Windows XP pro upgrade: ridiculously horrible

Undertoad · 01-24-2002, 11:18 AM

OK, I bought XP Pro upgrade version a few days ago, and now I have learned my lesson.

In attempting to upgrade a WinME box, the XP upgrade install behaved differently in the several times I attempted it.

At first it got partway through and died with some sort of talkback error after a "dynamic update" - intended, I guess, to correct whatever bugs MS felt necessary to correct after the OS went "gold". It suggested going again with another dynamic update.

The second time it claimed that it couldn't load a file on the CD, and failed with a bizarre error message, claiming that "upgrade functionality is disabled". The support page suggested copying the files from the CD to the hard drive and running setup from there. OK....

The third time it died with errors in user.exe.

The fourth time it got partly installed, after 30 dialogue boxes saying that it could not continue, along with only the OK button (i.e., no "cancel" - just like the examples in the user interface hall of shame). After hitting OK enough times, it appeared to resume the install, and died about 10 minutes in with a different error, after self-rebooting.

Now, it appears to be partly installed and in a state that it can't correct. On reboot, its boot manager gives a choice of booting XP or stopping the setup process. Choose to stop and it attempts an XP uninstall. But after 5 minutes of clunking away, theoretically uninstalling, it stops with a BSOD in "setupdd.sys".

It turns out that it would be cheaper to get by configuring an extra-cheap box from a system vendor and get the OS pre-installed. But please. Is nobody to upgrade? Is it not part of the MS revenue stream to see plenty of people putting up the latest and greatest?

And this box isn't anything non-standard, hardware wise. It's a P3-750 with 256 megs of memory, a Voodoo 3, two ide drives, a CDR, and a CDRW. And now it can't do anything, forever stuck halfway through the install.

Insanely, ridiculously horrible.

01-24-2002, 11:40 AM

I had similar trouble with Linux way back in the day. It was September or October of 2000. I had a nice little box (syphon) and it was working fine. However, Red Hat 6.2 was out, and I thought I'd go ahead and make the jump. Afterall, I had successfully upgraded a 5.0 to 5.1, then 5.2, then 6.0, then 6.1. I was happy with Red Hat's upgrade process, which I assumed just did the equivalent of

rpm -Uvh *

and that was it.

Boy, was I wrong.

I installed and, sure enough, the installer finished. I was psyched. "Remove CD-ROM from drive and reboot." Wow. So I did.

You know how it does those lovely little [ OK ] or [FAILED] when it boots? Well, about half came up with [FAILED]. Shit.

No problem, right? I'll just fix 'em. Just let me get online here...

startx

After spewing some garbage to the terminal, it terminated. Shit. X is fucked too. I re-ran Xconfigurator. Same thing.

Uh.....

Okay. Well I'll just use lynx, browse the web and get the info to fix these problems that way, then go ahead and do it. I'll be up and running in an hour.

lynx http://www.google.com

Huh, not working?

ifconfig shows... loopback. That's all.

SHIT!

insmoding the module didn't work. Nothing did. The new kernel module it installed was broken.

Well, I weighed my options - I could restore the system to its old state by carefully working with everything on the system, massaging it just the right way to make it work - or I could rebuild. Well, with all my programs and shit installed, my choice was pretty much made for me - I'm not throwing away years of configuration just for a fuckin' Red Hat Upgrade.

I hand-downgraded all the necessary packages. I got the ethernet working, downloaded the latest kernel (2.2.16 I think it was, though I could be wrong), installed that, made sure ethernet still worked, and then spent another 4-6 hours (honestly, I lost track of time that night) getting everything working properly. I swore from then on, "I will hand-upgrade everything in this system." And that's what I've done.

Unfortunately, you can't really do that with windows the same way you can with UNIX. But you shouldn't be using Windows anyway.

Buy a Mac. They just work.

russotto · 01-24-2002, 12:22 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Undertoad
OK, I bought XP Pro upgrade version a few days ago, and now I have learned my lesson.

Uhh, "Never use Microsoft Operating Systems!"?

SteveDallas · 01-24-2002, 12:34 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Undertoad
OK, I bought XP Pro upgrade version a few days ago, and now I have learned my lesson.

Let's make sure of that!!

/me smacks Undertoad

There.

Don't get me started on XP etc. It'll give me indigestion as I eat my lunch. All I will contribute at this point is that I've always felt it's a very bad idea to upgrade an installation Windows. If you need to move to a newer version, start with a fresh hard drive & move your files over. But you probably know that

mbpark · 01-24-2002, 05:04 PM

I upgraded XP from 2000 here on a ThinkPad 770X (PII-300, 128MB RAM at time, 8 GB HD, Xircom Ethernet/Modem) and it went OK. Even Mediamatics DVD Express worked.

However, there were many issues with COM object registration, seeing how everything critical is a COM object in XP, and how there were a lot of internal dependencies that just sucked ass.

Gradually, the system degraded into a mess and I had to reformat the HD.

Plus, the IE used in XP/2K/NT and the one in 9X/Me are actually two different executables, each with their own suite of COM objects and own version of WININET.DLL (the main networking DLL for all happy TCP/IP functions in 9X/Me).

Since half the OS is based off of Internet Explorer DLL's, you're going to have some problems

.

Bottom Line: NEVER upgrade a Win 9X system to XP or 2000. You will pay for it later. It will hate you.

If you don't want to format the HD, install XP into C:\WINNT51. After all, that is what it is!

Mitch

Undertoad · 01-24-2002, 05:24 PM

Another aspect of this is that vendors who pre-install will add about $140 to the price for XP Pro.

Let's see... mwave.com will quote $572 for a Duron 800 system (the cheapest setup you can buy) pre-loaded with XP Pro... or just the OS for $300. Hmmm, I don't think MS wants you to upgrade. I think they want you to just buy a whole new system.

mbpark · 01-24-2002, 05:36 PM

They always price the Home and Professional editions of their OS this way. 98 always cost $199 on its own, and so did Me. NT cost $300, or $199 for an upgrade.

I'm afraid to see what .NET Advanced Server will run when it comes out.

jaguar · 01-24-2002, 05:59 PM

Quote:

I'm afraid to see what .NET Advanced Server will run when it comes out.

Taking a guess? Not much

Ardax · 01-24-2002, 08:00 PM

mbpark,

If you know how to tell any edition of XP to install someplace other than C:\Windows, let me know. I certinaly didn't see it anywhere in the install.

UT,

But yeah, running an upgrade against an existing installation for ANY MS OS is just aching for trouble. Not to mention it leaves all of the collected cruft to cause more trouble.

Getting XP Pro for $140 (with a system, that is) isn't bad, assuming you get a CD.

Seeing as you're already sitting on the XP Pro upgrade disc, try to recover what data you can off of it and just wipe the partition.

The only real bonuses to XP over 2k for me are the pretty logins, visual styles, and hella faster booting.

cornelius · 01-24-2002, 09:24 PM

I upgraded 98se to XP pro. It took me a few tries to get it working, but it finally did. Basically, I had to make sure that the installer DID NOT update the setup software/program at any time during the process. Whenever it did try to update the setup it would hang or reboot, or give me those wonderful little ms errors that say

blah blah blah read this to find out what's wrong:
000000000030300400x000r0f0004000f000x

or whathave you. like I'm supposed to know what the hell that means. anyways, after I actually got the installer to work, I didn't have any problems with XP, cept having to upgrade some drivers, and of course,
when I move the HD to a new machine, windows decided to completly fuck it over, and now I've got a thirty gig hard drive with all sorts of info on it that I can't get too, and I don't want to format it, in case I can actually get the data back. bastards.

01-24-2002, 11:27 PM

we can get it. bring it down to me and i'll make it happen.

jaguar · 01-25-2002, 02:04 AM

mbpark, while i havne't screwed with XP, judging by other ms software, copy it to the HD to install and look for an ini file, my guess it it will be in there as an enviroment variable.

verbatim · 01-25-2002, 09:17 AM

Ive had my fare share of trouble going from 98 to 2k. Seems that the 2k kernel doesnt play nice on fat32 file systems, although it does support it. Good thing I had week-old cd's of everything important (game files, pictures, mp3s, pr0n, the important stuff). So I formatted and went with NTFS. Which brings me to my next point--why doesnt rh7.2 mount ntfs? Am I missing something?

01-25-2002, 09:39 AM

Because it's a proprietary file system that Microsoft is less-than-willing to release the specs to.

verbatim · 01-25-2002, 09:51 AM

Bah. Another instance of Micro$oft not playing nice. Go figure.

01-24-2002, 11:18 AM	#1
Undertoad Radical Centrist Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Cottage of Prussia Posts: 31,423	Windows XP pro upgrade: ridiculously horrible OK, I bought XP Pro upgrade version a few days ago, and now I have learned my lesson. In attempting to upgrade a WinME box, the XP upgrade install behaved differently in the several times I attempted it. At first it got partway through and died with some sort of talkback error after a "dynamic update" - intended, I guess, to correct whatever bugs MS felt necessary to correct after the OS went "gold". It suggested going again with another dynamic update. The second time it claimed that it couldn't load a file on the CD, and failed with a bizarre error message, claiming that "upgrade functionality is disabled". The support page suggested copying the files from the CD to the hard drive and running setup from there. OK.... The third time it died with errors in user.exe. The fourth time it got partly installed, after 30 dialogue boxes saying that it could not continue, along with only the OK button (i.e., no "cancel" - just like the examples in the user interface hall of shame). After hitting OK enough times, it appeared to resume the install, and died about 10 minutes in with a different error, after self-rebooting. Now, it appears to be partly installed and in a state that it can't correct. On reboot, its boot manager gives a choice of booting XP or stopping the setup process. Choose to stop and it attempts an XP uninstall. But after 5 minutes of clunking away, theoretically uninstalling, it stops with a BSOD in "setupdd.sys". It turns out that it would be cheaper to get by configuring an extra-cheap box from a system vendor and get the OS pre-installed. But please. Is nobody to upgrade? Is it not part of the MS revenue stream to see plenty of people putting up the latest and greatest? And this box isn't anything non-standard, hardware wise. It's a P3-750 with 256 megs of memory, a Voodoo 3, two ide drives, a CDR, and a CDRW. And now it can't do anything, forever stuck halfway through the install. Insanely, ridiculously horrible.

01-24-2002, 11:40 AM	#2
dave Guest Posts: n/a	I had similar trouble with Linux way back in the day. It was September or October of 2000. I had a nice little box (syphon) and it was working fine. However, Red Hat 6.2 was out, and I thought I'd go ahead and make the jump. Afterall, I had successfully upgraded a 5.0 to 5.1, then 5.2, then 6.0, then 6.1. I was happy with Red Hat's upgrade process, which I assumed just did the equivalent of rpm -Uvh * and that was it. Boy, was I wrong. I installed and, sure enough, the installer finished. I was psyched. "Remove CD-ROM from drive and reboot." Wow. So I did. You know how it does those lovely little [ OK ] or [FAILED] when it boots? Well, about <b>half</b> came up with [FAILED]. Shit. No problem, right? I'll just fix 'em. Just let me get online here... startx After spewing some garbage to the terminal, it terminated. Shit. X is fucked too. I re-ran Xconfigurator. Same thing. Uh..... Okay. Well I'll just use lynx, browse the web and get the info to fix these problems <b>that</b> way, then go ahead and do it. I'll be up and running in an hour. lynx http://www.google.com Huh, not working? ifconfig shows... loopback. That's all. <b>SHIT!</b> insmoding the module didn't work. Nothing did. The new kernel module it installed was broken. Well, I weighed my options - I could restore the system to its old state by carefully working with everything on the system, massaging it just the right way to make it work - or I could rebuild. Well, with all my programs and shit installed, my choice was pretty much made for me - I'm not throwing away years of configuration just for a fuckin' Red Hat Upgrade. I hand-downgraded all the necessary packages. I got the ethernet working, downloaded the latest kernel (2.2.16 I think it was, though I could be wrong), installed that, made sure ethernet still worked, and then spent another 4-6 hours (honestly, I lost track of time that night) getting everything working properly. I swore from then on, "I will hand-upgrade everything in this system." And that's what I've done. Unfortunately, you can't really do that with windows the same way you can with UNIX. But you shouldn't be using Windows anyway. Buy a Mac. They just <b>work</b>.

01-24-2002, 05:04 PM	#5
mbpark Lecturer Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Carmel, Indiana Posts: 761	I only upgraded XP from 2000 here I upgraded XP from 2000 here on a ThinkPad 770X (PII-300, 128MB RAM at time, 8 GB HD, Xircom Ethernet/Modem) and it went OK. Even Mediamatics DVD Express worked. However, there were many issues with COM object registration, seeing how everything critical is a COM object in XP, and how there were a lot of internal dependencies that just sucked ass. Gradually, the system degraded into a mess and I had to reformat the HD. Plus, the IE used in XP/2K/NT and the one in 9X/Me are actually two different executables, each with their own suite of COM objects and own version of WININET.DLL (the main networking DLL for all happy TCP/IP functions in 9X/Me). Since half the OS is based off of Internet Explorer DLL's, you're going to have some problems . Bottom Line: NEVER upgrade a Win 9X system to XP or 2000. You will pay for it later. It will hate you. If you don't want to format the HD, install XP into C:\WINNT51. After all, that is what it is! Mitch

01-24-2002, 05:36 PM	#7
mbpark Lecturer Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Carmel, Indiana Posts: 761	With XP Pro, I think that's the case They always price the Home and Professional editions of their OS this way. 98 always cost $199 on its own, and so did Me. NT cost $300, or $199 for an upgrade. I'm afraid to see what .NET Advanced Server will run when it comes out.

01-24-2002, 09:24 PM	#10
cornelius Fine drunken debauchery Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 18	I upgraded 98se to XP pro. It took me a few tries to get it working, but it finally did. Basically, I had to make sure that the installer DID NOT update the setup software/program at any time during the process. Whenever it did try to update the setup it would hang or reboot, or give me those wonderful little ms errors that say blah blah blah read this to find out what's wrong: 000000000030300400x000r0f0004000f000x or whathave you. like I'm supposed to know what the hell that means. anyways, after I actually got the installer to work, I didn't have any problems with XP, cept having to upgrade some drivers, and of course, when I move the HD to a new machine, windows decided to completly fuck it over, and now I've got a thirty gig hard drive with all sorts of info on it that I can't get too, and I don't want to format it, in case I can actually get the data back. bastards. __________________ Misery doesn't love company. Misery loves a good bottle of vodka!

01-24-2002, 05:24 PM	#6
Undertoad Radical Centrist Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Cottage of Prussia Posts: 31,423	Another aspect of this is that vendors who pre-install will add about $140 to the price for XP Pro. Let's see... mwave.com will quote $572 for a Duron 800 system (the cheapest setup you can buy) pre-loaded with XP Pro... or just the OS for $300. Hmmm, I don't think MS wants you to upgrade. I think they want you to just buy a whole new system.

01-24-2002, 08:00 PM	#9
Ardax Irrelevant Adulterant Join Date: Dec 2001 Posts: 43	mbpark, If you know how to tell any edition of XP to install someplace other than C:\Windows, let me know. I certinaly didn't see it anywhere in the install. UT, But yeah, running an upgrade against an existing installation for ANY MS OS is just aching for trouble. Not to mention it leaves all of the collected cruft to cause more trouble. Getting XP Pro for $140 (with a system, that is) isn't bad, assuming you get a CD. Seeing as you're already sitting on the XP Pro upgrade disc, try to recover what data you can off of it and just wipe the partition. The only real bonuses to XP over 2k for me are the pretty logins, visual styles, and hella faster booting.

01-24-2002, 11:27 PM	#11
dave Guest Posts: n/a	we can get it. bring it down to me and i'll make it happen.

01-25-2002, 02:04 AM	#12
jaguar whig Join Date: Apr 2001 Posts: 5,075	mbpark, while i havne't screwed with XP, judging by other ms software, copy it to the HD to install and look for an ini file, my guess it it will be in there as an enviroment variable. __________________ Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. - Twain

01-25-2002, 09:17 AM	#13
verbatim Vice-President of Resentment Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Pennsultucky Posts: 199	Ive had my fare share of trouble going from 98 to 2k. Seems that the 2k kernel doesnt play nice on fat32 file systems, although it does support it. Good thing I had week-old cd's of everything important (game files, pictures, mp3s, pr0n, the important stuff). So I formatted and went with NTFS. Which brings me to my next point--why doesnt rh7.2 mount ntfs? Am I missing something? __________________ <-- I'm with stupid

01-25-2002, 09:39 AM	#14
dave Guest Posts: n/a	Because it's a proprietary file system that Microsoft is less-than-willing to release the specs to.

01-25-2002, 09:51 AM	#15
verbatim Vice-President of Resentment Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Pennsultucky Posts: 199	Bah. Another instance of Micro$oft not playing nice. Go figure. __________________ <-- I'm with stupid

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