Re: OT: Sequence For Building XP System?


"(PeteCresswell)" <x@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:bdbv0319t3sndp1mt6d78u8s1kq8jietc9@xxxxxxxxxx
Per Mick Sitton:
which is far simpler than you might imagine. try this -
http://www.nliteos.com/download.html

It's even easier for me bc I have the MSN DVDs with all that stuff on it.

I've always done SP2 on my other machines and kept up with the MS updates.

I'd be interested to hear why Venom prefers sticking with SP1 and no
updates.
--
PeteCresswell


Our little group went through the format/reinstall of 98/98SE every month
type of thing and at about the time XP was being released this retired
electrical engeneer moved into our neighbourhood. We quickly discovered that
this fellow knew more than we did (which wasn't hard to do by the way) so we
tended to listen to him a bit. Every time we would wander over to his house,
his computer was always working and after a while we discovered he never
seemed to have the downtimes we had. We kind of figured he knew something we
didn't so we listened even more carefully to the old bugger. A few of us who
had more than the one computer loaded XP Pro onto FAT32 and just used it the
way it come out of the box and had no problems. Then of course SP1 had to be
loaded as USB2 gear needed drivers only to be found in SP1 but no other
updates.
As time went by, the FAT32/SP1 only computers were still purring like
kittens while the "one with the lot" computers some of us had were mongrels
with almost some damned thing playing up so that pretty much by the end of
the first year of using XP Pro we all were not updating at all. I might add
that by then we were all using ZoneAlarm Pro just in case there may have
been a bit of truth in these "security" patches in their thousands being
needed to keep stuff in or out of our computers.
As you can imagine in a group of computer users, everybody had their
favourite software to do what they had bought their computers for in the
first place and hardly any computer (apart from XP Pro and Office and
Nortons AV) had similar software loaded. Into the second year of XP, these
computers just kept running trouble free which was exactly what we wanted so
for as odd as this sounds, we just left them alone and simply got used to
booting up and using our computers whenever we wanted with no dramas and no
sort of constant loss of data due to slack backup. No more mystery of why we
could burn a movie yesterday but not today type of thing. The damned
computers just always did what was asked of them.
Hardware failures were a problem but we were introduced to a sweet little
cloning app called CasperXP and hard drives were relatively cheap by this
time so "everybody" ended up with a cloned copy of their "C" drive and if a
virus or power surge got one of us it was as simple as changing the hard
drive to the cloned copy and we were back on air in maybe 15 minutes.
Everything exactly were we had left it. How good does it get?
If it was a virus or user stupidity we would simply format the original hard
drive and reclone it ready just for future use if needed and no data lost.
If the hard drive went up in smoke then it was simply replaced and recloned.
No big deal.
As in any retired group of oldies, money plays a big part in our hobbies and
most of us use the AMD CPU in an ASUS board with the VIA chipset. That
statement will have some of the power users with the back of their hand to
their forehead around about now but it didn't bother us. It didn't take us
long to realise that we could build a new computer but still use a cloned
hard drive in this new and improved computer. Occasionally some new drivers
had to be installed but all went smoothly and this stupid activation thing
was overcome by using a Corp Key. We owned our copies of XP and had our
"legal" keys but we just didn't use them any more. We are a funny bunch of
people here in this country and we figure that when we pay $520 (our dollar
and that was the original retail price ) for a copy of XP Pro then we can do
whatever the hell we want with it.
I know I have given no evidence to show why just SP1 and FAT32 and no
updates works for us like it does with no fuss but it does and we like it.
Not every app upgrade is a winner as you guys have discovered but it
uninstalls and you revert back to the version you just left and everything
settles down with no problems. For us, at least, this neverending
reformatting and fresh installing everything is well and truly a thing of
the past.
We don't have enough life left in us to want to waste it in front of a
computer that won't do what is asked of it instantly.


.

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