In article <e0er40$qdv$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Ant says...
>
>Walter Bright wrote:
>
>> XP rarely self-destructs on me. This is the second time in about 3 years.
>
>I don't think that's reasonable but many windows users find it natural.
>
>Ant

I don't find your comment reasonable either, but natural for a non-Windows users. :P

David L.

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 MKoD: http://spottedtiger.tripod.com/D_Language/D_Main_XP.html

John Demme wrote:
> Yes, yes.. I know windows has user home directories, but since most
> applications use the registry instead, it's not worth much.

The bug with the Windows home directories, and why I don't use them, is they insist on putting spaces in the directory names. This hoses us command line users.

Walter Bright wrote:
> 
> The bug with the Windows home directories, and why I don't use them, is they insist on putting spaces in the directory names. This hoses us command line users.

It's possible to move home directories with a bit of hacking, though some programs do seem to hard-code path names when they shouldn't.  I tried renaming "Program Files" as well, but with less success.  Even MS apps seem to expect stuff to live there no matter what the registry says.  Ultimately, I just gave up on the whole experiment as too complicated to be worthwhile.


Sean

A fundamental flaw with windows is the use of the registry - which microsoft developers now admit.

However, this is a core component of the NSA data collection system distributed as an operating system.

"Walter Bright" <newshound@digitalmars.com> wrote:
> John C wrote:
>> Poor Windows. It does take some stick. Shall I be the only one to come to its defence and say I've never had so much as a crash since Windows 2000? Honestly, all this fuss...
>
> XP rarely self-destructs on me. This is the second time in about 3 years. But when it does, you're in for a full day or two of work, presuming you have all your crib sheets and install disks ready. The only reason I had them this time is because last August it failed on me, and it took me about a week to get everything sorted out (and some stuff was lost for good), including contacting some companies and begging them to give me a new registration code :-(.
>
> I'd forgive Windows for needing a reinstall now and then *if* it separated applications from the operating system, and *if* it provided reasonable ways to back up and restore things like O.E.
>
> The only way to back up Windows is to mirror the drive.

Maybe that's the reason I don't like Windows - although I have to use it, both at work, and at home. (I'm dual booting into XP Pro or Fedora 4)

During the time I've had this computer (since September 2004), I've had to reinstall Windows no less than 10 times - usually about two months between reinstalls, shortest has been 2 days after I managed to finally install all the software I need.

Installing all the software I use is not a task for the faint-hearted. It takes me about a week, working 8-12 hours a day, to get all the software back in shape. Everything from 3dsmax to visual studio, sql server, etc. And not forgetting to, after installing Windows, to go into the control panel and add/remove programs for the needed Windows components it does not want to install by default.

Why, oh why doesn't Microsoft let us select *during* install what features we want? I always hate having to go into the control panel and add IIS etc. to the system...

David L. Davis wrote:
> In article <e0er40$qdv$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Ant says...
>> Walter Bright wrote:
>>
>>> XP rarely self-destructs on me. This is the second time in about 3 years.
>> I don't think that's reasonable but many windows users find it natural.
>>
>> Ant
> 
> I don't find your comment reasonable either, but natural for a non-Windows
> users. :P
> 

I think we proved each other points. :)

Ant

Tom skrev:
> I used to work as a computer technician and have PLENTY hundreds of hours (or
> thousands of them maybe) making backups, restoring program settings, saving mail
> data from Outlook Shit-Express and others, cleaning
> viruses/trojans/spyware/adware, configuring network and reinstalling/tuning
> Windows 95/98/2000/XP (of weak users that broke their systems in a week/month
> basis). It's the worst crap you can ever do and I hate the job, though I made
> pretty much cash with it. I agree, the registry is the worst design decision
> I've ever seen.
> 
> Linux is a beautiful system (and also is FreeBSD) but they both have their
> problems such as for example: they're hard to configure, they lack drivers, they
> lack applications for some professional enviroments (eg. autocad, 3dsmax, games,
> 
> many others), they are TOO complicated for regular people, without an Internet
> connection they're hard to learn, etc.
> 
> The morals of the story: computers ARE NOT for everybody yet now in the 2006,
> even with dumb-oriented systems as Windows XP. You choose with which harshness
> you want to live with when choosing an OS depending on the time you have and the
> tasks you'll be performing on the system.
> 
I beg to differ, we have Mac OS X. A unix for pretty much everyone.

<snip>

// Fredrik

David L. Davis skrev:
> In article <e0dmeo$2cmk$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Walter Bright says...
>> ...
>>
>> Do you know it takes THREE HOURS to install Windows from scratch? Gads, you install XP from the CD which requires rebooting several times, then again 
>>from the XP SP2 update CD (rebooting n more times), then you log in to 
>> Windows update and update/reboot 4 or 5 more times. Why can't Windows Update download everything at once and reboot only once?
>>
>> ...
>>
>> Most of the other apps aren't too bad, if you were smart enough to keep a crib sheet of all the serial numbers, registration numbers, and funky passwords. The whole job takes about 12 hours.
>>
>> ...
>>
> Yep! It's like someone else pointed out in another message, these things will
> happen once in a while to everyone. And even moving to another non-Windows OS
> won't save anyone from having to rebuild their OS from time to time. And giving
> up computers all together isn't an option...so "no pain, no gain." Plus Windows
> XP is the best version of Windows that Microsoft has ever put out. Well I'm glad
> to hear you're back up and running. :)
> 
They will? My home computer I bought it in January 2002, came installed with OS X 10.1. Since then I have not reinstalled once, unless you count the upgrades to 10.2, then 10.3 and last spring to 10.4. I also upgraded from 40gig hard drive to 120gig, but no reinstall, simply copied the disk and kept running.

And I have tortured that poor installation :), tried about every app I have crossed. I am curious by nature, and experience showed me I no longer have to be afraid.

For Windows I must say that Windows 2000 is the best OS Microsoft have put out there. Quite stable, and much more lean than XP, that always caught me as a resource slurping Telletubies edition of Windows 2000. I think there is a reason why Windows 2000 identifies itself as Window NT 5.0, and XP as NT 5.1...


// Fredrik


> David L.
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> "Dare to reach for the Stars...Dare to Dream, Build, and Achieve!"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> MKoD: http://spottedtiger.tripod.com/D_Language/D_Main_XP.html

Sean Kelly skrev:
> Walter Bright wrote:
>>
>> The bug with the Windows home directories, and why I don't use them, is they insist on putting spaces in the directory names. This hoses us command line users.
> 
> It's possible to move home directories with a bit of hacking, though some programs do seem to hard-code path names when they shouldn't.  I tried renaming "Program Files" as well, but with less success.  Even MS apps seem to expect stuff to live there no matter what the registry says.  Ultimately, I just gave up on the whole experiment as too complicated to be worthwhile.
> 
It would have been easily solved if Microsoft just decided to use ~/ for the path to home directory as everyone else does.

But as I understand it Windows Vista should come with better support for command line users, hopefully a shortcut to the home directories is in there (But probably not ~\ just for spite).

// Fredrik

Sean Kelly wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
>>
>> The bug with the Windows home directories, and why I don't use them, is they insist on putting spaces in the directory names. This hoses us command line users.
> 
> It's possible to move home directories with a bit of hacking, though some programs do seem to hard-code path names when they shouldn't.  I tried renaming "Program Files" as well, but with less success.  Even MS apps seem to expect stuff to live there no matter what the registry says.  Ultimately, I just gave up on the whole experiment as too complicated to be worthwhile.
> 
> 
> Sean

I've renamed Program Files, and it's actually rarer than I would have thought that programs want to install to C:\Program Files. Of course, this requires that you change some registry keys to point to your directory instead of the default.

The one "big" case I remember was that the ATI Catalyst video drivers wanted to put something there - I can't remember what it was - and they also tended to pop up with errors when I tried to force them into my D:\Programs directory. This was reason enough for me to switch to the third-party Omega drivers, which have worked fine.

Other than that, only one or two programs have wanted, by default, to install to C:\Program Files, but it's hardly troublesome to just manually tell the installation program where you want it.

Using a different path for My Documents is far more painless. Even Microsoft's own Tweak UI (for Windows XP) lets you change that: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

The only trouble is that you still end up with "My xxx" in your My Documents folder, regardless of what you name the latter. Nothing's forcing you to use those directories for anything, though.