I downloaded Windows XP RC2 yesterday and I was wondering if I should do a Clean re-installation by formatting my HD or an Upgrade from RC1 to RC2 is good enought?

upgrade is good enough.

I got the RC1 sent to me, but RC2 instructions. Can someone tell me where I can get Conxion login info?

Quit the b****ing! XP is a great OS, not something i could say about WinME or Win98se, or Win2k. RC2 is practically flawless. If you're having problems with it, consider streamlining your registry or formatting your HD and then get an education on running an OS!

I have to agree. It runs Windows programs better than the OS they were originally designed for!!! I've had no problems running RC1. I can't imagine how good RC2 will be when I get the info on the download from MS....

Actually RC2 has the same issues RC1 does in terms of networking. When I try to communicate with any other machines on my network, it takes about 30 minutes for XP to open the drives on those machines and file copying between them is SLOW. I've seen other people complain about this on the XP Newsgroups so I know I'm not the only one this has happened to.

I also have soundcard issues but I'm sure that's more a driver problem than it is the OS.

The networking stuff alone though is enough to make me avoid XP. I installed RC1 and used it for a day and uninstalled it. Same thing with RC2. I rely on my network too much to have to wait for XP to decide it's going to find my Win9X machines. Maybe when SP1 for XP comoes out, I'll take another look but for now, these networking problems make me want to avoid it.

I agree with everything you're saying except for the networking issue. I have a Netgear FA310TX NIC with a Netgear 104TP hub and I'm having absolutly no problems in talking to my roommate's Windows 98SE machine. Actually communication is faster now that I'm using XP RC1 than when I was using Windows 98SE or Windows 2000 Pro. Could it be possible that you dont have something configured quite right in your network stack?

just incase you were interested about that fat xbox comment i found the article for ya > http://www.dailyradar.co...eature_page_2493_1.html

33.5 x 27.5 x 8.5 cm ! Damn, and I thought the PS2 was huge!
The GameCube on the other hand looks cool!

140 am cst and this is just plain crap. I guess all I get is my 19 bucks worth of bandwith but jesus the speed is embarrassing to an atwork connect. I will not do this again. either they deliver to my door or no go. I understand there are many but 6 kb?

I have Cable-Modem and it took me approximately 18 hours to download. At about the same speed as you're talking about. At times it just stopped. But, it's installed and working. How good, I don't know? RC1 rebooted on me at least once a day, out of the blue. Drivers, I suspect. I hope RC2 is better. I got one warning about my audio driver during install and was told to discontinue setup until I fixed it. But, I continued anyway. Here's hoping.

I also have Cable-Modem and I downloaded it yesterday at 130+ kb!

Most interesting....
I can recall a discussion I had several weeks back, where I was commenting on the size of the newfangled X-box. Seems many internet vidgaming sites are also claiming that it's excessively large. Even table-like. Doesn't sound much like a 'console' to me...

The only thing not working right now is my Quicktime 5, is anyone else having this problem? Besides this problem my instalation was perfect plus it seems to be booting quicker......

I guess it's IE that's broken then. As it works just fine in Mozilla and Opera.

Yeh, I have hade the same problem with Quicktime 5 not working, it is definitely a IE6 browser functionality isssue. I cannot get it to playh within its window frame in IE6...nothing happens

I just installed RC2 over RC1 and want to report that RC2 breaks Zone Alarm Pro. And For some reason I was asked for my Office 2000 install CD during the Windows setup. Is Microsoft using XP to check if other MS programs already installed are legitimate?

As much as remember, XP was always breaking ZoneAlarm....

pirated versions of office 2k may not work with XP from what ive heard. the 'warez serialz' used are now blocked or something. this is just something i read a long time ago, not sure how valid it is.

RC1 didn't break Zone Alarm Pro on my machine, at ant rate the latest update, 26z14 fixed it under RC2.

I haven't had any problems with RC2. Office XP installed fine with a pirated serial. (I have a legit copy, mind you; I just don't want to go through the pain in the a** of re-registering the damn thing on XP ... friggin' M$) Zone Alarm (personal) works fine. Even QuickTime gives me no problems. I DO have problems with my Voodoo3 card due to incompatible drivers, and my sound card gave me some grief until I did the SB Live patch routine, but now all is cool and everything's coexisting with everything else quite happily. I DO keep getting an occasional message from my taskbar that says "A local network connection is unplugged" (or something very similar) and I can't for the life of me figure out what it means. It doesn't seem to affect anything, but it pops up from time to time.

I experiencing the same error from trying to install both XP rc1 and rc2. I downloaded both rc1 and rc2 iso images from MSDN. Is it just me, or has anyone else out there been experiencing the following error:

ERROR:
sxs.dll:Syntax error in manifest or policy file
"D:\I386\asms\6000\msft

\\windows\common\controls\controls.man" on line 0.

Did you chech the ISO file ou downloaded with CRC.EXE? And after you burn the CD you can also check the CD with CRC.EXE and comparer CRCs which must be valid and the same on ISO and CD.

MICROSOFT'S XP PREVIEW PROGRAM IS AS ORGANIZED AS A RASH!

it will run ok on 128mb of ram but at least 256mb is very highly recommended. ram is dirt cheap these days anyways. i guess the difference would be roughly equivelant to running windows me on 64mb ram instead of 128mb. ok but not great.

I agree, in fact, i just bought a 256MB SDRAM for only $49.99 at Officee Depot, and it's not one of those cheap generic ones too. RAM Upgrade is one of inexpensive way to boost your PC's performance. Just make sure that you get your RAM from a reputable company, so you won't have to deal with defective RAM's later on...

I'm wondering if XP will have any code optimized to take advantage of the P4 (kinda like nvidia's new drivers)? If so, does it affect the performance a lot?
A side question: does anybody use a PCI 128 (CT4700 version) with XP, and if so, how well does it work?

John

I don't know about optimisations. Maybe there are optimisations for P4 and AMD Athlon CPUs but I think it doesn't make a big difference. There are drivers for CPU in Device Manager nut I don't know if that's it.

My friend has PCI 128 and it works great. Creative soundcards are always very well supported.

Creative doesn't support any of their products. The PCI 128 has 5 different "versions". Of those different versions, the ones that were made first only have the standard drivers that Microsoft made for Windows 2k, and there are no drivers for Windows Me. In addition, they are aware of dozens of problems with the 98 drivers, yet will not do anything about it. That's why I was asking... hoping somehow the CT4700 card might get decent drivers from MS this time. The Win 2k drivers by MS only allow 2 speaker support. No 4 speakers, no microphone, etc.

John

I think it was discussed in the newsgroups way way back, like during the beta1 stage, wheater or not MS was going to optimize the code, and I believe the answer to that was no.

Creative plain and simply sucks, it's ashame that they hold a monopoly on the sound market, luckily, another monopoly by the name of nVidia has developed what they call an APU (Audio Processing Unit), which is supposed to be quite a bit superior to the Live! chipset in most ways, not all, but most.

RC2 SUCKS...STICK WITH RC1.

For me RC2 is much better then RC1. There were some bugs in RC1 that are now fixed and I see almost no bugs now in RC2. Also RC2 is auite a bit faster then RC1.

That is if you can get the damn thing to install

What problems are you having?

It wont install...it bluescreens after the first restart.never had that problem with rc1 pro.

you cant install it through dos!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This might be a Ultra ATA 100 driver problem, if you are using a Promise ATA 100 card have the Promise Family driver disk ready during install. That is the drivers for Win2K they work fine. Also be careful with Intel Ultra ATA 100 drivers (IDE) which are not installed by default, especially if this was an upgrade from W2K.

If you're happy with Win2000, then don't upgrade to winXP when it releases. Wait for at least 6 months before switching. By then, hopefully a service pack is released to fix comment bugs. Also, this allows time for many drivers to come out for it. Win2000 is also a solid operating system. If it does everything you need, then there's no need to upgrade to XP right away.

I agree, I'm dual-booting both, and while XP has some nice features, Windows 2000 (SP-2) is just fine. I'm of the mind that if I win Windows XP or someone sends it to me, I'll install it. But I can't really justify spending another hundred bucks for the upgrade to Windows 2000.

I'm currently running a 500Mhz AMD Ahtlon, 64MB RAM, Win2k Pro, machine and just wanna know if Windows Xp is worth installing on a new computer or should i just upgrade current computer's memory to 256MB instead? I think that a Memory upgrade is cheaper than buying a new computer, but i just don't wanna run into problems later on. what do you think? I'm running Windows 2000 Pro, and there seems to be no problem with my hardware and other peripherals? Any opinion?

WinXP is superior. In all aspects. It also uses Win2k drivers, so your hardware will be fine. It's basically a (if you can believe it) more stable Windows2000, a new UI, and a few better features. (Such a** switching users, taskbar grouping, and inactive system tray icon hiding)

But with 64 megs of ram winxp is going to be one slow piece of software...better to go for more ram, windows 2000 will thank you for it.

WinXP is superior. In all aspects. It also uses Win2k drivers, so your hardware will be fine. It's basically a (if you can believe it) more stable Windows2000, a new UI, and a few better features. (Such a** switching users, taskbar grouping, and inactive system tray icon hiding)

Windows XP is almost the same as Windows 2000, esp. if you dissable all the new effects. You better buy some RAM. You will se a huge difference if you upgrade your RAM to 256MB.

Actually, i just decided to upgrade my memory to 256 Megs.
Thanks...

Upgrade your memory to 512MB, XP RC1 requires a lot of it (and disk space - cheap stuff you know). I run both Windows 2000 & XP RC1 on dual boot. Just a few problems.

come on Windows XP......... I had my Gateway 166MMX now for three years waiting for the time and with the good things I've been hearing about XP I thing it's time to buy me a NEW COMPUTER !!!!!

The only problem is do I buy a "AMD" or "Intel" ?

What does everybody think is better with XP "amd" or "intel" ? :-)

Completely up to you (obviously).
However, if you're buying it right now, save yourself some money and get an AMD.

I think AMD is much smarter choice then Intel. It's cheaper and gives you more performence at the same speed then Intel does.

with intel's aggressive price cuts on the p4, amd only has a marginal lead now in terms of price/performance ratio. if you can wait, the p4 will be upgraded to the new .13 micron technology this fall. that should even the playing field or even tip it slightly in favor of intel. but also remember that in a couple of years you will have to buy a new comp again to take advantage of usb2, 64bit processing, and possibly serial ata and pci-x(i think that's what it's called). though there will be a 64bit server version of windows xp, us regular consumers will have to wait a couple of years for 64bit to come down to our level. so the better choice might be to save a significant amount of cash and get an amd duron for now.

It funny i just upgraded last week and it was the same question AMD or INTEL ?? and i chose AMD 1.2 ghz with a7m266 asus motherboard with 256 DDR ram and i must say it way cheaper than intel and DAMM this thing is fast. :)

well XP is definatly one of the best OS's that Microsoft has ever made. Just wish you didn't have to activate it.

if RTM is most likly to be the one everyone downloads off the web, how long do you think it will be before a "Real" crack is designed???

just like Office XP RTM i don't think it will be long...

What is up with over 2 months between the 'drop date' and 'shelve date'?

Are people @ redmond going to walk around for 2 months and pat each other on the back or what?

It takes a fair amount of time for the media duplication, printing, packaging, delivery, stocking, and other other activities association with the physical distribution of a product. Marketing, advertising, and many other things are also going on at this time, with the final requirements and details regarding anything that had changed up to the last minute. Additionally, OEMs that intend to pre-load WinXP on their upcoming hardware lines need a lot of time to prepare their system images, test, validate, and then deploy each new release of binaries on their production lines.

Also, since MS intends to do simultaneous release of WinXP in multiple languages, final translation of all system text is also being performed. Although most of the translations of the initial-release languages had been started well before this time, there still needs to be incremental updates of any text that had been in flux during the last few weeks, so that the same changes can be reflected in the other languages as well. In the months prior to release, MS also is ramping up training of tech support and preparation of final tech support information of issues that are anticipated to be common support problems. There are lots of things happening.

>

M$ has been stretching the time between RTM and retail release. Win98 was about 2 months. Office XP was a tad longer, and WinXP will be nearly 3 months, assuming RTM within a week like Office. Blech...they're not even bothering to pretend they debug the stuff anymore. I'm gonna wait around for the *real* RTM...when the Server flavors go gold.

LooseChanj, you're an idiot. lol

Before you pass judgement and apply the same attitudes that might have been appropriate with Windows 98 about how they release products, maybe you should try the thing out. Windows 2000's launch happened and still no major debacle in the media has arisen - even security-wise.

Windows XP RC1, which I have and use regularly, as well as the rest of my family on my secondary machine, is almost flawless. Outside of a few bugs where a new feature might act a little bit differently than expected, the thing is solid.

With all the different things it's been used for (ranging from regular Internet and chat usage to Word Processing, acting as a print server in the house, as a Remote Desktop host, and for image, audio ripping, video editing, and encoding media into streamable formats) - the thing is astonishing.

The system has NEVER crashed, froze, or hung. I can't remember having any program errors, come to think of it. All of my programs (legacy or otherwise) work perfectly in it (I've even tried a few where you have to tell it to emmulate a legacy environment to run it). All of my hardware has been flawlessly compatible with it. I can't sing enough praises about it - they seriously have got it right this time.

the longer date is probably needed because they consider this a much more major product release than win98 and office xp. they need to press millions and distribute millions of cds worldwide. they need advertising and all other marketing methods to take hold and for the average user to take notice of what the product is about and that it is seen as the the biggest upgrade for home users since win95a.

although im sure with all the legal disputes mounting against xp that microsoft wishes it could get it on the shelves quicker.

btw, did someone add another month to the calendar without telling me?
august 28 -> sept 28 = 1 month
sept 28 -> october 25 = less than one month... seems like less than 2 months to me not nearly three as you said.

hehe yep its come a long way since the first beta i tried when 75% of programs didnt work (all programs written in delphi had major issues like scroll bars not working for example). now pretty much everything works in it.

I've been using Windows XP since build 2416 through 2428 and now the 2505 (?) RC1 build.

I have been simply amazed by the stability, compatability and speed of this new OS.

I've used all flavours of Windows since WfW 3.11, bar NT 3.x and ME, and this really is something special.

of course it is :) its build on w2k which already achieves 99.999% uptime if using certified hardware/drivers/apps. xp improves on this by being more tolerant to and warning users about using non-certified drivers etc.

XP may work extremely well for some people, but it is not perfect. I've read nothing but praise for WinXP on the bata sites and in the news, but what everyone seems to overlook is that there are currently at least 65 pages of messages from people having negative installation XPeriences accesible from http://www.microsoft.com.../newsgroups/default.asp .
XP recognizes my modem and it "tests" as being functional, but it will not dial out. I can't correct this, either. It also repeatedly asks me to install a driver for my USB Hard Drive, but I can't access it. "Reinstalling" WinME yields nothing but vxd corruptions, so I am currently running a clean install of "ole unreliable", Windows ME on my notebook again.

Linux, here I come....

People have been having negative installation XPeriences installing a BETA OS.....well that's strange!

And what is it that leads you to believe that there are no problems installing and setting up Linux? Is there a driver for your USB HDD for Linux or will u write it yourself? By all means, install linux and get rid of Windows, I'm just curious as to where you got the notion that there are less issues in installing/setting up Linux.

no offense, but i believe that the argument that instability and incompatibilities can be explained with the fact that this is a beta OS does not hold. while it is a beta, the difference between RC1/RC2/RTM are miniscule and would probably not correct most problems. HOWEVER, the beta OS does hold up for driver problems and software incompatibilities (Partition Magic, anyone??), as companies have not had ample time to adjust their code so it is at its normal stability for a different OS.

'while it is a beta, the difference between RC1/RC2/RTM are miniscule'

I agree, obviously that's not always the case, but I would agree with that. So no offense has been taken =) However I thought that those 65pages of negative XPeriences during installation were over the whole beta cycle not just RC1/RC2. Hence any negative XPerience had by someone in beta 1 may have not existed 3 builds later. From the last time I beta tested an MS OS, there were 5 builds in a row (out of nowhere - since everything was fine before and after) that for one reason or another had major problems.

As for your comment regarding drivers, precisely. It took a while before all the Win2000 drivers came out (and there are companies who still refuse to produce Win2K drivers....e.g. Pinnacle Sys for their DC10+), and the same will happen with WinXP drivers.

exactly.

my original point was that XP will be a very fine and VERY stable OS (apart from security issues no doubt) when there are enough XP certified drivers out there. I think it will be more stable than 2k and microsoft already claims all the 9s for that.

Now if they could just get their act together with the security issues as well all those linux kiddies would have less to b**** about and we could all live nice and happy and all be friends :)

Linux is certainly not the answer...

so I am currently running a clean install of "ole unreliable", windows ME on my notebook again.

There's a reliable WinME?

dunno about that one...

98SE.. the O/S of the masses....
2K, O/S of the techs :)

maybe "Windows is definately not the answer .."

What the hell do you people keep bashing linux for, if he wants to use it, then let him use it damn it .. Who are you to judge?

-8vO

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Go ahead moderate this post, see how busy I can make you, I know more cuss words than your filter does .. heh :-P

No you don't need to install drivers, funny thing really .. the kernel sees them as hard drives *GASP*

-8vO

really...last i heard Linux didn't have an all that great support for USB devices (Yes I do know about the open source project for usb). Is this not the case?

Sorry for not putting this in the original post - maybe there could be a 'edit post' feature added in - although this might cause more problems than solutions.....anyways back on topic:

Linux USB Project:
http://www.linux-usb.org/

This is a list of Mass Storage Devices with their current status:
http://www.qbik.ch/usb/d.../showdevices.php3?id=11

From that list my USB ORB drive is supported...good stuff!

I just loaded my new laptop last night, the only drivers I had to install were the printer driver (Lexmark Z53) which connects to a network print server using the native linux driver, and the Winmodem driver ..

The old argument about a lack of device drivers, and having to compile the kernel just doesn't hold water anymore .. This is a newer model laptop also, everything worked out of the box .. 1024x768x16 bit with no tweaking .. PCI sound with no tweaking .. xircom 10/100 pcmcia with no tweaking .. USB .. .. ..

Was the easiest O/S install I've ever done ..

-8vO

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Go ahead moderate this post, see how busy I can make you, I know more cuss words than your filter does .. heh :-P

Since they're not working on two Windows' at once, maybe they get time fixing all that security stuff.