[TenTec] "Remember, it's a computer."

[Joe Malloy]

Pete:

> Windows is another story entirely. Crashes are a daily and sometimes
> hourly occurance. Even when Excel and Word are the only programs
> except WinXX on the confusor.

My home network only has 5 boxen, all running a form of Windows (98, NT4,
2000 and XP) but they don't make CAB files and they run all sorts of
software (I'm an inveterate downloader and I like to play around with
software).  They also don't crash, daily or otherwise.  I wonder what's
causing instability in your setup?

> I keep the original Windows distribution disks with each computer,
> and I usually make an image backup of the bare Windoze installation -
> but even that does not necessarily mean that I will be able to
> restore the computer to operation without starting over from scratch.

I keep a cd-r with each machine which holds drivers and what not for a
re-install, but the only occasions on which I've had to do a re-install of
the OS has been when a machine had a catastrophic hard drive failure -- hard
to blame the OS for that!

> I had a motherboard failure on one of the Win ME
> computers that corrupted the hard drive. Replaced the motherboard,
> but of course, it won't boot. The original distribution disk tells me
> there is an operating system installed and I must use an ME upgrade
> disk. So I bought one. Which can't find the licencing info so it
> won't install.

I don't understand: if you had an OS on the machine prior to WinME, just
install that OS and use the WinME upgrade disk -- no additional cost.   I
had to replace the main board in one machine and there was absolutely no
problem.  What am I missing something here?

> So I bought a complete version, and I'm out nearly the price of a new
> box. But the complete version won't install either. Oh well, the
> computer works fine on DOS - and I am about to find out how good,
> bad, or indifferent Linux is. Because I am tired of living in Crash
> City.

Gee, I never moved to that QTH and I've run every version of Windows since
version 2.x!  But I've always been willing to sacrifice a bit of speed for a
stable system.  Nevertheless, I'm playing around with Linux (I've got
various distros of it) now and hope to move to it in the near future -- I
don't like what Billy Boy's got planned for my machines!

73,

Joe, W2RBA