[KLUG Advocacy] Windows stability

[Mike Williams]

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>I'd like to ask the group a question, and see people chime in with their 
>>>own experience on this... are contemporary Windows installs more stable,
>>>less stable, or about as stable as their counterparts of 5 years ago?
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>>Oh, much much more so.  XP doesn't spontaneously crash, or at least I've
>>never seen it.  ....
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>OK, thanks...Any other readers want to answer this question?
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OK, I'll bite.  Here's my experience with the various Windows versions. 

MS-DOS through WFWG:  fairly stable, unless you try to do anything with 
networking. 
Windows 95-98:  much friendlier interface but stability is nonexistent.  
(I've heard people exclaim how
           happy they were if they only had to reboot twice a day!)
Windows NT 3.1-3.5:  very stable, but cumbersome to use
Windows NT 4.0:  a little less stable, slightly better interface
Windows 2000:  good manageablility, good stability
Windows XP:  Even more of a memory hog than 2000, but very stable.  I 
abuse mine pretty hard, and I've seen an actual BlueScreenOfDeath 
twice.  I think performance has suffered from excessive crud in the 
registry, though, so it still needs a reinstall every few years.

I think you CAN upgrade to XP Pro from NT 4.0 or newer, and possibly the 
older.  I know that you can NOT upgrade from any NT (or 2000) to XP 
Home, which makes sense as you would have to remove some networking and 
security code.  NT 4Workstation will happily upgrade to NT4 Server or 
Enterprise (I think) unless you're trying to make a Domain Controller.  
Promoting to a DC from a member server is only available in 2000 server.

Note that this is just clarifiying the official upgrade possibilities.  
Although you can do most of these upgrades, it's usually a bad idea.  
Win3.11 to 95/98 upgrades were disastrous, as were 95/98 to NT 4.  Nt 4 
to 2000 upgrades tended to be merely bad, and 2000 to XP's might 
actually work for a while.  A clean install is the way to go in almost 
all situations.  But that is not a Microsoft-only problem, as I had a 
Redhat 7.3 - 8.0 upgrade fail miserably also.