Running Windows With No Services

mattOzan writes "So how many of the almost 4 dozen default-enabled services does Windows XP really need in order to preserve basic functioning, like web surfing and running applications? Zero, as it turns out. Mark Russinovich at Sysinternals demonstrates that if certain steps are followed, Windows XP will still run with only two active processes: System and Csrss.exe. No Smss.exe, Winlogon.exe, Services.exe, Lsass.exe... And, contrary to the expectations of various lead engineers at Microsoft, even Internet Explorer will still work under such conditions."

Comments

No Services on Boot?

[Anonymous Coward]

What are the real limitations of running like this? Some will become obvious during your exploration, but a major one is that you won't be able to logoff (or shutdown)

Well Windows "shutsdown" on its own accord often enough, so that isn't a big problem (well it isn't a NEW problem), but it would be nice to be able to boot-up without these processes instead of having to kill them every time.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Well Windows "shutsdown" on its own accord often enough

Really? Does it? Isn't this just an old joke with not much fact to back it up anymore?

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Idimmu Xul]

Really? Does it? Isn't this just an old joke with not much fact to back it up anymore?

You clearly haven't been using a system recently that's been riddled with spyware, I've just had a hell of a time trying to get rid of some stuff on a friends pc that constantly kept rebooting the pc, restarting explorer and crashing winlogon.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[wo1verin3]

You clearly haven't been using a system recently that's been riddled with spyware

And you clearly work for Dell technical support

Question: My computer is [basic OR advanced computer problem here]
Dell Answer: You clearly haven't been using a system recently that's been riddled with spyware

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad they don't sell common sense with the computer that you purchase.. excuse me.. but my system is loaded with spyware because I dont' check it regularly and I open emails about viagra. I'm sorry sir, the email violation voids your common sense warning, and apparently you didn't read your maintenance and upkeep plan portion of your common sense manual. Perhaps you haven't heard, but there are these people called black hat hackers out there, and they like people like you. You are the crickets to their lizards...

Re:No Services on Boot?

[E-Rock]

Ah, so if you don't know what you're doing and get infected with malicious 3rd party applications, then Windows is unstable.

Not the same as windows shutting down often.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Open up the run box and type in msconfig.

This handy utility will allow you to disable all the annoying tasks you don't need on boot-up.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[saleenS281]

No, I haven't. I installed anti-spyware beta on every computer I look after and they haven't had a single spyware problem since. Apparently you're too eager to have a reason to blame microsoft than fix the problem though.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[UnrefinedLayman]

Then that's not Windows shutting itself down for no reason, is it? It's spyware that causes the computer to become unstable.

The cause of that may be security holes in Windows, but Windows itself is a pretty stable operating system. It's the software written for it that performs irresponsibly or poorly from time to time (which isn't to say Windows doesn't suck every now and then purely of its own accord).

Re:No Services on Boot?

[TWX]

I've had XP with either service pack lock up and die when making standard system changes, working with USB memory devices, and working with cameras. I've not been impressed with the stability.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[badasscat]

You clearly haven't been using a system recently that's been riddled with spyware,

So we're supposed to blame MS for Spyware? Windows doesn't ship with system-crashing spyware, and it's not even like viruses are its primary way in. Most spyware is willingly installed by clueless users.

My Windows machine at work is currently at 221 hours of uptime. I don't even remember why it was rebooted prior to that, but it wasn't because of a crash. The current version of Windows XP is pretty stable if you ask me - not as good of a 24/7 OS as most *nix's, though not for reasons of stability. Its interface is not designed for keeping large numbers of applications open at once, and it doesn't seem to handle memory all that well at this point (this used to be one of its strong suits compared to other OS's). But it doesn't crash unless you do something stupid (like install spyware) to make it crash.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well people joke about it for a reason, because Windows used to be a horribly unstable piece of crap. So now that it is stable people still joke about it, same with security. If for whatever reason tomorrow Windows was fairly secure from then on people would still crack jokes about it being insecure. Microsoft did it to themselves, they can't expect to release a crap product, then fix it years later and expect everyone to love it.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[anthony_dipierro]

Pretty much. Windows gets slow every once in a while, forcing me to reboot it, but I don't think I've ever had this system shut down on its own.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Anonymous Coward]

just go to service manager and disable them. you can write wmi script to kill everything that isn't the 2 processes. then that script would have to kill the wmi service though...

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Retric]

If an OS can crash because of software then it has a basic design flaw. If an OS can get a virus then it has a basic design flaw. The only thing that should cause an OS to crash is severely corrupted memory and or CPU. I have worked with software that can function as the system RAM is being actively corrupted. Few people want to pay for this level of software but you can design an OS that will still run if you randomly rip out ram chip but hey let's blame it on the l33t hackers and say it's the software's fault.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[PhoenixFlare]

Well Windows "shutsdown" on its own accord often enough, so that isn't a big problem (well it isn't a NEW problem)

Such a wonderful attempt at "humor"/trolling/zealotry.

If it actually happened, it'd be funny, but it doesn't anymore (did it ever?) - not unless you have severe hardware problems or you're so clueless that you let your machine get overrun with viruses and spyware.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you must not have driven a car recently if you haven't ran out of gas in the middle of a desert in 130 degree weather. :P

I don't see machines randomly rebooting for no reason very often. I am an admin of a company with about 70 pcs. While they might get infected with some malware every now and then they never get to a point where they restart like that. Normally if you actually try to keep your machine clean by having antivirus w/ up to date virus defs, keep windows up to date and have something like spybot, adaware, or microsoft's antispyware that you run every now and then (how often depends on how many malware you get) you won't see a machine get that bad unless you are just really careless about what you install on a machine.

Only time any of my windows boxes running xp restart is when the power goes out, or i need to restart them after a software install or windows update.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Anonymous Coward]

You bragging about 9 days. My primary system has been up for 284 days (thats 6816 hours), of course its not a windows system.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[bleeware]

No more spyware? Let a 15-yr old use your computer for a few days. Even with anti-spy running, stuff happens.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[saleenS281]

you're bragging about a system with no less than 50 root exploits that haven't been patched. Congrats on that one champ!

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

You clearly haven't been using a system recently that's been riddled with spyware.

This is true. I'm behind a NAT router that came with my DSL, I have Norton, I use SpyBot and AdAware now and then, I defrag my drive every so often. Oh, I use Firefox (mostly). No problems. When I was still using IE, I'd pick up lots of spyware, mostly at porn sites. I still frequint porn sites, but only with Firefox.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[anthony_dipierro]

If an OS can crash because of software then it has a basic design flaw.

Not if that software is running as the administrator.

If an OS can get a virus then it has a basic design flaw.

I don't understand that one. How could an OS possibly protect against all viruses? It'd have to be impossible to modify executables.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[AstroDrabb]

not much fact to back it up anymore?

Behind corporate hardware and software costing 10's if not 100's of thousands, yes, you have a point.

On your typical Joe User system with broadband, your point is laughable at best. I have seen far too many typical Joe Users with system that are just "owned" by spyware/adware/malware/viruses. I live 1,300 miles from most of my family. Their systems are really, really bad. Every time I fly up to see everyone, I really an just doing "Windows admin" tasks for everyone. It is pretty sad that MS Windows allows a typical Joe User to totally destroy their system so easily, especially if those Joe Users use the "recommended"/"preferred" MS software of IE and outlook express.

Yes, technical users can lock down their home WinXP systems. My corporate WinXP dev workstation has not been rebooted for a long time and runs well (with the exception of explorer.exe crashing every time I log out!); This is at a fortune 500 that has spent 100's of thousands if not more on security (on a side note, we just spent a lot on an SSL VPN (in addition to our traditional VPN) solution so that any of our users that want to access our intranet from home need to go through that SSL VPN. Why did we buy this? Because we have 140,000+ employees and the _majority_ of those home users had viruses that were trying to get into our network and we had to protect our MS Win based servers (not our Linux or Solaris servers)! The majority of our non-technical home users had viruses running MS Windows!). My home WinXP system runs very well because I have protected it with a hardware firewall and a Linux firewall and locked down my wife's login account to just "Power User" so she cannot totally kill the system.

Now try to get the millions of Joe Users to implement these types of restrictions/securities/etc and see the backlash. They just won't/can't do it. The tasks are just too technical for most. The funny thing about all of this is that most Joe Users _do_ have some type of security. Many of them have Norton "firewall" or some other end-user type "protection". It is just funny how most of them _still_ are able have their systems destroyed in an average of 2-3 months or so.

Of my family members, so far I have gotten my brother-in-law to switch to Mac OS X (he is a photographer and wanted Mac anyway) and my sister to switch to Linux (web/email junkie only). I wrote down the root password for both of them, though they have no clue what to do with that root password. Both of their systems are still chugging along without issue. I can logged into each system every so often thanks to dyndns.org and I apply patches. I tried to do dyndns.org on some of my families WinXP boxes, however, they were getting infected faster then I could patch/clean them. It really is much easier for me to go North once a year with a bootable Linux CD and burn backups of their personal files and then do a restore, than to try to admin all their systems remotely.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, I can write the following C program and blow up any unix or linux system

#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>

void main()
{
while(1){fork()}
}

There you go, software crashing the OS

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell that to my $3000 dell laptop that refuses to leave sleep mode 1% of the time.

Just enough to be annoying; but not enough to spend a bunch of time figuring out why.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Windows XP the only real way to bluescreen it or get it to reboot is normally flawed drivers. The drivers are run at kernel level for speed reason as user mode would give a major performance hit.

As for a virus, it really depends on the user. If you were logged on as root on a Linux box and ran something bad, bad things would happen. Why should it be different with Windows? The major issue with Windows is that most people run it with Administrative accounts as poorly coded programs don't work under User access levels. Of course if Microsoft had a way to fix it most people probably would still run under administrative accounts. You can't stop user stupidity.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[anthony_dipierro]

Probably. But maybe he's running a system with a microkernel, which doesn't need to be rebooted to patch a root exploit.

Hell, maybe he installed a minimal version of Linux a year ago, and is using kernel modules for all the advanced functionality. There probably aren't any root exploits in that (what root exploits are there in the kernel, and not the apps, anyway?)

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Chosen Reject]

Who needs a 15 year old. I can bring you some of the professors I used to work for and they should do the job quite nicely.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[dnoyeb]

Regardless of the permission level of the user. The OS should not be 'crashed' by things running on top of it, but only by things it runs on top of.

Drivers crashing the OS is afaik unavoidable. Yet I hear they are trying to incorporate the drivers into the hardware.

As for the virus, i'm with you on that one. A virus is like a weed. its a program in its own right, its just that you don't want it there. The OS can't read your mind...

Re:No Services on Boot?

[pcmanjon]

"So we're supposed to blame MS for Spyware? Windows doesn't ship with system-crashing spyware, and it's not even like viruses are its primary way in. Most spyware is willingly installed by clueless users."

Yeah, and I also happened to purchase a Microsoft brand car. I'm sick of how people keep telling me "well, you bought a broken car, thats your own stupid fault."

I didn't buy a broken car. Microsofts Car came with the axel and the axel had ridges cut in to it which makes it brittle and easy to brake. I went over a speed bump going faster than 3mph and it broke the axel.

It's not Microsofts fault that going over the speed bump broke the Axel. Microsoft doesn't ship the car with a broken axel. Most Microsoft axels are broken when clueless users don't read the manual when it clearly states that they shouldn't pass a speed hump going more than 3mph.

Yes, some things sound ridiculous, like my scenario which is not unlike your comment above.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd ditch the motherboard with the VIA chipset and pickup a new one with a decent chipset that has real drivers that don't cause crashes.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[WilliamSChips]

Interesting, on my Linux that would just create 50 copies of itself, then complain that it can't create any more processes.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[jonbryce]

I don't think I've ever had Windows shutdown of its own accord since Windows 2000 SP1.

What you say was certainly true in the Windows 98/ME days, but NT based systems are much more stable.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not exactly the king (or queen, but I doubt it) of analogies, are you?

Re:No Services on Boot?

[anthony_dipierro]

Drivers crashing the OS is afaik unavoidable.

A program running with administrator privileges can install a driver.

Now granted, with most OSes, including unix ones, it's much easier than that. For instance, if you screw with the inodes of a running system, you can crash HP/UX (at least you could when I worked for HP). I wouldn't necessarily call that a design flaw, though. In fact, it could very well be considered a security feature. If something that fundamental is screwed up, either you've got buggy hardware, a buggy OS, or you're under attack. In any of those three cases I'd say it's safer from a security standpoint to panic than to try to repair yourself.

Some people of course have different needs. Some systems can't afford to reboot, they're that mission critical. But for most operating systems it's better to blue screen or to panic or whatever it's called. Reliability can be handled by having multiple systems running.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[praxis]

You clearly haven't been using the system properly. I have never, not once in my life, gotten any spyware, virus, worm, or trojan on my windows machines. It's really quite simple: do not run anything as Administrator unless you must, learn how to configure your services to match your needs and no more, and finally make sure you're all patched up.

So, yes, malicious software installed and running as administrator can bring a box down just as well in Windows as it can in any other operating system. The trick is to reduce your attackable surface.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[the grand asdfer]

Where do you work that has 140K employees? That must be a hell of a helpdesk!

Re:No Services on Boot?

[shadowzero313]

I had Starcraft blue screen on me. On a regularly patched and scanned computer. I've never had Starcraft die on me in Linux under Wine.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[blackpaw]

Yeah, well I had to switch to a PS2 adaptor for my USB mouse on Mandrake 10.1 because moving the mouse too fast locked the system.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Penguinshit]

Where I work we have in excess of 350k employees...

It's not that unusual.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[fandog]

And you wouldn't know for sure that you fixed it for maybe another 100 tries...

Re:No Services on Boot?

[d34thm0nk3y]

If an OS can crash because of software then it has a basic design flaw. If an OS can get a virus then it has a basic design flaw. The only thing that should cause an OS to crash is severely corrupted memory and or CPU.

I guess if you consider being able to run your own programs a design flaw. How is a computer really supposed to know the difference between a program I write specifically to wipe my hdd (for example) from a nearly identical program written maliciously by someone else.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[jacksonj04]

Oh will you all fuck off with your 'MS sucks, Linux is the answer' crap. If I want, I can damn well install just as much spyware on a Linux box, and it will crash as often as I want it to.

Most spyware is installed by clueless users. When the clueless users move to Linux, what is going to happen? My gods! They're going to install Claria Linux Edition!

Re:No Services on Boot?

[niteice]

I hope you mean Administrator privileges, considering that by default all user accounts have the privileges of the Administratot, unlike *nix, where nobody can have root's power unless specifically set that way. (wheel group and no sudo password)

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Randseed]

Happens all the time. Here's how:

1. Install Windows XP SP 2.

2. Use Microsoft's "recommended" setting to allow it to install service packs.

3. Go away for the weekend.

4. Come back to find out that Windows at some point started a stupid 5 minute countdown to reboot the machine without user intervention.

Even better, try doing anything like playing a game while that stupid dialog keeps coming up every twenty minutes or so, even though you've already told Windoze that you'll "reboot later."

If I tell it to reboot later and it keeps FUBARing applications by popping up a stupid dialog and seizing control of the machine like that, or just spontaneously reboots because I don't see the dialog, then it's effectively the same as a forced shutdown due to a crash.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[penguinrenegade]

Windows is perfectly stable, as long as you don't add any third party software to it, including anything that comes on the installation CDs.

=)

Re:No Services on Boot?

[FictionPimp]

su -
password: XXXXXX
# rm -rf /

or

su -
password: XXXXXXX
# rm /boot/kernel-2-6-12-gentoo-r6
# shutdown -r now

WTF, my software shouldn't screw my OS up!!!!
Something is horribly wrong with my OS!

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your sig makes me laugh every time I see it. Poor Woz....

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Zx-man]

No Services on Boot?! Use Windows 9x - no services on start up, no services at all, guaranteed.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[penix1]

"The major issue with Windows is that most people run it with Administrative accounts as poorly coded programs don't work under User access levels. Of course if Microsoft had a way to fix it most people probably would still run under administrative accounts. You can't stop user stupidity."

Is it user stupidity when XP Home comes pre-configured as admin by default? Who's fault would that one be? Wonder what brianiac in Redmond thought up the whole concept of "Home" vs "Professional"... That's the one that deserves a kick in the nads!

B.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Retric]

There is no "root".
Nothing can alter any system files. Outside of athenticated updates to the OS.
No process family can use more than 90% of system resorces.
The only process than can alter an executible file is one spawned by that process.
Drivers are treated as any other process and have no special writes or privliges.
All process are limited to their own memory space and a messaging system to comunicate with other programs and the OS.

That's a good start you need to add a lot of varification above this so you can handel corrupted memory gracefully.
PS: The closest thing to a real OS most people use is the JAVA VM.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Retric]

Don't treat drivers difrently than any other program.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Bahamuto]

I wrote a program in college that if the user typed in a character in the prompt it would cause a BEEP. Well first time I tried it I made an infinite loop of BEEP's. Well the UNIX box I was on didn't like that to much.. and I couldn't do anything so I flipped the power switch...

Re:No Services on Boot?

[pcmanjon]

"Oh will you all fuck off with your 'MS sucks, Linux is the answer' crap. If I want, I can damn well install just as much spyware on a Linux box, and it will crash as often as I want it to."

You could damn well install spyware on a linux box if you WANTED to. You'd to log in as root and put it in for it to effect the system globally.

The convienent part in Windows is I don't have to want it at all to accidently get on my machine. I don't even to run as admin to get it to install globally for every account.

Thats the one microsoft way.

Anyways, you said you wanted you could get it on linux? Thats strange, can you mention the vendors that provide Linux spyware? I was thinking about trying it out.

Yes, you mention installed by clueless users, but even users who have a clue run in to spyware from time to time due to the activex server. Honestly tell me you've NEVER got a peice spyware. I can vouch that at least 90% or more slashdot users have run in to spyware getting on their machine before.

Sincere regards,
PCMANJON

Re:No Services on Boot?

[robertjw]

Define blow up? Even if the Linux system would allow all of the resources to be taken up by your process it would still run. I have had similar circumstances many times and the machine will become unresponsive because there are no resources to respond with, but it doesn't crash and doesn't reboot - unless I manually intervene. As far as the system knows it's doing exactly what you want it to, if you didn't want it to fork and infinite number of processes you should have set a soft or hard limit.

The only times I've seen a linux machine spontaneously reboot there has been a kernel panic generally due to a hardware error. I can't say the same for Windows.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Master of Transhuman]

Uhm, last I looked, the problem was that Microsoft's system design ALLOWS and ENCOURAGES spyware.

Not to mention downgrading Claria to "IGNORE".

I'll grant the original complaint, however, that Windows doesn't crash these days AS OFTEN as it used to.

It's still a fucking POS in many other respects.

Mod: -3, Flamebait.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Master of Transhuman]

"It'd have to be impossible to modify executables."

So? Your point?

Unless you meant it'd have to be impossible to INSTALL NEW executables - in which case you're partly right.

I DON'T WANT to modify executables. I WANT them to run WITHOUT possibility of modification by a virus.

That's the whole point of so-called "trusted computing" - if you believe the proponents of that concept, anyway (I don't.)

And actually if the system can crash even when running software as the administrator, it's still flawed. The administrator should not be able to do anything that will CORRUPT the system - other than tell it to shutdown directly, of course - which is NOT corruption. (And not including the obvious braindead acts like deleting system software from the hard disk - or taking a hammer to the hard disk.)

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Citigroup?

I believe they have around 150k employees....

Re:No Services on Boot?

[scottv67]

Holy fuck! It looks like that run-in with the speed bump broke your spell checker too!

I haven't seen that many occurances of "Axel" in print since GnR split up. :^)

Re:No Services on Boot?

[LO0G]

I'm gonna catch high heck for this, but...

This is actually a GOOD thing. The reason that the system's asking you to reboot is that you have an unpatched vulnerability on your machine, and you'll continue to have an unpatched vulnerability until you reboot.

That means that until you reboot, you're vulnerable to the hacker who drops a worm that exploits the bug.

Rebooting (and being obnoxious about rebooting) is important to ensuring that the patch gets applied.

If you don't like it, turn off the auto-update feature, it's not that hard to do (Start/My Computer/Properties/Automatic Updates, select "Download updates for me, but let me choose when to install them" or "Notify me, but don't automatically download or install them".

It means that your exposure to a vulnerability is higher, but you get to control when the update happens.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Master of Transhuman]

"The drivers are run at kernel level for speed reason as user mode would give a major performance hit."

I can see that with the video drivers.

What about everything else?

Do I need my sound card to run at kernel speed?

The hard disk driver?

Even the NIC card?

I don't think so. The CPU is spending most of its time idle on most machines, so why do drivers for SLOW HARDWARE have to be running at kernel speed?

Because some designer thought it was a good idea back in the 286 days?

Modern OS's do not allow user space to control the hardware. Why allow drivers to take control of the system totally away from the OS?

The biggest annoyance I have with Windows (and even with Linux to a lesser degree) is how it can go wool-gathering for several minutes when some app is trying to do something with hardware that isn't responding? Even Task Manager isn't responsive.

On most mainframe OS, no matter what the hardware is doing (because it's being controlled by an external controller, mostly), the OS can be woke up with a couple keystrokes. This needs to be done on PCs. The point of a preemptive OS is that it can regain control of the system on its terms - which means it's responsive to the USER, not the hardware. Which keeps the USER in control.

Putting drivers outside the OS's control is just dumb design - let alone letting any moron at any hardware company write one and then install it at kernel level. That's just plain idiocy.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Master of Transhuman]

"Windows doesn't ship with system-crashing spyware"

You forgot to add - YET.

Remember, Microsoft is buying Claria and has already modified its antispyware tool to downgrade Claria from "Quarantine" to "Ignore."

Also, one could say that the tons of Windows system software that insist on phoning home or listening for pointless services constitutes "spyware" in some sense.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[scottv67]

on a side note, we just spent a lot on an SSL VPN (in addition to our traditional VPN) solution so that any of our users that want to access our intranet from home need to go through that SSL VPN. Why did we buy this? Because we have 140,000+ employees and the _majority_ of those home users had viruses that were trying to get into our network and we had to protect our MS Win based servers (not our Linux or Solaris servers)!

Amen, brother!!

It's no longer safe to give someone a "traditional" IPsec VPN client, let them install it on their home PC and then let that PC see your entire 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12 or 192.168.0.0/16. Those days are gone now. If you open yourself up to those "unprotected" home PCs, expect a worm to crawl up that VPN pipe.

I am also a big fan of using SSL VPN as much as possible. It exposes only what is necessary to get the job done, not all 65535 ports on a given host.

Even with the IPsec tunnel feature (new in Network Connect 5.0) on our Juniper SSL VPNs, I only open the exact ports and IPs addresses that a remote system needs to see. PCs at the far end of that tunnel don't get to see every port and they sure don't get to see every host on our internal network.

The other thing I've been thinking about is to put a decent IDP (like the Juniper IDP) between our old IPsec concentrator (Cisco 3000) and our internal network to provide a layer of protection between the remote PCs and our internal network.

Before folks says "Hey, you can lock down a 3000 to the exact port and IP address for each user group!", I know that. But our solution was not rolled-out that way. Going back and "adding" security to an existing remote access solution is going to be tough. It's easier for me to do things "the right way" as I configure new connections on our SSL VPN appliances.

Another cool feature of the SSL VPN solution is that the concentrator can *require* that a certain anti-virus be installed and runnig before it will allow a user to connect. On the Juniper product, this is called "Host Checker". You can have the IVE check the remote host for a variety of conditions to make sure its security posture meets your standards before the connection is completed. Yes, the Cisco VPN client does this but not as elegantly.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[scottv67]

That's a pretty sizable collection of warm bodies.

Your company Christmas party must be visible from outer space. :^)

Re:No Services on Boot?

[peawee03]

Agreed. At the university I used to work for, the more educated one is, the less one can handle a computer.

At least the sorority girls who called the help desk knew they didn't know anything and had cute voices on the phone as well.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Go ahead, the keyboard driver can still crash the machine by switching off the A20 gate. This is part of the hardware design of x86, so there is nothing the OS can do about it. If it can't flip that bit, than it can't talk to the keyboard hardware and so can't do its job.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[mrselfdestrukt]

Are you sure that's not the source code for DrWatson?

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure I don't understand the setup where you work, but how will an SSL VPN stop viruses from spreading from machines connected to it to your servers, while a "traditional" VPN won't?

Re:No Services on Boot?

[oldgeezer1954]

Windows is intentionally marketed to those who don't know what they're doing. So yes it is the fault of windows and MS. It used to be referred to as selling snake oil.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[hairyfeet]

I'll see your 15 year old and professor and raise you one secretary.I have never seen windows boxes so hosed in my life! There is nothing more dangerous than a bored secretary who is conditioned to use Internet Exploiter(tm) for the company activeX apps and decides to surf the net to find something "free and pretty to look at".Man was that machine hosed!

Re:No Services on Boot?

[kz45]

"So we're supposed to blame MS for Spyware? Windows doesn't ship with system-crashing spyware, and it's not even like viruses are its primary way in. Most spyware is willingly installed by clueless users."

This is true. I have a windows 2003 server and have had no blue-screens or problems. The only time I ever have to reboot it is for updates.

My windows XP machine at home is the same way. I, of course use firefox and have managed to keep it spyware clean for a long time.

Microsoft windows is used by people that don't know anything about computers. Spyware companies realize this, and create applications to exploit this fact. The reason Linux doesn't suffer from spyware is because there isn't any created for it. It's more of a lack of demand than better security measures. Even though you might not be able to trash an entire linux system because of spyware, you could still create spyware for it.

If and when linux becomes as mainstreamed as windows, it will suffer from the exact same issues.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[saleenS281]

Ya, that whole "claria was downgraded"... except... it's utter bullshit. Let's try actually testing out things like that before just repeating some bullshit uncle jed thought MIGHT occur when M$ showed interest in buying claria.

Windows doesn't crash as often? It doesn't crash AT ALL unless you're a retard. Here's a hint: Don't remove a PCI card while the computer is running. I'm sitting at a 25day uptime and the last reboot was for a 3rd party app, and I've had this install for 2.5 years now... including 4 hardware changes. If windows isn't "stable" it's your fault, not microsoft's.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[loraksus]

Big fucking deal. I had a server running mail, seti, etc, etc for 765 days before I moved. I tried to keep it alive via a ups, but alas, the small one didn't hold out long enough. Dual proc (blazing pentium pro) hp vectra. 2k, but its not like uptime is really determined by whether you have a shitty os or not (anymore), but
1. Decent power (holy shit the power in the USA is bad, I didn't even live in Cali and the local utility - PGE - couldn't keep the fucking lights on for more than a month or two.) A good UPS / power conditioner helps a lot too.
2. Shitty hardware (i.e. the hp burner I just installed in my main machine, sometimes it just dies and does all sorts of weird shit to stuff running on that box. Go HP "Qaulity"...sigh.
3. (perhaps should be number 1) how often you take the box down to replace hardware. Granted, server vs desktop machine, but still...
4. How often you move it / take it to lans / whatnot, again, you probably dont move servers...

Re:No Services on Boot?

[msuarezalvarez]

Is defragging *still* necessary?!

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Randseed]

I see where you're going, and in fact I just did that to eliminate this "feature." The problem I have is that there isn't an option to turn off the nagging. The effect that this has is twofold:

1. It encourages people to reboot. (i.e., as intended)

2. It causes people to delay installing the patches because, well, they have to reboot in the first place, and they get sick of the nagging.

So the result is that most people do what I've done, which is "download updates for me but let me choose when to install them." The problem is that a lot of the time they'll wind up not installed. (*I*'ll install them, but God only knows about Joe Bob.)

This kind of thing is rampant in the Windows world. For example, Norton Antivirus (I think it is) has an option to do automatic virus scans on a schedule. This is a GOOD thing. It should be done. Unfortunately, since it doesn't run with the equivelent of a "nice 20" and it insists on hogging the console as well (until you background the thing), a lot of people, including me, just turn the autoscan feature off.

The one exception to this is probably firewalls. When firewalls do this kind of thing and don't play nice, they do it ONCE for an application most of the time, so it doesn't become annoying. Sure, it might crash the whole freaking 3D app when it unceremoniously grabs the desktop to pop up a little bubble dialog, but it should happen once if at all, and that's it. So it isn't the same thing.

Now, while we're on the topic, I might as well get my post downmodded by saying something that Windows tends to do well that I like. Well, Windows specifically doesn't do it, but the various firewalls out there do. You authorize *applications* to either access the net or not, which is nice. Granted, it isn't all that you need for a decent firewall, but it would be nice if Linux made that kind of enforcement fairly transparent. (Of course, make the admin have to turn it on. Don't do it by default or all sorts of stuff will break.)

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Anonymous Coward]

The major issue with Windows is that most people run it with Administrative accounts as poorly coded programs don't work under User access levels.

Like Outlook for example.

If Microsoft themselves can't (Or won't) do it, is it any wonder other developers are creating "poorly coded programs"?

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, you know what servers he's running?

Wait, you think he has to reboot his machine to update a server or a library? Typical fucking Windows monkey.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Hosiah]

Of my family members, so far I have gotten my brother-in-law to switch to Mac OS X (he is a photographer and wanted Mac anyway) and my sister to switch to Linux

Ye Gods, you're smart! Of my imediate family, I have only gotten my grade-school-age kids to switch to Linux (to the point where they complain constantly of the Windows-only computers at school - exactly my goal!). It takes no effort to get kids to learn Linux at all - unlike adults, they haven't had years of MS brainwashing. Just show them Linux and they go "Cool! Let me try!" Linux, counting the Gnome games and KDE games alone, comes with something like 25-30 games out of the box. Windows has Minesweeper, Solitare, Freecell, and Hearts - case closed.

My In-laws are hopeless: They can *barely* handle anything at all, and are cookie-cutter conformists in every single way. It's not only that they can't handle Linux, it's that Linux would be "perverted" to them. Free Software sounds just like Communism, and Senator McCarthy would roll right over in his grave if he knew.

The battle rages on for the soul of my spouse. I've gotten her to using Linux 90% of the time, but I'll catch her booting over to Windows - ask why and it'll be some dumb toy that they just released for Yahoo chat that insists on Windows-only to run. (Yahoo for Linux works just fine, but doesn't get the Happy-Meal-Toy-of-the-week that the Windows version does) Everytime I put in a work-around, that's just the time they come up with a new dumb frob to keep people using Windows. It's like battling Satan! Because one person uses Windows 10% of the time, I *still* have to sit with the Windows disk once a month and shovel out the virusware! *sigh*

You know what our problem is? We're too indulgent! All we have to do the next time Windows crashes is just say, "Sorry, looks like it's broke and I can't fix it this time! You can pay another arm for another Windows system or run this free Linux disk I'm giving you!"

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Does it? Isn't this just an old joke with not much fact to back it up anymore?

Not a joke, but a worm (sasser): http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc /data/w32.sasser.worm.html

Re:No Services on Boot?

[julesh]

Do I need my sound card to run at kernel speed?

The hard disk driver?

Even the NIC card?

I don't think so. The CPU is spending most of its time idle on most machines, so why do drivers for SLOW HARDWARE have to be running at kernel speed?

Because that would make the hardware slower, and it is because the hardware is slower than the CPU that the CPU is spending most of its time idle (i.e. waiting for hardware to finish its job before it can get on with the next one).

Having debugged a network driver problem on one of my machines lately, I can tell you that a couple of milliseconds extra latency in responding to an IRQ from a network card can drop the maximum throughput of an SMB file server from ~50% utilisation down to ~5%. That's a huge difference. Extrapolating to a more reasonable delay of a few hundredths of a millisecond and you'll still see a noticeable performance degradation.

You'll notice it more with faster hardware. Add a hundredth of a millisecond delay to each hard disk access and you'll see file system performance drop by a significant figure, maybe as much as 10%.

Sound card -- that probably won't make much difference, except for professional recording studio applications. But they need an OS too, so we might as well keep the driver in there for them.

Latency's a killer. Doing everything you can to reduce it really increases throughput.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[anthony_dipierro]

So, essentially, what you're saying is that a program shouldn't be allowed to modify the operating system while it's running, because that might crash the operating system. I don't see the point.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Anonymous Coward]

What did you smoke for breakfast?

Those limitations may make for a stable OS, but largely useless as well, and the Java VM being the closest thing to an OS? If that slow, bloated load of crap is an OS, I'll go back to my mechanical adding machines.

I don't know what the answer is, but I can tell you having an OS tell the "administrator" access denied is bullshit. I've attempted to stop service processes on windows machines that have spiraled out of control and couldn't do it. "Access denied."

Even linux is subject to becoming unresponsive. (notice I did not say crash) Just last night The Gimp, Gnome and Xorg had a field day with one of my machines that finally had me manhandling a reset button.

No, no operating system is perfect and we're probably not going to see one for a long time (especially incorporating Java) but many of the proposals you've laid out here are so restrictive as to make the machine little more than a paperweight with blinkie lights.. hrm. cool idea.

My opinions are my own. Deal.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[xtracto]

Regardless of the permission level of the user. The OS should not be 'crashed' by things running on top of it, but only by things it runs on top of.

I totally agree with you on this, the Operating System must be used to OPERATE your hardware, that is its main use, it must do it securely and with good performance. I remember I read once that some SUN machines could continue working even after you added or changed a memory module while the computer was running. Maybe that is part the architecture and partly the OS.


Drivers crashing the OS is afaik unavoidable. Yet I hear they are trying to incorporate the drivers into the hardware.
Why is it unavoidable? if a driver crashes, the OS should just block the device and continue with its work, no blue screens or kernel panics or whatever, a driver malfunction is JUST a program malfunction, if the OS does not mange fine the hardware drivers then it is not 'operating' well.


As for the virus, i'm with you on that one. A virus is like a weed. its a program in its own right, its just that you don't want it there. The OS can't read your mind...


I think you are wrong on this one, and the prove is Linux, you see, on Linux, it IS difficult to spread a virus because of the system DESIGN for security. Maybe it is kind of cumbersome for the user to have to introduce the root password when installing a RPM but, at the end, you have 99% less viruses spreading.
(And please for you all flamebaiters out there avoid replying me saying that the reason is that Windows is more used than Linux...).

All in all, yes, it is possible to make a system quite secure but as it is seen on Windows/Linux/FreeBSD/OpenBSD. The more secure the system the more clumsy the software became for the user.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[geekopus]

You forgot the ampersand on the end of the rm statement. Much more effective....

# rm -rf / &

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Molochi]

And I raise you one PHB. They call em PHBs for a reason. A secretary can be eduterrorised into not downloading crap. The management and executives will do it over and over... god bless em.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[CagedBear]

Now try to get the millions of Joe Users to implement these types of restrictions/securities/etc and see the backlash. They just won't/can't do it. The tasks are just too technical for most.

I vote thin client for the masses. The service provider runs the primary server that connects when you power on the unit. If you want to access services by other providers, the two servers do a handshake and control is handed over. Now Ma, Pa, and Auntie Sue can surf the web, email, view pictures, balance the checkbook, and play some not-too video intensive games without any of the hassles of a PC.

If you want to run a webserver from your bedroom or play 3D games, then you buy a PC and standard internet access as we now know it.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[PhoenixFlare]

Yeah, i've had that happen myself a few times, before I turned off the automatic updating - would try to log back on w/ Remote Desktop after a sudden disconnect, not realizing that the computer had rebooted itself and gone into Linux. Obviously that's not a problem for most people (and mostly due to my laziness in not moving Windows to the top of the bootloader menu).

Even better, try doing anything like playing a game while that stupid dialog keeps coming up every twenty minutes or so, even though you've already told Windoze that you'll "reboot later."

I don't remember this ever happening - I think it was more like once a day, at the very least - but I'll give it a try this weekend sometime to see if my recollection is completely wrong.

If I tell it to reboot later and it keeps FUBARing applications by popping up a stupid dialog and seizing control of the machine like that, or just spontaneously reboots because I don't see the dialog, then it's effectively the same as a forced shutdown due to a crash.

The same end result, maybe, but it's also something that's completely preventable - you just have to remember to install updates manually.

Too, as another poster here says, I think the automatic updating and reboot is a good thing for most people.

If the roughly 2000 tech support calls i've taken during my work experience so far are any indication, most users don't even know Windows Update exists - or if they do, they'd still never use it on their own.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[TheRaven64]

what root exploits are there in the kernel, and not the apps, anyway?

Most privilege escalation vulnerabilities are in the kernel or in applications that run as root. There was a recent one in the Linux kernel involving an old shared library loading system call.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Pope]

I bet you'd love to be back in the 70s, programming 4bit CPUs directly with a hex input keypad and watching streams of numbers coming off the teletype.

Sorry, bub, bitching about the rise of non-pro computer users is about 20 years out of date.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[jimboisbored]

More or less. I have a Duron machine with 256 mb of ram for my parents set up (that I'm actually typing this on) that's been totally stable for a month now. (Actually 29 days 10 hours) The last reboot was a day or two after I put it together and ran windows update. Even with the low amount of ram it's a very well running machine. As much as I hate to admit it, the joke is dying.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Master of Transhuman]

"Let's try actually testing out things like that before just repeating some bullshit uncle jed thought MIGHT occur when M$ showed interest in buying claria."

You must have missed the story. Somebody DID test it - that's how it was discovered.

"I'm sitting at a 25day uptime and the last reboot was for a 3rd party app, and I've had this install for 2.5 years now... including 4 hardware changes."

Yeah, and you've never had a virus or spyware infection despite being on the Internet 24-7 with no firewall and no AV, yada, yada.

Sure, Windows troll - I've heard that one before.

Windows - 2000 AND XP - DOES crash - plenty of people have said so, and I've SEEN it. And it had nothing to do with bad hardware.

I call bullshit. And Windows Shill Serial Number 189999 - you must now use that number next to your /. ID on all posts, or Taco will suspend you for two weeks.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Kahlus]

"The administrator should not be able to do anything that will CORRUPT the system - other than tell it to shutdown directly, of course - which is NOT corruption."

No, the administrator should be able to do anything, even corrupt the system. Running as administrator is you deciding you know best and want full control. If you aren't sure what you're doing, you should be running as a restricted user.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Master of Transhuman]

A millisecond is a very long time compared to a nanosecond, which is where CPUs are running.

Also, I doubt that a drop in hardware performance of ten percent would really be noticeable to the end user.

As for network performance, if it's a SERVER that needs that level of performance, that might be a good thing to do. But for end user PCs, I think it would not be much of an impact to make the drivers more under the control of the OS.

Also, I don't see where adding tons of "features" to the kernel helps that situation any. If latency is that big a problem, then we need multiple CPUs handling the IO, like the mainframes do. If it adds ten or twenty percent to the price of the system, that's fine, since the next chip speedup will remove the price difference anyway.

Also, if they can get Linux to run in Ring Zero with Windows (which co-linux can do), I don't see why they can't handle drivers in a manner which is both fast and reliable.

Finally, I'm not suggesting that when the driver is running it needs to be polled every millisecond to see what it's doing. I'm suggesting that the CPU should be able to regain control of the system within something less than a freakin' MINUTE OR MORE if the driver or hardware hoses up. The retry counts an OS uses are ridiculous. If the damn thing isn't working in five tries, give it up.

The simple fact is, drivers aren't reliable and the whole concept needs to be re-engineered somehow to fix the problem. It's simply not acceptable for a third party piece of software written by some unknown moron can drag down the whole system. I think not going kaput is more important to a server than even the throughput. You can tweak the latter.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Anonymous Coward]

The story was bullshit too... I've verified that on several computer.

Let me know ANY system that can be on the internet, with all services running 24/7 with no AV and no Firewall that won't get a virus. I just assumed anyone with ANY clue would run AV and/or a firewall whether it's *nix or windows... that's just common sense.

Again, PEBKAC. Windows 2000 and XP don't crash if you don't abuse it. I can "make" my BSD and linux servers crash just as easily as I can make 2k/XP crash if I'm trying. "windows troll" is bullshit. I run 4 *nix servers at home as well. I just get sick of *nix trolls on slashdot spreading FUD about windows 24/7.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Master of Transhuman]

Nope - bad design.

I'm not saying the administrator shouldn't have "full control" - I'm differing in what "full control" MEANS. It should NOT mean being able to do something that causes the system to go into a knot.

For example, if the administrator hoses a config file, the system should be able to tell that and report something rational rather than crashing.

The simple fact is that administrators screw up all the time, just like end users. Their actions should not result in a CRASH - it should result in the system refusing to do something which it can't understand.

What possible point can there be in allowing root to crash the system? If you can't shut it down any other way than crashing it, by definition the system is flawed and needs to be redesigned.

Get rid of "sys admin ego" and look at the point.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Both of these actions don't have *any* effect on your OS. This shows the design excellence of *nix over windows. (ie. do something similar in windows and tell me if the kernel didn't crash).

In the first case, many daemons will fail and if you're running X it will probably crash(the Xserver that is, not your OS), BUT your OS (the kernel) is STILL WORKING and communicates with your hardware perfectly, and does everything a kernel is supposed to do, despite the fact you deleted the root partition.(equivalent of whipping out C: on windows)

In the second case you deleted the kernel on your disk. Your kernel is still loaded on memory though. This action will have *no effect* at all and you can do it safely(unlike your first example). Infact go ahead and do it, just make sure you back up your /boot first, so you're able to restore it. It's perfectly safe. Your system will work fine. I've set up my system so that it unmounts /boot. You could say this is equavalent to you deleting the kernel on your disk, cause as far as the system is concerned, /boot is unavailable anyway. But it's only needed during boot, so it's not a problem.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[eison]

For your family: put in a simple home router to hide the windows box behind, install spybot search and destroy and show them how to run it, convince them to use firefox, and shut off activex.

Then your vacations can become enjoyable again, zero admin work required.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[FictionPimp]

So i reboot and then its broke. Same thing. I still used a program which removed my kernel. The OP said virus's and programs on good OS's wont effect the OS. rm might not of effected the OS now, but it will on a reboot. And saying just restore can go for windows as well as linux. Unless no windows users keep backups.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[default luser]

Yeah, and you've never had a virus or spyware infection despite being on the Internet 24-7 with no firewall and no AV, yada, yada.

Let me tell you a story about a system.

I have a P200 with 48MB ram. For two years it was my internet gateway plus media player, with nothing more than Windows 2000 and Tiny firewall.

No antivirus, 24-7 internet-connected, and I even used it for browsing the net (using phoenix...this WAS over 2 years ago) when I didn't want to turn on another machine. It was marginally slow, but capable. Occasional scans with online AV scanners and anti-syware utilities revealed zero infections.

Why did I use it? Simple: it was very stable, and very easy to set up. BEST UPTIME: over 300 days.

NOW, THAT SAME P200 box runs Debian Linux, and simply performs routing duties. It performs just as admirably as it did under 2k, and were it not for the power-outtages from major storms, the uptime would undoubtedly be over a year at this point.

The point is, you can get a stable system if you use Linux, and you can get a stable system if you use Windows. It's when you start adding cruft that you start adding instability (and YES, you can make Linux unstable by adding the wrong things).

Now, the vast majority of XP users out there are too clueless to be selective in their additions, which results in less stable boxes. This is a good thing, however: when you think about all the shit software people download and run without a clue, it is patently amazing that general uptime numbers for Windows have improved SO MUCH.

Don't blindly down-play impressive improvements just because the end still falls slightly short of your higher standard.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[julesh]

A millisecond is a very long time compared to a nanosecond, which is where CPUs are running.

Not running device drivers in ring 0 typically involves two additional context switches per operation (kernel with user program address space -> driver and driver -> kernel with user address space).

Context switches typically require fetching of large amounts of memory, which is often not in cache (because they violate locality), so it's memory bus speed that is the primary determinant of context switch speed. It would not be out of the ordinary for a context switch to require several hundred memory cycles, which would put it into the approximate range of a hundredth of a millisecond, as I was talking about.

I agree that it is a small difference, but it is a noticeable one in some circumstances. The main loss would be in application startup times, and in performance when the system is low on memory.

I'm suggesting that the CPU should be able to regain control of the system within something less than a freakin' MINUTE OR MORE if the driver or hardware hoses up. The retry counts an OS uses are ridiculous. If the damn thing isn't working in five tries, give it up.

I'll give you that one -- that *is* ridiculous. I've only seen it myself when caused by the disk with the paging file on it crashing, but I can imagine it might be a problem in other circumstances too.

It's simply not acceptable for a third party piece of software written by some unknown moron can drag down the whole system. I think not going kaput is more important to a server than even the throughput

True. But, I've found that if you use quality components, Windows servers are generally as reliable as the hardware they run on. You just have to make sure that the parts you're buying are up to professional quality. If they have unsigned drivers, take them back to the vendor and complain. Driver signing happens for a reason, and all too often I've found cards that ship with unsigned drivers are buggy and unreliable. (I'm thinking of Belkin PCI WLAN cards here, specifically...) Better yet, only buy hardware that has drivers in the base Windows distribution. It's what we do with Linux, why not take the same approach when building a Windows machine?

Re:No Services on Boot?

[anthony_dipierro]

Most privilege escalation vulnerabilities are in the kernel or in applications that run as root.

Aren't all privilege escalation vulnerabilities are in the kernel or in applications that run as root? If an application which doesn't run as root can allow someone to gain root, then there must be a bug in the kernel.

There was a recent one in the Linux kernel involving an old shared library loading system call.

I'm not sure what that has to do with the kernel. Aren't shared libraries handled by ld.so? Which system call are you referring to?

Re:No Services on Boot?

[anthony_dipierro]

I think you are wrong on this one, and the prove is Linux, you see, on Linux, it IS difficult to spread a virus because of the system DESIGN for security. Maybe it is kind of cumbersome for the user to have to introduce the root password when installing a RPM but, at the end, you have 99% less viruses spreading.

I'm not sure how you define "virus", but by my view of what a virus is you don't have to be root to have or spread a virus.

The only real advantage of linux in this space is if you have a multi-user system. Then, at least in theory, you can't spread a virus from one user to another. But for a single user desktop machine this is pretty much meaningless, and in practice it's relatively meaningless anyway due to the possibility of using a root exploit.

I guess here I'm lumping all Linux systems together, and maybe that's not fair. After all, there are some build-it-yourself Linux systems out there that utilize different users for every single software package, and on those systems it's much more difficult to spread a virus. But this idea hasn't really caught on with any of the mainstream distros I know of.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Master of Transhuman]

A box that did nothing but pass packets back and forth - AND you DID have a firewall AND you didn't use IE as a browser - isn't impressive. I wouldn't expect it be infected two years ago as quickly as an XP box today, nor would I necessarily expect it to pick up every worm or remote exploit given you had Tiny Personal Firewall (I use Kerio, the derivative, myself and I don't even use the latest version - I use 2.1.5 instead of 4.)

It also depends on what you call "cruft" in terms of software installation. I run various utilities - renamers, media players like Winamp with a variety of codecs, a few other things. I don't download and run every piece of crap somebody offers me free, that's for sure. I have a TON of software on the hard disk that I COULD install if and when I get around to it. And I DO expect that some of those programs will strain the system - especially if I were to install a bunch of them at the same time. The only P2P I run occasionally and only occasionally is a Bittorrent client. So my system is stable in the sense that it isn't crashing and it isn't TOO weird.

But it still behaves like a POS sometimes when an app like Winamp hoses itself.

I've never said Windows hasn't improved - I've said it's still a POS for various reasons involving security and reliability and even end user usability. Compared to Windows 98, 2000 and XP are MUCH better.

They just aren't good enough, as you correctly assess my position.

Linux isn't all THAT wonderful, either. As I've said many times here:

Windows is CRAP.
Linux is ALSO CRAP.
BUT Linux is FREE CRAP.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Master of Transhuman]

Thanks for the Belkin warning.

And your suggestion about only getting truly Windows supported hardware is a good one.

Of course, I have to remember that statement some Microsoft exec made in a memo that came up during the antitrust trial - something about if they didn't have their development APIs to impress their customers with, their buggy drivers would have put them out of business by now, or something like that. Didn't make me confident about Microsoft drivers, hearing that.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[aztracker1]

To a large point I agree with you.. I have yet to see a stability issue with windows 2000 or xp that wasn't hardware (or kernel level driver) related...

Same for linux on this... I've seen quite a few audio drivers in linux take down the OS... although moving these outside the kernel space gives you a few different issues, that added up can be a performance detriment..

I just wish that driver writers were held to higher standards (especially when they're written by people with access to hardware specs), wether this is windows, or FooBarOS ... I also wish, by the same token, that linux did keep a better binary compatibility between versions, so that commercial drivers could become more available on that side... Wouldn't mind seeing the same for OSX and other BSD derivatives for that matter as well.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[lxt518052]

I can see the funny bit of this post. However, I'd like to point out a technical mistake. In Gentoo, as indicated by the kernel name, /boot is normally a seperate partition, AND is not automatically mounted at boot time. Therefore, to delete the kernel, you'd have to do a # mount /boot (if your /etc/fstab contains the correct entry for /boot)

Re:No Services on Boot?

[TheRaven64]

I'm not sure what that has to do with the kernel. Aren't shared libraries handled by ld.so? Which system call are you referring to?

See this security advisory: http://www.isec.pl/vulnerabilities/isec-0021-useli b.txt

Re:No Services on Boot?

[anthony_dipierro]

Ah right, sys_ulib(). A good example of linux moving in the wrong direction. This shouldn't be something handled by the kernel in the first place.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[FictionPimp]

well, that is correct, unless of course when I setup my fstab while installing gentoo I didn't include noauto as an option. Now I would have to be an idiot to do that. But hey, maybe I am :-)

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Mortlath]

Why is it unavoidable? if a driver crashes, the OS should just block the device and continue with its work, no blue screens or kernel panics or whatever, a driver malfunction is JUST a program malfunction, if the OS does not mange fine the hardware drivers then it is not 'operating' well.

What if the video card driver fails? (which happens often when I'm pushing the graphics card) I don't want the OS to keep on going. I think some errors and malfunctions need to cause the OS to shutdown, especially if the error could cause data corruption.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[oldgeezer1954]

"Sorry, bub, bitching about the rise of non-pro computer users"

Are you always this retarded? I never bitched about non pro computer users. You seriously need some education in basic comprehension. If nothing else I was saying it's not their fault.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah it's pretty stable if you're not running anything funky like audio apps.. my complaint is these software developers are in a state of constant beta-ism putting out stuff with new bells and whistles each release but not fixing issues with previous releases...'cause thats not fun..like sequencing software with vsti plugins that sometimes dont conform to specs for that platform/protocol and are unstable..if I'm doing heavy processor load stuff I have crashes maybe two or three times in a few hours.. (not hard crashes, ya just have to mostly terminate the process/program to get back)

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Retric]

What if the video card driver fails? SSH

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Retric]

The point is you can't trust software, drivers, or hardware. If you want to see a real OS look at what people use on million +$ systems. UNIX is great for the type of hardware most people have on there desktop but it's not what people will be using in 50 years. Intel could put out a CPU with 100's of processors but you start needing an OS that can work even if a few of those CPU's go bad.

If you want stability you need to asume things that can break will break.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[anthony_dipierro]

The point is you can't trust software, drivers, or hardware.

Huh? I can't trust it for what? Playing doom?

If you want to see a real OS look at what people use on million +$ systems.

Not everyone has a million dollars. That said, I've written OS software that runs on million dollar systems.

UNIX is great for the type of hardware most people have on there desktop but it's not what people will be using in 50 years.

If UNIX is going to be around in 50 years it's going to be dramatically different. That's partly because improvements in hardware will enable more complicated software, and partly just because software development techniques will improve.

Intel could put out a CPU with 100's of processors but you start needing an OS that can work even if a few of those CPU's go bad.

A much better technique both now and in the foreseeable future is to implement high availability through multiple operating systems working in a distributed environment. When Google loses a CPU, the site doesn't shut down. The computer does, and someone goes and fixes it.

If you want stability you need to asume things that can break will break.

Of course you do. The question is what do you do when things break? Do you trust the operating system to try to repair itself, or do you shut the OS down, let another OS take over, and call for someone to come take a look at things?

Right now I'd definitely say the latter. Maybe some day things will be different. Maybe some day we'll have strong AI. But even then, there's a limit to the amount of self-fixing that can be done. Think Godel's Incompleteness Theorem.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Retric]

Of course you do. The question is what do you do when things break? Do you trust the operating system to try to repair itself, or do you shut the OS down, let another OS take over, and call for someone to come take a look at things?

Right now I'd definitely say the latter. Maybe some day things will be different. Maybe some day we'll have strong AI. But even then, there's a limit to the amount of self-fixing that can be done.

It really depends on what your doing. I write real time software and in my problem domain the goal is to keep going if at all possible. Now some people would use a RAID 5 drive and use the parity information to find out if their is an error, but in my world finding out there is a problem is useless I want a fix. I don't want a system that goes OK XOR DISK 1,2 != DISK 3 so BREAK. I want something that keeps parity information so it goes XOR != can I find a parity set that works ... OK DISK 2 is bad but I can XOR DISK 1 and 3 and keep going...

In some systems people don't mind halting on errors but in the real time world making 1% more errors is worth a system that does not fail. After it's over you can get a human to look into what's wrong but right now you need as much uptime as possible. A CVS scanner that miss reads 1 item a week but does not go down for 10 years is worth a lot more than a scanner that goes down once a month for repairs.

However, I am more talking about systems where say a LAN card has a bad driver which keeps crashing the system. If the operator decides to reboot on such a failure that's one thing but I don't really want my OS designer to make those choices. It can be as simple as 3 modes, stable (Try and keep going), normal (Pop up a message but let non effected processes continue.), and reboot on error but BSOD is never a reasonable response IMO.

PS: implement high availability through multiple operating systems working in a distributed environment I am talking about 100's of CPU's on the same chip. They are all talking with the same HW and memory so it's not that easy to say ok system 44 is down re run those jobs on _.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[anthony_dipierro]

It really depends on what your doing. I write real time software and in my problem domain the goal is to keep going if at all possible.

I don't deny that there are some domains that need this. But the original post I was responding to was implying that every operating system needs to behave this way.

However, I am more talking about systems where say a LAN card has a bad driver which keeps crashing the system. If the operator decides to reboot on such a failure that's one thing but I don't really want my OS designer to make those choices.

That's actually an excellent point, and I guess I have to agree with you there. If my LAN driver is buggy on a client box I don't want a BSOD or a kernel panic. It'd be acceptable to shut down the LAN driver if necessary, then I can save my work, and then I can reboot the system.

I am talking about 100's of CPU's on the same chip. They are all talking with the same HW and memory...

Well, I don't really see how having 100s of CPUs on the same chip all using the same memory is ever a good idea. I guess for some really massive number crunching applications, but even then there are probably smarter ways to do things.

But hey, you sold me on the LAN driver scenario.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Retric]

Cool I got a logical point across on /.

The 100CPU chip is based around comparing a P4 with a 8080 and trying to picture a chip that's that much more complex than the P4.

20 years is not that that long in terms of OS evolution. But, in that time frame we should see chips with GB or TB's of cache on them.

Now Intel can try and stick with a small number of CPU's on that chip but it's going to be a lot easer for them to build a chip like a geforce-7800 (http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q2/geforce-7800 gtx/index.x?pg=1) that way they can test each component and cut off the pipelines that don't work. The top of the line chip could have say 10gig's of L2 cache and 500megs of L1 cache split among 100cpu's and with a good design they can still use chips that have significant damage in there Celeron brand which could be based around having 1/2 of those CPU's working with 1/2 the cache.

The basic problem is moving from 4 > 8 > 16 > 32 > 64 bit CPU's is useful but there is little value in a 128bit CPU vs. 2 X 64 bit CPUs. The 64bit CPU can address 2 ^ 32 X 4gigs of memory so it's going to be a while before we need 128bit CPU's but Single instruction Multiple data instructions are only so useful. Now we can always increase the on chip cash but it's a lot easer to have 100 64bit CPU's than it is to use that many transistors on 4 X 64 bit CPUs such that you are not just wasting them.

I don't know if we will ever have 10,000 CPU's on a chip but after a while it's hard to fund something useful to do with all those transistors. And it's going to be hard to build chips if we are still throwing away chips with a small number of defects. Hell, at some point I expect to start using pipelines to verify what other pipelines are doing.

But, I am not a chip designer so I am open to suggestions as to how you think this is going to play out over time.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[Wayfare]

The only time I've had spyware was when I wasn't paying attention and hit the spacebar accidentally at the same time my machine asked if it could install something. The dialog box went up and away so fast that I almost missed it. Ran adaware immediately and it was gone.

I don't use that much protection, either. It's all a user issue.

Re:No Services on Boot?

[saleenS281]

Well douchebag who will never read this... when you have to UPGRADE THE KERNEL TO FIX THE PATCH, it means a reboot. Apparently you missed the last 6 months where there have been over 10 root exploits in the kernel alone.

And...

[TrippTDF]

...I bet fewer services will mean less servicing, no?

Re:And...

[XanC]

...I bet fewer services will mean less servicing, no?

Not if it means turning them all off every boot...

Re:And...

[pilgrim23]

Would this not be a breech of my Service Agreement?

Re:And...

[SpaceLifeForm]

In Soviet Russia, Service Agreement microsofts you.

No Thanks

[fembots]

From the friendly article:

The bottom line is that this stripped-down Windows configuration is not practical, but makes a cool demonstration of just how little of Windows is required for basic functionality.

• There will be a delay before Explorer redraws the desktop
• won't be able to logoff
• Networking is also crippled

I don't think this stripped-down Windows provides even the most basic functionality expected by many users nowadays.

It's like patients are treated as long as their hearts are beating, even though everything else has shut down.

Re:No Thanks

[Bios_Hakr]

So, how would Debian stack up with all the init scripts disabled?

Re:No Thanks

[cnettel]

It should be no surprise that networking can get quite strange without DNS Client and DHCP Client (among others)...

Re:No Thanks

[sammy baby]

It's been a while since I've booted a Debian box, so I can't double check, but I'm quite certain that if my RHEL machines didn't run /etc/init.d/network on boot, they wouldn't be particularly useful to me.

Re:No Thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

it's an equally pointless demonstration of process management?

Re:No Thanks

[ryanov]

That may be, but that means if you don't need ANY in order to run windows in this imperfect state, you probably only need a couple to run it in a perfectly passable state.

Re:No Thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Not well... most of these things look important:

/etc/rcS.d/:
README
S02mountvirtfs
S05bootlogd
  S05initrd-tools.sh
S05keymap.sh
S07hdparm
S10c heckroot.sh
S18hwclockfirst.sh
S18ifupdown-clean
S20module-init-tools
S20modutils
S30checkfs.sh
S30etc-setserial
S30procps.sh
S35mountall.sh
    S36discover
S36lm-sensors
S36mountvirtfs
S39ifu pdown
S40hostname.sh
S40hotplug
S40networking
    S41hotplug-net
S45mountnfs.sh
S46setserial
S48c onsole-screen.sh
S50hwclock.sh
S55bootmisc.sh
S 55urandom
S70nviboot
S70screen-cleanup
S70xfree 86-common
S75sudo
 
/etc/rc2.d:
S10sysklogd
S1 1klogd
S20alsa
S20cupsys
S20dbus-1
S20firestar ter
S20makedev
S20nethack-common
S20rsync
S20s martmontools
S20ssh
S20tleds
S89anacron
S89atd
S89cron
S91apache
S99kdm
S99rmnologin

Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 12.4). Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 12.4). Your comment has too few characters per line (currently Your comment has too few Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 12.4).characters per line (currently 12.4). 12.4). Yaaay, I love the lameness filter.

Re:No Thanks

[gmack]

You will get a system with no networking or GUI and all your drives will be read only and a single root prompt (provided you told it you wanted one).

Re:No Thanks

[InvalidError]

So they essentially invented XP Starter Second Edition.

WinXP Starter SE: Discover new ways of not being able to do anything useful even without the 800x600 resolution limit, 128MB RAM limit, three processes limit, etc.

Re:No Thanks

[pcmanjon]

"contrary to the expectations of various lead engineers at Microsoft, even Internet Explorer will still work under such conditions."

I guess this is proof to all of us of exactly HOW much these Microsoft engineers know. It's on the far end of SAD that these engineers have source code to the entire operating system at their fingertips and yet they are more ignorant than some "hacker."

I can't believe people use this operating system and put themself in Microsofts hands. I, for one, use Debian myself, because I'm confident that the Linux community knows what the code they are working with does. It's no secret to anyone, and anyone who wants a peek can do so without breaking the law (being labeled as a leak)

Re:No Thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows can boot, out of the box, with no GUI or services of any kind.

It's called Recovery Mode.

Re:No Thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

My laptop is running with the following services:

DCOM Server Process Launcher
DHCP Client
DNS Client
Event Log
Network Connections
Plug and Play
Remote Procedure Call (RPC)
Security Accounts Manager
Windows Audio
Wireless Zero Configuration
Workstation

It's far from the extreme measures the Sysinternals fellow did but my Windoze runs stable and I can do on it whatever I want.

Re:No Thanks

[misleb]

Sure, but you could easily enabled networking and make the drives writable. That is really just two commands. (three if you want a default route).

-matthew

Re:No Thanks

[Bob Uhl]

That just configures networking, though--I don't believe that it leaves many daemons running. Still, a system in runlevel 2 can be quite useful for, say, document preparation (the original use for Unix). Even runlevel 1 can be useful, albeit dangerous (useful because one has a full Unix; dangerous because one is root).

Re:No Thanks

[Com2Kid]

• I guess this is proof to all of us of exactly HOW much these Microsoft engineers know. It's on the far end of SAD that these engineers have source code to the entire operating system at their fingertips and yet they are more ignorant than some "hacker."

Yah well these guys consider "working" to include "oops no DHCP client".

I would imagine that Microsoft includes "working" to mean "can connect to websites and download stuff".

Re:No Thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

You CAN get on the net, down to THIS set of services ONLY:

(A direct quote from an article I wrote and built up over the years, & SAME BASIC STUDY/EXPERIMENT as Dr. Mark Russinovich's now, ONLY on this YEARS ago , circa 1999-2001 @ the URL below)

http://www.avatar.demon.nl/APKTuneup.html

"WoW! On a sort of "off-note", today I learned I can run Win2k & STILL GET ONLINE, DO GAMING ONLINE, WebSurf etc. & only run 4 services! At this point, I am already connected to the net on a cablemodem and hooked into the net...don't do this unless you are on cablemodem (not for dialup users)

The minimum ones are:
---------------------
DHCP Client
DNS Client
Plug & Play
Remote Procedure Call (RPC)
---------------------

If you're on a dialup modem ISP rather than cable or DSL, this is not recommended this "off-note" section (as I used to disable WINS services to stop NetBIOS attacks in NT 4.0 Devices control panel icon, which controls drivers in NT 4 (Or, you could unbind WINS from TcpIP in networking)! I also used to unbind Tcp/IP NetBIOS helper to stop those attacks, this is the more sensible route!)"

* :)

APK

Re:No Thanks

[Swamii]

You will get a system with no networking or GUI and all your drives will be read only and a single root prompt (provided you told it you wanted one).

Sounds alot like Linux!

[with all the cheap shots taken at Windows by /.ers, I just had to even things out a bit. If you mod me down, I will come to your house and take away your children -- errr --- Linux boxen]

Re:No Thanks

[toddbu]

I've got my own list of stuff that I turn off right after a fresh install. Everything runs just great. Remember, this is a list of stuff to turn OFF:

Alerter
Automatic Updates
COM+ Event System
Distributed Link Tracking Client
Error Reporting Service
Help and Support
IIS Admin
Infrared monitor
IPSEC Services
Logical Disk Manager
Machine Debug Manager
Messenger
Network Location Awareness (NLA)
Remote Registry
Simple Mail Transport Protocol
System Event Notification
System Restore Service
Task Scheduler
Themes
Upload Manager
WebClient
World Wide Web Publishing

Because Windows services support dependencies, some stuff will turn itself back on when needed. But at least you don't take the hit at boot time.

Re:No Thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? Even with a full window manager, fully configured hotplug and all of that, on the same usability level as windows, a couple servers (http, ssh, etc), and all, you're still under the 40+ running services on a default XP install... And WAY WAY under the memory usage.

Re:No Thanks

[ultranova]

Even runlevel 1 can be useful, albeit dangerous (useful because one has a full Unix; dangerous because one is root).

Run "su username" or "exec su username", and the problem is solved :).

Re:No Thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Tried to boot XP to a command prompt before? Well, it's a gui with cmd.exe as the only running process. And I don't think you can see what services it's running. It can at least shut down and have basic networking support, so it is running some services. I don't know what they are because I don't have a winxp machine handy.

Re:No Thanks

[sd_diamond]

You will get a system with no networking or GUI and all your drives will be read only and a single root prompt (provided you told it you wanted one).

Sounds perfect for my kids.

Re:No Thanks

[dAzED1]

dhcp client only runs once - it's not a "service" per se, because once you have your ip it's done. If you ahve a static IP, you don't need it at all.

you only have a dns "client" running local if you're doing local caching. While this is certainly reasonable, it's not the norm.

So umm..networking can get quite normal without them.

Re:No Thanks

[Metasquares]

I think that the GP was referring to the recovery console that you can boot to via the Windows XP install CD... not that I've found that useful for doing anything but fixing the MBR.

Re:No Thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like patients are treated as long as their hearts are beating, even though everything else has shut down.

So.... a Republican OS?

Re:No Thanks

[YU Nicks NE Way]

Well, what do you mean by "working"? Without LSASS, your task bar doesn't fill. Without winlogon, you can't log off without shutting the system down, and you can't log in at all. Yes, you can start Explorer, but only until the various cached user objects start to age out; at some point, that will stop working, I suspect.

In short, they're both right: for a while after you do this, the system will "mostly work" with only a few glitches. However, it won't "really work".

Re:No Thanks

[jericho4.0]

You can get rid of all of them, but of course your system will not be capable of much. Many embedded systems don't run any services to speak of.

Re:No Thanks

[jericho4.0]

Most systems run dhcp as a service, because an ISP only gives them with a time limited lease. My ISP (Telus, whom I hate due to a recent /. story and crap service) only gives them for and hour and cancels it. That's assuming the dhcp servers are up, of course.

Re:No Thanks

[jericho4.0]

Windows is a very difficult system to fully grasp. The "view from 3000 feet" is cloudy. Windows stopped being a POS a while ago, but statements like this fr om MS people, and the dropped (and limited) feature list for "Vista" lead me to think MS has a problem. Anyone who has every worked on a failed software project can see the signs.

It wouldn't suprise me at this point if they had a few black projects hidden away in Redmond trying to rewrite the whole thing.

Re:No Thanks

[MarkRose]

I'm using Telus (in Grande Prairie), and I'll keep the same IP for months on end. The last dhcp lease I got is valid for 166405 seconds, or just over 46 hours.

Re:No Thanks

[asretfroodle]

That's probably because he was talking about Linux - Debian without the init scripts.

If you're browsing with a high comment threshold, checking the parent link is necessary for some posts.

Re:No Thanks

[pcmanjon]

"It wouldn't suprise me at this point if they had a few black projects hidden away in Redmond trying to rewrite the whole thing."

Well, I'm always open if they can make it perform better than my Linux machine. I'd be happy to review the product upon its release. Just don't expect me to pay for it to give it the "review" as I'm quite happy with my free alternative.

Re:No Thanks

[dAzED1]

sad that you got modded "informative..." (not being insulting, just saying).

your dhcp client only runs once. That's it. It's not a service. Tell me what port it's polling on? What would the dhcp "service" be doing, anyway?

If your provider only grants a 1 hour lease, then the provider, within the hour, is checking to see if your mac still has that IP. That's it - your "service" is doing nothing.

Do a scan on your box and tell me what port you think is open that is constantly sending arp traffic. What OS, even? Windows? Turn off your dhcp "service," and statically set your ip to what your dhcp client had gotten. You'll find you're still perfectly fine.

Just what is it you think this "service" is doing to maintain the lease?

Re:No Thanks

[kurtmckee]

They probably just stumbled on the steps Microsoft took to create Windows Starter Edition.

Re:No Thanks

[Radicode]

A service doesn't have to listen or send network data to be called a service. It can be a local task, a device handler or a scheduler for example. In this case, the DHCP client service will make sure your lease never expires by renewing it before it times out. The thread is probably paused for x - some_buffer seconds before waking up. There is an option in most DHCP servers to aggressively assign expired lease to new users. If you happen to have your IP "stolen" by someone else, you will have networking problems.

-Radicode

Re:No Thanks

[SpaceLifeForm]

Cancels? Dumb. I know of Charter that used to only give you a 15 minute lease (not sure of current state), but it would renew.

All a waste of network resources albeit minor.

I think it's just a way for the ISPs to do network management. When the customers start calling, they realize they have a network problem.

If leases were given out for say 4 hours, and they have a DHCP server problem, well, they might not find out about the problem for say 2 hours (depending upon Time Of Day (TOD)).

The ISP can find out about problems much quicker with short leases.

Of course, so does the customer.

Re:No Thanks

[SpaceLifeForm]

Well, if they were smart, they would port MS Office to GNU/Linux.

Re:No Thanks

[scottv67]

What about the part where the DHCP "service" talks to the DHCP server at time (lease/2) to see if the client can renew the lease? That communication is initiated on the client end.

One does not need an open "port" to send ARP traffic.

Methinks you know just enough to be dangerous but you are not aware of the full picture. For someone with a relatively low UID, that's surprising.

Re:No Thanks

[Oliver Defacszio]

Why would that be smart? Or, by "smart," do you mean "fans of wasting time and money for no good reason other to appease a hilariously small, cheap and malcontented demographic that has never, ever done anything but mindlessly bash Microsoft?"

In THAT case, I'd totally agree, but I doubt you meant something so lucid.

Re:No Thanks

[ak_hepcat]

LILO: linux init=/bin/sh

Works for me!

And i can manually turn up the network if I need it. Haven't tried starting X under this condition, not really sure how well it'd work...

Re:No Thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know how to turn off the fucking the dialog bubble reminding me that I have unused icons on my desktop? I hate that thing!!!!!

Re:No Thanks

[Keruo]

> IPSEC Services

Yes, lets turn off the firewall.

Brilliant.

If you have no clue what I'm talking about, I suggest reading this.

Re:No Thanks

[Hosiah]

Funny, I thought Linux was Debian without the BS

Re:No Thanks

[Hosiah]

If you mod me down, I will come to your house and take away your children

OK, I won't mod you down, after you switched to your other account and modded yourself +5 funny. I especially won't deign to dignify the cow-pattie in your link as a blog with any kind of critique. I will say that you're a huge asshole instead, but you probably already know this and are quite happy about it!

Re:No Thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Some instructions on how to turn off all that crap would have been nice.

Some of us are too lame to Google it for ourselves you know :)

Re:No Thanks

[gnu-sucks]

Thats completely invalid.

The article talks about disabling the programs that run while you use windows.

init scripts configure your system when it boots. They do not continue running after the login prompt, although they may spawn other services which do - you need to clarify exactly what you would propose disabling. A more valid comparison would be, "How does Debian Linux stack up with all the *daemons* disabled?"

Re:No Thanks

[famebait]

Remember, this is a list of stuff to turn OFF:
[...]
Machine Debug Manager


Hey, this is news for nerds.

Re:No Thanks

[julesh]

I run XP on a machine with only 96Mb of RAM. Needless to say, I've experimented a lot with which services I actually need to be running. The ones I still have are:

Automatic Updates (couldn't live without it, unfortunately)
COM+ Event System (some of the management processes use it)
DHCP Client (I could assign myself a permanent IP address, but I'm too lazy to figure out how to do that with my router)
Event Log (cause it's kind of handy sometimes)
Plug & Play
RPC (cause other stuff depends on it)
Server (I use it, you might not...)
Shell Hardware Detection
System Event Notification (I think I need this, I'm not entirely sure though)
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
Windows Audio
Workstation

Re:No Thanks

[julesh]

Yes, lets turn off the firewall.

Brilliant.

Err... the firewall that most people use is the one in the "Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing" service. I've never heard of anybody who actually does what's suggested in that link.

If you want something lighter weight than that, remove all network services other than TCP/IP from your network adapter and then enable the port-based filtering on the TCP/IP Advanced Settings dialog. You can't do source based filtering, but few people actually need to do that.

Re:No Thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell me what port it's polling on?

UDP 67 (Otherwise known as BOOTPS)

What would the dhcp "service" be doing, anyway?

Waiting for it's T1 timer to expire and then sending entering a renewal state where it sends a new DHCP REQUEST to the known DHCP server in an attempt to renew it's current lease.

Do a scan on your box and tell me what port you think is open that is constantly sending arp traffic.

Turn off your dhcp "service," and statically set your ip to what your dhcp client had gotten. You'll find you're still perfectly fine.

Only if you never reboot your machine and disconnect it from the network. You're just lucky to keep the same IP. When your DHCP lease expires and you fail to renew (Because you've switched off your DHCP client) the DHCP server will assume you are no longer connected to the network and place your IP back in the available pool. Eventually, it will give the same IP to someone else. Luckily, DHCP servers usually perform an ARP lookup to check that no one else has the IP it's about to offer before sending the DHCP ACK to the client. If you're unlucky, your machine will not resond to the the ARP request and so a second machine will accept the IP from the DHCP server and you'll end up sharing your IP address with another user.

Congratulations, you've just fucked up two internet connections.

I've written my own DHCP client. You havn't even read the book.

Re:No Thanks

[julesh]

You missed a few:

Wireless Zero Configuration (if you have a wireless card you should probably use the vendor's config interface -- the Windows one sends a query out for avaiable networks every minute which causes delays with some cards)

Secondary Logon, Terminal Services, Fast User Switching Compatibility (these are needed if you want to use fast user switching, but many people don't, so you can safely disable them in this case. You can disable Fast User Switching Compatibility anyway -- I've not found anything that needs it.)

Computer Browser (doesn't seem to do anything useful)
Server, Workstation (unless you need to share files or printers or use such shares respectively)
Cryptographic Services
Application Layer Gateway

Re:No Thanks

[bheer]

> TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper

You can actually turn this off (remember to also turn off NetBIOS in TCP/IP properties > Advanced TCP/IP Settings, WINS tab.

There's no downside if you're on a domain that uses DNS. If you're on a workgroup or home network you can enter hostnames into your HOSTS file for TCP/IP, and use IP addresses for SMB.

Re:No Thanks

[psymastr]

If you mod me down, I will come to your house and take away your children -- errr --- Linux boxen

Most /. people use Windows anyway.

Re:No Thanks

[dAzED1]

maybe I was trying to trick someone into saying something ;) Yes, I'm aware of what arp traffic is, and that "ports" are something that occur in tcp/ip traffic.

Re:No Thanks

[viralburn]

and then "exit"

Re:No Thanks

[indifferent children]

I don't think this stripped-down Windows provides even the most basic functionality expected by many users nowadays.

I don't think *any* Windows provides even the most basic functionality (but most of my friends (geeks) don't fall into the 'many users' pool).

Re:No Thanks

[scumdamn]

This is basically the same as changing to runlevel 1 (or 2, actually, maybe?) And if your system is owned, that might be a cool idea. I've seen instances where I would be able to use this on a Windows system that is completely hosed. I've had to boot to normal mode and kill every task, note which tasks ran themselves again, and then find and eradicate them. That's no fun.

Re:No Thanks

[indifferent children]

As Neal Stephenson pointed-out in In the Beginning was the Command-Line, because M$ refuses to release their applications for other OSes, every time their OS division loses a sale, their application division loses a sale. He said it much better of course, and you can read the whole essay online at http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html

Re:No Thanks

[ultranova]

and then "exit"

Of course; but it still ensures that you won't accidentally delete your hard drive.

Re:No Thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

"Computer Browser" is a SMB service. It basically keeps track of SMB machines on a network and allows a machine to participate in elections. For some reason I was having regular PCs winning elections over our Domain controller, so I just turned it off. On a home network you would probably want this turned on for one machine, or obviously turned off if you have no other machines.

Re:No Thanks

[Swamii]

Sorry you're upset my pro-Windows comment got modded as funny by your peers.

That's ok if you don't like my blog, I've had quite a few slashdotters come in give positive feedback (see comments section of my last post).

God bless.

Re:No Thanks

[dAzED1]

oh good God people...

the dhcp server will still check the mac on record, to see if it's still there and still using that IP. If your comp is turned off, then sure...that's a problem. If you're still sitting there working away, no problem. Tada.

THE POINT IS THAT YOU CAN TURN OF DHCP CLIENT AND YOU'LL BE JUST FINE.

Lets look at what I was responding to, shall we? " It should be no surprise that networking can get quite strange without DNS Client and DHCP Client (among others)..."

Turn off your "DNS client" - almost no one has such a thing running, unless they're the rare person with a local dns cache for some reason.

Turn "off" your dhcp client. What happens? Nothing. Keep using your computer.

So...what gets "quite strange?"

Re:No Thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like patients are treated as long as their hearts are beating, even though everything else has shut down.

I think we should run a full diagnostic before we hit the power button. Every possible manager should get together and decide if the computer guy just wants to shut it down out of convenience. Just because he's secretly a luddite. Uptime is a precious gift from God.

Sorry. That last line reminded me of the Schiavo bullshit. *shrugs*

For sufficiently small quantities of "run"

[man_of_mr_e]

I would have to wonder what DOESN'T work in this state rather than what DOES.

Re:For sufficiently small quantities of "run"

[hexed_2050]

And which state of the USA are you talking about?

...even Internet Explorer will still work...

[RandoX]

Hmmm. Define "work"...

Re:...even Internet Explorer will still work...

[cached]

I think a period was forgotten. It should be Internet Explorer will still. Work...

Re:...even Internet Explorer will still work...

[Anonymous Coward]

mmm. Define "work"...

Is that you Bill Clinton?

Re:...even Internet Explorer will still work...

[Sponge Bath]

Define "work"...

An excruciating slog through random and painful events beyond my control.

So, yes. I think 'work' applies to IE.

Re:...even Internet Explorer will still work...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm. Define "work"...

The opposite of what my boss thinks I am doing right now.

Re:...even Internet Explorer will still work...

[Anonymous Coward]

These days, you could ask "Is that you, Karl Rove?", as this administration gets just as pedantic about splitting semantic hairs as Clinton did, only over something far, far more serious than a blow-job.

Re:...even Internet Explorer will still work...

[vertinox]

Hey, it looks like my IE "works" even with all my services on.

Re:...even Internet Explorer will still work...

[TeknoHog]

Is that you Bill Clinton?

It depends on what the meaning of "Is" is.

Re:...even Internet Explorer will still work...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's me - W, dummy. I mean you when I said dummy, *chuckle*.

Need ma music!

[dxprog]

I disabled Themes and Windows Audio and now my productivity is near zero. Who could work without visual styles and music?!

Re:Need ma music!

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Who could work without visual styles and music?!

[Glances at Windows Vista requirements]

Anyone with a machine slower than 3GHz and a graphics card more than six months old, apparently.

Re:Need ma music!

[ilyanep]

Hey if you can't stand the heat, get out of the vista...

that was terrible..

Nobody's forcing you to upgrade to Vista, besides it's more graphical updates than functionality to the normal end-user.

Re:Need ma music!

[indifferent children]

Nobody's forcing you to upgrade to Vista

...unless you want to buy a new computer from a major manufacturer after 2007.

Re:Need ma music!

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Hey if you can't stand the heat, get out of the vista...

If that's the level of humour we can look forward to, this could be curtains for Windows...

Re:Need ma music!

[ilyanep]

In which case you will have a computer with more than 3 Ghz and a video card newer than 6 months old. Look how convenient!

Besides, it's in 2 years, by then 3 Ghz will be entry level.

Lots of work

[nickj6282]

Seems like an awful lot of work to kill some services. Personally I think starting in runlevel 3 is much easier, maybe Windows should think about going to a CLI-only interface for some of us uber-geeks out there. That'd gain them some respect in my book.

Re:Lots of work

[Anonymous Coward]

ok - turn on the telnet service and go!
besure to install some cygwin and sysinternals tools and its almost linux - NOT! well sort of....

Re:Lots of work

[nailz420]

I second that! I miss DOS... Upon installing Windows users should be presented with a choice of running mode - novice, advanced, expert, etc. novice would be maximum eye candy, maximum tool tips, maximum wizards. Advanced - minimum eye candy, maximum performance. Expert - CLI interface, maximum debugging info on everything!

Re:Lots of work

[zx75]

Its called DOS... do you really want to work in DOS?? Here, I have some old DOS installer floppies you can use, an entire operating system on 4.5 MBs!

Re:Lots of work

[RAMMS EIN]

Especially since that would all but force them to provide a usable CLI. They have some interesting ideas in Monad, why don't they use them?

Re:Lots of work

[Malc]

What's the business case for it? Microsoft isn't in this for the respect of a very small part of the population. They're in it for the money (eek: that's reminding me of a scene from a B movie that had me chuckling hysterically a couple of weeks ago. But I digress). What exactly will they achieve with this? Why would they do it? They already have a cut down version of XP for embedded systems.

Re:Lots of work

[temojen]

While they're at it, they could code up some handy VMS syntax. The "cacls" is so much harder to remember than "set acl" and "show acl".

Re:Lots of work

[diegocgteleline.es]

It seems you didn't tried the recovery console

Re:Lots of work

[harrkev]

Or, download for free.

Re:Lots of work

[misleb]

What would be the point? By the time you developed all the commandline tools needed to make a CLI in Windows particularly useful (or installed Cygwin, or whatever it is called), you'd just have "unix." And not a very good one at that.

-matthew

Re:Lots of work

[Glonoinha]

Bah - if you don't mind downloading it, all software is free

Re:Lots of work

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I think starting in runlevel 3 is much easier

It may well be, but doing that doesn't stop all the services, in most cases it just stops one whichever of xdm/gdm/kdm assuming you use a GUI and a DM. That's not saying it isn't easier to stop all the services in linux, just that you haven't got a clue what the difference between runlevels are.

Re:Lots of work

[khrtt]

Windows 98 used to have "runlevel 3". Worked like this:

1. Rename krnl386.exe (to whatever)
2. Copy command.com to krnl386.exe

The thing would boot to command prompt with all the VxDs loaded and the VM fully functional -- pretty cool, if you have a use for such a beastie.

Re:Lots of work

[ocelotbob]

MS provides a lot of hooks for administering through the command line; a system without a GUI would be a bit lighter, and coupled with something like sshd, would be easier to administer remotely/automatically through things like nagios handlers.

Re:Lots of work

[fbartho]

is there an equivalent for winXP?

Re:Lots of work

[ultramkancool]

I tried even deleting it with no difference :-(

Re:Lots of work

[Anonymous Coward]

Dammit, where were you 2 weeks ago when I was actually looking for a copy of DOS to flash the BIOS of a friend's PC. :)

He has no internet connection, and at some point I'm going to have to get him a copy of FreeDOS, or something else, to try emulate DOS to run an updater on the BIOS so that he can install his copy of XP Pro on his old pc.

He got the copy before finding out it wasn't supported, then ordered a new Dell. If I can put XP Pro on it he can at least get a better price than selling it with the SuSE 9.3 Pro on it at the moment.

It's a better system at the minute, and the kio slaves are great for his iPod, but he cuts himself off from most users trying to sell hardware with Linux on it, and you can't sell something that's free - even if you are allowed.

See how DOS might still be useful in certain complicated situations?

Re:Lots of work

[nickj6282]

Right, personally I'd rather have useful services sans a GUI, rather than have it the other way around like in the article. You can kill all the services in Windows and all you're left with is a cruddy GUI that doesn't do much. Same as with Linux. You can't kill the GUI and keep the services in Windows, you can do it in Linux and still have a useful machine in front of you.

Re:Lots of work

[Fred Ferrigno]

A MS recruiting rep demoed Monad at our university. As a example of the "power" of Monad, he showed off some ways to sort and filter the process table. Everyone noted in amazement that Monad itself took eighty megabytes of memory. 80mb to sit there and do nothing. Admittedly, that was pre-beta, but holy RAM-sucker, Batman!

The scripting language as he demonstrated seemed waaay too verbose and awkward. Text pipes can be limiting in some situations, but treating everything as an object is overkill. I didn't seem any easier than bash scripting, and frankly I doubt it'll supplant even the old DOS shell.

Re:Lots of work

[khrtt]

Honestly, I don't know. The 98 was implemented basically as a DOS extender with the Windows GUI apps all running in one VM, and DOS boxes each in its own VM. KRML386.EXE was the thing that started the Windows GUI. The design was rather symmetrical, so you could just replace it with pretty much any other DOS or DPMI-extended program (DPMI=DOS Protected Memory Interface, the API for the DOS extender beneath Windows).

Basically it had similar effect to replacing init with sh on your friendly *NIX box, which is a useful trick that has its own merits:-).

In case of Windows 98 the most useful thing you got by running COMMAND.COM like this was logn file names without need to start the bulky and unscriptable GUI. I've built a custom image replicator this way that was used for loading hard drive images into embedded 98 boxes (yeah, I know:-)) on the production line. The other option was to use linux, but I wasn't quite sure how to do a "SYS C:" from linux, and the capitalization on the filenames was getting all screwed up (back then VFAT module was still somewhat "new").

NT (including 2000 and XP) has a completely different architecture. I figure, you'd want to replace something like WINLOGON.EXE, or whatever the closest equivalent of init there is on Windows. I'm sure there are people here who are a lot more knowledgable about how WinNT starts.

Re:Lots of work

[SpaceLifeForm]

I can beat that OS by 3MB!

Of course, it's not DOS.

Re:Lots of work

[NutscrapeSucks]

Microsoft actually thought about shipping this as a product for a while -- 32-bit DOS!

Re:Lots of work

[FuturePastNow]

Well...you can use cmd.exe instead of explorer.exe as the shell. It involves changing a couple of registry entries. If you want to see what it looks like, Run>cmd.exe and hit Alt-Enter.

Re:Lots of work

[Anonymous Coward]

NT (including 2000 and XP) has a completely different architecture. I figure, you'd want to replace something like WINLOGON.EXE, or whatever the closest equivalent of init there is on Windows. I'm sure there are people here who are a lot more knowledgable about how WinNT starts.

No, you can't. I tried that and it bluescreened. As far as I can figure, WINLOGON.EXE creates the windowstation, and that is not a documented API call (contrary to what you might thing, CreateWindowStation doesn't do it).

Re:Lots of work

[Coryoth]

The scripting language as he demonstrated seemed waaay too verbose and awkward. Text pipes can be limiting in some situations, but treating everything as an object is overkill.

You see the thing is, if you want to throw things around as objects instead of just text pipes, and you're willing to suffer a slightly more verbose syntax than a simple shell - well that's what python is for. No problems throwing around objects there, and it offers an interactive shell if you want it.

Jedidiah.

Re:Lots of work

[Anonymous Coward]

Do DirectX apps still run like this? Games etc?
Presumably the GUI has a whopper of a memory hit?

Re:Lots of work

[alan.briolat]

/me goes to find his win98 disc under a pile of linux distros.

Re:Lots of work

[julesh]

I figure, you'd want to replace something like WINLOGON.EXE, or whatever the closest equivalent of init there is on Windows. I'm sure there are people here who are a lot more knowledgable about how WinNT starts.

I suspect you'd have to replace either CSRSS.EXE or SMSS.EXE, and the app you replace it with would have to be a native application, so it couldn't be CMD.EXE which is a win32 console subsystem application. More info on sysinternals, here and here.

Note that I/O will be your primary difficulty -- the only API available to you was designed for output only during the blue screen phase of Windows NT's boot process, and for display BSODs. You will probably have to install a device driver that enables access to a text console and use that for IO.

This can be done, as both Windows Setup and the Recovery Console seem to use this approach.

Re:Lots of work

[cyclomedia]

i'm gonna try this tonight... let's see if i can get PWS (IIS4) to run on it!

Re:Lots of work

[Malc]

People who need that kind of stuff are generally doing on servers. The overhead of the GUI is pretty insignificant really on these machines. Now I run a server at home. It's tucked away in a closet with no monitor running Debian. It's a P75 with 32MB of memory, so a GUI is no go. But really, I'm hardly representative of Microsoft's bread-and-butter money-making server business.

Since Windows 2000, Windows has had telnet support, which coupled with PPTP gives you what you're looking for with sshd.

Re:Lots of work

[ocelotbob]

PPTP is a lot heavier than ssh, and is fundamentally flawed. Although pptp is close, ssh is still far superior and easier to get working.

Re:Lots of work

[Malc]

Oh please! I can't believe people are still bandying that link around and perpetuating this like an urban legend after all these years. It's susceptible to offline password guessing by tools like L0phtcrack that require direct access. If people are doing that then figuring out a PPTP login is the least of one's worries... they're already cracking passwords and gaining all kinds of access to the domain.

It's hardly a PPTP issue either - if ssh were coupled with domain authentication, then it too would be susceptible to the same attack.

If PPTP were so flawed don't you think that there would have been more incidents of it being exploited after all this time? I'm sorry, but you're beginning to sound rabidly anti-Microsoft,

As for it being "heavy", it's hardly significant problem. I've been using it for years without complaints. It's things like NetBIOS that cause network performance issues. PPTP integrates very well in to Windows' networking, and is certainly a lot easier to use and less troublesome than Cisco's VPN solution. In fact I would say as a VPN solution, it integrates with TCP/IP far better than ssh does as it's a network adapter rather than local port forwarding, which is just a hack really. Maybe ssh does do that, but I haven't seen it under Windows.

Re:Lots of work

[ocelotbob]

PPTP is, simply put, a result of MS's NIH. In the unix world, we have ppp over SSH, which works better, is much more simple, and uses pre-defined pieces. Besides, the original point was regarding a quick remote administration tool - going from a monitoring server to a remote server to automate fixes. Why go through the trouble of setting up a vpn for such a use?

Re:Lots of work

[FuturePastNow]

I don't know. I would assume that applications which run fullscreen and/or are not dependent on the normal explorer shell would work normally. All I know is that it's possible to run Windows this way; I find cmd painful to use so I can't tell you what it's like. Ask Google.

Re:Lots of work

[Malc]

Why bother going through the effort to set up ssh then? Setting up a VPN between two Windows boxes is almost no effort. I maintain a Debian box which I administer remotely. I had to go out of my may to configure it properly, i.e. limit who could use ssh to the system, etc. That's more effort than turning on a user's dial-in access in the relevant domain admin or computer management MMC snap-in. Setting up PPP over SSH takes a lot more effort (I know I'd be referring to the man pages to get all of the ppp client command line params), which is probably why you're questioning the trouble to setup a VPN.

As long as...

[xor.pt]

As long as we can get BSODs, windows basic funtionality is assured.

Re:As long as...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, nevermind. I thought I was reading Slashdot circa 1998.

Re:As long as...

[nozzo]

YAWN
BSODs in XP are caused by clueless users/admins, barring some critical updates, i've never ever had to reboot my XP PC running on a Dell Dim 4550.
BSODs are simply no longer an issue if XP is configured right.

Re:As long as...

[GuyverDH]

As long as you don't have flaky memory, or hardware, which from the fact that you're running a *DELL* I'm shocked that you don't have at least 30 BSODs a day

Re:As long as...

[nozzo]

? ? ? ? ? WTF you talking about? Dells are reliable as hell, this ones been running non-stop for a couple of years. Let's just clarify that: I have not switched it off for two years. and I have never seen a BSOD on it - or my colleagues desktops/laptops - or the PowerEdge server (I had 3 x 6600 and 3 x 1600sc) and not a minutes trouble. I've been using Dell hardware since the early square beige machines and I'd stake my 16 years of IT experience on them.

Re:As long as...

[GuyverDH]

I've been in the industry for over 20 years. I have yet to see a reliable piece of equipment with the DELL name on it.

Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.

[suitepotato]

I hope that message wasn't indicative of what happens when you try not to run any Windows services...

Anywho, of course most of the services aren't needed at all times, but if they aren't turned on by default, a lot of extraneous apps that expect them will either not install or not work correctly. Hence, they are turned on. Are not most services blazing along on Linux by default to the glee of OpenBSD booster?

Alright then. Don't want em, kill em. It's easy, but the average user would have to read up and learn to do it. On whatever OS. Probably easier to leave them running by default so as not to fark things later. Or not because of the inherent security holes. Up to you. I'm ambivalent as long as my Windows boxes are behind a sharing router on private IPs without a lot of forwarding and firewall software.

With respect to resources, I'll check it out some time to see if there's really any improvement. Filed under "Review Later"....

I wonder how this well XP will run on qemu

[I.M.Anonymous]

I wonder how this well XP will run on qemu with all of those services turned off? There is very little I need from windows and I wonder if this would help with those final annoying things I need from windows at home.

Re:I wonder how this well XP will run on qemu

[colmore]

My guess is Wine or Crossover Office would work a lot better. Though this kind of stripped-down setup might be useful for the Wine community to work out exactly what the minimum needs are to get certain apps working.

Re:I wonder how this well XP will run on qemu

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope - Wine/CxOffice doesn't use Windows. There is no Windows code in Wine.

Re:I wonder how this well XP will run on qemu

[Fordiman]

Read the article. They're not turned off, they're killed. IOW, you still need to be able to fully boot.

Re:I wonder how this well XP will run on qemu

[Anonymous Coward]

What's your point? You can boot xp under qemu but it is slow. The poster was wondering if killing most processess would make xp under qemu snappier.

Re:Aha!

[cnettel]

RTFA, they are killing the processes after boot-up. For winlogon, this means they can't log off properly.

Impractical, but with useful implications

[Sv-Manowar]

Obviously the final result, a dubiously functional installation is not really groundbreaking for end-users, but there's much to be said for turning off the many services that ship enabled as default with Windows XP to gain both the performance and security benefits. Knowing whats running, what it's doing, and whether its really neccessary is a good step towards maintaining a system which has a low attack profile and is reasonably secure.

Re:Impractical, but with useful implications

[argel]

Obviously the final result, a dubiously functional installation is not really groundbreaking for end-users

Well, Mine Sweeper probably runs better!!! =:-)

But seriously, I wonder how many single-player games would run and how much better would performance be? Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines or Half-Life 2 come to mind.

Re:Impractical, but with useful implications

[SavvyPlayer]

There is a distinction to be made between "having a low attack profile" and being "reasonably secure"?

Reminds me of the good old days...

[jarich]

In The Olden Days, you could install a Linux disto without 10,000 daemons running... ah, those were the days... Linux was noticably faster than Windows out of the box! ;)

Re:Reminds me of the good old days...

[morgan_greywolf]

You still can. Like with Windows XP, it's a matter of 'what can you do without?' Only with Linux, killing all the daemons won't keep you from logging off or shutting down... :)

Re:Reminds me of the good old days...

[jonesy16]

Unless of course you kill the mingetty daemons . . .

Not that I'm totally sure what would happen if you killed one of the 24 processes associated with the kernel . . .

Re:Reminds me of the good old days...

[Amouth]

yeap.. i love the setup that was make for slackware.. i think it was v.9 were if you jsut chose the default stuff you got an empty kern nothing like booting nothing know what they say

Re:Reminds me of the good old days...

[makomk]

Unless of course you kill the mingetty daemons . . .

Init won't let you (it auto-respawns them), and you can't kill init for technical reasons.

Re:Reminds me of the good old days...

[Anonymous Coward]

Getty will be restarted by init (process 1, which you really can't avoid), the kernel processes are unkillable from user space (and are really not like normal processes in many ways)

Re:Reminds me of the good old days...

[jonesy16]

what if you omit the mingetty lines in the /etc/inittab. Mind you i've never done this, but if you did, would that keep you from being able to login?

Re:Reminds me of the good old days...

[misleb]

I suspect you are installing the wrong distributions.

Re:Reminds me of the good old days...

[Zzyzygy]

Unless of course you kill the mingetty daemons...

Then init would respawn them.

Not that I'm totally sure what would happen if you killed one of the 24 processes associated with the kernel...

You can't.

-Scott

Re:Reminds me of the good old days...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mind you i've never done this, but if you did, would that keep you from being able to login?

Depends if you had any other services running to allow you to login.

Re:Reminds me of the good old days...

[Anonymous Coward]

In The Olden Days, you could install a Linux disto without 10,000 daemons running... ah, those were the days... Linux was noticably faster than Windows out of the box! ;)

You still can. I've never met a Linux distribution that installs more than what you tell it to. Granted, some are leaner than others, but I hate it when people bitch about a distribution and how much "bloat" it comes with when they picked the full install option and fed it four disks.

If your Linux has 10,000 daemons running on it when you first boot it up, it's because you told it to.

Re:Reminds me of the good old days...

[ptr2void]

You won't be able to log in on the virtual terminals. You still can log into your X session if you're running a display manager (this is the common setup these days).

Re:Reminds me of the good old days...

[Diamon]

Good old days?! Sounds like modern times, if you're running Gentoo.

Re:Reminds me of the good old days...

[Anonymous Coward]

Which, of course, is a daemon.

Re:Reminds me of the good old days...

[typical]

The daemons are not what is slowing you down, unless they're polling.

Most of what the perceptual slowness is in Linux comes from a couple things.

* Inefficient GUI software. GNOME 2 software simply starts up and runs more slowly than GNOME 1 software.

* Heavyweight desktop managers and similar programs. I use sawfish, have a copy of gkrellm running, and use xbindkeys to launch all my programs Most of what I have open at any one time are Firefox windows, xterms (not the far slower gnome-terminals), and xemacs windows. These are all interactive programs, but things are much snappier when running these than when running the GNOME or KDE suites.

* Use accelerated drivers. There aren't that many that have RENDER acceleration, for example, and without that, all the antialised character blits to the screen are unaccelerated -- one reason why the antialiasing in GTK/GNOME 2 "felt" so slow. I use a Radeon 9250/128 bit data path and have no problems.

For all that, there's still a few things I'd like to point out.

* As a kernel, Linux *is* generally faster than Windows. You might be using slower userspace software, though.

* In The Olden Days, Linux distros tended to have an awful lot more daemons running out of box -- my Red Hat 5.2 box, IIRC, ran fingerd, ftp, ssh, telnet, and I think even a web server by default. There might be more -- talk might have been in there as well.

* Linux does a pretty good job of paging. If a daemon isn't doing anything, it isn't going to be consuming your resources.

Let me get this straigt

[RAMMS EIN]

So wait a minute...

Are they saying that, even without all that crap that normally get started...it still crashes?

Or is that not what they mean when they say Windows works?

Re:Let me get this straigt

[The Angry Mick]

Are they saying that, even without all that crap that normally get started...it still crashes?

Of course. That's what the "System Idle Process" is for...

;-)

Re:Let me get this straigt

[Really Wannabe Geek]

""Technically, Windows is an "operating system," which means that it supplies your computer with the basic commands that it needs to suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, stop operating." --db.

Re:Let me get this straigt

[Fordiman]

It crashes if you kill csrss.

Or, if like me, you accidentally kill ALL the unnecessary processes, then close process explorer. At that point, it's still windows, it still "works", but you can't LAUNCH anything.

*slaps hand against head*

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

All the cool kids are using MacOS X these days...

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, all the cool kids have girlfriends and are getting laid.

-Ensign Boner

So how about Mac OS-10.4?

[ibn_khaldun]

Anyone know what a similar exercise looks like for Mac OS-10.4? It is not, shall we say, exactly a speed demon and it would be nice to know what could be safely turned off when one is running CPU-intensive processes. Thanks.

Re:So how about Mac OS-10.4?

[sld126]

Try it.

Rename /System/Library/LaunchDaemons and restart.

I doubt you'd get very far.

Or try booting while holding down cmd-s. That's probably more like the equivalent.

Re:So how about Mac OS-10.4?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, Mac OS X is just Unix basically, so not quite as exciting as getting Windows to do it.

Just hold down Command-S (IIRC) when booting, and it goes into single user mode.

Once there, you can start stuff one service at a time, mount filesystems, basically you're "on your own", but it's handy. For instance once I needed to change the UID on my user account to match an NFS server's UID, so I went into single user, mounted the filesystems, chown'd everything, changed the UID in netinfo (after starting it) and rebooted, worked great.

It's not fair to compare Mac (or Linux or BSD etc) with Windows, since all the Unix-like systems are designed to be run in various configurations, Windows is pretty opaque and monolithic.

Re:So how about Mac OS-10.4?

[Listen Up]

The parent post is not entirely true. Either that or he/she is running Mac OS X 10.4 on a G3 300Mhz beige desktop system with a multiple year old video card. Even on moderate hardware (G3/G4 1Ghz+) with a moderate video card (Radeon/GeForce) OS X 10.4 has been nothing but exceptional for me. It is ridiculous how many non-OS X using Mods moderate posts.

If you are really having trouble with OS X 10.4, you can do a couple of things:


1) Upgrade from 5-10+ year-old Apple hardware (most complaints about OS X are from extremely underpowered hardware...Even new Linux distributions choke on underpowered hardware)

2) Start from a clean 10.4 installation. Most upgrades from 10.3.x tend to have a problem or two associated with the upgrade. And upgrading to a clean install is incredibly easy with OS X. Just use the option to do so from the Installer.

3) Turn off all Dashboard Widgets (with no Widgets active, Dashboard takes essentially 0 RAM or CPU)

4) You can even turn off Dashboard (you can find the utilities on VersionTracker)

5) Although I have never yet had a problem with it, and I absolutely love its search capabilties, you can turn off SpotLight (Change SPOTLIGHT=-YES- to SPOTLIGHT=-NO- in /etc/hostconfig) As an added note, you can control almost all of your services from the hostconfig file.

6) Look in /Library/StartupItems/ and /System/Library/StartupItems/ for other startup services

7) Wait for future updates to 10.4 as Quartz 2D Extreme and other video enhancements/improvements are disabled right now for more testing and will be re-enabled in the future.


Simply bad-mouthing OS X 10.4 is wrong. It works perfectly on my iBook and PowerMac and works for millions of other people as well. On a brand-new, default installation of 10.4.2 on my iBook I am averaging 42.91MB of RAM usage. Not exactly RAM intensive. The CPU is never peaked out except under extremely heavy usage (you can use the Activity Monitor application to permanently place a CPU meter on your desktop or in your Dock). While there are reports on the internet that some people are saying they had better video performance under 10.3.9, it would be a better comparison between the two when 10.4.9 comes out, because 10.3.9 is highly optimized at this point. Also, try searching Google for some optimization tips, there are a ton of Mac-centric website full of little performance tips for OS X.

Re:So how about Mac OS-10.4?

[Phroggy]

I wouldn't trade OSX for anything, but yes, it's very slow, and yes, 10.4 is significantly slower than 10.3. Also, since my laptop is a year and a half old now (not 5-10 years like you suggest), it won't get any speed boost from Quartz 2D Extreme.

So, until I can afford to drop about $2300 on a computer (15" PB with video card upgrade, extended warranty because my experience with Apple has shown that something will probably break at some point, and third-party RAM upgrade because it's cheaper to buy 2GB of RAM outright from somewhere else than to pay Apple to upgrade from 512MB to 1GB), I just have to be patient.

Re:So how about Mac OS-10.4?

[Anonymous Coward]

My Powerbook is a 667 with 512MB ram and 10.4 seems to run fine on it. My desktop is an upgraded Graphite (450 to 1.2 GHz with 1.5G ram and Radeon 9000) and it screams on it.

Re:So how about Mac OS-10.4?

[Listen Up]

I was being a little bit figurative and generous with the 5-10 years, but I haven't had any problems with my Apple computers and OS X 10.4. I agree, more speed is always better, but defining something as slow is definitely a subjective measurement. Also, I have never had a problem with my Apple laptop or desktop hardware. Every Apple product I have seen with a problem had some kind of actual physical flaw (that was covered under Apple Care warranty) or had been abused or mistreated. And I definitely agree that buying RAM from Apple is expensive. I bought all of my RAM from Crucial.com for a fraction of the cost (and has the benefit of being direct from the manufacturer).

I hope my tips helped you out to reduce your system requirements, although in stock configuration OS X does not consume a lot of resources or CPU.

Plus, since your Apple laptop is only 1 1/2 years old, it should be Quartz 2D Extreme compatible. AFAIK, the only requirements are an AGP video card/chipset and 32MB VRAM. Any Apple laptop with a Radeon and 32MB VRAM should work.

Re:So how about Mac OS-10.4?

[Phroggy]

Every Apple product I have seen with a problem had some kind of actual physical flaw (that was covered under Apple Care warranty) or had been abused or mistreated.

Of course I was talking about flaws that are covered under AppleCare. Usually they manifest themselves within the first year, but it's better to not have to worry about it.

Plus, since your Apple laptop is only 1 1/2 years old, it should be Quartz 2D Extreme compatible. AFAIK, the only requirements are an AGP video card/chipset and 32MB VRAM. Any Apple laptop with a Radeon and 32MB VRAM should work.

Hmmmm, I was thinking the requirements were higher than that. I guess we'll see! Awesome technology; I hope I can take advantage of it.

Re:So how about Mac OS-10.4?

[loquacious d]

You can use the Quartz Debug application in the Xcode Tools for 10.4 to enable Quartz 2D Extreme. Sems to make a small speed difference for me, but there is a little weirdness too. You can also try turning off beam synchronization, makes Exposé a lot smoother. I think you have to force-quit Quartz Debug for the changes to stick, it resets to the default if you quit it normally.

Re:So how about Mac OS-10.4?

[Phroggy]

Ah, yep, it says it's not supported. That's what I thought. ATi Mobility Radeon 9200, 32MB.

Re:So how about Mac OS-10.4?

[ibn_khaldun]

For starters, why is saying anything negative about OS-X considered "badmouthing"? Oh, right, this is /.

[But for the record, I've been using and programming Macs since 1984 -- yes, 1984 -- and since I'm in an environment where the higher-ups prefer Windows, have taken more than my share of flak for it.]

Hardware is not the issue -- I'm comparing 10.4 to 10.3 running on a G5 tower, an XServe, and a G5 iMac. I'm not running this stuff on a G3.

But the core program I'm trying to maximize the speed on (a large C++ program compiled on gcc; terminal interface) runs about 20% - 25% slower under 10.4 than under 10.3. That is a significant hit; something is going on.

Similarily, compare the speed of a standard program such as Folding@Home (which I run on all three machines) -- one can get a lot more horsepower out of the G5 processors under XServe than under one of the user OS's.

I will, however, try your suggestions: they seem well-informed.

Re:So how about Mac OS-10.4?

[loquacious d]

Try this hint, maybe? The comments make me unsure whether it'll even do anything, but hey, who doesn't like mucking around in plists. Not sure how well it'd even work with just 32MB of VRAM, but it's worth a shot. Since I read this thread I've been trying it on my last-year PB1.5 with 128MB VRAM (whoo!), and graphics stuff (genie, safari tab animation, expose) does seem slightly smoother. Who knows?

Re:So how about Mac OS-10.4?

[loquacious d]

Ohhh I'm a genius. That link was supposed to be to *this* hint, not to your post. (Use the Preview Button! Check those URLs!)

You can even close explorer.exe...

[brxndxn]

For running games, if you really care about it, you can CTRL ALT DEL and close explorer.exe. Then, run the game from the 'run' menu in Task Manager.

You probby won't notice any speed difference.. But your penis will be larger.

Re:You can even close explorer.exe...

[Neticulous]

I was without a PC for a while, and had to use my friends slow laptop to play my games, some of them would only run decent when doing this, so if you dont have much memory, its a good trick to get things running faster!

Re:You can even close explorer.exe...

[Sancho]

This was definitely a good old trick in the Windows 3.1 days. You could change the shell in win.ini for CPU intensive games (and this meant most games, since video accelerators weren't the norm back then). Soon as you started Windows, your game started up with no other shell.

Re:You can even close explorer.exe...

[Xibby]

Better yet, why run explorer.exe in the first place?

From memory (haven't done this for some time, so I could be a bit off...)

Start Regedit, find HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ Winlogon, Change the value of Shell from Explorer.exe to cmd.exe.

Re:You can even close explorer.exe...

[XMyth]

Registry: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Shell

Re:You can even close explorer.exe...

[shadowzero313]

I did this at school as a student tech. Hell, another tech changed the start up shell to firefox.

Re:You can even close explorer.exe...

[Audity]

CTRL ALT DEL? The real pros these days use CTRL SHIFT ESC. It brings up the task manager directly instead of brining up the screen with the logoff, shutdown and lock options first.

This is on XP pro, I'm not sure of the behaviour on xp home.

Re:You can even close explorer.exe...

[3770]

Amazing.

I have noticed that some web sites has the same effect.

Re:You can even close explorer.exe...

[Durinthal]

Whoa. That just makes me wonder how many other useful shortcuts I've completely missed.

Re:You can even close explorer.exe...

[ScytheBlade1]

A few notes as to usage:

If you're using XP with the fast user switching, ctrl+alt+del still brings up the task manager. In order to get the (actually useful) ctrl+alt+del panel (with an option for task manager), you have to disable fast user switching.

Re:You can even close explorer.exe...

[Koiu Lpoi]

This one bothers me - is there any way to get a win98 style process manager? In other words, when I hit CTRL-SHIFT-ESC, I want it to give all the CPU time it can to the Process Manager because I desperatly need to kill something. Alas, the default Windows XP one doesn't do that.

Re:You can even close explorer.exe...

[Brianwa]

I know. I almost forgot aobut this shortcut since I stopped using Windows 3.11. Now its used by "real pros these days".

Re:You can even close explorer.exe...

[EvilIdler]

Ctrl-alt-del brings up the taskmanager on all my computers (XP Pro).
It did bring up that other panel on Win2k, though.

Re:You can even close explorer.exe...

[EvilIdler]

Under processes:
Right-click taskmgr.exe, select Priority.

The killing urge can also be solved with firearms.

Re:You can even close explorer.exe...

[shiller]

Ah, I remember. I did that to in the past. Later I wrote a 4K Win32 assembler program that only showed a OpenFile Dialog that let you choose *.exe files. The cancel button was the switch to shutdown.

Re:You can even close explorer.exe...

[TractorBarry]

I prefer changing the value to "directory_name\bblean.exe" so I can run bbLean instead :)

An added benefit is that, since I installed it at work, noone has fiddled with my Windows box (not even the admins as they're all point & click people)

Re:You can even close explorer.exe...

[julesh]

OK -- I'm running Pro and get task manager directly from ctrl-alt-del. How do I get to the other screen you're talking about? (I used to find it useful on W2K)

Re:You can even close explorer.exe...

[Spire]

You need to turn off the Welcome screen:

In the Control Panel, open User Accounts, click Change the way users log on or off, uncheck the Use the Welcome screen box, and click Apply Options.

Re:You can even close explorer.exe...

[mswope]

Okay, I'm going to try this...
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
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    [Carrier lo$7)~9%&@&%

Re:You can even close explorer.exe...

[Anonymous Coward]

...or make the PC part of a domain, which also disables the welcome screen. This is why XP users at a business or a school don't get the task manager immediately when using ctrl-alt-del. Note that this is not practical for most home-bound XP PCs, as you need another machine to act as domain controller.

Re:You can even close explorer.exe...

[cybersaga]

Under processes:
Right-click taskmgr.exe, select Priority.

Task Manager has a priority of 'High' by default, which is two steps above normal.

Re:You can even close explorer.exe...

[Anonymous Coward]

Then set it to Realtime priority.

You're a tool.

[glrotate]

I don't think this stripped-down Windows provides even the most basic functionality expected by many users nowadays.

This was a proof of concept dork. A hack. Something to be done just because it can be. Mark's not suggesting everyone try this.

Re:You're a tool.

[Anonymous Coward]

"This was a proof of concept dork."

Maybe you should look at what you're reading before calling someone else a dork....

In regards to the title you chose ("You're a tool") I would say that the only tool here is you as you felt the need to flame someone over something so insignificant. You're really just a sad, pathetic person who just proved you're stupidity in front of us all.

Re:You're a tool.

[glrotate]

You're really just a sad, pathetic person who just proved you're stupidity in front of us all.

Please, I'm not you wife. Don't attempt to browbeat me, it won't work.

I called the guy a dork and a tool, fairly benign pejoratives, not paticularly harsh. The entire tone of his post suggested betrayed a complete misunderstanding of the geek factor of what Mark did. It wan't a suggested course of action, it was a hack. This is /. news for nerds, and the great-grandparent doesn't seem to belong.

Now buzz off AC.

great point.

[LiquidMind]

"The bottom line is that this stripped-down Windows configuration is not practical, but makes a cool demonstration of just how little of Windows is required for basic functionality."

that's kinda like saying why not drive in cars made from ~50 years ago. not very pratical, but they'll still get you from A to B.
...unfortunately, you can't sell a stripped-down version of Windows for $$$ as a collector's item.

Re:great point.

[Fizzog]

"that's kinda like saying why not drive in cars made from ~50 years ago. not very pratical, but they'll still get you from A to B."

I would have no complaints about being forced to drive from A to B in a '55 T-bird or a '55 Chevy...

Re:great point.

[networkJockey]

And Yet...you can sell an legit copy of Windows XP Starter Edition...

Re:great point.

[Anonymous Coward]

"50 years ago" was 1955.

That doesn't ring a bell?

Stay off the roads.

Re:great point.

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't want to be in an accident with it (either as a passenger or driver in the other car), the safety of those cars is horrid, and so is their fuel usage

I think...

[JonN]

the majority of people reading this will not wonder even Internet Explorer will still work under such conditions but if Firefox will still work under such conditions

Re:I think...

[Anonymous Coward]

It launches. I have no internet connection under Virtual PC with it because it's a LAN and all the doowhackies are disabled, but Firefox launches, and could be used as a very poor substitute for Explorer - unless of you course you want to do file manager stuff, in which case it's a very, very, very poor file manager. A file browser, but not a file manager at all... if you will.

Forgive me, I'm just happy I still have the boredom threshold to do pointless crap like test whether Firefox works in a zero functionality environment :)

Re:I think...

[denelson83]

Well, I tried doing what this article said, and even though Firefox was still running, I could no longer [Ctrl]+[V] (paste) any text into it. I could use the paste command everywhere else, just not in Firefox. That and I could no longer shut down the computer without resorting to holding down the power switch on the front of my tower.

Re:I think...

[Fordiman]

It does.

How about most people here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Taco already admits that most of the visitors are Windows users using MSIE.

Not anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

now that this is published, they'll fix that flaw before they fix the flaws that make it necessary to shut those services off in the first place.

Define "work"

[stratjakt]

Sure it will operate, sort of. You can run a linux box with no daemons, either, but eventually shit will happen.

More non-news from the technical geniouses at /. "News for Newbies, Stuff everybody with a clue already knows"

Re:Define "work"

[fishbowl]

"Sure it will operate, sort of. You can run a linux box with no daemons, either, but eventually shit will happen."

Well, I've got machines that are devoted to specific applications. One is dedicated to multitrack audio recording. Every little bit of performance or stability I can get out of that host is very valuable to me, and it only has to run one single application ever. Likewise, I have machines that serve a special purpose as musical instruments. This is one of the most CPU-intensive tasks I've ever crossed paths with. Again, even a very small gain in CPU performance or memory bandwidth is very valuable here as well.

In these situations, I am really, truly, not interested in any other applications. Maybe I'd like to have Explorer (not IE) running. And maybe enough of the networking devices to allow proxied web browsing. But that's about it, seriously.

I'll RTFA and try it on music rigs.

Re:Define "work"

[stratjakt]

You will sacrifice stability, no doubt. Imagine a linux box without kflushd in the background. Eventually, unexpected power outage or something of the sort will trash the HDD irretrievably.

Services arent CPU intensive, they sit idle unless in use. No, you don't need the logon service, you can have it always log on as administrator, and never properly log off or shutdown - but again, eventually it'll shit upon itself.

No, like linux, all it needs is a kernel. You don't even need the GUI (Umm, DUHHHH - Recovery Mode anyone?) Thats enough to make your computer do something. The rest of the basic services/daemons do serve a purpose.

Now, out of the box, a lot of (usually) useless services are activated. But significant features of the operating system will not function without them. Want to join a domain? You need the appropriate services. Most commercial Linux distros install a shitload of daemons most people don't need. For instance, I don't need cron or syslog on some of my machines - but they're always there.

The cause of this isn't shitty programmers or conspiracy bullshit, it's because neither Microsoft nor Red Hat have the ability to read your mind and peer into the future to decide what you're going to do with the OS once installed.

This is such non-fucking-news. It's sad how newbie oriented /. has become.

Re:Define "work"

[fishbowl]

I know all about tuning linux, thank you, far more than most old-school sysadmins. Among other knowledge, this is how I make my living.

But this is about tuning windows.

There are immediate gains to be had by turning off services -- they do have quite an obvious, easily measured impact on system efficacy for audio work -- but I suppose you are pointing out some consequences of going too far, turning off essential services gives diminishing returns and carries risks.

I still don't see the harm in trying it, and collecting empirical results. Have you ever tried to tune a P4 so that it will record 16 tracks of 24-bit audio, glitch-free? I mean, even if you do have SAWStudio or Samplitude or Cubase or PT, there are always tuning issues. Shame on us for trying to press general purpose PC equipment into service as a specialized device, but few other options are really economical.

Do I hear psHalo??

[Se7enLC]

We already had psDoom...

Do I hear psHalo??

For services you actually should disable...

[rdwald]

Take a look at Black Viper's list of WinXP SP2 services.

Re:For services you actually should disable...

[Insipid Trunculance]

Any equivalent list for Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 server?

Re:For services you actually should disable...

[rdwald]

From the same site:
Windows 2000 services

He doesn't have a list for Windows 2003, however.

MOD PARENT DOWN!!

[Anonymous Coward]

UNTRUE! I just tried his suggestion and it didn't work AT ALL!

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN!!

[ArielMT]

Grandparent post said that there would be no difference except in the size of the user's, uh, member. If your results are different, that's a personal problem hardly worth discussing on a tech news forum. Regardless, demanding that the post be modded down is the wrong way to say your experience was not the same. May I suggest seeking advice from DrRuth.com instead?

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN!!

[im_thatoneguy]

Actually my system had an issue a few weeks ago, where I had to run games and watch movies using this exact method or else they would stutter every minute or so. I ran system restore to a time before the last windows 'out of my control' I mean automatic update, and it worked fine again, but it was interesting having to run high performance applications using run.

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN!!

[Anonymous Coward]

rofl

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN!!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, this doesn't work for girls. Did you check your booby size?

Give me BSOD or give me ...

[WillAffleckUW]

As long as we can get BSODs, windows basic funtionality is assured.

In Windows Vista it's a Transparent Ice Blue Screen Of Death, and it's tabbed.

You're still hosed, but it looks nicer.

Re:Give me BSOD or give me ...

[mmurphy000]

Don't laugh.

I recently got a curious message on my iMac. The desktop was masked by a grey translucent layer, and on top of that, in white text on a black background, was a message in three languages telling me I needed to reboot my Mac.

It took a few appearances of this for me to realize it was a kernel panic, the OS X equivalent to the BSOD.

I mean, c'mon. It can't be a serious problem. Look how pretty the error message is!

Re:Give me BSOD or give me ...

[at_slashdot]

Actually it's a Red Screen Of Death (RSOD)
And you thought Microsoft doesn't innovate....

Re:Give me BSOD or give me ...

[Hungus]

It has to be tabbed since all those hyper threaded procs might get more than 1 BSOD at a time ...

Re:Give me BSOD or give me ...

[WillAffleckUW]

Actually it's a Red Screen Of Death (RSOD)

I know, but personally I prefer Burnt Ochre Screen Of Death (BOSOD) ... or Fire Engine Red Screen Of Death (FERSOD) ...

why can't it just have different levels, going from say Green to Yellow to Red. It would be just as useful as that color scheme is ...

Re:Give me BSOD or give me ...

[cnettel]

Well, in one of the blog posts mentioning the RSOD, it was hinted that the color might be different depending on some assessment of if the problem was recurring or not, and things like that.

Re:Give me BSOD or give me ...

[Ponzicar]

So they're tying the SOD colors to the terror alert system?

Re:Give me BSOD or give me ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me imagine microsoft implimenting that...

GSOD - buffer overflow, restart required
YSOD - windows has somehow borked and overwritten your mbr, reinstall required.
RSOD - DMA violation, thugs dispatched, payment required.

Re:Give me BSOD or give me ...

[mink]

Are you sure? That does mean changing the light bulb.

Shutdown is for wimps anyway!

[Anonymous Coward]

Real men (like me, of course) just use sync from sysinternals and hit the power switch. Fastest Windows shutdown on the planet.

Re:Feel "teh diference"

[Umbral Blot]

Do you know who Mark Russinovich is? Besides writing key books on windows published by Microsoft themselves he is also a very important member of the windows developer community. There is no way in hell Microsoft would want to make him an unsatisfied customer. If they really didn't like what he is doing I bet that they would try to bribe him with large sums of money to stop instead.

Microsoft GA

[badmammajamma]

Apparently Microsoft Genuine Advantage is one of the services you can disable.

Re:Microsoft GA

[SlowMovingTarget]

Doesn't Windows automatically disable that as soon as you launch IE?

you will not be a ble to turn them on again

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember before few years I have stoped some services and then I had problems, when I wanted to start it again they reported "no bla bla service started" that was stupid infinite circle!

fdisk solved the problem

Interesting

[RAMMS EIN]

Interesting...so you can kill almost everything.

I wonder if you can automate that.

And then, I wonder if you can provide the functionality that goes missing by running your own services. Sort of subverting Windows from the inside, and giving you more control over it.

But then, I'm not that interested. I've got my control. Total control. Without having to wrestle it from Windows.

Re:Interesting

[DinX]

It isn't hard to stop some services after booting. Just create a batch file that stops every service you want. Then put i in your startup folder.

net stop "service name 1"
net stop "service name 2"
...

Re:Interesting

[sycotic]

"automate it" ?

You mean like, going in to the 'Control Panel' / 'Administration Tools', opening 'Services' and then going in to the properties of each Service and changing the 'Startup type' to 'Disabled'?

I am positive I saw something very similar for RedHat and probably SuSE too when I looked at those products. :)

Re:Interesting

[PostItNote]

Possibly. But on Linux there's also the possibility of going into /etc/init and removing the scripts you don't want to start. Total control from top to bottom. I'm sure that people have hacked around this and that in Windows, but it's still an opaque box that usually works right only if you are very careful about not breaking it.

It's sort of sad that 'stop your system from doing things you don't want it to do' is front page news for Windows.

Re:Interesting

[LentoMan]

This program has everything you want to manage services and a whole lot more: (even sourcecode incase you are paranoid)
http://p-nand-q.com/e/pserv.html

Re:Interesting

[fourharpoon]

Total control.... you mean like power button or reset?

Re:Interesting

[jafiwam]

Yup.

Use:

net stop "PROPERNAME"

and:

net start "PROPERNAME"

Where PROPERNAME is the name of the service according to service control manager, type it in a command window.

For example, the following CMD file restarts the DNS client in windows and clears local DNS cache (helpful if you are trying to make sure DNS changes are done correctly)

net stop "DNS Client"
net start "DNS Client"

Save as TXT and rename to CMD.

A batch file could easily be made to turn services on off, or even put in the Start menu if you wanted. That way they get started and stopped again, so they come alive when dependancies call them instead of making what you are doing fail.

Oops. I just exposed myself as a Windows junkie. :P

Re:Interesting

[ScytheBlade1]

And then failed all at the same time! ;) (As far as exposing yourself as a windows junkie, that is)

ipconfig /flushdns flushes the DNS cache without borking DNS resolution (even for how little time it takes to restart). Plus, I'm rather sure that even a guest user can do so, quite unlike stopping a service.

Re:Interesting

[Hosiah]

, I wonder if you can provide the functionality that goes missing by running your own services.

*ding* *ding* *ding*! Jackpot! Yes, in the pre-Linux days, you could write your own version of any program using QBasic (version QB4.5 compiled to executables - I still guard a platinum-iridium floppy with QB4.5.zip on it). Put that together with stuffing DOS commands into DOS batch files - bletch! DOS is like 1/1000th of Bash, but the same concepts apply.

These days, you can dual-boot Linux and Windows from the same PC, mount the Windows drive from Linux, and then -heh - you have much more *powerful* tools to manage Microsloth with! By the way, Emacs is available for Windows, and can be run in batch mode to execute Lisp scripts. Ditto Tcl/Tk, Python, and others. Some compilers can be set for producing Windows .exe's instead of Linux binaries. vi can edit .COM and .INI files. And then, of course, Linux has Wine to run Windows programs anyway...

See, folks, Windows really *was* user-friendly the whole time! But, like a crack whore, you have to know what to give it to make it your friend, first!

Emptiness

[scaverdilly]

A favorite sci-fi book from my youth had (something similar to) this to say ...

"As the scientist dug deeper into the structure of the atom, he found out that underneath the quarks, etc. there was nothing - just emptiness."

Seems to me that this applies in some way ... but it seems to vanish before I can grasp why .....

Re:Emptiness

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you're an idiot zealot?

Just a guess.

Not just for games

[Plocmstart]

I've done this when explorer decides to hang on doing something network-related (searching for a network drive that isn't logged on to begin with, just being slow in general, etc.). The bringing up the task manager then allows you to run, change, kill any other tasks without the annoyance of explorer. Of course you also lose your desktop and file explorer. Didn't know you could stop so many other things and maintain some usability though.

Re:Not just for games

[ArielMT]

The explorer process fills four major roles, all replaceable: desktop/shell, file manager, Web browser, and FTP client. In XP, it fills a fifth role as well: PK-ZIP-compatible archive manager. All five roles can be replaced with alternatives such as LiteStep, DOpus, Firefox, CuteFTP, and PowerArchiver.

Optimization

[Valacosa]

I'd be more interested in selectively turning off services to make Windows as fast as possible.

I don't like how programmers bloat their programs; how the programs expand to fill the speed and HD capacity of the modern computer. I have half a mind to install DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1 on my 1.2 GHz box. Fewer unnescessary services, and programs really will open instantly.

Speed is the very reason my default photo-editing client is Paint Shop Pro 4, not Photoshop Elements. Why the hell should I wait minutes for a program to load? What is this, 1980?

Re:Optimization

[MarkByers]

I have half a mind to install DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1 on my 1.2 GHz box. Fewer unnecessary services, and programs really will open instantly.

You could try a minimal Linux distribution with a lightweight window manager. It will make your 1.2GHz computer seem very fast.

It is even possible (though probably non-trivial) to run your copy of Paintshop using Wine (a windows compatibility library for Linux). Otherwise there is Gimp which might be able to do the things you need.

Not only will you have a fast system, but also secure, up-to-date and still supported.

Re:Optimization

[Anonymous Coward]

try installing DOS 6.22 in a vmware session and running that.
I do and it is fast. Have not Instlled windows 3.1 on it but sounds like a fun thing to do!.

I also have a copy of DOS 3.3, ( i think) Windows 2, Excel 2.1, Word 1.1. in original windows disks. I think i might do a nostaligic trip and installl them as well

Yes there is a performance hit to running vmware but at least it works!

Re:Optimization

[Anonymous Coward]

I have half a mind to install DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1 on my 1.2 GHz box. Fewer unnescessary services, and programs really will open instantly.

Even if you don't go that far back, there's a lot to gain in speed. I had my 1.1Ghz PC run Win98 first edition on its first partition. Booted in 15 seconds at its first post-install boot. File GUI response is instantaneous years after that, well unlike XP. My HD's have NTFS so that I can move data but functionality and hardware compatibility are severely reduced.

That said, it's great for testing game speeds, though

Re:Optimization

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the hell should I wait minutes for a program to load? What is this, 1980?

I don't remember any program I used in 1980 taking as much time to load as any program on any consumer OS takes now.

We fucked up.

Re:Optimization

[mixmasterjake]

You could create a batch file to turn off/on services to a level that suited your particular needs at that moment. just create a batch file like so:

echo Closing Down...
net stop "Help and Support"
net stop "IIS Admin"
net stop "Messenger"

when you're done playing your game or whatever, you can start 'em back up with another batch file:

echo Starting Up...
net start "Help and Support"
net start "IIS Admin"
net start "Messenger"

(new-school guys could probably do this easily with a neato vbs script.)

I have a couple of batch files that I use for just this purpose. I work with a few different server setups like, Apache + MySQL, IIS + SQL Server, etc. When I'm working on one, I can turn off all the other stuff I don't need.

Re:Optimization

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy crap! I'm not the only one still using Paint Shop Pro 4!! Wooo hooo!!

Re:Optimization

[NuclearDog]

"I don't like how programmers bloat their programs;"

I don't like how every fucking program, no matter how big or small, feels it needs to run itself on startup in the system tray and place icons in the start menu, quick launch bar, the programs menu and on the desktop.

For a web browser or something I can see _offering_ to put a shortcut in the quick launch bar. For something like a game it's just fucking stupid.

Example: Winzip

IIRC it puts a shortcut in the start bar, quick launch menu and on the desktop, and then creates a whole sub-menu under programs for misc. winzip stuff. It then installs 'WinZip Quick Pick' or something which runs on startup and sits in the systm tray. WHO THE FUCK NEEDS THIS?! Okay, so it decreases WinZip's loading time by 0.000905245 seconds... well, I'm sure I lost more time than I gain because of it sitting there soaking up all my proccessor cycles and RAM...

Then we get the piece of shit which is steam trying to load at startup so it can take up 100+MB of RAM all the time, not just when I'm playing games.

*sigh*

Okay. That's enough incoherent rambling for today. G'day.

ND

Re:Optimization

[Skuld-Chan]

If you were that die hard I have a Commodore Amiga you might like. Has 148 megs of ram (16 fast - 128 expansion) boots in 3 seconds, and sports a 50 MHz 68060.

And will process any image Paint Shop will touch and more in its sleep.

Don't want it? Don't blame you - people like their pretty icons, flexibility etc.

Re:Optimization

[DavidBrown]

I absolutely agree with you - at work, in a law office where we use mostly P4's, we still use WordPerfect for Windows 6.1, because it's blindingly fast, highly reliable, and it does everything that we need it to do, very well.

Well

[DarthVeda]

If you were to replace the word "windows" with "linux," the parent would be modded "flamebait" or "troll" as opposed to "funny." Assuming of course that the article was about linux.

Re:Well

[toddbu]

The problem with moderation as I see it is that it's anonymous. I can crap on you all I want without any repercussion. Of course I can post a negative comment as an Anonymous Coward too, but moderation has more impact. Last time I meta-moderated, I flipped the switch on three in ten, for exactly the reason that you mention. Just because someone takes an opposing view doesn't make them flamebait. My metric for flamebait is something like "you're an asshole" or "your mother wears army boots" or some other comment that doesn't add value to the discussion. Saying "I like Windows because it's more secure and robust" isn't flamebait, no matter how untrue we all believe the comment to be. Although I'd never defend the comment, I defend the right to make the comment. Just don't expect me to waste mod points pumping up your opinion.

Moderation is becoming more and more useless for the n00bs because of the slant in moderation. At minimum, I'd like to see the default at "0 nested" or "1 nested" instead of "1 threaded". It generates more noise, but gets some of the contrarian opinions a little more out in the open. If we're really gunning for smart folks on the site then I'm sure they can figure out how to turn moderation on if they want it. The same argument could be made the other way, but I prefer to give people the raw facts and then let them decide what filters to add.

Re:Well

[dotgain]

That's why they created the "Overrated" mod, so bigots can mark disagreeable comments down without fear of reprise from M2.

Wanna know the biggest joke about M1? Allow me to quote CmdrTaco, from the FAQ...

"On the whole, we think the moderation system works really well..."

Re:Well

[Master of Transhuman]

'Saying "I like Windows because it's more secure and robust" isn't flamebait, no matter how untrue we all believe the comment to be.'

Depends on the context. If the original story is about Windows, it's appropriate, even if in response to one of my posts condemning that fucking POS. If the original story is about Linux, it may be less so. As long as it's presented as a sincere OPINION, it's one thing.

It also depends how many MORE untruths are uttered, such as "Linux can't be installed by anyone", "There is no hardware support for Linux", "Linux is unusable", etc., buttressed by references to "Linux fanboys" and the like - all for someone who hasn't used Linux at all or at least in the last five years.

Whereas my usual response to that is to call the poster an idiot and a Microsoft shill - which is a RESPONSE to flamebait (if not to a troll, which is dumb on my part), as well as being flamebait itself.

Other suspicious comments include those Microsoft shills who claim their Windows 98 has been up for three years with never a crash, no infections despite being on DSL 24-7 with no firewall or AV, runs like lightning on their 133MHz Pentium I with 32MB of RAM, yada, yada. (I exaggerate only slightly here.)

Or their company site has never been compromised, no server has ever had to be rebooted for a year, and all the MCSE sys admin does is eat pizza all day because he has nothing to do. Oh, and all this cost SO MUCH LESS than Linux's TCO because of that splendid Microsoft engineering.

Most of the pro-Linux posts of that nature I've seen tend to be a hair more believable - especially when they compare their servers directly to the Windows ones ALSO in their company.

As for moderation in general, I couldn't care less. I browse at +1 and read the stupid stuff to see how stupid it is and the smart stuff for what I might learn. Anyone new to /. could do the same.

It does waste a hell of a lot of my time, though. Especially posting random pointless comments like this one.

Re:Well

[BillyBlaze]

Well, the problem is that our stupid moderation system doesn't have the categories it should. If someone says something you think is incorrect, what mod should you give them? Overrated? Troll? Flamebait? Redundant? None of the negative mods fit the most common situation in which negative mods are warranted, -1 Disagree. (Granted, this may be by design, as you're encouraged to only mod up. But if there are stupid posts at +5, than no intelligent comment posted later than that will go above it, because scores only go up to 5.)

My ideal mod system would be, you get to choose a short word to describe the post, and give a score between -1 and 1. There would be no +5 limit. Each post would show its score, the number of mods, and its top 3 words. You could mod and post in the same discussion. And mod points would be a much more common occurance.

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

For the 10^76 time, especially for retards like you who have the attention span of a gnat, moderating Overrated or Underrated does not exempt you from M2. It has been that way for years now. Have you even ever M2'd? It doesn't look like it.

Re:Well

[aztracker1]

A buddy's company had their main file server (nt4) up for about 2 years without issue, though it was behind a firewall, and only went down to upgrade to sp5, then 6 (last before that was sp3 iirc) not 100% on the timing between sp3 and 5 for nt4 though...

A responsible admin can keep a windows server up (with the exception of planned updates) and secure as well as a good *nix admin can.. just imho, but this has been my experience...

I happen to like a lot of things about linux, but am honestly more partial to bsd.. been playing with pc-bsd for about a week now, and must say, I like it better than any desktop linux distro I've ever used... this isn't flamebait, just where I stand on things.. I like a desktop to be easy to install, fairly configurable, and pretty easy to install software on.. there's a couple utils I use that I was able to use the binary files for freebsd5.x and no issues, no install, etc...

I really hope that pc-bsd gains a lot of support, even though not "linux".. it is a great unix based OS.... beyond this, I like ports and packages myself, emerge, and apt-get are kinda ripoffs of them imo... And the new install package for pc-bsd if phenominal...

On the windows side, about the *ONLY* things I like is c#/.net are a bit more mature than mono, even 3 years into it... though mono will probably leapfrog ms.net a bit after the .net 2 release, and the managed SWF for mono stabilizes... I really think that this is a good thing for cross-platform.. use MS's tech, embrace, and extend...

Uhhh

[wbren]

And, contrary to the expectations of various lead engineers at Microsoft, even Internet Explorer will still work under such conditions.

And that's...a good thing?

Re:Uhhh

[nog_lorp]

I think the quote "even Internet Explorer will still work under such conditions" was meant to convey a failure.

Re:Uhhh

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called - Covering Your Ass(tm) - they're not going to come out and say yeah sure we expect it work with no problems.

This would be like giving the go ahead for every man and his dog to use it on any Windows installation. Like 'Good Employees'(tm) they will tow the MS line of course!

Re:Feel "teh diference"

[temojen]

Same goes for Linux. But with both, you have to know what you're doing, and whatch for what dependencies get installed along with the services you do use. For example I have no idea why one of my boxes suddenly has portmap and famd on it (both listening on the internet nic).

Twisted and Obscure

[FranTaylor]

It just goes to show you how twisted and obscure Windows is. Even Microsoft's own people don't know how their operating system works. How can they expect to keep it reliable and virus free if they don't even understand what processes need to be running?

Re:Twisted and Obscure

[scaverdilly]

Don't you mean "Twisted and Evil"?

Re:Twisted and Obscure

[lnjasdpppun]

How is this insightful? The system in the article barely even runs IE, has messed up networking support and in general is almost useless. It's not something a normal person would ever want to do because it leaves their system in a barely functional state. MS do know how their OS works and thats why they have sanity checks in place to stop people doing this to their systems, just because there are ways around those checks doesn't mean MS don't understand their OS.

Do you get upset because I can kill X on my linux system getting rid of any GUI's and still be able to browse the web in lynx? No, you'd call that a feature and claim how robust Linux is, but when Windows does it somehow it's a bad thing?

Re:Twisted and Obscure

[Barlo_Mung_42]

It's also a good example of just how robust Windows is. There is a LOT of things that are failing gracefully behind the scenes and yet it's still useable to the extent possible.

Re:Twisted and Obscure

[Rich0]

I thought that was funny, but in all honesty, how many people around here can tell you what the following do, and whether they are essential:

ksoftirqd, khelper, kthread, kacpid, kblockd, khubd, kswapd0, kseriod, kjournald, events, pdflush, aio, xfslogd, xfsdatad, xfdbufd, udevd

Are all of these even real userspace processes?

Re:Twisted and Obscure

[ScytheBlade1]

Most of them are not. udevd is.

Re:Twisted and Obscure

[typical]

You made it difficult by stripping off the brackets around 'em in ps output.

Type "ps aux", and the threads with brackets are kernel threads.

Nothing else is essential to run Linux except for init. I don't run, nor am I familiar with any of the "xf*" processes. udevd will be auto-started if udev needs it -- you obviously won't need or see it if you aren't using udev.

I'm not a kernel hacker, and I can tell this all to you pretty easily.

The Microsoft engineers, on the other hand, had no clue, which means that their system is over-complicated and harder to understand.

Re:Twisted and Obscure

[Rie Beam]

It's also a good example of just how robust Windows is. There is a LOT of things that are failing gracefully behind the scenes and yet it's still useable to the extent possible.

I notice you didn't say by who.

Re:Twisted and Obscure

[Rich0]

You made it difficult by stripping off the brackets around 'em in ps output.

Actually, they were never there. Try ps -e sometime. ps aux is BSD syntax, which I'd gotten away from a long time ago (probably from being on some system which didn't understand it at all)...

Remember - Microsoft has vowed the end of the BSOD

[GuyverDH]

They are changing the color of the screen for critical failures and crashes to Red in the next generation windows.

Death to BSODs, long live RSODs...

Re:Feel "teh diference"

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you idiots ever considered reading the DMCA instead of just yammering about it?

Re:Feel "teh diference"

[Sycraft-fu]

Well I doubt Russonivich has anything to worry about, he's one of the people that wrote the "Windows Internals" book from the Microsoft press.

Now that aside Windows integration is considered a GOOD thing by most normal users. That's one of the frustrating thing about Linux/UNIX form their perspective. There's a million options, and they have no idea what they need or want. What's more, if they make the wrong choice something might not work, since it depends on something else.

That's why Windows, and OS-X ship with so much integrated. They are targeted at users that want to be told how it is. They don't want a choice of 10 window managers, they want to have one that just comes up by default.

Now if you like the BSD way of doing thigns, that's cool, but don't assume that it applies to everyone.

Building from source is another great example. Linux people tend to see this as the best feature of Linux, that you custom compile things, and you don't have to worry about binary compatiblity. Newbies tend to see this is one of the worst features. Compiling is highly intimidating, as they don't understand what's going on. What''s worse, if something happens, they can't fix it, they don't know how to edit make files, or update headers, etc.

The Windows method is more targeted at the masses, have an enriched OS that isn't just defined as it's kernel, but it's APIs, GUI, media layer, and basic apps. Linux is a minimal approach that defines only the kernel, leaving everything else up to the option of the user.

Both are valid, and don't assume yours is the superior way.

Benchmarks

[tacarat]

Can this squeeze a few more frames per second out of my favorite games? How much RAM does this free up? As the user of an out of date laptop, I'd boot into a CLI if it meant it could significantly drop system requirements for best performance. I'm not enough of a penguin head to do it in Linux yet. (btw, I read the article and realize it's not practial, still a neat idea)

Re:Benchmarks

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a big catch to this configuration and that is without SMSS (the session manager) and Winlogon, you can not enter a state where you can gain an interactive logon.

Since as of around NT4 the GUI engine was turned into a device driver, once the various kmode objects are setup (desktops, windowstations, sessions, etc) killing off the user-mode support components will not destroy those objects. Why? Because they follow the same rules as all other NT kernel objects. Only when no references (kmode pointers or handles) can an object be deleted.

So I'm not really all surprised this works. I'm more surprised the Microsoft engineers didn't think it would! I wonder what DaveC thought....

Re:Benchmarks

[tacarat]

I'm not too worried about interactive logons for a stand alone machine. Not being able to connect to the internet through my home conncection, web surf or to log into a game server would be a problem, though.

On a related side note, any /.'s have recommendations on alternate gui's for XP? Particularly ones that eat less brains?

Re:Benchmarks

[Anonymous Coward]

With no interactive logon you'll sit at a pretty blank screen. The creation of the windowstation is what (I believe) brings the system into graphical mode. Without SMSS, it won't do that. You can kill it after the fact, as TFA pointed out though.

less servicing?

[infonography]

Does that include oil changes?

Has anyone tried the following?

[Rude Turnip]

On this same topic (sort of), has anyone tried stripping out Microsoft's own implementation of file/print sharing from Windows and running Samba instead under Windows? It seems like that would go a long way towards interoperability.

I used to do this

[shawn443]

AT least when I was using w2k. Of course there was a lot of trial and error to determine what was needed and what was not. Many times those services were the equivalent of the startup folder. I did notice performance boosts at times, but these boosts were offset by the occasional quirks that would require 10 minutes or more to track down the needed service. Ultimately I realized the lack of documentation or at best the sparse KB articles combined with the intermittent problems negated any semi-worthwhile gains. Except for that damned messenger service, which I realized was necessary to disable long before Microsoft ever got around to it.

Eventually I discovered Linux, ps -aux, and all the documentation I could ever want and was happy.
Unequivocal control, now that's what I'm talking about.

Re:I used to do this

[Anonymous Coward]

This has been possible since Windows NT 3.1 came out in 1993. It was even easier back then because Windows didn't have any code to check for critical processes so you could kill them in any order.

Re:I used to do this

[British]

I too tried turning off some non-essential services and ended up with>

1. The system taking FOREVER To start up
2. Some increidbly bizarre quirks.
3. Turning services back on didn't resolve the problem.

I realized it just wasn't worth my time on Win2K. darn, and I honestly didn't need to be running fax services either.

Later on in life I found myself having to do it on WinXP when it was pretty much running at 100% CPU power, just about every minute of operation for no reason.

Sysinternals > Microsoft

[TopSpin]

Sysinternals is teh r0ks0rz!

No, seriously. If you don't know this, they have a utility called "Process Explorer" for Win32. It's like top on steroids. Actually, its vastly better than top, or any other process monitor I've ever seen. It will show you pretty much everything there is to know about a running Windows process; file handles, TCP connections, you name it. Its small, fast, mercifully lacking a "setup" and free.

They've got a bunch of other stuff for Windows I now consider essential. Check them out.

I can generally get by with 4

[justdrew]

rpc, dcom, dhcp (not always needed), dns

There is another name for this:

[Jailbrekr]

SAFE MODE

Re:There is another name for this:

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, you are correct. I bet those sysinternals guys don't know about safe mode. You ought to write them and tell them about it.

Re:There is another name for this:

[plj]

Someone mod parent AC up.

One of the the comments posted to TFA specifically states that winlogon.exe is still running in safe mode – sure it is, how would you otherwise log in? – and killing it as explained in the article enables removing of viruses that attach themselves to winlogon.exe, without a need to boot from external media.

This means that grandparent is simply wrong, safe mode won't kill winlogon.

Russinovich? Sounds like from Russne.

[MickLinux]

Russne is here:

http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=55.284981,21.349869 &spn=0.169771,0.481407&t=k&hl=en

It just sounds like Russinovich would be "from the town of Russne".

Absolute best way to run windows without services

[Nuttles1]

RUN LINUX

Would IE display local HTML files?

[Beebos]

In such a state would IE display local HTML files?

Windows services list

[MirrororriM]

In the past, I've found this list to be very handy in figuring out which services are simply unnecessary. While I don't agree that you want to shut down *all* services (I wanted my USB key to work...stuff like that), You can shut down a LOT of unnecessary garbage to help speed up the system and boot time...not to mention make things a little more secure.

It works what a great feeling!

[Anonymous Coward]

thanks man! I have to put screenshot somewhere it is really bigger!

yeah, but who needs internet explorer? firefox...

[HelloKitty]

yeah, but who needs internet explorer?
we all use firefox now right?

Sure but...

[ninja_assault_kitten]

There's a difference between what will "work" and what will "work properly".

I could drive my car with no air conditioning (I'm in Florida) or seats but I wouldn't want to.

Dozens

[fejikso]

A bit offtopic, but the article is not very interesting anyway...

Why say '4 dozen services'? When I see that there are '48 processes' running in my computer, I think of 'almost 50', or if I feel geeky I might think of approximately 64.

Honestly, who counts in multiples of twelve, when your not buying eggs?

Re:Dozens

[CthulhuDreamer]

"Honestly, who counts in multiples of twelve, when your not buying eggs?"

Network engineers. Switch ports come in blocks of 12, with the occasional 16 tossed in.

Re:Dozens

[Kehvarl]

I agree, why would anyone say "4 dozen" when "two score and eight" is so much simpler to remember and convert to and from.

Re:Dozens

[terrymr]

Beer is usually packaged in dozens or multiples thereof, occasionally in half dozens.

Re:Dozens

[fbartho]

I just think 110000 big-endian

Re:Dozens

[spikedvodka]

True, but then again concidering the us-centirc view of /. ...

Here's more then enough cat5e to hang yourself with, a full box... all 12000 inches of it

Re:Dozens

[oojah]

I often think in terms on dozens. Just the other day I bought a dozen slices of meat and half a dozen slices of another.

In general conversation it is more likely used as an approximate value. How many people are going out tonight? A dozen or so.

Likewise, if someone asked how many errors I still had to fix at work it would (unfortunately :) be "dozens" as a reasonable synonym for "lots".

I am English so this could be a cross-atlantic difference. The submitter is currently residing in the US though.

From a lazy point of view, "4 dozen" is three syllables and "almost 50" is 4 :)

Cheers,

Roger

Mention Windows...

[dlefavor]

...get a Windows/Linux/BSD/OS X debate. I mean, really...

This is great!

[dynoman7]

This is great! Love the screenshots too, but WTF is that system idle process running at 99% !!!???!!! Jesus H that thing is a hog! Does anyone know how to kill it? I don't want to burn out my CPU...

Re:This is great!

[kobach]

system IDLE process? it shows how much cpu is not being used.

Re:This is great!

[wbren]

The parent was joking.

Re:This is great!

[jazman]

I don't think you can kill it but you can optimise it, as the following research by IBM shows:

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/power/librar y/pa-unrollav3/

even Internet Explorer will still work...

[Thaidog]

Wow... a browser that surfs... ? How's that funtional? (And don't say for local file browsing)

Big deal

[Quiet_Desperation]

My Mac OS X box runs without any Windows processes at all.

Pfft.

Re:Big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, that's amazing! Hey, have you heard? Starcraft finally came out! Yay!

That's right, it doesn't run Windows processes. Pity none of the stuff it -does- run is worth talking about.

Re:Big deal

[halivar]

Well, processes period is kind of a new thing for you guys. ;P

What a load of crap

[Radioactive Zorm]

This is one of the articles that is just pure shit. They aren't really running windows with no services they just killed them all, a two year old could figure out how to do that. Running windows with no services should really mean being able to reboot and appear in a state with no services running. I'm also not so sure of there definition of 'basic functioning' to me that'd mean being able to surf the web atleast and not just having a glorified calculator. You'll note they just check by launching IE and not actually visiting any web pages.

Hahahahahaha!

[Anonymous Coward]

You described yourself as an "uber-geek" after already mentioning that you use Microsoft Windows!

You're funny!

WRONG!!

[DaedalusHKX]

Dell pcs ship with at least TWO pieces of known spyware that even MS Antispyware flags as critical.

And I'm talking about RECENT Dell optiplex and above... not some ancient POS like emachines or such. (which all ship with windows and spyware) and on the upside, explorer still comes with Alexa which IS known spyware.

Well What?

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

If you were to replace the word "windows" with "linux," the parent would be modded "flamebait" or "troll" as opposed to "funny." Assuming of course that the article was about linux.

Yes, but while I use both Linux and Windows, and am quite happy with both, I've never had Linux shut down on me unexpectedly either. Maybe I'm doing something wrong?

Re:Well What?

[Fareq]

I actually have... my linux box (RH Enterprise 3 WS) seems to crash if I leave it alone for about 32 hours. No errors are logged anywhere, and even moving the mouse periodically to get the screensaver to ask for password will prevent it.

no clue why...

Re:Well What?

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

I actually have... my linux box (RH Enterprise 3 WS) seems to crash if I leave it alone for about 32 hours.

I'm running an RHEL3 box that has been "up" for well over a year. Maybe you have a hardware issue?

Re:Well What?

[Chicago Wolves]

I've had that problem too, and found out it was a power setting issue in my BIOS. Try to tweak around with the ACPI settings in your BIOS.

Re:Well What?

[slonkak]

ACPI is the devil. Especially for FreeBSD 5+. It will not boot on some laptops unless you specifically disable ACPI.

Re:Well What?

[mrselfdestrukt]

Hmm. Might be because it's dead-rat. Try Slackware and call me in the morning.
Sorry but,unless you already re-installed DeadRatbut it sounds like hardware probs to me.
Anywhoo.On-topic. This article states what I have been wondering about for a very long time now.
Still, I use Windows because I have to ,I use Linux because I want to.

Re:Well What?

[Drooling Iguana]

Are you running an OpenGL screensaver? It could be a heat problem with your video card.

Re:Well What?

[fluffy99]

So you aren't keeping up on kernel updates, eh?

Windows Uptime: 221 ?!!

[MarkByers]

My Windows machine at work is currently at 221 hours of uptime.

I was just about to reply to this to say how either you must be lying, or else your system must be horribly insecure because you don't reboot it for the monthly critical updates. Then I noticed you wrote 221 hours and not 221 days.

Usually uptime is measured in days!

Re:Windows Uptime: 221 ?!!

[MountainMan101]

I just had to shutdown our lab server (just a group machine with some files, nothing critical). 113 days of uptime (Fedora Core 2). I asked the dept IT guy (all windows) and the department server has never been close.

221 hours made me laugh, next they'll be quoting Windows Vista uptime in minutes ;-)

Re:Windows Uptime: 221 ?!!

[toddestan]

I recently shutdown my Pentium 4M laptop. Prior to doing this it had 46 days of uptime. And it was always being suspended/resumed (yes, suspend does work in Windows XP). The reason I shut it down? I figured it was about time to install that memory upgrade that had been sitting on my desk the last few days.

Yeah, I know 46 days is not all that impressive. But I once did get a Windows 95b system all the way to the mysical 49.7 day limit, then it bluescreened.

Re:Windows Uptime: 221 ?!!

[Anonymous Coward]

221 days is not a problem.

At the office we have a W2K server (no, not a desktop) that had nearly 365 days of uptime. (yes, i know, patches?)

It had to be rebooted because of jerking around with policies Re: time from the domain vs time from a separate timeserver*.

The server is quite heavily used, and as of the month ago reboot has been patched. It runs a real-time database, including running our own homegrown drivers.

I can't go in too many details, but it is quite possible.

* It's embarrassing as hell to say "we had to reboot to change the clock", but that's how it ended up. Not by choice, but out of domain policy frustration.

Re:Windows Uptime: 221 ?!!

[dotgain]

(yes, suspend does work in Windows XP)

That's right. And when longhorn hits the streets, hopefully resume will too!

But seriously, I used to hibernate my laptop every time, but if you hibernate with the charger connected, and then wake up with it disconnected, the resume takes longer than a normal boot. It wakes up quickly, but once you hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete and log in the system starts thrashing like a freshly-booted WinME install, blanking the desktop and redrawing the icons and being generally unbearable.

Nice try. Suspend/Resume works, but like a lot of things in Windows, terribly.

Re:Windows Uptime: 221 ?!!

[RadioTV]

I have a Netware 3.2 box that was up for 820 days before I had to shut it down to replace a UPS. Then it was up for 712 days before I had to shut it down to move it. Now it is up to 564 days. It has all the patches released before support was stopped and I don't have to worry about security because we don't allow IPX to cross the router.

Re:Windows Uptime: 221 ?!!

[toddestan]

Nice try. Suspend/Resume works, but like a lot of things in Windows, terribly.

Nice try? It seems to work pretty well for me. If I had a lot of stuff open when I suspended it, it might sit there 15-30 seconds or so before it turns the screen on (hopefully upgrading it to 512MB will help that issue). Maybe if it does the same thing for other people, they might get impatient and reset it. But suspend/resume does work, though not as quick as Apple's laptops, but better than what I have seen in Linux (disclaimer: I have not tried Linux on a laptop in a while).

Re:Windows Uptime: 221 ?!!

[scottv67]

because we don't allow IPX to cross the router...

...and communicate with the 21st century.

;^)

Re:Windows Uptime: 221 ?!!

[Master of Transhuman]

In the end, somebody needs to do a nationwide survey of uptimes for Windows servers and UNIX/Linux servers - preferably other than Web servers. Anecdotal evidence is obviously insufficient.

As I've said before, a smart Windows server admin who has five or ten years experience watching Windows servers crash eventually figures out how to avoid that - and HE gets huge uptimes. But most Windows admins aren't that good.

We have to factor out the sys admin somehow and just look at the server data in the aggregate. Even if you believe UNIX/Linux sys admins are as a whole are smarter than MCSE's, this would still reduce that as an influencing factor somewhat.

No way Windows is going to win that one, however. No way.

Re:Windows Uptime: 221 ?!!

[mrselfdestrukt]

LOL. Thanks Scott. I now have coffee in my nose.
N

Re:Windows Uptime: 221 ?!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh.. Thats nothing, my Gentoo laptop (Centrino based) has been up for 68days 4minues now. And well suspend works, since i have to suspend it when i drive home from work, the battery is dead ;)

http://www.suspend2.net/

Re:Windows Uptime: 221 ?!!

[nzhavok]

I have a windows 2000 machine that has been up over 300 days.

c:\windows\system32\shutdown.exe -l

[digid]

would the "c:\windows\system32\shutdown.exe -l" still function in this stripped down system. This command would log you out. I'd test it out but I don't have access to a windows box right now.

More proof that Bill lied

[Anonymous Coward]

As if we needed more proof.

Microsoft, at one point during the antitrust trials, insisted that Windows would not run without IE.

Anyway, I find it refreshing that someone is actively working on ways to get rid of 'bloat'. The point is that Windows devotes a lot of resources to things that a given user may never use.

Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell

[gdav]

have been providing facts and utilities for years now, in the face of threats and obfuscation. Those with long memories will remember how they exposed the fact that NT Server and NT Workstation were the same binary product, but with different marketing and license terms, back in the mid-1990s.

Re:Sysinternals Microsoft

[p3d0]

Hmm, sounds like /proc.

Automating This Procedure, and debunking miths

[williamyf]

Probably you can automate this by using some windows scripting and the Process204.zip program from the Fine folks at BeyondLogic.org http://www.beyondlogic.org/

          This may be useful for maintenance purposes, as some posters commented in the article's comments zone. Not that is very wise to run a machine like that all the time, as the article itself says.

          But what I like the most about this, is that the article shows that WinNT 5.0 (A.K.A. Windows 2000) and WinNT 5.2 (A.K.A. Windows XP) can be trimmed down to a bare minimum. Another mith debunked.

          Other of my pet peves comes from the dos era. The slashdot crowd used to say that DOS can not mount a drive into a a directory to form a unified directory tree like in Unix. This was false then (please see the description of the JOIN command mor the method in DOS). The functionality was present in Win95 and 98, but seems absent in 2000 and XP.

          Miths like this abound on Slashdot and are repeated time and time again, until they become truth. Check first, post later.

Re:Automating This Procedure, and debunking miths

[Tadrith]

1. Right click on My Computer, and select Manage.
2. Under Storage, select Logical Disk Management.
3. Right click the drive you want to mount under a folder, and click "Change Drive Letters and Paths".
4. Click on Add.
5. Select the option to mount in an empty NTFS folder, and put the folder in.

If you aren't using NTFS, this may not work. I don't have a FAT32 machine handy, though!

Re:Automating This Procedure, and debunking miths

[kmmatthews]

First off, it's "myth," not "mith."

Second off, you're the one spreading myths - JOIN did not exist in DOS 6.22.

Re:Automating This Procedure, and debunking miths

[williamyf]

Thank you very much indeed.

Re:Automating This Procedure, and debunking miths

[williamyf]

Pirmero que nada, gracias por la correcion en la alabra "Myth". Veras, mi lengua nativa es el español, y a pesar que hablo Ingles y Frances bastante bien, algunos errores se me pasan...

If you cannot read the previous paragraph, feel free to use bablefish. But I assuere you, there are no insults of any kind there.

Second off, Join was in a companinon disk for MS-DOS 6.22 as can be seen here:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb; en-us;117600/

You are welcome!

Re:Automating This Procedure, and debunking miths

[Anonymous Coward]

NT 3.51 - First version of NT Workstation/Server
NT 4.0 - NT 4.0 Workstation/Server
NT 5.0 - Windows 2000 Professional/Server
NT 5.1 - Windows XP Professional/Home
NT 5.2 - Windows Server 2003

Check first, post later, eh?

Re:Automating This Procedure, and debunking miths

[value_added]

What you wrote is s essentially correct, but is a feature of NTFS, so FAT32 is out of the question.

The 'subst' command also works, as does the ResKit's 'linkd' and Sysinternals 'junction'. All of these, however, have limitations that aren't readily apparent, so none is a substitute for the 'Map Drive to Folder' approach (as though that isn't limited as well).

The feature is a welcome addition, though lame compared to what's possible in *nix. I won't hold my breath waiting for DOS remnants like drive letters will go away any time soon.

Re:Automating This Procedure, and debunking miths

[00lmz]

You can also use mountvol. Subst doesn't mount a drive in a directory, it creates a drive from an existing directory. The bad thing about mountvol is that it uses volume names like these: \\?\Volume{1805142b-7371-11d9-933e-806d6172696f}\. Yuck.

From the Windows 2000 Help file:

Mountvol

Creates, deletes, or lists a volume mount point.

Mountvol is a way to link volume partitions without requiring a drive letter in Windows 2000.

mountvol [drive:]path VolumeName

mountvol [drive:]path /d

mountvol [drive:]path /l

Parameters

[drive:]path

Specifies the existing NTFS directory folder where the mount point will reside.

VolumeName

Specifies the volume name that is the target of the mount point. If you do not specify a volume name, mountvol lists the volume names of all partitions.

/d

Removes the volume mount point from the specified folder.

/l

Lists the mounted volume name for the specified folder.

Re:Automating This Procedure, and debunking miths

[julesh]

XP 64-bit reports itself as 5.2, because it's based on the 2K3 kernel.

Check first, post later, eh?

My machine is running only 4 servicies

[Zx-man]

I'm currently writing this on a Windows Server 2003 machine configured that way. Is (the OS) has been reinstalled last night, configured in a way to suite a server sharing a workstation functionality. So it has 4 servicies running so far and is fully usable for productivity. The music is currently heard from the speakers - the sound system is the one of the 4 services curretly enabled. The only problem I'm currently experiencing is that the proxy server refuses to respond to a non-local address assigened to it, e.g. changing the "proxy server" setting in a web browser from XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX:3128 (PC's IP) to localhost:3128 is needed. The uptime utilitie says that it has been up for 2 days and a couple of hour. Therefore, I sould claim that that concept concept is quite good for makeing a ``non-overloaded'' server system...

Now if we could only have the GUI as on optional service?

Re:My machine is running only 4 servicies

[xsspd2004]

\HLM\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\Winlogon\Shell=c md.exe

is as close as it gets. No explorer is a great way to Windoz.

The best way to ungui is Linux/BSD. It gets the gunk out and comes in a new citrus scent. Now for a limited time try it absolutely free.

We're trying to get it on the shelves at Wal-Mart. Baby, when we do that we're going big time.

Re:Sysinternals Microsoft

[morcheeba]

Bah! Obviously you haven't tried strace and ltrace yet. It like "process explorer" on steroids. With a big robotic claw. And super mystical monkey powers. :) It'll show file handles, individual read/writes, mallocs... anything that requires a system or library call (even strcpy!).

De-infestation

[phorm]

Which sounds quite nice for killing off spyware nasties/etc on the system...

Re:De-infestation

[Anonymous Coward]

Especially when the drives are read only!

Re:De-infestation

[flatface]

mount -o remount,rw /

Re:De-infestation

[James_Aguilar]

It seems like doing much of anything with a read-only drive is pretty difficult. Maybe if you wanted to *read* the spyware binaries, but beyond that, what can you do? You can't write out any of the changes!

Re:De-infestation

[einhverfr]

Which sounds quite nice for killing off spyware nasties/etc on the system...

Lol.... First, I have yet to see spyware on a Linux system. Not to say it won't happen, but not yet....

Secondly, wiping it off a read-only file system requires a remount. Not too bad. However, it seems to me that having a custom init level (maybe 2 or 4) where only the scripts you need for recovery are loaded makes the most sense to me.

Re:De-infestation

[andreyw]

Spyware? Linux?

Lookup -o rw,remount option for mount =P

I used to do it...

[WRoach]

...back in 2001 when I was still squeezing every bit of ressources out of my 1996 P166, killing all unneeded services, but I hardly do it anymore.

But with all the processing power we can get for pennies nowaday, who can say he really needs to do this when you have and A64 and a gig of RAM?

TFA would have been insightfull 5 years ago. Luckly enough http://dhost.info/kyeu/mirror/blackviper/ was there when I needed it.

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN!! (MOD PARENT UP)

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent post hit it dead on. Mod that shit!

Finally a way to get rid of Winlogon viruses

[robberbarron]

As was noted in a comment to his blog, this technique can be used to kill Winlogon.exe. The most annoying and insidious malware is hooking itself into this process which, ordinarily, isn't even killed by booting into any of the "safe" modes. Man, if Adaware can run in this mode, my prayers are answered.

Now, the fact that Winlogon.exe can actually be subverted by malware is another story entirely...

Re:Finally a way to get rid of Winlogon viruses

[Utopia]

The right way is to "suspend" the viral program.
Then do whatever registry or other process modifications that are necessary.
You can use Process Explorer to suspend processes.

Winlogon.exe is not subverted in any ways -- what are you talking about?

Re:Feel "teh diference"

[Anonymous Coward]

famd is monitors files for changes and things like that (using dnotify afaik), it is used by things like Konqueror to monitor a folder for updates (and probably GNOME apps to).

It probably would be a good idea to move over to using gamin (uses the much better inotify if you have a new kernel), and the daemon is started by the application that wants to monitor the files (it replaces famd).

Portmap is a service that has to do with rpc.

Most likely what happened is in an update a program added a dependency on them (maybe nautilus if you use gnome).

Filters

[Anonymous Coward]

I always jack trolls and flamebait to +5. That way I get to the real content of a discussion.

common knowledge

[PacketScan]

Come on.. you didn't know this already.. Microsoft.. or Bloat soft is in Ka-hoots with intel. Hence the wintel rederic.. Time to call the AG

Shutting Down Windows...

[benjamindees]

No Start menu necessary! You just need to know the right options to rundll.

For instance, in Windows 98, it's:

C:\WINDOWS\RUNDLL32.EXE user,exitwindows

Google (along with a bit of experimentation) can help for other versions of Windows.

Re:Shutting Down Windows...

[Anonymous Coward]

Without winlogon running, the ExitWindows and ExitWindowsEx APIs don't work.

Re:Shutting Down Windows...

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't everyone use the shutdown.exe /F command?
I used to be upset that my system shut down so slowly... this fixed it. (Of course later I found out that the system was running fifty thousand things I didn't need...)
Of course, if you REALLY want to go back to the good old days, Progman.exe is still included in your base Windows install.
Mmmm. Progman.

Re:Shutting Down Windows...

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer alt-sysrq-b, thank you very much :-)

Re:Shutting Down Windows...

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows wont shut down because of LSASS and other critical services being missing, he states that in the article. He's already in Task Manager, and there's a shutdown menu there that works readily when the option to Shutdown/Log off is actually going to work.

easier way to get the same effect..

[aurelian]

find an old 286 and install Windows 3.0.

Re:yeah, but who needs internet explorer? firefox.

[fbartho]

your desktop needs it. it has a pseudo secret affair with the MSIE. any help program on windows, and a few other things. Iexplore.exe is such a slut huh?

Re:WRONG AGAIN!!

[toddestan]

Well, that's not a Microsoft problem, that's a DELL problem. A clean install of Windows will not have any spyware in it.

Re:Sysinternals Microsoft

[e40]

autoruns is invaluable to cleaning the crap that programs install and have set to run when you login/boot.

Got forkbomb?

[toadlife]

Ahile back, I was recently playing around with the various forkbomb scripts that exist out there. To my dismay, even my beloved FreeBSD 5.4 machine was rendered usless by it.

Let me know when an OS exists that is immune to crashes. I've yet to find one.

Re:Got forkbomb?

[NuclearDog]

Last time I ran a forkbomb on my FreeBSD machine (was 5.2.1 at that time) I was able to SSH in and kill it no problem after leaving it running for a fair while.

The web server was still accessible (although very, very laggy) and the machine still handled nat routing just fine.

If you're actually concerned about this, try reading `man login.conf`.

Re:Got forkbomb?

[toadlife]

I know how to keep it from happening - I was jsut suprised at how effectively it was able to shackle my machine.

I didn't try to ssh into it from another machine - that probably would have worked.

All I know is, there was nothing I could do at the machine to stop it. I think an OS should allways be able to accept input at the local console - no matter what the DFO does.

Re:Got forkbomb?

[giliposha]

I guess to the last extent Alt+Sys.Req+E (or +I) would terminate all processes.

Re:Got forkbomb?

[NuclearDog]

I didn't even try the console. I only fire up the KVM + monitor when something is seriously FUBAR.

If SSH is still going, I don't bother.

ND

Re:Got forkbomb?

[toadlife]

Well, it was my Desktop machine.

So, WindowsXP without services...

[Not_Wiggins]

... is just basically DOS?

Yeah your linux box will foil that script...

[toadlife]

...but that configuration you have is not a solution to the overall problem. It's hard limit which on many systems would not be feasable at all.

There has to be a better way.

Re:Yeah your linux box will foil that script...

[Retric]

Why should you let fork add more process when their is not enough resorces to handel them? A real os should limit the amount of recorces any one family of processes can use.
AKA A forks B1 - B20
B1 Forks C1(1) - C1(20)...

All of these are children of B1 so they all share the same resource pool which is less than the total resources for the system. B1 might be able to fork 50,000 process but that's the limit ALL of it's decendents. You can even set limits so say non OS functions that are spawned on boot are limited to 25% of the CPU.

Re:yeah, but who needs internet explorer? firefox.

[toddestan]

I find it more interesting that such a stripped down system can run IE, as opposed to FireFox, because IE is so tied into the OS.

Apologies to DNA...

[caveat]

Ah, this is obviously some strange usage of the word work that I wasn't previously aware of.

Re:"Windows" and "Administrator" in the same senta

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody could possibly like you.

Shutting down Windows Services

[pakitloss]

Can we do that with Microsoft Corp. in general? I have found that no matter how many Windows services I shut down my Linux desktop still runs fine.......

They Would Say That

[verbatim_verbose]

Of course they would say they are surprised that Internet Explorer would work under these conditions. Remember that one of the claims in the antitrust trial was that due to the architecture of the system, it basically wasn't possible to remove IE from the OS.

Easy

[caveat]

At the login window, enter ">console" for the user, no password. Then use your regular l/p to get a bare Darwin shell. On my dual G4, top shows 99.8% idle when I'm on the console.

Reminds me of the recent new days...

[Anonymous Coward]

"In The Olden Days, you could install a Linux disto without 10,000 daemons running... ah, those were the days... "

Ahhhh, someone with a short memory is more like it. I remember when Red Hat and a few others were being dinged for running a lot of unnecessary services upon a default installation. They and others cleaned up their act. I'm guessing this is the point when you came into the picture.

Magic app for turn on/off all services

[MrJones]

I'm dreaming about a magical application that can stop all services so you can play you favorite game with all resources availables. Later, you can press a button to start all services again.

Maybe this article can show the path in how to do that ...

Re:Magic app for turn on/off all services

[xsspd2004]

Well, they are better men than I. I've disabled all but about 14 for a domain logging on, DHCP gettin, sound playing, file sharing type machine at work. And all but 5 for my game playing Internet attached machine at home.

If you want to get that 5 down to fewer you can write a bat/cmd file and issue the commands

net stop service

then copy the file and change the contents to net start service to turn them back on. You then have a MAGIC script file to turn your services off and on. You need to get the real name of the service out of services.msc. You can't stop and start them by description.

Hope that helps. Of course you can always use different hardware profiles to have different services enabled.

I'll stick with BUM on Ubuntu, personally.

Re:Magic app for turn on/off all services

[MrJones]

Nice Tip, many thanks!
Now I need to know which service I can stop, sure google can help me with that ;)

inflammatory blurb, again

[kayen_telva]

why dont you return your warez version of xp for the real one that does not default to 48 services running. or is that hyperbole ?

Re:Feel "teh diference"

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an idiot.

running this way now

[neovoxx]

Per TFA, I killed everything except what I wanted. Now I'm only running Firefox and Gaim. Pretty quick, too. Only disappointment is that it kills windows audio in the process, so music is a no go. I can still access mapped drives, surf the intarweb and even run some 3D benchmarks. This really does improve 3D performance - I saw some good 10-20 FPS improvements in 3DMark 05. No good for games; however, as there is no sound.

Re:running this way now

[corsec67]

I would assume that some of the gain you saw is from the fact that the OS doesn't have to deal with the audio any more. It doesn't have to mix multiple voices, adjust volumes, or anything. I would assume that this would be a significant amount of processing power.

How to debunk miths or what's your frequency Bill?

[WillAffleckUW]

Miths like this abound on Slashdot and are repeated time and time again, until they become truth.

Are you sure you don't mean MIPS?

win help

[Anonymous Coward]

can someone point me in the direction of a windows help forum? i have a problem when i rename a file or folder, i have to hit F5 to refresh before the change is active, and i have a piece of spy/malware that i can't get rid of. Thanks!

Re:"Windows" and "Administrator" in the same senta

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're a Linux User, or luser for short?

Math skills.

[zippthorne]

About the summary,

Since when does 0 == 2?

Re:Math skills.

[Bambi Dee]

Process != service!

Re:Sysinternals Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

By FAR the best feature is you can right click on a process and there is a menu option to Google that process name.

Actually... Alexa.... :)

[DaedalusHKX]

Alexa IS spyware and it even comes with IE 6 SP2 :)

Also, Dell's a microsoft partner. Perhaps M$ should keep a tighter leash on their high profile partners. And vice versa... of course this is highly unlikely in a country where nothing but the bottom dollar matters to the majority. :) And let's not beat around the bush, spyware and virus cleanup is the only reason a large majority of customer support companies are still in business...

Re:Actually... Alexa.... :)

[Rhipf]

It looks like this is only a potential problem and has been corrected/removed from Windows XP SP2. I did a quick search on Alexa and found this site that explains it in quite nice detail. http://www.imilly.com/alexa.htm

So...

[Anonymous Coward]

...does this mean we'll soon see window managers for the Windows kernel?

Hmm, I recognise you

[Julian Morrison]

You're the guy who tried to kill the kernel idle daemon, because it was eating 90% of his
CPU time.

Re:Hmm, I recognise you

[PhrostyMcByte]

no, that was dvorak.

Re:Hmm, I recognise you

[cybersaga]

I wasn't quite convinced that this guy is in fact an idiot, but, well... that sealed it.

Re:Feel "teh diference"

[temojen]

There is no X nor desktop environments installed on that server. Just Apache, PostgreSQL, MySQL, sshd.

KDE

[4volt]

Sounds like a good way to run KDE over a windows box as a bastard hybrid.

Even Better Solution

[greenhybrid]

I've actually discovered an even better solution, myself. With a little bit of toying around, I've effectively eliminated unexpected program crashes and virus attacks while still allowing all useful applications to run on my favorite operating system. See, I found this little button on my Dell case and pushed it. And then I took out my Powerbook.

Less BSODs

[gaanagaa]

With more services running on your background, youre more safer against the BSOD.

hey wow

[pizza_milkshake]

you don't even need firefox runni

Re:Sysinternals Microsoft

[Barlo_Mung_42]

I also want to give a shout out to them for DbgView. My life would be so much harder without it.
When SP2 beta came out DbgView stopped working. In desperation I sent him an email asking if he planned an update. Within minutes he sent me a version that worked. Very cool.

Re:Feel "teh diference"

[Badanov]

famd is a component of Tripwire. portmap is used in NFS.

Re:Feel "teh diference"

[Anonymous Coward]

Building from source is another great example. Linux people tend to see this as the best feature of Linux, that you custom compile things, and you don't have to worry about binary compatiblity.

Worry about binary compatibility? You say that like it's a source of trouble rather than a very useful feature. Just look at the kernel module nightmare to see how much of an "advantage" lack of binary compatibility is.

TFAuthor can't count

[Anonymous Coward]

SP2 has 32 services enabled by default. That's less than 3 dozen, not "almost 4 dozen."

Re:TFAuthor can't count

[mrselfdestrukt]

Yeah, but some of them are really big... Like eggs.

Re:TFAuthor can't count

[VoidWraith]

Standard marketing speech. 32 is almost three dozen, and three is almost four.

Re:TFAuthor can't count

[VoidWraith]

But as an addendum, there are way more than 32. I counted up to 30 and got about a third of the way down my services list. 10 are not microsoft, meaning that something like 80 are! 4 dozen was a safe estimate... Goodness I've got to disable some of these!

MOD PARENT UP!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny stuff man...

so....

[museumpeace]

which service to I kill to make ie go away?

Re:so....

[museumpeace]

yeah, I had "troll" coming for that remark. I keep forgetting that some of us have no sense of humor whatsoever.

Why?

[cyberslooth99]

Okay why would it even matter?It doesn't increase the speed very much, and one more thing. I can't log off! I guess I shouldn't of tried this on a computer with multiple windows acounts.So why does anyone want to do this?If you want to get your computer to crash, you can just switch your OS to macintosh.

Try no hard drive.

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

My.. my friend (yeah, that's the ticket) was messing around with a program to try to disable the copy protection of the latest splinter cell game, and to do that, the program "un-hooks" your physical CD drives. he accidently clicked the wrong button and the hard drives were disabled. Windows kept running. He could open "My Computer" and all it had was "Shared Documents" and "User's Documents" windows crashed a few minutes later and was back to normal on reboot. Never did get the game working, though.

intel won't like this

[asscroft]

They're already mad that MS hasn't made software buggy enough to require a next gen system.

Last week it was an article on running W2k on a 500 or something, and now this.

Good for users, bad for retailers. (or is it, who's to say I don't want the latest 64 bit all everything and a 500 chugging away in the corner.)

You CAN Kill System Processes From Task Manager

[Master of Transhuman]

Supposedly - IF you run Task Manager from PowerPrompt which starts up a shell with System privilege.

Hard to find a downloadable copy of PowerPrompt though, you really have to search Google for it.

Great tool for trashing spyware that's protected by Windows itself.

Re:You CAN Kill System Processes From Task Manager

[value_added]

This link will show you how to start a shell under the SYSTEM account.

Re:You CAN Kill System Processes From Task Manager

[Stauf]

You can just make a scheduled task to run Task Manager as SYSTEM - works just the same without some obscure bit of software.

Re:You CAN Kill System Processes From Task Manager

[Master of Transhuman]

Yeah, but that's Cygwin. Not very efficient to install Cygwin on a client's machine just to kill a process.

Nice to know, though.

Re:You CAN Kill System Processes From Task Manager

[Master of Transhuman]

Nice idea - I'll remember that. More work, though, than just running a piece of software, no matter how obscure.

Re:You CAN Kill System Processes From Task Manager

[value_added]

Yeah, but that's Cygwin. Not very efficient to install Cygwin on a client's machine just to kill a process.

My own opinion is that it's more efficient to install Cygwin to do anything on a Windows system. :-)

The following, however, will work similarly:

c:\> at \\clientbox 11:17:00 /interactive cmd.exe

Re:You CAN Kill System Processes From Task Manager

[Master of Transhuman]

Thanks, another one I'll remember.

Tiny windows

[extropy]

Does anyone recall the name of the projects for creating tiny versions of windows 98 and xp? I've googled it and searched on slashdot, but cant find anything.. I think it just involved deleting files and fixing any problems that came up.

Re:Tiny windows

[HermanAB]

Try BartsPE, much cooler than minimalist Windoze.

Re:Tiny windows

[belg4mit]

98Lite? http://www.litepc.com/

Brilliant! Allow home-grown tagging for an anchor,
use the URI as the anchor text, but still append
a stupid [foo.com]. Brilliant!

Re:Feel "teh diference"

[colinrichardday]

So compiling intimidates the masses? Hmm. . . I suppose that literacy would have intimidated medieval serfs. Maybe the masses ought to be "intimidated", not in the sense of being pushed around, but in the sense of having to confront their ignorance of computers.

Now you done it, Let MS know what everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

else already knew

Too bad

[V_Pundit]

If shutting down all the services would prevent IE from running I would take the time to shut them all down on my XP machine.

shhh!

[smash]

I think we just discovered the Windows Vist "security" features.

smash.

What is the list of least amount of services

[Anonymous Coward]

in order to have a functional networked Windows workstation?

Based on my research last time I installed XP and tried to optimize it (by disabling useless services), every windows guru seemed to have a different list with the standard disclaimer: set service blah to Manual just in case...

Funny thing was that there was one (or two) service NOBODY seemed to know what it does.

IE works but no LAN - pffft

[weighn]

disable those services but keep it functional:
Windows XP Home and Professional Service Pack 2 Service Configurations by Black Viper http://dhost.info/kyeu/mirror/blackviper/WinXP/ser vicecfg.htm

Re:Feel "teh diference"

[temojen]

neither of which are installed on that server.

RAM = Good!

[Anonymous Coward]

LOOK at me! I own all of you because I have more than 64MB of RAM! Ha ha ha. My comp pwns urs. All you n00bs worrying about services. :)

Re:Feel "teh diference"

[salimma]

Linux is a minimal approach that defines only the kernel, leaving everything else up to the option of the user.

Sorry to nitpick, but Linux leaves everything else up to the option of the distributor - unless you're running Linux From Scratch, which I doubt most users do.

What is this Windows Thing I keep hearing about?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares about this stuff? The whole architecture is preposterous, so can you really be surprised when it behaves oddly and key figures don't even know how it works? The answer is no.

Re:Feel "teh diference"

[gkuz]

Maybe the masses ought to be "intimidated", not in the sense of being pushed around, but in the sense of having to confront their ignorance of computers.

Do you drive a car? Do you do your own machine work? Do you re-program the fuel injection system controller? How about the automatic transmission's shift points? Why not, are you intimidated by those tasks?

Just as the vast majority of users of automobiles have NO F'ING IDEA what goes on inside, but can successfully drive to work and to the grocery store, so most users of Wintel computers can (and probably should) have no f'ing idea what goes on inside.

If your car required 5% of the level of maintenance a typical Linux desktop requires, you'd consider it broken.

Re:Sysinternals Microsoft

[Optic7]

I was thinking the same thing. Those guys just rule. Give another few points to process explorer for the fact that it can kill (protected?) processes that task manager can't, as well as entire process trees at once, and individual threads within processes. All of that has come in very handy when cleaning spyware.

Interesting but not news

[KarmaBlackballed]

This is not news. In the 15 years I've been running Windows all I've ever had was poor service if any at all.

Windows XP Embedded

[Anonymous Coward]

Gees, you guys sound like you've never heard of Windows XP embedded. I've used it to boot windows kernels around 25MB, and choose exactly what I want in them or not in them. And it's free (as in beer) to experiment with. Get with it, people...

But the real question

[chunkwhite86]

Is why do we give a crap? We know better than to use that garbage out of redmond.

And what are all these 'ctsr.exe' and 'winlogon.exe'?

Re:Sysinternals Microsoft

[typical]

On Linux, this would be not just free but open source and part of the kernel -- look in /proc.

Other handy monitoring utilities are strace, netstat, ltrace, lsof, and lslk.

Don't get me wrong -- Sysinternals makes Windows much more bearable, but Windows still ain't Linux.

Re:Feel "teh diference"

[Anonymous Coward]

are you kidding?? Bill Gates didn't get rich writing a lot of checks....

my work computer is Windows

[BroncoInCalifornia]

My employer owns it. They are in charge of what services run on it. If they wanted to, I would have to let them run Windows ME on it. Fortunately they are not that daft. At home though I do not do Windows.

Re:Feel "teh diference"

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if you like the BSD way of doing thigns, that's cool, but don't assume that it applies to everyone.

I'm not really sure what you mean by this; FreeBSD has been pretty braindead easy for me. Granted, I know my way around a computer, but it's really not all that difficult to learn to type "pkg_add -r" or even "make install clean," and pretty much everything works out-of-the-box once it's installed.

It is very possible to have a system that is more flexible and stable than Windows and yet have it work right the first time, without tweaking. FreeBSD, some Linux distros, and especially Mac OS X all fulfill this (if not perfectly then close enough for many users).

Don't assume that the differences between Windows and the rest of the OS world are all due to a difference of opinion or philosophy; there are some things that Windows just doesn't do well enough, and they have nothing to do with making the OS easier for the average user.

anyone remember this

[rotagivan]

I remember that there was some way to 'close' the start menu bar in either 95 or 98. You could have just the desktop with icons. Does anyone remember how to do this?

Do you use GNOME?

[sygin]

I am trying KDE at the moment. Gnome/Nautilus would stall on me and bring everything down. I am sure that the problem is SAMBA related.

Turn off CPU throttling

[b00m3rang]

The reason it's slower on battery is because it's slowing down the CPU to conserve power. If you turn this feature off (usually in a systray icon or BIOS setup), it'll boot just as fast.

Re:Turn off CPU throttling

[Filip22012005]

That's a strange way to conserve power. It takes less power per second, but you have to wait more seconds till it's available? I suppose it has something to do with the inability to make throttling really dynamic...

Re:Turn off CPU throttling

[b00m3rang]

Yeah, well their goal is to be able to boast longer runtime, not the ability to process more data on one battery charge. Since most people's computers are waiting for them more often than the other way around, it works for some.

Worked on one today with 122 Days

[b00m3rang]

2k3 Server. Then again, I built it from scrach and installed the OS, so it had half a chance :).

(FreeBSD admin by choice, Windows admin by necessity)

All hail Sysinternals

[b00m3rang]

Using a few of their tools, I was able to track down exactly why a customer's server had suspiciously tripled over the past 2 days. There's no reason the nVidia driver should be transferring packets with a german dialup account. Ever. Especially considering this particular machine had no nVidia hardware in it.

Re:All hail Sysinternals

[TheLink]

hmm interesting. So what was happening in the end?

Re:All hail Sysinternals

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess is the nVidia driver got infected by a virus that couldn't be detected by antivirus software because the virus was either custom made for that system or not widespread enough to be reported.

Server - server's bandwidth

[b00m3rang]

typo

lsass.exe

[jurt1235]

I seriously thought it was spyware. Since when you kill it, the system just keeps running. So it is a part of windows after all, hum....

Wow, neato!

[mlylecarlin]

Wow, so I turned off everything I could except explorer, Csrss, and opera. I expected my external wireless device to be long dead, but I clicked on a link to make sure. Surprise, it worked! Sweet, sweet functionality.

What's more amazing is, the last few days, this computer has been losing HTTP access every few minutes. Now it works fine. Conclusion: I have a virus somewhere in the higher processes.

Hooray for knowledge!

Re:OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG whatta POS, this SOB threw a BSOD on me.

FFS, use your SO for fun games like in the grand old days, have good time in multitude of ways. Just don't touch Microsoft, it's known they're all *happy campers*.

Exactly

[Moraelin]

Yep, I wholeheartedly aggree with your whole message.

Once Linux started shipping on CD's, as opposed to the early stack-o-floppies installs, the first reaction was to install and activate everything they could possibly download and pack on that CD.

(And I suppose the fact that at the time the flamewar was "but my Linux system gives me more free stuff than your Windows comes with", also didn't help the cause. Everyone just _had_ to pack 5 web servers and 20 IRC clients on a CD, and offer to install them by default, just to brag about how much more stuff they include than MS does.)

I didn't use RH at the time, but I do still remember installing SuSE in 1999. (Although I did briefly have Linux installed too, the stack-o-floppies way, prior to 1999 I was by and large an OS/2 fanboy.)

Ooer. Now that offered to install everything and the kitchen sink by default, and pretty much everything depended on everything else. I _know_ at least Apache was installed and started by default, because some documentation module depended on it. But it's more like it offered to install and start by default some 2-3 web servers, _and_ MySQL and god knows what else.

By comparison, nowadays most distros got a bit more clue. And then there's Gentoo. I'm not the biggest fan of Gentoo generally, but there you only have the stuff you've emerged, and the stuff it had a dependency on. If you haven't explicitly emerged Apache or PHP or such, there's just no way you'll have a web server on that machine.

And, yeah, you're right about the heavyweight GUIs and desktop managers. Looking back in retrospect at the times when we used to brag "my Linux starts faster and uses less memory" with a straight face, I have to wonder where and what went wrong.

I still remember compiling and starting KDE 2.0 on my old 128 MB K6-III. I mean, gah, all my memory was used up with just that and X before I even started any programs. And it just went downhill from there. Nowadays Windows XP actually loads faster, used up less RAM and is more responsive than a KDE 3.x desktop, and that's just bloody sad.

Mind you, I too use a more lightweight desktop, which keeps things a lot snappier. I'm on XFCE at the moment, and for a long time I was a IceWM+DFM proponent. Gave me something pretty close to a Windows desktop (DFM managed the desktop nicely, IceWM took care of the task bar and menu) on a couple of megs RAM.

But still, as soon as I load a couple of programs, I get all the GNOME2 and KDE libraries in RAM anyway.

Bought a car yesterday...

[BarryNorton]

Took off the doors, ripped out the seats and the windscreens, removed the exhaust and the air filter and then drained all the fluid from the steering... still works!

MOD PARENT OVERRATED

[BarryNorton]

This guy wouldn't recognise insight if it spontaneously occurred to him!

Now that I've scanned through the comments...

[Hosiah]

I'm pretty surprised that this wasn't common knowledge! Here, all this time, I thought everybody ran their Windows system this way!

Those of you who had Windows back when it was 3.1, scanned the famous "for Dummies" books, absorbed Peter Norton's work, learned QBasic, and wrote your own DOS batch scripts are with me on this, perhaps? Windows can quite handily be "lobotomized" into obeying your wishes! Even the famous binaries can be edited using a hex editor, which is how we fixed our systems before Linux came along.

Regardless of how stupid the priprietary software vendors tell you you are, I would like to once again point out that it's YOUR computer which YOU paid for, and you have the right to change ANYTHING on your system that you want, regardless of what the EULA says.

Read through your system today! You'll find config.sys, autoexec.bat, win.ini and company in pretty much the same form they were back in 1992. The same lousy .dll's and CAB files. The DOS utilities are still there. You can still make a Windows boot disk and run your system from that. Microsoft actually changes little from one release to another, they just patch it and play a shell game to make it look like you got something for your money when you bought the new version.

Yes, Windows shills, it turns out that we Linux geeks aren't bashing M$ all this time out of bigotry: we bash M$ because we are computer geeks who Know Our Stuff!

A Windows SOE can be robust...

[TapeCutter]

I agree that a good SOE version of Windows very rarely crashes. The only way I can deliberately crash my system at work is to dump out large volumes of text to the command prompt from a telnet session. It gets to a certain point and then, blip, the bios screen starts counting ram (no BSOD). I bumped up the default buffers and it seems to be happy now. The main reason for rebooting my machine is the monthly auto update ritual.

Even my 98 box at home will run for several weeks without a reboot (I wish my DSL modem would do the same). Once or twice a year I will get some nasty spyware app at home that can take hours to remove (it used to be weekly before the kids grew up and left home). Windows stability gets a bad wrap due to spyware / virus infections and sometimes immature Linux zelots that don't know the first thing about it (ooooh, I will burn in karma hell for that one).

I think part of it's flakey image also derives from early versions. I started working as a programmer just after Win3.1 came on the scene. Now that was a dog, you had to sacrifice several chickens just to keep it up for 24 hours. Often you would have to delete the sawp files just to get it back up again. However, in that era, anything unix cost an arm and a leg compared to Windows. The PHB's would put up with Windows problems in an effort to minimize costs. Kind of ironic now that a stable Linux is available for free, don't ya think?

Re:A Windows SOE can be robust...

[cbiltcliffe]

I started working as a programmer just after Win3.1 came on the scene. Now that was a dog, you had to sacrifice several chickens just to keep it up for 24 hours. Often you would have to delete the sawp files just to get it back up again.

Odd. I found Windows 3.1 and WfW 3.11 to be two of the most stable versions of Windows I've ever used.

I set up a voice modem and WfW 3.11 as an answering machine on an old 486, using some piece of crap software. I could ignore it for a couple of weeks without problems, just firing up the monitor to check for new messages. I didn't ever have to reboot it for stability problems.
The only problem I ever ran into with it was to do with 3.x's horrendous multi-tasking. Whenever it was recording a message, and needed to dump it's buffer to the hard drive, it wouldn't record for a quarter second or so while the hard drive activity was going on. If somebody happened to be giving their phone number at that point, it could easily drop a digit from the recording.

I've upgraded the machine to a Pentium 90, and the OS to Win95 (got rid of the dropouts during the recording), and even it's surprisingly stable.
No anti-virus, screen saver, or any other software running other than the phone program, and it runs for weeks at a time.
I guess the key to Win9x stability is to not run any software......

Re:A Windows SOE can be robust...

[TapeCutter]

"The only problem I ever ran into with it was to do with 3.x's horrendous multi-tasking."

Win3.x did not have multitasking, it had a message driven GUI that, (if used properly), gave the illusion of multi-tasking. You could get exclusive control of the machine by simply not returning from the message loop.

The 3.x application I was working on was the client end for a large telco's job dispatch system (I also worked on the middleware that ran on a hanfull of NT3.51 boxes, the server end was HPUX). The application ran on tablet PC's and laptops using wireless ip comms (yes way back in '95), it even had an auto update feature (saved the Telco $2M in labour costs per client upgrade). We had 8000 captive users in all corners of Australia that connected via GSM, Sattelite, PSTN or Radio. It was replaced after 7 years of service by handhelds and a web application that ironically took a coule of years to become as stable as the 3.1 client. The real reason the PHB's spent $100M on hardware and software was so that they could franchise the repair/intsall work and recoup $600M from the sale of the redundant depots (real estate).

The strangest production bug I came across was X++ incremented a counter by 3!!! I never found the root cause for that one (I could see it in the disassembled code of the binary but a recompile produced the correct instructions). To see an example of how much MS have improved, try doing anything to a 100+ page document via word on 3.x

"I guess the key to Win9x stability is to not run any software"

A stand alone anything with a low workload is great for stability but is only usefull in limited situations.

Re:Feel "teh diference"

[Magada]

famd is a file alteration monitoring daemon. Gets installed by default with Gnome in latter-day distros, for some weird reason. Doesn't do much good, but may be useful as part of an IDS, or, ironically, of a good rootkit.

Portmap turns RPC (Remote Procedure Call) program numbers into DARPA protocol port numbers. It must be running in order to make RPC calls. Services that use RPC include NFS (used by Samba, for example). This could also be part of a rootkit, since RPC == remote procedure calls.

So, try to remember what you've installed lately that has these things as dependencies. Failing that, take the machine offline and go all forensic on its A55

Defragmentation

[bcmm]

I wonder if you can run the defragmenter (probably command line) in this mode.

Even in safe mode, you get some unmovable files (i.e. files which are open).

not graceful

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it is this silent failing without any feedback (what you call 'graceful') that has been a long term major design annoyance of the Windows line. Things just mysteriously stop working, it seems like the OS is just decaying away, and finally you just have to reboot to fix it. It's like the OS is running into exceptions is certain modules, so it just silently disables those modules, instead of crashing outright, at least for the moment. Such extreme ugliness. But this is more in the past now, since 2000 and XP this is much less of a problem.

More Shortcuts

[Anonymous Coward]

ctrl-esc pulls up the start menu on any version of Windows I have used. It's really only a useful shortcut if you have a keyboard without the spiffy Windows logo key. For those who do have that spiffy key: (In order of my own preferences for usefulness.)

• win-r -run dialog
• win-l -lock computer or fast user switch
• win-d -show desktop (hides all windows temporarily)
• win-m -minimize all (except windows that can't be minimized)
• win-b -moves focus to the taskbar - use tab and arrow keys to get where you want
• win-e -windows explorer
• win-f -search
• win-u -accessibility utility manager

There are probably more...

Re:More Shortcuts

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry...more specifically, win-b targets the system tray.

Why the Windows Bashing?

[quibbs0]

Why does the slashdot crowd always insist on beating the hell out of Windows? Sure there are flaws and vulnerabilities but every system has these I think Windows takes the most heat because it is the most commonly used.

Personally, I'm running a 2 or 3 year old computer with Windows XP and the thing boots up in about 20 seconds. I haven't had a single instance of spyware since the combination of SP2 and Spybot.

As a network admin, I find the tools supplied by Microsoft to be pretty helpful. I can basically do my job without ever having to leave my desk thanks to group policy and all the MMC functionality. Hell I don't even have to physicall go to the server to edit the policies.

As for the new version of Windows...Why don't you all have a contest to see who can come up with a more generic line than "Wow it looks like a Mac now! We waited x amount of years for a new desktop theme! etc etc etc"

I recognize that Microsoft is a monopoly but they also have a decent product. Lighten up!

And by posting this, I'm sure I'm in for some creative responses.

Re:Why the Windows Bashing?

[Anonymous Coward]

And by posting this, I'm sure I'm in for some creative responses.

Hows this. Do you prefer sucking Microsoft's cock, or taking it up your ass. Or just ramming your nose down Microsoft's crack.

Re:Feel "teh diference"

[Anonymous Coward]

> Building from source is another great example. Linux people tend to see this as the best feature
> of Linux, that you custom compile things, and you don't have to worry about binary compatiblity.

Didn't IKEA patent this technology a long time ago?

Re:Feel "teh diference"

[colinrichardday]

Bad analogy. Computers are made to be configurable. Also, cars have better encapsulation, in that you don't need to know the internal functions to avoid other cars.

People did use to tweak their cars (I don't own one) before the engines started getting sealed.

Are you suggesting that the various flavors of Microsoft Windows require less maintenance? What kind of "maintenance" does the Linux desktop require?

Last time I ran XP SP2 was awhile back... but.

[DaedalusHKX]

Alexa still came up on Adaware SE... check it and let me know if it still does :)

always!

[globaljustin]

automatic slashdot post generator:

1. post an article with the words 'windows' 'internet explorer' 'linux' 'opensource' 'apple' or 'gates'

2. post reply to said article in which a perfectly smart, capable computer geek has a problem while using a linux-based opensource OS

3. reply to that by a nerd with WAAAAY too much free time, enough free time to while away hours of trial and error bud fixing in linux (which you all KNOW is what is really required to run open source) who without any humor belittles the computert skills of the original postert

and there you have it...

maybe you have a hardware issue?

i'm laughing, because you appear to have phrased your comment to at least appear to be helpful, but..oh yes, you are a flamebait...your post is nothing more than shit-talking to feed your nerd ego.

moderators, don't let this continue, b/c it does nothing to promote true dialogue, just the same old back and forth.