.500 Average Not Good on Installs (Microsoft)

Associated Press ^ | Monday, July 29, 2002 | LARRY BLASKO

[Dog Gone]

In baseball, batting .500 is cause for celebration. In installing operating systems, it's a well of woe.

Regular readers might remember that a few months back, the office PC was upgraded to Windows XP Home edition, and everything went exactly as advertised.

Which was remarkable.

And, it turns out, remarkable in the sense that it doesn't always happen.

Since Windows XP will install only on one machine, Bill Gates got another $100 for the same upgrade to the home machine, which is pretty much a twin of the office machine.

Started Windows ME and fired up the XP install CD. It went to the Internet for updated install files, then whined about incompatible software and halted.

Removed the offending software (a virtual private network package) and tried again, declining the ``upgraded'' install files. This time, about halfway through the 70-odd-minute installation process, it halted again.

Third time, the installation said it was halting, but when the close button was clicked, continued anyway, completing an installation that removed all desktop icons and refused to talk to the Verizon DSL service that had worked without a hitch before.

Huh?

A trip to the net at work discovered that problems with XP and DSL (digital subscriber line, a broadband internet connection) are common. The reason is PPPoE (Point to Point Protocol over Ethernet).

According to a Web article in Wired News, Windows XP installs its own copy of PPPoE, and attempting to use the earlier version provided by your ISP not only won't work, but it often trashes the XP version, as well. It generates error 678, which says it can't connect to another system, although a visit to the Windows control panel will show -- mistakenly -- that all the hardware is hunky-dory.

What fun.

There are suggested fixes and workarounds and they'll be tried. But a careful examination of the Windows XP Home Edition packaging failed to find anything resembling a warning: could take hours of your time and still not function as well as the system you are upgrading from.

No doubt Windows will fix this charming bug at some time in the future, but until then, if you are using a DSL service, think twice about the upgrade and, while your Internet connection is still working, do some online detective work first.

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Questions and comments are welcome. Send them to Larry Blasko, The Associated Press, 50 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10020-1666. Or e-mail lblasko(at)ap.org.

[Tijeras_Slim]

I'm no computer genius (other than having found FR), but ME is horrible when it comes to upgrades. The computerguy at the office always tears ME out by the roots and does a fresh install of whatever.

[Capt. Tom]

Started Windows ME and fired up the XP install CD. It went to the Internet for updated install files, then whined about incompatible software and halted.

Is this guy a computer guru. If so why is he using windows ME? That's probably his problem. - Tom

[Gladwin]

its better to reformat rather than upgrade from another operating system

[VOA]

bump

[Interious]

Stick with Win2000 or Linux.

I had the same problem installing Sprint DSL service on a neighbor's machine. Fortunately, Sprint tech service is on top of the problem. I would have never known that XP has its own PPPoE software.

I did do a fresh install of XP. The factory Gateway XP installation was fatally corrupted with the Klez cancer. The average computer user is not equipped to deal wtih these viruses.

[beckett]

XP is running better than any OS I've had previously, FWIW. And with 512 MB of RAM and a PIV 2.0 GHz CPU, I am one happy camper these days.

I do miss native DOS, though. XP has no deltree command. I've got to find a way to delete the index.dat file in my cookies folder, and DOS emulation doesn't cut it.

[toupsie]

Switch and get a Mac. How often do we have to read that Windows is a pain in the butt, forces you to do things you don't want and deletes your files without telling you? Its like reporting the sun is bright.

[AdA$tra]

Is this guy a computer guru. If so why is he using windows ME?

Not only that: Why is he installing XP home at the office.

[RiVer19]

I always enjoy seeing the WindowsME rants. I just find it
so opposite of what I have experienced. My wife is a programmer and works from home. Her machine had a few lockups on average a day running Win98 (fully updated).
I installed WindowsME on this exact same hardware and the
machine is nearly crash free. She swears by it. I've got one other machine in the house running ME and it runs fine too. But, I do always keep them on the latests patches and such. Maybe that's the difference in my experience and others'. BTW, I run XP Pro on my machine
and love it. Very stable. But, I have to admit that ME was not stable on that hardware. Just ran the upgrade to XP and it's rock solid. So, I guess I do have some mixed success with ME. But, 2 of 3 computers are a success on it. ...for what it's worth...

[Kevin Curry]

. . .[I]t's better to reformat rather than upgrade from another operating system

I tried that. Didn't work.

I have Windows ME and get a half-dozen blue screens of death a day.

Last week I bought Windows XP Professional Upgrade. I visited my computer manufacturer (Sony) website, downloaded and installed the latest BIOS and other Windows XP prep utilities, and ran the system restore utility to get as clean a configuration as possible. It wouldn't install as an upgrade no matter how many times I tried. It wouldn't even get to the main install screen. It kept hanging up as it checked the hardware configuration (e.g., blue screens kept popping up vaguely warning "IRQ_not_Equal . . ." or "memory_management" which mean absolutely nothing to me). I tried first disabling memory cache options. Still zip.

Because I couldn't get it to install as an upgrade I tried again but selected the full install option. When the screen came up asking me to verify that I own a qualifying OS, I popped in my ME CD, and got the green light to continue. Still no good. I got the same blue screens at the "checking hardware configuration" stage.

So it seems clear that Windows XP isn't bamboozled by pre-existing software and OS configurations on my computer. It just doesn't like the way my computer hardware is configured in the first place. Yet, Windows ME can live with it okay, it is just so unstable as to be almost useless.

For as much as I have spent on Bill Gates and Sony, you would think they could get it right.

[Illbay]

Oh, I didn't know that MICROSOFT had excluded Windows Me from the list of OSes that you can upgrade to Windows XP.

[toupsie]

its better to reformat rather than upgrade from another operating system

Odd. I never heard a Mac user say that...Our upgrades work. Saves a lot of time and effort plus you lose files in the process that you *thought* you backed up. :)

[The Iceman Cometh]

Switch and get a Mac. How often do we have to read that Windows is a pain in the butt, forces you to do things you don't want and deletes your files without telling you? Its like reporting the sun is bright.

No thanks! I prefer to have some choices in software versus the miniscule selection available for the Mac. Plus, the MAC OS has some downside to it as well.

[Illbay]

Sorry, but that's a cop-out.

MS has supposedly made it possible to upgrade without having to back everything up, reformat, install, tweak, and then spend two days loading the old software.

That it doesn't work is MS' fault, not the user (there is an AWFUL lot of "blame the user" for doing things that MS told them they could do, I notice. "User error" typically means a procedure that is not supported. I think some MS weenies need to get clear on that definition).

[Dog Gone]

I have Windows ME on my home machine and am relatively satisfied with it. I do get an expected crash about once a week, though.

My son installed XP on his machine on a clean disk, and he's having problems with it, especially in networking to the other computers in the house. Given my aversion to Product Activation, and all the horror stories about upgrading from ME, I'm really reluctant to try.

[Illbay]

Well, we're talking about OS upgrades here, though.

And I know for a fact that Macs also have problems when upgrading OSes, particularly when upgrading an "older" machine (2 years or more).

[Gladwin]

I'd do the same with linux, if I was changing flavors. My main machine has XP on it right now. I usually reformat the OS hard drive on my computer every three months. I have a second hard drive that I keep data and software downloads on.

Reformating seems to clear out the barnicles.

[Gladwin]

It is a cop-out, but it's a cop-out that works. :)

[Kevin Curry]

Given my aversion to Product Activation, and all the horror stories about upgrading from ME, I'm really reluctant to try.

I had the same reservations but I broke my own promise to myself. I had sworn off Windows XP and decided to install Windows 2000 Professional on my home machine. I have Windows 2000 Professional on five machines at my business and have never once suffered so much as a hiccup.

Alas, I bought Windows XP and have wasted three days trying to get it to install. I'm taking it back for a refund and getting Windows 2000 Professional. Of course, there is no upgrade path from Windows ME to Windows 2000 Professional; it will have to be a full install. At this point, I don't see that I have any other option.

Then again, maybe Windows 2000 Professional won't install either. Just my luck.