Author Topic: Life without XP SP2 - is it possible? (Read 33,550 times)

dantheman · « **on:** August 22, 2007, 10:40 PM »

Hi,

My situation is annoying.
SP2 takes up so much ressources!
Every time i re-install my notebook (hooked up to a Network) it takes about 5 to 10 times before the D-Link works properly and then, without SP2 loaded yet, my connection randomly falls all the time.

Any hint as to how i can keep my XP Home ed. without SP2?
I have 768MB of RAM and plan on going to 1.2G but in the meantime...
Also, do i have to install SP1 if i must install SP2?

Thanks for helping out folks!

Josh · « **Reply #1 on:** August 22, 2007, 11:07 PM »

SP2 can be installed independently of SP1. You can upgrade to SP2 without any prior updates. As for SP2 taking "more" resources, I honestly dont see it. I've had SP2 running for a few years now and its run great and without any sort of issue.

What exactly happens when you install sp2? Does the system slow down? Does it crash? what?

Darwin · « **Reply #2 on:** August 22, 2007, 11:11 PM »

I didn't notice much in the way of a difference between Sp-1 and Sp-2 - are you sure that Sp-2 makes a profound difference?

Note: when I did the Sp-1 - Sp-2 upgrade I was running 512MB RAM but have since upgraded to 1024MB... Wish I could tell you that the difference when I did this was dramatic, but it wasn't...

dantheman · « **Reply #3 on:** August 22, 2007, 11:37 PM »

So from what you're telling me, upgrading to 1.2G of RAM shouldn't make any noticeable difference?

Slower boot/shutdown and general less responsiveness is what i get when i "upgrade" to SP2.

Also, still trying to figure out why it takes 5 to 10 reboots before i can get onto the Network (using wireless)?

Lashiec · « **Reply #4 on:** August 22, 2007, 11:42 PM »

I think it's impossible to keep SP2 at bay unless you reject the updates from Windows Update, which it's a terrible idea, as a SP1 would be getting attacks by every hole, unless you properly cover them (not recommended). I think something may be wrong somewhere between Windows and your D-Link. And actually SP2 "carries" SP1 as well.

Another option to avoid SP2 would be installing Vista

or (a more realistic option) Windows 2003 Server. But that's like killing flies using dynamite

Darwin · « **Reply #5 on:** August 22, 2007, 11:44 PM »

The reboots to get to wireless would worry me (are you using D-Link's wireless app or the built in XP one to connect to your wireless network and configure everything? I had trouble with Cirond Winc and finally uninstalled it and just used the XP component. No problems whatsoever in three years! Just a thought, anyway. Can't comment on the general lack of responsiveness - I didn't experience it when I made the transition.

WRT the RAM... If you can get the RAM cheaply, go for it anyway. I don't *think* you'll see a massive improvement but who knows? Multi-tasking will be improved, that's for sure... They do say that a gig of RAM is the sweet spot for XP so if you're content with your hardware and XP for the foreseeable future you certainly won't be losing anything by upgrading. If nothing else it might help with the unresponsiveness?

dantheman · « **Reply #6 on:** August 23, 2007, 12:02 AM »

Quote from: Darwin on August 22, 2007, 11:44 PM

The reboots to get to wireless would worry me (are you using D-Link's wireless app or the built in XP one to connect to your wireless network and configure everything? I had trouble with Cirond Winc and finally uninstalled it and just used the XP component...

Pardon my ignorance, but it was a friend who has hooked up the computers.
Mine does not connect directly to the web.
When i see the little blue light on my notebook is on, i know it's trying to access wireless connection.

Quote

WRT the RAM... If you can get the RAM cheaply, go for it anyway. I don't *think* you'll see a massive improvement but who knows? Multi-tasking will be improved, that's for sure... They do say that a gig of RAM is the sweet spot for XP so if you're content with your hardware and XP for the foreseeable future you certainly won't be losing anything by upgrading. If nothing else it might help with the unresponsiveness?

RAMs still don't seem to be that cheap! Would like to switch to Vista if i could get a few hundreds for my notebook!

Darwin · « **Reply #7 on:** August 23, 2007, 04:58 AM »

OK, this begs a further question: do you have a wireless network of your own, or that someone in your residence maintains?

Grorgy · « **Reply #8 on:** August 23, 2007, 05:52 AM »

As for the memory, I upgraded the memory to 768 from 512, and i noticed no difference in the speed of the laptop, but it did become much more stable, that one change has resulted in a reduction of blues screen crashes from 2 or 3 a day to maybe 1 a week if i install something it doesn't like. For me anyway it was money well spent.

lanux128 · « **Reply #9 on:** August 23, 2007, 07:51 AM »

dantheman, i was having serious instability issues that had nothing to do with OS or memory. only after installing CPU Idle did the problem subside, take a look here..

• http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=7387.0

dantheman · « **Reply #10 on:** August 23, 2007, 12:20 PM »

Quote from: Darwin on August 23, 2007, 04:58 AM

OK, this begs a further question: do you have a wireless network of your own, or that someone in your residence maintains?

I bought this D-Link 524 to hook my notebook to a small "family" network and don't really want to trouble my friend who set it up as life on the farm is pretty hectic!

What i can't understand is the fact that the "Wireless Broadcom" connection shows it is operative and has an excellent connection. The internet connection may fall at times (sporadically) without anything to notify me that it has. Wireless Broadcom shows it is always excellent. Now go and figure that one out?

dantheman · « **Reply #11 on:** August 23, 2007, 12:25 PM »

Quote from: lanux128 on August 23, 2007, 07:51 AM

dantheman, i was having serious instability issues that had nothing to do with OS or memory. only after installing CPU Idle did the problem subside, take a look here..

• http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=7387.0

Have never heard of this program before but now giving it a shot on your good word.
I trust people here at DC.

Wouldn't RAMBooster do something similar?

Update: after installing CPUidle the indicator showed 98 to 99% and it was CPUidle itself the culprit.
Even after reboot it remained same.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #12 on:** August 23, 2007, 03:16 PM »

Read the notes on CPUIdle on the site and you will see that is normal - CPUIdle uses all CPU time possible to provide 'Idle' time to the system. They explain why it is necessary but just think of it as replacing windows cpu idle process.

dantheman · « **Reply #13 on:** August 23, 2007, 03:45 PM »

Quote from: Carol Haynes on August 23, 2007, 03:16 PM

Read the notes on CPUIdle on the site and you will see that is normal - CPUIdle uses all CPU time possible to provide 'Idle' time to the system. They explain why it is necessary but just think of it as replacing windows cpu idle process.

Thanks for the pointer Carol.
Will look into it.

Darwin · « **Reply #14 on:** August 23, 2007, 04:38 PM »

dantheman - follow this link for instructions on using the XP built in wireless utility. My intention in directing you there is primarily for you to see and recognize the icons and dialogs associated with it. If you do NOT see the wireless icon in your system tray, it suggests to me that you are using a third party utility (Broadcom or D-Link) to manage the connection. If you could check this out and report back we can troubleshoot this part of your problem from there.

dantheman · « **Reply #15 on:** August 23, 2007, 05:41 PM »

Quote from: Darwin on August 23, 2007, 04:38 PM

dantheman - follow this link for instructions on using the XP built in wireless utility. My intention in directing you there is primarily for you to see and recognize the icons and dialogs associated with it. If you do NOT see the wireless icon in your system tray, it suggests to me that you are using a third party utility (Broadcom or D-Link) to manage the connection. If you could check this out and report back we can troubleshoot this part of your problem from there.

Darwin,

I appreciate your concern and link.
My connection is good so far (even if has fallen a few times) and there is a dlink configuration that appears under the wireless connection tab even if Windows is "ticked off" to configure those settings. So, from what i should conclude is i'm getting to the web through the Network in the wrong way?

Darwin · « **Reply #16 on:** August 23, 2007, 06:11 PM »

I'm not entirely sure... Can you open up your wireless connections from the Control Panel (right click on Wireless Network Connection and then select View Available Wireless Networks) and press F12 to take a screenshot of the resulting window (maximize the window first, otherwise whatever else you have open may be visible in the screenshot)? You'll then need to open up Paint (usually found in start-programs-accessories) and then paste the contents of your clipboard into it and save it as a png file. Then attach it to a note here and we can take a look. I suspect that when you say that there is a dlink configuration under the wireless connections tab that you are referring to the network and not a third party connection configuration utility

dantheman · « **Reply #17 on:** August 23, 2007, 06:27 PM »

Quote from: Darwin on August 23, 2007, 06:11 PM

I'm not entirely sure... Can you open up your wireless connections from the Control Panel (right click on Wireless Network Connection and then select View Available Wireless Networks) and press F12 to take a screenshot of the resulting window (maximize the window first, otherwise whatever else you have open may be visible in the screenshot)? You'll then need to open up Paint (usually found in start-programs-accessories) and then paste the contents of your clipboard into it and save it as a png file. Then attach it to a note here and we can take a look. I suspect that when you say that there is a dlink configuration under the wireless connections tab that you are referring to the network and not a third party connection configuration utility

Hope this does the trick (done with Screencaptor!)

This other one just in case:

Darwin · « **Reply #18 on:** August 23, 2007, 06:53 PM »

Ha, ha - I shouldn't have ass/u/me-d that you didn't have a screencapturing app installed

.

Anyway, judging from the screenshots you've uploaded, you ARE using Windows to configure your connection and you're connecting to a D-Link D-524 router via a Broadcom wireless card. Two thoughts suggest themselves to me - one, perhaps there is a conflict between the Windows configuration utility and a Broadcom utility that may also have been installed. Example: my gateway came setup to let an intel utility handle my wireless connections - I never even tried this utility but set up a third party one that I had paid for before reverting to windows. Anyway, if you've got two different utilities configured to handle the connection, you might be waiting for them to battle out which one is going to actually handle things. The other thought is that it is lunchtime... er, no it's that there maybe an issue with your router configuration.

Let's sort out the utility that's doing the heavy lifting for your wireless card. Can you go into your Program Files folder and see if there is a Broadcom subfolder? If there is, open it up. Open up task manager (ctrl-shift-esc is my favourite way to do this) and click onthe Processes tab, then check for a match between the executables in the Broadcom folder and running processes in the TM Processes tab...

OH - googled this and note that if Broadcom is handling the connection, there may be control panel app that you can look for, so I guess start there.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #19 on:** August 23, 2007, 07:27 PM »

I sometimes find the simple solution to WiFi woes is to delete the connection altogether and set it up from scratch again. Windows seems to have a way of breaking itself with remarkable regularity. I now use a Netgear utility to connect and I have far fewer problems.

Darwin · « **Reply #20 on:** August 23, 2007, 07:39 PM »

Yes - that's the route I was going to suggest if it proves that Broadcom is not already doing this.

Darwin · « **Reply #21 on:** August 23, 2007, 08:55 PM »

Was going to add the following in edit the above post, but the edit turned out to be long and contains enough new info that I want to make sure Dan reads it! Thus, I have turned it into a separate post

EDIT: was running for lunch as I wrote the above. To elaborate, I used to use Winc by Cirond (who knows what's going on with this one) under Win2k (because the D-Link drivers for the wireless card I was running conflicted with Standby and Hibernate resulting in a consistent BSOD when invoked while running D-Link's utility). Under XP, I found that Winc would ABSOLUTELY refuse, out of the blue, to connect to my security enabled network and I'd have to resort to removing the security protection and setting up new keys, etc. I got fed up and reverted to the default XP utility and have never looked back. However, experience suggests to me that what afflicts one machine won't necessarily have the same effect on another so I'm just working through dantheman's setup to see who it's setup so we can proceed from there.

So, Carol's advice is excellent, dan, if Broadcom is not interfering in any way, we can try deleting the profile and re-creating it. **BUT a word of caution: make sure that your friend hasn't set up any security on your network first. If he has, you won't be able to connect at all when you try to set up your new profile**

dantheman · « **Reply #22 on:** August 23, 2007, 10:22 PM »

@Darwin,

While you were out to lunch i went for a stroll and did some lawn mowing.

I'll have to meditate on what you wrote about.
Could find anything in programs with Broadcom and the option you shared.

@Carol,
This NetGear business, is that another contraption like DLink?

Pardon my ignorance folks!

Darwin · « **Reply #23 on:** August 23, 2007, 10:30 PM »

Sorry - jumping in to answer for Carol. Yes, Netgear makes routers and wireless cards. If you buy one of their products and install their drivers from CD, you'll wind up with a bunch of software installed on your computer, one of which will likely be a utility to manage your wireless network connections.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #24 on:** August 24, 2007, 12:12 AM »

Quote from: Darwin on August 23, 2007, 10:30 PM

Sorry - jumping in to answer for Carol. Yes, Netgear makes routers and wireless cards. If you buy one of their products and install their drivers from CD, you'll wind up with a bunch of software installed on your computer, one of which will likely be a utility to manage your wireless network connections.

Thanks for responding for me.

Actually I quite like Netgear's software - the only things installed by the driver CD are the drivers and the connection wizard. The connection wizard is really useful (IMHO) and is much easier to use than Windows crapola system - especially if you want to use WPA encryption. The only downside is that I haven't worked out how to get it to start minimised so every time my system starts up I have to close the Netgear window.