I wouldn't insult those OS's...you'll annoy people.
A registry clean isn't too bad, it solved one of my problems before.
I've had my beef with Windows XP, but once you make friends, you do just fine. My computer has been very well behaved and has had 0 problems since we kiss and made up (figuratively, not literally...although I kissed a life size playmobil guy...)
Quote: "And that is the 74th out of 500 and some odd reasons that I hate windows, you have to either defragment every night, or you have to do registry surgery every 2 months."
Not true - I don't defrag very often and I've only used a registry surgery about 3 times - each problem caused by viruses...My last one was to get rid of an unwanted Trojan horse that revived itself from the registry.
If you keep stressing with Windows - then I'd suggest this is how you manage your computer.
-Watch what you download - Make sure it's a trusty piece of software (Don't go with that Windows blinds crap to make things look fancy- you don't want your current styles, get 'Zune Theme' from the windows website of the Windows Media Center theme.)
-Virus scan EVERY download
-Use a decent up-to-date virus checker, Firewall and Spyware tool (If you got money, get Windows Live OneCare - it looks after the lot, even checks for back ups and does defragging...if not - AVG Free, Sygate and Spybot 'Search and Destroy' (Spybot doesn't look out for spyware, but scans for it, so do a scan more often than your viruses)
-Do virus checks once in a while
-Do disk clean up once in a while
-Don't overload your computer with unecessary crap
-Don't use loads of background processes or processes that begin on start up (AIM, Yahoo messenge, MSN Messenger, Bittorrent, Yahoo Widgets, Limewire etc. are included with these...My 'extra' processes running now are Windows Live OneCare and a monitor colour manager...That's all I need, if I wanna go on MSN, I can, but I don't need it sitting in the background)
-Encounter a virus? Can't get rid of it, seek help, don't try to be smart and try allsorts to remove it
-Don't use Junkware - that can be 'Performance boosters' or anything that apparently 'fixes Windows' problems...they're a waste of space
-Use safe internet software - Install Windows XP SP 2 if you haven't already, Install Internet Explorer 7 (For security on any apps trying to access the internet, like steam, visual studio etc.) and use Firefox as your main web browser and Thunderbird to check your mail.
-If you have lots of messenger accounts - get Trillion - it ties them all together with less mess
-If you download lots of codecs, don't, find something that ties them together (Indi mentioned one to me a while ago, but I can't remember what it's called)
Sounds like a lot...but really it isn't basically what I said was, keep you PC clean, use good security and keep it up to date, don't run unecessary processes and cleanup/scan for problems once in a while.
Hope you can bear than in mind and good luck in removing your problem
I had similar one before - never found a solution (this was before I knew of anything to clean my registry - try that first), I managed to look after things by closing explorer and restarting it with Task Manager, but in the end, I backed everything up to disk and reformated and reinstalled Windows.
Support the return of Cow-Fishing! Hook up Paris Hilton and die!
