Re: Frame crashes on load

[Dov Isaacs <isaacs@xxxxxxxxx>]

At 7/24/2004 01:20 PM, Jeremy H. Griffith wrote:
>On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 14:03:19 -0700, Dov Isaacs <isaacs@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>>There is NOTHING in FrameMaker that is specific to or relies upon 
>>components of Windows XP Professional as opposed to Windows XP Home.
>
>Heh heh.  Performance got worse and worse, for everything, and I
>finally threw up my hands and did a clean install of Win2K Pro.
>After getting some drivers off the HP site (using a Mac ;-), I had 
>a working system again.  Frame runs fine now...
>
> From this ghastly struggle, I find the caveat "Don't use XP Home"
>*real* convincing.  Everything else is the same:  hardware, other
>apps, network connections.  Just the OS is different.  Draw your
>own conclusions.
>
>-- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc.
>  <jeremy@xxxxxxxxx>  http://www.omsys.com/


At 7/24/2004 05:10 PM, Austin Meredith wrote:
>Where do we stand now, in regard to WinXP with the latest service pack upgrades? --Is Win2K still the gold standard, for those who rely on FM?


At 7/24/2004 06:05 PM, Art Campbell wrote:
>I don't think it's been the gold standard since XP Pro shipped. ;- )
>XP is quicker, more stable, and includes better tools....
>
>Cheers,
>Art


To expand on my earlier response, there is NOTHING is FrameMaker
that is specific to or relies on components of Windows 2000 
(Professional or any of the server versions), Windows XP (either 
Home or Professional), or Windows Server 2003 (any of the versions).
FrameMaker 6 (updated with the downloads available at 
<http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=1002> and
<http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=1420>),
FrameMaker 7 (updated with the downloads available at
<http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=1933>,
<http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=1949>, and
<http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=2111>),
and FrameMaker 7.1 should run on any of these Windows versions
without any difference in functionality or performance. The only
caveat is that this assumes that you have a fully and properly
configured operating system including device drivers appropriate to
your particular hardware configuration and the Windows version in
use. (In this discussion, "device drivers" refers to more than the
obvious printer, scanner, and video drivers, but also to various
interface drivers for system busses and i/o channels. This becomes
especially critical for "low end" systems that have all sorts of
features "integrated" onto the motherboard in a proprietary manner
not directly supported by Windows, but only by the motherboard
provider's "private" drivers, usually not supported beyond the
operating system version current at the time of motherboard 
shipment.)

One significant source of serious Windows XP problems relates to 
attempts to "upgrade" from Windows'9x/Me or even Windows 2000 to 
Windows XP. Our experience at Adobe and that of many of our customers
is that the any attempts to "upgrade in place" either doesn't yield
a usable system or yields a system with various problems including
missing functionality, instability, and/or performance problems.
The only "upgrade" approach that is fairly reliable is to install
Windows XP on a new, clean disk partition and reinstall all system
assets including fonts, drivers, profiles, and application programs.
And this assumes, of course, that there are indeed Windows XP-
compatible drivers for all your "legacy" devices. Sometimes Windows 
2000 drivers work without a hitch; sometimes they fail spectacularly!

My personal advice is that if you have a full and properly 
functioning computer system running any Windows 2000 version, updated
with all four service packs and all subsequent critical and 
recommended updates from Microsoft, then leave well enough alone.
There are very few current Windows applications that REQUIRE
Windows XP, but do not run on Windows 2000. If you have a tyrannical
IS group that MANDATES Windows XP, make sure that you do the "clean
install" outlined above and that you indeed have Windows XP-compatible
drivers. If you are currently running Windows'9x/Me, migrating to
Windows XP makes an awful lot of sense IF you have enough computing
resource to support the resource thresholds of Windows XP. If your
system is old enough to be running Windows'9x/Me, you likely (but
not necessarily) have a system that is at least three or four years
old; it may in fact be more cost-effective to simply replace the
system than attempt to upgrade old hardware to meet Windows XP's
resource requirements.

And back to the XP Home versus XP Professional issue, it won't make
a bit of difference to FrameMaker unless you store your content on
network servers and you print to network printers. Windows XP Home
really isn't setup for anything other than total solo usage.

        - Dov
  


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