If your all set to go back to XP, then nothing we say is going to change that. Best that you simply pull off the band aid and go back. If anything I might suggest is that you look at running WinXP in virtualbox, on ubuntu.
When you can, you seriously need to upgrade your hardware.
Declan
OP: there are all kinds of computer forums on the internet; I think you would probably get specific advice at one of those.
Did you already check with HP about buying a recovery disk from them?
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=bph07143&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en
As a PC user for around a quarter of a century who has accumulated a moderate amount of expertise and stumbled on this thread, let me make a few comments.
[ul]
[li]Windows and Linux both have strengths and problems, and I myself am just sick to death of the Linux fanbois claiming that it’s God’s gift to computing. My first experience many many years ago was that it was an overly complex bug-riddled piece of Unix-worshipping idealism that was useless for most people. Since then the fanbois have been trying to convince me that it’s “come a long long way” and named particular distributions that at the time were considered king of the hill, Suse Linux being one that someone recommended as being just terrific, out-of-the-box ready to run. Oh yeah? I won’t even begin to try to list the problems, some with obscure solutions, others with no solutions. I had a USB wireless adapter at the time that worked perfectly with Windows XP because the manufacturer supplied a driver. For Linux, I had to spend a week figuring out the chipset it contained and then basically sourcing and tweaking other drivers based on that chipset and learning more than I ever wanted to know about Linux drivers before finally getting the thing working. Screw that shit! Windows is pretty much a good example of “you get what you pay for”.[/li]
[li]No, you cannot mix’n’match product keys for XP, even within the same class (Home or Professional). OEM product keys, volume license keys, and retail keys are all different and will only work with the corresponding distributions.[/li]
[li]The idea that official support and constant Microsoft updates – as opposed to rational computing practices and virus and malware protection – causes virus-laden bots to infest the Internet is unmitigated bullshit.[/li][/ul]
That’s not going to help if Ubuntu is having trouble supporting the physical hardware.
Personally, I’d recommend having a go at one of the other ~buntus - the mainstream distribution typically has quite a demanding display configuration, so as to support lots of visual effects - and this can be buggy on older hardware.
It does sound like there may be some underlying hardware problem with the OP’s computer, however - hard drive/boot issues, then display issues - may not all be connected, but there’s a possibility of something like a faulty motherboard - in which case, no change of OS would solve it.
LOL, no I’m not. I actually only came across this forum because I was researching 9/11.
I have heard of cases, but only if it was 100% proven that an outdated system posed a risk. Like I said, you may be lucky and nothing ever happens. It is fact, though, that patches continue to remain unpatched due to no updates being aired any longer. However, how much that poses a danger is not something I can definitely assess. I’m not an expert. All I can say that it was too much of a risk for me.
I did not intend to impose my opinion on others though, just wanted to give advice.
I’m going to vote for this.
Ubuntu still isn’t as user friendly as Windows XP/Vista/7 were, but the hardware support and stability are pretty similar. You need to install Xubuntu in order to get the windowing to run at a comparable speed, though.
Now I would really like a cite for anyone being even threatened with prosecution for having a PC running a corrupted install of XP whilst connected to the Internet.
I too have many years experience of using , repairing and building PCs for the last three decades and am very current with the IT world.
Marvolo I’m calling B/S on your statement.
Peter
Now I would *really**like a cite for anyone being even threatened with prosecution for having a PC running a corrupted install of XP whilst connected to the Internet.
I too have being using, repairing and building PCs for the last three decades and am very current with the IT world.
Marvolo I’m calling B/S on your statement.
Peter
Sorry double post, Mods?
P
I’ve always been a fan of Linux Mint. It is based on Ubuntu but doesn’t have the bullshit GUI. There’s always CentOS as well, which is really very stable because it is a free recompilation of Red Hat (with branding removed), which itself is designed to be rock solid for businesses to use.
I once read about it in a German computer forum. If I find the thread again, I’ll link it to you. That person in the thread used a Windows 2000 or 98 distribution and kept it connected to the internet. He didn’t notice how criminals used the unpatched loopholes in the system to send fraud mails to public institutions like banks, using his email account. Eventually, police turned up at his door and he had a hard time proving it wasn’t actually him. He was later “partly” held responsible for using an overly outdated system and for not taking the responisbility to secure and minimize the possibility of an exterior threat as much as possible. Not knowing about it was no excuse. That was the main reason of his post, because he didn’t know. That’s all I remember from the thread. And, of course it wasn’t a draconic punishment, of course no custodial sentence or anything, but yet he was considered “partly” responsible.
If you, Peter, or anyone else think my posting is B/S or not is not really much of my concern. I just gave my advice here and I’m not forcing anyone to do anything. Amen! Have a nice one everyone!
Assuming the OP installs all available patches for Windows XP, how insecure will it be? I mean, by April 2014 when Microsoft finally stopped patching Windows XP, it had been doing so for so long and released so many patches that I wonder if any significant security holes remain. Anyone have any factual info, or care to speculate?
No this is still BS, knowingly writing or distributing Viruses or malware for profit or malice is a crime in most jurisdictions and warrants a visit from the Police.
Stupidity, using an un-patched or un-protected PC on the Internet is not.
You are trying to scare Dopers into upgrading XP and using the wrong issue to worry them with.
X.P. has reached the end of it’s Consumer life, agreed. People should seek a replacement, agreed, MS will probably not be supplying anymore general patches for consumers agreed.
Governments/Law Enforcement are taking individuals to Court for running XP, 2000, 98 or even win 95 systems B.S.
I see you’re new here so you should know that extraordinary claims require more than ‘I read it in a magazine’ type answers to be seen as credible.
Peter
I was thinking that, but put out vbox as an option he may not have been aware of. But if Linux is not doing anything for him, then the only thing to do, is assume he is going to reinstall Xp and point him to links for hardening Xp.
Declan
If I understand you correctly, Puppy Linux works fine, but Ubuntu 14.04 causes problems. The thing is, the latest versions of Puppy Linux are actually based on Ubuntu. So the same driver files should be present on both systems. So either Puppy is loading the default VESA video driver, or Puppy just doesn’t tax the system.
If it’s the latter, I suggest trying Xubuntu. It is pretty close to Puppy, and doesn’t use much video hardware.
If it’s the former, I’d still suggest trying Xubuntu, but I’d also suggest trying out other drivers. Describing that is outside my expertise, but this post on AskUbuntu seems to describe it well. (I don’t see the VESA option in the screenshot, though.)
I didn’t start using Unix until 35 years ago but didn’t stay novice for long, eventually fixing driver bugs, adding features to the kernel, etc. That ‘gcc’, ‘csh’, ‘awk’ and ‘grep’ are my constant companions will suggest that I use a computer differently from many. For the things I did with a computer, any comparison between Windows and Unix would be an utter joke. I first put RedHat Linux on a PC almost 25 years ago and it worked fine. Since then, the first thing I did with any new computer was to install Linux.
My mistake may have been to start with the latest off-the-shelf Fedora (or, worse, Ubuntu). Things got sillier and sillier, but I was fine until about 6 years ago (Fedora-9 or whatever it was). Talk about anal-retentive pretentious idiots.
Ubuntu doesn’t come with a root login (“If you’re not clever enough to work around that you don’t deserve to be superuser!”). Fedora no longer includes csh/tcsh in the default distribution.
Fedora no longer includes csh or tcsh in the default distribution. This might be meaningless to some people but for Unix-savvy people it should be almost unbelievable. I was flabbergasted to see that ‘gcc’ doesn’t arrive by default, but at least it has the excuse that it’s large enough for space on the CD to be an issue. But csh/tcsh??? Somebody at Fedora just doesn’t like it. :smack: They do include A_Stupid_Appointment_Book_Program and An_Even_Stupider Appointment_Book_with_Dancing_Pigs but no tcsh. Mind-boggling. And, as dropzone pointed out, just getting your first command prompt, csh or not, may be an ordeal.
The above peculiarities can be worked around. But others cannot. So, as I said earlier, I’ve switched to Cygwin. For me, Linux was a wonderful idea that was defecated on by pretentious twits and became a worthless joke.
I’m pretty sure using sudo rather than directly logging in as root is standard practice in all of Linux, septimus. The current model is that no one should actually run as root directly. That’s used in OS X and Windows (with UAC), too.
I don’t know anything about Fedora, though. I haven’t heard that name in years.
“Models” telling me what I “should” or shouldn’t do is precisely my complaint. And you misinterpreted me dramatically if you think that Windows doing it also is an endorsement.
You might be surprised what I’ve done on machines, with or without sudo. Or that I’ve repaired broken machines with neither sudo nor root login available. (Has anyone fixed the NFS nobody-mknode bug yet?)
Is it possible to have had a generally positive experience of Linux and not be a ‘fanboi’? I find that label offensive.
I use linux a lot but I wouldn’t call myself a fanboy (or fanboi or any other spelling).
I use linux as my main internet access computer at home mostly because of its immunity to most of the viruses and malware out there. It’s not completely immune to everything, but most of the bad stuff out there is targeted at windows machines. I still use adblock and noscript on my browser though.
My linux box dual boots linux and windows 7. I very rarely use the windows side of it. I will say that setting up windows 7 was mostly just put the disk in and let it install. Then put the disk in for the motherboard and then put the disk in for the video card, and pretty much done after that. Installation was a bit more involved than that, but not much. The only really negative part of it was typing in the fourteen thousand character secret decoder ring annoying as all hell license and activation code, which is Microsoft’s way of torturing those of us with old eyes and reading glasses.
Installing linux on the other hand was a royal pain in the ass. It was an endless cycle of figuring out what didn’t work right then figuring out what configuration file was screwed up or what packages weren’t installed properly and installing them. When I was done with it, I had something that was customized much more to my liking than windows and something that works really well. However, I can definitely say that linux still has a VERY LONG way to go to catch up to windows in terms of easy installation of both the OS and software that runs on it.
Linux also has a long way to go with respect to error handling. When something screws up in linux the result tends to be much more catastrophic. I’ve had a linux machine lock up while a file was being edited (the lockup was unrelated) and the entire file ended up being nulled out, completely lost. With similar windows errors the worst that ever happened was I lost the most recent edits. I also run linux on a virtual machine at work. Occasionally the host computer reboots (because some stupid windows update came through) which aborts all of the virtual machines without allowing them to do a clean shutdown. The windows virtual machines all start back up fine. The linux box always ends up with an internal system lock that prevents xwindows from starting. I have to manually delete a hidden lock file and then manually restart the xserver. You never have to do that sort of fiddling on a windows machine.
I can definitely understand why some folks wouldn’t want to use it.
And despite all of that, I would rate my experience with linux as generally positive, but then I’m a bit more advanced than a novice user (I occasionally write linux device drivers as part of my job, if that helps to put some perspective on my skill level).
When I’m not on the internet, the computer I use most runs XP. A lot of folks act like XP is going to explode at any moment, killing me and my family just because Microsoft no longer supports it. I think a lot of the XP bashing that folks do is overstated. While it is true that Microsoft isn’t patching it any more, keeping an up-to-date anti-virus on it and locking down the browser are much more important than worrying about any internal OS security flaws. I wouldn’t use IE for the browser. Running firefox or chrome with a script blocker and an ad blocker(combined with the aforementioned antivirus) will keep you mostly safe.