mynickers

Someone was telling me they'd got the leaked longhorn installer, I think he said it was build 4053.

Has anyone else bothered to try it out?

Where could one get a copy, should one be tempted to do such a thing (not that I am saying on a public forum, that I would do such a thing)?

Is it full of bugs?

And while on the subject of dodgey operating system, has there been any beta releases of XP reloaded or whatever they're gonna call it?

angrynorth

From what I've heard, I would leave it a couple of weeks, there is another build scheduled which should be the version that was demo'd at WinHEC a couple of weeks ago. The build that was leaked last is a bit flaky from what I understand but the next is good.

IWatkins

I've got the preview that was available at WinHEC along with the SDK. MSDN Subscriber downloads has it available as well.

Cheers

Ian

greasemonkey

Also on an MSDN Universal Subscription, so have had the Longhorn alpha as well as the various SP2 betas. Thus, if you want a copy, I'd suggest going a similar route.

However, the latest externally distributed Longhorn is still some way away from being even a beta, so unless you're desperate to give it a try, there are better ways of spending your day.


[/quote] And while on the subject of dodgey operating system, has there been any beta releases of XP reloaded or whatever they're gonna call it? [/quote]
"XP Reloaded" is more a marketing campaign than a single piece of software. However, the piece of software that underlies the "Reloaded" campaign is Service Pack 2. IIRC SP2 beta build 2096 - Release Candidate 1 is available for public download from Microsoft.

mynickers

No not desperate to get longhorn, but I get a bit hacked off with XP, my system is home built, so there is a possibility that there are minor hardware conflicts, but I have stripped it fairly bare, I try to use external things to reduce this and even so, their flagship OS should be better than this. I ran 98SE on a much dodgeir home build with very much less stability issues.

I have done lots of tweaks to free up resources, and to speed it up, and that helped a lot, it is much quicker and more stable now. After that I ran disk check, and de-fragged, all working much better.

However, it's still very quirky, it does crash alot, especailly file folders, and explorer. Outlook XP is another prime one for making it go haywire. I have tired leaving it alone and letting the application or system hangs try and sort themselves out, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Either way, I use my machine for work, and it takes up my time having to baby my machine. I seem to constanlty be bringing up task manager cause I can start to sense something might be hanging, and end up haivng to kill of tasks.

Once a system or application process hangs, the system never really works properly afterwards, so it normally needs a reboot. Again I just want to do my stuff, I get bored of having to mess around with the system to keep it running so I can do useful things with it.

Anyway, I have to do a fresh install, cause i have two partions on my local disc, and I want to merge them, and I prefer to delete them both, and format the whole thing and do a fresh install, never happy with results of partition magic and the like.

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

Nickers, Have u tried Win2k PRO? I also use to have lots of stability issues with XP. IRQL stop errors and alike. Are u using AMD and VIA combination? This seems to cause the most headaches with XP. Dont give up, keep trying by process of elimination and you will find the cause to the lack of stability. Its usually a bad driver or RAM that isnt up to the mark.

I dont have any issues in XP now, but I spent almost 2months working out what was causing the problems. Win2k never game me any hassle and usually clocked up 5week uptime or more on a regular basis.

I've used the last Longhorn beta, it should only ever be used on a DEV machine. It was extremely flakey and had virtually no support for my hardware, although at the time it was very new.

mynickers

bioforger - yeah I was on 2k pro before, and have been considering downgrading, but that seems like madness to have to downgrade.

I am using AMD Athlon XP2k+, but I am using one of the first generation Nvidia chipsets, which is generally very good, I prefer it to Via not that I am that tech saavy to really know the in's and out's of it all.

On the hardware front, I suddenly had a brandstorm last night, I have considered it before, but I went on the website for my board, and looked at the Ram it suggests, I thought it just had to be the same type I.E. DDR, but it actually suggests particular models, so maybe it's a ram timing thing or something, a minor conflict. Because I just used the Twinmoss 512k DDR ram I had from my last system...

http://uk.asus.com/prog/spec.asp?m=A...eluxe&langs=11

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

XP to Win2k isnt really a downgrade though. XP is based on the same kernal/code that win2k uses. XP is just win2k with aload of eye candy and ok a few other new features, XP is overloaded with useless stuff imo. Having said that, I prefer XP purely because of how it looks, and for gaming it is better.

mynickers

Well likewise, and like I said, you can tweak it to switch off all those unnecessary things, I have disabled indexing services, disabled unnecessary programs, disable unnecessary services to free system resources, and stopped any programs apart from anti virus from starting when it boots.

It only really struggles when I have a lot of programs open like illustrator, photoshop, a few explorer windows and outlook. It’s normally out look or explorer that goes, and file explorer windows.

scoobynutt

hi all

if someone wanted to try longhorn thay mite find it on some p2p software like kazaa OVERNET edonkey and others and do a search through them you will be amazed at what you could find

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

XP uses 98 code? :S u sure about that? I'm sure XP is an evolution of Win2ks kernal only.

Yer right though, Win2k was never designed as a gaming platform. This is why XP excels over it, and you quite often get a few fps advantage over Win2k as well.

GaryK

Yes I'm pretty sure there isn't any 9x code in XP, if there is it will only be user interface elements, the kernel is based on Win32 (NT) codebase. I would expect them to write new UI code on this base rather than have a mish-mash of codebases.

Gary

ChrisB

Hmmm... next!

stevencotton

Well, I would not be surprised Look at the size of applications - there is no need for them to be that large, it's sloppy coding.

GaryK

agree steven, m$ have always turned out bloated apps, xp I think is something like 20 million lines of code which is pretty scary in terms of qa and testing! I think they have always taken a cavalier attitude that because hardware is cheap it doesnt really matter. And their dev. tools have bloated runtimes, even the mfc for c++ is huge, nearly all of my apps are under 2 meg and most will fit on a floppy with no runtimes!

greasemonkey

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, or, indeed, what your definition of "100% NT code" is.

If you're trying to say that XP= NT + 98 all sort of mixed together, you are incorrect.

As Windows XP was intended from the start to form the common codebase of all MS' operating systems, from the home through workstation through the server spaces, it goes without saying that it would adopt similar core functionality to both the "professional" and the "home" predecessors.

As it was developed by the team of software developers responsible for both NT and the Win95 series, it follows that there will be a certain amount of commonality with both predecessors (you don't just rip everything up and start again if you have a choice). However, claiming that WinXP contains chunks of Win98 code is at the very least somewhat disingenuous, and, tbh, basically wrong.

greasemonkey

No, that's bollocks as well, sorry. Win2k (aka NT5.0) was "based entirely on NT4" in exactly the same way as WinXP (aka NT5.1) was based entirely on Win2k, so XP and 2k aren't different, as you're trying to make out; one is a direct development of the other.

As for this "XP is not like Win2k" line, what on earth are you tryig to say? As mentioned above, XP is merely a point revision of Windows 2000, and its major changes are in the UI. If you are trying to say that XP has elements of 98 in it, so does Windows 2000.

Don't forget that 2K (aka NT5.0) was originally designed to be the replacement for 9x in the home and workstation space that XP eventually became. By this time Microsoft had also developed the WDM unified driver architecture that was applicable to both OS lines so it goes without saying that 2k shares some commonality with 9x.

Again, you are, to a greater extent, talking complete gibberish. You are incorrect to differentiate 2K and XP in the manner you're doing, and this line about "98 derived" code is largely meaningless. How, exactly, do you define "Windows 98 code"? A line? Ten lines? Ten characters???

Long before Windows 98 was released to manufacturing, Microsoft were already working on the basis that the two OS lines would eventually unite, and were sharing more and more code. Thus, you could say that 98 contained NT code, and if 98 contains NT code how can you differentiate between the two in the way you're doing???

You might look at 2K and XP as "completely different" products, but they are, overwhelmingly, the same, and were designed to perform the same set of tasks.

greasemonkey

No, stop trying to play the drama queen. I characterised what you were saying as bollocks. That's not the same as insulting you.

No, this is where you're tripping yourself up. 2K didn't "gain USB and DX support from Win98". It gained USB and DX support because Microsoft chose to add them, no more or less. It's not like they simply copied these aspects of the Win98 codebase and pasted them into NT4.

No, XP is better for games because Microsoft (and to an extent, the hardware manufacturers) developed it to be better at games. It wasn't like they went "Hey, we need XP to be better at games, let's throw a half pound of Win98 raisins into the mixing bowl and stir it on in?!".

MS did a lot of work on their side, and the hardware manufacturers started developing the drivers with a greater emphasis on performance than they had in the days when NT was a business OS only.

Erm, I did correct and attempt to educate you. Doesn't appear to have sunk in

Lol. Like I said, you'll know when I'm slagging you off. Whether you like it or not, unfortunately, you were talking crap, and I've always been the sort of person to call a spade a spade. Rather than trying to win an Oscar for your stuck pig performance, read what's been said and learn.

GaryK

hey c'mon guys correct bravo dont lynch him!, gm yep you're right no doubt about it, anyway back to the orginal thread....

tried longhorn, why would anyone want to waste their time on something that is at best pre-alpha!!! what would be the benefit? Sure alpha/beta applications, but an alpha OS??? no no no!

gregh

Nickers,

Try running memtest86, found a load of memory problems on my Athlon, apparently they are very particular about memory.

http://www.memtest86.com