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Windows XP Starter Edition Snubs P4, Athlon
Apu writes "CNET is reporting that Microsoft's Windows XP Starter Edition operating system specifically checks the result of the CPUID instruction on bootup and fails to continue if a Pentium 4 or Athlon processor is detected."
I dont get this. EVERYONE (well, most) have p4s an athalons. What am I supposed to run this thing on?????
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Of course when the machine is in such a mess that it decides to blue-screen you're probably not going to trust it to write a file.
After all it might have crashed because it encountered a strange filesystem error - and writing to it could trash your whole disk.
There have been similar suggestions for the Linux Kernel; write information somewhere when the kernel panics, but they are usually shot down for the same reason.
When a machine is in the 'panic' state writing to the local disks, or sending stuff across the network isn't usually feasible. (True some people have done it but its a hard problem - because you can't actually rely upon the kernel to do anything correctly when it's mid-panic).
This is called price discrimination. It allows you to extract maximum profit from people (particularly those who are unwilling/unable to pay the same as the market price). Microsoft is making the simple (and correct!) assumption that people buying budget PCs are more price conscious and therefore will be more enticed by a lower priced operating system. Remember, NOBODY in the US is going to get their hands on a copy of this OS. As long as Dell is selling fully functional PCs with XP Home for $300 or less, this OS is all about foreign markets where consumers can't afford US priced PCs.
The Mac OS X writes data to the machine's NVRAM on kernel panic, which is then retrievable and interpretable once the system reboots.
-ben
myselfmusic
This Pentium4/Athlon decision makes perfect sense - if someone can afford the higher-end processor, they can afford the higher priced OS.
No it doesn't. Considering the Pentium 4 is a.. 5 years old processor?
Coupled with the fact that the XP starter's edition is meant to curb piracy in countries where it is rampant, and there you go. A total foobar.
I can buy a Pentium 4 Processor for AU$150, or a rather high end A64 CPU for about AU$200. I do not need to pay A$300 for Windows XP "Normal" edition.
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
Why does noone realize that XP Starter Edition is not the version of XP that the EU ordered Microsoft to produce. That distinction belongs to Windows XP Reduced Media Edition.
Of course when the machine is in such a mess that it decides to blue-screen you're probably not going to trust it to write a file.
Yes but it *can* safely write to swap space. On the next boot (I think!) it'll pull the crash dump out of swap and saves it in your windows folder for analysis. System Properties, Advanced, Startup and Recovery, Write debugging information. On XP and 2003 it'll then look at the crash and either point you to a web page with help on the STOP error or, if it doesn't recognise the crash, it'll ask permission to upload the memory dump to Microsoft.
This does mean you need at least as much swap space on the system drive as you have memory for a full dump - which can be a problem if you've deliberately taken a small system partition, as our co-lo host used to do by default.
When you direct NT to make a memory dump on BSOD, it uses disk space already reserved for the pagefile. You need to have a page file on the boot volume large enough to hold whatever size memory dump. Since the sectors are already allocated, it's as simple as writing memory directly into them; the filesystem need not be involved for this. The next time the system boots, it copies the memory dump contents into a new file (which is now safe to create) before the pagefile is used for paging again. Another area is pre-allocated to hold space for a crash event in the event log.
OS X can also send a log to a 'panic server' during a kernel panic. You specify the remote machine (by IP address) in some open firmware settings. The remote machine must be on the same subnet.
I'm certain someone else must have already pointed this out to you. Many types of windows BSOD's say "beginning dump of physcial memory"; they're writing to the disk. Solaris does it, Linux does it, Mac OSX does it. Of course there are failures that cause hardware to become unavailable, but those are usually hardware errors. All of the OS's we're talking about are fairly sophisticated, and they generate the blue screen or panic screen because someone is doing something naughty that leaves the kernel in question as to the status of memory, the stack, or other necessary functional bloc, so the kernel STOPS the system. In short, the vast majority of failures leave the kernel *quite* capable of writing to a designated crash pad, and every OS I've mentioned offers that option.
Thinking outside my Head
And for reference, that £400 is a 24th my annual before tax income.
:-)
And a Rs. 25,000 PC in India is an 8th of the annual income of a person earning Rs 200,000. Most people who buy PCs earn even less. So you get an idea how how expensive it is
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
Yes, yes it does: http://people.redhat.com/anderson/crash_whitepaper /
ustr: Managed string API with ave. 44% overhead over strdup(), for 0-20B
There was a scrolling starfield & space sound demo that you were supposed to run and pull the CPU out from.
I think it could only do noninteractive stuff.