Where in your link do you see anything indicating how much of that 4GB you have installed is usable by the OS?
How much memory does your graphics card use? That (amongst other things) comes right off the top of your 4GB, as they all have to be addressable within the 4GB space (at least on 32-bit versions).
Every OEM copy of Vista I've seen comes with both.
Just rebuild it from the recovery disks as soon as you get it, and you'll get prompted for 32-bit or 64-bit. At least thats what I've seen, on Vista business versions.
The Pavilions are consumer level garbage. You should never be buying them for a business.
The whole driver support and consisten images are one of the key differentiators between business class equipment and consumer class stuff.
If you like HP (as do I) just stick to the notebooks that carry the name, 'HP Compaq NNNN' or similar. Those are the business class stuff and you dont run into those kinds of problems.
Come on Microsoft, how hard would it be to construct a framework to provide one-click updates to the entire system? It already exists, its called Microsoft Update. If your app is signed and certified (ie, it can be published on the microsoft catalog webpage), then patches can be distributed via microsoft update.
Of course, I dont think there is a single app vendor out there that uses it, but the facility exists.
There's also WSUS/SUS for corporate, in-house environments. You can add your own signing key to the trusted root, and deploy updates to anything you want to package through your corporate wsus.
Not quite the same thing as the package managers on Linux, but thats more of an economic issue than a technical one (ie, most of the software on windows is commercial, not open source).
I cant speak to the VMM issues, as I'm not deeply knowledgeable enough there.
However, as to your comment as why windows admins tend to do one service per OS instance, its not really about that, at least not in my experience.
It's more about incompatibility. There are lots of pieces of software that wont coexist well together.
An example is multiple apps that use IIS as their web front end. Many arent very good about not breaking other configs in IIS when they install their IIS configs.
There are also library incompatibilities. For example, if you have two things running on the box that expect 2 different versions of the oracle client... you can get problems.
Some software stomps all over the registry and registry perms when it installs, etc.
But if you can get past that stuff, its not a problem with the OS itself. I've got boxes on clients that have 4 different versions of sql server (msde2000, sql 2005 express, sql 2005, and sql 2005 compact), sage timberline + pervasive, exchange, multiple web apps, SUS, Sophos A/V console, DC/DNS/GC, and heavy file serving.
Now mind you, its an abomination. And I've had the stupid Timberline software screw up the registry on at least one occasion during an upgrade (only software that seems to cause problems there). I'd rather not have the server have that exact load mix, but it runs just fine, 2GB of memory, and 2xHT-Xeons, and a small raid-5.
Anyway, I kind of rambled on, but my point is that people do the one-service per os instance thing because of app/service compatibility issues primarily, not because of resource issues.
Once tried to use ipconfig/release and/renew to fix a conflicting IP address, but it gave permission denied error! XP behaved this way too. You had to be a member of the Administrators group, or the 'Network Operators' group to do a manual release/renew. You can also just unplug and re-plug the network cable.
If the memory use is because of caches then something is wrong with their implementation, because they grow endlessly.
After a recent thread on this (which I think you and I discussed) I put in some of those settings to reduce FF's memory usage, and it did help, but it still grows endlessly, now just slower.
There's a linear relationship between how long its been running and how big the memory is.
For example, right now FF2 has been running for about a week on my box, and has 17 tabs open. The tabs have been fluctuating constantly over the week.
It's using a physical memory working set of 182MB, and a virtual memory size of 410mb.
Note that this is _massively_ improved since I made some of those changes. Prior to those in a similar situation, it would probably be over 500mb of working set.
It's interesting talking about things like hand-optimized assembler, and the like. Microsoft did alot of that stuff in the early days of windows, and it worked wonders for them then (fast apps), but now is coming to bite them in the butt.
Take the VBA engine for example, embedded in all the office apps. I read a blog by one of the office team folks, and he talked about what a horrid mess that thing was, so heavily optimized, with big chunks of assembly that it was almost completely unmaintainable at this point. The article was in the context of porting it over to the mac office versions, and he was saying how it was completely impossible because of these issues.
Just an interesting aside in how those early optimizations were great then, but are killing them now.
I understand what you're saying, that the Jet drivers are built into windows... but that has nothing to do with being free.
Why not just add a silent installation of SQL 2005 Express or SQL 2005 Compact to your app installer? It's pretty straightforward once you've done the work on your app installer. I mean you have to do things like check for the right version of the Jet driver and Access runtime, etc.
If your audience is all windows, sql 2005 express or compact are excellent choices. They're as or more capable than other equivs (myssql, sqllite, etc), and you get the added benefit that they get automatically patched by windows-update/microsoft-update/automatic-update.
who figured a server is a server and confused "much more secure" for "needs no precautions whatsoever" and then just left it unwatched and with no updates for several years. Thats actually been almost precisely my experience with all but the most very paranoid high-end unix guys.
They think that because its unix, its secure, so they dont need to check logs, patch it, or do any maintenance on it. We get comments like, 'we only patch it when something really nasty is going around'.
Now mind you, I think the vast majority of the hacks come through userland (PHP and PHP apps I'm looking at you) with local escalations, or through open SSH ports with some passwords that are easy to guess, plus local escalations.
Anyway, thats been very consistently my experience for the last 5+ years.
Dont normally read or respond to ACs, but this was a good one. Just wanted to add a few details.
The 4GB (xp) or 4GB (server) limits are not the same in x64 versions.
Even XP x64 supported up to 128GB of memory, and many engineering shops used it extensively immediately after it came out to support large memory situations for ProE and CAD/CAM/CAE stuff.
Windows 2003 Standard supports a max of 4GB for x86 and 32GB for x64.
Windows 2003 Enterprise supports a max of 64GB for x86 and 2TB for x64.
For Vista, all the 32-bit versions support up to 4GB, even the Home Basic. For Vista x64, it goes from 8GB in Home Basic, up to 128GB in Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate.
XP x64 was very doable in a business environment, where you got a supported build from the manufacturer.
Server 2003 x64 is the standard. I dont think we've built or deployed a 32-bit server in several years, and dont really seem them purchased that way anymore.
Vista x64 is stable, as long as you're working with a quality vendor that supports the drivers and such. I have a new HP Compaq 8710w on the way loaded to the gills, and one of the builds on it will be vista x64.
Thanks to user account control. I was locked out of all the data I had hoped to save, including my outlook mail and contacts therein. Permanently gone and unrecoverable. You do realize that what you've described is not possible, right?
The only way what you described could happen is if you encrypted the drive (BitLocker or EFS) or the folders in question.
UAC does not have anything to do with file storage, encryption, or the like.
Now its possible that by default you may not have permissions to access your old user profile files from the new system, but thats just a simple matter of using an admin account to update the acls.
Yes and no... Indeed, 32 bit operating systems can't address more than 2^32 bytes, but 3GiB isn't getting close to that. It's not that simple. Everything that has memory or requires memory addressing must be stuck into that 4GB space.
So if you have a 512MB video card, that eats up half a gig of your available memory space from your theoretical max of 2^32. Then there's all the other components in the system.
Thats not typical though, at least in my experience.
Sure, the poorly managed windows networks get hosed periodically by people serving spam and warez. It gets caught by the network guys, and gets fixed. Repeat.
But the really really nasty stuff seems to come in through the Unix systems. The kind of things where the research group finds out that all user accounts have been compromised for several years, and its been used as a launching point for highly targeted, low-volume (and very successful) bank phishing scams, or as a control node for botnets.
Seems like the noisy amateurs target the windows systems, where there's a high turnover of machines getting compromised and fixed. But there's this self-righteous attitude on the unix folks' side that their stuff is secure and so doesnt have to be monitored or audited, until its too late.
Anyway, just my experience, but I've seen this pattern repeat for years.
JET is a depreciated platform and is no longer being actively developed or really supported in new projects by Microsoft. *OK* A perfectly reasonable position to take when you do have functionally replacement products being offered, which they do in the form of MSDE. Jet hasnt been deprecated, the MDB file format has been. Jet is still present on windows and ACCDB files are the currently supported flavor.
Exchange Server never used the Jet that Access uses.
It used something that originated as DAE, and whose team and query engine was merged for a brief period with Jet Red (what Access uses).
But the ESE (sometimes called Jet Blue, even though it has almost nothing to do with the Jet that Access uses) used by Exchange and Active Directory is not that Jet you're talking about.
2 minutes of search on wikipedia for 'jet blue' or ese will clear this all up for you. In particular, read the History section and the 'comparison to Jet Red'.
MS Exchange doesnt use Access, and it doesnt use the same 'Jet' as what Access defaults to.
Exchange uses a database technology known as ESE that was at a time known internally as 'Jet Blue'. Although its got the word Jet in it, it is not the same as the 'Jet' engine that Access uses.
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Where in your link do you see anything indicating how much of that 4GB you have installed is usable by the OS?
How much memory does your graphics card use? That (amongst other things) comes right off the top of your 4GB, as they all have to be addressable within the 4GB space (at least on 32-bit versions).
Are you kidding me?
You're mixing server v.next versions that dont even exist yet with released versions of the desktop.
The only reason you're seeing that is because (I'd guess) they're all based on the NT6 kernel.
But they're not all versions of 'Vista'. By definition if nothing else.
Depends what you're using them for.
From a security point of view, they've got real problems.
Terrible default service settings, no firewall of any sort, horribly insecure default NTFS ACLs, and IIS5 was a POS compared to the later versions.
Just the default NTFS ACLs is a real problem, as it makes it hard to have any sort of defense-in-depth on them.
But if you're only using them for internal CIFS servers, they're probably not too bad.
WinFS was not and is not a new file system.
It's a metadata system that sits on top of NTFS.
I'm not sure why everyone here seemed to think it was a replacement for NTFS, but this is just not the case.
Every OEM copy of Vista I've seen comes with both.
Just rebuild it from the recovery disks as soon as you get it, and you'll get prompted for 32-bit or 64-bit. At least thats what I've seen, on Vista business versions.
At the risk of feeding ACs ...
This is completely incorrect.
XP most certainly was the replacement for win2000 workstation.
Server 2003 was the replacement for win2000 server.
You're mixing the desktop lines and the server lines.
The Pavilions are consumer level garbage. You should never be buying them for a business.
The whole driver support and consisten images are one of the key differentiators between business class equipment and consumer class stuff.
If you like HP (as do I) just stick to the notebooks that carry the name, 'HP Compaq NNNN' or similar. Those are the business class stuff and you dont run into those kinds of problems.
What's the model on that Dell?
The only time I've ever seen this is on consumer level stuff.
Of course, I dont think there is a single app vendor out there that uses it, but the facility exists.
There's also WSUS/SUS for corporate, in-house environments. You can add your own signing key to the trusted root, and deploy updates to anything you want to package through your corporate wsus.
Not quite the same thing as the package managers on Linux, but thats more of an economic issue than a technical one (ie, most of the software on windows is commercial, not open source).
I cant speak to the VMM issues, as I'm not deeply knowledgeable enough there.
... you can get problems.
However, as to your comment as why windows admins tend to do one service per OS instance, its not really about that, at least not in my experience.
It's more about incompatibility. There are lots of pieces of software that wont coexist well together.
An example is multiple apps that use IIS as their web front end. Many arent very good about not breaking other configs in IIS when they install their IIS configs.
There are also library incompatibilities. For example, if you have two things running on the box that expect 2 different versions of the oracle client
Some software stomps all over the registry and registry perms when it installs, etc.
But if you can get past that stuff, its not a problem with the OS itself. I've got boxes on clients that have 4 different versions of sql server (msde2000, sql 2005 express, sql 2005, and sql 2005 compact), sage timberline + pervasive, exchange, multiple web apps, SUS, Sophos A/V console, DC/DNS/GC, and heavy file serving.
Now mind you, its an abomination. And I've had the stupid Timberline software screw up the registry on at least one occasion during an upgrade (only software that seems to cause problems there). I'd rather not have the server have that exact load mix, but it runs just fine, 2GB of memory, and 2xHT-Xeons, and a small raid-5.
Anyway, I kind of rambled on, but my point is that people do the one-service per os instance thing because of app/service compatibility issues primarily, not because of resource issues.
Ahh, misunderstood then.
.... with vista as one of the options ... we'll see how it behaves for me.
What has been surprising me is how variant the behavior has been amongst users.
Wonder how much of that is driver related, how much is upgrade artifacts, etc.
I've got a real heavy duty 17" hp compaq 8710w laptop coming
If the memory use is because of caches then something is wrong with their implementation, because they grow endlessly.
After a recent thread on this (which I think you and I discussed) I put in some of those settings to reduce FF's memory usage, and it did help, but it still grows endlessly, now just slower.
There's a linear relationship between how long its been running and how big the memory is.
For example, right now FF2 has been running for about a week on my box, and has 17 tabs open. The tabs have been fluctuating constantly over the week.
It's using a physical memory working set of 182MB, and a virtual memory size of 410mb.
Note that this is _massively_ improved since I made some of those changes. Prior to those in a similar situation, it would probably be over 500mb of working set.
It's interesting talking about things like hand-optimized assembler, and the like. Microsoft did alot of that stuff in the early days of windows, and it worked wonders for them then (fast apps), but now is coming to bite them in the butt.
Take the VBA engine for example, embedded in all the office apps. I read a blog by one of the office team folks, and he talked about what a horrid mess that thing was, so heavily optimized, with big chunks of assembly that it was almost completely unmaintainable at this point. The article was in the context of porting it over to the mac office versions, and he was saying how it was completely impossible because of these issues.
Just an interesting aside in how those early optimizations were great then, but are killing them now.
I understand what you're saying, that the Jet drivers are built into windows ... but that has nothing to do with being free.
Why not just add a silent installation of SQL 2005 Express or SQL 2005 Compact to your app installer? It's pretty straightforward once you've done the work on your app installer. I mean you have to do things like check for the right version of the Jet driver and Access runtime, etc.
If your audience is all windows, sql 2005 express or compact are excellent choices. They're as or more capable than other equivs (myssql, sqllite, etc), and you get the added benefit that they get automatically patched by windows-update/microsoft-update/automatic-update.
Well, I am sorry that this happened to you, losing files is very painful.
But something else must have happened. UAC has no interaction or ability to modify the file system.
You may not have had bitlocker, but EFS may have been setup or triggered accidentally. Or maybe the drive was corrupted.
In any case, it may have been windows, it may have been corruption, it may have been bad hardware, but it definitely wasnt UAC.
They think that because its unix, its secure, so they dont need to check logs, patch it, or do any maintenance on it. We get comments like, 'we only patch it when something really nasty is going around'.
Now mind you, I think the vast majority of the hacks come through userland (PHP and PHP apps I'm looking at you) with local escalations, or through open SSH ports with some passwords that are easy to guess, plus local escalations.
Anyway, thats been very consistently my experience for the last 5+ years.
Dont normally read or respond to ACs, but this was a good one. Just wanted to add a few details.
The 4GB (xp) or 4GB (server) limits are not the same in x64 versions.
Even XP x64 supported up to 128GB of memory, and many engineering shops used it extensively immediately after it came out to support large memory situations for ProE and CAD/CAM/CAE stuff.
Windows 2003 Standard supports a max of 4GB for x86 and 32GB for x64.
Windows 2003 Enterprise supports a max of 64GB for x86 and 2TB for x64.
For Vista, all the 32-bit versions support up to 4GB, even the Home Basic. For Vista x64, it goes from 8GB in Home Basic, up to 128GB in Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate.
Everything you wanted to know about it is here.
XP x64 was very doable in a business environment, where you got a supported build from the manufacturer.
Server 2003 x64 is the standard. I dont think we've built or deployed a 32-bit server in several years, and dont really seem them purchased that way anymore.
Vista x64 is stable, as long as you're working with a quality vendor that supports the drivers and such. I have a new HP Compaq 8710w on the way loaded to the gills, and one of the builds on it will be vista x64.
The only way what you described could happen is if you encrypted the drive (BitLocker or EFS) or the folders in question.
UAC does not have anything to do with file storage, encryption, or the like.
Now its possible that by default you may not have permissions to access your old user profile files from the new system, but thats just a simple matter of using an admin account to update the acls.
So if you have a 512MB video card, that eats up half a gig of your available memory space from your theoretical max of 2^32. Then there's all the other components in the system.
Thats not typical though, at least in my experience.
Sure, the poorly managed windows networks get hosed periodically by people serving spam and warez. It gets caught by the network guys, and gets fixed. Repeat.
But the really really nasty stuff seems to come in through the Unix systems. The kind of things where the research group finds out that all user accounts have been compromised for several years, and its been used as a launching point for highly targeted, low-volume (and very successful) bank phishing scams, or as a control node for botnets.
Seems like the noisy amateurs target the windows systems, where there's a high turnover of machines getting compromised and fixed. But there's this self-righteous attitude on the unix folks' side that their stuff is secure and so doesnt have to be monitored or audited, until its too late.
Anyway, just my experience, but I've seen this pattern repeat for years.
Exchange Server never used the Jet that Access uses.
It used something that originated as DAE, and whose team and query engine was merged for a brief period with Jet Red (what Access uses).
But the ESE (sometimes called Jet Blue, even though it has almost nothing to do with the Jet that Access uses) used by Exchange and Active Directory is not that Jet you're talking about.
2 minutes of search on wikipedia for 'jet blue' or ese will clear this all up for you. In particular, read the History section and the 'comparison to Jet Red'.
MS Exchange doesnt use Access, and it doesnt use the same 'Jet' as what Access defaults to.
Exchange uses a database technology known as ESE that was at a time known internally as 'Jet Blue'. Although its got the word Jet in it, it is not the same as the 'Jet' engine that Access uses.
Read more at Wikipedia. Particular note the difference between ESE and Jet Red.