Hey basically i have windows xp 2003 home edition and vista. Long story short vista sux because nothing works with it and i need to upgrade my os. So which do you think is the best os i should choose guys? i was thinking windows xp media center edition 2005 but i dont know... so tell me what u think
Try Ubuntu linux with Wine so you can run some essential windoze apps.. Vista looks nice but it's gonna be really expensive and ram greedy.. XP=obsolete and insecure..not to mention unstable.. If you can stick out another few months It's probably better to see how Vista works out when it's released if you must stay with a broken OS.. There's no point buying XP now, as it's being obsoleted by the new apps that are being written with Vista specs in mind.. IMHO Media centre is rubbish...more a TV come games console than an OS..junk for people who don't want to do anything constructive with a pc. Before anybody jumps on me ..it's an open question..I ran XP pro reasonably happily for 4 years..
Windows xp with service pack 1 is the best operating system ever made by windows. Media center does look kinda nice and flashy and stuff, but all it really is is xp-sp2 dressed up in a few more bells and whistles (a.k.a. bugs and glitches) If you want speed and reliability, sp1 (and maybe a few patches) is by far the best os. If all you are interested in is an upgrade then wait for vista to "come of age."
but with service pack 1 wouldnt that less protechion against bugs, like viruis and adwere and stuff than service pack 2??? And how is it faster???
Not on your life...SP1 is pretty good.(as good as 3.1 was back in the day)..make sure to learn about the "Run at Startup policy" and completely kill autoupdates or M$ will screw it up for you.. I'm thinking of doing a guide to M$ proof XP.. lol
My friend has a VERY similar computer to me and has pretty much the same programs to me he has sp1 and i have sp2 and his computer is faster at most times!!! do u reckon i should uninstall sp2 and the updates
Heres how I think is the best way to set up an xp machine.. First (and very impotant) back up any data you want to keep..don't bother with windows and the program files, you will be replacing all of those..Then go to the MS homesite and look up the "Run at Startup policy"...you will need to know how it works to kill auto-updates.. Run a good partitioner (fdisk on a 98 boot disk will just about do if you don't have anything else) and remove all partitions...reboot and restart the partitioner.. Make a 10-20 GB partition, don't give it a label and put it at the start of the drive Make another partition with the remaining free space Format both NTFS Run the windows xp-sp1 install disk, and put the OS on the first partition (this will be called C:\ and ONLY contain the OS, temp files and active program files.. Make a few folders on the other partition.downloads, install apps documents..whatever you think will be useful.and remember to link to them when anything asks for a download destination...don't ever let anything download onto C:\. The second partition will be called whatever, it's up to windows how it allocates them..the last one I did it was F:\ The mission is to have a partition with NO active programs on it! Then run the procedure for the "run at startup policy" (which you wrote down or printed off the M$ website..Right?)..and kill auto-updates and ctnotify...that takes care of any updating M$ may want to do...( It has the added effect that if you are using a pirate/unregistered version they can't detect it) Then go into the system32 folder and look for a program called csrss.exe and make it "read only" That takes care of most of the Win32 type virus attacks..do the same with regedit.exe..then just continue to setup your windows how you like it... Dump Internet explorer...get Firefox, it's just saferand you won't ever see any more of those annoying "A script error has..."messages. IE is broken software..Why use busted stuff?? Get a good anti-virus free from http://www.free.grisoft.com and install it..remember to update it regularly.. This is more like a unix setup than a windows one...some things work a little different and can be a bit harder to install, but a machine set up like this has been running stable without any virus or malware at all for over 6 months...try it, and enjoy
Seriously...What do you want to do with it??? Functionality without necessarily user friendliness.. Slackware10 with wine Ease of install and most things work Ubuntu5.10 What your used to viruses, malware and all.. XP Pro SP1 with the hack suggested above, or holdout for Vista when it goes public in November
okay thanx man. Then i already have sp1 installed so i am good right? and will do for vista. THANX u guys have been great!
And then check out this site to see how insecure it is (and what you can do to protect yourself) http://www.grc.com/dos/winxp.htm
