Another reason why i hate XP...
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The taskman, which is supposed bail you out when ever you are stuck (i.e. a program running an endless loop) has to perform a stack walk too! Kinda self defeating, don't you think?:mad: I remember how it was in windows 98 (still use it btw...no vista for me). /* Everyone seems to remember 98 for the blue screen (they don't know how to use it), but not me...in fact it was nice and light-weight...can't anyone put out an o/s with a small footprint anymore? Processors get faster and faster, and the o/s gets fatter and fatter, and give you roughly the same system usability...but where's the gain? */ But the way it used to be was that on Alt+Ctrl+Del, boom there it was. Thanks to the infailability of the keyboard driver (i'm assuming 98 had something like the tty driver is in unix), it would always catch the key sequence. Sure, you'll have a memory leak if you do kill the offending program (and will have to reboot in the next hour or so or risk worse hangups, typical for 98's memory management), but you can rely on it to sandwitch itself as the very 1st thing in line and displace whatever is taking up all the CPU cycles. If the stack itself (processor cache?...i'm no expert at this, but i'd seen enough it to make sense of what i saw) filled up completely you'd get a blue screen instead, but all you'd have to do is press enter and try again as it clears. I'm used to this as i always force the scrap machines (reclaimed parts, mix & match of whatever's most compatible) to do more than they were intended. But under XP, the whole process is turned on its head. On an average day if i need to deal with something, it's a 30 second to a minute wait, which is okay, but coupled with the taskman itself responding slowly, only functioning when an extra two cpu cycles are available, it's a bit of a pain. If you are used to 98, then it's completely backwards. Couldn't they have thought of something better? Whoever Microsoft assigned must have had his a** and spleen work on the code, while the guy himself was reading The Onion all day!:wtf: However this time it took about 2 hours for the taskman to come up, with "System" having choked and taking up all the CPU cycles. Once every 5 seconds the taskman would be functional, but even then it seems like "System" was protected and i couldn't kill it. I tried to power down or go into standby to hopefully have the process crash and restart but no, doesn't take it. No way to scram it, it just keeps going snails pace, 2 minute old tooltips and gui hi-lights :sigh: Had to pull the p
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RoswellNX wrote:
can't anyone put out an o/s with a small footprint anymore?
RTOS? PuppyLinux? DSL? - What're you complaining about :rolleyes: - there are plenty of them out there, ok, not Windows. I've even come across (annoyed now, can't remember where) but someone wrote an OS which ran on an 8-bit PIC. How much smaller do you want the footprint to be?
RoswellNX wrote:
it would always catch the key sequence.
Not on mine, in my opinion the best for killing tasks (in order and from my experience) were: NT4 -> 2000 -> XP -> 98
RoswellNX wrote:
no, i can't just press the power button
Shouldn't you be able to hold it down.
RoswellNX wrote:
Had to idiot-proof it, because someone else in the house would press the power (to boot up?)
Idiot-proof it, you'd have to do this in hardware to bypass the hold down button functionality.
RoswellNX wrote:
while the machine was in a blank screen screensaver
You can tell the PC to ignore the power button altogether when XP is running. At least on mine you can, or you could password protect the screen saver, even if it's something obvious, then at least it won't shutdown (I think).
RoswellNX wrote:
effectively causing me to lose my work, three times
Well who's fault is that? Ever heard of "Save" :doh:? PS, I'm not criticising (:rolleyes:) your rant, just pointing out the obvious and offering a bit of advice.
Ed.Poore wrote:
Shouldn't you be able to hold it down.
Ed.Poore wrote:
Idiot-proof it, you'd have to do this in hardware to bypass the hold down button functionality.
Ed.Poore wrote:
You can tell the PC to ignore the power button altogether when XP is running. At least on mine you can, or you could password protect the screen saver, even if it's something obvious, then at least it won't shutdown (I think).
Well, what i did was go into Display properties, then Screensaver, then Power Schemes, where it lets you set what the power button does when pressed within windows. I set it to do nothing...problem solved, well the "involuntary" shutdown was... and so it did like intended, or at least when i held it down the system didn't respond...but it did shut down in 10 minutes when the battery ran out...
Ed.Poore wrote:
Well who's fault is that? Ever heard of "Save" ?
I should've been clearer...it was mostly internet research that i lost, and about 15 minutes of work...i'm pretty good at saving, having for a long time worked on Macs which had a mind of their own when it came to Photoshop bugs:rolleyes: Roswell
"Angelinos -- excuse me. There will be civility today."
Antonio VillaRaigosa
City Mayor, Los Angeles, CA -
The taskman, which is supposed bail you out when ever you are stuck (i.e. a program running an endless loop) has to perform a stack walk too! Kinda self defeating, don't you think?:mad: I remember how it was in windows 98 (still use it btw...no vista for me). /* Everyone seems to remember 98 for the blue screen (they don't know how to use it), but not me...in fact it was nice and light-weight...can't anyone put out an o/s with a small footprint anymore? Processors get faster and faster, and the o/s gets fatter and fatter, and give you roughly the same system usability...but where's the gain? */ But the way it used to be was that on Alt+Ctrl+Del, boom there it was. Thanks to the infailability of the keyboard driver (i'm assuming 98 had something like the tty driver is in unix), it would always catch the key sequence. Sure, you'll have a memory leak if you do kill the offending program (and will have to reboot in the next hour or so or risk worse hangups, typical for 98's memory management), but you can rely on it to sandwitch itself as the very 1st thing in line and displace whatever is taking up all the CPU cycles. If the stack itself (processor cache?...i'm no expert at this, but i'd seen enough it to make sense of what i saw) filled up completely you'd get a blue screen instead, but all you'd have to do is press enter and try again as it clears. I'm used to this as i always force the scrap machines (reclaimed parts, mix & match of whatever's most compatible) to do more than they were intended. But under XP, the whole process is turned on its head. On an average day if i need to deal with something, it's a 30 second to a minute wait, which is okay, but coupled with the taskman itself responding slowly, only functioning when an extra two cpu cycles are available, it's a bit of a pain. If you are used to 98, then it's completely backwards. Couldn't they have thought of something better? Whoever Microsoft assigned must have had his a** and spleen work on the code, while the guy himself was reading The Onion all day!:wtf: However this time it took about 2 hours for the taskman to come up, with "System" having choked and taking up all the CPU cycles. Once every 5 seconds the taskman would be functional, but even then it seems like "System" was protected and i couldn't kill it. I tried to power down or go into standby to hopefully have the process crash and restart but no, doesn't take it. No way to scram it, it just keeps going snails pace, 2 minute old tooltips and gui hi-lights :sigh: Had to pull the p
RoswellNX wrote:
I'm used to this as i always force the scrap machines (reclaimed parts, mix & match of whatever's most compatible) to do more than they were intended.
RoswellNX wrote:
However this time it took about 2 hours for the taskman to come up
So, you cause the problem. It's like trying to move a 20-ton block of rock with a car.
RoswellNX wrote:
with "System" having choked and taking up all the CPU cycles. Once every 5 seconds the taskman would be functional, but even then it seems like "System" was protected and i couldn't kill it.
You cannot kill "System". It's like trying to remove the engine of a car while driving. In my opinion, you don't understand what computers are for.
________________________________________________ Personal Blog [ITA] - Tech Blog [ENG] - My Photos Developing ScrewTurn Wiki 2.0 (2.0 Beta is out)
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Ed.Poore wrote:
Shouldn't you be able to hold it down.
Ed.Poore wrote:
Idiot-proof it, you'd have to do this in hardware to bypass the hold down button functionality.
Ed.Poore wrote:
You can tell the PC to ignore the power button altogether when XP is running. At least on mine you can, or you could password protect the screen saver, even if it's something obvious, then at least it won't shutdown (I think).
Well, what i did was go into Display properties, then Screensaver, then Power Schemes, where it lets you set what the power button does when pressed within windows. I set it to do nothing...problem solved, well the "involuntary" shutdown was... and so it did like intended, or at least when i held it down the system didn't respond...but it did shut down in 10 minutes when the battery ran out...
Ed.Poore wrote:
Well who's fault is that? Ever heard of "Save" ?
I should've been clearer...it was mostly internet research that i lost, and about 15 minutes of work...i'm pretty good at saving, having for a long time worked on Macs which had a mind of their own when it came to Photoshop bugs:rolleyes: Roswell
"Angelinos -- excuse me. There will be civility today."
Antonio VillaRaigosa
City Mayor, Los Angeles, CARoswellNX wrote:
I should've been clearer...it was mostly internet research that i lost, and about 15 minutes of work...i'm pretty good at saving, having for a long time worked on Macs which had a mind of their own when it came to Photoshop bugs:rolleyes:
Fair enough then, but to lose it 3 times? :wtf: - Don't you learn :rolleyes:
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RoswellNX wrote:
can't anyone put out an o/s with a small footprint anymore?
I think this is the OS your looking for http://www.minix3.org/[^] not that I have tried it. Just going off the system requirements :) Hardware Required To run MINIX 3, you need a PC driven by a 386, 486, or Pentium CPU or compatible. The standard configuration requires 16 MB of RAM. An 8-MB version is also available, but it is slower due to a smaller buffer cache. Since the distribution comes on a live CD, you can test it without allocating any hard disk space, but for a hard disk installation, 50 MB is needed as a minimum, 600 MB minimum if you want all the sources.
I'd love to help, but unfortunatley I have prior commitments monitoring the length of my grass. :Andrew Bleakley:
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RoswellNX wrote:
can't anyone put out an o/s with a small footprint anymore?
RTOS? PuppyLinux? DSL? - What're you complaining about :rolleyes: - there are plenty of them out there, ok, not Windows. I've even come across (annoyed now, can't remember where) but someone wrote an OS which ran on an 8-bit PIC. How much smaller do you want the footprint to be?
RoswellNX wrote:
it would always catch the key sequence.
Not on mine, in my opinion the best for killing tasks (in order and from my experience) were: NT4 -> 2000 -> XP -> 98
RoswellNX wrote:
no, i can't just press the power button
Shouldn't you be able to hold it down.
RoswellNX wrote:
Had to idiot-proof it, because someone else in the house would press the power (to boot up?)
Idiot-proof it, you'd have to do this in hardware to bypass the hold down button functionality.
RoswellNX wrote:
while the machine was in a blank screen screensaver
You can tell the PC to ignore the power button altogether when XP is running. At least on mine you can, or you could password protect the screen saver, even if it's something obvious, then at least it won't shutdown (I think).
RoswellNX wrote:
effectively causing me to lose my work, three times
Well who's fault is that? Ever heard of "Save" :doh:? PS, I'm not criticising (:rolleyes:) your rant, just pointing out the obvious and offering a bit of advice.
Ed.Poore wrote:
RTOS? PuppyLinux? DSL? - What're you complaining about - there are plenty of them out there, ok, not Windows. I've even come across (annoyed now, can't remember where) but someone wrote an OS which ran on an 8-bit PIC. How much smaller do you want the footprint to be?
I'm aware of those, though as a graphic designer i stick to either windows or mac, but lately both platforms have become pretty bloated. Luckily i use Photoshop 7 (still relatively light weight) and it supports windows 98 (whereas the newer versions do not, same with Flash, version 7[MX2004] is pretty well written [as opposed to the pile of junk they call v6 {MX}] and still runs too. By staying clear of bloatware i can use a machine that's not exactly up to spec by the current standards, saving myself a lot of money... Roswell:-D
"Angelinos -- excuse me. There will be civility today."
Antonio VillaRaigosa
City Mayor, Los Angeles, CA -
RoswellNX wrote:
I should've been clearer...it was mostly internet research that i lost, and about 15 minutes of work...i'm pretty good at saving, having for a long time worked on Macs which had a mind of their own when it came to Photoshop bugs:rolleyes:
Fair enough then, but to lose it 3 times? :wtf: - Don't you learn :rolleyes:
Ed.Poore wrote:
Fair enough then, but to lose it 3 times? - Don't you learn
Wasn't sure what the problem was:laugh: They said they didn't do anyhting and it "crashed" (i assume they meant the end program dialog boxes). Only when i saw them do it did i figure out what was wrong... Roswell
"Angelinos -- excuse me. There will be civility today."
Antonio VillaRaigosa
City Mayor, Los Angeles, CA -
RoswellNX wrote:
I'm used to this as i always force the scrap machines (reclaimed parts, mix & match of whatever's most compatible) to do more than they were intended.
RoswellNX wrote:
However this time it took about 2 hours for the taskman to come up
So, you cause the problem. It's like trying to move a 20-ton block of rock with a car.
RoswellNX wrote:
with "System" having choked and taking up all the CPU cycles. Once every 5 seconds the taskman would be functional, but even then it seems like "System" was protected and i couldn't kill it.
You cannot kill "System". It's like trying to remove the engine of a car while driving. In my opinion, you don't understand what computers are for.
________________________________________________ Personal Blog [ITA] - Tech Blog [ENG] - My Photos Developing ScrewTurn Wiki 2.0 (2.0 Beta is out)
Dario Solera wrote:
So, you cause the problem. It's like trying to move a 20-ton block of rock with a car.
I should've been clearer here as well...the taskman problem happened on a fairly new (only a year old) sony laptop, which runs XP and isn't mine but i have a copy of VS05 on it for when i use it... my scrap machines are just my personal "herd" that's not work related, though two of them have enough power to get the job done...all running 98...which i only brought up in this discussion because they did, and i had to use the taskman a few times
Dario Solera wrote:
You cannot kill "System". It's like trying to remove the engine of a car while driving. In my opinion, you don't understand what computers are for.
I'm fairly new to the NT branch of windows, but no, i'm not surprised i couldn't kill system...explorer, yes...done so may times, so i was half hoping that if System crashes it will reload itself, but i haven't dealt with it in practice...but i was almost expecting the "engine" analogy, since the name says it anyway... Roswell
"Angelinos -- excuse me. There will be civility today."
Antonio VillaRaigosa
City Mayor, Los Angeles, CA -
The taskman, which is supposed bail you out when ever you are stuck (i.e. a program running an endless loop) has to perform a stack walk too! Kinda self defeating, don't you think?:mad: I remember how it was in windows 98 (still use it btw...no vista for me). /* Everyone seems to remember 98 for the blue screen (they don't know how to use it), but not me...in fact it was nice and light-weight...can't anyone put out an o/s with a small footprint anymore? Processors get faster and faster, and the o/s gets fatter and fatter, and give you roughly the same system usability...but where's the gain? */ But the way it used to be was that on Alt+Ctrl+Del, boom there it was. Thanks to the infailability of the keyboard driver (i'm assuming 98 had something like the tty driver is in unix), it would always catch the key sequence. Sure, you'll have a memory leak if you do kill the offending program (and will have to reboot in the next hour or so or risk worse hangups, typical for 98's memory management), but you can rely on it to sandwitch itself as the very 1st thing in line and displace whatever is taking up all the CPU cycles. If the stack itself (processor cache?...i'm no expert at this, but i'd seen enough it to make sense of what i saw) filled up completely you'd get a blue screen instead, but all you'd have to do is press enter and try again as it clears. I'm used to this as i always force the scrap machines (reclaimed parts, mix & match of whatever's most compatible) to do more than they were intended. But under XP, the whole process is turned on its head. On an average day if i need to deal with something, it's a 30 second to a minute wait, which is okay, but coupled with the taskman itself responding slowly, only functioning when an extra two cpu cycles are available, it's a bit of a pain. If you are used to 98, then it's completely backwards. Couldn't they have thought of something better? Whoever Microsoft assigned must have had his a** and spleen work on the code, while the guy himself was reading The Onion all day!:wtf: However this time it took about 2 hours for the taskman to come up, with "System" having choked and taking up all the CPU cycles. Once every 5 seconds the taskman would be functional, but even then it seems like "System" was protected and i couldn't kill it. I tried to power down or go into standby to hopefully have the process crash and restart but no, doesn't take it. No way to scram it, it just keeps going snails pace, 2 minute old tooltips and gui hi-lights :sigh: Had to pull the p
RoswellNX wrote:
I remember how it was in windows 98 (still use it btw...no vista for me).
I got this far and gave up. Anyone defending 98 as a better alternative to XP loses all credibility, IMHO. Win98 was a band-aid on top of a band-aid on top of a band-aid on top of a band-aid on top of a gaping flesh wound. In '98, a single process could take down the machine with no effort whatsoever. I could write you a one line program that would do it instantly. XP has a million things wrong with it, and I was kind of looking forward to reading this post, but dude, you're out in lala land if you want to go back to the Win98 way of doing things.
Faith is a fine invention For gentlemen who see; But microscopes are prudent In an emergency! -Emily Dickinson
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Ed.Poore wrote:
Shouldn't you be able to hold it down.
Ed.Poore wrote:
Idiot-proof it, you'd have to do this in hardware to bypass the hold down button functionality.
Ed.Poore wrote:
You can tell the PC to ignore the power button altogether when XP is running. At least on mine you can, or you could password protect the screen saver, even if it's something obvious, then at least it won't shutdown (I think).
Well, what i did was go into Display properties, then Screensaver, then Power Schemes, where it lets you set what the power button does when pressed within windows. I set it to do nothing...problem solved, well the "involuntary" shutdown was... and so it did like intended, or at least when i held it down the system didn't respond...but it did shut down in 10 minutes when the battery ran out...
Ed.Poore wrote:
Well who's fault is that? Ever heard of "Save" ?
I should've been clearer...it was mostly internet research that i lost, and about 15 minutes of work...i'm pretty good at saving, having for a long time worked on Macs which had a mind of their own when it came to Photoshop bugs:rolleyes: Roswell
"Angelinos -- excuse me. There will be civility today."
Antonio VillaRaigosa
City Mayor, Los Angeles, CA -
Dario Solera wrote:
So, you cause the problem. It's like trying to move a 20-ton block of rock with a car.
I should've been clearer here as well...the taskman problem happened on a fairly new (only a year old) sony laptop, which runs XP and isn't mine but i have a copy of VS05 on it for when i use it... my scrap machines are just my personal "herd" that's not work related, though two of them have enough power to get the job done...all running 98...which i only brought up in this discussion because they did, and i had to use the taskman a few times
Dario Solera wrote:
You cannot kill "System". It's like trying to remove the engine of a car while driving. In my opinion, you don't understand what computers are for.
I'm fairly new to the NT branch of windows, but no, i'm not surprised i couldn't kill system...explorer, yes...done so may times, so i was half hoping that if System crashes it will reload itself, but i haven't dealt with it in practice...but i was almost expecting the "engine" analogy, since the name says it anyway... Roswell
"Angelinos -- excuse me. There will be civility today."
Antonio VillaRaigosa
City Mayor, Los Angeles, CARoswellNX wrote:
I'm fairly new to the NT branch of windows
He he! You're about 10 years out-of-date. :-D
________________________________________________ Personal Blog [ITA] - Tech Blog [ENG] - My Photos Developing ScrewTurn Wiki 2.0 (2.0 Beta is out)
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The taskman, which is supposed bail you out when ever you are stuck (i.e. a program running an endless loop) has to perform a stack walk too! Kinda self defeating, don't you think?:mad: I remember how it was in windows 98 (still use it btw...no vista for me). /* Everyone seems to remember 98 for the blue screen (they don't know how to use it), but not me...in fact it was nice and light-weight...can't anyone put out an o/s with a small footprint anymore? Processors get faster and faster, and the o/s gets fatter and fatter, and give you roughly the same system usability...but where's the gain? */ But the way it used to be was that on Alt+Ctrl+Del, boom there it was. Thanks to the infailability of the keyboard driver (i'm assuming 98 had something like the tty driver is in unix), it would always catch the key sequence. Sure, you'll have a memory leak if you do kill the offending program (and will have to reboot in the next hour or so or risk worse hangups, typical for 98's memory management), but you can rely on it to sandwitch itself as the very 1st thing in line and displace whatever is taking up all the CPU cycles. If the stack itself (processor cache?...i'm no expert at this, but i'd seen enough it to make sense of what i saw) filled up completely you'd get a blue screen instead, but all you'd have to do is press enter and try again as it clears. I'm used to this as i always force the scrap machines (reclaimed parts, mix & match of whatever's most compatible) to do more than they were intended. But under XP, the whole process is turned on its head. On an average day if i need to deal with something, it's a 30 second to a minute wait, which is okay, but coupled with the taskman itself responding slowly, only functioning when an extra two cpu cycles are available, it's a bit of a pain. If you are used to 98, then it's completely backwards. Couldn't they have thought of something better? Whoever Microsoft assigned must have had his a** and spleen work on the code, while the guy himself was reading The Onion all day!:wtf: However this time it took about 2 hours for the taskman to come up, with "System" having choked and taking up all the CPU cycles. Once every 5 seconds the taskman would be functional, but even then it seems like "System" was protected and i couldn't kill it. I tried to power down or go into standby to hopefully have the process crash and restart but no, doesn't take it. No way to scram it, it just keeps going snails pace, 2 minute old tooltips and gui hi-lights :sigh: Had to pull the p
RoswellNX wrote:
But the way it used to be was that on Alt+Ctrl+Del, boom there it was. Thanks to the infailability of the keyboard driver (i'm assuming 98 had something like the tty driver is in unix), it would always catch the key sequence.
As former Win98SE victim I can tell that this is blatant nonsense!
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Dario Solera wrote:
So, you cause the problem. It's like trying to move a 20-ton block of rock with a car.
I should've been clearer here as well...the taskman problem happened on a fairly new (only a year old) sony laptop, which runs XP and isn't mine but i have a copy of VS05 on it for when i use it... my scrap machines are just my personal "herd" that's not work related, though two of them have enough power to get the job done...all running 98...which i only brought up in this discussion because they did, and i had to use the taskman a few times
Dario Solera wrote:
You cannot kill "System". It's like trying to remove the engine of a car while driving. In my opinion, you don't understand what computers are for.
I'm fairly new to the NT branch of windows, but no, i'm not surprised i couldn't kill system...explorer, yes...done so may times, so i was half hoping that if System crashes it will reload itself, but i haven't dealt with it in practice...but i was almost expecting the "engine" analogy, since the name says it anyway... Roswell
"Angelinos -- excuse me. There will be civility today."
Antonio VillaRaigosa
City Mayor, Los Angeles, CA"System" isn't a true process. It's where the kernel's worker threads live. Probably a high-priority driver thread had gone into an infinite loop, or a piece of hardware had been constantly generating interrupts, its driver not acknowledging them properly. As such, user-mode processes weren't getting any CPU time (or were getting very little), so Task Manager would take a very long time to come up.
Stability. What an interesting concept. -- Chris Maunder
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The taskman, which is supposed bail you out when ever you are stuck (i.e. a program running an endless loop) has to perform a stack walk too! Kinda self defeating, don't you think?:mad: I remember how it was in windows 98 (still use it btw...no vista for me). /* Everyone seems to remember 98 for the blue screen (they don't know how to use it), but not me...in fact it was nice and light-weight...can't anyone put out an o/s with a small footprint anymore? Processors get faster and faster, and the o/s gets fatter and fatter, and give you roughly the same system usability...but where's the gain? */ But the way it used to be was that on Alt+Ctrl+Del, boom there it was. Thanks to the infailability of the keyboard driver (i'm assuming 98 had something like the tty driver is in unix), it would always catch the key sequence. Sure, you'll have a memory leak if you do kill the offending program (and will have to reboot in the next hour or so or risk worse hangups, typical for 98's memory management), but you can rely on it to sandwitch itself as the very 1st thing in line and displace whatever is taking up all the CPU cycles. If the stack itself (processor cache?...i'm no expert at this, but i'd seen enough it to make sense of what i saw) filled up completely you'd get a blue screen instead, but all you'd have to do is press enter and try again as it clears. I'm used to this as i always force the scrap machines (reclaimed parts, mix & match of whatever's most compatible) to do more than they were intended. But under XP, the whole process is turned on its head. On an average day if i need to deal with something, it's a 30 second to a minute wait, which is okay, but coupled with the taskman itself responding slowly, only functioning when an extra two cpu cycles are available, it's a bit of a pain. If you are used to 98, then it's completely backwards. Couldn't they have thought of something better? Whoever Microsoft assigned must have had his a** and spleen work on the code, while the guy himself was reading The Onion all day!:wtf: However this time it took about 2 hours for the taskman to come up, with "System" having choked and taking up all the CPU cycles. Once every 5 seconds the taskman would be functional, but even then it seems like "System" was protected and i couldn't kill it. I tried to power down or go into standby to hopefully have the process crash and restart but no, doesn't take it. No way to scram it, it just keeps going snails pace, 2 minute old tooltips and gui hi-lights :sigh: Had to pull the p
RoswellNX wrote:
The taskman, which is supposed bail you out when ever you are stuck (i.e. a program running an endless loop) has to perform a stack walk too!
Please, never more use Taskman: SysInternals Process Explorer[^] ;)
:sigh: Still searching for a good resource to LEARN English grammar ...
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.(John 3:16) :badger: -
RoswellNX wrote:
I remember how it was in windows 98 (still use it btw...no vista for me).
I got this far and gave up. Anyone defending 98 as a better alternative to XP loses all credibility, IMHO. Win98 was a band-aid on top of a band-aid on top of a band-aid on top of a band-aid on top of a gaping flesh wound. In '98, a single process could take down the machine with no effort whatsoever. I could write you a one line program that would do it instantly. XP has a million things wrong with it, and I was kind of looking forward to reading this post, but dude, you're out in lala land if you want to go back to the Win98 way of doing things.
Faith is a fine invention For gentlemen who see; But microscopes are prudent In an emergency! -Emily Dickinson
David Kentley wrote:
I got this far and gave up. Anyone defending 98 as a better alternative to XP loses all credibility, IMHO. Win98 was a band-aid on top of a band-aid on top of a band-aid on top of a band-aid on top of a gaping flesh wound. In '98, a single process could take down the machine with no effort whatsoever. I could write you a one line program that would do it instantly. XP has a million things wrong with it, and I was kind of looking forward to reading this post, but dude, you're out in lala land if you want to go back to the Win98 way of doing things.
I actually agree with you, but none of us are on the same page...i was simply bothered by how cumbersome XP is in practice. It's like comparing a honda civic and a sherman tank. I prefer to have a tin can of an o/s, just as long as it's fast and still has the Win32 libraries and wouldn't have compatibility issues(as opposed to switching to linux and trying to get it to work with WinE) when i run the software i use. Look, i'm a cheapskate, i admit it. XP may be superior in the ways that Titanic was, pretty bulletproof...right? But not much use in a muddy lake. There you'd at best need an inflatable rubber boat :laugh: It's not that serious of an issue, vote me down again if you like...we are just looking at different things here :-O. Roswell :)
"Angelinos -- excuse me. There will be civility today."
Antonio VillaRaigosa
City Mayor, Los Angeles, CA -
RoswellNX wrote:
I remember how it was in windows 98 (still use it btw...no vista for me).
I got this far and gave up. Anyone defending 98 as a better alternative to XP loses all credibility, IMHO. Win98 was a band-aid on top of a band-aid on top of a band-aid on top of a band-aid on top of a gaping flesh wound. In '98, a single process could take down the machine with no effort whatsoever. I could write you a one line program that would do it instantly. XP has a million things wrong with it, and I was kind of looking forward to reading this post, but dude, you're out in lala land if you want to go back to the Win98 way of doing things.
Faith is a fine invention For gentlemen who see; But microscopes are prudent In an emergency! -Emily Dickinson
David Kentley wrote:
Anyone defending 98 as a better alternative to XP loses all credibility
Amen to that, brother! As an example of a professionally written operating system, Windows 98 was a pretty piss-poor example.
0 bottles of beer on the wall, 0 bottles of beer, you take 1 down, pass it around, 4294967295 bottles of beer on the wall. Awasu 2.2.4 [^]: A free RSS/Atom feed reader with support for Code Project.
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"System" isn't a true process. It's where the kernel's worker threads live. Probably a high-priority driver thread had gone into an infinite loop, or a piece of hardware had been constantly generating interrupts, its driver not acknowledging them properly. As such, user-mode processes weren't getting any CPU time (or were getting very little), so Task Manager would take a very long time to come up.
Stability. What an interesting concept. -- Chris Maunder
Mike Dimmick wrote:
"System" isn't a true process. It's where the kernel's worker threads live. Probably a high-priority driver thread had gone into an infinite loop, or a piece of hardware had been constantly generating interrupts, its driver not acknowledging them properly. As such, user-mode processes weren't getting any CPU time (or were getting very little), so Task Manager would take a very long time to come up.
Thanks for not going into the ridicule mode unlike everyone else. :cool: I actually thought so myself, i just haven't taken the time to write it all out and kill the dial-up users with the long post:laugh: Although it's not exactly something i can talk about with much experience, i figured that the System process would be pretty much equal to the Unix kernel, with all the underlying daemons. The fact that it runs under "system" rather than "user" gives it away. The infinite loop was actually either started by the 2nd monitor being unplugged at the time the machine came back out of standby, or a driver conflict with the wireless card on/off switch. I kinda wish there was a way to knock out the driver thread separately and restart it though windows doesn't exactly allow for that as far as i know. My rant was more than anything about taskman not being the same way it was in 98, but it's understandable that in a multi-user environment it would be a security liability if it ran as system... Roswell:)
"Angelinos -- excuse me. There will be civility today."
Antonio VillaRaigosa
City Mayor, Los Angeles, CA -
RoswellNX wrote:
But the way it used to be was that on Alt+Ctrl+Del, boom there it was. Thanks to the infailability of the keyboard driver (i'm assuming 98 had something like the tty driver is in unix), it would always catch the key sequence.
As former Win98SE victim I can tell that this is blatant nonsense!
Sceptic Mole wrote:
As former Win98SE victim I can tell that this is blatant nonsense!
it is...i was being half sarcastic, but at the same time i give it credibility as being more comfortable/usable in the situations i were in :) Roswell
"Angelinos -- excuse me. There will be civility today."
Antonio VillaRaigosa
City Mayor, Los Angeles, CA -
The taskman, which is supposed bail you out when ever you are stuck (i.e. a program running an endless loop) has to perform a stack walk too! Kinda self defeating, don't you think?:mad: I remember how it was in windows 98 (still use it btw...no vista for me). /* Everyone seems to remember 98 for the blue screen (they don't know how to use it), but not me...in fact it was nice and light-weight...can't anyone put out an o/s with a small footprint anymore? Processors get faster and faster, and the o/s gets fatter and fatter, and give you roughly the same system usability...but where's the gain? */ But the way it used to be was that on Alt+Ctrl+Del, boom there it was. Thanks to the infailability of the keyboard driver (i'm assuming 98 had something like the tty driver is in unix), it would always catch the key sequence. Sure, you'll have a memory leak if you do kill the offending program (and will have to reboot in the next hour or so or risk worse hangups, typical for 98's memory management), but you can rely on it to sandwitch itself as the very 1st thing in line and displace whatever is taking up all the CPU cycles. If the stack itself (processor cache?...i'm no expert at this, but i'd seen enough it to make sense of what i saw) filled up completely you'd get a blue screen instead, but all you'd have to do is press enter and try again as it clears. I'm used to this as i always force the scrap machines (reclaimed parts, mix & match of whatever's most compatible) to do more than they were intended. But under XP, the whole process is turned on its head. On an average day if i need to deal with something, it's a 30 second to a minute wait, which is okay, but coupled with the taskman itself responding slowly, only functioning when an extra two cpu cycles are available, it's a bit of a pain. If you are used to 98, then it's completely backwards. Couldn't they have thought of something better? Whoever Microsoft assigned must have had his a** and spleen work on the code, while the guy himself was reading The Onion all day!:wtf: However this time it took about 2 hours for the taskman to come up, with "System" having choked and taking up all the CPU cycles. Once every 5 seconds the taskman would be functional, but even then it seems like "System" was protected and i couldn't kill it. I tried to power down or go into standby to hopefully have the process crash and restart but no, doesn't take it. No way to scram it, it just keeps going snails pace, 2 minute old tooltips and gui hi-lights :sigh: Had to pull the p
Once upon a time I wrote a simple application in C/C++ (don't recall where it is, quite handy though) that had one goal in life. Run at a very elevated level of permissions. If process ran at 100% start ticking, look for special keypress from me. If keypress, kill 100% process. The WINAPI made this trivial and it *always* worked. Why don't you just bail yourself out and write one of those? It's cake you don't need a UI, just a few API's that you hook and that's about it.
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RoswellNX wrote:
The taskman, which is supposed bail you out when ever you are stuck (i.e. a program running an endless loop) has to perform a stack walk too!
Please, never more use Taskman: SysInternals Process Explorer[^] ;)
:sigh: Still searching for a good resource to LEARN English grammar ...
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.(John 3:16) :badger: