Windows irritation

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Windows irritation

Postby Apollo » Thu Dec 09, 2004 3:07 am

I have an irritation caused by Windows 98 SE (surprise). Perhaps someone else has come across it, or a solution or reason. Microplop's Knowledge base has come up with zilch, regardles of how I phrase a query.

I've suffered this on a few machines, but usually they've been in use for a while before I notice it. Probably because I was expecting it, I now see it on another different one that's just been installed, and has only had 'serious' software (Office etc.) installed.

The problem shows itself when deleting files. After deleting files using Windows Explorer, not one or two, usually lots (100s or 1000s), something goes wrong and any subsequent file deletions are followed by delays during which there is no response to the mouse or keyboard, and the screen does not update. This delay lasts for almost a minute, and (as an additional irritant) any keystrokes or mouse commands issued are remembered and executed when the PC comes back to life. Once this has happened, things appear to run ok, unless you forget and hit delete file at some point, when even deleting just one file will result in the same dead zone period.

Resetting the PC cures the effect, until you delete a large number of files again, when it kicks in again.
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Postby AMcD » Thu Dec 09, 2004 10:31 am

Is it just a problem when using Explorer or does it do the same in a MS-DOS window?

I had a quick look on annoyances.org and the general consensus seems to be that it's a problem with win98 SE's kernel. I'm not so convinced it's that fundamental, but more likely a problem with Explorer. I've just spent the last two days coding an explorer-type add-in at work for a project and Explorer really is ridiculously/needlessly complicated in the way it handles shell objects, uses a stupid amount of memory per file/PIDL. Every file transaction seems to require an enquiry of the registry to obtain information on the file type.

I think windows 98 still has the old filemanager, does WINFILE.EXE work any better?

/geeky

(Still wouldn't make me switch to Apple :D )
Last edited by AMcD on Thu Dec 09, 2004 11:45 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby purplegrum » Thu Dec 09, 2004 11:35 am

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Postby Apollo » Thu Dec 09, 2004 3:40 pm

Har har har, who listens to Americans? ::):

Good idea in a way, but now that I've got my AGP graphics accelerator back on line, Apple's offerings aren't really much cop for games graphics, or even intense graphics surprisingly enough, but I suspect that's only cos the PC has dedicated cards available, normal cards are a bit of a joke.

Tried the winfile route out of nosiness (impressed that someone remembered that was still there) and found 2 interesting points Copied over 3,000 files as a test, and the copy operation took ages (i.e. a few minutes) compared to Explorer. The delete operation was the complete opposite, with the lot going in about 10 seconds or so, and no 'minute of death' as per Explorer, so it looks like it's some sort of inherent nasty that it's not handling proporly, or relaeasing the resource afterwards either.

I got another one from those nice people at Fujitsu-Siemens last night. Rebuilding one of their Scenic PC's, using the system disks etc. supplied with it cost me hours and got nowhere. They provide a W98SE recovery CD. Unlike a normal W98SE install which boots from a floppy which provides drivers for the install CD to run from, this recovery CD will not run when it sees the SMBIOS, and stops dead. According to the book, one is supposed to reconfigure the BIOS to boot from ATAPI CDROM and the recoverty CD will then install. Yeah...right... The thing goes stone dead and doesn't see the CD if I do this, and no amount of cajoling, re-ordering the boot sequence or trying to boot from floppy to get CD drivers installed will make it see the supplied recovery CD.

I can chuck it just use an ordinary W98SE instal, but what is an ordinary punter who doesn't have things like that lying around do? Go buy it if the PC's out of warranty, or scrap it?

For a laugh (I needed after 4 hours of failure) I stuck a Dell XP install CD in, and it wouldn't play because it couldn't see Dell's BIOS............
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Postby AMcD » Thu Dec 09, 2004 4:32 pm

I can sympathise with your recovery CD problems.

Last month I had to get a colleagues home PC working again after his installation of XP SP2 failed, corrupting the registry and rendering his PC unbootable. It turned out that SP2 was incompatible with Athlon 64bit processors, as it tries to execute 'Intel-only' instructions on the reboot. It seems there is a registry key to stop this happening.

Anyway.... my colleague wanted it back to a factory install regardless.
It had a recovery CD that was just a copy of a windows XP disk, with none of the pre-installed packages that came with it. The factory install recovery was on another partition on the hard disk that you were supposed to access by pressing F10 after the BIOS. This option had long since vanished, and the other partition wouldn't boot.

That's when I found this.. http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
It's a program that lets you create a bootable CD of XP's pre-install environment. Very handy for Admins, let's you mount NTFS drives or any partition as a drive letter, and in this case start the image restore.

Handy to have in your utilities, along with Knoppix.
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Postby purplegrum » Thu Dec 09, 2004 7:11 pm

Apollo wrote:Har har har, who listens to Americans? ::):

Apple's offerings aren't really much cop for games graphics, or even intense graphics surprisingly enough, but I suspect that's only cos the PC has dedicated cards available, normal cards are a bit of a joke...


Don't underestimate the graphics power of the Mac - it'll blow most PC's out of the water easily, after all, that's why it's favoured by serious graphic designers the world over.
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Postby Fossil » Thu Dec 09, 2004 7:21 pm

purplegrum wrote:
Apollo wrote:Har har har, who listens to Americans? ::):

Apple's offerings aren't really much cop for games graphics, or even intense graphics surprisingly enough, but I suspect that's only cos the PC has dedicated cards available, normal cards are a bit of a joke...


Don't underestimate the graphics power of the Mac - it'll blow most PC's out of the water easily, after all, that's why it's favoured by serious graphic designers the world over.



purplegrum who cares if macs are better than pc's
:roll:

my *ocks bigger than your *ock

::):

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Postby purplegrum » Thu Dec 09, 2004 7:24 pm

I was mearly standing up for myself and my convictions.
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Postby turbozutek » Thu Dec 09, 2004 7:25 pm

The Modern Fossil wrote:
Don't underestimate the graphics power of the Mac - it'll blow most PC's out of the water easily, after all, that's why it's favoured by serious graphic designers the world over.



purplegrum who cares if macs are better than pc's
:roll:

my *ocks bigger than your *ock

::):

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Actually it's favoured by Graphics Designers the world over as Quark first came out for it and it's the only machine until recently to fully support industry standard colour calibrations. In fact it's more of a historical cludge that GD's prefer the Mac to the PC and not in fact a technical reason.

And even the fastest Mac graphics card is vastly inferior to a £400 PC Radeon. And I say this as someone with a McTosh G5 and a Dell on my desk right now.

Chris...
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Postby purplegrum » Thu Dec 09, 2004 7:27 pm

They're still better. It's a known fact.

It's also a known fact that PC users are unable to admit this because they find it hard to cope with.
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Postby Fossil » Thu Dec 09, 2004 7:31 pm

purplegrum wrote:They're still better. It's a known fact.

It's also a known fact that PC users are unable to admit this because they find it hard to cope with.


..........
::):
"you must be over 18 to post in these forums"

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Postby turbozutek » Thu Dec 09, 2004 7:34 pm

purplegrum wrote:They're still better. It's a known fact.

It's also a known fact that PC users are unable to admit this because they find it hard to cope with.


Sorry Purple - but you are talking out your arse mate. Anyone can buy a wanky machine, paint it 'soho purple' and run a shite cut down clone of Linux on it. Charge a stupidly inflated price and you have a MAC !! waaa hey! You can even take a hammer to the mouse and convert it to the ultra COOL and user friendly single button 'Mac mouse'.

Now, on a technical note (And slightly more on topic) - the problem you are suffering from Apollo is called 'DOS File Updates to Directory Structure'

There is a hack somewhere to instruct Windows 98 to NOT update the DOS directory in ram when a file is deleted - this reduces the overhead on the filesystem greatly.

Quite how this is acheived I don't quite recall but there is a registry hack - I'll look it up if I get time mate.

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Postby purplegrum » Thu Dec 09, 2004 7:40 pm

turbozutek wrote:Sorry Purple - but you are talking out your arse mate. Anyone can buy a wanky machine, paint it 'soho purple' and run a shite cut down clone of Linux on it. Charge a stupidly inflated price and you have a MAC !! waaa hey! You can even take a hammer to the mouse and convert it to the ultra COOL and user friendly single button 'Mac mouse'.


I am not talking out my arse. Why do you think the Mac is so wanky when, in essence, it's no different to a PC apart from the fact that it runs a more stable OS and it's build using higher quality hardware. It also looks good in your house, not like some of the cheap tacky Windows boxes trying to look 'cool'. It's easy to use and it gets the job done.

Most of the TV shows you watch are edited on a Mac, your newspapers and magazines are produced using Mac's, the platform is almost virus free and is used by the US Army because of it's high level of security and reliability.

Shame that more folk can't take off their M$ goggles and see that.
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Postby turbozutek » Thu Dec 09, 2004 7:48 pm

purplegrum wrote:
turbozutek wrote:Sorry Purple - but you are talking out your arse mate. Anyone can buy a wanky machine, paint it 'soho purple' and run a shite cut down clone of Linux on it. Charge a stupidly inflated price and you have a MAC !! waaa hey! You can even take a hammer to the mouse and convert it to the ultra COOL and user friendly single button 'Mac mouse'.


I am not talking out my arse. Why do you think the Mac is so wanky when, in essence, it's no different to a PC apart from the fact that it runs a more stable OS and it's build using higher quality hardware. It also looks good in your house, not like some of the cheap tacky Windows boxes trying to look 'cool'. It's easy to use and it gets the job done.

Most of the TV shows you watch are edited on a Mac, your newspapers and magazines are produced using Mac's, the platform is almost virus free and is used by the US Army because of it's high level of security and reliability.

Shame that more folk can't take off their M$ goggles and see that.


The hardware is off a higher quality ? In which parrallel universe ? How is the IBM / Moto RISC chip any better than a P4 in design and implimentation ?

Let's not mention exploding powerbook batterys, failed HT units on iMacs, poor quality control on newer LCD iMacs, G5 thermal issues (A desktop machine with 5 fans sounding like a train arriving is cool!?), the new iMac monitor 'creep' of death, iPod battery failures etc etc

None of which would be an issue if spare parts didn't force you to re-mortgage your house and your dog.

I work for a LARGE newspaper company and did work for STV - STV used exclusivly PCs ONLY and didn't have a single Mac on the books. Also, the newspaper company for which I work are just beginning to role out MILES33 - which knocks Quark and the Mac lot into an old shoebox.

What does it run on? PCs with 2003 servers. Long live mac.

If Apple was a PC manufacturer and released as many design problems / lemons they would have went under long ago.

As for the McTosh being virus free - dream on. Secure ? Dream on. Anything running a variant of UNIX is open to being raped left right and centre.

Anyways, this is entierly off topic and futile, so let's not discuss it any longer lest I let Fossy have his way and lock this thread with Apollo's straight forward and well asked question completly un-answered.

Chris...
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Postby purplegrum » Thu Dec 09, 2004 7:50 pm

Now you're talking out your arse mate, sorry, but you are. This has done nothing but to show me that this website is so not the place for me, as nobody is open to any other thinking than their own.

Bye all.
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