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I am finding the responses here very illustrating!

Lots of people coming out with statements along the lines of “I love XP”, “I hate W8” etc.

I’m just wondering if people who use OSX or iOS have the same feelings about ‘versions’, or do they just get on and USE their OS?

This seems to be the problem with MS’s OS strategy – it’s completely fractured, and divisive – and simply alienates their domestic customer base, leading to people moving to other platforms.

Why are MS so confused? All this chopping and changing does them no good whatsoever in the long run.
And shuffling people from a position they excel in to one they don’t is just plain daft.

Windows : 7 was/is great, it just lacked a Touch overlay which should have been just a large add-on to the standard OS, but instead they decided to release a whole ‘new’ Windows 8, and cocked up the fact that millions of users need just keyboard and mouse, not touch. The reasons are no doubt because MS see releasing a ‘New’ OS as a great advert for Windows, and hope to sell loads just on the “ITS NEW!” factor, which may appeal to new users, but in the present ‘Device-led’ market, that group is pretty small, and not a huge earner in itself as the traditional PC market shrinks.

Windows Versions : Windows, WindowsRT and Windows Phone are too many OS’s, MS need to slim down their product line, and make sure Apps and Programs run on all of them as much as possible. Having fewer OS’s would greatly simplify all that cross-coding. Surely WindowsRT and Windows Phone are aiming at all-too-similar devices?

Office : For too long MS have held the view “If you want to use Office, you must have a Windows PC”, which in the days before ‘Devices’ was probably a justifiable limitation. But for a few years now people have had to use alternative Office products to do work on their new devices if they were not near a PC. As Office is a good earner in itself, MS should have released Office versions for iOS and Android long ago, and made more of the sales, but also to keep people using its core Office product, and not wander off to the Office alternatives. Keeping people in the fold applies to Windows and Office separately in my view, as they are two completely different products, which just happen to come from the same company.

IE : As most people realise, a Browser is just a Browser, there is no huge divide between them, they all do pretty much the same thing. It is not worth the effort at MS to waste money on adverts for its new “Amazing!” Browser, or even develop it, as it is free, and included with Windows, it is just a small add-on. I know people use their Browsers a lot and can form an attachment to them, but a web page is still just a web page, whatever browser you use.

Sync and Exchange :
Office in its plain form does not sync with other systems. You can import and export some stuff, but this is not Sync, where you set-and-forget and it just does it in the background. MS want to keep too much exclusive control to themselves, but these days people need more co-operation between their disparate devices, and Office does not cooperate.
As a Home user who is an Admin through necessity not desire, I have no wish to delve into Exchange just to get some kind of Sync working. I waste enough life time already with Backups, clean-ups and general file-tidying, so Exchange is not an option for me when a simple Sync would do.

So to sum up, MS should :

Release Office – the full-fat version – for iOS and Android. Users will find the bits of menus they need, no matter what the screen size is. And it is a good solid earner independent of any OS sales.

Stop releasing a ‘New and Amazing’ Windows every 2 years, and just concentrate on improvements and bug fixes.
People really don’t care what the version number is, they just want to get on with using an OS.

Incorporate a simple Sync that cooperates with other systems, independent of Exchange.

Stop pretending IE is Really Important. It’s not.

And get rid of either WindowsRT or Windows Phone, or integrate them into one OS? Too many programmers doing similar things to each other, instead of working together.

Phew!

Good article, though I would like to point up one thing.

Your statement “Windows 7 and 8x offer enhanced security and better compatibility with modern software and peripherals” unfortunately misses the point WHY people may still be using XP – that it runs older software and peripherals that W7/8 never will.

My main Music Studio PC has a large and expensive sound card that has drivers for XP, not W7/8. I don’t want to throw away £700 worth of quality sound i/o and have to spend another £700 for virtually the same thing. I suspect the difference between XP and 7 in this drivers’ particular context is minimal, maybe just a small registry change that has completely crippled the driver installation, but who knows?

Also in the Music PC are thousands of pounds worth of Virtual Instruments (software synths etc.) and Plugins (reverbs, echoes and other sound toys) which I equally have no desire to replace.

On the hardware side, I already have a perfectly good printer and scanner, not very old, that do not have drivers for W7/8 and probably never will. The bugbear here is that I haven’t found a way to access them over a network from a W7/8 machine, as the drivers for W7/8 are required – another dead end, thanks Microsoft!

So there you have it, a combination of software, hardware, and Microsoft continually moving the Driver goal-posts, and expecting companies to deploy teams of coders to reinvent the wheel again – I mean rewriting drivers. Why does MS not provide a layer of backward compatibility for printers and scanners?

These are why so many people will stick with their trusty and reliable XP for a good time yet.

Also, very occasionally email will work, ie. get sent to the Outbox with a ‘Sent’ timestamp. And then it will Send.

But the very next email I send will fail, and all subsequent emails.

Have you turned on logging in Outlook?
Are any of the recipients distribution lists?
Do the number of recipients make a difference?
Is this to a specific recipient?

Joe

No. Will it cure the problem? Or just give me code-lists?
No.
No. Reply to One or to All is the same.
No. Any recipient.

I should say that this ‘just started happening’, nothing has changed (unless Outlook has somehow guessed that I’m moving away from MS and decided to sabotage my email…) on this PC.

It seems strange that other people are getting this problem (searching elsewhere on the web throws up a LOT of ‘Mail won’t send’ issues identical to this one, ie not server- or connection-based), yet there is no fix from MS, just some ‘You need to do this-and-this-and-this-and-this, and good luck, but it probably won’t fix the problem’ suggestions.

I am completely fed up with MS, and so apart from the Music Production PC, I am moving everything I can to other OS’s, and this ‘Oh we don’t know why our product is broken’ is just another nail in their coffin.

The only reason left to use Outlook is the Mail Archiving ability, which lacks on my Android phone and iPad. Since it won’t sync with Google Calendars or Contacts (I can Export them, but that’s not the same as Syncing. And I am not getting into Exchange at all!), it’s a long time since it got used to it’s full capacity.

As extra info, the problem happens when I ‘send’ the new email to the Outbox, and before I make any online connection.
So it is not a Server connection issue, it happens before that within Outlook itself.

Thanks, that’s got it.

The switch to ‘Reconnect to _HIDDEN_ networks’ was……. hidden! ….on the ‘Make New Connection’ page, and not available on the ‘Connect’ page.

jpl : It’s a curiosity test, just to see what happens.
I live in a semi-rural area, there’s only 3 other Wi-Fi’s nearby. I know it’s not intrinsically more secure, but didn’t realise it made devices broadcast your ‘Home’ SSID (supposing that your ‘Home’ is hidden) all the time.

Still, I presume if I’m in a cafe (just for example, I’d never do this normally) and someone picks up the SSID of my Home network, surely they would then have to find out where actually I live to then try cracking the password?

Just curious!!

Will

Probably the most common email scam, the False Link one.

Always check the end of the domain, just before the forward-slash (in this case .biz/) for the true domain.
Having a ‘.com’ in the middle is an easy foil, but its the ‘dot’ AFTER the ‘com’ that also points to the fake domain ending.

Another trick (and more insidious) is a link with .com.zip in it, which points directly to a ZIP file which will execute directly on your machine.

Always check links thoroughly, and as another user said, Plain Text is a bit more secure (no hiding nasty code in pretty pictures).
And as another user said, never use links in emails, always manually go to the website to log in, even if the email is from a company you know to be ok.

Drew, what is the point of your thread?

You are obviously a W8 evangelist who thinks the sun shines out of it.
Thats fine, but why expound your glowing fanaticism on a new thread here?
Isn’t there an “I LOVE W8!” website you can post this stuff to?

Are you paid to write this non-stop adoring, gushing praise, or are you just blinded by new technology?

You consistently avoid difficult questions or opinions about W8, suggesting doubters are either lacking in something, or missing the point, or don’t understand it, and never fail to effuse hugely about how incredible it is at every opportunity, without providing any real examples or proofs.

Also, the mass of grammatical and spelling typo’s suggest you posted after a long ‘recreational’ evening.
Please don’t hit ‘send’ until the morning, when things look a little different.

There are/will be several types of W8 users :-
1. Somebody just bought their first PC, they don’t know anything else, and it is all a unique experience.
– They will either love it or hate it, it’s up to them.

2. Experienced users who have used MS product for a while.
– They might love it or hate it, depending on what they like and what they don’t, compared to how they have used PC’s for the last 10+ years. Maybe they have found MS OS’s lacking for years and are now thinking “At last, it’s all here!”, or maybe they have been very happy with 98se, XP, and W7, and are thinking “Where have all the things I use and fiddle with every day gone, and – more importantly – WHY have they gone?”

3. Evangelists
– Who can’t see anyone else’s opinions as valid. The fact that W8 exists is enough.

Personally I have never had anyone ever reply to the simple question “Why remove the start menu?”, and I know sure as eggs is eggs you’re not going to give me an unbiased answer!
But would love to hear from someone who can.
And also why do drivers for older devices not work any more – surely it is possible to make a ‘virtual layer’ to accommodate older drivers in a modern OS?

MS have a consistent OS track record for ‘domestic’ OS’s :-
(I don’t count W2000 as a Domestic OS, it was always touted as a Tech’s OS, and never marketed as ‘domestic’ at all)

DOS – good (basic, but pretty solid. DR-DOS was possibly better, but had no marketing)
W98 – bad (the first MS attempt at a WYSIWYG interface, not a solid OS)
W98se – good (they sorted out the problems and it worked well)
W-ME – bad (a frankenstein of W98 interface and solid W2000 tech)
W-XP – good (very good, still used by millions (billions?) 15 years later)
Vista – bad (a rushed OS, put out just to boost sales. Pointless and forgettable)
W7 – good (a proper solid OS, not a dumb ‘rush release’)
W8 – bad (Rushed out to capitalise on its Touch Interface and sell a new OS, just as W7 was getting to be solid. They seem to have empirically decided “This is what people need!” without actually assessing users or the market at all. The pricing incentives tell you all you need to know about how MS feel it will sell.

Do you see the pattern there? I hope so.

MS have found themselves in a rut between appealing to the Desktop Tech’s and the Smartphone users. W8 is a halfway cludge (see W-ME above) of a smartphone Touch Interface foisted onto a desktop OS – or a Desktop OS operated through a Smartphone interface. Either way it could have been done so much better, if they had simply taken W7 and applied an ‘Optional’ Touch Interface over the top. That is basically the only difference (Any core improvements could have simply been a W7 update). Perfect, everybody would’ve been happy. But they didn’t. They ditched the Techie side (alienating millions of PC professionals and large companies – and most importantly big revenues), and made it a Smartphone interface with an underlying but hidden Tech core (when most Smartphone users are already very happy with their iOS or Android devices). W8 is trying to catch up with Android and iOS – fat chance there! And what is the MS App store like? – how many years will it take to have the range and variety of iOS and Android apps? They have already lost the battle, as these days throwing a ton of money at something (Nokia) doesn’t guarantee success with a ‘connected’ audience who can independently evaluate things en masse and make ‘crowd decisions’ of their own. Which is why iOS and Android are well established, after a fraction of the time MS has been making OS’s. MS have simply missed the boat, lost the plot.

I wish MS would restore the bits of Windows people have liked for 20+ years, keep the new bits they hope people will like in the future, and make drivers for older (5 years?) devices work, instead of saying “It’s a new OS, now you have to go and buy a new printer and scanner and……etc…..

Also if they make a PC-OS and a Phone-OS (and W-RT), they have to be fully data-compatible. No question of “Oh, you can edit that on your PC but not the Phone” or vice-versa. Total data-compliance is a must. But just looking at the current MS-Office mess it looks doubtful (Desktop, Live, 365, all with problems – why so many disparate varieties?).

And another thing – how come Apple made the transition from a 32-bit single-tasking OS to a 64-bit multi-tasking OS so simple for users (with just one major jump at OS-10 then carry on as normal), yet after XP-64, Vista-64, W7-64 and W8-64, MS-Office is still only truly reliable in its 32-bit format? And IE-8 wasn’t reliably usable in it’s 64-bit version either, even after making 64-bit OS’s for 10 years.

Come on MS, stop being stupid and act like a real and proper HIGH-TECH company!

I’ve been using MS-OS’s since 1990, and I really don’t want to have to move to the Apple ‘Walled Prison/Fascist’ way of things, but if MS keep at this ‘scatter-gun’ approach to programming, I may have to.

Is Mr Ballmer really such a massive idiot as he appears?
He should stay in the back office and let a real human do the PR. He’s not doing MS any favours at all.

Oh, and before anyone says “Linux!”, I stopped using complex command-lines years ago (mostly programming POV scenes), and no way I’m going back!
If you can’t do it with a Graphical Interface, you’re stuck in the Stone-Age.
But I still have hopes for Linux.

This problem sounds exactly like one I have had happen twice with Win-XP.

PC boots, but instead of getting to the Login screen after the Windows splash, I just got a Black screen with Mouse pointer – no menus, icons, totally nada. Not even Ctr-Alt-Del did anything.

I asked for help on several Tech Forums including here.

A couple of people offered the usual common advice – “Change PSU”, “Boot in Safe Mode”, “Check Harddisk”, “Change Graphics card”, “Change RAM”, etc.
All worthy things to try out, but not one “I know this problem!” reply.
But nothing worked, and – most worryingly – not one person said “I’ve had this happen to me” or “I’ve heard of this problem”.

So it seems it was a completely unique fault that nobody had ever heard of, or had happened to them.

But it has happened twice like I said – once on a Laptop 3 years ago that had never been in Hibernate or Standby, and just last month to my main XP PC.

Two completely and utterly different machines, have the exact same ‘Unique’ problem within 3 years – but none of the Techies here or elsewhere has ever heard of it…….

Sorry to rant, but you are having exactly the same problem as I had – boots to black screen with mouse pointer, and clicks or keys do nothing.
What is really worrying me, is you are having the problem on Win-7, and mine were on XP.
And that nobody has heard of the problem, and can only suggest guesses to try out.

Do I have this same problem to look forward to in the future?
Gee, I hope not, that was a major reason for me moving to Win-7 – the hope of reliability.

Suddenly the fascistic Apple prison looks slightly more appealing, should I just give up on this whole MS crap?

Remember the old days when things were designed to be ‘Solid’?

Thanks Doc I’ll try this today.

I have no idea why USB devices (which haven’t changed) might be a problem, but anything is worth trying to resurrect an OS!

Thanks to the folks who have replied with suggestions, but I’m surprised no-one has said “I’ve had this happen to me, it’s caused by this, do this to repair it”.
Maybe this is a totally original, unique fault….

Onwards and – ummm…. – uhhh….

OK, using the /BASEVIDEO switch didn’t work. Still boots to a black screen with mouse pointer.

I still somehow feel this is a Graphics issue, but obviously I could be wrong…

Tomorrow I’ll try bunging a different graphics card in, just to see if that jolts the system into action!

Any other suggestions from the kind folks on here I could try?

Many thanks to all!

Thanks for the suggestions folks.

Last Known Good Configuration – just the pointer on black screen, no change
Adding /BASEVIEO – just the pointer on black screen, no change

So, presuming that XP really IS switching to the VGA driver (How can I tell with a black screen?), it’s not the ATi drivers.
Could it be the Desktop itself that is crashing possibly?
It seems as if the PC has booted properly, but is not displaying the Desktop, just the pointer.

Since I can see the XP Partition from Win-7 I am able to rescue stuff I need, but if the suggestions on here don’t work, I’m gonna have to a fresh reinstall of XP.
The other annoying thing is ATi Catalyst Control (the config panel for Graphics) is crashing under Win-7, and there are lots of frustrated Forum users with horribly complex ways to try to make it work, most of which DON’T work! The driver is running OK, just no Control Panel.

Oh the Joys of PC’s!

…and how I’m enjoying my Android phone more these days…

This thread started with Drew stating his opinions, these then became a discussion and almost descended into a flame.

Why did Drew feel the need to ‘enlighten’ us with his (personal, one-sided) insights in the first place?
To start a ‘Yes it is/No it isn’t’ argument?

He was not asking a question out of need, or giving useful advice to a reader even, just voicing unsolicited personal opinion.
Or ‘baiting’ the Forum as it is known.

I agree with whoever said “You techies are completely out of touch with reality”, and this thread seems to prove his point, with a stream of “I’ve sussed out Windows8 and can live without the Start menu, so anybody/everybody else can too” posts from – you guessed it – Techie’s!

Personally I have posed the question a few times, simply “Why remove the Start button?”, and the only replies I have had are similar to the above – ie. avoiding the issue, ‘you need to modernise’, ‘you can do it all with the Desktop/App-Barr’ etc. – so no proper answer at all yet, just ‘Techie’ ones……

As somebody said “Its just a matter of time, but when it breaks, it’s gonna break bigtime”.

It’s the “We don’t need protection” statements that amaze me!