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Worst Software you remember?

I had my whole organization on NT4 in 1997. Yes, I know that XP was sort of a "fake" XP until SP2, MS had a real hard time taking the underlying reliability of NT and merging it with the easy UI of 95. A lot of the nuts and bolts under the hood were improved, but it was far from prime time. Also, I remember the Win2K promise of no reboots for patches. Um, I'm still waiting for that one 14 years later.:rolleyes:
 
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Also, I remember the Win2K promise of no reboots for patches. Um, I'm still waiting for that one 14 years later.:rolleyes:

Yeah. It drives me buggy that I have to reboot my 2008 R2 servers for a simple security patch. I can patch anything on my Linux servers except for the kernel without rebooting.
 
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Since I'm a Photoshop user, I always had a good graphics card. I switched over to Ubuntu on the 2K drive as 2K couldn't handle new graphics card I got.

XP did quite a few things really well. Special software is one case. Almost all of the embroidery software ran just fine on XP. As soon as Vista came out --it took a while. With 7, you had to get the professional version of 7 to run it. XP would even run a lot of the older stuff from 95/98. There's probably some CAD programs that are the same way. Machine embroidery is done by using the coordinates for the stitch.
 
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Win2k was very good to me.

Infantile networking setup, and more of the same registry, and a whole lot of network babbling with other machines and vying for WINS supremacy (Win2k liked to believe that other Win2k boxes were liars and didn't have authority to specify that, so a lot of net bandwidth was lost with the arguing back and forth).

Wait, so you throw a bunch of Win2k rigs together on the same network, and they all start arguing about who gets to be called Bob?!:thinking:

...Well, I guess THAT explains why my dad's old '2k rig only showed up in our house network half the time....:stupido2:
 
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Wait a minute! Win2k was the release of WINNT (NT, 2k, XP and beyond are all versions of Windows NT) that made WINS obsolete. It was the first NT version that supported DNS on the LAN as a replacement for NBNS. Win2k shouldn't be a WINS problem--just turn it off! :D

I once worked on a ~10,000 node flat network (no routing or VLANs enabled) with more than 3000 Windows 95 boxes on it. And most of them had the full HP client on them, which constantly polled the entire "Class A" subnet for printers. Now THAT'S a broadcast storm!

For me, Windows NT 4 was hands-down the most stable and useful version of Windows. It was "just right" when it came to balancing performance with protection. Later versions moved too much code into kernel mode, and stability suffered. 2000 added the Windows 98 look 'n' feel, which I warmed up to eventually, but added stuff that I didn't want or need. XP wasn't production-ready until SP1 at least, and Vista never got fixed. Windows 7 is a surprisingly good comeback, but it also suffers from way-too-many-features-itis.

PE gave me (false) hope that Microsoft would finally allow admins to turn off the blasted GUI on server systems, but no luck. Shades of OS/2 in text mode though. Anyone Remember OS/2 1.0?
 
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Sadly, yes.

I did like the rewrite, OS/2 Warp. Used it for a few years.
When I returned from my boot camp-style introduction to the PC and decided to build one for myself, I went with Warp 3. When I got a job working in a shop with DOS/Win desktops, I took home a copy of WfW 3.11 and did the "winos two" thing.

Thanks to that limited experience, I became the vict^H^H^H^H volunteer to build a OS/2 2.1 box to run some kind of middleware on. (We had a mainframe running DOS and TSO on 4 partitions.) Later on I got to play with even older OS/2 versions on what must have been old LANMAN file servers that I had been tasked to check for sensitive data before they were scrapped. It was an interesting look into how LAN networking had been before I got into it.

Yeah, Warp was nice... ;)
 
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there are quite a few errors i still laugh at:

Error: The Operation Completed Successfully (often during a long wait before document was sent to the printer driver)

Windows has detected an undetectable error (Windows 95 bootup, usually network driver problem related)

Error: no error occurred (Adobe Dreamweaver)

An error has occurred but the error message cannot be retrieved due to another error (Windows 2000/XP)

An error ocurred when trying to create an error report (Windows XP)

the all-too-common 'blank' error dialogs (various software)

lp0 on fire (*nix)

Bugchk: Sckmud "Shut her down, Scotty! she's sucking mud again! (Xenix 3.x)

Guru Meditation (Amiga)

beeps of death (DOS during a lockup situation where pressing keyboard keys would only give POST-style beeps from the PC Speaker)

Error reading drive A:
Abort Retry Fail?
 
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iTunes, IE6-IE8, Safari for Windows, Samsung Kies...I'm sure there's plenty more that I can't remember atm.

Edit: LockDown Browser...have been forced to download this crap for one of my classes this semester. If you want your computer disabled this is the browser for you! I think this one takes the cake for me.
 
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"Microsoft misstep No. 1: Internet Explorer 6"

Oh look at good old People's Republic of China. :rolleyes:
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And a very good reason why I use Linux.

ie6.jpg
 
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