Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (
More info?)
dont@agora.rdrop.com (Don Taylor) wrote in message news:<5KadnTTtPq1rGKHcRVn-uQ@scnresearch.com>...
> "Tony" <lkj@lkj.com> writes:
> >Has anyone tried it?
>
> >I've heard bad things about it..hardly surprising with MS..any good
> >experiences?
>
> You can get some, likely biased, view of the experiences if you
> look over in microsoft.public.windowsxp.general. But be prepared
> for a thousand or more postings a day.
>
> Proponents of Microsoft claim that it is just fine, that all the
> problems can be attributed "viruses or spyware or customers are
> just too stupid." Maybe viruses or spyware were responsible for
> some of the problems, but I haven't seen postings REALLY confirming
> this. If this were the case then I cannot understand why Microsoft
> didn't 1: run a virus/spyware scan, 2: run a registry validation,
> 3: do sfc (system file check), 4: kill any running processes that
> weren't essential for the installation, 5: do a chkdsk, 6: quarantine
> any software in their list that they already knew were going to
> cause problems 7: run one of the "scan and repair conflicts and
> problems on your pc" programs and THEN do the install. This just
> isn't rocket science.
>
> If, as some claim, this would have eliminated the vast majority of
> problems then I cannot understand why they would not have done this,
> if for no other reason than to eliminate the potential public
> relations image damage that they desperately need to avoid at this
> point, ignoring their own support cost, the support cost to the
> other vendors and completely ignoring the cost to the users who
> have to try to figure out how to recover from failure.
>
> There are far too many people taking an extreme position based on
> their experience with one machine, or at most a tiny number.
>
> There appear to be a handful of specific problems that really do
> exist. One version of the Intel processor causes trouble, that can
> be sorted out if you know what to do. Some of the bad software
> items on the list do appear to cause problems, but some folks find
> they don't. It seems that they have yanked around the interface
> for drivers and a variety of folks find that some hardware and
> software won't work afterwards. Reinstalling the hardware or
> software or hoping the vendor has or will provide new drivers may
> get around this. There is an ongoing string of folks who find
> Windows Explorer fails in some way, that one got me and I still
> haven't found any way to fix that. Some folks find it just crashes,
> more find it crashes if you click on certain items, mine just refuses
> all mouse clicks. Some of the low level hardware guys found that
> the drivers for the chipsets "just get lost" in a modest percentage
> of the cases, "nobody knows why and they wouldn't want to be the
> ones to have to figure that one out."
I've had problems with sorting (sometimes it works, sometimes it
doesn't).
I've had problems with the client area of the right pane (Folder view)
not displaying entries properly (detail view).
>
> If you have a problem with the install it is supposed to be the
> case that you can back out of this, but some have claimed that they
> could not get this to work. If you have a problem you can escalate
> this to Microsoft, support.microsoft.com/windowsxpsp2 and give them
> all the details you can about what you have seen. There is no
> guarantee their analysis will be correct or even that their directions
> won't make things worse, but it might work out. In my case they
> concluded "some files must be corrupted, repair windows back to
> original install state and then reinstall SP2 twice while in safe
> mode." Before I did that someone discovered that for some folks
> with Windows Explorer problems that if you create a new user and
> switch over to that user then that user doesn't have the problem.
> WHen that worked for me I sent Microsoft mail saying that this made
> it seem a little less likely that "some files must be corrupted"
> and asked if they were still sure I needed to blow windows away.
> They haven't answered that in a number of days now, but I can imagine
> the hell on earth it might be inside there now.
>
> It does appear the installation blows away your Java, my Sun Java
> hotspot compiler installation was silently deleted. It does not
> ask you a single question about what you want or don't want done.
>
Now why would this be? Someone please explain this to me.
> Nobody appears to know the actual percentage of people who have
> problems on install. I'd love to see a good random sample of 10,000
> people called who installed this and how many had problems. I'd
> guess Microsoft has some idea by now but they aren't talking.
>
> I have not noticed a disproportionate number of other Dell customers
> reporting problems. Based on scanning thousands and thousands of
> postings I don't think it would be any worse or any better than any
> other brand, but most folks don't report brand info with problems.
>
> As one person put it: "Just because you have heard there are car
> accidents, does that mean you aren't going to drive? Do the upgrade."
> And I replied "Good analogy, now, if you knew that somewhere between
> 0% and 10% of all the drivers in the country were going to get into
> an accident the same day they did the upgrade, or risk falling
> victim to a potential Microsoft bug when maybe exploited by some
> net vandal maybe some day in the future, would you go driving today
> or not?"
>
> Personally I think failure rates like that are simply inexcusible
> but I came from a "6 sigma" environment and have never understood
> why customers accept the number of failures with pc's they do.
The current PC software market is one of the only markets where the
consumer (customer) serves and accommodates the producer. In any other
market, producers serve consumers. Would any of us enter a restaurant,
seat the waiter, serve the waiter, pay for the waiter's meal, and then
leave the restaurant? Would any of us purchase a five-pound wrist
watch all because the sales person is telling us that with enough
dumb-bell curlse it's wearable?
Performance is another quality issue. I see MS turning its entire OS
into a virtual machine. "Managed code" is a synonym for "Java byte
code". On the server, where a server app written in java is up and
running all the time, initial-startup latency is a non issue. On the
desktop, it's a huge issue. I don't want to wait! I've got 1.5GB of
RAM on my desktop. Why should I wait? The clincher is when I sit down
to a P300 box with 64MB of RAM running FreeBSD 5, X and and fvwm 2,
and the system runs pretty fast. By the way, the FBSD, X, fvwm
installation took no longer than the XP installation. In fact, it was
faster.
>
> I waited a week or two after it was initially available, watched
> to see if there was a firestorm of problems, perhaps underestimated
> the number of problems a bit, and then tried this on one machine
> that I could accept the loss on if it killed it. I am still hoping
> that Microsoft will come through and deliver a fix for the Windows
> Explorer problem. Other than that there may be a host of other
> problems with the machine that I just haven't exercised yet. But
> I will wait till the end of the month or so, and try to schedule a
> block of time when I can deal with any potential disaster, before
> I try upgrading the others that absolutely positively have to be
> working every morning.
LB
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