Why it takes a whole day to install & update Windows

[SteveRiley]

Re: Why it takes a whole day to install & update Windows

LMFAO ......that is a cool site thanks for the show their @ SteveRiley

I thought LMGTFY was pretty well-known by now...? It is funny, but you have to be careful that you don't come across insulting! I figured ardvark would see the humor in it though

I usually advocate Avast anti virus for my friends that would like a free Windows anti virus that is. what do you recommend?

Microsoft Security Essentials. It's the lightest-weight anti-malware product I've ever seen, it integrates right into Windows Update, and it works exceptionally well.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Why it takes a whole day to install & update Windows

.....
I usually advocate Avast anti virus for my friends that would like a free Windows anti virus that is.
...

I used to use AVG, but they've gone to the dark side by moving most of their functionality to a paid version after several years of exploiting the FOSS movement's debugging capabilities. There free version is, IMO, nothing more than nagware. More important, they've made it so that even when you remove it using the control panel, it leaves behind two files which are nothing more than Trojans that aren't in the registry. They keep the AVG icon in the system tray which, if you click on it, asks if you want to install AVG, and the second program is a keyboard logger! CCleaner finds them, identifies them as Trojans, and removes them.

IMO, the best AV program for Windows today is Microsoft Security Essentials. It is free. It scans incoming emails and downloads, and does a regular quick or complete scan of the memory and filesystem, based on your settings, at the time you designate. Microsoft owes it to every Windows user to keep MSE free, supported and updated. Without MSE I wouldn't put Windows on the Internet. With it I still wouldn't do online backing or buying.

[SteveRiley]

Re: Why it takes a whole day to install & update Windows

The Windows registry, present in all versions of Windows since Win95, is notorious for filling up with unused or broken links to objects in the file system. An entry in the registry may point to a file on the filesystem which is no longer present, or the other way around. This often happens when Windows crashes while in the process of updating the registry.

To be fair, the same can be said for any kind of configuration container, whether it's a database (registry, dconf) or text files (.ini, .conf, *rc). Blame is more correctly placed on how applications install and clean up after themselves. Developers are rarely motivated to do this in a predictable way. Cheap third-party apps are particularly guilty of this sin.

The debate that rages over whether to use text files for configuration or to use a database has compelling arguments on both sides. Text files are easy to read and usually compact. They're easily portable. But they multiply like rabbits. Databases gather everything into one place, and thus are easier to modify. But they don't port well and are prone to greater system-wide corruption.

More important, they've made it so that even when you remove it using the control panel, it leaves behind two files which are nothing more than Trojans that aren't in the registry. They keep the AVG icon in the system tray which, if you click on it, asks if you want to install AVG, and the second program is a keyboard logger!

Holy crap. I didn't know they had gone that rotten.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Why it takes a whole day to install & update Windows

Surprised me when I cleaned up a friend's Win7 box a couple weeks ago. He had called and said he couldn't update is AV software, which was Norton. AVG had been setting on his box for most of the year, after he thought he had "uninstalled" it through the control panel. His Norton wasn't updating properly. He had been infected. He brought his box over. I eventually removed all traces of AVG and Norton, which has the same practices as AVG, and installed MSE.

[SteveRiley]

Re: Why it takes a whole day to install & update Windows

Jerry, I was thinking about my reply while I was feeding the cats just now.

I'm going to hazard a guess... has the majority of your work dealing with Windows during your career involved Windows 95/98/ME?

[ardvark71]

Re: Why it takes a whole day to install & update Windows

Uhmm...

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=cruft

Ok, thank you. But did you need to be sarcastic about it?

Regards...

[GreyGeek]

Re: Why it takes a whole day to install & update Windows

I never owned nor would I touch ME.

I started using Windows with the 287 version. Most of my consulting career was spent with Win3.1FWG, a little older than what you thought.

One of my clients had OS/2. I liked it so much that I purchased it and ran Win3.1 in its DOS box. I used OS/2 from about 1995 to 1997. I purchased a Sony Desktop on December 29th, 1997, that came with Win95 installed. Between the day I bought it and May 1st, 1998, I had to reinstall it five times because crashes had corrupted it. I bought the book during that period to see if I could repair the registry and not have to reinstall so much. I learned a lot about the registry but it didn't help. I should have been suspicious when I noticed a Sony "Medi-Kit" setting between the BIOS and Win95. The purpose of the medi-kit was to intercept Win95 crashes and try to recover gracefully. It didn't work. In May I returned to Barns & Nobel to see about getting the latest copy of OS/2. There I saw a paperback by Bill Brush titled, "Learn Linux in 24 Hours". It included a CD of RH5.0 in the back. I dual booted with RH and suddenly that Sony was as stable as a rock running Linux. I spent most of my personal time on Linux.

When I bought an Gateway mpr675 18" diag laptop in 2004 or 5 it came with XP and was set up to boot into Linux. My grandson is now currently using that box.

My last client, also my last employer, was using Win95 and for the course of the eleven years I worked there the 500 workstations progress from Win95 & 98, then NT 3.5, then 4.0, followed by W2K. When I retired in 2008 we had just finished an upgrade to WinXP. The developers were always the early adopters. IIRC, I used XP from about 2005 till I retired. Between Jan 1997 and 2005 I used the previous versions of WinXX.

Most of my registry work done at work during the Win95 to W2K period. I gave that book to a bright young MSCE who had been hired and haven't done much with regedit since then, until a few weeks ago on my friend's machine.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Why it takes a whole day to install & update Windows

Uhmm...

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=cruft

Ok, thank you. But did you need to be sarcastic about it?
....

Ardvark, Steve wasn't being sarcastic. IF you knew Steve you'd know what sarcasm was if he leveled it at you. He just gave you a straight forward answer without comment.

[ardvark71]

Re: Why it takes a whole day to install & update Windows

Ardvark, Steve wasn't being sarcastic. IF you knew Steve you'd know what sarcasm was if he leveled it at you. He just gave you a straight forward answer without comment.

Hi GreyGeek...

A matter of interpretation, I guess. When I clicked on the link, one of the messages below the "Google Search" button was "Was that so hard?" Perhaps it wasn't Steve's intention to come off sounding like that. If so, I apologize. Sometimes it's next to impossible or flat out impossible on a written forum to gauge body language, tone, meaning, etc. Perhaps lmgtfy.com thought it sounded funny to include that. To me, it sounded rude.

Again, my apologies for any possible misinterpretations.

Regards...

[de_koraco]

Re: Why it takes a whole day to install & update Windows

+1 for MSE. The others just aren't worth it.

[ardvark71]

Re: Why it takes a whole day to install & update Windows

+1 for MSE. The others just aren't worth it.

Hi...

Avira and Avast are pretty decent, too.

Regards...

[SteveRiley]

Re: Why it takes a whole day to install & update Windows

Ardvark, Steve wasn't being sarcastic. IF you knew Steve you'd know what sarcasm was if he leveled it at you. He just gave you a straight forward answer without comment.

A matter of interpretation, I guess. When I clicked on the link, one of the messages below the "Google Search" button was "Was that so hard?" Perhaps it wasn't Steve's intention to come off sounding like that. If so, I apologize. Sometimes it's next to impossible or flat out impossible on a written forum to gauge body language, tone, meaning, etc. Perhaps lmgtfy.com thought it sounded funny to include that. To me, it sounded rude.

This is why I'm always a bit reluctant to use LMGTFY... thus my smiley, and my follow-on to Vinny's post: "It is funny, but you have to be careful that you don't come across insulting! I figured ardvark would see the humor in it though." As the word itself is rather humorous, a humorous way to find its definition seems fitting.

[SteveRiley]

Re: Why it takes a whole day to install & update Windows

I started using Windows with the 287 version. Most of my consulting career was spent with Win3.1FWG, a little older than what you thought.
. . .

Most of my registry work done at work during the Win95 to W2K period. I gave that book to a bright young MSCE who had been hired and haven't done much with regedit since then, until a few weeks ago on my friend's machine.

I rather suspected this. It was during the move from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 when Microsoft transitioned away from text-based .ini files to the hierarchical key-value database known as the registry. Windows 3.1 had a registry, but only for storing configuration data of COM components. With Windows 95, the intent was to clean up the unholy mess of .ini files scattered everywhere and use the registry as the system-wide configuration database.

The major problem with the registry during Windows 95 through 2000 was that it lacked a transactional update mechanism. Atomic updates, which the registry always had, ensure that multiple processes attempting to update the same value in one key don't end up in a race condition. But if multiple processes attempt to update multiple values or keys, simple atomicity isn't sufficient. Microsoft added a transaction manager with Windows Vista. So nowadays, registry updates take more time, but there are few instances of real corruption anymore.

One of these days I think it would be neat to come visit you in Nebraska, have a couple beers, and chat about OSes. While not perfect, Windows has matured a lot since the 2000 editions. Putting aside the disaster that was Vista, Windows 7 is really rather durable. Anger at Windows 7 is more rightfully redirected toward application developers who refuse to write proper code and thus force Microsoft to incorporate special exemptions and workarounds directly into the operating system to accomodate crappy software. Nobody likes Windows Side-by-Side (WinSxS). But it is the mechanism that has relegated daily bluescreens into the dustbin of history.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Why it takes a whole day to install & update Windows

....
One of these days I think it would be neat to come visit you in Nebraska, have a couple beers, and chat about OSes.

That would be neat! I don't drink beer, but if you don't mind a nice glass of chilled white wine.... and maybe a nice steak dinner to wash it down!

While not perfect, Windows has matured a lot since the 2000 editions. Putting aside the disaster that was Vista, Windows 7 is really rather durable. Anger at Windows 7 is more rightfully redirected toward application developers who refuse to write proper code and thus force Microsoft to incorporate special exemptions and workarounds directly into the operating system to accomodate crappy software. Nobody likes Windows Side-by-Side (WinSxS). But it is the mechanism that has relegated daily bluescreens into the dustbin of history.

W2K crashed a LOT on me. It had a memory location labeled "crashcounter" which maxed out at 10, or at least it never incremented beyond 10 even though the crashes continued. Things changed significantly when I got a new Dell with XP on it. It crashed, but less often than the W2K box. What really helped XP was turning it off every night. I usually left my computers on 24/7/365 at both home and work. At home, Linux never slowed down or crashed, even with up times of two or three hundred days, not that anyone could do that up time these days with all the security updates. At work XP, if left on 24/7, would gradually slow down and eventually lock up, usually within a week or two. But, budget restrictions at work forced all unused computers to be turned off, especially over night or the weekends, except for the servers. That one policy change significantly reduced the number of XP crashes around the office and on my machine. During the last two years at work I don't recall a single crash of my XP workstation. The Windows servers, left on 24/7, would slow down and hang or crash and to avoid that they were regularly bumped on weekends. During the last 6 months I worked the IT department was testing VISTA. They had 3 DELL laptops with VISTA Ultimate on them. None of the six MSCEs could keep the three boxes running for more than a half an hour. They gave one to me to try. It crashed and then reduced its performance because it "detected" the installation was "illegal". They decided not to upgrade to VISTA.
I don't know how things are done now. I haven't followed this stuff since I retired.

At home I've been running XP SP3 via an Oracle VM for the last four or five years, and it has never crashed once. But, I rarely run it. During the last year I've used XP only for iTunes to update my iPhone, and to let it do security updates. My wife's one year old Acer Aspire One netbook with Win7 Starter has given a blue screen only once, for no apparent reason. She uses it only 30 or 40 minutes a day.

My friend with the Win7 laptop uses it about 4 or 5 hours per night, but he says he has had several crashes on his old HP dv7. He usually brought it to me to clean it up. He replaced it with a Lenovo E520 running Win7 Premium about two months ago. So far, no crashes.

The two things Microsoft has done that help them the most is their security updates and the AV program, MSE, but I still won't do online banking with a Windows box. The 4,500,000 Windows zombie bot farm didn't get created because Windows is secure or the users are stupid. It still is just too promiscuous.

My big complaint has been and is with Microsoft and its corporate ethics. They would do well to dump Ballmer.

[ardvark71]

Re: Why it takes a whole day to install & update Windows

This is why I'm always a bit reluctant to use LMGTFY... thus my smiley, and my follow-on to Vinny's post: "It is funny, but you have to be careful that you don't come across insulting! I figured ardvark would see the humor in it though." As the word itself is rather humorous, a humorous way to find its definition seems fitting.

Hi Steve...

No problem, I admit I jumped the gun a bit.

Regards...