wow. i’m surprised that got done in less than 200 steps. also, i’m surprised none of those steps involved punching things, walking away for several hours or days, or various forms of substance abuse. patience have you. you’re gonna be a good daddy.
— nick 
Double wow. Life in the Win32 trenches is still that good, huh? Maybe I should rebuild my linux desktop from scratch and see how much [comparative] pain it causes me.
— Daniel Smith
On one hand it’s bad that you need to toggle so many options; on the other hand, it’s good that they’re there in the first place. Is there a TweakUI equivalent for OS X?
— Owen
If you like RSync, you’ll love Unison ; it’s based on RSync, but it’s two way.
Oh yeah; switch !
…and the URL is: http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/
Ok. I have to admit I only skimmed that entry. I know that’s probably not a nice thing to admit and I honestly intended to read it all, but once I realized the steps went on and on, my natural fear of all things Microsoft kicked in. I’m still using Win98 just because I don’t want to go through any of those steps.
You have the patience of a saint. Your kid is gonna benefit from that for sure! :)
— Patricia
would you honestly allow me to suck your left tit?
— anthony
But… Why?
Mozilla, bash, binutils, bzip2, cron, crypt, curl, cvs, diff, gawk, gcc, grep, gzip, less, links, lynx, more, naim, ncftp, ncurses, openssh, patch, rsync, sed, tar, texinfo, tidy, unzip, vim, wget, which, whois, zip, Python and a slightly less ugly desktop can be installed in slightly less steps together with a slightly less unstable platform by getting yourself one of those Linux thingies.
“This copy of Windows XP has lasted me almost 9.”
I’ve been running the same copy of XP since about a month before it was released (people actually pay for software ;) screw product activation) and its still working as well as it ever did. Maybe I’m just a bit too gentle with it but I’d hate to have to go through what you went through so I don’t really push it to its limit I suppose.
— MikeyC
I just have to ask… during this process did you keep track of all 147 steps using another computer or with (gasp!) an actual piece of paper?
To remove MS Messenger run the following command:
RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\INF\msmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove
I’ve been running Windows XP for a good year or two now (since around its release date) and have still not had any problems. I think you probably have so many problems because of the hackery you do to it straight after the install. Ok, things like MSN Explorer are a nuisance, but if you are going to completely rework how you use it with things like cygwin, apache, etc. when Windows is more than capable of doing the job *if you would give it the chance*, then you are bound to run into problems.
For the record, I use Windows XP and various Unix distributions. Each has their place – and Windows XP is used for Windows XP tasks, and it works fine without any crashes or even any problems. In many respects, it does its job better than *nix does.
— Joe
My Windows XP installations used to screw up after about 6 months, too. I’m really good at installing and tweaking XP, by now. :D
— Manuzhai
Just a quick note.. I don’t particularly like windows but have to say that Win XP Pro is the best incarnation yet. Installed and running since July last year and still stable. Only had 2 blue screens and only reboot once every two or three weeks. As for running it hard, it’s got PHP, Python, Java, Zend IDE, Wing IDE, JEdit, Perl IDE, Cygwin (Full Install.. does anyone else get tired of clicking) Apache 1.3.26, MySQL, Postgres (Win32), Postgres (Cygwin), Adobe Web Pro package, Macromedia Studio Package, VMWare (essential), Office XP, svn, Tortoise(svn,cvs), various explorer plugins (folder size, etc), moz, firebird, nn4.8, nn7, Opera5,6, vnc, efax, pgadmin, mysqladmin, mycc, xmlspy, snagit, htmlvalidator, feeddemon betas (and various other betas).. blah, blah, etc. The only problems I have now and again are the system locking up when I run out of memory. If this happenes I get the cursor back about once every minute for a couple of seconds. Typically I can either let it work out what it wants to do (can take a few hours) or try to shut things in my little control window. I don’t install win updates until they’ve been out for a month. I’ve got normal RAM (tried ECC, made no discernable) difference. Don’t defrag very often. 1Gb RAM. P4 1.4ishGHz. Can’t think why it’s so stable, possibly because I don’t reboot it all of the time?? (it stays on constantly). I think it’s like russian roullette, unfortuately when you get the bullet it really is game over and time to reinstall. Crossed fingers that hasn’t happened yet.
First off: Mark, you sound like you’d be much better off with Win2k. Half your list consists of turning off nuisances introduced with XP.
Next: Is there a specific reason why you’re using the ActiveState Python instead of using the one provided with Cygwin?
<sarcasm> ” I think you probably have so many problems because of the hackery you do to it straight after the install. “. Uh, ok. So installing the applications you need, and uninstalling the one’s you don’t is hackery, and Windows is designed to react to said hackery by becoming unstable. </sarcasm>
For the record: My own way of keeping windows stable over time is this:
a) Clean the junk from the registry every once in a while. There is a good tool at http://www.jv16.org/ – even though it recently went from free to cheap.
b) Don’t use Internet Explorer. If you do, run something like Spybot Search & Destroy regularily. ( http://www.safer-networking.org/ )
c) When you’ve uninstalled an application, make sure that it actually uninstalls properly. Meaning: Most apps won’t actually delete the application folder, and many leave a lot of junk around in %Documents and Settings%.
d) Manually empty Windows’ temp folders every once in a while. Both the ones in your %Documents and Settings% and in %WinDir%.
I’ve actually managed to keep a Win2k install without reinstalling for three years this way. Until I nuked the box and installed QNX.
Exercise for masochists: Throw away, break, or otherwise render your MS Office 2000 CD unusable. Then try to uninstall the application.
— Arve
Oh good, another person who finds the balloon hints annoying. I noticed that Sun have taken a leaf out of MS’s book – the JRE1.4.2 pops up ‘Visit Java on the web! http://www.java.com/‘ when you start the virtual machine the first 5 times or so.
It annoys me that you need TweakUI to turn those blasted things off.
— Neil T.
If you have two hard-drives and want to reduce your reinstallation time from 5 hours to around 20 minutes, I recommend using Norton’s Ghost software.
Install your copy of XP, configure it the way you want, then use Ghost to create an image-file of your entire boot-drive. (Make sure you remember to change the location of your My Documents folder to your second hard-drive before you go about this, or there will be tears, and the spilling of much blood later.)
Whenever XP throws a barney you can just stick in your Ghost boot-disk, reboot, and click some buttons. By the time you’ve gone away to make yourself a cup of coffee, drink it, and return — you’ll have your old, ready-configured installation of XP back again.
— Conan
You ever tried doing that on two laptops, one desktop, with one wireless network and a printer with a scary habit or reconfiguring its IP every now and then? You should.
We’re still much better off with XP than with 95 or Me (shudder). 98, 2000 and XP are the only good Windows systems. Oh, and 3.11, but 3D Pinball doesn’t run on that.
— Jesper
-scary habit or
+scary habit of
— Jesper
SWEET JESUS. FIVE HOURS!?! Give me a FreeBSD Unix install. Five minutes from start to finish. Even Mandrake Linux with it’s user friendly auto installer can be done fully in under thirty minutes.
If you are forced install Winblows, the best way is to create two paritions, set up everything on parition one, (Install applications and such), and then image onto the second partition. This will 1/2 the capacity of your drive although it will make restoring a full system somwhere between 30 seconds to 4 minutes, because it will reload everything from the image. This takes just as long as it takes to boot off a floppy and run the auto imager. Check out good old symantec ghost. About the only good product to ever come out of their labs.
— Anonymous
I feel your pain, having recently underwent mostly the same (http://mac.against.org/space/mac.2003-07-19 – but I focused more on the apps I needed, and wrote a far less entertaining post… :))
Seems to me you had WinXP “installed” at Step 29. Everything after that is trying to turn a dog into a cat. No wonder this dog is the worst cat you’ve ever had.
Next time, use the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard. Saves a lot of time.
ZORK RULES!
What a laugh!
Damien
— Damien
I hate to admit it, but my Mac OS X has also reached its half life. I’m trying to hold out until Panther is released.
— Trevor
It occurs to me that Windows XP itself is an exercise in perpetual left tit-suckage.
— Ethan
So steps 60-80 pretty much consist of “Make my thousand dollar laptop not act like a Fisher Price child’s toy”.
105+ equate to make my modern day Windows machine act like a 1995 Unix workstation. (Remember having to worry about termcap? Forking overhead? Stty?)
I have to admit that, aside from Cygwin (putty debian.insom.me.uk), I did most of the same. I’d install 2000, but it’s just too much effort, and I’ve almost got exactly that now. Also Movie Maker 2 is pretty good for a free product.
Aaron
In response to various comments that I should be smarter/more automated/using less or different software:
This is the software I am required to use. This is my work laptop. It is not a choice. My last project involved a desktop web application that ran Apache on Windows; we are still supporting it so that’s required. That same project (and many other projects) use CVS, ssh, rsync, and other Unix tools for source control and workflow. I use ActiveState Python because it comes with the win32api stuff built in, which we’re using, and it’s the version of Python we shipped to our clients, so I have to stay with it to test the dwindling number of support issues. Oh, and we’re using XP at all because someone needed to be running it because we were getting reports of compatibility problems during beta testing. I can and do run every other version of Windows in a virtual machine (VMWare rocks), but XP activation means it binds itself to a particular hardware configuration, and it seemed silly to risk binding it to a VM.
I do not have an extra hard drive, and extra partition, or Ghost. I understand the concepts involved, I have done the same or similar things for years on multiple platforms. It just wasn’t an available option this time.
In short, nothing I did to “set up Windows XP” was optional. It was *not* set up after step 29. It is not even completely set up after step 147; I just got enough installed to make sure I could run my most important work projects, and then I gave up in utter exhaustion.
— Mark
You’re so darn right with everything here! I had to re-install XP about a month ago, luckily with the SP1 at once, I thought. But ooh how the human mind can be tricked… since the complete wipe-off and reinstallation from the scratch I have serious trouble with the NT-Kernel, resulting in regular hang-ups for no obvious reason. I just can’t understand why Billy-boy Gates isn’t charged for terrorizing innocent users. Not that life isn’t already strange enough…
— Mart
This probably isn’t helpful, but would you consider quitting your job? Hermit life isn’t so bad. Better than all this, anyway.
— James
Oh yes, the joys of spending an hour searching for your fully-legitimate CD key, knowing that it has to be SOMEWHERE on your computer…
I’m convinced microsoft is directly responsible for increase in substance abuse.
— kasia
Mark, calm down. Go over to your Mac. Hug it. Pet it. Smile at it. Now go over to your wife and hug her, too. ;)
— Adrian
Oh, as a side note, I’d like to post a little something I did recently… on my new Mac:
1) Find out Netlock VPN client and Remote access desktop software are available for Mac OS X.
2) Fill out Netlock form for VPN client demo and download free RDC software.
3) Install Netlock and RDC flawlessly.
4) Fiddle with IP numbers for about a week, not realizing I have the wrong IPs and eventually get the right ones.
5) Remotely log into a Nortel Networks VPN to my business and remotely access 3 terminal servers necessary to do my job…. all from a G4 Mac and a 56k modem and with little help from IT other than getting the IP numbers.
This is secretly what mark is trying to tell everyone:
EVERYTHING… absolutely EVERYTHING about computers should be this damn easy, even across multiple platforms. Yes its extremely hard to get software this way, but its not impossible, and installations like this prove it. People in this work think computers just don’t work unless you poor your own blood from a major vein onto it and chant a voodoo ritual.
Software that works like this is crap and all companies should return it as crap.
No this is not an anti-MS, pro-Apple rant. If you’ll note, RDC is a microsoft product, and it worked flawlessly.
— Adrian
Mark,
In the future, why not keep a copy of Knoppix around ( http://www.knoppix.net/ ) ? Knoppix is a GNU/Linux distribution that boots and runs completely from the CD. Whhile it includes several recent Linux software and desktop apps, such as OpenOffice.org, Abiword, etc … it’s also mounts your Windows file systems so you can get in there and make repairs booting from the CD … and getting around any security that encumbers you from fixing your own machine.
More ramlbings of mine about it at:
http://www.healyourchurchwebsite.com/archives/000916.shtml#000916
— MeanDean
Mark,
Sorry for not including this in my previous message. But points/*nix utilities 106-137 (via cygwin) … are also supported rather nicely with GNU utilities for Win32 ( http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/ ).
All the command line commands that really count and then some.
— MeanDean
I hope the birth of your child goes smoother than that…
— CowPi
Well, the half-life of XP is equal to the time the baby’s in there, so I’d expect the one-and-a-half-month-old boy to see his dad very frustrated once again. :P
— Jesper
Cue Jeff Goldbloom: “There’s no 150th step”
— Ross
I have to storngly second one of the suggestions above. Get Norton GHOST or Powerquest DRIVEIMAGE. You do the installation once and then backup an image of the drive. Then when you are ready to start again, just decompress the image to the partition. I must admit it was more precious back in the Win95 days, when reformatting and reinstalling was a frequent exercise, but it’s still good now. Note that to make an image with DRIVEIMAGE you don’t even have to boot “DOS” (contrary to GHOST) and you can boot the DRIVEIMAGE cd to restore/reinstall your image.
— quake74
I recently gone over to pure OSX at work (with Virtual PC for Windows stuff). Virtal PC lets you “undo” changes to a PC installation. Wonderful for testing. You can set up Win 95 up to XP as seperate “PCs”. Setup XP the way you want it and save the drive image. Then, test, hack away and just choose not to save changes to the PC when you shutdown. the your back to your fresh installation. This way you can activate XP and then save the image. I have 98, ME, 2000 and XP set up this way. I run a seperate 2000 Pro installation for development stuff. he only caveat is you need a fast Pro Mac (1ghz with at least 768 RAM and an L3 cache) for it to be usuable. Works well for me. Just thought I’d throw that out in case it might help.
— Geoff
I’ve often read that to achieve an inner peace we should finish some things we started, but have put aside.
Today I finished that ham sandwich from yesterday, the half-quart of Jack Daniels from last weekend, the rest of my Budweiser, the rest of my stash, and then I went out and punched that neighbor I never liked.
I can tell you, I’ve never felt better.
— tHatDude
“Wait. Time passes. It is getting dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.”
Dude, you really should take a lantern with plenty of oil along with you when you’re messing around in that maze. Oh, and be sure to drop some less useful inventory items to be sure to find your way.
Wow.
This 147 steps make me wonder if I really want to buy a PC, or if I should stick with a Mac.
My 233Mhz rev. A iMac is getting so old.
I didn’t even dare to put Panther on it, so it is still only running 10.2.6.
Oh, god I earn so little for a G5…
— braindance
So.. you install WinXP, don’t do the activation, try to get around the normal behaviour of WinXP, try to tweak it into the ground and then try to turn it into Linux and bitch because it doesn’t work as well.
Sorry dude, the problem isn’t Windows, it’s you.
— Anonymous
Maybe I’m out of touch, but what the heck is f8dy?
Google and jargon file searches came up nil. Anybody got background, history, etc on this term?
— Anonymous
If you’d like to copy that partition and don’t have Norton Ghost available, save the money, do a google search on the GPLed partimage and use it to save the partition over the net or on a second partition, even in 800M (CDROM) or 1.44k (disc ;) pieces.
Though the NTFS support is said to be experimental and won’t work with compressed or heavily fragmented system files, it will verbosely fail when trying to make the backup rather than fail when you’re trying to recreate the partition.
It’s a great tool that works very well over here, with NTFS and anything else I’ve tried (FAT32, ext2/3fs).
— thomanski
LOL, that sure is erm… one way of doing it. Fortunately there’s the lucky ones (very few, no doubt) who claim the installation is finished at step 13, and that XP Pro’s ‘half-life’ is still unknown because after using it for 2 years it shows no signs of reaching it.
Of course, luck here depends very much on the hardware you run, and it also tends to improve with experience ;)
i feel your pain, but here’s something to make life a bit easier – install your WinXP/2K system once with all your needed tweaks and preferences, then create a disk image. reload said image every 6-9 months – 8 minutes of wasted time vs. 5 hours.
of course you always have to re-install 3rd party software that you installed afterwards, but that’s the same either way…
— Andreas
Very funny!
Anonymouses (anonymice?)
65: Ever noticed how he has a whole lot of the problems just trying to install XP as usual? Although I agree with you. One should not bang his head against the wall and complain when it hurts.
66: His random login from college.
— Jesper
I format every 2 months – it’s habit.
And XP is the only OS that works properly with my computer.
Except Redhat 9, save for a couple hiccups.
— Matt
Nice URL.
— Sam Ruby
re: “you don’t do the activation”.
False. I did the activation the minute I got on the internet. And was bugged about it six times before that.
re: “you tweak it into the ground”
Um, TweakUI is a Microsoft tool.
re: “and then turn it into Linux”
Excuse me for installing software required by my job. Cygwin is simply a collection of files in its own directory; it makes no registry or other changes that I’m aware of. And excuse me for not wanting to use the useless MSN Messenger or the dangerously buggy Internet Explorer, but I actually have work to do here, and Windows XP is *getting in the way*.
— Mark
FAT32, not win32, but who ever let facts get in the way of a weak flame?
Nice banana error on “recommended”, too.
— James Kew
Words of advice: write XP product key on sticky label. Stick to sleeve of XP install disc.
Burn disk with Linksys drivers — ditto any other essential drivers. Keep with XP install disc.
— James Kew
Have you even wondered what people who enjoy Microsoft products are actually like?
Well, they canot type compleet gramatacal sentenses, but what I can grok does have a certain I-enjoy-this-anal-violation ring to it.
http://motherboards.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=28160&sid=9dbe385a0c011664df876588f2d1560c
— kami
Word of advice:
Rather than writing XP product key on a sticky label, and sticking it to sleeve of XP install disc (as comment 82 suggests), I highly recommend taking a Sharpie -or other permanent marker- and writing the damn thing directly on the CD itself.
This way, if you can’t find the product key, you won’t need it!
Re: “Readers who feel the need to point out that the title really ought to read ‘5 hours or fewer’ can suck my left tit.”
Those readers would have done an inadequate analysis of your semantics and blindly applied the grammatical rule concerning discrete vs. continuous quantities. The term “hours” can be either discrete or continuous depending on the author’s intent. It appears to me that your intent was to indicate a “duration” of 5 hours (continuous quantity) rather than specifically a “number” of 5 hours (disrete quantity), so the adjective “less” is perfectly appropriate here.
With respect to the nature of time as being discrete or continuous (or something else) you may be interested in a recent physics paper that could turn our accepted wisdom upside down. See: “Time and Classical and Quantum Mechanics: Indeterminacy vs. Discontinuity”, Peter Lynds, in the August issue of Foundations of Physics Letters. For a fascinating commentary, go to:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pubnews.php
and drill down to:
Public Release: 31-Jul-2003
Foundations of Physics Letters
Ground-breaking work in understanding of time
The first paragraph:
A young New Zealand researcher appears to have solved Zeno’s motion paradoxes, the solution to which have puzzled some of history’s greatest scientists since their original conception almost 2500 years ago. His paper, which has highty impressed some of the world’s top physicists and been published in the August issue of Foundations of Physics Letters, also seems set to change the way that we think about time and its relationship to classical and quantum mechanics and cosmology.
Cheers
— Gary Zak
Re: 84, and Microsoft-haters in general.
(First a few words to kami (84), I knew that you meant a lot of XP-defenders in here have had bad grammar and such and may look like idiots to people. I understand, but I want to bring this issue up here, because it’s pissing me off how people seem to think that Windows is the worst thing since what would be the opposite of sliced bread.)
Windows XP works very smoothly for me. It just about never gets in the way, and I find a lot of things in it helpful rather than in the way. I also just got my Office 2003 Beta CD, and Outlook 2003 runs smoother, looks better and is easier to work with.
Yes, Windows is not *NIX. That can mean good things too, you know.
Also: If Apple ships OS X with Quicktime, iTunes and iMovie, it’s obviously a quality range of products that’s good to get with the OS. If Microsoft ships XP with Windows Media Player and Windows Movie Maker (2, because 1 is indeed crap), it’s forcing people to expand their monopoly and lower competition, oh, and it just appearently happens to be the worst peice of shit to ever have shipped. Just a reflection. Funny, no? :P
— Jesper
… and you did this because…?
a) you like to beat yourself up
b) your employer made you
c) you didn’t have anything better to do
d) all of the above
— Anonymous
It takes me about a WEEK of evenings to reinstall Windows. But that’s just all the programs I use. (Not as many as Mark!) To reinstall the core of Windows is easily done in an hour and shouldn’t cause any major problems.
I found Windows 98 did get clogged after a year or so requiring a fresh start. But now I’m on XP it’s much better. Half my hardware is already installed with the native drivers. Any that isn’t is very easy to set up.
Only 1 blue screen so far, and that was down to my graphics card unable to draw something! Even then, Windows explained the problem.
I’d advise against removing MSN Messenger, or disabling the yellow pop-up notes. Because they let you know of CRITICAL SECURITY UPDATES to Windows that come out. These can occur almost every week!
I was lucky to buy a magazine with Service Pack 1 on a DVD. You might be able to save a zip file of it to a CD-R. Do anything but download it!
Lastly, I’ve heard of equally painful problems when tackling OS-X on Zeldman.com. Just make sure you have enough hard drive space and RAM and a reasonably fast processor. Then XP lives quite happily for months to come.
Mark, I really not positive what your point is.
Once you eliminate steps due to human error (forgetting to record what your product ID is, neglecting to backup various config and/or drivers), and you eliminate the time on things you can’t avoid with archived OS copies (39 updates and SP1) you really end up with more like 2-3 hours if that.
Wouldn’t you have exactly the same sort of thing if you used another OS? Same tweaking and all?
One kind of odd suggestion – and I’m not sure if it works but on something like the Explorer tweaking you did I’d certainly check out. Is it possible to run RegEdit and backup your registry before reinstalling the OS, then lay out your preferences after getting XP and the various OS updates and TweakUI install complete? If so, seems to me like that would eliminate about 35-40 steps right there.
— Dave
If you consider Windows to be a form of taxation, and the various re-installs to be metaphors for redoing your income tax (because, although you paid already, the forms mutated since you filled them out) it’s loads more fun.
Similarly, observing how the US Constitution keeps getting better with each passing revision leads one to develop a true appreciation for Windows and those who oversee its mutations on behalf of we, the ever-thankful end users.
— sandy sphynx
Jesper: yes, I was being unfair. His bad gramer in no way represents his intelligence or the intelligence of other microsoft users.
Lemme put it this way:
Windows XP is stable. In fact, I even kind of like 2K more: all the stability, none of the cruft.
That being said, there is one reason above all I hate Microsoft. It’s not monopolization.
It’s Windows Update.
Roughly, using Windows Update to fix security flaws in the OS is like trying to cover the moon with spackling paste: even if you have enough (which you don’t) meteors are constantly impacting it, creating new holes.
Why should you need to buy antivirus software?
Why does spyware only affect IE users?
Why should I have to install a firewall?
— kami
kami: All very good points. I totally agree with you. I think IE should be recoded from bottom to the top to be secure and stable – with their new ’secure thinking’ (according to themselves) it shouldn’t be that hard – and be released as an independent app.
One important matter is also this; *NIX is being used by maybe 10% of all the computers worldwide, tops. 8% more if we add Macs with OS X. But *NIX is much more complicated than Windows, possibly due to the fact that there are over one hundred, possibly two hundred, base apps for doing small things in the system and doing it good. This binds a web of a whole lot of apps, and it’s very hard to grasp it.
Windows, on the other hand, pretty much is ready to rock and roll out of the box, is built by one company with a solid one-piece (mostly) foundation and is not built with security in mind. It would take until mid-90s until the real exploits happened. The kernel was written in the 80s. Add this with atleast 70% of the world’s computer market share and you’ve got your scriptkiddie-struck platform, or meteor-struck moon if you so will.
It’s impossible for Microsoft to patch all this up. They can’t. Millions of people are hacking it everyday. They’d need a totally new kernel to do it, it’d take years. As a matter of fact, only after Longhorn is finished and survives its initial few SPs and child disease-ridden minds, can Microsoft focus on creating a new kernel, which I think they will. And I also think, make no mistake, that if they recruit the right people, learn from their mistakes (they have a broad selection), and focus on security from the beginning this time, they could create a kernel that outdoes the good old *NIX kernel, more or less from the 60s.
I hope that it’s just a matter of time until Windows users can have a usable, nice looking AND stable and secure OS. But for now if you want that, it’s either XP with easily obtainable sharewares, or OS X or Red Hat (the nice looking and usable bits here). OS X and Red Hat (or any damn version of *NIX for that matter) would result in needing to change either the hardware or the fundamental truths™ and I don’t think even 5% of today’s Windows users are willing to do that.
— Jesper
By “It would take until mid-90s until the real exploits happened. The kernel was written in the 80s.” in #94 I mean that the viruses came first, but the big exploits that should’ve been fixed since the beginning (and therefore have rolled into newer code) just begun appearing a few years ago.
— Jesper
This made me weep.
— Speck
Great Mark! I am so looking forward to when I have to do this. Of course I don’t install *nix tools in Windows :p
The king is naked. I know how much you guys enjoy bashing Microsoft and all, but please, why do you want to be so cheap. What’s this post all about? Installing windows XP? What are all these comments? What does this post say? It is obviously not true that it takes 5 hours to install XP. It is also, probably, not true that Windows XP has to be reinstalled every 9 months. I am trully stunned to see so many people making empty comments after a post which doesn’t say anything.
The only useful stuff here is that, you can install python from Activestate, there is TweakUI from Microsoft, which is useful, and there is the firewall. Other than these, what’s the point of the post.
— Anonymous
3 useful things in one blog entry, and only 144 lines of crap? C’mon, you gotta admit that’s *way* above average for most blogs…
— Mark
This is a 2 to 3 hour job, no matter how I look at it. If you know you are going to reinstall your XP once a while down the road, there are some good practice tips you can follow:
Create a seperate partition during install (a 1 or 2 GB partition should be OK.) Save important drivers, like you WIFI card driver, in that partition. save SP1. save anything you don’t want to bother to download there. You can even save XP CD’s 386 dir there too. Copy your important config and data there.
Mistakes you made there (and certainly you hould learn from it):
Don’t install any XP patches until you install the latest SP. Don’t lose your key. Don’t try to get network connection before you have the good NIC driver. Don’t only think backup at the very last moment, and you need to ALWAYS backup your stuff. (What if your hard drive dies?)
— Victor
I’m glad i don’t have windows xp, because i’m not that patient.
— James
I wonder if this moron is still using win32 instead of the recommnededn NTFS format… if you are using win32 YOUR A DUMBASS…. AND GOOD LUCK IN YOUR FUTURE INSTALLATIONS…. Theres a million reasons why people should not own computers…. THIS IS ONE!!!
— me
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Apple…OS X…*nix core…brain draining back into head.
Can anyone confirm that Windows machines work best if you face them toward Redmond?
— renaldo
Being a computing enthusiast, I have quite a bit of experience with installing the various flavors of Windows. So I have some advice–belated for Mark, unfortunately–that might help.
First, download any device drivers you might need. Do this before you format/reinstall/etc., especially if you need drivers for the device that will connect you to the Internet. Better still, keep a directory of drivers handy at all times. You never know when you’ll have a need for an emergency reformat. Being a build-it-yourself type, I find this saves an immense amount of time and trouble. Burn these drivers to CD and test the CD just in case. (Optional: Download the network install version of your OS’s latest service pack and include that on the CD.)
Next, determine ahead of time the partitioning scheme you intend to use. Some people might argue that it’s wise to have separate partitions for Windows, your applications, and your files. To tell you the truth, there’s no point in having a separate partition for applications because there’s a good chance you’ll need to reinstall the applications after reinstalling Windows. I do, however, advocate a separate partition for your files. This is especially helpful in case your system partition’s file system becomes corrupted in some way (this isn’t much of an issue with NTFS). Similarly, it’s great for holding user preferences for applications and such. For example, I keep my Outlook Express files on a separate partition, as well as my Mozilla Firebird preferences.
Now install Windows. Create your partitions, let the setup format the system partition, and go have a beer. You don’t need to babysit the installation for the better part of half an hour. At some point, you’re going to have to put in a few preferences (time zone, admin password, etc.) but that takes just a few minutes.
Once in Windows, install your device drivers. Some people will tell you to install the driver then the hardware itself. Others will tell you to install the hardware one piece at a time then install the driver for it. I say make it easy on yourself. Toss in all of the hardware even before you install. Windows 2000/XP is smart enough to not screw everything up. (This wasn’t always the case with Win9x.) Then configure your network connection.
After your drivers are installed, install any Windows Components you might need, such as IIS. Here’s how to find the dialog: Start -> Control Panel -> Add or Remove Programs -> Add/Remove Windows Components. This is dead simple (as easy as checking or unchecking a few boxes) and it doesn’t even require a reboot.
Now visit Windows Update. Start with the big stuff (Service Pack, .NET Framework, Windows Media Player, etc.). Download and reboot as necessary. Once the big stuff is done, go onto the bug fixes and security updates. Download and reboot as necessary.
Next, install your applications, games, utilities, and all that fun stuff. Install any updates for them, if applicable.
And finally, run the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer tool [1]. It will scan your computer for possible security vulnerabilities and make recommendations on how to lock your computer down. (Not all the recommendations are worth doing, but most are. Use your best judgement here.)
If you’re like me and have a lot of experience in the process, it can take you as little as an hour to go from nothing to a fully-functioning install of Windows XP. If you follow these steps, it shouldn’t take you more than a couple of hours unless you have some very large programs to install (Visual Studio .NET alone, for example, can take well over an hour).
If you’re insane in the preparation you do for a Windows install (like me), you could even go so far as to create a slipstreamed version of Windows [2], with the latest Service Pack (among other things) built into the installation CD.
Painless Windows installs are all about the five Ps: Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance. If you take the time to prepare for the installation, the process will go along very smoothly and painlessly and can–for the very wierd (again, like me)–can even be an enjoyable experience.
[1] – http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9a88e63b-92e3-4f97-80e7-8bc9ff836742&DisplayLang=en
[2] – http://zarquon.arsware.org/slipstream.html
— Greg Hines
I’m not sure what it is among WinXP users that’s causing all these stability problems.
I mean, some of it is undoubtedly windows. But almost none of the XP uers I know personally (people running it for over a year with no reinstall) are having stability issues, and certainly none as serious as being unable to print or change network settings.
— Slade
Install OS whatever in 1 step…
1. Press c key while boot OS CD is installed.
Done
— THE MAC 1 STEP
You know, I’m pretty sure that half-lives result in decaying *exponential* curves, not logarithmic ones. Unless you’re looking at the graph the wrong way, I guess. =)
Personally, I like the hide-inactive-system-tray-icons feature, usually. And a lot of those visual options that you set with TweakUI are actually settable from various places in the control panel (although they can admittedly be somewhat difficult to find). Try Display Properties -> Appearance -> Effects, and System -> Advanced -> Performance -> Settings (button).
Oh, and for those interested, you can have the fancy WinXP title bars without letting them be so huge. In Display Properties -> Appearance, leave the style on “Windows XP Style”, click the “Advanced” button, select “Active Title Bar”, and set the size to something reasonable like 21 or so. With the silver color scheme, I think this creates a very pleasant effect.
— Slime
To think you would go to all this trouble when you could slip-stream XP and SP1, add any necessary hotfixes, remove any Win apps you don’t need or want via Reg hacks, and load any apps and necessary drivers… and do it all unattended… via a winnt.sif file.
I guess if you did that, this page would be moot…
— Anonymous
man, that really stinks. that happened to me one time, but i just bought a new comp. then again i was running on a PACKARD BELL. boo.
hope everything works out in the end, and that the swiss cake roll that was crammalamma’d is all taken out.
— tweedy
re: slipstreaming. I’m trying to decide if that comment was intentionally funny or unintentionally funny.
— Mark
Maybe a bit off topic, but I as just wondering what is it you need and/or use Windows XP for?
I always assumed your primary platform was MacOS X. Judging from all the *nix tools listed above, you spend a lot of time on the command line (yes, rsync rocks).
So do you actually _use_ windows regularly? Is it for testing? Or do you just enjoy the pure evil of it? ;-)
why don’t you use norton ghost? saves you a lot of time. nevertheless, entertaining. been through the same routine.
And I was going to blog moaning how long it took me to do a clean install of half-life and counterstrike when I’d lost my original cd-case and product activation key for that.
Respect.
the half life of win 98 is about 3 weeks. eventually you lose so many core functions that you forget how a computer is supposed to work.
i just installed win me [what i have found to be the lightest and most stable version of the home windows installments] on virtual pc for my new imac. that took an hour and a half and i did not install any drivers. fortunately i only need it once a week.
— yaj
*chuckle* funny stuff..
even tho most it is much easier to get around, but good none the less :D
— Anonymous
Half-Life ? Why not setup a ghost image or something once you set it up once? Then rebuild it once a week – or day…whatever makes you hard and happy..only takes a few mins……
i hate XP tho. ahhahaha all that bullshit looks…. 2k isn’t too bad tho. MS are actaulyl improving instead of just building onto more and more shit. Bout time they woke up.
That said.
2003 server is apparently just 2k server with XP interface…..who the hell would want that on a server!?
— Anonymous
Funnily enought that all this banter that is all hot wind from the days when bill wanted to do what anyone in in world would have done and that is protect what he worked hard for.And I also wonder how many of these hippy geeks from the start who began this anti bill crusade have made at least one cent from the internet age.If they have they are hippocrits.Any one that has made money in any shape or form from anything that has anything to do with any form of computing,and that even includes doing a facour for a favour,does not have any call in what has happened in the past.Period.
— zig
Interesting, in comment #34, Mark outlined why he uses the Unix tools, why he can’t use Ghost, that he doesn’t have spare partitions etc., and why he needs XP (for work).
At least 1/3 of the remaining 90 comments are asking questions answered in #34 – so why do people not stop to read the previous comments?
Seems you’re not the only one with recent software agonies, Mark. :-)
http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1060025253&count=1
Also, I notice Steve Gibson is unhappy: “Crappy software”:
https://grc.com/x/news.exe?cmd=article&group=grc.news&item=428&utag=
— Michael
Hm… 5 Hours is fast. I remember my last reinstall was a more painfull eXPerience. I needed 2 1/2 days, or the entire weekend to do it. Update from win2k, extra partion with win98 and no disks or bootable cd-rom.
— Robert
It take me about 2-3 hours to make a Windows 2000 re-install. I do not like Windows XP, I really feel good using Windows 2000 pro instead XP Pro.
Well I feel better using Mac OS X instead Windows, or use my Mandrake Box instead Windows.
— mini-d
All I can ask is why? Please explain why you installed XP at all? What you did afterwards was install & disable stuff so you got what looked like a brain damaged version of unix? Why did n you not take the ooporunity to do so in the first place?
— robert
Mark, I bow in front of you! You saved my day.
— Sascha
Solution: Get A MAC!
— wowmac
No joke. Be sure to install winxp on much bigger partition than you think you need. XP Can install on a pretty small partition if you want to seperate data from OS install, but you can’t apply updates — they use the primary partition for huge temp files.
Another thing that makes XP hard to backup/restore is the “My files” paradigm. It scatters your interesting files amongst windows cruft, and its very hard to move the directories to a location where you can just back up all your data and restore it.
— Doug Ransom
well yo i have installed severalv versions of windows and i totally share his expieriences – see the x86 platform supports tons of hardware like windows does as well but u see with all the new hardware and the emulation of 16 bit and all this oldschool crap windows is nothing but torture compared to an os x. like posted before – you put the cd in your cd drive you press c its booting – you press install and 20 minutes later you have a working system without all this driver crap etc. the big advantage of apple is that they can optimize thier software on their hardware – compared to x86 there is way less hardware to support. so with every update of os x its getting faster cause they optimized it more – what about windows – its getiing slower and fatter and more and more unusable. i mean honestly mircosoft did not introduce any innovation since 3.11 – they were just copying – and they were doing bad. the innovations did other guys. but anyway 2 weeks ago i installled 2 pcs and i had to put xp on them, with all the updates and thousands of reboots between them it took me like 3-4 hours without installing software. i mean formatting an 80 gb hdd takes like hours – try this with any unix or os x – it will take seconds.
its just a pile of crap
thanks for allowing me to be part of this awessome flamewar and hey thanks for this report – i laughed my ass off ;)
— hukl
Gotta admit. The only time I had to reinstall XP was when I updated the BIOS on my laptop and suddenly Standby/Hibernate and TV-Out would crash. Since the re-install It’s been going for nearly a year.
As for re-installing software, I write my own so I don’t get these nasty registry thrashing problems that most people get! One copy of DevStudio and a backedup copy of my WBIn directory and I’m done :)
— Sal
re: “get a mac”. Now *that’s* unintentionally funny. I’ve been using Macs for 13 years, Windows for 8, and Linux for 7. I’m currently a Certified Apple Trainer; sign up for a class at http://train.apple.com/ and we can swap war stories in person.
But I don’t work for Apple; I work for an independent company that also works on other projects. As I have already mentioned and others have repeated, I need Windows for some of these projects.
Anyone who feels the need to Save Me From The Evil Empire(TM) is welcome to match my salary. Otherwise, save your breath.
— Mark
137: He has almost exclusively Macs. He has one or two PCs, and that’s because he needs them at work. Stop shouting out randomly, people.
— Jesper
Whatever mongs suggested that it should be “fewer” hours are wrong. If it had been steps then yes, fewer steps. But not hours. Less time, not Fewer time. Mongs. Is 4.8 hours less than 5 hours or fewer than 5 hours? Less. Thank you. Goodbye.
— BoyT
And also try XP-Antispy to let go all of the stuff M$ put in windows XP to spy on you.
— Bookaroo
“They could create a kernel that outdoes the good old *NIX kernel, more or less from the 60s.”
To paraphrase “maddog” Hall, the fact that it’s still around suggests they might have gotten it right the first time. :)
— kami
I was going to trackback, but I didn’t know what to PING.
http://www.citizenkeith.com/cgi/blosxom.cgi/2003/08/05#080403os-saga
kami: It’s been recoded bit by bit so many times, but I can’t help but wonder what would happen if the *NIX people sat around to rethink it totally and build it according to new principles. I think it would be harder for *NIX than for Microsoft simply because *NIX has a lot of opensource coders that’d want to chime in.
— Jesper
In response to comment 66.
I was curious about the term too, and searching the web leads me to believe it is Mark’s unix handle. I am assume having f8dy as his windows users account name will help file and runtime permissions when logging into the windows box from a unix based machine.
But then again maybe it is some 1337 4ax0r jive.
I like XP. I also like Mandrake. I also like Win2k. I also like Solaris. I also like OS X. What makes me choose between these options? Why, whatever is the best tool for the job, of course. Screw your OStheism, trolls, and screw those o’ you who fail to read all comments before posting the SAME THING 14 PEOPLE BEFORE YOU DID!
Nice article, it does an evenhanded job of explaining an average/above average user’s experiences with a fresh install.
— Squirrel
155: See 73.
— Jesper
You now have more comments than steps required to install Windows XP. Go figure…
— Didier
What the?? This is just a bit nutty. I’ve not yet had an XP system act like this. I personally have set up about a dozen XP systems. Each of them have taken less than two hours total – including time to unpack and hook everything up. Buy a Dell. ;-)
— HandyGeek
Regarding misplacing registration/activation/CD key codes: write them on the install CD with a Sharpie.
— Roy
if youv’e got an iMac, why bother with all this crap?
— Jon Cooper Taylor
This brings back bad memories…
I think you forgot some steps though: Did you remember to physically hurt and/or threaten the computer? It’s usually done about 3 hours into the installation process.
— Eva
Wait, Mark, why didn’t you just set up a ghost of Linux on your Mac instead?
Microsoft does make less-than-stellar decisions that directly affect the user experience. They seem to assume that the user doesn’t read closely or pay attention or follow what’s going on.
Surprised anyone? ;)
I just think that your to dumb to make an Ghost image of your first good installation… It takes 5 minutes, but keep going on reinstalling your computer, its seems you have nothing else to do …
— LaforcE
You think this is bad? Try installing XP and all the utilities you need and cracking them all as you go, updating everything, and cracking everything all over again.
I remember once a 12k patch for a single DirectX file b0rked an entire system because it looked for an activation key. Couldn’t even boot up into safe mode, couldn’t restore, nothing.
Lastly, woe to those who have an NTFS drive and no floppy. Try flashing the Bios on your video card like that!
Bill Gates is the AntiChrist.
— KaiBosh
Ghost or some other cloning software is the way to go– if the mark makes more than $8/hour, this software will pay for itself. No need to remind me that Mark did not have Ghost at the time, but if he’s certain he’ll be doing this again in 9 months, it’s worth getting ASAP, while the install is still fresh. After that, he’ll just have to install 9 months worth of hotfixes and Service Packs, 2 restarts at most.
It’s a little disingenuous to call all of those steps “Installing XP,” when in fact you’re installing quite a lot more than XP, namely all of the linux and apache stuff. It may take 5 hours to restore the PC to the state at which you can do your job with it–no dispute there– but when I’ve restored my computer from a format, I don’t include the time it took to install and add 5 years worth of mods and patches to Half-Life (plus find that darned CD-Key), even though it’s obviously essential software.
Now that you’ve done the install, you can benefit from experience and backup your settings using the convenient feature XP provides, write down your key, clone your disk, and you’ll be done in an hour or so. Plus you’ll have steps like “get beer from fridge; open beer” and “check shoelace tension.”
— LAN3
It’s been over a week and it is still not installed. Files wont copy onto the harddrive, there are page errors. Windows start up errors. Password errors. It’s just completely freaking me out, and I BUILT this thing. (Well, quite a few PCs and I’ve installed OS’s from DOS to ME, all the ones inbetween.)
Typed from my G4, of course.
— Ann
have you tried unattened install which is similar to the redhat kickstart process along with slipstreaming the service packs and patches into the install media. http://www.svrops.com/svrops/downloads/zipdocs/xpunattend.zip give info on xp unattened installs
— Anonymous
I’ve had my win2k installation going for about a year and a half and it’s just now starting to go goofy on me. Do you know how I’ve got it to go for so long? (Other than my hardware and software brilliance?) Because I don’t install anything on it. The worst thing you can do to your pristine Windows installation is to install a program on it! I mean, what are you thinking? If you ask B. Gates, he’ll tell you that Microsoft produces everything you should want. Look for the next version of Windows; it wont allow you to install anything without paying extortion to MS first.
One more note: using ghost after finalizing your installation and making an image file of your hdd will save a ton of time when that IRC trojan analy rapes you.
— dp
Interesting, took me less than 3 hours to completly set my eMac back up with and install and customizing.
— KC
#126 > doing a facour for a favour
A faker for a favour..?
A fake hour for a favour..?
Which is it?
— dda
#126 > does not have any call in what has happened in the past.Period.
Booh. And we thought Bush was bad… I’ll take the First…
— dda
#129 > I needed 2 1/2 days, or the entire weekend to do it.
2.5 days = weekend? Any job opportunities with your company?
— dda
Perhaps you missed a step, but I didn’t read where you transferred files FROM the iMac upstairs TO the XP laptop. Seems to me that there’s really nothing worth saving in the first place. Your thoughts?
— rab
My daughter and her friend have an emoticon that they use between themselves that I wasn’t familiar with. [...] I asked my daughter and she said it was somebody closing their eyes and sticking their tongue out at you.
Leaving aside the issue of my daughter’s friend sticking her tongue out at me, I now give you the emoticon:
XP
http://amianduri.com/somethingfischi/archives/003586.html
Kids…
— dda
Hey you know those upgrade versions of MS Office that will only install if you have a previous version?
Well, when you specify you want to manually browse for that old version you can point the sucker AT THE CD YOU ARE INSTALLING FROM and it will work fine.
Odd.
— Anonymous
Thanks, Mark. That really made my day.
Frank.
Five hours? must be the first time you’ve had to do it then…
— benzboy
:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D
Its very cool ^^
i sazed mz friend he must Install XP with this readme here ;)
:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D
After those long steps, I suggest that you get an image of windows xp partition using Norton Ghost just to get a backup of what you’ll need to redo in less than five weeks.
— Linux XP
It took me more like 25 hours to install Mac OS 7.5:
http://www.designkitten.com/archives/2003_07_29.html#000159#more
Of course, I had to download 27 floppy disks worth of operating system to do it.
— Jickup
Mark, I keep all of my install CDs (along with any registration codes, stickers, cardboard cutouts, etc.) in one of our 5 unused music CD carrying-cases. Makes software installs a little more tolerable. :)
I can’t believe you downgraded from Win2K to XP. I’ve never had to completely re-install Win2K due to software problems – only when my hard drive or motherboard have committed suicide. I never want to go near XP on my home PC!
— JonB
If you want to keep an MS OS stable, never ever upgrade it. If you really need the three or four “enhancements” in XP then you should have wiped 2K and bought the full version of XP.
Someone here just described XP as a downgrade, its hard to argue with him.
Also, run a regcleaner everytime you uninstall something and you might increase your windows half-life.
I really don’t know what all the fuss is about. Don’t you know that all of the applications you will ever need for your computing needs are produced by Microsoft. When you need something new, Microsoft will tell you. (Hold a black shoe brush under your nose and read the above statements with a German accent and you will get the point.)
Actually, I have XP that is running just fine and it never fails. I can perform tasks faster than any other windows based system I run across… Oh, I almost forgot to mention that my XP runs on a Macintosh G4 and the only reason I have it is to run Visio and an occassional custom piece of software that some idiot made only available for Windows.
— foberkam
my laptop’s needed to be reinstalled 4 times in the past 3 weeks, and all i run is trillian and aol, along with 3 or 4 games (3d pinball kicks ass!)
i feel your pain, although my pain is much less, except with more of the changing every option everywhere, and uninstalling stupid windows apps
— jmello
The secret to a happy Windows installation is pretty straightforward: Stay pure and keep your software vertical.
Staying vertical means avoiding programs which are meant to modify or add to the behavior of other programs. No matter how tempting that keystroke saver or titlebar enhancement is, avoid it. No matter how tempting it is to let QuickTime or RealPlayer install themselves as browser plug-ins, don’t do it. Load these programs on their own and paste URLs when you want to stream something. Keep everything stand-alone and you won’t end up with a unique never-before-tested configuration when you start bumping versions on one app or another.
Similarly, staying pure means: Avoid hardware that needs special drivers. If a signed driver isn’t available, or if the hardware -requires- extra software to function, consider returning the hardware and picking something else up. As soon as you add Creative Labs audio-magic apps, nVidia desktop
tweakers, Epson print managers, HP tool-tray on-the-fly burning integration, etc — you’ve started to veer away from the mainstream tested configurations.
By being a purist about this kind of thing, my work XP installation has been going strong since XP’s release, and my 2000 configuration never went stale.
I run Debian GNU/Linux at home, and there I exercise similar caution, avoiding installing unpackaged software at all cost. (I package it myself if I have to.) Periodically running debfoster and deborphan finds unneeded packages, and cruft finds unmanaged files. By keeping the system clean, I’ve been using and upgrading the same GNU/Linux desktop installation for nearly six years now.
You are ridiculously unskilled and computer illiterate. It’s a shame you put yourself through so much pain. I am a Mac user, but can nagivate Windows far easier than you. It’s too bad OS-bashing is so trendy. You are in the wrong line of work.
— Anonymous
I am a UNIX Systems Admin. I have installed XP numerous time, albeit on numerous different machines. Currently I am running XP pro on 4 of my PCs, Red Hat on 1 and Mandrake on 1. I have never had any issues with the installations nor have I ever had any problems with drivers. I realize that XP may not be as simple as Apples new Playtel/UNIX wannabe OS, but, unlike OSX, XP expects you to know more about PC than to blindly blame the OS for everything your feeble mind cannot grasp. I like Linux and I like XP. I have no desire to give OSX a try, if for no other reason than what I have seen at work. we have over 200 pc running various versions of Windows and we have 14 macs running OSX. we have 1 guy to support the 14 macs and one guy to support the 200+ pcs. the “Mac guy” is begging for help to keep the Macs up and going, the “windows guy” spends most of his day surfing the web and chatting on IM, not because he is lazy, simply because he has nothing to do.
— Darren
Criminy! You Windows users are such masochists. I have a one-work solution to all your problems: Macintosh.
— JEdesign
for a hefty chunck of “Disable ….” items, there actually is a one step process (took long time to find the darn thing):
[winkey + Break] > Advanced > Performance Settings: Adjust for best performance > OK.
You idiot. All you have to do is make a damn image of your crap.. and when your installation reaches its “half-life” as you say, just reimage. takes less than an hour. get a clue.
ice-man@efnet
— Matt
Try making a disk image next time, dumbass.
— Anonymous
I’ve done this 3 times in less than 1 year and it’s starting to lose functionality again. argh! Our home network has 4 macs and that stupid XP box. We never (repeat never) have trouble with the macs. That stupid XP box gets used for one semi-serious app and internet reversi. That’s it. All 4 of the macs get pushed hard all the time.
— BigAir
Another way:
1. Do all this the first time.
2. Tweak everything to within an inch of it’s life.
3. Use a backup utility to make a complete copy of the system partition. I use Ghost.
4. 20 minutes or so to make the copy.
5. 30 minutes to reinstall system partition.
— Estaban
when microsoft has complete control of the world and then proceeds to crash, bringing all non-*nix-using and non-i*-using beings to a standstill i shall think of you and how much effort you put into being a part of it
— shade
XP is really no joy to install and configure, but once it is up and running, it’s actually not a bad little OS. While still rife with security holes (I don’t think MS will ever get that right) and fragmentation issues, it at least has stability much more under control than Windows 98SE.
Get Mandrake 9.1 – install is a dream. No driver issues. You have all the software you need, and the new KDE kicks ass. Love it. Or get a mac. They are pretty sweet little machines.
— Craig
Macintosh, Macintosh, Macintosh.
Come into the light.
All are welcome.
— JEdesign
Dang dude. My reinstalls of XP take 10 minutes flat.
Course, I had to plunk down a good chunk of change for Norton Ghost a while ago, but to avoid that frustration again? It was well worth it. The latest version’s pretty nice actually, let’s you boot from a ghost floppy, and backup directly to a CD via a CD burner. :)
— Devin
Hey, I hate to burst your bubble, but:
You could have saved yourself a whole boatload of time and hassle. Use the “System Restore” feature. It’s pretty damn slick; you restore your system to the state it was in on a certain date. Here’s some text copied from Technet on this:
<>
A. The System Restore feature of Microsoft Windows XP enables administrators to restore their computers to a previous state without losing personal data files (e.g. Word documents, graphic files, e-mail). System Restore actively monitors system file changes and some application file changes to record or store previous versions before the changes occurred. Users never have to think about taking system snapshots as System Restore automatically creates easily identifiable restore points, which the users can use to revert to a previous time. Restore points are created at the time of significant system events (such as application or driver install) and periodically (each day). Additionally, users can create and name their own restore points at any time. For more information, please see the System Restore (link deleted) document on TechNet.
<>
If you can’t find info on this, e-mail me at adamhe@speakeasy.org and I’ll hook you up.
Decided to do a reinstall of OS 10.2 on my G4 last nights – let’s see how many steps.
1. Load OS X 10.2 install disc into CD drive;
2. Open System Preferences, Set Start Up Disc to “OS X Install Disc 1″
3. Rebooted
4. System launches directly into Install screen
5. Selected “Read before Installing” PDF file
6. Read PDF – no relevant issues
7. Launched Install OS 10.2
8. Selected “Archive Existing System Files”
9. Selected “Save Network Settings”
10. Clicked on Continue
11. Clicked on “Agreed” for EULA
12. Clicked on Continue
13. Selected hard drive named “Velocity of Time” to install system files
14. Clicked on continue
15. Files started writing – estimated time to complete 1 hour 5 minutes
16. Called friend who was having trouble with XP and mocked her choice of operating systems for 25 minutes.
17. Noticed that the estimated completion time was now less than 1 minute.
18. Commented that the 1 hour 5 minutes passed very quickly.
19. Remembered that Mac users actually exist in a parallel universe where software actually works
20. Said goodbye to friend
21. Hung up telephone
22. Click on “restart” when dialogue box advised that the computer would restart in 15 seconds
23. Make that 14 seconds
24. No, 13 seconds
25. System restarted
26. System automatically reselected primary hard drive as startup drive. Did not need to reset then reboot.
27. Dialogue box requested that I insert OS 10.2 Install Disc 2
28. Inserted Install Disc 2
29. Put Install Disc 1 away
30. Install Disc 2 completes writing auxilliary files to system files.
31. Installer finished
32. System automatically rebooted
33. Login screen asks for User Name and Password
34. Momentary Panic
35. Look up UN&PW in Sony Clie NX70V
36. Enter UN&PW
37. Open System Preferences
38. Open Login Preferences
39. Open Edit Login
40. Enter Admin Password
41. Set login preferences to automatically enter login data
42. Close Login Preferences
43. Quit System Preferences
44. Notice that System Update has discovered that I need to download several updates to OS 10.2
45. Click on Proceed
46. Enter Admin Password
47. Wait for download to complete
48. Launch Netscape,
49. Browse eBay
50. Notice that button configured on Logitech Optical Mouse is not working
51. Open System Preferences
52. Launch Logitech Control Center
53. Reset mouse button configuration
54. System Update advises that download is complete
55. Click on Restart
56. System restarts
57. System automatically logs in without asking for UN&PW
58. Reinstallation of Mac OX 10.2.6 completed.
Time to complete 55 minutes, 48 seconds.
— Demon Goddess of Speed
Just a tip:
don’t use the /noguiboot switch in boot.ini. It gets rid of the cheesy splash screen but it causes more problems than it’s worth. What that flag does is competely disable the bootvid.sys driver, which is not only responsible for the splash screen, but also the output from autochk if there’s a file system problem, and any bluescreens that might occur, even after the OS is loaded.
Use /sos instead. That will display what passes for a boot log in XP. Usually you’ll only see something like “Microsoft Windows XP Professional. 1 system processor. 1024MB memory, etc…”
— Anonymous
Hmm. All your years of experience with Windows (as mentioned above) yet:
1) You don’t seem to know that you should reformat your drive (easily accomplished via the install CD) before reinstalling over a problem installation.
2) You don’t seem to know that the WPA code is not on the Windows box, it on the CD jewel case.
3) You don’t seem to know how to access Device Manager, even though there are numerous methods that can be employed.
4) You don’t seem to know to uncheck that checkbox (the one that’s titled, obscurely of course, since it’s in an MS GUI: “Show this screen every time Windows starts”) for the Windows XP Tour screen.
5) You don’t seem to know that very recent hardware (like a wireless network card) may requires drivers that are not available on the Windows install disk.
6) You don’t seem to know that Windows XP was installed by Step 14.
Somehow, I don’t think Widnows XP was the real problem in your fiasco.
— Anonymous
Since nobody who’s commenting now has bothered to read through the previous comments, I’m not sure why I should bother responding civilly, but here goes…
I was installing on a fresh partition. My old install was still semi-usable and I didn’t want to wipe it until necessary.
My original CD is in my original retail box, both of which are stored in a location so safe even I don’t remember where it is. The first thing I did when I bought it was create a disk image of it, from which I create backup CDs as necessary. I use backup CDs exclusively on this particular laptop because my CD drive has a nasty tendency to scratch discs that are in the drive longer than 30 minutes.
I upgraded from W2K last December and my wireless card continued to work. XP touts easy wireless networking as one of its main features, so it honestly never occurred to me (a) that my old drivers would not work on a fresh install, and (b) that I would need to manually install any drivers at all.
XP was *not* installed by step 14, at which point I had no programs and no internet access, and it would have stopped working in 30 days because I hadn’t activated it yet. I might possibly concede that it was installed by step 45, except that the defaults for XP are so hideously unusable that they actively work against my getting any productive work done.
And to those who missed the previous 3 times I explained this and are about to say “get a Mac” or “switch to Linux”, I also use both of those operating systems on a daily basis. They have their own strengths and weaknesses, and I have had similarly bad days with them as well. However, this particular laptop is used for work, and for reasons I don’t feel under any obligation whatsoever to explain, it needs to be running Windows XP.
— Mark
So, how many of you fanboys here actually do this stuff for a living? What Mark did was essentially create a *nix box out of a windows box. Sure, it took five hours, but he finally got to where he can “work” on it. Jesus, man, just go get a freakin install of what you’re comfortable with. This tripe wasn’t really funny (if it was even meant to be…), it actually reminded me so much of the stupid users that can’t figure out where the anykey is.
— Admin
First of all, since I read every single comment up to the one I made, I’ll ignore your accusation.
Thanks for the clarification about the separate partitions. That specific info wasn’t stated previously, or at least not clearly.
So you can’t find the original box for Windows XP? OK…erm…great. So now I’m trying to figure out how your lack of organization on your part = a faux pas on MS’s part?
Yes, MS touts wireless networking as easy, and it is. However, MS doesn’t tout installing PCI cards without drivers as easy, and it obviously wasn’t. Again you seem to point fingers in the wrong direction.
XP was “installed” by step 14. You heard the chime as you stated, right? That means Windows is “installed.” If it wasn’t installed you wouldn’t have heard a chime or have been presented with a desktop. All of your remaining steps are configuration steps (tweaking Windows, locating drivers for devices because you can’t find the right disk, installing software, etc.) not operating system installation steps. And no, this is not a semantics argument, just a fact. It’s also a fact which tends to make the title of your little diatribe unfairly misleading. Maybe “How to reinstall Windows XP and configure my laptop for work” would be far more appropriate?
Hmm. Without the hyperbole it loses something though, doesn’t it?
— Anonymous
Mark,
I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but I think you need to get out more. You are getting way too worked up about a trivial issue.
Upgrades are not always easy – and five or six hours is not that much time to me.
Finally, your comments such as “suck my tit” and various references to your mother being violated come off as plain wierd (i.e. NOT funny).
Without trying to insult you, all I can say is: a) this is a small thing b)it is not worth getting riled up about c)see a therapist about any other outstanding issues.
— Anonymous
umm, with all the linux stuff your running, why are you using windows in the first place?
— Anonymous
Seems to me like the only problem is a user = Id10T error. Easily fixable.
— Jon
“Decided to do a reinstall of OS 10.2 on my G4 last nights – let’s see how many steps.”
And let’s see here — oh yeah, look at that, he set up his entire system completely with all specific settings and programs he wanted, while you um, installed the OS. Period.
Not to mention this guy is an idiot in the first place.
— Anonymous
It’s amazing how personally offended people are getting that somebody they don’t know had a painful experience installing an operating system, and decided to write about it. It’s a weblog: blogs are _supposed_ to be self-indulgent.
Some of the commenters are reacting as if Mark came round to their house, burst through the front door and told them their children were ugly.
For the record, I hardly ever do that. Most of my enemies are too ugly to have sex in the first place.
— Mark
Mark: +3 witty retort points
— Anonymous
“5 hours or less” is correct; you don’t mean “either 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, or no hours”, you mean “some amount of time no greater than five hours”.
— Nic