An alien ate your computer

[hm_murdock]

Microsoft Bollocks XP! Just like I said.

[Duo Maxwell]

I've found that when waiting on a replacement part or some other such shit for a comp, that if I "forget" to remove a live CD that they will use linux and not even know that they are doing so. The Linspire live 5.0 CD is the one I usually leave lol.

[Calum]

my dad's fifty five. he learnt how to use windows and ms office pretty in depth at the local college, but he doesn't own a computer, and when he's round here he doesn't seem to have any problems using my computer. to him the choice of OS is something that isn't important, in fact it's a choice i'm not even sure he's aware of, but that doesn't stop him being able to use other OSs with equal ease to windows.

i think this "windows is easy" stuff is not only because people have "learnt" one OS (ie: windows) first, but because they have a mental block about it too, mainly. my dad doesn't have this mental block because he's not really interested in which OS he's using if the programs work in it for him. i'm just using this as an example not only of how age doesn't really matter here, but also that people who are not too well versed in non windows OSs really don't have too many problems nowadays when it comes to using them.

PS: i know 55 is not the same as 68, but my dad didn't even really use computers at work till he was about 40 etc (not windows ones of course! it'd be mainframe or something i think, with remote terminals) so the principle is roughly the same.

by the way worker, your explanation about the cadillac et cetera was very good, well done, a quality piece of writing. that's the sort of thing that should be collected on some sort of best of" area on the forums for posterity.

if not you can try Wine (or Crossover office, however most Linux fanboys are against it because it's commercial)

actually it's because it sucks ass. it's incredibly fiddly to set up, and it doesn't work properly with most programs, and when it does it's slowly and unpredictably. with these things in mind it is hardly the best choice to convince a windows user that linux has all the best programs for them to switch to. the wine configuration alone would be enough to turn off any windows user for life. if somebody wants to use a windows program, they should use it in windows (oh! blasphemy!), simple as that.

[Calum]

and another thing:

if isa support is gone in xp, then how is a person supposed to use their perfectly good isa sound cards etc? fedora linux (and many others) support these just fine. and what benefit is the user seeing by dropping the support? if other things in the OS still have the ISA etc dependencies then there's no disk space saving, although this is negligible anyway with new versions of windows since they are so huge regardless. It makes no sense, why drop ISA support when there's no saving in space, speed or functionality?

is it just because it's "old"? to my knowledge nobody has found anything wrong with the ISA specification so in my opinion being old is no excuse, if it works, and there's no cost to continuing support, then what is their f*!$

[toadlife]

Windows XP does support ISA cards. What they don't support is non plug-n-pray ISA cards. So if your ISA card is plug-n-pray it will work with XP - hence the filename "ISAPNP.SYS"

Someone asked, "how can a file become corrupted"? In the vast majority of cases where I've seen a file become corrupted in Windows, the problem has been bad sectors. I would suggets doing a chkdsk /r on the boot drive of your dad's computer. Another cause can be faulty memory and/or motherboard components that cause writes to disk to become corrupted. My money is on bad sectors though.

[pofnlice]

Can I just say...

He just said that!

Well, it seems like it wasn't really a system file that ate itself, but the hard drive dying.

and you saw someone asked this question...

Someone asked, "how can a file become corrupted"?

I usually just pay them off until they become dirty....then I exploit them.
No, really. Windows files can bcome corrupted by a lot more common incidents than a hd going bad. Many of the malwares and viruses going around now do just that. Windows also has on occaision just decided not to copy a portion of, or a complete program during install or update. OK maybe we can blame that on faulty disk or the upgrade was right...but it still could result in the same thing...making your computer as corrupt as the white house.

[toadlife]

Can I just say...

He just said that!

Sorry. I failed to read the whole thread thouroughly. I got sick of the "OMG Microsoft doesn't support ISA, therefore they are evil" crap and skimmed through.

[worker201]

Sorry. I failed to read the whole thread thouroughly. I got sick of the "OMG Microsoft doesn't support ISA, therefore they are evil" crap and skimmed through.

I'm pretty sure nobody said that.  It was postulated that ISA support was deprecated in Windows XP, and then reasons were speculated.  If you are correct that only nonPNP ISA support is deprecated, then M'Obrien's post was somewhat misleading, which led to untrue conclusions.  Please take the time to read each post before replying.  And if it's not too much fucking trouble, try to comprehend them too.

[Calum]

well i certainly didn't say any of that moronic crap. i agree, anybody who is replying to some comments should at least familiarise themselves with what the comments actually say in the first place.

[mobrien_12]

I have been under a very very strong impression that ISA support, not just the non PNP, was scrapped from XP.  I have understood this since a year before XP was launched.  Reasoning for this was that ISA bus is damned slow, XP is fucking bloated and wouldn't be running on many systems with ISA boards anyway, and scrapping ISA support simplifies the kernel and speeds things up (one of the reasons to drop it from custom Linux kernel compiles if your MB doesn't have it, BTW).  Apparently I didn't get the whole story.

The fact that the hard drive was dying was the root cause.  The isapnp file was corrupted due to the hard disk dying, which created the symptom listed above.  

My statement, which appears to be erroneous, was that this was evidence that MS had critical legacy file requirements in it's code that were actually unnecessary.  This would be further evidence of MS crappy coding practices.

ISAPNP is apparently used, not a true vestigal file, so the hard disk corrupting the file leads to a legitimate crash.

[worker201]

It's a really sad statement about Microsoft's reputation that we would be extremely ready to believe that there were unnecessary system files retained in the OS.  I'm sure there are still (even sadder), but I think we've cleared up any mystery surrounding this particular one.

[jtpenrod]

"It's a really sad statement about Microsoft's reputation that we would be extremely ready to believe that there were unnecessary system files retained in the OS."

And they have worked very hard to earn that reputation.