OT: Computer's...gotta hate 'em.

[Thermodyne]

Any Apps that write to the registry during install will need to be reinstalled with the OS anyway. And most fully compliant windows apps will install some files to the system drive regardless of where you point the installer. I went with 40 because it's so hard to resize the system partition, and doing so puts your system at risk. He could go with 20 or even 10, but if he runs out later, it's a long process to increase that partition. He has space to burn, so why not 40?

Anyways, once we move him to using image files, his reinstall/reactivate day are done. If it hoses up, blow the image back onto it. 15min tops and you’re done.

[Fyron]

Most apps I use don't need to use the registry. The tiny number that do can just be reinstalled as needed. Using the registry for user level apps was a terrible invention anyways. Hopefully Vista does away with it and makes apps keep their own data (hopefully in a sensible manner using XML or so)...

The goal here is to separate the operating system from the user level apps as much as possible. *nix makes this easy with mount points. TweakUI can let you approximate it tolerably.

[Thermodyne]

Imperator Fyron said:
Most apps I use don't need to use the registry. The tiny number that do can just be reinstalled as needed. Using the registry for user level apps was a terrible invention anyways. Hopefully Vista does away with it and makes apps keep their own data (hopefully in a sensible manner using XML or so)...

The goal here is to separate the operating system from the user level apps as much as possible. *nix makes this easy with mount points. TweakUI can let you approximate it tolerably.

Last I heard, weren’t you a CS major?

I don’t have any idea what apps you use, but based on your statement, I have a good idea about what you don’t use.

With windows XP and to some extent 2K, the whole idea is to gain app performance by integrating applications into the OS. All of the major applications I work with daily use windows integration. Office 03 and XP both use it. Autodesk uses it. Micro station uses it. Adobe uses it. Roxio, Intuit, Adaptec, Cisco, Firefox, Plextor, Symantec, Peachtree just to name a few. I can’t recall seeing an app come out in the last couple of years that didn’t write to the registry. There is just too much to be gained from integration not to go wit it. I’d have to go back to something like Office 97 probably, before finding one without it. In the business world, if it installs locally these days, it’s integrated. Even some of the big web front-end’d db apps install clients to integrate themselves with windows.

Just out of curiosity, what apps do you run?

[Fyron]

Last I heard, weren’t you a CS major?

Computer engineering, but close enough.

With windows XP and to some extent 2K, the whole idea is to gain app performance by integrating applications into the OS.

Which is precisely why IE bugs are such a security problem... integration into the OS. But that's at a much deeper level, into the kernel itself, so bad totally from a technical standpoint rather than aesthetics. Sometimes, marginal performance gains should be sacrificed.

I can’t recall seeing an app come out in the last couple of years that didn’t write to the registry.

Apps that need to be installed to create registry keys and can't just be run after copying the installed folder over (or after wiping and reinstalling the OS) are highly annoying apps. Those are what I try to keep to a minimum. Apps should be robust enough to recreate required registry keys (or stored settings files, however they store their config data) if it is missing.

This is primarily what I was thinking of when I typed about apps I use not needing the registry, rather than not using it at all. I think I mistyped on that bit. A number of the apps I like do happen to keep all of their data locally instead of registry, however.

Just out of curiosity, what apps do you run?

Apps that keep their data locally:
Foobar2000
MPC (though it usually gets reinstalled with codec packs, since those are a pain to set up manually)
bblean
xplorer2
CKRename
Dscalar
Icecast
LAME
Oddcast (though now as a plugin of Foobar2000)
SlimServer
DosBox
Various classic games and emulators

Apps that use registry but are happy to rebuild themselves:
EditPlus (though contemplating migration to Notepad++)
Gaim
FileZilla
SE4
WinSCP
EAC
Spybot
Irfanview

Apps that I reinstall either way:
Kerio
AVG
Driver stuff
K-lite Video codec pack (plus MPC and Quicktime Alternative)
Nero
cygwin
Visual Studio 2003 (stay away from 2005!)
Various poorly written games that don't recover well

Apps that I have only used recently so don't know:
FolderShare
Skype
Psi
VirtualDub

I think that about covers it. Probably miscategorized some things, but meh.

[Renegade 13]

Good news! It seems I just have a temperamental computer...

I killed it via the power switch, left it for a moment, fired it back up and voila! it functions perfectly again. I'm at a loss to explain why any of this happened, but now that it's fixed I really don't care too much.

It is odd though that a reset would not fix the problem (I tried resetting once), but a full power-down would...

Once again I'm in your debt Thermodyne and Alneyan for the help you provided me. I'm just surprised this time it had such a simple solution...

[Thermodyne]

It sounds like the system has an onboard raid chip, and that it is turned on in the bios. IIRC, you are using only one hard drive. If so, you'll need to go to the bios setup and turn the onboard raid off.

VOM = Voltage - ohm meter, or mulitmeter.

[Baron Munchausen]

Renegade 13 said:
Good news! It seems I just have a temperamental computer...

I killed it via the power switch, left it for a moment, fired it back up and voila! it functions perfectly again. I'm at a loss to explain why any of this happened, but now that it's fixed I really don't care too much.

It is odd though that a reset would not fix the problem (I tried resetting once), but a full power-down would...

Once again I'm in your debt Thermodyne and Alneyan for the help you provided me. I'm just surprised this time it had such a simple solution...

Remember that hardware manufacturers are pushing the limits in seach of performance. Given the speed at which things are developed, each new generation of hardware is really only 'nominally' reliable/stable until proven by months of use by the general public. Sometimes events unforseen by the manufacturers can cause various 'registers' in these very complex chip sets can get set to weird configurations that are not in the 'spec' and cause the system BIOS to get confused. Since the system is only able to cope with what the designers though of in advance, it can't fix itself. I've seen things like this myself. HDs and other peripherals can become unusable even though it doesn't make sense for the device to have been damaged by a mere software glitch. A hardware off instead of the 'reboot' switch fixes this, as you discovered.