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Favorite Microsoft Windows OS?  "Got any stories of your memories of them?"

Poll: Pick the OS's that'll apply. (47 member(s) have cast votes)

Favorite Windows OS?

  1. Windows 3.1 (8 votes [9.41%])

    Percentage of vote: 9.41%

  2. Windows 95 (8 votes [9.41%])

    Percentage of vote: 9.41%

  3. Windows 98/SE (10 votes [11.76%])

    Percentage of vote: 11.76%

  4. Windows ME (1 votes [1.18%])

    Percentage of vote: 1.18%

  5. Windows NT/2000 (3 votes [3.53%])

    Percentage of vote: 3.53%

  6. Windows XP (17 votes [20.00%])

    Percentage of vote: 20.00%

  7. Windows Vista (1 votes [1.18%])

    Percentage of vote: 1.18%

  8. Windows 7 (31 votes [36.47%])

    Percentage of vote: 36.47%

  9. Windows 8/8.1 (5 votes [5.88%])

    Percentage of vote: 5.88%

  10. Windows 10 (1 votes [1.18%])

    Percentage of vote: 1.18%

Vote Guests cannot vote

User is offline   Mark 

#31

I guess I'll say WIN95 is my favorite in some respects. I started in the DOS days and then upgraded to WIN3.1 which gave me lots of grief. WIN95 came along and after asking some friends a million questions about tweaking and running that OS I had a very good working computer for about 3 or 4 years. When I upgraded to WIN98 SE, because newer software I wanted required it, I tweaked things to make it look and feel as much like 95 as possible. Same thing when I went to XP and then later to Vista. I always strive to keep my look and feel as close as possible to 95. Very basic no themes, no backrounds, no frills. So from a GUI aspect 95 is my favorite. Performance wise, my original install of XP lasted the entire 7 years I owned that computer. No crashes. Ran fast and lean. It did everything I needed it to do at the time.

This post has been edited by Mark.: 18 January 2014 - 07:59 AM

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User is offline   blitzer 

#32

95 was my first. It was okay, but I liked it way better than Mac OS, which was the first computer I was ever introduced to in school.
98 was slightly better, but had lots of freezing problems.
I liked XP a lot. I almost never got the blue screen of death or freeze.
I have Win7 now. I'm getting used to it. It just bugs me that it won't play a lot of my old games or old software without some special patch, which isn't always available.
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#33

Windows 8 and 8.1 should have been separate voting options in this poll.
I am not saying 8.1 is much better but there are differences that for some people are enough to help them decide to chose whether they move to 8 or not.
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User is offline   Splat 

  • Eat Shit and...

  #34

Windows 95. Weezer - Buddy Holly. Wow, a music video! MTV on my computer! No other Windows has wowed me since.
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User is offline   Kathy 

#35

^Holy shit! This! My mind was blown the day I saw Edie Brickell's video on my family's PC.
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#36

On Tuesday, April 8 2014; Time to play "Taps" for Windows XP.

CBS news link.

This post has been edited by DustFalcon85: 28 March 2014 - 06:01 AM

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User is offline   Tea Monster 

  • Polymancer

#37

7 is probably the finest fruit of Redmond.

8 is technically better, but that metro - bleurgh!

I liked XP - especially if you loaded the Royal Noir theme :) , but I had a real soft spot for 98lite. That made an OK operating system into a piece of art. Rock solid and fast as lightning :) .

This post has been edited by Tea Monster: 31 March 2014 - 04:43 PM

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User is offline   Gambini 

#38

How the hell I never knew of this thread?

Windows XP SP3 will be on my memories as the best system I´ve ever used. I only missed -while using it- DOS support, but just until I found DosBox. I remember W98 SE being a very fine OS too, it had some crashes but nothing compared to W95 or older 98´s. Windows 3.1/3.11 were a sort of eyecandy for me in their times, my father would bring the PC, once again, back from the shop with Windows, once again, reinstalled.. and it would last a couple of weeks before it stopped working again. This forced me to become a DOS master. I remember having a very solid knowledge and control with DOS 6.22. I knew most commands, shortcuts and tricks and that was all thanks to Windows 3.11 being so shitty. It took me a lot of time and grief to let that go, my favorite action in windows 95 and 98 was "exit to dos".

Now, moving the timeline straigth to the end: I´m using W7 64bits these days. It´s nice and looks good and is so much faster than XP (specially for booting and shutting down) but it has a few annoyances i can´t get used to. One is the fucking file ownership, having old HDs with tons of backed up files is a pain because it keeps telling me I have to take ownership of them before accessing them, which is completely stupid because those are MY flies. Another thing I REALLY REALLY hate from w7 is the way it sorts files in the explorer. It keeps rearranging my files by "most used" despite I changing it to alphabetic order. It happens every time, I want X folder to show thumbnails, Y folder to show details arranged by date and Z folder arranged by name. Every time i go to X from Z all files have been re-arranged and then again when i go back again to Z or Y. It keeps changing the details i want to display in my music folders with stupid labels as "number of track" or "collaborative performer", details of which I give a fuck, needless to say. Another thing I hate from it is that it keeps asking me if i want X program to make changes on the system, despite it being a program I use daily, or the need of external codecs and "plugins" in order to display TGA and PSD thumbnails.

This post has been edited by Gambini: 31 March 2014 - 05:44 PM

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User is offline   Kathy 

#39

View PostGambini, on 31 March 2014 - 05:43 PM, said:

One is the fucking file ownership, having old HDs with tons of backed up files is a pain because it keeps telling me I have to take ownership of them before accessing them, which is completely stupid because those are MY flies.

This is NTFS and it is as it should be. Although, I don't remember system asking me to take ownership as it would automatically do that when I copy anything to NTFS.

Quote

Another thing I hate from it is that it keeps asking me if i want X program to make changes on the system, despite it being a program I use daily, or the need of external codecs and "plugins" in order to display TGA and PSD thumbnails.

That's because this shitty program wants to have privileged access. I call those crapware.
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User is offline   Gambini 

#40

You call Photoshop crapware? lol it even asks me if I allow this program "microsoft windows" to make changes when i go to the control panel.

Quote

This is NTFS and it is as it should be. Although, I don't remember system asking me to take ownership as it would automatically do that when I copy anything to NTFS.
Windows XP utilizes NTFS and i can manipulate any file from any source at any time while on it. This is my 2nd W7 install and I took care, this time, of not moving the documents folder to the backup directly. But better decentralize it, subfolder by subfolder. But with my previous install I couldn´t recover my files because they were inside of a "user´s documents" folder and W7 refused to accpet taking ownership of them. It´s funny that the only thing I had to do was pluggin the HD back on the XP pc, where i could have access to ANY file of any HD. This is not "as it should be" this is lose of control.

This post has been edited by Gambini: 31 March 2014 - 08:30 PM

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User is offline   Kathy 

#41

View PostGambini, on 31 March 2014 - 08:25 PM, said:

You call Photoshop crapware?

If it demands privileged access to the system files/directories then yes, it is indeed a crapware. Why on earth would Photoshop need it?

Quote

lol it even asks me if I allow this program "microsoft windows" to make changes when i go to the control panel.

You don't get asked when you go just to "control panel", you are asked when you go to panel that is used to change system settings.
Anyway, disable UAC then if you don't like it. You're still working from the root account anyway.

Quote

It´s funny that the only thing I had to do was pluggin the HD back on the XP pc, where i could have access to ANY file of any HD. This is not "as it should be" this is lose of control.

I can't say I encountered such a problem, but it seems to me to be simply corrected with rewriting ntfs access lists.
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User is offline   Gambini 

#42

View PostKathy, on 01 April 2014 - 06:13 AM, said:

You don't get asked when you go just to "control panel", you are asked when you go to panel that is used to change system settings.
Anyway, disable UAC then if you don't like it. You're still working from the root account anyway.


That UAC thing is useful when you´re running software of doubtful procedence. It should have an option to add an exception when it comes to software that is already installed in your system and that you trust. Does not provide extra safety either as any program can create an exception in the built-in firewall or add scheduled tasks to the boot and you´re never asked if you allow it to do so.
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User is offline   Kathy 

#43

That's because UAC isn't sufficient and you simply shouldn't work from a root(or similar) account. UAC is useful and convenient for elevating privileges when you're working from user account, but it is not a secured boundary when you already have super-privileges.
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User is offline   Forge 

  • Speaker of the Outhouse

#44

UAC is annoying as hell. i have scheduled programs that clean my system and registry. UAC would block them from running every time until i got on the computer and allowed them to run.
-disable UAC and install a program like comodo firewall that does the same thing as UAC, but will remember your answers and not ask about the same program every damn time it's ran

Windows 7 file explorer sucks ass
-install classic shell and take back your windows explorer so you can set it up to act more like XP if that's what you want

I hate some of the idiot proofing, but it's there for a reason
-file ownership is built in to keep people from tampering with the system. sorry, i don't know of any easy fix. you have to manually do that. pain in the ass, but if you can get everything into as few folders as
possible and take ownership of those folders, it lets you take ownership of all the files in those folders as well. this should minimize the annoyance, and it only needs to be done once.

you shouldn't run your system in root. nothing to do with security reasons. if someone wants to hack or infect your system a user account is will do just as well as any other door.
staying out of root keeps you from damaging the operating system. you can screw up your user account, but you can go to root, make a new account, and move all your stuff over from the broke account and you don't lose anything important.

This post has been edited by Forge: 03 April 2014 - 09:16 AM

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#45

This just in. Microsoft releases the source code to MS-DOS V 1.1 & 2.0.

Microsoft Word for Windows 1.1 too!

Let's see if Microsoft releases the source to MS-DOS 6 and above to give the DOSBox crew an edge.

This post has been edited by DustFalcon85: 03 April 2014 - 09:36 AM

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User is offline   Kathy 

#46

View PostForge, on 03 April 2014 - 09:01 AM, said:

you shouldn't run your system in root. nothing to do with security reasons. if someone wants to hack or infect your system a user account is will do just as well as any other door.

It has everything to do with security reasons. Malware gets access to root - it gets access to everything. Security settings, other user accounts, services etc.
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User is offline   Gambini 

#47

View PostForge, on 03 April 2014 - 09:01 AM, said:

Windows 7 file explorer sucks ass
-install classic shell and take back your windows explorer so you can set it up to act more like XP if that's what you want


Thanks for this tip. I have isntalled Classic Shell and it almost feels like being on XP again! I still can´t get rid of those stupid "libraries" but it´s getting closer.
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User is offline   Forge 

  • Speaker of the Outhouse

#48

View PostKathy, on 03 April 2014 - 01:08 PM, said:

It has everything to do with security reasons. Malware gets access to root - it gets access to everything. Security settings, other user accounts, services etc.

disagree.
if someone really wants to hack your system. gaining control over a user account makes little difference compared to taking over the root account. especially since they can then take over root from the user account anyway.

malicious viri will attack your mbr or bios. root or user makes no difference once infected.
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User is offline   Kathy 

#49

How would they attack mbr or bios? I'd like some examples.
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User is offline   Forge 

  • Speaker of the Outhouse

#50

examples?
what are you planning?

a simple web search should provide the information you seek
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User is offline   Kathy 

#51

My point was that you'd still need a direct hardware access which shouldn't be available anyway under restricted user account.
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User is offline   Forge 

  • Speaker of the Outhouse

#52

and one can properly harden a root account as well.

if someone is skilled enough to sneak into your user account undetected, then it's only a matter of time before they break through the user privileges and hijack the admin account.
A user account is a speed bump. It slows the intruder down to give you the opportunity to catch them, but that's about it.

most malicious crap is aimed at stealing your information, spying on your activities, or hijacking a bit of your bandwidth for denial of service attacks.

since pretty much all that stuff is located in your most frequently used account it really doesn't matter what kind of account you use.

if you properly harden an account it doesn't matter what kind of account you use
if you fail to properly harden an account it doesn't matter what kind of account you use
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User is offline   Kathy 

#53

I wasn't talking about specific attack on you, but malware in general. Breaking through user account will not be that easy as you make it sound unless you use 0-day exploit.
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User is offline   Forge 

  • Speaker of the Outhouse

#54

breaking into a user account is that easy if one doesn't take the proper steps to protect their system.

eventually they''ll get into your root account with keyloggers, brute force, or the dozen or so other methods.

echo

View PostForge, on 04 April 2014 - 07:04 AM, said:

A user account is a speed bump. It slows the intruder down to give you the opportunity to catch them, but that's about it.


if your system is properly hardened then it doesn't matter what type of account you operate under

is a user account a more secure method to use a computer? yes. that's not the issue.
is a user account the perfect security? hell no.

the primary purpose of a user account: to keep you, the end user, from unintentionally screwing up your operating system or network (which inherently keeps intruders and other users from easily screwing it up as well. specific effort and malicious intent will still manage to do so though)

This post has been edited by Forge: 04 April 2014 - 11:05 AM

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User is offline   Kathy 

#55

View PostForge, on 04 April 2014 - 10:57 AM, said:

if your system is properly hardened then it doesn't matter what type of account you operate under

The thing is that I don't think your system is properly hardened if root account is used for anything other than changing system settings.

Quote

is a user account the perfect security? hell no.

It is essential, but not perfect.

Quote

specific effort and malicious intent will still manage to do so though

Perhaps, but it will keep you relatively safe from broad malware attacks.
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User is offline   Gambini 

#56

Since you´re talking about accounts that don´t give access to the system files... this reminds me how much i miss the days of DOS in which you´d know exactly how your HD would be composed. What each folder contained and you decided where the hell you´d want to install your games and stuff. I hate how much crap is stored in the system these days by the most insignificant program you install. Sometimes i spend a few hours checking folder by folder and deleting all the crap i´m sure I don´t need. For example, installwizard folders of programs that i dont use anymore, which contain the installer, all the outdated versions (the hell why!!!) and much more shit. You can save several GBs by deleting, for example, all the redist folders of your games once they have been run at least once. Who needs 50 copies of directx and netframe anyway?
That is the main reason of why i can´t get used to run on an account without privilegies. Systems for idiots, that´s what we all run these days.
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User is online   Rellik 

#57

View PostGambini, on 03 April 2014 - 04:02 PM, said:

I still can´t get rid of those stupid "libraries" but it´s getting closer.

Funny thing, libraries were removed in Windows 8.1

Oh, and this is what we will be seeing in Windows 9 for desktop users:
http://www.theverge....ktop-experience
Posted Image
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User is offline   Kathy 

#58

It is really sad that the most talked feature is a fucking start menu. I mean, for fuck's sake, this small feature is an actual deal breaker for many. I'm not talking about people being insane by treating Start menu like this(but they still overdid it), but about Microsoft being complete idiots for not allowing a simple option to have it back, even in 8.1. And now, lo and behold, Start menu making a comeback will be the grand feature of Windows 9. It is fucked up.
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#59

RIP Windows XP.

October 25, 2001 - April 8, 2014
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User is offline   Tea Monster 

  • Polymancer

#60

View PostKathy, on 04 April 2014 - 06:16 AM, said:

My point was that you'd still need a direct hardware access which shouldn't be available anyway under restricted user account.


You guys need to get out more.

https://threatpost.c...omputers/103079
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