Hi! I wanto expose some bad stuff with windows, especially XP.

So Linux know what not to do while they take-0wah or popular demand gets Longhorn better.

Registry mess

A windows (even 2k and XP) re-install give you a "clean state" feeling and "when a harddisk is formatted, the pc is otfen faster then when it's not newly formatted."

The more programs you install, the more settings ends up in the registry, the registry loads at startup, and not many programs removes everything they put in the registry.

Atlantis Nova 1.0.0.66 install - Keys added: 41
Atlantis Nova 1.0.0.66 uninstall - Keys deleted: 4

See also Programs registry usage

Browse your files

Open "my computer" and type www.google.com in the address bar and the window turns into a full-retail web browser. I still haven't found a valid use for such a function that compensates the added bloat to Windows XP. When you load the OS you also load explorer.exe (task bar and start menu), which here is tightly bound to Internet Explorer.

I cannot live without the back and refresh button, but my web bookmarks/favourites and a HTML renderer has nothing to do with file browsing.

DLL HELL workaround

Double-up with system files if you got the space. C:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache is 372MB.

Why not use programs that got their own stuff, in their own folder, settings and stuff, and you can move it around as you wish, and after a WinXP re-install just double-click its .exe file and everything is there, like Trillian, Opera, Thumb Plus 5.0 and Eudora 5.2

Search dog

What a cute dog! It's for the ladies, but I hope someone grabs the sourcecode for windows and make a windows without this dog. It's also useless if the file browser windows are small (easier to move files around and organise your HD).

System restore

Is just a workaround over a mess. There was 1GB system restore files over 4 harddrives. Guess I wasn't fast enough to turn it off after a reinstall.

Too integrated

C:\Program Files\xerox\nwwia
is "in use" by winlogon.exe

Google discussion

"The xerox folder is used by the imaging software in XP, as Microsoft licensed some of the tech from Xerox. My understanding is that it's used as scratch space."

So frontpage and imaging is bound to a critical system process like winlogon.exe? Oh the mess?

Suggestions

Sandbag Maybe microsoft should pay the money to themselves and redesign their software. You know, if the next version of Windows(TM) pulls what Apple did with their OS X, built a bsd underbelly to it and didn't allow backwards compatibility outside of a sandbox of sorts I wouldn't cry. Then it would be possible to secure the system and hopefully they'd get rid of their god forsaken registry / file and drive permissions / insecure nature for the most part.

Gradually deteriorates A typical Windows system follows a simple lifecycle: it starts out with a clean Windows installation, which gradually deteriorates as programs are installed, and uninstalled. Eventually, the Windows registry accumulates so much crud that the user is forced to do a clean install. When a user does a clean install that user's system loses all the previously applied security updates, and becomes a sitting duck for worms and other malware. Thats why I'm such a FreeBSD/Mac advocate.

Patches and work-arounds and bugs and more bugs, and bloat and more bloat. The current splash screen module is a case in point: Microsoft includes a 16-color bitmap which weighs in at nearly 200KB for you. This bitmap can be compressed with RLE encoding to less than half that size. The idea of banging a 100KB splash bitmap in an application is still, however, sickening. Yet Microsoft gladly gives you the bitmap at 200KB, happy if you don't understand what you are doing by using it. Your application will be more sluggish than their own bloatware, and people will be less inclined to complain about what they themselves do. http://www.msversus.org/archive/bloat.html

I know an Amiga user that hasn't re-installed his Amiga OS at all, only patched it up, and it's just as clean and fast as always. He's a bit wierd though.