Re: Software Conundrum, Clarkdale

On Fri, 02 Apr 2010 02:41:03 -0400, Paul <nospam@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Puddin' Man wrote:
On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 22:08:25 -0400, Paul <nospam@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

...

I keep a copy of Acrobat Reader 9 installed in Win2K, and for documents
that my other copy of Reader won't read,

Your XP reader won't read certain doc's?

The version of PDF standard present in some Intel documentation,
requires Acrobat 9. Anyone who has used Distiller to make PDFs,
knows you have a setting to control what PDF standard is used,
and when I've used Distiller, I always used an older standard
to ensure my audience could read the documents. Apparently, Intel
doesn't feel the same way about it.

In fact, I marvel at the number of documents I've read off the
net, where it is obvious the people using Distiller, don't even
know there are preferences in there, and they can be set in a way
appropriate for the job. For example, I spent 10 minutes with
my copy of Distiller, ensuring I was using an image compression
mode that preserved image quality. How many documents have
you seen, where some dope provides pictures of install screens
or something, where all the text is so blurry as to be unreadable ?

Many, many, and many.

I hate displays of stupidity like that. It doesn't take that long,
to tune the tool for the job. I mean, if you want to show screenshots
of an install screen, and all it has is text on the screen, you
could always just put text in the document, rather than the insulting
blurry picture.

It's all in their priorities. If their priority is to rip-and-tear ...

You run Firefox only on XP?

If I have Firefox in XP, and in the virtual W2K, it doesn't make sense
to be using them both at the same time. I could, but I confuse easily :-)
I use Firefox in W2K, if I happen to be doing a download that is going
to be used in the virtual W2K environment. I probably wouldn't surf
in there though (because if I did, I'd need to back up my bookmarks
on occasion).

Who said anything about "both at the same time". I was just wondering
how W2k FF "looked", but if you only use it for downloads ...

I tend to access my segregated tools in W2K. Some of the tools are
segregated, because they may adversely affect XP (like the movie tools
that had CODEC packs or the like). Or if I have a piece of software with
no pedigree, where I don't know what it is going to do, I might try it
in virtual W2K first. If it trashes the environment, I just reach for
the "clean copy" of the virtual disk, and start over again. (VPC2007
has an "undo" feature, but I'm not interested in it.) My usage
pattern is planned with trashing the virtual setup in mind - I don't
do things in the virtual setup with the idea that they're permanent.
It's so I can use crappy software, and not think twice about having to
throw the environment away.

Well, your VPC2007 guests are "Test" environments for my purposes.

I, like many, view emulation as an iffy, iffy proposition. Still, it seems
likely I will have to fiddle some of it sooner or later. Do you know of a good
forum that is specific to vitualization?

Had hoped to, maybe/perhaps/if-the-moon-is-in-the-right-position, continue
to run W2k on a daily basis whilst working with a newer MS OS, all on
current gen HW. It now looks difficult to impossible.

Thx,
P

No forums come to mind, for VPC2007.

If you're thinking the virtualized environment is perfect, it is not. But
if you were to compare it to the history of virtualized environments, it is
pretty damned good. At one time, it was barely usable, because it was so
slow. Now, the speed is tolerable to good.

My purpose in pointing out my usage pattern to you, is to emphasize that its
purpose is to fill in "functional holes" in an environment. If Office wouldn't
run in Windows 7, and you used Office all day, then perhaps you would spend the
entire day using the virtual window. If your Office usage is casual, such as reading
a document sent as an email attachment, then you might not be in there very much.
I haven't tested Office tools in there, but I see no reason to suspect they'd
suck, since they're typically not exercising graphics like other applications do.

I can give examples of functional failures. When I use VPC2007 for simple things,
I've never had a problem. But one day, I decided to run movie rendering in there,
and I turned on a feature like file sharing, which accesses my real disk, instead
of writing to the emulated disk (the emulated disk was set up with a 15GB limit).
I processed about 130GB of data, and somewhere along the way, VPC2007 managed to
corrupt NTFS on the real disk. There was no data loss, but CHKDSK would no longer
pass the real disk (and it couldn't fix it either). To fix it, I copied all the data
off the damaged disk, fixed up the disk, and copied the data back. All I can say
about the experience, is I haven't tried it again. I can't remember the last time
I had a CHKDSK problem in normal system usage.

Pushing the virtual environment too hard, perhaps.

I've never had problems with information stored on the VHD (virtual) disks. So
that part seems OK, and is the mode of operation you've be most likely to be using.
Since you can drag and drop files between windows, there isn't a reason for you
to be using the file sharing thing I was trying out. And there were no hardware
style events (like a power failure, or abend of the VPC2007 session) to account
for the NTFS problem. The patch level of my Win2K copy, was at SP4 plus "rollup #1",
so it was patched reasonably well. It was probably missing a few security updates.

What W2k install isn't?

VPC2007 is not the only virtualization environment out there. There are
others, but I haven't been sufficiently motivated to test them.

Do bare-metal hypervisors employ emulation?

Much thanks for sharing your VPC2007 experience. It is something that I needed to
know about.

I'm still looking for W2k video drivers for current HW. The release notes
for various NVIDIA GeForce devices using the 197.13 driver have stuff like:

Microsoft® Windows® 2000 and Windows XP systems using AMD K7 and K8
processors can hang when an AGP or PCI-E program is used.
. Root Cause
There is a known problem with Microsoft® Windows® 2000 and Windows XP
systems using AMD K7 and K8 CPUs that results in the Microsoft operating system
allocating overlapping 4M cached pages with 4k write-combined pages. This
condition results in undefined behavior and data corruption, and is explicitly
disallowed by the AMD CPU manual.

So, I suppose there is hope of some sort. :-)

Cheers,
P

"Law Without Equity Is No Law At All. It Is A Form Of Jungle Rule."

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Computer Infected:
    ... Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition ... Dell Application – Backup Dell installed programs, ... SeagateDisk Utility ... You do NOT want to do a Repair or Recovery install. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: xp on intel Mac from usb stick?
    ... Would it be possible to run windows xp native from a usb stick? ... A custom slipstreamed CD is required to install XP on a Mac. ... partition managers but if you're feeling adventurous you may ... This procedure WILL WIPE YOUR iMAC DISK CLEAN. ...
    (comp.sys.mac.apps)
  • Re: sfc /scannow
    ... a clean install from that slipstreamed cd ... work with a PE disk instead. ... push windows o.s. ... winxp home version. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: Problem with disk upgrade of Windows XP Pro
    ... Failure to install the required service packs and install the ... > disk beyond 137 Gigabytes. ... For more information regarding Windows ... There is no risk of data loss in the situation as described by the OP. ...
    (alt.computer.security)
  • Re: Reverting from Vista to XP
    ... I successfully created the slipstream disk and WinXP installed on the first ... CTRL-ALT-DEL then end process, the whole windows task ... Once you create this CD use it to do a fresh/clean install ... You will also need SP1 or SP2 for Windows XP to support drives larger than ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support)