Windows XP was just too enticing to pass up. I haven't willingly upgraded the operating system on any computer I own since Windows 98 was released. Windows 98SE added no new features of any interest to me. Windows ME was the most blatant corporate ploy to milk consumers I've ever seen as it provided a less stable, less capable environment than its predecessors. Windows 2000 might have been a nice upgrade, but I just couldn't use it because it wouldn't handle some important hardware and software I own. Windows XP was the first real prospect I've had for an OS upgrade that would run everything I need to get through my workday and let me play video games in the evenings. Believe me, after years of fighting system resource limitations and the constant crashing of the Windows 9x family, I was desperate for relief.
It was with a great sense of trepidation that I removed the Windows XP installation CD from the overly colorful case and inserted it into my PC's DVD-ROM drive. I had spent quite a bit of time making sure that I understood my options and was ready for the installation. I even tried (unsuccessfully) to update my motherboard BIOS, which was an adventure in itself as I've written about elsewhere. I thought I was about as ready as I was going to be. Naturally, I was wrong.
The installation process went relatively smoothly. It took quite a while compared to previous versions of Windows, but if anyone from Microsoft is reading let me be crystal clear: you can take all day to install if you like if that's what it takes to get it done correctly. I didn't really care how long it took; I just wanted it to work. Strangely enough, as Microsoft products go, it seemed to do just that. The setup routine didn't crash; the detection of hardware seemed to work; the entry of settings seemed pretty painless. In short, roughly an hour after I started the process, I was running Windows XP. How strange is that?
I was quite stunned. Everything just seemed to work. I ran a few programs, experimented with the new user interface (which I'm surprised to say I like) and even fired up Internet Explorer to see if the networking had been initialized correctly. It had. I was browsing the web as quickly as the program could launch. I was utterly elated. I have never had an experience like this previously when installing a Microsoft operating system. The folks who put the setup program together really deserve a big round of applause for finally getting it right.
My one complaint is that the OS didn't make it at all clear to me that I was on a one-way road. I was an early adopter of Windows NT back in its version 1.0 days. I took Microsoft's claims that NT was the future at face value and did my level best to embrace the future. What I got in return was disappointment after disappointment as Win32-certified software failed to work, was unsupported and help was forthcoming from Microsoft only after I'd coughed up hundreds of dollars for each support incident. In short, for a company that was "betting the future" on NT, their initial approach to its marketing and support was utterly pathetic. Eventually, I gave up after Windows NT 4.0 SP4. I went back to Windows 98 and had a much easier time of... well... everything.
So, I had certain expectations about the installation that were unfounded, most prominent of which was that the handling of multi-booting. In the past, I had always been able to install Windows NT on the same partition as Windows 9x. As long as I was careful to do a complete installation in a separate folder, I would end up with a boot menu at startup when the process was complete. That's what I expected of Windows XP. Imagine my chagrin when I discovered that XP requires separate partitions. Oops. I couldn't go back to Windows 98 to dump all those nifty little registry tweaks and so forth that I hadn't bothered to record. Oh well. The new OS installed so cleanly I could forgive a little unpleasantness.
At any rate, I figured it was time to start installing my software and get to work—burned bridges have that effect on me (grin). Toward that end, I opened a session of Windows Explorer and tried to navigate to the network server upon which most of my software setups are stored. It wasn't there. In fact, I was surprised to notice that none of my other computers were visible on the network. Ah yes, I remembered reading that Microsoft removed NetBEUI from Windows XP. Since NetBEUI wasn't available, I figured I would use IPX/SPX for file sharing. I prefer to use NetBEUI or IPX/SPX for file sharing because these protocols supposedly can't be leveraged by malicious persons outside my own local network segment, unlike TCP/IP. Thus, all three of my other computers were supporting file sharing under both NetBEUI and IPX/SPX. All I should have to do is change the Windows XP machine to use one of these protocols, and I would be in business.
I had to poke around a bit to find where all the network goodies were kept, but I soon found the proper portion of the control panel and acquainted myself with the network connections manager. I didn't know it at the time, but this was the beginning of a tumultuous relationship with that particular portion of the software. At any rate, I added the IPX/SPX protocol to my Windows XP system, pressed the button to approve my changes and... sat there in stunned silence when Windows XP didn't want to reboot. I sat there in slack-jawed amazement as a Microsoft operating system didn't need to reboot after I did more than sneeze in the general direction of its network settings.
If this seems a bit unfair, bear in mind that I'm old enough to remember Microsoft's prattling on for years prior to the release of Windows 95 (a.k.a. "Chicago"). At the time, they made an enormously big deal out of the new "dynamic VxDs" that could be loaded and unloaded as needed. The purpose of this technology was to allow software to be installed and Windows to be reconfigured without rebooting. Once Windows 95 was released, however, and the hype had cleared, I was disappointed then to find that despite these wonderfully dynamic VxDs, I still had to reboot my machine with every single network change. It's a small thing that Windows finally works as it should, but it's been so broken for so long in this regard that I was shocked to see it work like a real operating system.
So, I waited a few minutes to let the new machine settle its way onto the network while I browsed some articles on the Microsoft web site, then opened My Network Places again. None of the other computers or their shares appeared. Well, that was OK; after all, I knew the system had to work, right? I pulled up the search tool and tried to find the other computers on my network. Again, I couldn't find a single one of them. At this point, it was time for some troubleshooting.
Step one when testing network connectivity is to make sure that each computer has a good physical connection to the network. Arguably, the simplest way to do this on networks that have the TCP/IP protocol installed is to use the ping tool. I opened a command prompt and issued the appropriate commands from each computer, and I was pleased to see that, in fact, each computer on the network could successfully ping each other computer on the network. That told me that the hardware wasn't at fault at least insofar as packets were getting from one machine to another.
Step two, then, was to test the specifics of the protocol in question. Under the Win9x family, this was always pretty simple. I opened a command prompt on one my server and ran the net diag command. Within moments, I had an IPX/SPX diagnostics server running, to which I could connect from the other two non-XP machines on the network. When I went to do this with Windows XP, however, I was quite disappointed to discover that XP doesn't come with its own version of that useful tool. As I poked around, I was disappointed to find that there didn't seem to be any such tool at all for Windows XP. I did the only thing I could think to do, namely, uninstalling and reinstalling the IPX/SPX protocol a few times, but that didn't do any good.
At this point, I used the help system built into Windows XP. A friend told me that Microsoft is actually providing support for the operating system—again a complete shocker from a company that has previously always wanted $35 just to talk to you ($195 if you're a business). Sure enough, I was connected to a Microsoft support representative within a few minutes. Unfortunately, he clearly didn't know much about Windows XP, as I was the one explaining to him where the network settings were, how to change bindings and so forth. He walked me through the process of installing IPX/SPX and was surprised and dismayed when it didn't work. He might have had something else of use to say, but I'll never know as Internet Explorer picked that particular moment to crash and bring the whole XP shell down with it, terminating my conversation. For the record, Microsoft hasn't yet taken any other action on that support incident; it remains open and untouched.
Well, rather than diddle about forever trying to get IPX/SPX to work, I figured I would try what Microsoft expects me to do, namely, use TCP/IP instead. There's usually a smart way to do things, which wasn't working, so maybe the Microsoft way would work instead. This took a bit of doing as I had to reconfigure the other three machines on my network, two of which stubbornly refused to alter they're network settings. Every time I tried, Windows 98 would crash in the middle of the update, leaving the other protocols in place. I wish that were atypical. I eventually resorted to starting those machines in Safe Mode and removing the other protocols one at a time in order for it to work.
After about half an hour, though, I had the other three machines up and running, sharing files over TCP/IP. I also made darned sure to verify (using the wonderful Shields Up! utility provided by Gibson Research Corporation) that the firewalls on those machines were blocking everybody else from getting at my data. I removed the IPX/SPX protocol from my Windows XP box and bound file sharing to the TCP/IP protocol. After waiting a minute or two, I tried to access the network and was pleased to see that my machines could now "see" each other after a fashion. The XP box could see all of the other machines, but they couldn't see the XP box at all.
Setting this niggling issue aside for the moment, I figured I would install some of my software. It bears describing at this point some of the networking conventions I've adopted here. Speaking generally, the following drives are mapped on every client machine on my network:
With this in mind, then, I intended to get at the T: drive to install some programs. I refreshed My Network Places, mapped a drive and double-clicked the drive in a separate session of Windows Explorer. After somewhat of a delay (2 - 3) seconds, I was looking at a list of the folders available. The delay was surprising given that this is a very small network, but I had read elsewhere that Windows is not exactly snappy when browsing a Windows 98/ME system. I suspect that's another typically Microsoftian ploy to force upgrades, but that's an entirely separate story. At any rate, I installed a few applications then turned my attention to my My Documents folder.
It was with the My Documents folder that things got ridiculous. I was able to map drive H: to the right network share relatively quickly, and double-clicking it showed the same kind of performance I was getting with T:, slow but workable. I then right clicked the My Documents folder and set it to H:\ so that it would "point" at the proper location. After declining the offer to move all my data files—another nice and long overdue touch, Microsoft—I double clicked the My Documents folder to make sure that everything was set up correctly. I waited. And I waited. And I waited. And I waited.
Just as I was about to close the Explorer window, it finally showed me the contents of the very same H: drive that it had shown me in roughly two seconds previously. I pulled out my digital watch and invoked the timer before double-clicking on a subfolder. No less than 47 seconds elapsed before I saw the contents of the sub-folder. Hmph. That ain't right. Checking all my settings, fiddling about with the firewall, uninstalling and reinstalling file sharing, repairing the connection and all manner of other diagnostic procedures failed to improve matters.
To make matters worse, while I was testing the My Documents folder, I somehow lost my other network drives. H:, S: and T: all changed their appearance in Windows Explorer to indicate that the connections had been dropped. I double-clicked each one, but the connections simply wouldn't restore. I kept getting some ridiculous error message explaining how I couldn't connect to that resource because I was already connected to it. Ah yes, that must be why I can't get at any of my files. Nice.
To make what is already too long a story shorter, this problem still plagues me today—even after a completely fresh second installation of Windows XP just to make sure that my network twiddling wasn't the cause of it all. For the time being, I've mapped the My Documents folder to a local drive. I'm just working with H: whenever I need to get at my important data files. I have to tolerate several second delays for no good reason from time to time, but at least my system is usable. To date, Microsoft is pursuing this support incident by suggesting that I do all the things I've already told them I've tried. Still, I'm being a good little trooper, trying NetBEUI instead—just for the record, the My Documents browsing time goes up to 7 minutes 24 seconds with NetBEUI in place—trying to repair the connection, uninstalling and reinstalling the protocols, etc. Nothing has helped. I'm planning to install Windows XP on my main server in the not-so-distant future, and we'll see if that fixes the problem as I expect it will given Microsoft's prior track record with such things.
Though the networking woes have been the single most troublesome issue with Windows XP thus far, there have been a host of other annoying problems. Some of these aren't so surprising while some are. For example, I am privileged to have a Boomslang 2000 mouse on my system, and though Windows 2000 drivers are available for it, no drivers are available yet for Windows XP. Still, from what I've read on various web sites I expected the Win2K drivers to work under WinXP. Naturally, they didn't; after installing the Win2K drivers for the Boomslang, I lost file sharing completely.
Worse yet, I saw the most bizarre in-game behavior I've seen to date. Upon joining an Unreal Tournament server, I was surprised to discover that I could run around the map at roughly twice the normal speed. I was moving so fast it was really quite dizzying. At least, it was until I stopped in place while the whole screen display vibrated in a ridiculously jerky fashion for several seconds before resuming play. I suspect that the local client was somehow getting ahead of itself in its motion prediction as a result of the drivers; the complete stops every few seconds were presumably the result of the client then updating the correct position courtesy of the server. It also bears mentioning that my sound worked only intermittently with the Boomslang drivers in place. Yipes.
Needless to say, I uninstalled those drivers right quick. Sadly, I'm stuck using the generic mouse drivers until Karna puts out a new version for Windows XP. Their razerzone site says that a beta version will likely be available on 1/11/02, but I'll believe it when I see it. I sure hope so, as I'm finding out daily just how much I've come to rely upon the special features supplied by the Boomslang. As an aside, that mouse takes a little effort to get used to it, but it is easily worth the time and expense for any serious gamer in my estimation.
After the experience with the Boomslang, I figured I would focus on hardware guaranteed to work correctly with Windows XP. You know, stuff that's certified by Microsoft for the OS so that I, the consumer, can have complete confidence that it will simply plug in and work like it's supposed to. I have two of those devices: (1) a Microsoft Sidewinder Strategic Commander (SC) and (2) Microsoft Sidewinder Game Voice (GV). The following was taken directly from a screen shot of my web browser while examining the Microsoft site today:
How comforting an announcement that is! I could be assured that my SC and GV would both just work in Windows XP. As Dr. Evil might say, right. Since in-game communication is usually more important to me than having another funky controller around, I started with GV. I plugged in the unit and installed the software without incident. I then upgraded the software to the latest version (v1.5) and launched it. Everything seemed to be going well, but I then made a fatal mistake: I tried to connect to a GV server—what was I thinking?!? Naturally, Windows XP became completely unresponsive. I had to wait nearly two minutes for the task manager to appear in response to my three-fingered salute (i.e., Ctl+Alt+Del). Fortunately, I was able to close GV after another lengthy few minutes of twiddling. Now, Windows XP is a robust operating system, so I should have no trouble simply launching it a second time, right?
Again: <Dr. Evil>right</Dr. Evil>. My second attempt brought the system completely to its knees. When Windows XP hadn't responded to my request for a reboot within several minutes, I finally hit the reset button on the front of my case. After a complete, cold boot I fired up GV again expecting the worst. I was pleasantly surprised when this time it asked me for a password when I attempted to connect to the same GV server. It locked up completely immediately thereafter, of course, but hey, at least we're getting somewhere! All in all, a total of three cold boots were required before the software stopped giving the OS a digital enema. Since then, GV has worked without any fuss.
Having had this much trouble with GV, I was less than thrilled about my prospects for the SC. Still, I plugged the unit in and was happy to observe that the system didn't actually explode—that's always a good sign. I then installed the software and was happier still to note that the unit seemed to be in good communication with the PC. Could it be I had dodged the hardware bullet with the SC? Sadly, no. As one of the final steps in the installation, the SC software launches a movie to impress you with how phenomenally useful the unit will be to you in the various games with which you might use it. Naturally, playing this simple movie file while the SC initialized itself was like the electronic equivalent of a shotgun blast to the forehead. That is, Windows XP promptly showed me a somewhat prettified version of the infamous Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). As with the GV unit, all that was required were three cold boots before the SC started playing nicely with others.
There are two things worth noting about this particular plane of XP Hell, I think. First, isn't it just a bit sad (not to mention ironic) that the only two hardware devices that actually locked the OS completely are made by Microsoft? And isn't it still more pathetic that both of these devices are certified specifically as compatible with Windows XP? Second, doesn't this sort of thing force one to believe in bit-rot and other such notions? After all, what changed between the second and third cold boots with the two devices that could explain why they now suddenly work just fine whereas they were an anathema to the system mere moments before? Sheesh. If these two are certified as compatible, may God help those poor, damned souls with iffy hardware.
On this point, at least, Windows XP almost lives up to its hype. As I said previously, I was an early adopter of Windows NT, so my experience with the NT code base is simple: unless it's explicitly a piece of Windows NT software, you can expect trouble. NT wouldn't run games for beans. It wouldn't run most of my DOS applications. It would only run some of my 16-bit Windows applications. Heck, it wouldn't run all of my Win32-certified applications! Windows XP, in contrast, finally does it right. The applications just run like they're supposed to—well, for the most part.
To date I've encountered only a single truly unreasonable incompatibility, and it saddens me quite a bit as the application that won't run is Dungeon Keeper II (DK2). For those who haven't played this game, I'll say simply that I think it's one of the best of all time. Its off-beat sense of humor, wonderful graphics and audio, innovative gameplay and other aspects make it terribly compelling. Unfortunately, I can't get it to run. I can't get it to run with the stock audio/video drivers. I can't get it to run even if I crack the SafeDisc copy protection that normally enfolds it. Nothing makes any difference. I'm told by others that they have no trouble running it, so I guess I'm just "lucky" (as usual). Anyway, for this lone application I will be installing a copy of Windows 98 on one my drives as soon as I figure out how to do this without screwing Windows XP. DK2 is just that good.
As an aside, I take this failure to run DK2 as wholly unreasonable because XP does so well with every other application I've thrown at it. Sure, it balks at running 16-bit debugging tools, and it won't handle certain DOS applications I have that directly access hardware (though it does run some of them bizarrely enough), but far more amazing is what it will run. I was downright shocked to find that I can run all of my old DOS games. The only DOS game I can't make work perfectly is an old gem called Darklands, which was always ridiculously fussy about its sound drivers. I have to disable the sound to make the game run, but it's still playable and that's really saying something after all those years.
While fussing about with all my networking problems, I discovered something rather important along the way. One of the problems to which I gave little mention previously was that Windows XP would drop the connections to my network drives. To make matters worse, the problem was intermittent; sometimes it happened after the computer had been idle for a few minutes, and sometimes it didn't happen until the computer had been idle for a few hours. But it would always happen eventually if I left the computer idle. Further, once the network connections had been dropped, I could find no way to reestablish them short of rebooting. If I simply tried to double-click the non-responsive drive in Windows Explorer I would get the same ridiculous error message about how I couldn't connect to that resource because I was already connected to it. Nice.
Eventually, I decided on a lark to try disabling the firewall after this happened. I didn't think for a minute that Microsoft could have been so stupid as to design their firewall so that it hoses basic file sharing over TCP/IP when they are clearly urging all users to go that route by dropping NetBEUI and providing an essentially non-functional IPX/SPX protocol (as near as I can tell). You can imagine my complete astonishment when after deactivating the firewall I was able to reestablish my networked drives by simply double-clicking! Further testing confirmed it beyond any doubt: Microsoft's own firewall shuts down file sharing if left to its own devices for too long. Isn't that just lovely? In short, the Microsoft firewall has precisely two settings: (1) useless and (2) suffocating. Since I didn't want to be without a firewall yet couldn't trust Microsoft's, I quickly installed the free version of ZoneAlarm until my upgrade to Norton Personal Firewall 2002 (NPF) could arrive. That's ridiculous, of course, but hey, that's the Microsoft way. For the record, neither ZoneAlarm nor NPF have this problem, but it's 100% repeatable with the default firewall.
There is one amusing/frustrating thing to note about product activation as well. In my case, I wasn't going to activate Windows XP until I was darned sure that I had a functional operating system. I only had to install it twice to get as far as I have today, but that's better than some previous Microsoft OS products. I expected I would end up installing it at least three times to get everything working, but in that respect XP has turned out to have exceeded my expectations—which are admittedly pretty low after years as a Windows user. At any rate, I still had 28 days to activate the product when I finally succeeded in flashing the BIOS on my motherboard, an unhappy tale that is told elsewhere. After flashing, I went into the BIOS setup utility and made changes, but I forgot to set the date/time correctly. Thus, when I let Windows XP boot, it thought it was January 1, 2000. I noticed this a few moments later and set the time/date correctly using the control panel and thought nothing further of it.
At least, I thought nothing further of it until the next time I rebooted. The reason I had to reboot was because my copy of Norton Personal Firewall 2002 had arrived, and its installation required a reboot. When I tried to log on, however, I was greeted with a stern admonishment that I must activate the product. Because I knew I still had 28 days to go, I clicked the "No" button in response to the "Do you want to activate now?" question and was temporarily infuriated when it kicked me right back to the startup welcome screen. I don't know precisely how WinXP keeps track of the amount of time it's been in use, but the method is clearly less than half-baked!
Unfortunately, getting out of this mess wasn't that easy either. When I tried to activate over the Internet, the process failed. I suspect it was failing because the newly installed firewall was being a good little soldier and preventing connections until I allow them. The only problem, of course, was that NPF couldn't pop up its user interface to ask whether it should allow them because the Microsoft activation police were dominating the display. Still more surprising was that the automated telephone activation process failed as well. My modem dialed the number, but the host simply wouldn't respond. Thus, I was forced to punch all of the dizzying array of digits on the screen into the telephone handset myself.
In retrospect, I'm grateful that the third method worked; otherwise, I would have been really ticked off. Still, with the hassle that activation presents, I will use a crack to disable it in the future if I can find one. I don't like Microsoft's bullying me into jumping through such annoying hoops before I can use software I legitimately purchased. And this isn't a complaint about the process, though it was hardly painless in my case; rather, it's a matter of principle. To my mind, such things are like enforcing onerous restrictions on the innocent in order to trip up criminals. It's an unreasonable violation of our liberties eschewed by our justice system, and it should be no different in the commercial sector.
So, after nearly a week I still don't have all my software installed, but I'm getting closer to the point whereat Windows XP will be a completely functional OS for me. My frustrations at its obtuse and ridiculous networking will grow with time, I'm sure, but if these problems can be fixed by migrating my other machines to Windows XP, I'll spend the money to do it. The advantages are just too numerous.
Right now, for example, I'm composing this text in Macromedia Dreamweaver, listening to MP3 files across the network courtesy of MusicMatch Jukebox, burning a 1:1 copy of my DK2 CD in the hope of finding some other way to make the game play, installing the roughly 1.5 GB of the most recent copy of MSDN that I own from my DVD-ROM drive, and all of this goes on smoothly without a hitch with nearly a dozen other programs open in my system tray. For a guy accustomed to the pathetic 16-bit resource limitations of Windows 98 (i.e., you're lucky to run more than two substantial programs at once), this is utterly fabulous.
As it stands, Windows XP is the new system of choice in my mind for today's computing. It's got some pretty seriously annoying warts, and fussing about with it has cost me almost an entire week of any productivity. Nevertheless, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, I think, and I'm hopeful that Microsoft will fix some of the ugliness with a service pack in the near future. Of this much I'm certain: finally leaving stupid 16-bit limitations in the dust is a Godsend!
01/04/2002