All off topic discussions go here. Everything from the funny thing your cat did to your favorite tv shows. Non-programming computer questions are ok too.
AJ wrote:If you have a 486 with 128MiB RAM, you can just install the kernel, Bash and other bare essentials which is great.
How many 486 systems have you seen lately with 128 MB of ram?
I don't know about the status of Linux these days, but OpenBSD can run on SPARC systems with 12 processors, 96 GB of ram... or a 486DX with 16M of ram.
Twitter: @canadianbryan. Award by smcerm, I stole it. Original was larger.
suthers wrote:When I change the boot device priority in my BIOS to my old hard disk (with XP installed), I get a message saying BOOTMGR is compressed...
Jules
Try accessing that partition and look for some file called BOOTMGR, maybe at the root directory.
Then, if that partition is NTFS, just right click it >> Properties, click "Advanced", and if NTFS compression is checked, uncheck where it says something like "Compress contents to save disk space", and also "Encrypt contents to secure data".
That sort of error has occurred to me when I have compressed the whole NTFS boot partition, to be precise C:\NTLDR.
well, I'm going to be honest... as a person that uses(on a regular basis) XP, Vista, and OpenBSD...
Anyone that says "Well Vista is way faster than my XP install" just give it a while, Windows NT has a horrible disease that doesn't become apparent until you have been using it for a few months.. as you install more things, the slower it gets... even if these processes aren't being started at boot... If you were to take two fresh installs of XP and Vista, there wouldn't hardly be a difference with speed... except for maybe with SATA stuff.. (iirc, XP doesn't support true SATA speeds)
When I first got my Vista system, my only problem with it was compatibility... but now, it's slower than my XP computer... and my Vista is a dualcore 64bit AMD processor with 1GB ram and 160GB SATA hdd.... and my XP is a 2.4ghz celeron with 512MB and IDE harddrives...
now both systems take at least 10 minutes to really startup and get going (including if it's from hibernation) and I'm not one to install spyware crap like Limewire and such...
Although it takes a while to really learn and adjust to a *nix system like OpenBSD, you'll be amazed with just how fast you can get it started up....
I have OpenBSD on a 4GB thumbdrive that will boot(with no modifications but to xorg.conf) on both systems and both go extremely fast. I can boot them up and get firefox, pidgin, and a terminal going in a little less than 4 minutes... keep in mind though, this is from a thumbdrive, which has MUCH slower transfer rates than IDE or SATA harddrives... (now note, I also use fluxbox, which starts hardly anything, KDE is a little slower to start)
The only thing I have noticed with OpenBSD that is slower than windows is building a project I have with g++... it is noticably slower, but this is probably due to very low USB transfer rates...
my advice, if you want to play games and everything, use the cheapest windows you can find... and if your going to develop, switch to a *nix, particularly OpenBSD....
Brynet-inc wrote:How many 486 systems have you seen lately with 128 MB of ram?
I don't know about 486s, but my 25MHz Macintosh IIci has 128MB RAM
AJ wrote:If you have a 486 with 128MiB RAM, you can just install the kernel, Bash and other bare essentials which is great. The problem with this of course, is that a complete Linux newbie like me gets daunted by it all and will go back to what they are comfortable with.
I run into the same problem with distros like Debian via net install where you get all the thousands of packages in the list. =p I've found myself spending ~24 hours just to get the system up to my standards, let alone customizing it, just because I'm a little OCD and feel I have to look through the whole list "in case I need anything". The best way I've found to deal with it is, if installing on a low-spec machine, to just choose a basic installation, then just install stuff as you need it. I've gotten Debian 4.0 onto a system with 4MB RAM and 160MB HD. Didn't run fast until I managed to find an upgrade card for it to 12MB and recompiled the kernel, but eh, you can only ask for so much. =p
I've been using Vista since October '07 and it's still running faster than my Sempron beside it running XP Pro that was installed maybe a couple months ago.
I did have Vista running on the Sempron before and it ran just fine on there too for a few months. I know the only problem I did have was with the built-in zip decompression and USB file transfer speeds which were fixed with SP1.
I could be one of the lucky ones, but I still have yet to see the performance problems people talk about. Maybe they should buy better hardware.
XP machine:
Sempron 1.7GHz
1GB RAM
ATI HD2400
Vista Machine:
Core 2 Duo E6550 @ 2.3GHz
4GB RAM
nVidia 8600GTS
Memory usage stays around the same, I haven't notice 'many' (see I didn't say 'no') memory leaks. The only time the box is rebooted is for certain updates. I agree 4GB isn't going to be used quickly, but I was also running it on 1GB and it was running just fine. I needed to run XP for working remotely at home so I bought the RAM and run XP under VirtualBox.
To each their own though, I won't tell anyone what OS to use or pretend to think Vista is the best thing since sliced bread because they all have their flaws or we wouldn't be on this board.
I get much better performance out of Vista than I ever got out of XP, and with SP1 I noticed even more improvements.
Although, my system might just be pretty decent. I can run 3 or 4 VMWare virtual machines, a dual-monitor game of Supreme Commander, and still have my IDE and Firefox open in the background. 2 GB RAM, 2 GHz Core 2 Duo, nVidia GeForce 8400.
I wouldn't go back to XP after using Vista, personally. I know of others that have had no end of trouble with Vista though, and I can understand them switching back to XP. I guess it all depends on your own experience .
If your Windows machine (Vista or 98SE ) takes 10 minutes to start up, it's time to do some cleaning. You wouldn't expect your car to run without servicing would you?
I find it's generally not the Windows installation itself that runs slow... it's all the badly written applications that are put on top of it. I mean, both Norton and Nero have 'removal utilities' to remove the crud that the uninstaller doesn't do...
What the hell the I can't delete some of my files, even when logged in as admin, I need special permission and I can't tick that box in the permissions thing...
This OS is crazy, I can't even delete most of my files and all of my files are read only....
I was thinking, since there is a bootsek.bak, couldn't I make an image of XP HDD and replace the bootsector by bootsek.bat?
Jules
Legal and the normal way, but on top of everything from XP...
All of my stuff can only be modified, deleted, etc.. by a user who's ID is a weird number that was my PCs ID under XP...
I no longer have control over anything, because only my old use that doesn't exist on vista can modify anything...
Jules
You have to change the owner of the files by going into the security tab on the file properties clicking advanced options and then going to owner and changing it, that always seems to work for me, then you just have to change the security permissions to read and write.
. TBH, it's so long since I was using a 486 that I don't remember the system "normals" as far as RAM is concerned.
) takes 10 minutes to start up, it's time to do some cleaning. You wouldn't expect your car to run without servicing would you?
