Microsoft Windows 7 "Wishlist" Leaked 522
Cassius Corodes is one of many readers to point out that a recent "wishlist" of new Windows development features is floating around the net. This list was supposedly leaked from Microsoft and contains some of their key development features for the next version of Windows. Given that the next new Windows release is bound to be a long way off I would recommend seasoning this news with a hefty dose of sodium chloride.
I Wish (Score:2, Informative)
Barring that, I wish it were XP, again.
Re:Follow-up story (Score:5, Informative)
Because modding it informative is funny.
Re:References for future moderators (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Am I the only person who makes a 2nd partition? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Am I the only person who makes a 2nd partition? (Score:3, Informative)
Sounds complicated. Why do games and applications need to be in a different partition?
I generally have 2 partitions - the OS, and 'everything else'. That way I only have to reserve a decent size for the OS/temp files, and never have to think "Hmm...how much of this disk will I use for games? Data? Apps?" Also, then my 'temp' folder isn't limited to whatever I thought I'd need when I installed the OS.
It makes backing up/ghosting the OS much easier/quicker. In fact, that's pretty much the only reason I use more than one partition at all.
Re:I've done it since Win3.1 (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to do things by-the-book, you can use pagefilescript.vbs which happens to be in the %systemroot%/system32 directory in XP, 2003, and probably Vista. Info here. [wordpress.com]
"Prevent System Restore Points From Being Deleted" (Score:3, Informative)
"...When Dual-Booting With XP"
I dualboot with XP... I should check to see if this is happening... however I DID disable system restore for the Vista drive from XP, and visa-versa, to decrease the chance they would mess each other up. I do thing both OSs have system restore enabled for all my common drives, except those I don't put Windows programs on since that would be useless.
Re:Am I the only person who makes a 2nd partition? (Score:3, Informative)
This hasn't been necessary for several years now, NT usually creates a non-fragmented pagefile.
Speaking of which, why does Windows still use a variable sized swap file? I lock it down to 2x RAM or 4GB. Whichever is larger. I do not want fragmentation in the swap file. I'd prefer not to need one, but that's another story.
Again it hasn't since Win98, default is system managed and this means the OS picks the size, and it stays the same. Although with system managed if your HD does run out of room, it can automatically decrease the fixed size.
And how about moving IE's temp files somewhere else? Okay, you can still set permissions on the folder, but get it out of the user's profile.
Because for security reasons, the IE temp files are the 'users'. If a co worker was sharing a system with you, and looking at kiddie porn, would you like for his temp files to be in a public folder?
And I'm tired of seeing C:\WINDOWS\Temp
Temp directories do not belong in the OS directory.
Again, only old applications use this, Windows and any application made by a credible developer uses the TEMP variable, which points to the users Temp folder.
Yeah, I'm whining. But I spend 15 extra minutes just getting the directories and swap arranged correctly every time I set up someone's Windows machine.
Sounds like you are doing extra work, and gaining nothing in the process. You should take a look at how Windows works today, it is far different from your assumptions. Some of the stuff you are talking about is from the Win9x OS, which was completely different than the NT based OSes like 2K,XP,Vista.
PS Even if you have a lot of settings or changes you like to make to a default installation, take a look at the install and deployment tools and policies for Windows, you can slipstream your install so that all the settings you want are done by default.
Deployment tools and easy customization of the Windows installation is one of the things that makes it popular in the business world, and you can use these tools at home or in the field as well.
Here are a couple of links you might find of interest, they come from an article talking about how Windows IT people shouldn't ever be using DVDs or stock Windows images to install Windows.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/desktopdeployment/default.aspx [microsoft.com]
http://blogs.msdn.com/ptstv/archive/2007/04/03/partner-tv-adam-shepherd-and-richard-smith-on-deployment.aspx [msdn.com]
Good luck to you, and I hope this makes your life a bit easier.
Re:Am I the only person who makes a 2nd partition? (Score:5, Informative)
First of all, it's called the page file, not the swap file. This isn't Unix and this isn't Windows 3.x. If you're going to pretend to know something about this aspect of Windows, you'd do well to at least use the correct name.
Second, and far more importantly -- You do not get fragmentation in the page file unless the page file is resized, and the only time the page file gets resized is when you consume ALL your physical memory, and ALL the memory in the page file. On a system with 1 GB of memory (which will be given a 1.5GB page file), you will have 2.5 GB of memory that you have to fill up first. Windows XP & later will display a pop-up balloon when this happen.
Fragmentation NEVER HAPPENS OTHERWISE. Why is this such a major concern to you?
Third, separate logical partitions for the page file is a bad idea because it significantly lowers the performance of paging operations. Regardless of whether you use all the physical memory in your machine or not, the page file is utilised to store data that hasn't been used recently, thus freeing more physicla memory for cacheing stuff that is used more often. Performance suffers because now the disk heads have to move further into the disk in order to get the page file. On a freshly-installed Windows system, the page file gets placed near the beginning of the disk (in the fastest portion), close to the operating system files that are likely candidates for ongoing file operations.
Consider that Mac OS X doesn't use a separate partition for its swap files, either.
If you want to really understand how Windows works, do yourself a big favour and go pick up a copy of Windows Internals [amazon.com] by Russinovich and Solomon. Yeah, that's the same Russinovich who discovered the Sony rootkit a couple of years ago, so, chances are he knows what he's talking about.
Re:Follow-up story (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Am I the only person who makes a 2nd partition? (Score:1, Informative)
First of all, it's called the page file, not the swap file. This isn't Unix and this isn't Windows 3.x. If you're going to pretend to know something about this aspect of Windows, you'd do well to at least use the correct name.
A Unix admin can call your swap file whatever he f'ing pleases, because he's more qualified to speak on the subject than you are.
Second, and far more importantly -- You do not get fragmentation in the page file unless the page file is resized, and the only time the page file gets resized is when you consume ALL your physical memory, and ALL the memory in the page file. On a system with 1 GB of memory (which will be given a 1.5GB page file), you will have 2.5 GB of memory that you have to fill up first. Windows XP & later will display a pop-up balloon when this happen.
You're missing the real issue. If nobody ever needs more active memory than 1.5 * RAM, why let it expand to begin with? If you knew it would EVER have to expand, you'd have set it bigger. Hell, why not grow it until it fills the hard drive? Fixed at 2 * RAM is a sane default for systems with swap partitions. The default way Windows and Mac OS X do swap is suitable for people who don't know what swap is, and almost know what a GB is. That is, most users. Most admins move the swap files to dedicated partitions and fix them to the maximum size.
Third, separate logical partitions for the page file is a bad idea because it significantly lowers the performance of paging operations. Regardless of whether you use all the physical memory in your machine or not, the page file is utilised to store data that hasn't been used recently, thus freeing more physicla memory for cacheing stuff that is used more often. Performance suffers because now the disk heads have to move further into the disk in order to get the page file. On a freshly-installed Windows system, the page file gets placed near the beginning of the disk (in the fastest portion), close to the operating system files that are likely candidates for ongoing file operations.
Consider that Mac OS X doesn't use a separate partition for its swap files, either.
Are you daft? Separate partitions are used so we can tell an OS EXACTLY [microsoft.com] where on each disk to use swap space.
I don't give a flying fuck if the POPE uses a swap file! Swap partitions are still around for very valid reasons, and do not lower performance. Have you EVER touched a Unix system? You're starting to piss me off.
Fourth, this is a bad idea because you are almost certainly not going to want to use a system that is so heavily loaded that you will need to use up to 300% of your total system memory. It's bad enough when you're running 20% over physical, isn't it? Now you're just wasting vast amounts of hard drive space for no particularly good reason.
Do you even know what swap is used for? He only needs enough physical memory for the task at hand, and how can you be a judge of how many idle tasks he needs to run? It's not unusual for developers to use more than one large application for a project, and might not make sense to deck every workstation out with enough RAM to handle using JDeveloper, Oracle, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, etc, all simultaneously. Shutting each one down when he's done with them isn't necessary with enough swap space, and a good OS.
Why? Is there a sound technical reason for this? The IE temporary files (and indeed the user's general-purpose temp directory) is in a disposable area of the profile directory structure... it isn't part of the "roaming" profile.
FYI, they were part of roaming profiles [microsoft.com] not too long ago. Today, his reasoning might be that temporary files that don't expire on their own should have the option to be placed somewhere other than the dark, hidden, depths o
Re:Am I the only person who makes a 2nd partition? (Score:3, Informative)
No support for files over 4gb (most common use: dvd images), not case sensitive, no support for permissions, no journaling, no symlinks etc...
I tend to use EXT3, linux/bsd support it natively, and third party drivers are available for osx and windows.