Chkdsk/Scandisk

On 5/15/2012 12:01 AM, glee wrote:
Ah, the voice of sanity. There are a lot of things about Seven I do not
like at all.... particularly the Vista/Seven version of Windows
Explorer, which drives me crazy.... but overall, the system is much more
trouble-free than previous operating systems. I was a big fan of Win95,
was a very late adopter of both 98SE and XP, but eventually found them
each to be progressively better than the previous systems.... once
software and hardware companies caught up with the curve in making their
products and drivers compatible.

Every version of Windows 3.1 and since, offered me a feature or two that
I really wanted. This worked for me all the way up to XP. And Vista,
Windows 7, and Windows 8 doesn't have any features that I could use and
want. Worse is that those later OS eats much of the processor power and
leaves much less for applications.

For example, most of my machines has no problems recording TV programs
under XP. And it can also convert the video in real time from MPEG to
say WMV format at the same time. Although any OS later since XP can't do
this without dropping video frames with any of my over 20 laptops.

Another thing that newer versions of Windows did was support for newer
applications. This also isn't doing anything for me with Vista and
Windows 7/8 either. As everything I want to run still runs under XP. And
actually, Vista and Windows 7/8 runs less of what I want to run. So for
me, these newer Windows OS are far less useful to me than XP is.

I think all of the seasoned programmers have long retired and now
Microsoft is stuck with younger programmers that have no clue what is
important with a newer OS. And they somehow seem to think that a bloated
OS is the way to go. Although that isn't my opinion, I think it should
go in the other direction.

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when
there is nothing left to take away."
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
French writer (1900 - 1944)

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Thunderbird v12
Centrino Core Duo T5600 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP2

On 5/15/2012 3:44 AM, Yousuf Khan wrote:
On 14/05/2012 9:03 PM, BillW50 wrote:
I must be the world's worst proofreader. I got through half of this
paragraph below before I even knew anything was wrong. :-(

Arocdnicg to rsceearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in
waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht
the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pcale. The rset can be a
toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit pobelrm. Tihs is buseace
the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a
wlohe.

Awesome! Wow, it really works.

What is even odder, is apparently *none* of the above is actually true.
As Cambridge University had no such research study for one. I first saw
this paragraph like 7 years or so ago and I don't know where it
originally came from.

reading jumbled letters
http://dan.hersam.com/2005/01/27/rea...mbled-letters/

And while I can't find examples right now, but others since then has
created paragraphs by the same rules which are almost impossible to
read. So I really don't understand how sometimes it works and sometimes
it doesn't.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Thunderbird v12
Centrino Core Duo T5600 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP2

glee wrote:
"Char Jackson" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 14 May 2012 17:36:22 -0500, "BillW50" wrote:

In ,
Char Jackson typed:
On Mon, 14 May 2012 15:27:28 -0500, wrote:
I once read that the OS should remain invisible, and only provide a
means to run the visible software installed to it. I guess MS has
forgotten that, since these days the OSs are *in your face*
annoying....

You wouldn't believe some of the things I once read.

No it is true. OS were once created to be invisible and not get in the
way of the user. This was great since the user had the freedom to do
whatever they wanted too. It isn't that way with newer OS. As newer OS
assumes the user is a total moron and slaps their hand if it thinks you
shouldn't be doing something you shouldn't. And all this does is to
make users dumber and dumber with each generation.

The OS of today is expected and demanded to do far more than at
anytime in the past. You can pine for the old days if you like, but
you'd have to drag me back there kicking and screaming.

Ah, the voice of sanity. There are a lot of things about Seven I do not
like at all.... particularly the Vista/Seven version of Windows
Explorer, which drives me crazy....

snip

??? I almost hate to ask, but I am curious as to what they did to windows
explorer. It was already one step backward in XP when they removed the
file extension column and replaced it with "file type".

In message , SC Tom writes:
[]
Maybe it was just the hardware that I had at the time, or I was just
lucky, but I went directly from 98 to ME, skipping 98SE along the way,
and never had near the problems that I had with 98 or early XP. After

Interesting; you're one of the few that found ME good. The majority of
folks didn't - but I've met people before who did, so you're no alone.

Certainly most 98 fans say 98SE was a lot better. (I personally ran
98SElite, which was a way of running 98 - with a lot of the improvements
that came with it, like better [though still far behind XP] support for
USB, and other things I can't remember - but with the gimmicky [weblike]
98 GUI, but instead using the 95 GUI, which was quicker, less
resource-hungry, and more stable.)

the BS I went through with all of the Win3.11 workstations we had at
work (we had a number of DOS-based programs that did NOT co-exist well
with 3.11), I was happy to go to 95. Then, hearing how great 98 was, I

Yes, I don't remember 3.1x with great affection: hunting drivers (for
graphics hardware and printers) is one of the things I don't remember
enjoying.

gave it a try (we didn't migrate to it at work), and thought eh, it's
ok. The more I ran it, the worse it got. Then I went to ME and thought
Bill finally got it right :-) It was quick and stable, and trouble
free. 98 to me was like Vista- a poor filler between two really good OS.
Odd - a lot of people thought that about ME (as being between 98SE and
XP).
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

And in the end, nothing will really change. France is too used to being
France. - Jonathan Meades (on French elections); RT 5-11 May 2012.

On Mon, 14 May 2012 17:27:34 -0500, "BillW50" wrote:

In ,
SC Tom typed:
You could always go to WinME; you get the Win98 interface with a lot
better hardware usage, and without that nasty resource limitation
that BillW50 mentioned. Much as I like WinXP now, I went back to ME
at least three times before figuring out the solution to the XP
problem I was having.

Huh? ME don't have the System Resource problem? I ran ME for about a
year and I didn't remember that one. And the one very bad thing about ME
is that it is one of the buggiest Windows versions ever developed. And
it is one of the least supported Windows version ever. Even still, it is
possible to have ME running very stable. But I might be wrong, but I
believe your best chance is running it on a machine that is designed for
ME in the first place.

I'm surprised anyone says WinME is good. I always heard bad about it,
so I avoided it. At the same time, I have to say that I rarely have
system resources problems with Win98se. Ok, there have been times when
I was running something like Agent, over 20 open web pages in Firefox or
K-Meleon, Paint Shop Pro, Thunderbird Email, Winamp is loaded, Foxit
reader has an open PDF, Five open notepad text files, A Word document,
and when a MP4 video starts playing, suddenly my icons turn black and
the mouse cursor wont move. But even I have to admit this is an
overload. I'm running all of this on a computer that came with Win2000,
but I downgraded to 98se, later installed Win2000 as dual boot. I have
500megs RAM, The CPU is a 1000mhz Intel Celeron, and I have 160 gigs of
HD space (Fat32). [I've never known if this CPU is a Pentium II or III]

I should also mention that I'm running Kernal-EX, which is a non-MS
aftermarket upgrade for Win98se, which makes it compatible with newer
software. For example, I could not run Firefox 3.x on the native 98se,
but now it will run FF3. (But none of the newer versions of FF).

I should also mention that NOTHING loads at bootup, except the files
needed to load Win98se. No virus scanner, no networks, no printers are
turned on, nothing but Windows itself. (Internet Explorer has been
removed).

"Bill in Co" wrote:


??? I almost hate to ask, but I am curious as to what they did to windows
explorer. It was already one step backward in XP when they removed the
file extension column and replaced it with "file type".

You can have it show the extensions, of course. I don't have an XP
machine in front of me, but as I remember there's a command on the
View menu that shows a dialog box that lets you choose what to see.
The default is to hide extensions, which has never made any sense to
me. I always set it to show all extensions.

--
Tim Slattery

"Bill in Co" wrote in message
m...
glee wrote:
"Char Jackson" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 14 May 2012 17:36:22 -0500, "BillW50"
wrote:

In ,
Char Jackson typed:
On Mon, 14 May 2012 15:27:28 -0500, wrote:
I once read that the OS should remain invisible, and only provide
a
means to run the visible software installed to it. I guess MS
has
forgotten that, since these days the OSs are *in your face*
annoying....

You wouldn't believe some of the things I once read.

No it is true. OS were once created to be invisible and not get in
the
way of the user. This was great since the user had the freedom to
do
whatever they wanted too. It isn't that way with newer OS. As newer
OS
assumes the user is a total moron and slaps their hand if it thinks
you
shouldn't be doing something you shouldn't. And all this does is to
make users dumber and dumber with each generation.

The OS of today is expected and demanded to do far more than at
anytime in the past. You can pine for the old days if you like, but
you'd have to drag me back there kicking and screaming.

Ah, the voice of sanity. There are a lot of things about Seven I do
not
like at all.... particularly the Vista/Seven version of Windows
Explorer, which drives me crazy....

snip

??? I almost hate to ask, but I am curious as to what they did to
windows explorer. It was already one step backward in XP when they
removed the file extension column and replaced it with "file type".

Not sure what you mean, Bill. Win98 also had the "File type" column in
Explorer, and did not have an "extension" column. File extensions were
shown by using Tools Folder Options View to uncheck "Hide extensions
for known file types" or something like that.

Windows Explorer in Vista and Seven are a bit different, and for me it
is much harder to manipulate files and folders with it. You can't
travel through the folder trees as easily, the Back button works
differently, it acts more like a web browser than a file manager, the
menus that Explorer used to have are gone... the list goes on.

Some big changes are coming for Windows Explorer in Windows 7:
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/win...windows-7/1020

--
Glen Ventura
MS MVP Oct. 2002 - Sept. 2009
CompTIA A+

In ,
glee typed:
"Bill in Co" wrote in message
m...

??? I almost hate to ask, but I am curious as to what they did to
windows explorer. It was already one step backward in XP when they
removed the file extension column and replaced it with "file type".

Not sure what you mean, Bill. Win98 also had the "File type" column
in Explorer, and did not have an "extension" column. File extensions
were shown by using Tools Folder Options View to uncheck "Hide
extensions for known file types" or something like that.

The File Type isn't the same as the file extension. Sure you can show
the file extension under XP Explorer, but you don't sort by file
extension.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core2 Duo T5600 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP2

On 16/05/2012 8:41 AM, Tim Slattery wrote:
"Bill in wrote:


??? I almost hate to ask, but I am curious as to what they did to windows
explorer. It was already one step backward in XP when they removed the
file extension column and replaced it with "file type".

You can have it show the extensions, of course. I don't have an XP
machine in front of me, but as I remember there's a command on the
View menu that shows a dialog box that lets you choose what to see.
The default is to hide extensions, which has never made any sense to
me. I always set it to show all extensions.

That's still there in Windows 7, just type "Folder Options" at the
search programs and files prompt.

Yousuf Khan

On 15/05/2012 1:24 PM, BillW50 wrote:
What is even odder, is apparently *none* of the above is actually true.
As Cambridge University had no such research study for one. I first saw
this paragraph like 7 years or so ago and I don't know where it
originally came from.

reading jumbled letters
http://dan.hersam.com/2005/01/27/rea...mbled-letters/

And while I can't find examples right now, but others since then has
created paragraphs by the same rules which are almost impossible to
read. So I really don't understand how sometimes it works and sometimes
it doesn't.

Maybe if the words become too long, then the jumbling doesn't work any
more? Just as a guess, let's say that as long as the words are 7 letters
long or less, then jumbling works, but beyond that, then you do notice
what the internal letters of the words are? Just a hypothesis.

Another possibility is that it works with dyslexic people better than
with others? I'm somewhat dyslexic and I had little problem reading that
paragraph.

Yousuf Khan

On 15/05/2012 12:16 PM, BillW50 wrote:
On 5/15/2012 12:01 AM, glee wrote:
Ah, the voice of sanity. There are a lot of things about Seven I do not
like at all.... particularly the Vista/Seven version of Windows
Explorer, which drives me crazy.... but overall, the system is much more
trouble-free than previous operating systems. I was a big fan of Win95,
was a very late adopter of both 98SE and XP, but eventually found them
each to be progressively better than the previous systems.... once
software and hardware companies caught up with the curve in making their
products and drivers compatible.

Every version of Windows 3.1 and since, offered me a feature or two that
I really wanted. This worked for me all the way up to XP. And Vista,
Windows 7, and Windows 8 doesn't have any features that I could use and
want. Worse is that those later OS eats much of the processor power and
leaves much less for applications.

I really find Windows 7's use of a search for program name
indispensable. Under XP my programs menu was incredibly large, it would
spread across 3 or 4 columns. Trying to navigate that was nightmarish.
Now, I just do a search for a partial name and it gives me a list of
possibilities. This is actually somewhat a bit of a throwback feature,
from the days before graphical interfaces, where you ran stuff on the
command-line entirely. This is a sort of modern take on the command-line.

I think all of the seasoned programmers have long retired and now
Microsoft is stuck with younger programmers that have no clue what is
important with a newer OS. And they somehow seem to think that a bloated
OS is the way to go. Although that isn't my opinion, I think it should
go in the other direction.

Microsoft's older programmers were known for creating bugs more than
anything else. Spaghetti code was another description. I'd say the newer
programmers are doing a better job.

Yousuf Khan

In ,
typed:
On Mon, 14 May 2012 17:27:34 -0500, "BillW50" wrote:

In ,
SC Tom typed:
You could always go to WinME; you get the Win98 interface with a lot
better hardware usage, and without that nasty resource limitation
that BillW50 mentioned. Much as I like WinXP now, I went back to ME
at least three times before figuring out the solution to the XP
problem I was having.

Huh? ME don't have the System Resource problem? I ran ME for about a
year and I didn't remember that one. And the one very bad thing
about ME is that it is one of the buggiest Windows versions ever
developed. And it is one of the least supported Windows version
ever. Even still, it is possible to have ME running very stable. But
I might be wrong, but I believe your best chance is running it on a
machine that is designed for ME in the first place.

I'm surprised anyone says WinME is good. I always heard bad about it,
so I avoided it.

In my experience, it generally takes a lot of work to get ME running
really well on about 50% of computers. The other 50% doesn't have a
chance of running ME well.

At the same time, I have to say that I rarely have system resources
problems with Win98se. Ok, there have been times when I was running
something like Agent, over 20 open web pages in Firefox or K-Meleon,
Paint Shop Pro, Thunderbird Email, Winamp is loaded, Foxit reader has
an open PDF, Five open notepad text files, A Word document, and when a
MP4 video starts playing, suddenly my icons turn black and the mouse
cursor wont move. But even I have to admit this is an overload. I'm
running all of this on a computer that came with Win2000, but I
downgraded to 98se, later installed Win2000 as dual boot. I have
500megs RAM,

I ran out of system resources just with AVG, IE, OE, and MS Word 2000.
If I could run as much as you could, I would have been fine with it.

The CPU is a 1000mhz Intel Celeron, and I have 160 gigs of HD space
(Fat32). [I've never known if this CPU is a Pentium II or III]

If it is a Celeron that is what it is. A Pentium II and III are
different CPUs by Intel. Control Panel and System Properties should tell
you what CPU it is.

I should also mention that I'm running Kernal-EX, which is a non-MS
aftermarket upgrade for Win98se, which makes it compatible with newer
software. For example, I could not run Firefox 3.x on the native
98se, but now it will run FF3. (But none of the newer versions of
FF).

I should also mention that NOTHING loads at bootup, except the files
needed to load Win98se. No virus scanner, no networks, no printers
are turned on, nothing but Windows itself. (Internet Explorer has been
removed).

Yes I have heard good things about Kernal-EX. I have two Toshiba
2595XDVD from '99 era. They are maxed out with 192MB of RAM with a
Celeron 400MHz. One has Windows 98SE and the other has Windows 2000. And
the Windows 98SE is super fast compared to the Windows 2000 one. As 98
boots really fast, keeps up with DVD movies and can stream video up to
700bps. The Windows 2000 one takes 10 minutes to boot, can't keep up
with DVDs, and can only stream video at 100bps max.

It isn't Windows 2000 fault though, as I had Windows 2000 installed on
other computers and they are fine. It is just awful with 192MB of RAM as
it constantly swaps to disk even while booting up. I can tell you that
Windows 2000 isn't as good as XP as far as multimedia is concern. XP
seems to be tweaked for multimedia while 2000 seems to be tweaked for
business applications.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core2 Duo T5600 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP2

In ,
Yousuf Khan typed:
On 15/05/2012 12:16 PM, BillW50 wrote:
On 5/15/2012 12:01 AM, glee wrote:
Ah, the voice of sanity. There are a lot of things about Seven I do
not like at all.... particularly the Vista/Seven version of Windows
Explorer, which drives me crazy.... but overall, the system is much
more trouble-free than previous operating systems. I was a big fan
of Win95, was a very late adopter of both 98SE and XP, but
eventually found them each to be progressively better than the
previous systems.... once software and hardware companies caught up
with the curve in making their products and drivers compatible.

Every version of Windows 3.1 and since, offered me a feature or two
that I really wanted. This worked for me all the way up to XP. And
Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8 doesn't have any features that I
could use and want. Worse is that those later OS eats much of the
processor power and leaves much less for applications.

I really find Windows 7's use of a search for program name
indispensable.

There are lots of utilities like that even for XP. For example Aston
Shell has that and it is so super quick. In fact, I use it on my Windows
7 machine since it is much faster than the Windows one.

Under XP my programs menu was incredibly large, it
would spread across 3 or 4 columns. Trying to navigate that was
nightmarish. Now, I just do a search for a partial name and it gives
me a list of possibilities. This is actually somewhat a bit of a
throwback feature, from the days before graphical interfaces, where
you ran stuff on the command-line entirely. This is a sort of modern
take on the command-line.

I have one machine which I had like 500 applications installed. It
overwhelmed the Programs Menu. So I broke things into categories and
created new folders like Tools, Office, Games, Utilities, etc. and then
dropped the programs into each of these folders. So the Program List
became really small even with all of those programs installed.

Although nowadays I rarely ever use the Program List for anything. As I
have so many other tools like LaunchBar, Left and Right Launchers, etc.
for Windows 2000 and up.

I think all of the seasoned programmers have long retired and now
Microsoft is stuck with younger programmers that have no clue what is
important with a newer OS. And they somehow seem to think that a
bloated OS is the way to go. Although that isn't my opinion, I think
it should go in the other direction.

Microsoft's older programmers were known for creating bugs more than
anything else. Spaghetti code was another description. I'd say the
newer programmers are doing a better job.

I don't see it that way. As the updates are causing more and more
problems all of the time. Years ago you didn't have to worry about
updates screwing up your system so much. Nowadays though, updates cause
more problems than malware does for many of us. Microsoft is getting as
bad as IBM was with OS/2 FixPaks. As whenever IBM fixed one bug, they
created three more new ones. It was just awful! And what did they do
after about 50 FixPaks? Plug in all of the original code which worked
the best anyway.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core2 Duo T5600 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP2

"BillW50" wrote in message
...
In ,
glee typed:
"Bill in Co" wrote in message
m...

??? I almost hate to ask, but I am curious as to what they did to
windows explorer. It was already one step backward in XP when they
removed the file extension column and replaced it with "file type".

Not sure what you mean, Bill. Win98 also had the "File type" column
in Explorer, and did not have an "extension" column. File extensions
were shown by using Tools Folder Options View to uncheck "Hide
extensions for known file types" or something like that.

The File Type isn't the same as the file extension. Sure you can show
the file extension under XP Explorer, but you don't sort by file
extension.


In Win98, you couldn't sort by extension either in Windows Explorer, you
sorted by file type. There was no 'file extension" column in Details
view in Explorer It was the same as XP.
--
Glen Ventura
MS MVP Oct. 2002 - Sept. 2009
CompTIA A+

On Wed, 16 May 2012 11:56:43 -0400, Yousuf Khan
wrote:

Microsoft's older programmers were known for creating bugs more than
anything else. Spaghetti code was another description.


"Spaghetti code" does not mean buggy code. "Spaghetti code" is code
that is tangled with up and down gotos. It is the opposite of
Structured Programming.

Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP