Win98 was Fragilistic, XP's Not Atrocious (Microsoft Windows XP - Professional Edition)

Name: Nibelung

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Product:	Microsoft Windows XP - Professional Edition
Date:	26/06/02 (4072 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Much more stable, Many new (and actually useful) features

Disadvantages: Can rubbish some of your older hardware and software

Um, diddle, iddle, iddle, um, diddle, eye
Um, diddle, iddle, iddle, um, diddle, eye ...

DAMN THOSE PESKY "BLUE SCREENS OF DEATH"
I've nearly always kept my PC operating system up to date, but in the past couple of years, I really couldn't work up any enthusiasm for changing from Windows 98, which had always performed OK(-ish, see title), to the Windows 98SE, or even the ME version.

My spendthrift 'doppelgänger' kept goading me to upgrade, and the 'sensible short arms and deep pockets' part of me held me back.

However, along comes Windows XP with, it seems from magazine articles, enough extra widgets and fidgets to justify my very own quantum leap.

Up to now, my operating systems have been the cheaper (quelle surprise!) upgrade versions, involving the need for the previous version before they would install. Thus it was that MS-DOS 6.0 begat Win95, which in turn begat Win98 etc. Tiring of this, I decided to go for the 'full' version of Windows XP, packaged 'For PCs without Windows'.

I'm obviously equally tired of clearing my Visa card off every month too, since a full copy of the Pro version of XP set me back £250! But, heh, it's an investment?? Isn't it? Please tell me it is!

INSTALLING THE BEAST

(Please note - this refers to a full version. With an upgrade version, I imagine you'd HAVE to load the system over the previous version.)

Prior to the actual install, I would recommend accessing the CD-ROM disk from your existing system while it's still working.

When confronted with the CDs menu, DON'T click the Install key. Despite the fact the Windows XP makes all sorts of reassuring noises about being able to restore your old system, there seems a wealth of opinion on why installing over Windows 98 isn't a good idea! For one thing, you can't change the disk format to the superior NTFS version from
the FAT or FAT32 versions if there's an existing system sitting on them!

However, DO click on the option to check system compatibility. This will scour your PC for potential hardware and software problems that it may encounter when running the real install. In my case, it found that my Canon printer drivers wouldn't work, my extra printer port card for my colour printer needed new drivers and that my CD Writing Software would become unusable on transfer (Solution - buy the new version. Nice one! ONLY another £45 to upgrade it!).

This then gives you the chance to go off onto the web with your old set up, to find new drivers etc - not that difficult, it now seems in retrospect. Sometimes, you can draw a blank though, but Windows XP shares a lot with previous Windows NT versions, so if all else fails go for the newest Win NT or 2000 driver. Store these off the PC on a floppy or CD-R. Using the NT4/2000 driver for my Canon Laser certainly worked for me.

To install a Full Version (note that, NOT the upgrade) via the easiest cleanest route, you need two things.

a) A totally blank hard drive - it needn't even be formatted, since a totally blank disk will be taken as a prompt to instal the NTFS format, whereas one that is already FAT32-formatted will force it to offer you the choice of keeping what you have got, or changing it.

b) A bootable CD-ROM drive - this means knowing enough about your PC to be able to access the BIOS screen, and to alter the drive on which the PC finds its operating system to CD-ROM from C:\ Drive (aka IDE-0), at least on a temporary basis.

Once these changes have been made, re-boot the PC, and let the CD do its worst, and follow its prompts when asked. Note - you need to name at least one user, since this operating system (OS) can be configured to look and act differently for different users. Being the only user makes you the System Administrator (oh the power!)

About 45 m
inutes later, you should be the proud (?) owner of a PC running Windows XP. Then all you got to do is install those wayward drivers to get the 'stragglers' of hardware on board in the same way as you would have added new hardware in Windows 98.

INSURMOUNTABLE SNAGS

I've got a couple of axes to grind here. Firstly, Windows XP claims to have a built-in driver for my Epson Stylus 600 Colour printer, and on the face of it, this works as per normal. However, when I come to use its 1440 dpi print quality, is it available? - is it f+*?2!. The problem seems to lie with the manufacturers (damn, just when I could feel another anti-MS rant coming on!). Microsoft gave all major players the opportunity to rewrite their drivers for XP. Where they didn't respond, Moicrosoft took there best shot at writing them themsleves.

UPDATE - a reader has pointed out that the Windows 2000 drivers for the Epson 640 should work, and lo and behold they do! It's coming to something when you have to use the drivers for the wrong OS and wrong bit of kit, before something works. This doesn't bode very well for the novice! Perhaps this should now be listed as a SURmountable sang!

Also, my Hewlett Packard scanner has now come under the all-embracing 'native to Windows' wing. Unfortunately, this now means that there is no Optical Character Recognition option for scanning printing directly into text, as the Windows driver obviously doesn't want me to have it how I wanted it. For the solution, see the above paragraph. OK, this bit of kit won't last forever, as I want to replace it with one that scans slides and negatives too, but it's only 2 years old for crying out loud. How dare they write it off like that?!

Another strange little glitch which does no harm but I hold out no hope of curing relates to my Sandisk USB Card Reader for downloading my digital camera's piccies. For some obscure reason, the plug'n&
#39;pray detection sees it as it is plugged in, but switching to Windows Explorer shows that is has logged on as drive G:\ (correct) AND drive H:\. What's more, both letters work! About two weeks ago, I sent in a technical query to Sandisk, but as for an answer, nada, niente, rien, nichts, nowt!

SOLUBLE SNAGS

Both my wife and I depend heavily on Intuit Quicken to keep our money affairs in control (did I say 'control'?), taking the daily precaution to back it up to my d:\drive and thence to a CD-R less frequently. Imagine my chagrin (the smirk you get after sex) when I discovered that my d:\drive was full. Or at least, that's what Quicken reckoned. However, by digging deep into the copious help facilities built into XP, I was able to tweak this software to run in 'Win98' mode, and all is now well again.

Therein lies the problem. Because Windows XP looks a LOT different, navigating it to sort out teething troubles is a bit daunting and time consuming since having a problem and not knowing what you are doing are not easy bedfellows. There are just so many more facilities and help systems. True, you can still go to Control Panel, but once you get there, you are immediately confronted with 24 icons, several of which are new - well they are to me, at least, coming from Win 98.

FINDING MY WAY AROUND

This system takes time to explore. One suggestion I would make. If you find the new look Start Menu confusing, you can change it back to 'Classic' format just to help you feel at home. Having said that, it's shame to do so, because the new menu builds on the functionality of Win 98's ability to list Recent Documents, by introducing a list of Recently Installed Software, and Recently Used Software. It is equally easy to drag and drop icons to their rightful place on the menu. For example, I usually create a CD Recording menu item, just so that my array of CD burning and related software can al
l be placed under one heading.

THINGS I LIKE

There is now an in-built facility to write to record-able CDs directly from Windows Explorer. This is a stripped-down bought-in package from Roxio (formerly Adaptec). You get a fuller facility version (DirectCD) if you buy Roxio's Easy CD Creator 5 package. I had to, if you remember, since version 4 was a non-starter on Windows XP.

Loading a media CD, e.g. one packed with JPEGS or MP3s leads a dialogue box to appear asking what you want done with them. From here, in the case of picture files, you can go straight to thumbnail sketches allowing an easy reminder of what's on the disk. Double-clicking on a particular one brings it up full size. At this point you can decide to run a slide show of everything on the disk. Also, there is a 'Save To' facility, which includes using the file as an e-mail attachment. Since a lot of digital camera photos are quite large files, a recipient with a dial-up line is not going to thank you for sending half a dozen 1.5mb pictures to them. Windows XP offers to make them smaller first - neat eh?

You don't need any third party firewall software, but you do need to make sure that the in-built one is turned on. You can check this by accessing Control Panel\Network Connections\Network Tasks\Change settings\Advanced. See what I mean about navigation? To be fair, the Help And Support facility on the Start Menu went straight for the jugular and came up with those instructions in seconds just by typing 'Firewall' into the query box. If you STILL don't believe the security afforded by this built-in firewall, try going to www.grc.com where they have a free facility for testing your firewall by throwing traffic at it. This will confirm whether your system is OPEN (arghhh!), CLOSED (better, but hackers still know you exist) or STEALTH (best, because there's no sign of you on the internet) - just try their ShieldsUp utility.

>Multiple users with differing access rights (and hardware configurations) are easy to set up and personalise, including their photo. I've only done this on a trial basis at the moment, because I can't see that it has any application for my wife and me, except that for anyone having an affair (I'm not), you can hide whole directories behind a password.

Automatic updates via the web. This is where an 'always-on' internet connection comes into its own. On installing, the system went off and found 13 critical changes that were now available for download. All I had to do, was OK them, and they were loaded and installed on next re-boot.

THINGS I DON'T LIKE

There seems to have been a whole rash of changes for their own sake. For example, just when you'd gotten used to the location and purpose of the MY DOCUMENTS directory, they've shifted it, or rather buried it layers deep. Now it's in C:\Documents And Settings\Myname\My Documents. There is also a different path for documents common to all users, and internet Favourites and the Address Book are buried alive somewhere in there too! To be fair,the default Start Menu gives direct access to My Documents, but it doesn't alter the fact that when using Windows Explorer, it's more fiddly to get to.

I especially don't like Microsoft's heavy-handed way of combining product registration with anti-piracy measures. I see WHY they're taking steps, but the implication that you've got to get their permission to move the registered system to a new or rebuilt PC seems way over the top. How would it be if you bought a 'single-user visual interface licence' (or a book as it's sometimes known), and had to ask permission to take it with you when you moved house or just built a new bookcase? Worse still, if no one else was allowed to read it. This is exactly what the great god, Microsoft is foisting on us, 'criminalising us all by d
efault' as PC Advisor magazine puts it. It's no wonder that this is being worked around as we speak by hackers the world over - after all, at £250, it would be worth trying to beat this system.

Having used various CD-Player and CD-writing facilities over the years, I've been able to database my CD collection in MS Access format, to show the loss adjuster the NEXT time we're burgled. This was achieved by accessing various CD databases on the web, which in turn supply the information of tracks, titles etc to the off-line database. It now appears that with the latest version of Media Player, you only get the details as and when you insert a CD. What I can't find is any form of off-line database being built up. My new version of Easy CD Creator 5.0 uses this once-only method too. It looks like in future, the database I've already built up will have to be kept up to date manually. One more nail in the coffin of existing functionality. If anyone knows where the off-line details go, please let me know!

DOS AND DON'TS

I you are running a twin system like me, i.e. with different slot-in C:\drives, where D:\drive is common to both Win 98 and Win XP versions, do make sure that the D:\ drive is formatted for in the older FAT32 system - the NTFS format used as standard for Win XP cannot be viewed by Windows 98 or DOS-based boot disks, whereas, Win XP can look at a FAT32 formatted D:\drive with no problems. I did this on the first day, and panicked when I found out, that all my precious back-ups on D:\, couldn't be seen or accessed by Windows 98.

If you have a CD-writer or some other back-up device, do please take advantage of the Windows Backup facility the moment you have your new XP system running how you want it, including any Internet updates. In the event of a crash requiring the backup process, the restored version will then contain all the updates without all that tedious reloading from the web, or wors
e still trying to remember where you got them!

IN USE

The first thing you notice, or lack thereof, is that you haven't seen one of those 'blue-screens of death' lately. I've been using this system for two weeks now, and have yet to crash it/lock it up, whatever you want to call it. Even if you switch it off physically at the mains before doing a proper log-off, you don't get one of those annoying lectures upon re-boot about doing it properly, just before it really annoys you by taking ages running Scandisk. This used to be particularly galling when it was a Windows lock-up that forced you to turn it off at the mains in the first place! Sure, I've had the odd item of software refuse to run, but the Ctrl-Alt-Del routine always seems to disentangle the offending task from the bits that are behaving themselves.

BTW, I have a suspicion that XP doesn't always survive accidental mains loss as easily as Win 98 did, as this happened to me, and I had to restore my system using the CD before it would boot up again. As a precaution, I've turned off disk-caching in case it's in the middle of writing something vital about the next re-boot when the 'lecky' goes phutt. In theory, this has a slight time penalty during normal operation, but then so does having to restore an ailing system. In any case, this is a good precaution to take for anyone using slide-in drive caddies, in case you remove a drive from a live system. Done that? Who me??

Everyday navigation, like finding a program and running it are much the same as before, so anyone familiar with the Windows 9* family will be able to get on with some work just as soon as they've installed all their software. Of course, if you installed over Windows 9*, then it SHOULD all be there for you. If something seems to be working not quite how it should, try the tweak I had to employ to get Quicken fully functional, i.e. go to the Help and Support screen a
nd type in 'Software compatibility'. From here, you'll be guided, wizard-wise to tweak any errant software - well, within reason you will. My CD-Creator software just HAD to be replaced (you can tell I'm still smarting about that, can?t you?).

IN SUMMARY

It would be very easy to rabbit on page after page, on the subject of what can and can't be done. Suffice it to say that XP is a lot different, with a lot more built-in functionality and stability. Whether you think it is worth the upgrade money, or are happy to wait until you get another PC, which will no doubt have it, pre-installed, is up to you.

The major points which clinch it for me are:

STABILITY - can't stress that one enough

Ability to write to CD-R's from Windows Explorer/My Computer (yes, why do they have both?)

Built-in Firewall, which seems to work seamlessly in background.

Ability to use NTFS's much more secure disk format without having to go the 'whole hog' of using Windows NT/2000.

However, beware, the spending might not stop there. You may find hardware and software that will require replacing.



Signed,

Mary Poppins

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