Computer crash problem

[Steve A.]

I guess I'm missing how you solve the problem in 5 minutes. Can you explain that?

I was thinking that when MSFT announces that they'll no longer support XP (like they did with 98) then everyone is going to be SOL. If you have to change a motherboard or a network card, then you need to call MSFT to get a new activation code. But MSFT won't be giving any more of them out once they announce that they will no longer be supporting XP. That means that XP is a time bomb that will eventually stop working and there's nothing that anyone can do about it. At least an old version of Win 98 will run forever as long as suitable hardware can be virtualized.

Bob:

Time to call your local congressman (or thug- your choice). It seems to me that there should be a law protecting consumers. Namely if a company discontinues support of a program or OS that requires activation, then as a final gesture the authorization processes should be removed from the code or otherwise disabled.

However you might be jumping the gun a little bit; MS will continue to authorize their new software and OS so when they no longer support WinXP they still might be able update authorization codes. Just a thought...

Hey, Bob! With all of your complaints about Microsoft and Windows have you ever considered switching to Linux? Just a thought...

Steve A.

(That was a joke, folks)

[Steve Conner]

Hopefully when MS discontinue support for XP, they'll just pull the plug on the authorization thing.

However, XP has been rebranded as "XP Embedded" and I think MS are committed to supporting it in the embedded sphere for a while longer.

I tried screwing with the activation process to better understand how it works. I was never able to get through to a real live phone agent. Maybe it's easier in the USA.

There are various cracks to remove the WGA/WPA completely, but obviously this counts as piracy. And, installing SP3 will probably undo them, because it gives you a new version of Winlogon.exe, the file that contains the product activation routines, and that (as far as I know - I haven't tried all of them ) these cracks patch.

WGA is a separate program distributed via Automatic Updates, and it can't bother you if you don't let it install in the first place. For some reason (legal?) the computer asks you if you want to install it. Well, it does in the UK at least, other countries may differ.

I got tired of Microsoft and bought a Mac, and so did my boss and half of all the other computer geeks I know.

I heard that Windows 7 is pretty good, though. Obviously MS's next step will be to bring out software that only runs on 7.

[Steve Conner]

Oh by the way, here's the straight dope from MS themselves.

End of support for Windows XP with Service Pack (SP2) and Windows Vista without service packs - Windows Help & How-to

What does it mean if my version of Windows is no longer supported?

In particular, support for XP SP2 ends on July 13. Support for XP SP3 will continue. (I notice our work IT department don't seem to have rolled out SP3 yet.)

MS say that older versions will continue to run, you just won't get updates any more. (Some of you might consider this a bonus )

[Prairie Dawg]

Oh by the way, here's the straight dope from MS themselves.

End of support for Windows XP with Service Pack (SP2) and Windows Vista without service packs - Windows Help & How-to

What does it mean if my version of Windows is no longer supported?

In particular, support for XP SP2 ends on July 13. Support for XP SP3 will continue. (I notice our work IT department don't seem to have rolled out SP3 yet.)

MS say that older versions will continue to run, you just won't get updates any more. (Some of you might consider this a bonus )

What's the story on SP3?

[defaced]

I guess I'm missing how you solve the problem in 5 minutes. Can you explain that?

It took about 5 minutes to call customer service and get activated. That was this January when I was reinstalling my system.

If you have to change a motherboard or a network card, then you need to call MSFT to get a new activation code. But MSFT won't be giving any more of them out once they announce that they will no longer be supporting XP.

Has continuation of activation after the product hasn't been supported been verified? There's tons of ways for MS to deal with activation.

[bob p]

Has continuation of activation after the product hasn't been supported been verified? There's tons of ways for MS to deal with activation.

That's exactly the problem. You're totally dependent upon MS to deal with the problem, and if MS refuses to deal with the problem (ie: discontinuation of support for XP) then you are HOSED.

In my circumstance, I'm a small potato -- just a single end user running XP. There's a limit to how much I have to lose if a company like MS pulls the rug out from under me and stops a legitimately owned OS from functioning for an arbitrary and capricious reason. I may not like what I have to do to fix the problem, but it won't kill me to shell out hundreds of dollars to the richest man on earth so I can upgrade to Windows 7. I could swing it if I had to, but there are a lot of other end users who might have real problems shelling out that kind of money for an OS and all the updated packages that need to go with it.

A large corporation has to pay a HUGE sum of money to keep their OS current. That's probably why MS started doing this verification stuff in the first place -- to keep the IT gravy train rolling.

Small businesses are caught in the middle. They'll have lots of PCs running that depend on a functional OS, they probably don't have the IT expertise to move to alternate platforms, and they may or may not have the budget for a sweeping upgrade when MS pulls the plug on their OS ... not to mention the downtime that will ensue when that happens.

I'm glad to hear that some people can get the problem solved in 5 minutes -- at least for now. Realistically speaking, that's 5 minutes of my life that I should never have to spend on the phone. For most people who don't have your level of knowledge, the total time expenditure in recognizing and dealing with the problem is going to be on the scale of hours rather than minutes.

Essentially, this verification model tells me that MS is more concerned about their money than the trillions of man hours of worldwide productivity that they will cause to be squandered. MS has a really skewed view of the world, and the impact of this viewpoint effects mankind on a scale that's hard to fathom. This kind of consumption / waste of time and money and human resources is the primary reason that people are working on alternative operating systems.

When MS stops support for XP like they did for 98, we can only hope that they'll keep that phone line open. If they don't, then we're screwed. I don't think that the embedded version of the OS staying around is going to help desktop users much. Preserving a kernel doesn't guarantee that all of the userspace desktop applications will continue to be supported.

My personal opinion is that its fundamentally wrong to hold people hostage by imparting changes to an operating system in a piecemeal fashion. It reminds me of the allegory of cooking a frog: If you drop a frog into a pot of boiling water he'll try to jump out. If you place him in a pot of comfortable water and slowly increase the heat, he will be cooked." Its not really accurate, but you get the idea. If people knew where they were headed (and they had an option at the time) they may have never chosen to adopt XP. But we all know that it was the only game in town for a long time, and that MS has been slowly turning up the heat to cook the frogs. This frog wants out.

[Steve Conner]

Yeah, OK, Microsoft suck, open source is awesome, we get the idea.

I think the problem with MS is that they essentially gave the world the personal computer. They were the pioneers, so what they gave the world was Version 1.0 of the desktop computing paradigm. And Version 1.0 of anything always sucks.

Sure, Microsoft's dodgy code wastes trillions of man-hours worldwide, but it wastes them in the context of an entire industry that MS themselves created. Getting angry about that is a bit like being pissed off because air is only 21% oxygen.

Linux is cool, but distros come and go faster than versions of Windows.

The open-source way of thinking is independent of what platform you run. If you write your code in C, Python or Perl, back up your stuff with rsync, CVS or Subversion, you don't have to let any OS hold you hostage. My old uni research group had a codebase of 1.5 million lines that they'd been running since 1978. It started out on Sun, but we ported it to Linux (more or less a case of typing "make") and eventually a subset of it to Windows.

[defaced]

I'm glad to hear that some people can get the problem solved in 5 minutes -- at least for now. Realistically speaking, that's 5 minutes of my life that I should never have to spend on the phone. For most people who don't have your level of knowledge, the total time expenditure in recognizing and dealing with the problem is going to be on the scale of hours rather than minutes.

WTF? The screen tells me to call a number, I call a number. There's no technical skill involved. It's not like telling someone their RAM is pooched just by reading a hand full of descriptions. I've wasted more time trying to get stuff to work on a MS system then I have ever spent on the phone. I understand your ideals, but they're not realistic, and never will be. Things break, they stop working, they need maintenance, etc. It's part of living in today's world. 5 minutes on the phone or 5 minutes installing a driver, who cares?

If people knew where they were headed (and they had an option at the time) they may have never chosen to adopt XP.

Wha? If people don't have enough foresight that software will become obsolete, then no one can help them. In my day job (welding engineer), when we develop a procedure we also develop a repair procedure. Something will go wrong, things are going to stop being supported, and life happens. And as you have said, 98 still works, so there was, and has always been an option. Mac, Linux, Unix, Sun, etc. MS is a shit company, and I'm not a big fan of their policies, but they're not holding me or anyone else hostage. We can choose to use the OS we are currently using along with all of its nuances.

[bob p]

Yeah, OK, Microsoft suck, open source is awesome, we get the idea.

this isn't about open source, Steve. its about ethical software design.

to morph this into a commercial for open source software has the effect of confusing the issue. unlike most open source proponents, i could really care less about free software being free as in beer. i value other peoples' time and i'm willing to pay real money for their work product. all that i want in exchange for my money is a product that's reliable, works as advertised, and doesn't contain any trojan horse code in it that is intentionally designed to screw me in the future.

ultimately, this is a question about whether its acceptable for coders to inject trojan horses into an operating system. there are only 3 ways to protect yourself from that happening: 1) trust an honest vendor, 2) license the source code so that you can maintain it yourself, 3) roll your own.

the welding analogy falls short. software isn't a mechanical device. there is no physical wear that requires software to be repaired. as steve noted, properly designed software will never need maintenance and will run forever, independent of the hardware its deployed upon.

[Prairie Dawg]

It took about 5 minutes to call customer service and get activated. That was this January when I was reinstalling my system.

Has continuation of activation after the product hasn't been supported been verified? There's tons of ways for MS to deal with activation.

I had the same experience. I originally installed the XP Home update on my IBM box but when I got the Dell box I was still running the hard drive from the IBM. At that point I had to call them because it was a different mother board and processor. It wasn't a really big problem.

There are some folks who get really angry over this stuff. Some are linux nazis and others are mac cork sniffers. I've never understood it. If you want a clean legit copy of a microsoft OS, you either get it with your computer or you buy it. Costs a couple hundred bucks.

If I had to hazard a guess as to why this stuff happens, microsoft is in the business ot make money and doesn't like what people are doing to its business in places like China. So everyone gets inconvenienced by product pirates and every new version of their OS becomes more difficult to rip off. I can understand it-I don't like it much but it is what it is.

come to think of it, I know a judge who retired a couple months ago and up until that time he was using W98 and quite happy with it.

Just my opinion-your mileage may vary and probably will.

[defaced]

the welding analogy falls short. software isn't a mechanical device. there is no physical wear that requires software to be repaired.

Sure it does, everything has a lifespan. Software does not exist on some magical matrix somewhere that defies physics. It it stored on platters, in flash memory, or whatever. It's human readable/manipulatable form is fleeting, but it's real location and characteristics are not immune to wear, fault, or decay. It may "run" forever, but the chip that runs it, or the platter its stored on is a ticking time bomb.

But in all, you missed the point. The point is that you have to plan ahead, not get pissed when the normal course of events happens and stuff stops being made/supported/whatever. It's impossible to design a product that won't become obsolete. And in fact, doing so would be counterproductive to technological evolution.

as steve noted, properly designed software will never need maintenance and will run forever, independent of the hardware its deployed upon.

In a theoretical world, the "properly designed software" thing is a very valid statement. Now where is that theoretical world? It does not exist. Never has, never will, so any argument based on it is null.

[bob p]

Sure, we all understand that there are variables that you can control and variables that you cannot control. Interestingly, every variable that you just named is something that an informed user can choose to control and thereby neutralize the threat it poses -- if he has sufficient knowledge, and cares enough to take the effort. The concepts of data backup and hardware virtualizaton completely nullify all of those arguments.

Hidden software bombs don't fall into that category of things that you can control by planning ahead. Hidden software bombs are the equivalent of an exploitative sucker punch. The amount to being struck from the blind side. I don't understand how people can rationalize being sucker punched as being a good thing.

Some people care to learn about these things, some don't. Some people learn faster than others. There are many people who will remain forever ignorant of these things, because they don't care to devote the time to educating themselves, and there are many people who will never care, because the path of least resistance for them is to remain ignorant and open their wallet. Those are valid options for people who want to choose them. Its just as valid an option to choose to use knowledge to prevent being exploited.

"Theoretical" or "ethical" software does indeed exist in the marketplace. To deny that and to say that it doesn't exist, or to say that arguments based on it are "null" is a somewhat obtuse position to take. I'm not sure if you're just being hyperbolic in your comments, or if you've just bought into a good sales pitch.

Software that does what its supposed to and nothing more does indeed exist. Its just that the average home user doesn't know about it or care enough to pay for it. They're used to buying mass-marketed off the shelf items. To many people it boils down to Windows vs. Mac. There's nothing wrong with that, but there have been other OS solutions running what's being called "theoretical" software for decades.

The bottom line is that everyone has a choice to make, and an informed choice is better than an uninformed choice. I have nothing to gain in trying to convert anyone to my way of thinking, so you can have the last word on this if you like.

[defaced]

The last word.

[Steve Conner]

No, this is the last word!

I feel Bob's pain, the IT industry is a nasty place to be. Your whole living depends on proprietary software that seems to live about as long as a hamster or a goldfish.

But I also feel that it's possible to be sustainable in spite of that, by trying to keep your work platform-independent. At the end of the day though, it's all platform-independent: if you have a brain and you can be bothered to use it, you're not going to go hungry.

I work in embedded programming, and I used to do a lot of little gizmos that were run by a few K of assembler stored in a flash ROM. You shipped it, and that was it. No updates, no bug fixes, the thing keeps working the same until the user finally throws it away. If you did your job right, he doesn't even need to know that there's a computer inside it!

My latest instrument runs Windows CE and has field-upgradable software, and I get users pestering me to fix bugs and add new features. The upside of that of course, is that you can start shipping them before the software is done (not that I would ever do such a thing ) And, I like that the project is small enough that I actually get to speak to the end users.

The worst thing I ever got involved with was National Instruments' Labview. They make Microsoft look like a pussycat. They bring out a new version every year as a paid upgrade, and add new features that break backwards compatibility with the old version. I used to do a lot of Labview work, but I deliberately got out of it and moved over to C/C++, because I didn't want my livelihood tied to NI.

Eric Raymond's "The Magic Cauldron" makes interesting reading in this context.
http://catb.org/~esr/writings/magic-cauldron/

[Prairie Dawg]

The last word.

Nahhh. I started this ruckus.

My old man always said I was studying for my doctorate in obsolete technology. Why should this have been any different?

To tell the truth this started out as a cheap computing project, because I've always felt that a person who deliberately stays a couple steps behind the leading edge of technology can do a lot of computing on a very minimal budget.

After the IBM aptiva became terminally obsolete it was exiled to the basement. The idea was to put together a system as cheaply as possible, and I did that. The P-IV 2.8 mhz CPU came from Iowa State University surplus (home of the $20 variac) for $50 sans memory and hard drive. I provided a hard drive and a DVD drive from a defunct Tivo box, and the 21 inch viewsonic monitor came from ISU surplus for $20. The O/S came from the IBM by way of an upgrade.

To date I've got about about $225 in it spaced out over 3 years with the new hard drive thrown in, and it does a good job in my shop but being a cheapskate sometimes causes problems.

On the whole though it did vindicate the idea that cheap, reliable computing is a real possibility. I guess that's green livin'.