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Complete List of Bugs Fixed in SP2
callipygian-showsyst writes "Microsoft has published the complete list of bugs fixed in Service Pack 2.
They range from the obscure like: 'File Appears to Be Deleted Although You Do Not Have Permissions on the OS/2 Warp4-Based Server' to the serious-sounding: ' Stop error message on a blue screen when you transfer data to a USB device in Windows XP'"
This is a giant list of all of the updates, and then links to the KB numbers on the left, so you can read what each one was.
... but after reading the KB, it's an ActiveX problem that can allow a webpage to access your media library. Then again, MS has always really vague and stupid titles.
Side note: one of my favorites:
MS03-021: A flaw in Windows Media Player may permit the Media Library to be accessed
At first, I was thinking that it was supposed to do that
Okay, tell meonce again how many months it took to root out those errors? Some where known for a long time. And I expected a longer list... waaaaay longer!
www.weberseite.at
Why is it so hard that the editors can't use the appropriate icons for them?
It's time this site starts to grow up.
Slashdot Moderation: From positive to terrible in 2 "insightful" posts.
It's not a dupe. The one you listed is SP2's incompatibilities. This is a list of things it fixes.
is the list of bugs they've *introduced*.
--Rob
This list is all the bugs that have been fixed in Windows XP through SP2, not bug fixes exclusive to SP2.
How can they fix these: "Random "0x0000008E" Error Message on a Blue Screen in Windows XP" and "Your Computer Restarts Unexpectedly When You Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE to Unlock Your Computer" These are the best features in windows!
if we're close to the time when the majority of slashdot readers don't know what OS/2 Warp4 is?
"Complete" list of bug fixes? Probably not. More like a list of all the bugs they think they fixed, not counting the bugs they inadvertantly fixed plus the bugs they inadvertantly introduced.
I mean, this guy printed the list : http://www.microbizz.nl/buglist.jpg
Well, out of the many bugs listed as being fixed thirteen were repaired that could cause code execution...
;)
Were these bugs found internally by their team or were these found by outsiders and then patched months later because knowledge was never released?
Not Prompted to Obtain a Digital Rights Management License for Installations Created by Using Sysprep
This was one bug they could have left unfound
331044 Files Larger Than 4 GB Are Truncated When You Use an EMC Device with Windows XP
I first read that as EMP Device... Actually it might improve things.
It is amazing to see a fix of this nature...it is more like an upgrade. I didn't count the number of fixes, but I would venture to say it is in the hundreds, plus all the ones they do not publish. I can't wait to download all 250MB of this patch over my dialup line! should take about 2.75 days
But, but, but...then it wouldn't be slashdot any more!
There are a lot of instances of the word "cumulative" in this list ("Cumulative patch for Internet Explorer..."). I wonder how many true bugs are fixed with this, not just support article entries.
Like this one?
-- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
Out of an amazing 805(?) bugs listed, this has to be my favorite.
Some programs do not work as expected when large files are opened
Are there any fixes in terms of usability or user interface?
Like the damn message that comes up VERY TIME I wake a windoze laptop from sleep: "Hi! You're connected to your wireless network again. The same network as always, but I just wanted to remind you. The signal strenght is excellent. Click me, and I'll disappear. But be sure that I'll return the next time you start or wake your computer!"
I wonder how many suicides are directly related to windows error and/or informational messages.
Ciryon
More pressingly, why is the worm topic represented by a caterpillar?
And where would /. be without great days like this?
* Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server SP4
* Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional SP4
* Microsoft Windows 2000 Server SP4".
Are they intentionally driving up the number of bugs fixed?
-- "I'm not a religious man, but if you're up there, save me Superman..."
SP1 fixed very serious bugs in Win XP that were not on the SP1 bug list. Also, serious bugs that had been reported a long time before were NOT fixed.
Who in their right mind would come to Slashdot to look for objectivity, especially on a Windows article? There are more deep-seated and extreme viewpoints on here than there are in the middle-east.
This list is kind of funny.
Browse with Mozilla and you'll stay clear of any popups and/or malicious stuff the page is trying to install. (I got some complaints from a friend when I gave the link, don't really what it was all about, but something I guess made IE go nuts)
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
814545 Registry Repair and Recovery May Inadvertently Delete a Subset of Keys
Where's my keys?
...and you'll see it's a window that looks like it's had some rocks thrown through it-- there are cracks and holes in the panes. Subtle commentary at its best.
~Philly
326971 - Operating system does not work
Ok so it might fix some things but the patient could die from the cure.
KB00001 - Windows security is a contradiction in terms. FIX - [Insert favorite distro here]
"Would you, could you, with a goat?" Dr Seuss
Your computer becomes a spam zombie within minutes of being connected to the Internet.
or
Outlook Express has no junk mail filtering.
or
Your screen becomes deluged with popup windows with no escape because closing one opens about ten others.
Seriously though, I'm staggered at the volume of bugfixes here. What's sad though is that a product made it to market with this many bugs still in it. Windows is supposed to be a 'mature' product by now. Clearly it isn't. Many of the bugs describe stuff that's just broken full stop and should really have been removed before XP was released, ie: You cannot preview a fax in the Fax Console.. Others sound like simple program logic errors, which shold never have happenned in the first place. I particularly liked: Windows XP stops responding (hangs) when you log off the computer if more than one user is logged on. WTF?
Like tinyurl, but one letter less! http://qurl.co.uk/
Then it hasn't fixed THE bug.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Here's an excerpt from a recent article on the debacle.
It's fine. Who needs objectivity anyway? Highly over-rated. Oh, unless you're talking about linux, in which case objectivity is essential.
Issue:
Error message on a blue screen when you transfer data to a USB device in Windows XP.
Resolution:
Error message now placed on gradient green screen when you transfer data to a USB device in Windows XP.
Has Anyone Noticed Their Misuse Of Capitals (HANTMOC)? They Start Each Word With A Capital Letter But Why? Are They Inventing New Acronymia? Are They Not Able To Remember The Rules About The Use Of Capitals In Sentences? jzs.
B.
A handle leak occurs when you use "Run as" to run a program in Windows Server 2003?!
________
Entranced by anime since late summer 2001 and loving it ^_^
I wonder if the names that have for the bugs are the titles on the original bug reports from their internal testers, who may not necessarilly be actual developers.
(S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))
He saw Pestilence. But he could overcome him. He saw War. Not a real threat. He saw Famine. He could take him down. He saw Clippy. And his heart stopped pounding.
-- "I'm not a religious man, but if you're up there, save me Superman..."
Wow! they are half way to eliminating the blue screen, now we get them, but without messages! They were the only chance I had to brush on my hex reading!
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
MS says it's a feature... I think it's a bug: programmatically disable windows firewall
MS03-008: Flaw in Windows Script Engine may allow code to run
So...if it's working fine then no code runs..?
Your access to network resources is slower in Windows XP than in earlier versions of Windows
That's a bug? I thought it was just a symptom of bloat.
The Display Rotates 180 Degrees When You Lower Your Screen Resolution Using the Accessibility Wizard
Now that's just funny. I wanna see it
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
a complete list of bugs CAUSED by SP 2?
Hmm I don't think MS has a big enough cluster of hard drives to document all those bugs.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=88
good to see billions of dollars buys the best programmers money can buy
Ripping the shit out of microsoft for no good reason is an impossibility. M$ is such an amazingly efficiant producer of reasons that no one attempting to produce an unjustified attack is likely to succeed in avoiding all of them.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
I use Lynx you insensitive clod!
liqbase
813907 You Cannot Open Certain System Information (.nfo) Files
WAREZ!!
250MB+ of patches? Granted it includes WMP9, and a bunch of IE stuff, but previous service packs (2k/NT) covered multiple versions of the same OS (Win2k Pro, Server, Advanced, etc...) This is 250MB of patches for ONE version of ONE OS.
To be fair, I guess it would be similar to a point release for linux, updating the kernel, glibc, gnome/kde, mozilla, etc... It would probably be at least that big. It's still kind of freaky installing that many patches simultaneously.
I remember updating Netware 3.x using patches on floppies, one after another. It was a pain, but at least you knew exactly what's getting installed and when.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
And you have to be in administrator mode. Oh no, you mean if I log in as administrator the programs can do bad things.
If I logged on to linux as root and ran a program it could cause the same sort of problems
I/O, I/O, its off to disk I go, with a read and a write, and a bit and a byte, I/O, I/O, I/O, I/O
Speaking of icons not really used anymore, what ever happened to having quickies every once in a while? They were short, fun, had multiple stories, a real timesaver for the more obscure stories that might not otherwise have exposure. I want my quickies back!
"What use is power to the Keeps of Balance?" -Disnt of Nightmare LpMud
326863 Operating system throttling does not work
Calling software defects "bugs" denotes that somehow critters are crawling into code and having their way with the bits. Once upon a time, there were real bugs in computers. They prevented relay contacts from closing. There's no such thing as software "bugs" today, only logic defects.
In reality, defects are created by people with imperfect logic. Calling defects "bugs" is transferring responsibility from the human creator to a mythical insect.
Defective software is a fact of life. Unlike Star Trek Vulcan science officers, humans lack pure logic. Maybe that's the price we're paying for being human.
Until space aliens possessing pure logic visit Earth and mind-meld with humans, we're doomed to imperfect logic. This means microcode cast in silicon, assemblers, compilers, and program generators will continue delivering defective output. To compound the problem, it also means that application solutions humans are abstracting and describing using these tools will continue containing logic defects.
If you think defects are rampant today, you ain't seen nothing yet. The order of complexity of software-based systems is most likely accelerating at a rate faster than Moore's law.
The best we imperfect logic humans can do is learn from our mistakes. Unfortunately, this seems to be rarely practiced. Many realities about the art of software were described by Fredrick Brooks in "The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering." The second edition of the book published 20 years later confirms that the realities of software are as true today as in 1975 when the first edition of the book was published.
A precious few people practicing the art of software are aware of software sins of the past. Most practitioners are blindly recreating them, and are pushing the blame onto the mythical "bug."
No, no, you're wrong. You may not be objective about Linux. Linux is the greatest thing on earth, everything else is either crap (Microsoft), overpriced (Apple), or dying (BSD).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Since when Microsoft uses CSS in his website?
It's strange for me seeing MS using such standard... hope they'll give IE full support soon.
--
Typos randomly introduced
...a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.
... new bugs created.
Its such a long list, they would have been better off to publish a list of things which they did not fix.
(Although they might be included in SP3)
--
I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer.
you're either:
A) A very crafty troll
-or-
B) Some right-wing flag-waving, pickup driving resident of a flyover state.
Sorry... Slashdot won't grow as quick as your corn (of whichever flavor)
If you think the bugs-fixed list is long, check out the list of "programs that may behave 'differently'." Differently seems to be a euphamism for "no longer work."
But they do. Going on about "blue screens of death" and crashing is one that immediately springs to mind. That's not been the case since before 2000...
> Not Prompted to Obtain a Digital Rights Management License for Installations Created ;)
> by Using Sysprep
> This was one bug they could have left unfound
You're to optimistic. You read that one as "not prompted, not confirmed by user, so not obtained". Call me a cynic, but I was thinking more along the lines of "not prompted, not denied by user, so obtained by all".
Are you kidding me? I got one just the other day on my XP pro machine.
You can only pull this kinda crap (that MS has been proven and even admitted to of having done) when your sure it is the other guy that is blamed. Kinda like when IE fails to load a page it is the websites fault but when Mozilla fails to load a page it is Mozilla's fault.
OS/2 has been killed but it is still being used. Those customers are smart enough to know that any problems are not OS/2 fault but MS. Since MS wants them at one time or another to switch it is probably not to wise to alienate them by showing them how buggy MS software is. Once they switched and are totally locked in THEN you spring the bugs on them. It helps sell the next version. Just explain to me exactly why I should have upgraded from Win95? What exactly has been added that is so helpfull? Stability? Stabilty is a bug, it should have been fixed in a patch.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
812383 The Browserui.dll file does not update after you apply a Windows hotfix to restrict the toolbar location in Windows 2000 Internet Explorer
In all seriousness, should I actually install this thing? It's one thing if the worst it does is make me manually unblock all my programs to get them through the firewall, but I don't want it to break other programs that are currently working. Is it problematic to firewall my machine if I'm already behind a firewall (home, work networks)?
They *can* hack in an easter egg while *USING SOURCE CODE CONTROL*. And in the management reports it will show up as "fixed a misspelling".
I've done it, I know bunches of other people that have done it, and I've been directed by my manager at one company to do it.
The cutoff date for features is *way* earlier than the cutoff date for defect fixes, and on occasion we'd (i.e. my first level department) discover a feature that we needed to have in the product, but which higher level management would never agree to due to the schedule. Our first line boss would give us the OK to slime it in. It's the old "It's easier to beg forgiveness than to ask permission".
Would somebody lose their job? I guess it all depends on whether your first line manager goes to bat for you or not... but that being said I've *never* heard of a programmer losing their job due to slime.
--Rob
STOP error messages were the reason that I downgraded from XP back to 2000. Random reboots with no explanation anywhere. I thought I traced it down to a buggy scanner driver, but it still happened.
Microsoft needs to more accurately diagnose these mysterious errors and provide help to end users.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
That's not true. There are still BSODS in WinXP. My Pro box throws them now and then. I've gotten maybe three or four since I installed it in NOvember, so they're not COMMON anymore, but they still exist.
Besides, fair or not, Win95, 98, and ME were all atrocious, and that stigma is permanently etched in the minds of a lot of people. Microsoft really screwed up, and they'll continue paying for it until the last vestiges of the pre-XP era are gone. A lot of professionals remember Windows as the mid-90s system that couldn't match the performance, stability, or security of early 70s systems, but cost a lot of money anyway.
A lot of users remember Windows as the system that ate their term papers, presentations, budget reports, etc. Windows, for its first three incarnations, was an absolute piece of garbage. Even though XP and 2000 finally started behaving like semi-modern systems, people will hold the original transgressions against them anyway.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
The page blows- there is nothing funny there, even if you try...
It is teh Lame
...is the 3D Web Cam of the guy who submitted this /. article!
Why is so unreasonable to expect any user to have a rough idea of what programs they run on their computer so that they just update the bits they need to?
For example, if I run an AMD CPU, why do I need:
810064 - Short Battery Life on Your Pentium III-M Tualatin Processor Computer
I thought Windows Update was supposed to supply you with just the updates you need? Even if it cannot do that level of system checking, what about MS just doing a "portage" or "apt-get" system like in Linux?
MS has a reputation for bloatware and having to download a huge Service Pack where you only need 20-30 of the updates does nothing to quash that reputation.
Not to mention millions of people downloading a 250MB+ Service Pack and wasting bandwidth...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Couldn't they have just put "This didn't work before" and then added say every tenth line of code? That would have been faster and probably more accurate
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa milyId=049C9DBE-3B8E-4F30-8245-9E368D3CDB5A&displa ylang=en
Exactly. "Fair or not". That's what I've been talking about.
XP doesn't crash. Bad drivers crash XP. Read up on WHQL, then fix your computer. Don't blame the OS when the user is clearly to blame.
Wow, that's cool that you had such an impact. The surprising thing is that the person from MS showed some personality themselves, not just some standard auto-response or straight corpo-talk. Lets you see that even the guys over at MS can be just like us... well, kinda. ;)
...with what Linux geeks are accustomed to.
A Service Pack provides an easy mechanism to identify major code refreshes. This way when handed two sets of install disks a person can tell if they have newer version than was originally distributed.
Now for the most part I agree, lots of this should be available for download separately. The update process in windows is tolerable. However there may be enough inter dependancies among these various updates to require them all to be available in one neat package.
I know people who will not use Windows Update but they will apply a service pack.
As for that 250Mb size, I believe that was the special network administrators version that everyone should not have been downloading, let alone the fact that most only got it because it was on P2P network.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Right, because all programmers outside Microsoft have superhuman skills and prove that each bug fix they code is correct...
Why is this news, I thought everyone here used Linux. Or is it just me and you're all laughing behind my back?
"Debian has released their own Service Pack for Windows XP. /Debian Service Pack 1 for Windows XP/ is to be used only if you are disatisfied with XP after you install SP2. A Debian spokesperson stated : Just pop this CD in, reboot, then follow the onscreen instructions, and Windows will be upgraded on your PC, which will feel much more responsive and will not crash as much - if at all."
See http://www.debian.org for further details of this upgrade.
XP doesn't crash. Bad drivers crash XP. Read up on WHQL, then fix your computer. Don't blame the OS when the user is clearly to blame.
Wow. It's like bashing heads with a Linux zealot all over again. Only one problem, numbnuts: none of the drivers that are installed are signed by anyone but Microsoft, and I've never allowed installation of an "unsafe" driver (i.e. - a driver that took advantage of the fact that Windows was total shit until Microsoft pulled their head out of their ass and made their OS work like it was 1977).
Touche, zealot-boy.
Exactly. "Fair or not". That's what I've been talking about.
It's perfectly fair. Microsoft made a shitty product for years and held anyone who dared suggest they fix it in utter contempt. Now Microsoft has a reputation for making shitty products.
Well, gee. Ain't that a bitch. Funny how you get the reputation of an asshole when you act like one, isn't it?
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
This the list of programs that the built-in firewall will break until you add them to the exception list. Be ready to do the procedure listed in the Knowledge Base article on every machine you apply the service pack to.
As for your crashing XP box, check your hardware. I can't tell you how stable XP is, even compared to my RH9 boxes - it's rock solid. Any time a computer is on the fritz like that, look beyond the OS. I know it's hard if you're jaded ("microsoft made a shitty product for years"), but it's worth it.
You have a go at me for being a zealot, then refuse to listen to my argument in a mature fashion. cheers.
Computer Seems to Hang When You Log On
I dont think ANYONE HERE has hanging problems with his/her windoze box. Maybe some little minor glitches with the interface but not these big hanging problems... Intoducing Longhorn....-> Mac OS X - Tiger...
Sourdia Rulez
...even if they don't really understand it.
I agree that it is hard to explain a buffer overflow to non-technical people, but I've done it before to their satisfaction. A lot of people want to know more about how their computers (and other appliances) work. Furthermore, lack of detail can translate to lack of trust. There has to be a balance between technobabble and plain, simple english.
If all a user wants to know about a bug is something general like you suggest then the list of critical updates in Windows Update or on the SP2 page would look like this:
123456 - A flaw in Internet Explorer may allow an attacker to control your computer
123457 - A flaw in Outlook Express may allow an attacker to control your computer
123458 - A flaw in Windows XP may allow an attacker to control your computer
123459 - A flaw in Internet Explorer may allow an attacker to control your computer
123460 - A flaw in Internet Explorer may allow an attacker to control your computer
123461 - A flaw in Windows XP may allow an attacker to control your computer
123462 - A flaw in Internet Explorer may allow an attacker to control your computer
Honestly, how would this be ANY more useful to a user than something line "A buffer overflow in IE's URI parsing routines could allow an attacker to perform a cross-site scripting attack"? Sure, most users would not know what that means without reading the details, however, I think a lot of users would not be comforted by the above list. Is it the same flaw? How does the flaw manifest itself? Does it apply to my setup?
In fact I think most users would feel a bit insulted by overly vague information on updates--as if MS feels they are not smart enough to handle any sort of detail. "Okay boys and girls, Windows has a booboo. Run this program and it'll but a bandaid on the booboo and everything will be alright again".
I think I'd personally prefer technobabble, at least it sounds more credible (like someone knows something about software).
Ok, this is not XP SP2, but Win2k SP3:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=276304
Imagine getting an error message like:
"Your password must be at least 18770 characters and cannot repeat any of your previous 30689 passwords. Please type a different password. Type a password that meets these requirements in both text boxes."
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
The Windows Update process for installing the service pack does eactly what you describe. It scans the computer for what it needs to DL and it DLs only what the computer nees. It can range from about 70 to 90 meg Not the 250 to 400 meg for the full admin or developer versions.
/. users were supposed to be smart enough to figure things out for themselves by reading and experimenting rather than blathering on and on about things that they know nothing about to hords of other people that also know nothing thus starting up a shit storm of FUD like the wold has never seen"
In the same vein... "I thought that
Next time there is a big Mozilla update, is someone going to post the MASSIVE list of bug fixes (Hey just look at the current change log!) so we can all laugh at them too?
Geeze, like grow-up man.
Bugs are generally the "undocumented features."
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
I installed SP2 and then it made me re-activate both Windows and Office 2003. During the reactivation, my original Product keys were no longer valid. I had to call Micrsoft support, spoke to numerous tech support and activation department employees before they gave me a new product key which could be re-activated. I felt like I was getting interrogated as to why I was re-activating the software even though I had valid and legal copies. The other interesting part, every person I spoke to was from India, the the only person not from India was Canadian. It appears as if Microsoft has almost completely off-shored major portions of their company to India. The way I fixed the computer was to completely reinstall everything on the computer. I have not seen a Micrsoft release that has had more problems and instability than this release of Windows XP and Office 2003.
Such bug does NOT mean that all writes to USB devices are failing - only on some specific device under special conditions. Usually any functionality in Windows never *completely* broken - unlike Linux where you can get respected distro with non-working DSL support or 50%-failure rate boot loader. As I wrote: SlashDot is deep into blind anti-MS propaganda... shame on you! And what so special about list of bugfixes? Have you seen Debian or Mandrake change logs recently? (and in case of XP SP2 it is list for 2 years! two!)
Slashdot - free anti-Microsoft propaganda 24/7
You can remove 200 to 500 meg from that by removing the various patch uninstalls from the /Windows folder once you are sure that your machine is working properly... (Must have the viewing of hidden/system files enabled)
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
839017 - Help and Support causes Windows XP to stop responding
This is not actually an OS fix but rather cleaning house in the tech support dept.
in bed.
Service Pack 2 fixed my Wi-Fi problems. Wi-Fi support is much more advanced. I highly recommend this update to anyone with a Wi-Fi enabled laptop.
SlashDot is deep into blind anti-MS propaganda
...
respected distro with non-working DSL support or 50%-failure rate boot loader
Got some sources for that, bucko? Didn't think so. Now get back to your VB project.
If you called the US activation number, you were talking to somebody in Washington State. If not... well, it's possible Microsoft has outsourced support for other nations (and I know they are planning to outsource more in the future).
Comment of the year
Sometimes I feel like smashing my comp or repartitioning HDD when I think about windows swap behaviour. Then I remember I have still unfinished projects on windows. When I run linux with 512MB of RAM, then it STARTS to use swap ONLY when this memory is used up. When I run windows, it seems, that it writes EVERYTHING to SWAP and then retrieves memory pages only when really nessecary. And what does it use all the free memory for? o yeah, caching! It's absolutely nessecary to swap out all the possible memory to copy 600MB file over the net, just because it's fun to release the memory when the copy operation finishes and watch continued HDD torture when I switch back to recent app. On laptop this renders system pretty unusable for minutes after the copy. And of course it's Very Funny to see, that system has 100..200MB FREE MEMORY and HDD led just doesn't go off after switshing to app left to the backround for a while. And this is "tuned" system. Bloat-services switched off, many registry settings optimized, resident("update-clients") portions of various popular "default" software removed, so on. Seems like it's absolutely no use to do all this shit, as inactive programs will be swapped out of memory anyway after few seconds of idle time or when they stay on the background for few minutes.. And as I discovered after many days of frustrating web-search .. All this behaviour is totally normal and "correctly working" feature of windows!!!
I know now there are different hacky-smelling "solutions" for this, like various "memory-optimizers" and shit, but why-oh-why would I need any memory optimizing with 512MB and 200MB constantly free in the first place?!?!
If that's not "buggy" .. what is?
Oh yea: even brand new CLEAN XP SP2 with 512MB RAM running doom3 (pretty well) for hour or two starts to freak out with the same swapping horror. Restarting DOOM3 will reset the situation.
So this XP Starter Edition is really good thing: opening one app and closing it before opening nextone seems to be the way microsoft thinks computers should be used these days.
Service Pack releases also contain all the point releases up to that point. If you click on the knowledge base article attached to those 13 bugs, you'll probably find that most, if not all, of them have *already* been in WindowsUpdate in the past.
Service Packs are designed so that if you have a plain-jane Windows XP install and you put on the Service Pack, you'll be at the same place a user who's been running Windows Update every week will be.
Comment of the year
No, after you apply the service pack (at least with SP2) it has something running in the background watching for this, so it retroactivly will apply all of it's updates to everything, no reapplying the service pack.
I saw it in one of the papers on SP2 on Microsoft's site, can't remember which one though.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Windows, for its first three incarnations, was an absolute piece of garbage.
And worse yet- that was NOT the first three incarnations. The first three incarnations were 1.0, 2.0, 3.0. There was also a 3.1 and a 3.11 before 95- all in the same code base.
The current code base is actually an entirely different set of code, starting with NT (for New Technology). So we're talking 8 incarnations of garbage- all of which belonged to a code base that is now utterly abandoned by Microsoft.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
So we're most likely doomed to another few years where we can't use alpha images on web sites unless we want to only show them to a few percent of the public.
Way to go, Microsoft's IE team.
<rant>
I hope Firefox and crew kick your sorry, ownable, hackable, broken code writing, specification ignoring, partial standard supporting, no tab having, pop up generating butts.
</rant>
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Yes, I called the US activation number that pops up on the screen. I live in the United States. I only talked to and was transferred to people from India. The same went for support also, but the higher levels of support in India transferred me to someone in Canada after a few people could not help me then transferred me back to India.
Oh, I love those *NIX kiddies :-)
My message based on my personal experiences with Mandrake (9.1, 9.2, 10.0) and Fedora. Boot loader thing was quite covered by press BTW.
I never even touched VB. Now get back to your AWK scripts.
Slashdot - free anti-Microsoft propaganda 24/7
You're actually asking why an operating system would have the ability to throttle its own speed? Have you ever heard of, say, a laptop battery, or seen the same feature in the Linux kernel? Do you know what Standby is?
for my "I survived NT4.0 SP2" t-shirt...
...but I took it away because I kept getting marked down for no reason. It read: "Slashdot is the Ain't-It-Cool-News of the tech sector."
Anyone who has been to AICN knows exactly what I'm talking about.
microsoft.com is a corporate website, slashdot is an unofficial messageboard for geeks...
Unofficial? This place is considered the peak of geek community chatter on the 'net. If you ignore that, you are putting your head in the sand.
As far as it not being a corporate site--ROFL. It's owned by OSDN, a Linux company. Malda posts these Microsoft articles to get more page hits that he can report to OSDN to use for shopping to banner advertisers. The day Slashdot instituted banner ads should have been the first big sign. The day pointless subscriptions came into play should have been the second. And when you realized they don't even listen to the subscribers despite what Malda originally said, that should have been the last straw.
It is owned by a company, shops banner ads, and has user subscriptions. It's not a "fan-run advocacy site," it's a business.
It's surprising that you find it "ludicrous" for a news portal to remain neutral and unbiased. This place is the PRIME SOURCE of all the immature attitude out there in the OSS community. False memes propagate through this thing like STDs in high school. People repeat the same unproven facts in +5 posts, which causes other people to believe it.
I think this release of SP2 has really illustrated a lot of things fundamentally wrong with this community's attitude, but in particular, the attitudes of the editors. Not to mention the horrible, overly broad "IT" section and its garish color scheme.
Worth pointing out that everything worked great from a VMWare session running under linux, so I was certain it wasn't (a) hardware or (b) the type of transfer or (c) some combination; I blamed the VIA drivers for my motherboard, but neither the stock XP drivers or the MB drivers which came with the MB did any different.
Mebbe I'll load up SP2 and see what happens; my system's been playing up for a while and a fresh install might clear it up :)
That sig is hilarious, Zev. :)
Another item on the list is:
"Computer stops responding after you put it into hibernation, and then resume it from hibernation many times"
And here's an extract from the KB article...
"For example, the computer may stop responding after you put it into hibernation and then resume it from hibernation approximately 300 times."
(THREE HUNDRED TIMES??!!! I'm not surprised that causes problems!)
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No - not matchsticks. Oil. The world is built on oil. Matchsticks are useful for lighting oil though.
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That's interesting. For a week or so a year ago we were shuffling around computers and doing a lot of installs of XP Pro, and didn't bother with finding the specific keys for each computer (we have 10 or 20 keys bought at once). When we had to reactivate some installs and call up the number, they seemed to be too relaxed about it... We honestly could've had all stolen copies and MS wouldn't have known/cared.
LegendMUD
The page blows- there is nothing funny there, even if you try...
:-)
I agree most are far fetched, but I found some gems in there, such as
"In the lab at Vampire Village, when Luke tells Lizzy 'a horror handed me dad's wallet', horror sounds like whore."
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
"Internet Explorer May Shut Down Unexpectedly If You Have Set Windows and Buttons to Windows XP Style"
Now that one *should* read:
"Internet Explorer May Shut Down Unexpectedly If You Have Not Disabled Windows XP Style Windows and Buttons"
BTW, if you don't like the XP look anyways, I *highly* recommend going back to bog (bug?) standard Windows skin. Even on a newer sys it just speeds things up a lot. Combine with disabling useless services, not allowing RealPlayer/Quicktime/Driver Apps/Quick Starters to run in the background, Windows is nice and snappy - one can get it to well below 100MB mem usage. (Even if you have lots to spare, this is A Good Thing).
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That list contains the bugs that Microsoft admits to fixing. There is a completely separate set of problems that Microsoft won't admit were ever issues in the first place, that are probably fixed here.
They were not relaxed about it with me. They kept on giving me the third degree. I personally did not appreciate being treated like that when I am actually one of the few people probably out there that actually has legal copies of their software. I would have had an easier time just loading up the cracked versions than dealing with MS support.
what a wanker.
For agreeing with my post... as I said I've had first line managers direct me to do such stuff knowing that higher level management wouldn't go for it.
--Rob
.NET actually cuts against the grain of using the registry for config and application config files at various levels from machine down to application are now the prefered method.
The central repository is the old model.
Sorry, but you're talking out your arse.
I installed SP2 and then it made me re-activate both Windows and Office 2003.
We've deployed it on approximately 100 machines here in the office, and haven't had any activation issues of any kind, with Visual Studio, Office, or Windows XP itself. I also fail to see how a service pack would force a re-activation.
spoke to numerous tech support and activation department employees before they gave me a new product key which could be re-activated. I felt like I was getting interrogated as to why I was re-activating the software
You've apparently never actually had to re-activate windows or office. The very first thing you can do is use the internet to re-activate. 90% of the time this works right off the bat. The second thing you can do is call their 1-800 number, and be connected to an automated phone system. You say/speak the code into your phone, and the system reads back an auth code. Bam, done. If for some reason the phone system cannot understand you, it transfers you to a Real Live Person (tm) who asks for your code, and gives you back an auth code. No interrogation. No questions at all, even.
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
No, I am not talking out my arse. I am not saying that this will happen to everyone, or that it is common. But it did happen to me. That is great that you have deployed it on all those machines and have experienced good luck. I wish you further good fortune. That was not my experience though. I have had to reactivate machines in the past, and yes, I have chosen the online method. It sometimes has failed and had to go through the 800 number. This time it was even worse. I spoke to the 800 number people over in India, went though the long string of numbers, re-entered their numbers a few times and it still did not work. I went through many "Real Live People (tm)" in India and one in Canada. I had no luck and no answers were given to me. I eventually had to reinstall, enter the new product keys given to me and reactivate windows over the internet. ......This was not a "You say/speak the code into your phone, and the system reads back an auth code. Bam, done." situation.....
Boot loader thing was quite covered by press BTW
Oh, you mean the partitioning problem that affected *only* those people who were dual booting with Windows? The one where Windows insists on using CHS values instead of LBA values? Yeah, that sure caused a number of issues. Good thing the Windows installer allowed me to dual boot with Mandrake/Fedora just fine.
Oh wait, no it didn't.
The word "crash" appears only twice in this list of fixes. (Plus another time when "Crash" is part of a function name.) Sheesh, that's 125MB per crash fix.
I hate the fact everything has a config file/directory in my home directory.
My home directory is cluttered with loads of them (yes, I always "ls" with -a)
I remember way back when, when unix acccounts were more scarce and share, you could set the environment variable "DOTDIR" to the directory you wanted configuration files put into.
SETENV DOTDIR "$HOME/.config"
made things much clearer, but no applications these days seem to support it
Sig out of date
There is a bug in Fedora Core 2 that causes the hard disk geometry as reported in the partition table to be altered during installation. The Windows *installer* does not have anything with this. It is Fedora installer that breaks things.
Slashdot - free anti-Microsoft propaganda 24/7
It happened to me about 10 times before I figured out what's going on. Where I work we have a spaghetti of Access 2000 databases. I'd say around 250. I noticed that when trying to compact and repair the database sitting on a Novell File Server from a client machine over a network the database would get deleted, gone...., and an error appears saying: "The database cannot be found". What a great explanation. When I raised the issue in a meeting, I found out that about every developer in the room had encountered such a problem, and had to restore the files from a backup more than once. They had no idea it was a flaw, they just restored thinking they deleted the file by mistake. I urged them to use the compact/repair feature locally only. This might not be of concern to most /. users, but it's a pretty severe flaw, especially for a small business who's whole operations are dependent on such database format.
The phaomnneil pweor of the hmuan mnid. Fcuknig amzanig eh!
The processor can't detect "empty clock ticks"... there's no such thing.
If the operating system determines that no user threads have anything to do, and the kernel has run out of stuff to do to... so it's just waiting for hardware interrupts (keyboard, mouse, network, video, disk, interval timer), rather than sitting around in a loop it executes the HALT instruction which brings the CPU into a low-power state until an interrupt or trap wakes it up.
Otherwise it would have to spin in a loop for a few milliseconds, and that eats juice it shouldn't otherwise need to.
Intel Speed Step CPUs let the operating system use special MTRRs that allow it to dynamically adjust the clock speed in reaction to an increase or decrease of thumb-twiddling time as well. Because a CPU at 1.2GHz halting 50% is still consuming more power than the same CPU at 800MHz in HALT only 20% of the time.
I believe this is the thing that doesn't work in XP without Service Pack II or hotfixes. I've heard about this gripe before.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
if there were three changes....
1) That the reg tool existed as early in NT as when the registry was first introduced.
2) That the reg tool would allow you to dump and restore hives and keys to flat/text files
3) That the registry would be broken up into many hives that applications could load and unload dynamically and keep independantly.
In this fashion, for example, all the settings for a particular app for a particular user might end up as %USERDIR%/Application Data/foobar/foobar.dat and would be dynamically added under HKCU or whereever until it the relevant app was closed (and the hive removed).
You could always go back and manually mount that hive and make changes...
In this fashion, complete rebuilds would become unnecessary because you could spread out your critical config, and backup/restore parts independantly, prevent corruption or slow access from large hives, etc.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
It's actually saved me some trouble. You'll know that your disks are out of free space (thus preventing the audit log from growing) when you see that ol' Blue Screen. A similar machine without the setting would just behave very erratically and just fall all over itself.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I believe this is also a requirement of one of the federal security certifications (FIPS 140, etc). To maintain security, the OS cannot be allowed to run if logging isn't working right.
"There is a bug in Fedora Core 2" ... in the 'parted' application, a hard disk partitioning tool used by several Linux distros (and invoked by FC2's Anaconda Installer)...
... that alters the CHS information only. Windows cannot handle the LBA information which is handled *correctly* in the BIOS, even though every other OS is fully capable of understanding it. Rather, Windows happily ignores the LBA information, and chokes and dies. It is a Windows issue.
"that causes the hard disk geometry as reported in the partition table to be altered during installation"
All of this is in the article in the link, which I can only assume you didn't read.
"Windows *installer* does not have anything with this."
Your original post referred to "50%-failure rate boot loader" for Linux. Try installing Windows *after* installing Linux. I guarantee a 100% failure rate, as Windows will happily take over the MBR and ignore your Linux installation.
I fail to see how you can say one thing, then ignore it two posts later.
That's the list of bugs it fixes...where's the list of problems it causes?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
why did you have to reinstall?
you can change your product key without reinstalling.
Dude!
That's a hela list of updates. I think I just fucking hit my swap file on that page load.
That's just plain crazy.
Just explain to me exactly why I should have upgraded from Win95? What exactly has been added that is so helpfull?
Spider Solitaire
Linux has very complete and powerful command line processors and command line tools.
Windows has very weak ones. Many of the Windows command line tools are not completely integrated into the Windows OS. For example, here is a non-destructive test you can try: Run the command SUBST L: C:\. That makes L: point to the root of the C: drive, so that L: is equivalent to C:. Now open the recycle bin. Delete something and see the recycle bin malfunctioning; it automatically deletes items rather than holding them. Run SUBST L:
Microsoft is extremely sloppy, in my experience. Some things they fix, some things they don't. Notice that the items in the bug list are not dated. Note that there is no way to know what was fixed between SP1 and SP2. The convenience of the technical writers is considered more important than the huge amount of time lost by customers because things are documented in a sloppy way.
Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer are tired of getting up in the morning and doing the same thing every day, it appears to me. Slowly they are losing touch with their company, and slowly the company is decaying. Microsoft was, in my experience, always abusive toward its customers, but now it is sliding more into disfunction.
Linux HALTs the CPU when it's not actively doing anything, and has done so for a lot longer than any MS-Windows derivative. I had one guy complain that his dual-boot machine wasn't working in MS-Windows but went fine in Linux (well, hey... but read on), and it turned out to be a failed CPU fan. Linux spent so much time idle (and so HALTed) that the CPU temp was reasonable even without a fan, MS-Windows constantly hammered it so it overheated and went catatonic. And who hasn't woken up at 4AM to hear the MS-Windows Disk Squirrels scampering around on their drive for no reason that you've ever been able to discover?
Win2k and XP do HALT the CPU as well, but by their very nature they don't do it as consistently.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
A lady answered in an accent which I guess was Malaysian, but would only admit to being "somewhere in Asia". This is calling an allegedly Australian company (QANGO, really) from Australia.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Regedit will run from the DOS prompt. Type "regedit" in real DOS (not just in a DOS window) to get a list of available commandline switches.
However, this doesn't give you the nice GUI with the automagically decoded-to-text representation of the registry's contents.
So to fix the registry in the DOS environment, you use the Regedit switch to dump the registry to a textfile (you should do this anyway for archival purposes), use a text editor to fix whatever needs fixing, then use Regedit to restore the registry.
You can also use Regedit in DOS to merge individual keys (whatever.reg files, which are themselves plaintext).
"Corrupted registry" gets a lot of bad press, but in my experience it is exceedingly rare, and takes the blame for a lot of other issues, usually involving mismatched Explorer components caused by AOL and its kin forcibly updating only *part* of the set. You might then wind up with some conflicting registry keys, but that does not equate to the registry itself being corrupted.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Once: Tie a rope between two fixing points. This is like unto your entire hard drive, with many config files interwoven. If a thread frays out of the rope, it doesn't break.
Now tie a thread between two fixing points. This is like unto your registry. If a thread frays out... it's game over.
Again: take a pile of gravel. This is like unto a pile of small files on your hard drive.
Now, carefully stack the individual pieces of gravel one atop another to build a thin, tall pillar. This is like unto your registry on your hard drive.
Take one piece of gravel from each system. Which lasts better?
Discussion: Similar principles apply elsewhere. Microsoft have a tendency to lose the plot when faced with a choice between "robust" and "shiny". They also fall victim to their own propaganda.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
That the numerous incompatibilities and bugs that cropped up with XP, such as the piss poor performance with Netware, were in fact sanctioned by managment?
Interesting.
but I only have a 160 gigabyte hard drive and I don't have enough space to download the entire bug list.
"Software is like sex... it's better when it's free"
no wait, bad taht all these bug were there in the first place !
Since there are BSOD errors and crashes in the list of things supposedly fixed bs SP2, I think we can deduce that M$ dissagrees with you.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
If you logged into linux as root then you deserve to have the same sort of problems.
Of course, this big list of "fixes" is totally unverifiable. How do we know the fixes have been done? Where are the regression tests? What sort of fixes have been put in place? MS has a ubiquity is fast approaching Utility level - and most, if not all nations - require different levels of scrutiny for utilities. This would mean, of course, opening up the active source code tree for all to *read* on a real time basis. one step to freedom. r
I'm having a hard time believing that. I've installed SP2 on all manner of machines, and not a single one had any issues at all with activation. As far as I can tell, activation isn't even addressed with this release. I've even used it on "dodgy" product keys to see what would happen, and it installs fine. It stops windows update from working, but certainly does not deactivate windows OR office.
But then he couldn't post on slashdot and bash microsoft! get with the picture, man!
Good question. Microsoft did not have an anwer either. The re-activation would not work no matter how many times we tried it over the phone. We went through a variety of different options and nothing worked. Microsoft recommended for me to re-install a fresh copy.
Believe it. I hope you never experience it. It was a major pain.
I found that a good deal of the apparent slowness of SP2 comes from the fact that the disk becomes badly fragmented (presumably as a result of deleting and replacing so many small files). Running the disk defragmentation system tool after updating a system to SP2 substantially improves the performance of the system. The slowdown seems to be especially prevalent on laptops.
/. account just to post this, so I hope someone sees it..
Note that defragmenting the disk before installing SP2 will not help. It must be done after the system has been updated.
I made a
msoobe /a ? :D
that SP2 will probably fix every single one of those bugs, but who's to say that it's not going to create a lot more? With every patch comes a consequence, rather that be good or bad... and in Microsoft's case, everytime they try to do something good, they always end up hurting themselves and everyone else in the long run.
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher