IPV6 Support

You need to install IPV6 support if you want to get on the internet after somewhere around January 2012. Otherwise, soon you will not be able to get on the internet.

a modified SP1 through SP4-capable version of the IPV6 hotfix is available on my web site through the WinTools ISOs. The modification I put in is according to DSLReports' instructions to make repairs to a DLL for reverse name lookups. here is is right here:

IPV6 support is currently (as of 6/9/2011) currently only works "out of the box" for Service Pack 1. Some Microsoft web pages claim the IPV6 Technology Preview works with SP1 and later, but they do not give any details on how to modify it so it will. this dslreports page does. othwerwise, it gives an error on SP4 saying that "this update is older than the service pack you are installing. This is made for Service Pack 1.". They have also dropped support for Windows 2000. when I tried to use ipv6 if, it caused the machinbe to reboot. so I would say that the stack is unstable.

But I will say that a new machine from a computer store costs $500-$800 for a quad core or 6-core AMD with a 1-2TB hard drive and 6GB-16GB RAM. and 2.8GHz. That's nothing to sneeze at. Those are ZT Affinity Desktops, and they are available at Costco and Wal-Mart.

Printer Availability

you can often find an HP Laserjet 4-6 somewhere which will work with this machine. they are still serviced and supplies are still available.

no new printers are available.

minimum RAM/Virtual Memory(VM) settings

• 32-bit: Can get by on 512MB. suggest 1GB at least. severe performance penalties and program aborts on anything less.
• 64-bit: can get by on 1GB. suggest 2GB at least. severe performance penalties and program aborts on anything less.

I always prefer to max out the machine's RAM (4GB on 32-bit and 8GB on 64-bit) and get as much VM as I can (VM=2..4×RAM approximately) in case anything goes wrong.

I typically run about 20 windows at once (which is all I can fit into memory) on an average day plus a number of background processes like 3 databases, a web server for testing, an FTP server for file sharing.

managed VM tends to run the more disk I/O than it would for a fixed size: resizing itself and allocating and deallocating disk space using the filesystem takes up some amount of time, plus there's all the disk platter file scatter (fragmenting) for this method. you can save a lot of that time by using a fixed VM. However, if you are not comfortable working with VM, you can leave it as System Managed.

however, I have discovered that if windows doesn't have enough RAM, programs will crash or just quit all by themselves for no reason, dialogs won't display properly (buttons and other controls disappear). Some say you should have 512B minimum RAM in 32-bit Windows XP, 1GB minimum RAM for 64-bit, even though the minimum is 128MB. For optimim performance, you should have at least 1GB for 32-bit and 2GB for 64-bit.

If you can set VM to 4GB minimum, do that. With any VM it will run like a dog, but it shouldn't crash.

generally the machine will run somewhat slower the more RAM you put in, but when you put in the max memory:

• you won't have memory hungry apps like Microsoft Outlook crashing
• you can run lots of applications at once without having to close them. The heydays of single-tasking OS's like DOS are long gone (with the exception of embedded systems).
• you can run games

microsoft OS's [not] limited to 32 processors

also in winnt.h I found #define MAXIMUM_PROCESSORS 32. This explains why microsoft OS's are not used in SMP systems. We now have the i7, a 4-core processor that thinks it's 8 through hyperthreading. There was something special I learned about the number of processors that I can't tell you, but it may be invalid nowadays anyway since code has become more and more multithreaded.

I found out by someone who writes mingw that that is not what this is for.

...the docs for SetThreadIdealProcessor() says:

"On a system with more than 64 processors, this function sets the preferred processor to a logical processor in the processor group to which the calling thread is assigned. Use the SetThreadIdealProcessorEx function to specify a processor group and preferred processor."

Service Packs

Service Pack 4 (SP4) is the last service pack available

you can get it here. it contains many updates and is cumulative, one of which is the update to break the 137GB(128GiB) disk-size barrier, if your motherboard and system BIOS support 48-bit LBA (disks larger than 137GB).

support for disks larger than 137GB(128GiB), or 137GB(128GiB) barrier broken

Service Pack 3 and Service Pack 4 contain the partial fix, but it is not enabled. GOTCHAS:Enabling it can cause system corruption if your motherboard/BIOS combination cannot handle 48-bit LBA. there may be a workaround: read on.

you can get SP4. It contains many updates and is cumulative, one of which is the update to break the 137GB(128GiB) disk-size barrier, if your motherboard and system BIOS support 48-bit LBA (disks larger than 137GB).

1. One way you can make sure your system can handle larger disks is to update the BIOS on your motherboard, but only if the manufacturer says it is OK (some say update, some say don't).
2. the next step is to apply SP4.
3. read this kb article all the way through!, check the registry value it mentions, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\atapi\Parameter\EnableBigLba=DWORD:1 you may or may not want to try setting this value (here is a .reg file to do it), but it depends on whether you are willing to lose your data (at least according to the article), so have an OS or System Restore disc handy, and also have a disc with SP4 on it handy.

you can maybe swap step 1 and step 2. It is possible it makes no difference. I do not know.