WOF: Windows' biggest annoyances in your book

That's not nice, or even fair, shame on you. Personally I would have said, "thanks for the input windbag". Much kinder, less confrontational, but yet still firm.

Is it possible that Apple, (at least partly), planned it that way?

OK, here I think you're just being modest. :rolleyes:

OK before i go into my tirade on windows and the people who use it, lets be clear on one point: windows xp is the best commercially available operating system. 95 in second, win7 third.

now almost every complaint i have seen on this open forum can be solved by simple maintenance and adjusting settings within windows itself.

don't like constant reminders to update your system? well you have three options here, 1) set windows update to not display update alerts, 2) set windows update to automatically down load these updates and install them when your PC shuts down, 3) or you can complete turn off windows update and tell it not to alert you and it will never bother you again, at the cost of no new updates.

security giving you hell every time you try to open new and sometimes old programs? easy fix, if your in vista, which you most likely are if you have this problem, is to open "help and support" from the start menu then search either "User Account Control" or "uac". you should get a result that leads to the section of the control panel that will allow you to turn UAC off. ironically it will trigger a User Account Control dialog box to try to deter you from turning UAC off.

computer running slow/stating slow/using excessive amounts of ram? if this is the case and your running any version of vista then your only option is to buy more ram, or install a better version of windows (95 would be a definite improvement). if either option is unavailable, then your SOL. for all other versions of windows periodically defraging your hard drives, cleaning out your registry with any freeware registry cleaner, and just plain deleting the unused files on your PC will do a world of good. the ram issue all depends on you and your particular install. running vista or win7 on a gigabyte of ram is just plain dumb.

the 2007 laptop i am writing this on:
core 2 duo 2.0ghz, 4gb(3.125 available to windows),
500gb hdd, win XP x86.
this rig boots with only 147mb(-/+) of ram used, in 35 seconds

windows is the only operating system for everyday and power user usage. for every thing else, Linux is god.

Great rant, Guest in post 45...! Although I didn't see mention of a good program to manage start ups. Or giving the old turd a good "msconfigging".

BTW, some of us aren't blindly irresponsible. Why, believe it or not, I myself have been know to utilize "CCleaner" from time to time.

good start ups? well keeping the registry free of unused entries and the hdd defraged was my answer to slow start ups. i guess you could use msconfig, but a good old fashioned "vanilla" boot with a clean registry will be more than fast enough for any normal user.

i just want to say that any ***** who tries to access the start menu while explorer is still loading deserves a BSOD every time he tries it.

also any program that allows you manually edit the NTLDR if your brave enough to do it should be shown some respect.

People really like to complain about windows, I never really had any problems with it that I couldn't solve within 5 minutes, longer than that and its time to reformat which in itself is no big deal. If you don't like using a computer because of the software on it, become a programmer and fix it, if not live with it because a lot of it does make sense in a way. Just because you think something should be done in a different way doesn't mean its the way it should be. I'd look at windows and think Microsoft did a rather good job, the sheer vast consumer base. the unlimited supply of programs, the customization itself that allows the user to make their OS their own. Complain if you want, its not going to change anything. Finally to all those people complaining about windows being a resource hog, yes if your using a computer with less than 2GB of ram you are going to have a problem so why not upgrade your 8 year old computer thats a ticking time bomb of failure and realize that windows actually runs well on current hardware...

PS. This has gotta be the fumiest read ever, I was going to leave this out but felt other Techspot members will feel the same way, the number of people giving their "two cents" about the most absurd problems. LAWL...

So does this mean you're right and I'm wrong, or you just weren't finished raving? In which case you should thank me for helping you to get it all out of your system.

Julio, I honestly don't know what you are talking about regarding the wake-up time from sleep. My son has an HP laptop (Core i3) and it wakes-up instantly (2-3 seconds). My wife has Acer One netbook and it also wakes up within 2-3 seconds. Even when it goes into hybernation mode it takes less than 10 seconds to be fully functional upon wake-up. Both machines are hardly powerhouses.

I agree with your gripe about a lot of third party software insisting on installing its own update checkers and insisting on loading those on start-up. I get that you can disable the functionality, but it's an extra hassle that I don't want to go through. I really think that Windows needs some centralized install/update service.

Otherwise, I am pretty happy with Windows 7, especially compared to XP.

Can't find you now to give the @ sign, but your reply about disabling shadow copy with system restore points: The idea of shadow copy in Vista and later is that when restoring, all files are restored to the same state they were in at that restore point. However, it didn't work for me at home or where I work when the application of KB951847 failed. At home I had to restore from backup and at work he rebuilt the computer from scratch after the incident.

To improve boot times, and they are dreadfully slow, Windows should have a way of "gennning" its configuration like we did on the mainframe. You pick out all the devices you have from a list, and send it through a sort of compiler (assembler was used then), and it generates only the code used for those devices; it doesn't have to go thru 50,000 devices every startup. When you change devices, you regen. All devices need not be in the gen; some can still be plug and play, but let's get with the 21st century, or should i say, let's get with 1980?

you read me wrong cranky, i was just trying to say that my original statement was my solution for your every day user. you are absolutely correct in saying that you can use msconfig to configure your startup, i was leaving it out because that is really a power user feature. some were along the lines of editing your registry. sorry? i was actually agreeing with you and stating that you're way is valid.

now of course if you are referring to the comment i made about accessing the start menu before explorer has had a chance to load then yes you are absolutely wrong. you deserve to have fire balls shoot out of your power supply. (its possible, i have seen it happen to a friend's pc, lol)

I asked this before, "since this is a Mac, are you (Julio) sure Apple didn't plan the slow resume when running Windows"? And if they didn't make it worse intentionally, is it possible the simply never bothered to optimize it? Window 7 reports on programs that are slowing down standby. Dunno about resume, though. I thought that part of the sales pitch of Windows 7 was directed at these particular issues. That, and boot times.

well per, i really meant during the start up, you really should let it do its thing. at any other point yeah go for it, thats what its there for, but in loading its a bad idea.

I don't like how my windows 7, on my laptop designed for Vista, has problems with drivers for certain devices like my WiFi adapter. I also find my printer from the XP era to be completely useless without Virtual PC. While it isn't a Microsoft problem necessarily, the most annoying factor about using Windows is that perfectly good hardware becomes useless because of poorly written drivers and no after-market support. At the very least, I think Windows should carry a set of all purpose drivers that work, even with basic functionality, with most devices.

I love the troubleshooter, but I do think it needs to be beefed up. It could be a lot smarter and more capable than it currently is.

The damn Language Bar on Windows XP was the most useless default taskbar item. I hate that thing.