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Anger Management: living with Windows XP + lot of software

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justice:
For some reason I always manage to cause problems in my windows xp installation. Last night i noticed msconfig couldn't be run and the Help and Support service wasn't running and not in the services list. I suspect an third party installation utility to have removed too mayn things.

Short story:
with all the different software out & the underlying OS not protecting itself properly, how can I use all my software and software installs conveniently without problems appearing.

Long story:
So as a precaution I ran the system file checker (sfc /scannow). Afterwards, I recommend never to do this! It replaced a series of files - After a reboot I got a blue stop error. Booting into last known good mode turned out to boot into the middle of a daemon tools install and therefore broke a system level device driver Daemon Tools installs (sptd.sys).
I couldn't boot into normal mode, and as system restore was off (can't remember doing that) I couldn't fix it. Now see short story. :P

Options I've thought of:

* Buy a big additional /external harddisk + Acronis Trueimage and make weekly images.
Problem with this is that when I find out that there's problems it will be a pain to revert to  an identical installation without problems.
* Bare XP install + Using a virtual PC to use most of my software with.
It's an inconvenience, and it wn't work for games + movies due to no video accelleration (and more). Booting up two oses is a defeatist attitude.
* Bare XP + Altitis AVS virtualising all apps.
Still makes installs inconvenient, but should theoretically keep XP clean, and enable software packages on demand. Unknown how this works with software updates such as Adobe's updater, and startup items.. Also I don't know if this works with games? (does it affect performance). No experience.
* Don't install as much software.
I'm too curious - and what use is an OS that you shouldn't use software with?
* Move to different OS(x)/Linux --
Either too expensive at this time or will cause just as much time fiddling to get thigs set up + vmware to run certain programs. :(
* Some magic idea you know of that I have not come across.
Please tell.
So sorry for this long post but this issue has been annoying me since 2001. Any tips on living with Windows XP + a lot of software would be appreciated!

mouser:
Some time ago i noticed that the more "cleaning/repairing" programs i ran, the less stable my windows OS became.
So now i never run any registry cleaners, disk check repairers, etc.

I think the reason is this:
Inside every computer that has Windows OS installed, is a tiny little miniature bill gates.  And when you run these types of programs you make it very angry and it throws a fit and starts trashing things.  That's just my theory,

justice:
I have definately done away with registry cleanners, I was still using Crap cleaner to clean temporary files etc but I guess that will have to stop. I thought i could trust windows build in tools but I guess not as they will restore from my Windows XP SP2 cd so the files would be out of date and cause conflicts?

Anyway I heard some good things about AVS, so I will give that a try, and also try Acronis Trueimage, maybe split up my os drive in two partition as it is the biggest. That way I could reinstall windows without affecting the data on the other partition.

mitzevo:
Don't install as much software?  ;D

I think you are too curious, you can't expect to install all the software you want and have your OS run as it were freshly installed.. If you want to experiment with new software, have a dedicated pc for that.. that way, on your primary pc, you aren't "risking" it as much.

Or, if you still want to install all the software on your primary pc, use images - some thing like Acronis TrueImage - but this gets really task intensive, creating images after each big install, update, etc. it's a lot of maintenance.. also the other option you mentioned, was to use a virtual machine for software installations, unless your pc can handle running guest os's, I don't recommend it, just as much hassle.


one of the easiest ways to b0rk MS Windows is to install some thing.. so try not to install so much software, it's not going to all play nice together.. so the best solution I would recommend would be to use virtual machines or another computer for testing software... and keep your good pc with the known good software..

justice:
I'm not expecting it to run "as new". But I do expect my printers still working + no strange interface delays after testing and removing acrobe acrobat for example.

it'd ridiculous though that applications are able to interfere with each other, MS should buy altiris AVS and incorporate it into windows. ;)

mostly it's probably the registry and explorer issues, however this time it was system files.

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