Newbie hi and thanks

[markem]

Hey everyone!

I just wanted to stop by and say thanks. I bought a new laptpo from Dell back last November. I never even got to look at it until February. Dell decided not to provide the drivers for the laptop for Windows XP. I tried (somewhat successfully) to install the drivers. Not because I don't know how to do so. I've worked with computers since 1972. It is just that I used to be a big Apple person, then Linux (from working at NASA), and I didn't start using Windows until almost 2000. So I don't know how to go through the install files and fix problems with them or to make them work on other OS versions. Still, I did get everything installed - it's just the sound didn't work quite right, video wasn't quite right, and so on. So I finally gave up/in and bought System 7 Pro, installed it, and began using it. System 7 had problems from the start. Slow start-up, long load-in of programs, and so forth. Eventually, System 7 ground to a halt on my system. This is totally different than any of the other Windows OSs I'd used in the past. Although I program for a living and am fairly familiar with the blue screen of death (having caused it enough times) - this was totally different. What would happen is that the system would boot up, get to the nice sparkly intro, and then just sit there. Or I'd make it to the login screen, log in, and I'd get a black screen with the cursor on it. Sometimes the system would sit there for over an hour before continuing on. (Having debug experience I am a rather patient person when waiting for something to happen.)

Then in March, Microsoft issued an update that took over four hours to install. Upon rebooting, the system modified over 23,000 entries in the registry, rebooted, another 10,000 entries, reboot, more updates, reboot, and a last few updates. The system ran fantastically. So I figured everything that was wrong with System 7 was fixed. Sadly - no. Last month my system returned to the slow start-ups and slow logins. Turned out the disk drive had developed over 3,000 bad spots on it overnight. Literally. Friday night I was using the system and everything was ok, Saturday morning the system had problems. This really upset me. So I first got a new hard drive, then I installed Linux (Fedora Core 13). Unfortunately, the Fedora version of Linux doesn't automatically install the Broadcom wi-fi software so I had to figure that out and install it and then I installed VirtualBox from Oracle, installed Windows XP, moved everything to it and started working. One week later, for unknown reasons, Linux decided to delete the Broadcom wi-fi software and to remove VirtualBox. Again, as luck would have it, I had shut down the system the night before and when I booted it up the next day - all of this had happened. I was, needless to say, extremely unhappy. Maybe a little too much security on the part of Linux. (I say this because every time I went to do anything a pop-up dialog would come up and ask me for the admin's password instead of just asking me one time and then just doing whatever I needed to have done. It makes me wonder if something thought that the software I had installed was not supposed to be there and removed it. [Or maybe thought a non-admin person had installed it and had removed it as if it was some kind of a security attack.])

So I thought about it a lot. Gave it a whole week. And I decided I wanted to try Windows XP again. All of the other systems I have networked together at my house (except the Macs) run Windows XP. By this time I had heard that there were some programs out there which would look for what you needed as device drivers and I found DeviceDoctor. I'm a bit skeptical by heart so I tried four different programs at work to see what they would do. DeviceDoctor did what the others did not. It not only told you about what was missing but provided links to where the device drivers were located so you could download and install them. So when I got home I booted up one of the other systems, downloaded DeviceDoctor, put it on a jump drive, wiped the hard drive on the laptop, installed Windows XP, installed Device Doctor, and found out another great feature of DeviceDoctor - it would generate a webpage if you didn't have internet connectivity. So I did, put those on the jump drive, went back to the other system downloaded everything, put those on the jump drive, and installed all of them onto the laptop....

And they worked. So here I sit on my laptop, a year later, running the OS I had wanted to run in the first place and talk about fast. Windows XP on this hardware is immediate gratification. Instead of it taking a few seconds or minutes for something to come up and run - it is just there. Further, all of the software I have been using is now so fast it is amazing and not a single problem so far (knock on wood!). I did have to set the hard drive back to the ATA setting but the way Dell has set up the ATA stuff now, it really is still using SATA but just telling the OS it is ATA. So my 500GB hard drive was seen and used by Windows XP without a hitch. Further, unless something like Avira is running a virus scan - the system usually is 99% idle. The sound works great, the screen looks terrific, everything is very responsive.

Even if something, later on, happens to the system (which does seem to be my luck lately), none of the other systems have had the problems I have had with Windows System 7. It is my sincere belief that there is something wrong with System 7 and that, like the database called 4th Dimension - System 7 is writing to one spot on the hard drive over and over again which is what caused the hard drive to fail. It is possible that the hard drive just was a bad hard drive. But it is more likely that System 7 is writing so much Meta data that it is simply wearing out the hard drive quickly. Especially if it rewrites to the same location over and over again. (For instance - System 7 no longer writes directly to the screen like in Windows XP. Instead, it has an intermediary program all commands go to and then that program does the writing to the screen. If some program attempts to re-write the screen 60 times a second (on a 60Hz screen) and that program is redoing the entire screen each time, then it is possible that that intermediary program is updating its information on the hard drive 60 times a second as well [or buffering that and doing it once a second and just checking to see if what is on the hard drive already is the same as what is being displayed]. But that is just conjecture on my part. I don't deal in the underlying software to the Windows OS. So it could be doing everything in memory. Instead, just take it as an example of how you can overuse a single location on the hard drive to the point of failure. In the case of 4th Dimension - every time you updated a table in the database it was updating a master table as well. It was the Master Table that killed the hard drive by going through the 400,000 hours of usage time the hard drive was good for in only a few months. After that - we wrote our own database program and did away with 4th Dimension.)

So what am I leading up to? I've decided to begin making a donation every month for the next six months to help out the people at Device Doctor because I'm very impressed with their work and the program. I've already sent my first donation.

Thanks again for a great program. It was exactly what I needed.

Mark Manning

[Thomas]

That's very generous of you, thanks so much. And glad to hear DeviceDoctor proved useful to you!
I'm still on Windows XP too

[markem]

Not trying to blow my own horn here - just letting everyone know I am doing what I said I would do. Second donation completed.

[Thomas]

We should make VIP donors list somewhere . Much appreciated.

[markem]

You are welcome. I'm just glad you guys were around when I needed you.

[markem]

November donation completed.

[markem]

December Donation sent! Merry Christmas!

[Kaka]

Hello Anyone Greeting from me!..........Hiiiiiii

[markem]

Hi! And welcome! :-)

[markem]

First - January donation completed.

I have been introducing everyone I know to Device Doctor. Most people are ho-hum about it until I get them to run the program. Then they are like "Wow! I didn't know there were that many updates to my computer!" I also hint to them that they should make a donation to help keep Device Doctor up and going. Don't know how well they are taking the hint though. Still, hope things are going well for you guys!