zxian's temps aren't much higher on passive cooling.


While it probably sucks for gamers who want the latest vid cards and such for cheap, for basic business systems it's just fine. We got a pretty good support contract for free out of it too (not outsourced in India either), with 1 business day service (you call, next day someone shows up with spare parts), and pretty good prices. It runs Windows, Office and everything else just fine. They're silent enough and all that. No stability problems or anything so far. We don't have to return bad hard drives either (we just fax them a copy of the label) due to the sensitive data that might be on it. No real complaints about them here (not that I'd buy one for my specific needs).

I think Zxian pretty much said it as it is (he makes a habit of it too).


My $70 E2160 that's getting close to a year old gets 5.7 I'd say that's pretty good too.