Microsoft Quietly Fixes Windows XP Resource Hog Problem

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft indicated this week that it has fixed a Windows XP resource-hog problem associated with the system's SVCHOST.EXE processes. Windows XP users affected by this problem typically found that the operating system was using up system resources for 15 minutes to an hour after startup, making it difficult to use the machine during that period. The Microsoft Update team had vowed last month to spend the holiday break tackling the issue, which has plagued some users for years. The fix involved stopping the system from perpetually checking Internet Explorer updates. Microsoft indicated that the fix was rolled out on Tuesday."

Comments

yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Bye bye Windows 8 hello xp

Re:yes

[TheGoodNamesWereGone]

Bravo! http://youtu.be/TAryFIuRxmQ

Re:yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Bye bye Windows 8 hello xp

Maybe they need to be forced to roll out a similar fix for win 7 as that has the same bug in it .

Probably the same in 8 , 8.1 , & 9 ..

Re:yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that they're done, can they go help with the Healthcare.gov website? It's the perfect fit. They're comically inept, vowing to work to fix a problem in a... why not call it an operating system... that Misrosoft has REPEATEDLY killed. Talk about polishing the brass on the Titanic, it's like they've just announced they've fixed the boiler as the hull broke into pieces and sank.

That's awesome though that it took years to figure out which program was hogging resources, and how to fix it. It's like the TV's picture went out and it took them years to figure out that there was nothing wrong with the cable, it was the TV itself that was broken. It's basic troubleshooting and it took them years.

Bunch of clowns.

Re:yes

[hairyfeet]

Personally I find it ironic as hell that they FINALLY fix this problem...with less than 4 months left before EOL. They did the same thing IIRC with Win2K and reminds me of Mozilla with their "There is NO memory leak, it "works for me", the problem is you"...denial right up until they quietly fixed the memory leak they had said didn't exist. I know I submitted my first "SVCHOST hangs system in XP" bug report back when I was running the RTM of XP X64 and XP in a dual boot back in...wow that was 2005, how time flies.

I'm just glad I got my customers all switched to Win 7 ages ago so I won't have to play "race to the finish" with XP. There is a couple dual boots but the customers haven't booted into XP in ages so no worries there, I can just remove those next time they come in for work.

Re: yes

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm betting some manager's bonus was at stake. "Your count of bugs over five years old must be zero at the next measurement."

Re:yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Much confirmed. Still waiting for a fix on Win 7 (it's affected me for years, sometimes it hangs for ~30 minutes after startup).

My roommates quite often have to restart after restarting, as their 8.1 system is completely unusable until their system stops thrashing after startup.

just in time

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it always better late than never?

Suppose if they didn't get it over the holiday and it wasn't done by April 8th, they could have perhaps saved themselves all the bother and turned off all update checks (since none would be forthcoming, why bother to check)...

Re:just in time

[David_Hart]

Not for me, dam it... My lease finally ran out on my old XP work laptop and I got a new one with a corporate Windows 7 image last week.

However, I'm happy to finally be running a modern 64bit OS with 12GB of RAM. My only complaints are that there were no SSD options and that it took me about 4 hours to get patches, fixes, and drivers loaded to fix some issues with the corporate image.

Not much of a microsoft fan...

[roc97007]

...but that was pretty cool. Thanks.

Over a decade

[C18H27NO3]

Windows XP has been out for 12 years and they just started to look into the problem last month?

Re:Over a decade

[arbiter1]

i never had a problem with it for 8 years i used it.

Re:Over a decade

[mtthwbrnd]

It shows exactly how much disrepect that MS has for its customers. they could not care any less about the "User Experience". Anybody requiring further evidence need only look at the feedback on Windows "Peice of Shit" 8.

Re:Over a decade

[MetalOne]

Not only that, it really sounds like a couple people just did it on their vacation time because it personally annoyed them. Microsoft was not interested in actually putting it on a schedule to be fixed.

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, it really sounds like a couple people just did it on their vacation time because it personally annoyed them. Microsoft was not interested in actually putting it on a schedule to be fixed.

It's funny how that sounds precisely like the bug tracker of any Linux distro.

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

Many people running an "unauthorized" copy of XP turned off the automatic updates (in order to avoid getting Genuine Advantage installed as a "security update"). No update requests, and no slowdowns.

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

Their original plan was to do the oposite, let xp get even slower (yeah, they made it possible). But at some point an unknown member of marketing skipped a dose of the mandatory drug injections and came down long enough to realize that people might not upgrade to windows8 as ordered if ms is incapable of fixing a 12 year old bug...

Re:Over a decade

[DogDude]

Windows XP has been out for 12 years and they just started to look into the problem last month?

Or you can look at it in another way: "They fixed a bug on a 12 year old OS?! Awesome!"

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about that. I worked for a vendor that would occasionally stumble on issues with core services or .dlls from time to time and MS was really surprisingly good about providing fixes that were ultimately part of the general distribution roll-ups like patch tuesday or what have you.

Re:Over a decade

[0123456]

It's funny how that sounds precisely like the bug tracker of any Linux distro.

I didn't pay $100 for Linux.

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the slowdowns came from the worms you inevitably got.

Re:Over a decade

[oscrivellodds]

The difference here is that the linux distros are free and MS charges big bucks for their OS's. When you pay for a product you expect it to work properly- well, maybe YOU don't, but I do.

Re:Over a decade

[ApplePy]

Haha! And they say piracy is bad!

Re:Over a decade

[ApplePy]

I didn't pay $100 for Linux.

Even then the bugs in Linux still get fixed faster.

But yeah, when volunteers are giving their own time to build me a killer operating system, I'm not going to harass them about a schedule. I give them thanks and positive vibes and sometimes donations. I think we all expect more from paid developers... but we don't always get it.

Re:Over a decade

[Immerman]

Expect all you like - you still agreed to a license that stated that the software is not warranted as fit for any purpose, including the purpose for which it was sold. I'd dearly love to know how exactly software companies are allowed to include that as a standard disclaimer, seems like it should run afoul of some pretty serious consumer protection laws.

Re:Over a decade

[TheRealQuestor]

Windows XP has been out for 12 years and they just started to look into the problem last month? Or you can look at it in another way: "They fixed a bug on a 12 year old OS?! Awesome!"

Sure wish I had some mod points left as that post was befitting of one of mine

Re:Over a decade

[jones_supa]

The problem is that you don't get a killer operating system but a garbage operating system. I actually want to pay the $100 to Microsoft to not have to constantly worry about shit breaking.

Linux is good for many purposes, but the desktop environments are essentially alpha quality software. Just the other day I tried adjusting the time of the Magic Lamp effect in its properties dialog under KDE. Whooptidoo, using anything than the default value gives me two magic lamp effects. And how about looking at the latest Xubuntu release, it shipped with broken sound indicator and broken power management. These are just completely silly and unnecessary regressions. If we start to talk about the Unity desktop (which represents a de facto Linux experience to many), it's just a huge bugfest which I don't even want to begin to talk about. It is also extremely slow.

The declining quality of the Linux desktop should be taken very seriously. These are similar experiences to why I hated Windows back in the day when it still sucked. I want to use the most stable and fast software available.

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of modding down whoever got pissed off by the AC the most as I originally planned, I gave you my last mod point because you actually spoke the truth about the matter, your karma be damned. I normally don't like what you have to say, but today we agree.

Re:Over a decade

[Jarik C-Bol]

What amazes me is that it explains so much. I have no idea how many XP users have asked me to work on their computer 'because it has gotten so slow' and after full virus and malware cleanings, the system was noticeably slower than it should be for the hardware. This problem actually seems to explain it. Usually, all that cleaning involved a restart, and if this bug was causing slowdowns for more than an hour (I've read comments on the earlier /. posts about his testifying to multi day resource hogging after restarts) Then I would generally never be on their machine long enough for it to clear out. Couple that with the fact that a lot of people (especially older ones) completely shut down their computer when not using it, and its possible that the update checks would never finish on a particular machine. My old advice turned out to be solid. "leave it on for a few days, and see if it gets better"

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember this BS.
I was always killing svchost processes to try and fix this shit.

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

> Unfortunately I don't waste mod points for AC's

Dear Asshole,

Mod points are supposed to be used to increase or decrease the visibility of a post for the readership. They are NOT intended to be used as a reward or punishment for an individual.

HTH.

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

You paid much much more, just not in USD

Re:Over a decade

[Winamp]

The fact that people have to worry about their karma and being modded down for speaking the truth about the state of the Linux desktop and things that fans really don't want to hear (but must), speaks volumes about why old problems still exist with Linux and polish isn't a priority.

Re:Over a decade

[Billly Gates]

No this is really annoying for VM users.

It is not bloat but a bug. Your CPU goes 100% and the fans spin like mad and there is no way out of it. It started from SVChost.exe trying to do a Windows update and quiting after an overlfow of +1000 patches.

Many were gleaming hoping this would force the holdouts finally to get with the times.

Re:Over a decade

[mrbcs]

Troll. I have been running xp machines WITHOUT ANY UPDATES for years and have not had any issues. First thing I do, shut off the updates and the damn firewall from hell.

Yes I have anti-virus and NO, I've never had a problem.

Router/ Firewall and a hosts file and don't be a moron and the thing will work forever.

I have tons of software and games that my little kids are gonna get a chance to use because I can keep these machines running.

I will probably be running XP machines for another 12 years or longer.

Microsoft support means nothing to me.

Re:Over a decade

[ApplePy]

Just the other day I tried adjusting the time of the Magic Lamp effect in its properties dialog under KDE.

How many desktop effects does Windows have for you to play with and customize?

  If we start to talk about the Unity desktop (which represents a de facto Linux experience to many),

Everyone knows Unity is crap. So is Windows 8. And mostly for the same reasons -- hubris, and a few clowns thinking they're going to change the fundamental paradigm behind the way millions of people use their computers.

Well, except for the people who like Unity... some folks like choices. How many choices do you get with Windows?

What you need to understand is that Linux is not a monolithic thing. Linux as a whole is not tainted because one release of one distro sucks -- because Linux is not a whole anything.

The declining quality of the Linux desktop should be taken very seriously.

That's a rather subjective and vague statement.

As someone who has used Linux desktops almost exclusively for over 12 years now, I have to say I'm quite pleased with the improvements over that time. Well, except for Gnome 3.

Anyway, if Windows floats your boat, great. I hope MS makes Windows for a long time, and that most folks continue to use it, so us Linux geeks can continue to feel smug about it. :)

Re:Over a decade

[Billly Gates]

Really. Kernel 2.2 is still being patched and so is Redhat 7.2?

This is the age of XP by the way.

Re: Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

The magic lamp effect is not enabled by default in KDE. By default it uses a scale/fade minimize effect, which does not suffer from the bug you are describing. In fact I am unable to reproduce your bug using the magic lamp effect either. Which version of KDE are you having this issue with?

I agree that the settings for the magic lamp effect should work consistently under all circumstances, but complaining about an obscure setting in a non-default visual effect is hardly evidence of alpha quality software.

Re:Over a decade

[Billly Gates]

The fact that people have to worry about their karma and being modded down for speaking the truth about the state of the Linux desktop and things that fans really don't want to hear (but must), speaks volumes about why old problems still exist with Linux and polish isn't a priority.

Yep reading how the guy whined about X sucking got -1 and those bashing Wayland got +5 insightful 2 weeks ago brought it home! Many slashdottters are conservative and do not like change in their Linux environments and some using XP are die hards and anti technology which I never dreamed slashdot would ever become!

Apparently Xeyes over the network was more important than creating a non sucky GUI that can compete agaisnt Android, MacOSX, and Windows. Things the way they are are features and they do not get why no one would want to think like them.

Re: Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I paid for it in negative time. Time I got back not futzing around with a different update mechanism for every app, all of which want to run simultaneously on reboot. Time not spent being bombarded with scareware ads from the various 'protection' rackets 'required' to run Windows smoothly. Time not spent tracking down and installing drivers for various bits of random hardware, because it just works out of the box. Time not spent rebooting for every update or every file that needed replacing while it was in use. Time not spent figuring out which 'analytic and debug log' needed to be activated to find out how to fix a problem. Time not spent waiting for Event Viewer to load slower than a flight sim. Time not

Re:Over a decade

[Hal_Porter]

Maybe over on bizarro slashdot. Here in real slashdot they are used to reward adherents of the True Faith and punish heretics and dissemblers.

Re:Over a decade

[Antonovich]

Bullshit. Try just using the "most standard" versions of everything (like LTSes, etc.) and not trying every latest gizmo. No software is perfect, and if you want to dabble in fringe stuff then you are going to have problems. I went through a gentoo phase (never got bored enough to try LFS but anyway) but that was long ago, and I now just want to get stuff done. I have given up on Windows for "just getting stuff done".

I need to test out apps now and then so install and uninstall reasonably frequently. Every time I boot to windows 7 it's just horrible, it's ridiculously slow and painful to get anything done. I have removed everything I don't need and manualled services I only need occasionally (like SQL Server). I was sure I had a virus in spite of always updating before doing anything on boot (I boot very infrequently so there are always lots of updates) but recently gave it the once over with a brand new Kaspersky and found only the browser javascript+php exploits from a hack we had at a previous company that I had kept for forensics in my archives (and had certainly never been executed on my machine). I NEVER install software that isn't from a "reputable" source, and never do any browsing of dodgy sites (on windows :-)). While I'm not certified, I've managed production windows servers and know what you shouldn't do, and I don't. I'm sick of it, I just want to get shit done, so I use Linux. Mac might work too but I'm perfectly happy not trying flakey gadget stuff so Linux fits the bill perfectly and I won't have to learn a new way of working (until Ubuntu 14.04 anyway!).

Re:Over a decade

[dnaumov]

I didn't pay $100 for Linux.

Even then the bugs in Linux still get fixed faster.

But yeah, when volunteers are giving their own time to build me a killer operating system, I'm not going to harass them about a schedule. I give them thanks and positive vibes and sometimes donations. I think we all expect more from paid developers... but we don't always get it.

So how many Linux distributions are supported 12 years after launch? For free?

Re: Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

why not ? do you contribute code?
didn't think so you freeloading scumbag.

Re:Over a decade

[fluffy99]

Or you can look at it in another way: "They fixed a bug on a 12 year old OS?! Awesome!"

As I understand it, the fix was done on the Windows Update server and wasn't actually an OS bug They cleaning up and deprecated a slew of superseded patches (mostly IE) so the OS wasn't checking for ancient, irrelevant patches. The article and people keep referencing the svchost process because the windows update service normally runs under svchost process instead of standalone (although it's trivial to configure it to do so).

Re:Over a decade

[ApplePy]

So how many Linux distributions are supported 12 years after launch? For free?

I'd guess "none" -- but who cares?

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

according to legend, the actual fix only took about a minute. what they had no expected was that a great injustice: the opening text from star wars a new hope... haphazardly spray painted all over the lobby... in klingon.

the perpetrator had to be found, and then thoroughly convinced of every obscure reason why that would be utterly impossible.

that quest took 12 years.

Re:Over a decade

[rahvin112]

Stop using Ubuntu and you won't have nearly as many declining quality issues.

Shuttleworth has declared the PC dead, as a result you don't actually think he's going to spend the same money to keep the "dead" desktop software quality do you? He's investing all his resources in Ubuntu phone and tablet because he declared multiple time the future is a post PC world where everyone uses devices for all their computing needs.

Re:Over a decade

[ratboy666]

Actually, the reasons I use Linux are:

1 - Xeyes over the network. And that IS more important to me than "competition".

In fact, my Xeyes application(s) don't run on Windows, Android or Mac. They run on AIX, Solaris and Redhat. Different hardware and OSs. The common GUI IS X11. Which makes this very important... I have tried Cygwin on Windows -- and, I guess it would do... but THAT is what "Linux" is competing with FOR ME.

2 - A platform for POSIX applications.

3 - Hey, I am not bashing Windows, Android or Mac. Don't get in my grill and bash X/POSIX and my needs

4 - I do need "office applications". Since I have NEVER used Windows XP or Microsoft Office I am very adept at the tools I use. That they happen to be no-cost and libre? My benefit. Yes, I have used OpenOffice right back to when it was Star Office. Evolution, Mozilla/Firefox. When I attempt comparing my tools against Windows/MS Office/IE, the Microsoft tools fall short. Why? Because for ME, my tools are the "gold standard". For Microsoft users, the Microsoft tools are the "gold standard". Any deviation makes us uncomfortable.

5 - Sure, I will adopt another "paradigm". About the same time that AIX, Solaris, HP-UX and Redhat do. Or those platforms die.

I agree, we do not think alike. That is why I am in the minority, and use Linux. If Linux discards X or Posix, I would have to see if OpenOffice, Evolution and Firefox supported one of the BSDs and move to that platform. My needs... Why do I need douches complaining that *MY NEEDS* are minority when I am already using a *MINORITY* platform specifically BECAUSE it meets my needs! In disclosure, I hold Microsoft shares. I don't have a position in Redhat or Apple (at this time).

So, my needs are not important, even when *I* try to steer my minority platform to support them. I am not suggesting that Windows, Mac or Android go that way. It is obvious that Xeyes isn't a priority for you.

Now, I use xfce. With compositing. I was curious as to the applications on my laptop that wouldn't "remote" properly - smplayer, and audio, because of pulseaudio. All of my other applications are "remoteable". All the GUI applications are my Solaris, AIX and HP-UX systems are useable. RDP/VNC support? I guess... but the GUI *is* X.

I don't particularly like "systemd" either. Prefer sysvinit. Why? Makes Linux closer to the other OSs I use. However, I can tolerate that change because it is internal to my terminal ONLY.

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

"The declining quality of the Linux desktop should be taken very seriously. These are similar experiences to why I hated Windows back in the day when it still sucked. I want to use the most stable and fast software available."

LOL! Throw Linux the same amount of cash Microsoft sits on and we'll go back to comparisons. How much have YOU donated to open source projects?

Re:Over a decade

[pmontra]

Not volunteers but paid developers. This is a common misconception. Check this post for a quick summary of the contributors to the Linux kernel. Linux and many big open source projects started as volunteers's efforts and eventually turned into joint ventures between companies ruled by FOSS licenses instead of by thousands of pages of contracts. Shared development is a major money saver for all parties involved and is a very efficient way to invest resources.

The same applies to distributions, which are ofter owned or substantially backed by for profit companies (Canonical, Red Hat, etc).

/rant-mode Nevertheless even paid developers have schedules. I just wonder why nobody's schedule includes this 2007 Thunderbird bug. Well, maybe I'll have to wait for the 12th year or learn the relevant technologies and fix it myself (won't happen, i got other stuff to do.) /end-of-rant

What I appreciate with Linux and open source in general is that they have public bug trackers. I can open bugs, vote them up, contribute information, see how fixes progress. Bugs in closed source programs and OS are usually managed in a very opaque way. Those money you pay don't buy you any insight unless you pay really big money and get into some special support program.

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

Just the other day I tried adjusting the time of the Magic Lamp effect in its properties dialog under KDE.

How many desktop effects does Windows have for you to play with and customize?

Thats not the fucking point.Why, when they don't have an answer or someone criticises some part of their operating system, do Linux supporters immediately turn to bagging the other persons operating system. It shows how childish they are and how Linux is not the God of all operating systems.

Fucking grow up

Re:Over a decade

[kthreadd]

You've never had a problem, or you think you've never had a problem? Your machine may be completely owned and just waiting in standby in some bonnet, that doesn't mean that you know about it and has been directly affected by it.

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, do me a favor and at least disconnect your botnode from the internet, it'll make the firewall logs just a little easier to read.

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with some comments, I never had this problem, then again I disabled the updates, use a completely different firewall, virus, and added a few low memory using Malware detectors. Use Firefox and other browsers..

So I am pretty much ready for the shut down of Windows XP updates. for the last 10 years. Of course I have had to reinstall the OS several times do to hardware failure.

I afraid to register and ask which linux would be best used as I guess a winodws replacement, and keep the gaming aspect as well. I've toyed with linux before having to program it to do certain functions but that was 8 years ago, and did the same when I had an Amiga, so I am not worried if I have to redo certain things manually.

Re:Over a decade

[Barsteward]

is that a red or pink bonnet? :o)

Re:Over a decade

[nukenerd]

Jones_supra wrote :-

I actually want to pay the $100 to Microsoft to not have to constantly worry about shit breaking.

Yes, but the Microsoft shit did break. That is what this news item is about.

Re:Over a decade

[nukenerd]

i never had a problem with it for 8 years i used it.

I read that the bug was introduced about 6 months ago, not years, by a Windows update. And it does not seem to affect everybody, for some reason.

Re:Over a decade

[nukenerd]

Many people running an "unauthorized" copy of XP turned off the automatic updates. No update requests, and no slowdowns.

My wife's PC has this problem, caused by a bug which I understand was introduced during an update. I turned off Automatic Updates, BUT that did not solve the problem - it was still disk-thrashing after every boot, and you have to stop SVCHOST via Task Manager or it goes on for ever.

Re:Over a decade

[nukenerd]

I have been running xp machines WITHOUT ANY UPDATES for years and have not had any issues. First thing I do, shut off the updates

The bug was introduced in a Microsoft update some time ago. Turning off updates now does not stop the problem, I find. Nothing to do with viruses.

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeap, sitting on 12.04 LTS and it just works

I hear debian stable, RHEL and centOS are good too

Re:Over a decade

[couchslug]

Linux desktops have been taken over by artistic "designers" instead of people who want to build tools for getting actual work done.

As with Windows, people looking to put their stamp on a product confuse change with progress. Printed books don't constantly change format, but for some reason desktop environments are relentlessly fucked with by designers for the sake of play.

Since bleeding edge distros no longer offer anything useful, I ignore them and leave them to the ricers.

Re:Over a decade

[couchslug]

"The fact that people have to worry about their karma and being modded down"

Worry about things of no value? Wake me when Dicedot "karma" will buy me something.

I give no fuck about my karma and anyone modding me down is welcome to die in a fire. :-)

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

That depends - are you going to include the cash-up-front cost of Windows in that comparison?

Re:Over a decade

[smash]

Pretty much. For all the shit apple cops about form over function, the OS X desktop actually fucking works. Including scripting of shit that normal people can use.

Re: Over a decade

[smash]

Erm. Youtube, on Linux. Or my Mac. Still gives me ads to fix windows malware.

Re:Over a decade

[smash]

150 bucks for a new OS every 5-10 years is hardly "big bucks".

Re:Over a decade

[Ash-Fox]

So how many Linux distributions are supported 12 years after launch? For free?

Many Linux distributions are older than 12 years and have been releasing free upgrades and updates for that entire period of time.

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

How could a post like this, the one that flies in the face of all good (and reasonable) advice, be modded as insightful based on a claim of one single person? And we ever do not know if the story is true and not a troll bait.

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

You've never had a problem, or you think you've never had a problem?

You can ask the same to a user of a fully uptodate patched windows running AV software. He can't be sure either.

Also, the people who make the consious choice to switch off updates and firewall (but often button-up in other ways) are mostly not as susceptible to click on every 'free toolbar/game, nude celebrity, etc' link they see. :-)

Re:Over a decade

[evilviper]

Windows XP has been out for 12 years and they just started to look into the problem last month?

The bug didn't exhibit itself 12 years ago. I believe the earliest report was 2 years ago, there were workarounds (like upgrading to IE9) and this isn't the first time they've TRIED to properly fix the issue...

But what do I know, I just spent 2 minutes RTFA...

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny, my experience is the absolute opposite. When the time came to upgrade my laptop, I decided to use the previous one as a HTPC. Since its hardware is mainly intel (Intel CPU, Intel GPU and Intel WiFi) I figured that Ubuntu 12.04 with XBMC would be a great fit for it, after all, Intel is supposed to have some of the best graphics drivers currently available for linux, so I should be able to get good performance from it, right ? WRONG. The Unity desktop was so slow to the point of being nearly unusable, XBMC wouldn't get more than 20 FPS.. on the UI, at 720p. 1080p was absoutely out of the question. No hardware decoding either, so high bitrate videos wouldn't play at all. Yes I spent quite a bit of time trying to get it to work better, trying different drivers while dealing with the absolutely shitty and buggy Ubuntu desktop which required countless workarounds even to get it working without retarded problems everywhere.

Eventually I gave up and just put Windows 8 on the thing, now everything works smoothly without any need to tweak anything, I get 60 fps at 1080p, I am able to play 40 Mbps videos without any problem, and all of that while the CPU rarely goes above 10%, while being much more silent (the fans rarely spin up on windows) due to the increased power efficiency.

So yeah, I am calling bullshit on your story.

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

i never had a problem with it for 8 years i used it.

I read that the bug was introduced about 6 months ago, not years, by a Windows update. And it does not seem to affect everybody, for some reason.

Will Apple be suing for stolen IP?

Re:Over a decade

[Jarik C-Bol]

I don't do it professionally, thats for sure. This is simply a case of "hey, you know a lot about computers right? will you work on mine?" I'm sure If I where being paid to work on it, I would have found the 'fix'.

Re:Over a decade

[hairyfeet]

What you are describing is known in the biz as "WinRot" and is caused not by the OS, but by software that refuses to clean up during an uninstall. Ever wonder how some programs can take a good 10 minutes to install but only seconds to uninstall? Its because it isn't actually uninstalling, its just tossing the folder under Program Files while leaving all the keys and .DLLs it crapped all over the system.

There are several free tools that can fix WinRot but personally I prefer Tuneup Utilities as it takes care of everything automatically and is pretty much a "one stop shop" for Windows. I like it so much that I use it on my home systems and even though my Windows installs are several years old they boot just like a fresh install. As a bonus it has a "program deactivator" that fools all those programs that insist on being run at startup that you haven't futzed with them by silently flipping them between active and disabled when you launch and close respectively. Its pretty sweet and they have a trial so you can see if its something you'd like.

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems most of the attention to Linux dev is going on in the Kernel space. That's good, we need the work there.

If part of the goal of 'Nix open source is a nice, workable desktop system, there's a bunch of time being wasted on all the desktop environments for X, X development itself (and Xorg) and Mir and Wayland, compositors, libraries and video drivers.

Instead of spending all this time on the other projects, concentrating all efforts on one really nice customizable desktop environment might have yielded better results. We might now have an OSX or Windows alternative system.

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a pretty floral bonnet!

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

And I'm sure that waiting an hour for a machine to be useful is a killer experience. Almost every operating system that is installed by the user himself requires some amount of tweaking to get it "right" and windows is no exception. Go to an apple store and look at the customer service lines if you don't believe me. But as was noted, Linux devs are mostly part-timers (and or idlers) who code for fun and the occasional stipend. If you want a working Linux then you can also pay for that too.

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

They must be sad to let their best user troll go...

Re:Over a decade

[Jarik C-Bol]

Thanks for the tip. First testbed, my parents XP machine.

Re:Over a decade

[fnj]

Yes it sucks to be us, the posters.

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, No, and No.
This is the problem:
The problem is not with service host, its with a library/dll under service host,
i.e. a service. It runs under Windows Update, its called:
wuaueng.dll, and its the library Windows Update uses.
It uses up a lot of time creating a list of updates that are installed,
and what needs to be installed.
If you run updates for IE or install another IE, the problem goes away for a while, but eventually comes back.
it is an APPLICATION patch, and since IE is integral to the OS, it becomes an OS patch.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_xp-windows_update/latest-windows-xp-update-and-svchostexe-problems/57ff2a95-3a9c-4e85-a879-b340c65acfa5

i.e. its a balanced tree/decision tree search, that a 1st year CS major
could have written better. So, they paid an intern to fix it. ( two doughnuts and a burrito. )

The reason it's not a problem in the corporate environment, is the use of system server/update manager/patch management.
It has spawned a whole industry of patch management.

The way around it is to turn updates off, two days before patch Tuesday, and turn in back on for Saturday, and let it burn up the CPU cycles on Saturday, while no one needs their computer, and when Windows update gives you a list of updates, pick the ones you want, and download the patches to a directory, and install them by hand, 5~7 at a time,

The other way around it is to REMOVE IE from your system.

You can temporarily get around the slowdown, by using process explorer, and looking at the properties of that task, selecting the threads, and the sorting by the cycles-delta. wuaueng.dll floats to the top, and you can terminate that thread.

DaVinci has spoken

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither did you for Windows even if you do use it :P

Re:Over a decade

[RubberDogBone]

+1 Informative

If you want to reward PEOPLE, friend them. Or whatever. Mod the post based on content, contribution, value, humor, regardless of who wrote it.

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

explains a lot for me too. i had a user that would complain that his computer was running slow every other day. he would do this complaining in the morning. by the time i got to his machine, it seemed to be running fine. this happened a couple of times so i finally did some full scans which found only 2-3 spyware apps and removed them. guy kept complaining every other week for a few months. his computer was about 4-5 years old at this point. it should have still be beefy enough to run XP, surf the web, and check email - which is about all he used it for. i finally just told him he needed a new computer with windows 7 because XP was going to be EOL in about a year. no problems since then.

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

time is money and money is time. finding the 'fix' for a problem you can't even see would take a lot of my time and the user's time. 'leaving it on' is a very cost-effective fix. replacing a 4-5 year old computer that is no longer under warranty is also cost effective, especially when it's running an OS that is 12 years old.

Re:Over a decade

[hairyfeet]

You'll like it as its a "set and forget" solution. It cleans the reg, gets rid of broken shortcuts (also a source of WinRot), defrags the reg and hard drive if it needs it, there is about a dozen things it does on its little checklist and again its all automatic. Oh and if your parents are like mine and get pissed when a program doesn't "instarun" when they click? it has both "turbo mode" that stops all the background crap and it can silently lower the affinity of all other programs and boost the one you just launched if the system is under heavy load.

I don't recommend anything that I don't personally use and I've been using Tuneup since 07 and can say it runs great, is hassle free, and I've NEVER had it screw something up, unlike those freeware cleaners that I've seen screw up reg keys. Enjoy!

Re:Over a decade

[mrbcs]

I can monitor network traffic and have been playing with these infernal machines for almost 20 years.

I know when a machine runs like shit. Whether its from a shit install or a bad power connector on a dvd drive.

Just because most computer users are retarded, doesn't mean we all are.

Re:Over a decade

[mrbcs]

Because there are more people out there that are like me. They know how to use and secure a computer and are not dumb enough to open email attachments.

That's the only way left for malware to get on a machine if you don't use internet exploder. No drive by downloads. You have to allow it through negligence or stupidity.

The sad part is the amount of dumb people that click on anything, download warez and go to bad porn sites.

Those are the bozos you should be worried about.

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

The declining quality of the Linux desktop should be taken very seriously.

That's a rather subjective and vague statement.

Maybe so but it is true. The number of heisenbugs on any recent Linux desktop is ridiculous. The majority of Linux desktop developers don't seem to understand about race conditions at all and the amount of wasted time as a result is just sad. Windows has nothing to do with it.

Re:Over a decade

[Bungie]

umm...do you remember the Windows cursor exploit? It was basically an unchecked buffer between the Win32 and NT kernel APIs that allowed a specifically crafted cursor file to run privileged code on the user's system. Since custom cursors are part of the CSS standard, every web browser on Windows that supported CSS implemented this feature and was vulnerable to the exploit by just visiting a page that specified the correctly crafted file in their stylesheet. It didn't require any user download or any of the usual attack vectors (ActiveX plugins, Java or scripting).

A common way to spread malware these days is to break into an adserver and upload an exploit to it. Then the exploit will be distributed across even well known and trusted sites which display ads from a third party service. Our workstations at work commonly get malware from users visiting news sites.

What I'm saying is that even the most cautious users can get owned without doing anything stupid...

Re:Over a decade

[mrbcs]

Fine. Point taken, although it's never happend to me in 20 years.

Ad servers can't serve ads to me though because I block them with a hosts file and have for about 10 years.

Re:Over a decade

[thegarbz]

Even then the bugs in Linux still get fixed faster.

I'd be interested in finding out if this is actually true. Has there been a study on this? Yes Microsoft has just fixed a 12 year old bug. Didn't the X consortium just fix a bug that had been present in X11 for 20 years or something? Haven't there been bugs in the Mozilla bug tracker for many years still waiting on a fix because stupid UI changes take priority over actual bugs?

It's like the people complaining about Windows Updates. Well yes but my Linux distro updates even more than Windows.

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux users should try Mint 15 or 16 with the Cinnamon desktop - it just works and so far no bugs.

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how that "garbage operating system" is in use on hundreds of millions of mission critical components, in areas where no sane person would even DARE to install any version of Windows. OSes have their reputations for a reason. I'm sorry you can't figure out how to configure a KDE eyecandy effect. I have a corporate client with an Exchange server that deletes almost EVERY email, irreversibly, seemingly at random, from a completely bare install. MS has tried to provide support, but even they've admitted they're stumped, and only suggest reinstalling the system. Until they can cycle that server out they just have backups of every email, and should the bug strike, they reimport from the backups overnight.

When you pay thousands of dollars for software, you SHOULD NOT GET GARBAGE.

Re:Over a decade

[countach]

You don't know for sure it never happened to you. You might have been pwned for the last 10 years.

Re:Over a decade

[countach]

Declining quality? It always was this way I think.

Re:Over a decade

[mrbcs]

Are you fucking kidding me?

I must be completed retarded, firstly for responding to trolls and secondly that I can build all the machines in my gigabit lan, tweak them to run as fast as possible, remove all the chances of loading ad sites with a host file, not use internet explorer or microsoft email, not click on any unfamiliar attachments and never see any unusual traffic on my lan.

Yet according to you, the new internet expert, I must be owned because you cannot fathom that someone besides yourself can actually run a computer?

I cannot believe the ignorant troll responses this post has garnered. You guys should get the hell out of your mom's basement and open your minds a little.

/rant

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you donate anything?

Re:Over a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

Not.

Re:Over a decade

[Ash-Fox]

Not.

You deny that distributions have been providing free upgrades and updates to their releases?

Re:Over a decade

[gshegosh]

"declining quality of the Linux desktop"? Funny, I've been using Linux as my main desktop OS since 2004 and I've noticed a tremendous betterment of its quality over these years.

Re:Over a decade

[toddestan]

I've seen various incarnations of svchost.exe chewing up massive amounts of CPU time for years on Windows XP (and 2k). It seems like one of those problems that periodically pops its head up, Microsoft quietly issues a fix, and it goes away for a while until something else triggers it again. I've always figured it must be something fundamental to the way that Windows Update works. Though with only three months left of updates for XP this may be the last of it. So far I've not seen it crop up in Vista or later.

Re:Over a decade

[Trogre]

Or any other distro with the Cinnamon desktop for that matter.

Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I can turn windows updates back on on about 10 XP computers at work. Even though we're replacing the last 40 or so XP computers over the next month. Just in time Microsoft, thanks!

Great to know that they fixed it! Finally.

[mtthwbrnd]

What next: Are they going to tackle the memory leaks in the Commodore 64 Operating System?

Re:Great to know that they fixed it! Finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

My C64 never crashed .. maybe a better joke would have been to mention Windows 98, 95, ME, CE, 3.1 or every single version of MS DOS ever released.

Re:Great to know that they fixed it! Finally.

[Ash-Fox]

My C64 never crashed ..

Type in 'CALL &BBC123'

Re:Great to know that they fixed it! Finally.

[Nethead]

Or flip the bit that swaps out kernel ROM for RAM.

Re:Great to know that they fixed it! Finally.

[Keybounce]

No, the joke should have been about the reliability of Radio Shack's TRS-DOS for the model 1.

(Hint: it was $15, all the competition OS's were around $80-$100, and everyone knowledgeable about the issues thought that the prices were just about right, radio shack's dos possibly overpriced.)

windows embedded systems based on XP still get

[Joe_Dragon]

windows embedded systems based on XP still get updates for some time and firms can buy more update for XP as well.

Re:windows embedded systems based on XP still get

[similar_name]

Where can I pirate these security updates? :)

Re: windows embedded systems based on XP still get

[Anonymous Coward]

torrent.microsoft.com/shhh-its-a-secret

Re:windows embedded systems based on XP still get

[hairyfeet]

Question...why would you want to? I have run Win 7 on a 2003 Sempron with 1Gb of RAM, it ran just fine. I'm typing this on a 2007 1.8Ghz C2D with 3Gb of RAM and Win 7, again runs just fine. If your machine is sooooo old it can't run Win 7? Then its most likely so old its not worth having.

My advice in that case, which usually applies to socket 478 P4s (which are insane power pigs as is all the P4 line from Prescott through Pentium D) would be to change out the board for an AMD E350 which can be had anywhere from $70-$85 depending on which features you want, gives you a dual core with HD6310 that runs rings around the Pentium 4/D and even does 1080P over HDMI, supports up to 8Gb of RAM and best of all the board uses less under full loads than a socket 478 does idling. You can even keep your old drives by simply getting one with a PCI slot and using a PCI to IDE adapter. I have done this conversion for several customers and its easy, fast,lowers the hell out of the power bill, and turns a big noisy P4 office box into a whisper quiet system. Its really a crazy good deal and even has VM support and XP drivers if you want to keep XP as a VM or dual boot for some older software.

As for TFA? We've been complaining about this bug for years! Better late than never but it would have been nice if this would have came out half a decade ago instead of right before EOL. BTW for those saying it was only "recently introduced" might want to look up "SVCHOSTS eats 100% CPU" as you'll find that bug showing up off and on since 2005.

Re:windows embedded systems based on XP still get

[MrNiCeGUi]

Most likely answer: laptops with unsupported video cards, or desktops with other unsupported hardware, such as tv tuners, old scanners or printers. The system might be able to run Windows 7 very well, but it does no good if the video card has no drivers for 7.

Re:windows embedded systems based on XP still get

[multicsfan]

That is only part of the cost, you need new memory as the old won't fit. There aren't enough PCI slots, no IDE support that I can see and not enough SATA connectors. An upgrade for me to run win7 (my Intel MB is not 64 bit) will cost between $370 (AMD) to $445 (Inte i5). I'm on full disability, this is something I need to plan and save up for as I have a very limited budget.

XP

[Anonymous Coward]

JIT!

Just in time...

[Anonymous Coward]

...for the finish line.

Re:Just in time...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it's just like getting a pebble out of your shoe at the finish line.

Let me get this straight...

[EdIII]

The performance issue was a constant check for updates.. for another program notorious for performance issues....

This is why I really wish that Microsoft was *truly* forced to allow IE to be ripped out of their operating system completely.

At this point, just give it up guys. You had over 10 years trying to make a browser. Let it go....

Re:Let me get this straight...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well said man! IE is a waste of time. WHO USES IT anyway?
Looks like an intentional slowing down forcing XP users over to 7

Re:Let me get this straight...

[EdIII]

I use IE all the time to download Chrome on new systems....

Though, lately I've been doing more and more front end work. It's where I'm finding money. That unfortunately requires me to use IE most of the day to make sure what I'm working is rendering across browsers correctly.

Otherwise I use Chrome. Opera is just not my cup of tea, Firefox sucks balls now (seriously. they couldn't have fucked up more if they tried), Safari isn't all that good, and that leaves IE or Chrome. Gee... I wonder....

Re:Let me get this straight...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just disable the check for updates in the browser preference: IE Tools | Internet Options | Advanced and uncheckmark it..

Duh..n

Re:Let me get this straight...

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox sucks balls now (seriously. they couldn't have fucked up more if they tried)

Challenge accepted!

Re:Let me get this straight...

[Billly Gates]

Have you run the modern browsers on a recent OS?

Firefox is usable again and uses the least amount of ram. IE starting with 9 started acting compliant and normal. I couldn't believe it in 2011. IE 11 has an issue at work because it is so standards compliant that it no longer supports legacy jscript code that launches IE specific flash. It runs like it should. This of course angers the MBAs and the luddities and slashdotters still think it must be the same as IE 6 and wont touch it!

IE is actually good and if banks stopped feeding it broken IE code from last decade it would work. Firefox still is missing some things but I really like that it has true adblock. Google is so limited that adblock plus only stops it from appearing on the screen. The ads still run and track you and install malware. You just do not see it etc.

FYI adblock plus now works with IE as well!

Times are changing and I feel it is safe to say MS wont ever do an IE 6 again and can't. I do feel Chrome could become that role in the next couple of years if businesses give up after Windows 7 and go all tablet in 5 years. With Citrix that is a possibility if Windows 9 blows.

Re:Let me get this straight...

[EdIII]

Uh huh.

I shouldn't have to roll that change out in group policy because some idiots at Microsoft destabilize an entire fucking operating system looking for updates to a single program for upwards of an hour after start up.

That's assuming I even have group policy. The number of companies with XP using them effectively as thin clients without domain controllers is the majority, not the minority.

That preference is just a hack and a cheap work around.

Re:Let me get this straight...

[EdIII]

I have not run FF for at least 2 or 3 years now. It really was hilariously slow compared to previous years when it was the only usable web browser around.

It's nice to hear that IE is getting better, but my experience day to day is that Chrome is way faster in page loads and general operation (javascript). Personally, I would go back to IE if they are that good because I don't like supporting Google. They are so anti-privacy right now it's horrible.

The biggest problem with IE from what I understand is that it costs so much to develop plugins on it. That was the complaint from Ad Blocker right?

I think it was summer of last year I was looking for plugins on IE and did not find nearly as many as available and that was allegedly the reason why.

Re:Let me get this straight...

[Anonymous Coward]

IE 11 is still behind and MS like Apple and Google want to keep it that way and have people write apps instead that use the HTML rendering engine below. Adblock plus is available for it. But like the previous poster stated many websites that have not been updated in awhile have issues with IE 11 as its javascript is too standards compliant :-)

They see IE and feed ancient code. MS fixed the issue with HTML and CSS with this as Apache recognizes it as Firefox now, however it still feeds ancient javascript sadly written for crappy versions.

Firefox to me is speedy again. Delete and recreate your Firefox profile if you have not re-imaged your computer since version 4? Now it will load as fast as Chrome and have better hardware acceleration.

The issue with Firefox still is not does not do process by tab like IE and Chrome do. On an icore7 this is frustrating as everything still is one big process on 1 cpu but it uses less ram than any browser out there.

The browsers are changing rapidly. I switched back to Firefox myself and thankfully it is not the piece of crap it was. If I had a gun to my head I could use IE 10 and later and still get a similar experience but I want to move on. The days of sites only working with IE 6 blew.

Re:Let me get this straight...

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI: The root cause of the problem was an O(2^n) algorithm in the update service, where n is the number of patches since a "screw it; just download the whole app" reset instead of trying to compute a minimal set of patches to convert $OLD_VERSION of the binaries to $PATCHED_VERSION.

This only became a problem after they issued enough patches, and in most cases it only existed on systems that were using older version of Internet explorer, so upgrading to IE8 fixes the problem on most systems. (I accidentally stumbled onto this solution out of desperation about a week before I read an article citing older versions of IE as the performance problem).

p.s. I hate Microsoft, and I'm glad I don't have to support this shit much longer. I told my client a year ago that he's on his own after April 2014.

Re:Let me get this straight...

[smash]

Firefox is still a piece of shit. I gave it 3 months until about 3-4 weeks ago (after a long hiatus because of non-resposive UI issues) and guess what? It still sucks. Don't care how much RAM it uses. Don't care how many plug ins it has. One browser tab makes the entire thing non-responsive. Chrome fixed that issue what... 6+ years ago now with process per tab?

And yes, IE since version 9 is actually half decent. Guess what? Also multiple process.

Re:Let me get this straight...

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox is still a piece of shit. I gave it 3 months until about 3-4 weeks ago (after a long hiatus because of non-resposive UI issues) and guess what? It still sucks. Don't care how much RAM it uses. Don't care how many plug ins it has. One browser tab makes the entire thing non-responsive. Chrome fixed that issue what... 6+ years ago now with process per tab?

And yes, IE since version 9 is actually half decent. Guess what? Also multiple process.

You got some shit in your system then pal ....

Try this fiormat c: .

Re:Let me get this straight...

[RubberDogBone]

Chrome is my go-to for now, however the system of constant updates is starting to cause issues where the browser will start an update and suddenly pages no longer work right, things don't load properly. It's like they are Frankesteining the code into place while it's running. It makes for a wobbly product which may or may not work right next time I need to use it. You never know when these updates are happening or if you have picked up some sort of exploit to pwn your machine, or if the site you are trying to look at is down.

This is all the more frustrating where I work as we have moved to a Google Apps system for everyone. We rely on it all the time. When Chrome does these updates, Gmail dies, our chat function kicks people out, the trouble tickets go nuts because scattered people suddenly starting getting logged out of Google and their managers freak out wondering if the suddenly offline person has up and left or something. Yes, They look at that status to tell if you're working or not. Because they can.

Chrome happens to not work at all with our internal case management system so we have to use IE as well. Lots of tabs everywhere. Sigh.

call me cynical...

[Anonymous Coward]

but this is proof that IE is inextricable from XP, and my cynical self says that if microsoft had fixed it, they would've lost a good portion of their defense against the EU.

Surprising

[product_bucket]

Whilst I'm pleased to see this fix I'm surprised they didn't just leave it. What business sense is there in fixing soon-to-be-obsolete products, especially when takeup of the new ones is lower than expected?

Re:Surprising

[tepples]

What business sense is there in fixing soon-to-be-obsolete products

Because other products using the same update mechanism aren't quite as soon-to-be-obsolete.

The Commodore 64 has memory leaks?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you do a memory leak in C-64 BASIC?

No fair faking it by POKING machine code directly into memory!

Memo to Slashdot: If you want to attract more female contributors, don't use "codpiece" as a captcha.

Re:The Commodore 64 has memory leaks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Memo to Slashdot: If you want to attract more female contributors, don't use "codpiece" as a captcha.

Oh please. You know the ladies love a man who wears a huge codpiece.

Re:The Commodore 64 has memory leaks?

[PPH]

Ha! I'm not wearing a codpiece. Fooled you!

Hell.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's ABOUT time.

Now they need to fix it for Vista too!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, XP is not the only Windows OS with this problem...

Re:Now they need to fix it for Vista too!

[Immerman]

Yeah, but anybody using Vista has much larger problems.

Windows Server 2003 supported until mid-2015

[tepples]

Suppose if they didn't get it over the holiday and it wasn't done by April 8th, they could have perhaps saved themselves all the bother and turned off all update checks

Windows Server 2003 is supported longer than Windows XP despite using the same update mechanism and nearly the same kernel. Extended support for Windows Server 2003 ends on 7/14/2015, and this problem will only get worse for servers over the last two and a half years of extended support. So there's a benefit for making a fix for Windows Server 2003. And if the same fix applies to Windows XP, it doesn't cost Microsoft that much to release the fix for both, and the gesture of goodwill could help deter companies from switching to GNU/Linux or OS X instead of buying Windows 8.1 + Classic Shell.

Re:Windows Server 2003 supported until mid-2015

[Anonymous Coward]

... one and a half years.... it's 2014 bub!

Re:Windows Server 2003 supported until mid-2015

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone other than me uses 2003? I thought the first rule of 2003 club was don't bother talking about 2003 club because hipsters refuse to believe that 2003 exists.

CoD piece

[tepples]

If you want to attract more female contributors, don't use "codpiece" as a captcha.

Probably assumed that a "piece" was a firearm, and a "codpiece" was a firearm in Call of Duty video games.

ObXP: Do Call of Duty games even run on Windows XP anymore?

Re:CoD piece

[mhajicek]

A codpiece is obviously a fillet of fish.

Re:CoD piece

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure if the new CoD's play on XP, but the #1 CoD of all time -the original CoD 1- still works flawlessly! The only exception to this being the bestest evar is CoD 1 + United Offensive xpac, so really it's still CoD1. There's no denying this since they included it with CoD:MW2 purchases renamed Call of Duty Classic. It's definitely better than New CoD.

I really thought they would never actually fix thi

[Anonymous Coward]

I repair old computers to be resold and the amount of time it would take to get the first updates was the single longest time waster of re-installing a fresh copy of XP on an old machine. The last 2 days it only took about 5 minutes for XP to figure out what updates were exactly needed instead of what had become the normal several hours.

Exponential algorithm

[tepples]

I seem to remember reading that the time used by the previous update conflict resolution algorithm scales exponentially with the number of updates issued for a particular platform. Until recently, the number of updates wasn't big enough to cause a problem, but after 12 years of updates, this has changed.

EOL installation media

[jones_supa]

What I'd really like Microsoft to do for XP (and other versions of Windows) is when the product reaches end of life, create a new installation medium which includes all the updates. If anyone wants to do legacy installations of the OS in future for special purposes, that could be quite handy.

Re:EOL installation media

[Anonymous Coward]

What I'd really like Microsoft to do for XP (and other versions of Windows) is when the product reaches end of life, create a new installation medium which includes all the updates. If anyone wants to do legacy installations of the OS in future for special purposes, that could be quite handy.

This.

I'd be happy to pay Microsoft for a blessed EOL XP SP4 and/or Win7 SP2.

Re:EOL installation media

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay but you're still going to have crack it to get around the activation. MS has promised that they won't release a patch to disable activation and those servers are going dark too.

Probably the best thing if you insist on hanging on to XP is to do one last blessed install before the April cutoff and image the drive. After that, it's all up to the demons of hardware failure.

Re:EOL installation media

[Anonymous Coward]

MS has promised that they won't release a patch to disable activation and those servers are going dark too.

"A spokesperson confirmed that activations will still be required for retail installations of Windows XP post April 8. "Windows XP can still be installed and activated after end of support on April 8,""

Re:EOL installation media

[Anonymous Coward]

You need the volume license media or a BIOS locked setup like a Dell.

Re:EOL installation media

[Anonymous Coward]

Once MS stops offering updates you won't need XP activation which can be disabled by several cracks. You won't be able to install updates but if their aren't any it won't matter.

I have been thinking of putting together an XP Ultimate CD which would have all XP versions with all updates. Part of the problem is some updates have to be installed before applying a SP release.

Re:EOL installation media

[Hamsterdan]

Or someone will release an unofficial service pack like it was done for 9x

http://www.htasoft.com/u98sesp/ (that one I didn't know about)
http://www.freewarefiles.com/Unofficial-Windows-SE-Service-Pack-a_program_16791.html (that's what I use on my old 486 vintage box)

Re:EOL installation media

[Anonymous Coward]

Go to http://www.wsusoffline.net/ and download the WSUS Offline Updater. It will create update sets for XP, Vista, Win7, Win8 and their Server variants, as well as Office. You tell it what you want and it downloads the relevant updates and builds the folders and apps to install it automatically. I used it a few months ago to build a USB drive with the updates on it so I could apply it against an XP virtual machine. Everything for XP fit well on to a 2-gb thumb drive. You can basically install XP, plug in a thumb drive and the app will take care of installing the necessary updates and reboot as necessary during the process.

I don't believe this app get all possible updates - I think it gets the important and critical ones. The idea behind it was to have something that you could use offline to get a new XP box patched sufficiently so that it wouldn't get instantly hacked while it was trying to download the updates from the Internet.

I'm planning to run download everything at XP EOL - don't know if I'll ever need it, but it beats hunting for this stuff.

Re:EOL installation media

[Trogre]

I think nLite will do what you're after.

Re:EOL installation media

[hcs_$reboot]

What I'd really like Microsoft to do for XP (...) is when the product reaches end of life, create a new installation medium which includes all the updates

Isn't that obvious? It shouldn't be a wish, it is a requirement (Even Ubuntu does that).

Re:EOL installation media

[flyingfsck]

The interesting thing with a nLite cut down XP, is that it generally prevents XP from picking up viruses, since some files that viruses need to install themselves, are missing.

Re:EOL installation media

[Megane]

There are already updated and WGA-cracked versions of XP if you don't mind trusting a torrent from TPB.

Re:EOL installation media

[antdude]

I agree, but you can make your own slipstreamed version. Or better, a net-install that have the latest updates for people with fast network connections.

Re:EOL installation media

[Anonymous Coward]

Try WSUS Offline Update, you can make a DVD that will update a fresh install of XP to be fully patched.

http://www.wsusoffline.net/

http://www.wsusoffline.net/docs/

CORRECTION

[tepples]

Thank you Anonymous Coward for the correction:

one and a half years

Touché. But that's still 18 months of the server being able to do its job of serving instead of sitting and looking for updates, 18 months of one fewer annoyance that might push IT into "screw it, I'm switching to Linux" territory.

Re:CORRECTION

[Stewie241]

If the summary is correct I don't really see how this affects servers all that much... The summary says it is an issue in the first 15-60 minutes after startup. Servers are generally up for longer periods of time so the actual impact would be low for W2K03.

Re:CORRECTION

[djdanlib]

Partial downtime / reduced capacity still represents money though. In some cases, large amounts of money. There are a lot of realtime call processing systems that run 2003 because the vendor doesn't support, or charges a lot of money to upgrade to software supporting, Server 2008 or newer. The systems need to come online in a specific order instead of all at once (might be 4-10 or more) and if you have a vendor onsite doing maintenance, charging by the hour, who can't leave until it's verified operational, that 15-60 minutes per server gets really expensive.

Re: CORRECTION

[Anonymous Coward]

what's with the 0 in 2k3?
nobody does that.
you just increased bloat for 0 reason.

Re:CORRECTION

[fluffy99]

If the summary is correct I don't really see how this affects servers all that much... The summary says it is an issue in the first 15-60 minutes after startup. Servers are generally up for longer periods of time so the actual impact would be low for W2K03.

It's about time they fixed this. I intermittently run a Virtual Machine version of XP. A few months ago, I noticed windows update service (running under svchost) would chew up 99% of the cpu when booted up for 10 minutes. Seems the problem was windows updates check for the presence of every single IE update ever released, when they were all superseded by the latest IE cumulative updates anyway and not per-requisites for anything else. I'm not sure why they are patting themselves on the back, when they just did the equivalent of declining superceded updates in WSUS (generally done in seconds, btw).

Re:CORRECTION

[smash]

Erm. Windows 2008 R2 is a far better server than Windows 2003 ever was.

Re:CORRECTION

[roarkarchitect]

This bug caused my Windows PBX to fail.

Everytime I posted about this sort of problem

[oscrivellodds]

in the past the astroturfers and other MS fans said I was full of crap because I said my computer took 10 minutes to boot to a useable state. Screw all of you. I stand by my past assertions that MS OS's are crap- they always have been and always will be.

When are they going to figure out what causes my Win 7 to take 10 minutes to boot to a useable state? Maybe in 2025...

Re:Everytime I posted about this sort of problem

[ApplePy]

I hate to be the one to tell you this, because I am about the farthest thing from a Windows fan... but the problem is probably you and the amount of stuff you have starting up on your machine at boot time. Use "msconfig" to turn some shit off. I've gotten lots of Win 7 machines to a minute or less startup, down from 5+ minutes, and the problem is always the same: bloat.

Then again, the obvious question that occurs to me is: if your user experience is so bad, why haven't you switched to something else?

Re:Everytime I posted about this sort of problem

[oscrivellodds]

That's EXACTLY the same sort of crap people have said before. I use Linux on my laptop. I have a win 7 machine because a few critical pieces of software, such as the CAD programs I use frequently, and a media server, have no equivalents (that I have been able to find) available in Linux. No it isn't crapware, it's stuff I use daily, and over time the boot process has slowed even without adding run-time programs. I run virus and malware scans frequently using a bootable linux rescue disc to ensure the machine is clean. I don't download pirated software, use bittorrent, click on weird links, or do anything else that would load weird and undesirable stuff on my machine.

Like XP and Win 95 before it, Win 7 is suffering from an ever increasing rate of "security" "updates" many of which require rebooting the machine.

The problem is MS and Windows. It's all crap!

Re:Everytime I posted about this sort of problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, anyone who disagrees with you or doubts you must be an "astroturfer". Do you see black helicopters and Illuminati symbols everywhere too?

Re:Everytime I posted about this sort of problem

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that you are describing a completely different story than what is detailed here?

Re:Everytime I posted about this sort of problem

[Spy Handler]

Is there anything stopping you from disabling Windows updates?

I disabled all Windows updates on my MS machines in 2012. But I do run a good antivirus program on all of them and the antivirus updates itself.

Never had a virus or malware problem since then. Not visiting warez sites and not clicking on email attachments helps a lot too.

Re:Everytime I posted about this sort of problem

[dbIII]

There's also broken update stuff on some Win7 boxes that causes long start times, inability to get new updates, desktop icons not able to be found - and that's just one of the problem boxes. The answer is a reinstall treadmill for boxes that have hardware where new drivers break the updates - and a hope that this time you can skip over the problem and get something that can be kept up to date.

I'm beginning to think that that disgrunted bottom 10% that MS throw off each project has ended up working with updates.

if your user experience is so bad, why haven't you switched to something else

The important thing is always the applications and not the OS under it. You can put up with a lot of shit if that's the only way the app will run - hence the XP machines still in use and even Win98 lurking in some places. I helped a guy do a Win98 install on a VM the other day to get his radio software to work. The OS may be shit and getting the serial port going to a real serial port may be tricky but if that's what is needed to do the job you put up with it.

Re:Everytime I posted about this sort of problem

[jddj]

Agree: my office XP laptop (with an i5) took 12 minutes to boot to where I could even crowbar Outlook open.

OTOH, my SSD-upgraded 2008 Mac Book Pro on Snow Leopard goes from cold metal to ready to work in 20 seconds.

Re:Everytime I posted about this sort of problem

[Smauler]

My Vista system used to boot from BIOS to usable desktop in 15 seconds. I timed it. It's a lot worse now (almost a minute), but it hasn't been cleared out properly for 4 years or so. This is on a striped pair of oldish 500gb hard drives.

Re: Everytime I posted about this sort of problem

[Anonymous Coward]

i can't believe you actually believe this crap.

Re:Everytime I posted about this sort of problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you see black helicopters and Illuminati symbols everywhere too?

I do! My friend, it definitely sounds like we're both in the same privileged group comprised of maybe 1 out of every 10 million people. You should join our group -- you are most certainly not alone in seeing these visions, it's just that those of us blessed with the skill are so rare that it's exponentially unlikely that we ever cross paths. That we have both read this same thread, on the same day, on the same website is a miracle (even ignoring the uniqueness of our rare gift). Seriously, you must come along to the next meeting. If you're shy (we all are at first) I'll meet you outside and introduce you once we enter. I still can't believe that we've met like this; all of the unlikely events that had to hurtle through time and meet at this exact moment at this exact place for us to actually contact each other are monumental. The universe has conspired for use to meet and I am truly grateful. Looking forward to meeting you in person at the next meeting!

Re:Everytime I posted about this sort of problem

[Anonymous Coward]

How hard is it to configure Windows to not run Windows update and other crap every time you boot up?

You know MS issues updates monthly. And if you know what you are doing you are more likely to be bitten by a random automated (rather than intentional) update than the bug it fixes. So there isn't even any point running it daily.

Or run windows in a vm on linux. Then just suspend/snapshot the VM. The benefit is if the browser uses too much mem (which seems to happen sometimes) it's still limited by the VM and doesn't affect your Linux stuff.

I've never seen a Win 7 machine take 10 minutes to become usable. 1 minute maybe.

Re:Everytime I posted about this sort of problem

[oscrivellodds]

I don't know what else to think of someone who tries to deny what I actually deal with every day. Maybe instead of calling them astroturfers I should call them after that other big group of habitual deniers- Republicans?

No, I think it more likely that slashdot would be infiltrated by astroturfers than Republicans, many of whom would probably deny the existence of computers. There are certainly a lot of people who earn their living sorting out MS OS problems here, and if they want to keep that gravy-train running, they have to support MS at every turn.
Yes, I think astroturfer fits.

Re:Everytime I posted about this sort of problem

[smash]

Yet, I can actually copy files from disk to disk on Windows or my Mac without the responsiveness of say, trying to start an app at the same time from one of the disks going to shit. Linux needs an IO scheduler that doesn't either suck or require fucking around to make it responsive to user interaction under load.

Running both Windows and Linux on this machine (Core i5-4430) and as far as disk IO goes, Windows blows the doors off Linux on it, in terms of responsiveness when copying files. Can it be tweaked? Maybe. Why should I have to fuck with it?

Re:Everytime I posted about this sort of problem

[Anonymous Coward]

If it does that and its an old image, reimage it.

If it does that off a refresh image, it's a hardware problem. There's tons of forums for that.

Re:Everytime I posted about this sort of problem

[Anonymous Coward]

You most likely have misconfigured your Linux filesystem. I've ran multiple benchmarks between various Windows versions and various Linux distros, on multiple hardware combinations, and ext3/4 soundly trumps ntfs in every way, on every configuration I have tried. You should run your benchmarks before making whatever tweaks you are making to the filesystem; your results will change, guaranteed.

Re:Everytime I posted about this sort of problem

[countach]

How crappy is an OS that makes you run a hidden command from the terminal, with obscure lists of processes to turn off the bloat? At least in OSX there is an easy and intuitive way to see what is being started on login and turn it off if you want.

Re:Everytime I posted about this sort of problem

[FunkDup]

what causes my Win 7 to take 10 minutes to boot

Holy fuck. I've seen servers with extensive startup scripts but no desktop should take that long. My windows 8 gets from power button to password in in 6 seconds, it's usable immediately. I could boot and shut down over 50 times while you boot up once!

You need to analyze all the running processes and then uninstall them. All of them. Except the virus scanner (you haven't got 2 virus scanners doing realtime have you?). You also don't have enough RAM

They fix it NOW??!?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

XP is basically EOL and they just fix this now? Assholes.

Re:They fix it NOW??!?!?!

[flyingfsck]

Well, XP is still extensively used by government users on virtual machines.

Another sign?

[oldhack]

Maybe they'll keep XP on life support until they get Win9 out.

Re:Another sign?

[Anonymous Coward]

The company my wife works for just now started upgrading their desktops from XP. They figure they will be running w/o support for about a year before they get everyone converted to Win7. Besides the risk of infection everything they connect one to the network, I can't even imagine how many certification requirements they will be violating. They're not a financial institution but I'm sure Sarbanes-Oxley applies to just about everyone. They were hoping M$ was going to keep in on life support... DOAH!

A PC is rebooted monthly and suspended more often

[tepples]

The summary says it is an issue in the first 15-60 minutes after startup. Servers are generally up for longer periods of time

If by "uptime" you mean wall time between reboots, I don't see how it differs. A desktop PC is rebooted monthly to install updates, and it is put to sleep (suspend) after hours. A server is the same; it just doesn't sleep unless it's used only during business hours.

Re:news flash

[Anonymous Coward]

Xp eol has been extended to 2015. This was a needed fix even if not for server 2003.

No it hasn't, that is for MS XP security products. ie, MSE [Microsoft Security Essentials].

Bloody hell?

[gstoddart]

The fix involved stopping the system from perpetually checking Internet Explorer updates.

Really guys? People get crappy performance for years, and it's due to trying to update IE?

That's pretty lame, even for Microsoft.

Re:I really thought they would never actually fix

[HybridST]

Sounds like you should have rolled the updates into an updated xp iso. Search the MS kb for more info.

Why fix it now?

[Virtucon]

I'll bet it persists in Vista, 7, 8 and 8.1 or it's prodigy would exhibit the problem. I just looked over the patch Tuesday fixes from this week and there's no mention of anything for SVCHOST however there is a nice memory leak that's been around for a long time in oleaut32.dll. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2870467

I guess they don't take advantage of static or runtime analysis tools at MSFT.

Re:Why fix it now?

[Anonymous Coward]

It has been confirmed in all OSes up to 8.1. Many of my clients are waiting for the fix in 7, 8, and 8.1, as they have been plagued with 30+ minutes boots ever since upgrading from XP.

Re:Police Pursuit

[Anonymous Coward]

It was on the NEWS...

Windows 9

[shikaisi]

OK, so now just incorporate this fix into a shrink-wrap version and launch it under the name of "Windows 9". I'm pretty sure it would outsell Windows 8 comfortably.

Re:I really thought they would never actually fix

[bloodhawk]

Really as the other poster said. You should have slipstreamed the updates into the install long ago. There is no reason for a new install of XP to be time consuming, especially important if you do a lot of installs.

Re:Thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Which part of "Microsoft product" did you not understand?

wow

[the_Bionic_lemming]

When you won't use IE and they have a bug that tries to continuously update software you won't use? That explains a lot of my issues with speed on older rigs. I wish developers would just focus on modular coding rather than expecting everyone is using the system the way that their developers/product designers expect.

I don't use IE, Adobe, and a bunch of other luzers addictions when I'm on the web, I shouldn't have system degradation because of it.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to use the most stable and fast software available.

I want to access my data today, tomorrow and in 15 years time. For me, that rules out any dependence on proprietary software.

Also, it is a bit of an ingenious argument to say to Linux is buggy because the most popular distro has regressions. It wouldn't be the most popular distro unless it had something in its favour.

CO2

[tonywestonuk]

I wonder, how much Co2 has been released into the atmosphere, with this bug present on millions of computers, over decades, causing PC's to eat more electricity than they should.

Re:CO2

[hcs_$reboot]

That extra bit is certainly much less than all the games you played and porn you visited over that same period.

Re:CO2

[evilviper]

I wonder, how much Co2 has been released into the atmosphere, with this bug present on millions of computers, over decades, causing PC's to eat more electricity than they should.

Far less than would have been caused by XP users "upgrading" to Vista...

If you want to calculate something... Figure out how much energy would be saved if everyone had stuck with Windows 2000 for the past decade and a half, instead of upgrading.

Re:CO2

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Well, I don't have the numbers with me, but to find for that carbon value (V) I guess it would work like this:

you need to find out how many computers had XP on them : (X)

multiply that by how much power these machines use on average per second (watt hours/360) (P)

find out how much carbon was emitted by power stations during that time. (C)

find out how much energy was generated, (E) and divide (C) by that.

and then divide that number by (P)

That's how I'd do it.

Re:CO2

[Anonymous Coward]

This. Bitcoin should also be charged a carbon tax. At least the change in my pocket does not continue to create new CO2 because it requires a server to track it!

When do they fix windows 8 explorer

[angel'o'sphere]

At work my computer stops basically completely after 4 programs have once used the file open or file save dialog (and the explorer windows also sleep and eat all CPU.
While I found a lot of potential reasons while googeling bottom line none seemed convincing.

Re: I really thought they would never actually fix

[Anonymous Coward]

i bet you sit there and stare at the status bar too.

XP.Org

[Anonymous Coward]

So when X.Org has a 22 year-old bug fixed it's "awesome" but when XP has 12 year-old one fixed it's "what did they wait for" ?

Re:XP.Org

[ledow]

One was a theoretically-exploitable, but extremely difficult to do so, obscure security bug that was almost invisible,

The other brought even top-of-the-line machines to a grinding halt constantly without reason.

Despite my own priorities, one of those is obviously going to get a LOT more attention.

Re:XP.Org

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, people always rant about how Microsoft has support and Linux doesn't have any, so I figure one of them is hoped-for, and the other was paid for when you bought your OS from Microsoft.

Re:Thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair they usually don't do this kind of stuff.

Oh, this old chestnut.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Fixed" isn't quite the right word. The version of Windows Update in Windows XP uses an O(2^n) - exponential! - algorithm to calculate update dependencies. Every time you add another update, the time to calculate dependencies doubles.

Two attempts to fix, in November and December, failed - just culling the supersedence lists didn't work. They haven't changed the algorithm, either. What they have done is remove a bunch of the Windows Updates to Internet Explorer from the catalog which have been replaced by others (the updates were for the most part cumulative, so you only needed the last one to have the most recent version - although I'm not sure if "most recent" is the right term here!).

There's a far more practical way that users will be able to do in April - use nLite to integrate every one of the updates until EOL, and remove Windows Update. After that point, it won't be doing them any good anyway.

Of course, what users REALLY SHOULD be doing is migrating to an OS that isn't end-of-life and that will be getting security updates. Windows 7 is fine. They had the cheap opportunity to update to Windows 8 and then (for free) 8.1, which doesn't suck as long as you install Classic Shell and ignore that the Metro UI even exists. Or any of a number of easy Linux distributions like Ubuntu, of course. I know two groups who are saving 0days deliberately for release after the last XP Patch Tuesday...

Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

not a decade too late.

In other news, the NSA has annouced the scaling ba

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, In other news, the NSA has annouced the scaling back of domestic surveillance. Coincidence?

Why fix it?

[unixisc]

They should have released a bug that makes the OS alone eat up the whole PC, and leave nothing for the applications. That way, everybody can be forced to migrate.

Where, exactly, would be up to them.

M$ extends support for XP. Stops crippling it...

[Anonymous Coward]

for the time being

Figures that it would be something stupid

[Karmashock]

so all those slow downs are so a system service can check for internet explorer updates? A program which shouldn't even be integrated into the OS?

really MS? Knock it off.

Re:I really thought they would never actually fix

[antdude]

I thought M$ did this on purpose to make XP users dump this old OS. :P

Re: Thanks

[Anonymousekiteer]

righto

How to spin bug-fix for MICROS~1 ..

[DTentilhao]

They fix a years old bug and somehow slashdot manages to spin this into a positive puff-piece for MICROS~1 ..

Coupling of Browser and OS!

[Anonymous Coward]

There's more proof, EU court.

Re:I really thought they would never actually fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should millions of people have to do this on their own? Why doesn't Microsoft do it once? Doesn't anyone understand the concept of scale?

Re:I really thought they would never actually fix

[hairyfeet]

Or if he is constantly doing installs and doesn't want to keep having to burn .ISOs he can just use WSUS Offline dropped into a share folder on his network and call it a day. I have a copy on my network and it has everything from XP and Office 2K3 to Win 8.1 and Office 2K10 on it and between that and Ninite the amount of time it takes to go from bare metal to fully patched and ready to go has dropped right off the map. What is nice is the fact you can just flip UAC off and have it run fully unattended, just run it and it'll take care of any reboots required and fully patch the system, install the latest IE and DirectX as well as .NET and Office patches if you want, easy peasy.

Gigawatts

[Beatlebum]

I wonder how much energy has been burned up by this sloppy code. Thanks Microsoft.

Computer slow for 45 minutes

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows slowed down my mom's Pentium 4 2.4 GHz computer. Yes, she still uses XP. don't diss her. I will have to upgrade her OS to Windows 7 in March or April though.

Over three decades of computer Use

[fast turtle]

My first PC was a TRS80/4p in 1982 that cost over $5,000 for it and the 15M External Disk, so I've been using a computer for a very long time. Hell the next system I bought was a Tandy 1000 (Intel 286) and I used that for 4 years. The first Windows system I had was in 88 and ran Dos 6.22/WFW 3.11 and that was a 386. I've had damn near every generation of Intel based chip other then P4 over the last 30 years.

In fact, I've used every consumer version of Windows (3.11/95a/b/c/98/Se/Me/XP/Vista/Win7/8/8.1) that MS has released and let me tell you: Win8 is not crap and yes I do know as I'm running 8.1 now. 8 was a clusterfuck in your face change - as bad as Vista was but with a fucking reason. Yes 8 is not for anyone who uses a desktop and 8.1 fixed many of the fucking desktop complaints but it still isn't as good as Vista/Win7 is for that purpose.

Personally, I'm no fan of desktop effects and have disabled them since Win95b with IE4 since the slide open menus simply wasted time. When I use Linux, I prefer Fluxbox to anything else as it has a plain text syntax for the fucking menu and I can edit it as needed but when I need a full DE, I'll stick with KDE 3 as it actually works better then the crap called 4 - email actually works w/o bogging the fucking system down and Amarok is damn near perfect (2.0 still hasn't reached feature parity) and who's bright idea was it to use an SQL DB for email? Sounds like something from Microsoft.

The biggest complaint I'm hearing about 8/8.1 is WMP is not included (finally killed by MS) and those folks don't use iTunes so I suggest they get VLC for Videos as it handles damn near everything including music though I do tell em that it wont save the fucking playlist for some reason. If they have an extensive music library, I suggest FooBar2000 as it works quite well - use it myself. Personally, I'd stick with Open Source but Wine doesn't support my games worth a damn (at least I haven't figured out how to get some of them running) and don't even mention Steam to me as I don't like/trust them.

please stop

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Microsoft,
please stop providing updates to any Version of Internet explorer less than version 10, and likewise stop providing updates to any (consumer) operating system that does not run IE-10+.
you want customers to move on, developers want them to move on. really, please make it an easier decision for then to all upgrade. you are doing nothing but encouraging security exploits, and preventing progress. (it's like IE6 all over again)

Re:Thanks

[FatdogHaiku]

To be fair they usually don't do this kind of stuff.

Right. Normally, if it's broken, it stays broken until a new product release really fucks it up...

kbase number

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi, would one of you that has received the update please post the kbase number ... when I try windows updates I don't see any update that would address this issue.
Thanks,
Daniel

would you have the Kbase number for the update

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi, would you have the kbase number for the update? I don't see the update when I go to windows updates. Thanks, Daniel

Still better than Hurd

[Anonymous Coward]

That garbage browser turns 20 next year.

Which is really fucking sad actually, until you consider Hurd has had more than 20 years of MIT development time and its still not up to stuff.

Re:I really thought they would never actually fix

[Anonymous Coward]

At the XP era, slipstreaming updates didn't always work.

Finally

[brunnegd]

My XP computer works fine, no BSOD, no unstable operation, until MS issues patches. Then the machine gets flakey, and the only solution is a reboot. Is MS setting a switch that essentially forces me to reboot? I install patches, understand the need, but I want to do it on my own time.

2003 Servers

[Anonymous Coward]

As a techie that works and supports accounts at a large 3 letter Tech company, trust me to say the next 18 months if going to be VERY busy due to the 10's of thousands of 2003 servers still out there. As many have mentioned its sounds "easy" to just say well you need to upgrade. The reality is a lot more sobering, especially with those legacy software applications that only run on 2003 or lower.
Hell W2K is still out there in many cases.

Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Got tired of windows, installed that newfangled linux thing on all my machines, it seems to run faster, also it works nice with the internets. It is so good norton and macaffe don't work on it..that in itself is a good thing.

They engineered the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

They engineered the problem to get people to upgrade.

They are using the last window of fixes to remove the intentional code in case someone eventually works that out, although it seems stupid as I imagine a lot of XP installs can still be decompiled to look at this.