Hi Ray,> Me senses you're going to be a troublemaker!! 
LOL!
Actually I've now installed Win2000 Pro as my O/S on my main development system. Not because I like it or think it is better in any ways you ascribe to XP, but because Adobe Premiere and Photoshop, principally, need loads of RAM, and Win98SE won't let me have the 1GB RAM I'm installing -- its limit is 512Mb without fiddles, and those fiddles bring instability, or so I've been told.
> When a program crashes you're given the opportunity to send the info to
> Microsoft. Whether you do or don't a prompt allows you to examine the
> info that will be sent. Is that different to what Dr Watson produces?
Yes, wildly so. Mostly it doesn't even manage to identify the module responsible, or not in any way I can understand. I've read an article in this week's PC Pro that tells me how to enhance this to produce a Kernel memory or full memory dump, but those would be no use to me either -- they are aimed only at MS tech support staff.
> Given that it tells you what files will be sent and shows detailed info
> useful to a programmer isn't that of any use?
Useful to MS WinXP programmers, no others that I can see.
> I agree that sophistication can mean complexity but I really can't say
> anything about obscure bugs because I really don't have any problems
> using the OS. I don't have tools to measure against any other OS I'm
> afraid.
Did you get loads of problems on Win98SE? As far as I can tell, the same problems which cause difficulties in Win98 do so in WinXP. It was different in WinNT4 and before, and in OS/2, which was a system I really liked, while it lasted (did lots of programs for that, and it was 3000% more robust than any Windows I've met). The problem is that since WinNT5 (Win2000 -- XP is WinNT5.1) Microsoft undid the protections they had before. They let 3rd party drivers into the Kernel. They had to, really, for commercial reasons, unless NT was to remain a strictly business-only, limited hardware list O/S.
Probably 95% of crashes and hangs in Win98, Win2K and WinXP are down to drivers. I've actually just updated from Parhelia 1.00 drivers to their Beta 1.01 (or is it 1.02?) drivers, and (cross fingers) so far haven't seen another crash/hang. But it's only been a few days, so watch this space! <G>
You are probably now using very stable nVidia drivers which have been debugged over hundreds of versions -- there are more new versions of nVidia drivers per month than FSUIPC! <G>. With good drivers I get no hangs or crashes in Win98SE except those caused by my own developments, and those I can also debug, on Win98SE. But I really cannot remember the last system crash or BSOD I had on Win98SE and I've been running it full time 6.5 days per week on 5 machines, since it came out. Admittedly I do NOT leave my machines on all night. I have heard of too many fires caused by overheated/failed PCs. But switching it off and on again should, you'd think, introduce more instability, not less --- not so here, though.
> If you right-click on the taskbar and choose Task Manager / Performance
> tab you can observe how much memory is currently available. Although Me
> had no comparable measuring tool I have never run out of memory whereas
> this did occasionally happen with Me.
I think you'll find that was down simply to resource allocations, not memory. In Win9x/Me systems there's a relatively low limit on the number of handles given for things like windows, icons, files, etc. If you are running any program which uses these and doesn't release them, and that program keeps doing it, you can get what appears to be memory problems but which are merely table size problems. NT has expansible tables for this sort of resource, and is better at collecting garbage by itself so the wastage of handles doesn't grow annoying. There are some good background utilities which do some similar things for Win98 -- I use one and have done for a long time (MemMonitor Pro I think it's called), but really I don't think it's been needed in Win9X for a long time. I've never actually seen any so-called memory or resource problems in Win9X since Win95 days.
> But, I have
> heard that XP reallocates memory away from programs that are running but
> minimised thereby giving more to active program(s).
All virtual memory operating systems page out less frequently accessed memory in order to page in other memory as it is used. That's what the swap file is for, and that's the principle of VM systems anyway, whether NT or 9x. NT is probably more efficient at most things as it is all 32-bit code whereas Win9x is still a mixture based on its DOS/Win3 heritage. But where NT gains in less CPU switching it tends to lose efficiency through the stricter layering. They had to break a lot of their own rules to get DirectX as efficient as it is.
> You must be running some strange software! <g>
No, these are nearly all down to the first release of the Matrox Parhelia drivers.
> I assume you've
> downloaded all the updates including the recent Service Pack 1?
Got that from a magazine CD somewhere.
> Up here
> XP Home remains 99% stable and is a pleasure to use. Wanna swap PCs?
If you kept the same drivers and add-on cards it would make no difference. The instability is down to add-ons, not specifically Windows, EXACTLY as it was with Win98SE.
I'm not arguing for Windows 95 (ugh -- 3 crashes per day, guaranteed! <G>)), nor Windows Me, which was the biggest disaster inflicted on us by Microsoft ever, in my opinion (after 4 days only struggling with it, never getting even one thing working, and facing similar on friend's systems too!). I'm claiming that Win98SE, and only Win98SE, is/was the best (and for FS and most other such programs, the fastest) O/S Microsoft has yet produced.
> <bg>
LOL yourself! <G>
Best regards,
Pete
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