Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Skuzzy on August 06, 2008, 09:53:09 AM
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Microsoft has published a Vista Performance Guide (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=ab377598-a637-432c-a3c8-1607ab629201&displaylang=en). It does require SP1 for Vista to be installed.
I have not completely read it yet, but thought I would go ahead and point it out.
I am part way through it and it is full of bogus information regarding ReadyBoost and SuperFetch. The rest seems pretty generic.
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More a sales pitch than useful information? :huh
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Well, it is a given that most information available from Microsoft will be funneled through the marketing department and enhanced to put forth the "we are wonderful and good and perfect and benign" vibe that has made Microsoft the stalwart of philanthropy and goodness everyone has come to know and love.
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It all boils down to: Use the fastest drive you can buy. Install as much of the fastest RAM you can. Disable background services that are not needed. Optimize your system by defragging on a regular basis. If you have a piece of hardware that could be faster then replace it.
All that readyboost and readdrive business will not be ineffective in boosting the performance of a video game because its designed to speed up Windows. I tried it with a 4Gig USB flash drive and it does speed up Windows at startup and thats about it.
My current MB (P5N-E SLI) is PCIe 1.0 so I thought about switching over to the Asus P5Q so I could get PCIe 2.0 speeds (a PCIe 2.0 card in a PCIe 1.0 slot will only get x8 speed) but the only game that can actually benefit from that much horsepower is FSX. I also thought the 16Gigs of RAM the P5Q supports would be nice but even Vista x64 only delegates 4Gigs of memory to single applications so unless I want to run two games at the same time it wont do much for me.
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I'm surprised Microsoft released this considering they're trying hard to throw Vista under the carpet.
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I'm surprised Microsoft released this considering they're trying hard to throw Vista under the carpet.
They're not doing it fast enough...
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I dont think Microsoft knows what it is doing. It sure looks like they jumped the gun announcing the next operating system. Historically MS has never gotten an OS out the door on time and there is no reason to believe its true for the next one either. MS jumped the gun releasing Vista when they should have gotten things in order first. Nvidia nearly did the OS in by offering drivers that blue screened at every oppurtunity and now users have gotten into a negative mindset that will never be overcome.
Meanwhile Vista users (mostly gamers) are really enjoying the OS and taking benefit of the 64 bit environment that Ultimate offers. The more things change the more people want them to remain the same. I know people that are running XP on the same system they ran 98 on and now with Vista they want the OS to conform to their hardware and when it doesnt they complain the OS is terrible. With Vista you absolutely MUST throw more power at it with hardware and that is not likely to change in the next OS MS releases.
For me Microsoft finally offered what I have been looking for and since SP1 I havent had a single OS glitch that I didnt cause myself. I have had older software programs crash. The same programs would crash XP Pro and that would result in a system crash and forced reboot. With Vista after SP1 the OS announces the program has crashed and must be closed and then searches for a solution (there never is a solution because the program was poorly written by somone outside of MS). The OS does not crash although I do usually reboot to avoid issues I might not be aware of. The thing that is missing there is the potential for a crashed file system jumbled page file and an OS that wont boot and must be reinstalled as I often saw in XP Pro. I took steps to avoid problems then and I still do just in case. I will let you know if I ever have a major system meltdown or some catastrophe strikes but it really has been smooth sailing so far.
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Im still waiting for AMD to write a dual core patch to Vista though... :cry
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Meanwhile Vista users (mostly gamers) are really enjoying the OS and taking benefit of the 64 bit environment that Ultimate offers. The more things change the more people want them to remain the same. I know people that are running XP on the same system they ran 98 on and now with Vista they want the OS to conform to their hardware and when it doesnt they complain the OS is terrible. With Vista you absolutely MUST throw more power at it with hardware and that is not likely to change in the next OS MS releases.
Most of our customers that are Vista users that contact my company for tech support on any of our games, the majority of the time issues they face are Vista OS related, mostly driver issues. Frankly, for gaming Vista is not a good choice.
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Drivers for what? What games?
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I feel your pain Ack-Ack. Even in its smallish numbers, Vista has more than doubled our support load. Out of the box, Vista is an abomination for gaming. Its default settings are just horrible.
Personally I never could use Vista due to the borked up sound system. I do too much audio and video editing to even think about using Vista.
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Microsoft could have saved money if they would have just shipped Vista as XP but with pair of mittens.
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Vista was designed by committee and it shows. Unfortunately, it looks like Microsoft is going that way from now on so I hold little hope for a reasonable operating system to come from them in the future.
And the reason they are posting this type of information is in a disparate attempt to get people to use the operating system. They know out of the box the OS is too full of bloat to do much of anything real time. The performance on the same hardware as XP is abysmal without bringing any real benefit.
People accuse others of being resistant to change, but change for the sake of change has never been a good thing. Change for the sake of making things worse, is also not a good thing.
I am sure some will perceive Vista as a good thing if they are coming from some three or four year old XP installation that has been hammered by various spyware/malware programs and/or viruses over the years. XP was a massive security hole begging to be exploited. It has gotten better, and can be even better still when you ignore the default installation settings MS chooses.
I have access to both XP and Vista. I have yet to find any reason for Vista to be used over XP. In most cases XP is a better choice. I cannot say that for Vista.
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I dont think Microsoft knows what it is doing. It sure looks like they jumped the gun announcing the next operating system. Historically MS has never gotten an OS out the door on time and there is no reason to believe its true for the next one either. MS jumped the gun releasing Vista when they should have gotten things in order first. Nvidia nearly did the OS in by offering drivers that blue screened at every oppurtunity and now users have gotten into a negative mindset that will never be overcome.
Nvidia drivers were pretty bad, overall. However, DirectX 10 itself isn't exactly stelar. You code something that has to interface with DX10, and no matter how well YOUR code is, DX10 could still mess up the end result.
Meanwhile Vista users (mostly gamers) are really enjoying the OS and taking benefit of the 64 bit environment that Ultimate offers. The more things change the more people want them to remain the same. I know people that are running XP on the same system they ran 98 on and now with Vista they want the OS to conform to their hardware and when it doesnt they complain the OS is terrible. With Vista you absolutely MUST throw more power at it with hardware and that is not likely to change in the next OS MS releases.
The 64-bit comment might not be accurate. 64-bit is still buggy and highly unsupported, compared to 32-bit, which itself isn't a dream to compare things to.
As for hardware requirements: Going from Win98 to XP was a little bit of a step up. Nothing major. However you can NOT run Vista properly without a dual core and 2 GB ram. Vista needs a frickin' GIGABYTE of ram and its own CPU core just to run the OS and nothing else. That's one of the stupidest arbitrary code bloat increases ever! There's "progress" then there's "MS getting plain sloppy" and this falls well into the latter category.
For me Microsoft finally offered what I have been looking for and since SP1 I havent had a single OS glitch that I didnt cause myself. I have had older software programs crash. The same programs would crash XP Pro and that would result in a system crash and forced reboot. With Vista after SP1 the OS announces the program has crashed and must be closed and then searches for a solution (there never is a solution because the program was poorly written by somone outside of MS). The OS does not crash although I do usually reboot to avoid issues I might not be aware of. The thing that is missing there is the potential for a crashed file system jumbled page file and an OS that wont boot and must be reinstalled as I often saw in XP Pro. I took steps to avoid problems then and I still do just in case. I will let you know if I ever have a major system meltdown or some catastrophe strikes but it really has been smooth sailing so far.
You must have had a seriously screwed up version of XP Pro. I've beat my system up with my own stupidity and COUNTLESS programs, games, tools, utilities, settings, and have almost NEVER had XP Pro crash on me ever, since I first got it. It's a major leap above Win98SE (high praise from me!) and far more stable. I haven't had a BSOD in probably almost a decade now. I have NOT had a forced reboot since Win98SE and even then I only had 2-3 in the entire span of years I used that OS as well.
As for "recovery, tries to solve it," that's a standard feature of Windows XP.
You seem quite biased when you type the above and include comments such as:
"(there never is a solution because the program was poorly written by somone outside of MS)"
You blame other programs that function normally in XP for crashing in Vista. You blame the instability on the other programs and imply nobody outside of MS can program properly. Let us not forget that MS has so much code bloat that they HID an entire little 3D flight sim inside MS Word at one update and nobody at MS caught it until well after the fact.
End of the line: On the same hardware that runs Vista with no problem, XP runs noticably better. That means it's NOT just a matter of having the hardware to run it, even WHEN you do it's worse that what we've already had for almost a decade now. Given that, and the fact that XP will still run most games just as well as Vista, but can do so on 1/8th the system requirements, it means Vista was a bad idea.
To quote [paraphrase] Bill Gates, "Yeah, Vista was a bad idea."
Edit: Sorry if I came off as a crab, was in a bit of a mood. Edited.
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Lighten up Krusty. For some, Vista's appeal is that it seems more stable if they came from an XP box which was not stable.
As to why one computer is more stable than another computer is anyones guess. Hardware and software configurations you can put together in a Windows system are boundless. Some will be more problematic than others. That is just the way it is.
It also leads to these discussions which cover so many extremes on who thinks what is best. In all of it there is no reason to bag on some user who is expressing his/her personal experience. I have no doubt Challenge believes what he is saying. I feel equally the same about those who have nothing but trouble with Vista.
Vista has a lot of problems and Microsoft has admitted as much. They want to replace it as fast as they can. Hopefully they learned a lesson with Vista and will not repeat the same mistake with Windows 7. Only time will tell.
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Yeah, sorry. Was in a mood, it came across in my tone.
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When I said "there never is a solution because..." I was speaking from first hand knowledge of one particular program and the only one that gives my system problems. It doesnt matter if I use 98 XP 2000 or Vista this program crashes (Chikka - a program for chatting with family in the Philippines). I do have issues with IE7 (I hate it) and thats pure MS.
I guess Im lucky but I cant say anything bad about Vista and I dont believe in luck.
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Drivers for what? What games?
Majority driver issues with Vista our tech support gets are related to Nvidia cards and the other big one is related to Soundblaster cards, specifically the X-Fi line of sound card drivers.
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Even in its smallish numbers, Vista has more than doubled our support load. Out of the box, Vista is an abomination for gaming. Its default settings are just horrible.
I know where you're coming from. We did a survey of our PC customers and found that close to 73% still use XP and 27% use Vista but almost 75% of our PC related tech calls are related to Vista issues.
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Majority driver issues with Vista our tech support gets are related to Nvidia cards and the other big one is related to Soundblaster cards, specifically the X-Fi line of sound card drivers.
I think Nvidia almost killed Vista from the start. Creative has issues too and its obvious if you use one with Vista. Their 24bit X-Fi line is not 24 bit for instance (they lost that law suit). Bluegears b-Enspirer is though and works wonders for Vista. I tried X-Fi on Vista 64 but if you ever initiated two sounds simultaneously then the sound would drop off and stereo location in AHII was dead from the start.
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Vista is good ... For me to poop on
(http://www.kmov.com/sharedcontent/movies/dailyimages/081204triumph.jpg)
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It's not just video and sound card hardware drivers - or ancient legacy apps that are problematic either. About a third of our standard modern business software was flakey at best on Vista - not to mention Vista being flakey at best itself. And it's not like you just say "oh well, time for a different software vendor" when your core business software packages in a vertical market runs poorly on a new version of the OS. I was actually starting to seriously consider for the first time ever moving to something like a Linux platform with a VM for the XP based apps as it would have been no more trouble and eventually pay off in terms of flexibility.
And trust me, I'm not minimizing in any way how expensive, ugly and time consuming that would have been. It would have been a one to two year project for at least half my staff, nearly full-time.
I took the easy route - and simply "outlawed" Vista on the desktops at work. This works for me because we can control the software and hardware at the desktop - we're small enough. I'm sure that many wish they could do the same.
<S>
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I have Vista on this laptop & XP Pro on the desktop I use for AHII. I loaded AH on the laptop & said that this is not going to be pleasant, uninstalled it & went back to the Desktop. :noid :rock
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I recently got a new lappie at work, top of the line NEC ultraportable. Shipped with Vista. I give it 3 weeks before I rolled back to XP (sp3). I found Vista slow when under load (ie Outlook, big Excel stuff, Filemaker, and browser all open at once) where XP has no problems, and I found Vista slow. I also found it's networking stack abysmal, it took ages to bring up a WPA2/EAP wifi connection that comes up instantly on XP.
It's also worth noting I'd dumbed down the GUI to XP level and it was still slow.
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Unlike XP never needed to read any tweak guides. Installed it since release day, never touched a single setting on it and has run perfect since day one and with far less crashes then XP on my previous system. Infact the only software to ever crash on it is games, but that was due to a power supply when under load.
If anything Vista has probably suffered more then any previous OS simply due to the internet and blogger hype. True it has it's issues and requires a good system to run (just like any previous new OS) especially prior to SP1, but a lot of issues are over hyped and multiplied to ridiculously stupid levels, the whole Vista vs XP argument that's been beating around the internet since it's release is nerd at it's worst.
I would guess that the majority of issues are user related (RTFM) and hardware. Though due to the hype they automatically think it's a another Vista problem. :rolleyes:
<S>...-Gixer
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You really cannot put this all on the user. Microsoft is the one who has stated they are working on the many issues with Vista.
The really big issues with Vista are compatibility, stability, and useability. No matter what any of us say, Microsoft knows it, and that is a good thing. Hopefully they will correct it all in Windows 7.
UAC is probably the single source of most of the complaints about Vista and why people, more and more, are loathing it. Why? It does nothing to increase the security of the operating system. It is like a nagging child all the time asking, "Are we there yet?". UAC is about as useful as that as well. Every OEM computer comes with it enabled,
The difficulty in doing many things in Vista versus previous operating systems can be substantial. Most, if not all, of the audio recording industry is dumping Microsoft and going back to Apple for sound editing systems as Microsoft made the brilliant move to dump DirectSound, which killed many high end audio packages. All for the sake of DRM. This will trickle down to the movie industry as well. A small market with a big voice.
There are real problems in Vista that did not plague XP. At least Microsoft acknowledges the issues, which is all that anyone can hope for at the moment, until Windows 7 is out.
All this posturing about Vista is rather pointless now. Microsoft wants to replace it. Its gotten bad enough they want to dump the name as well. The people really driving this are the OEM computer manufacturers. This is where Microsoft makes it living. The independent computer builder is a drop in the bucket to Microsoft. OEM's are not happy with Vista. Dell is so over it, they are still shipping XP, by using a loop hole in the licensing arrangement with Microsoft.
It is Windows ME all over again. There were also proponents of Windows ME who claimed it was a good operating system too, even though the industry at large knew better. The same thing is happening with Vista.
Side note: Gixer, when you say "RTFM" for Vista, just what manual are you referring to? I have never seen one ship with a Microsoft OS.
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No there hasnt been a paper based manual since 3.1 and even that was little more a small paper back then a manual. Obviously im refering to modern version of RTFM which is the help within the OS itself Microsofts own website and google.
The point i was making is that people dont look into the problem themselves they assume its another vista issue and just find a bbs to post their problem on and leave it to others to solve for them. Rather then taking a few mins to identify the issue and resolve on their own via the help options as above.
<S>...-Gixer
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Skuzzy I hear what you are saying too. I respect your opinion but you have to understand too that I see what I see and hear what I hear but in the end I MUST have 8-16Gigs of RAM and whatever system I use for 'work from home' is also what I will use for AHII. In my next job I will either be designing bridges or interiors for jets (big difference I know) and either one will require a monster to generate the 3D models. Whenever Windows 7 comes out I will probably have to have that too but only if it supports a larger memory model. For today I am very happy that Vista works so good even with all the problems. Im going to try to install XP Pro x64 on a separate drive but if I recall you didnt like that one either.
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The 64 bit versions of any Windows OS is pretty poorly supported. If you pick your hardware smart enough, then you will probably be ok, but I do not think those 64 bit versions are ready for general consumption by the masses.
Gixer, I agree that most people when faced with something they acts differently or they do not understand, might jump to the conclusion that it must be a bug. I deal with people every day who do not understand why things happen the way they do in our game and they instantly think it must be a cheat.
If Microsoft wanted to do a market friendly version of Vista, they would have created various editions to meet the demographics of the many marketplaces they sell to. Instead, they shipped the worse single configuration version they could based on users who have never used a computer. That may not be entirely true, but it feels like that. The idea that everything should be enabled, even if iti s not needed, purveys the entire OS. Why Microsoft will not do a simple configurator a user can run to tailor the OS to the environment is simply beyond me.
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I would guess that the majority of issues are user related (RTFM) and hardware. Though due to the hype they automatically think it's a another Vista problem. :rolleyes:
<S>...-Gixer
From the technical calls our support center gets regarding Vista issues, the majority are not user related.
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From the technical calls our support center gets regarding Vista issues, the majority are not user related.
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Support center? What are you supporting is it a level 2 Service Desk or higher? Can you post up a month of statistics, volume of calls,type of call. And most common root issue,action & resolution. Just interested to know what your actually refering to in more detail.
<S>...-Gixer
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I just built a new system and have no problems with vista. I was very concerned about it before the build but decided to go with it anyway. I have had virtually no problems running AHII at max settings. I do have an occasional stutter due to my hard drive choice but that is rare and doesn't cause any issues. It is really only when I approach a furball and (6K or dot range) then it is done and I have no more problems.
EVGA 780i (PCIe 2.0) MB, 4 GB Corsair Memory, Intel E8500 3.16 Ghz C2D, MSI 8800GTS OC 512 MB, WD 500 GB harddrive(7200 rpm AAKS5000), Samsung Syncmaster 2253bw, Antec P182 case.
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I do have an occasional stutter...
Do you shut down the sidebar before you launch AHII? If not you should. :aok You have more 'umph' then I do and I dont have stutters. Your HD is the same as mine too.
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Nope no sidebar running that I know of...
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Onboard sound maybe?
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Support center? What are you supporting is it a level 2 Service Desk or higher? Can you post up a month of statistics, volume of calls,type of call. And most common root issue,action & resolution. Just interested to know what your actually refering to in more detail.
<S>...-Gixer
Unfortunately, I am not able to post the figures as that's slightly confidental but I can say that depending on the time of the month we can average up to 2000 calls a day (usually at the beginning and end of the billing month) but on average about 700-900 calls a day. Out of those calls, maybe 200 or so are technical related. Out of those calls technical calls, the majority are related to driver issues in Vista (Vista users make up the smallest number of users but the majority of technical calls), specifically with Nvidia cards and Sounblaster sound cards (majority related to XFi cards). Resolution is simple, update the video drivers and use the Creative Alchemy software for the Xfi cards.
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Unfortunately, I am not able to post the figures as that's slightly confidential but I can say that depending on the time of the month we can average up to 2000 calls a day (usually at the beginning and end of the billing month) but on average about 700-900 calls a day. Out of those calls, maybe 200 or so are technical related. Out of those calls technical calls, the majority are related to driver issues in Vista (Vista users make up the smallest number of users but the majority of technical calls), specifically with Nvidia cards and Sounblaster sound cards (majority related to XFi cards). Resolution is simple, update the video drivers and use the Creative Alchemy software for the Xfi cards.
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That's not Vista OS related issues per say, if the majority of resolutions are solved by updating drivers from manufactures website it's more a case of people using incorrect/old software drivers for a given OS. It's like TRACKIR forums were full of people complaining about Vista 64bit because the device stopped working when they upgraded from XP to Vista 64bit. Almost a year later down the track TRACKIR realised they forgot to add 64bit drivers to their Vista driver release. Their technical support just kept shrugging their shoulders and saying Vista issue try rebooting your PC. :lol
I'm not saying Vista doesn't have problems it does. But due to the Internet a lot of the problems are blown way out of proportion. Especially if majority of fixes are as simple as updating drivers, to me that's not a problem it's just common sense and another case of RTFM.
<S>...-Gixer
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That's not Vista OS related issues per say, if the majority of resolutions are solved by updating drivers from manufactures website it's more a case of people using incorrect/old software drivers for a given OS. It's like TRACKIR forums were full of people complaining about Vista 64bit because the device stopped working when they upgraded from XP to Vista 64bit. Almost a year later down the track TRACKIR realised they forgot to add 64bit drivers to their Vista driver release. Their technical support just kept shrugging their shoulders and saying Vista issue try rebooting your PC. :lol
I'm not saying Vista doesn't have problems it does. But due to the Internet a lot of the problems are blown way out of proportion. Especially if majority of fixes are as simple as updating drivers, to me that's not a problem it's just common sense and another case of RTFM.
<S>...-Gixer
It was a specific issue with Vista and the Nvidia drivers which was recently addressed by Nvidia 2 driver revisions ago. Prior to the fixed driver revision, those with Geforce 8xxxx series were pretty much unable to play our game under Vista. Back then our only resolution to the issue was suggest they revert back to XP or play our game on a PS2 or Xbox 360. Same with the Soundblaster problem, until Creative released Alchemy, those with Soundblaster cards were pretty much arsed out as well.
That's not to say that XP has been a walk through the park for us either, XP users make up the majority of our tech support calls relating to connection issues. We also see a large amount of XP users calling our support center to report their accounts being hacked, usually through the myriad of security loopholes within XP that make such things possible.
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