So, I always hibernate my computer overnight or when I leave it alone for the day. One night, I left XP in hibernation before bed. Then, the next day, I booted straight into Vista (on a seperate hard drive, which requires me to change the hard drive boot order in the BOIS) and decided I'd use EasyBCD to just get a dual boot menu instead of having to mess with the BIOS when switching operating systems. Well, I test it out by rebooting and trying to select XP in the new boot menu and my computer spazzes out and restarts. Now, I can't start XP and I get an error saying it's missing some file that no other XP machine I can get my hands on has and I can't seem to find on the net. So, I pop in the XP install disk and try to repair it, which is to install the operating system over the old one, without erasing any other data. I forgot that the key I use for this computer is for an XP install disk with SP1, but the disk has XP2, so it won't take the key (I've got something like 5 different 32-bit XP keys, all in use somewhere). Well, darn. So, I find the correct XP install disk and reboot, do the repair again, and nothing happens except a blank screen after the disk puts the data on the hard drive and tries to reboot into the installer. Well, darn again. So, I ended up just doing a clean install and now it boots up fast again. Yay.

So, moral to the story is don't hibernate when implementing dual booting. However, my laptop is dual booting between Vista and Ubuntu Linuix and I never have any problems when I hibernate Vista and go to the other OS and back. Score one for Vista... or GRUB.

I just turn off my computer for the night. It takes like half a minute to boot up.

Wow, I am genuinely impressed. I have some decent hardware and it takes a couple minutes for me. Then again, I do have 3rd party antivirus, firewall, IM, and some random tools like Daemon Lite on startup. Another strange quirk is that half the startup applications start immediately, then the hard drive idles for a minute, then the rest of the applications startup. That's a large factor in my choice to hibernate. However, I do reboot at least once a week.

I keep startup programs to a minimum. Right now the only 3rd party programs that run on startup are the folding clients.

But one thing does annoy me when it comes to startup times; Firefox takes extreme amount of time to open, up to a minute. But only once, the next times in the same session it will open up quickly. But because of this I'm thinking of switching to Chrome or Opera.

I share your irritation with Firefox. I like Opera. Used Chrome a little, so far so good. However, I would definately miss Firefox's addblocker. Haven't come accross anything similar for Opera or Chrome.

So, you start your firewall and antivirus manually every time you boot up?

I don't have a 3rd party firewall installed, and yes, I start the anti-virus when I feel a protection against malware is in order, like when visiting EA's or Sony's websites.

As for Firefox, what I like most about it is an add-on called AccessiBar. It makes me able to turn pretty much every website into high-contrast colored ones. I get completely blinded if there is a white background, I just can't read the text on such background unless it is very big/bold/etc.

If Chrome and/or Opera had accessibility options for this purpose, I'd ditch FF with no regrets.

I use IE7Pro, it's awesome.

Well, IE7 couldn't be awesome without assistance.

Not to mention IE8, it's horrible. IE7Pro is perfect for not-so-mainstream users like me.

I checked up on Chrome, definitely not the best when it comes to accessibility, at least not yet. (I read an article where they are working on the next version, planned to include accessibility features)

Opera is much better in this regard but it doesn't seem to have a feature for forcing a certain background color, which is essential for me.

I might check out IE7Pro if it has accessibility features that fit my needs (configurable background and text color).

well thats because chrome is only a beta right now bjossi. I like chrome and opera as well. give chrome more time to mature and it will be a good browser, hopefully it will be faster than firefox or IE, especially when they get a good full working version as opposed to a beta.

It is not hard to beat FF in a performance contest.

I did a Google search for the best web browser and some say that opera takes the cake for fastest, while keeping some features that Firefox has.

I think I will give Opera a try until Chrome goes 1.0.

After a google search I saw that Opera is not even close to be as memory hungry as the 'Fox.

thats true... even with ff 3, chrome beats it and IE memory wise!

I bailed firefox when chrome came out, and ive been using google chrome since its been out!

Firefox is far superior to Chrome in terms of accessibility though, to my knowledge at least. There is a wide array of add-ons that can make web surfing painless regardless of the disability. In my case it is poor eyesight, can't live without the NoSquint add-on.

in my case, i dont worry about accessibility or use any addons in my firefox at all!

I seen the stats for Opera, GC, FF, and IE8.
Opera download the biggest files the fastest with GC next.
IE9 is supos to be even better, but its mostly for developers.
I use Opera and GC for larger files, flash,and movies,
and IE8 for mail and crap like that.

Don't use Internet Explorer. It's the most prone to get viruses.

I use Firefox the most, then Opera. IE is too slow for online games. And Chrome hate me, crashes every time I use it. Doesn't matter whose PC I use either. But it's only me that it crashes on.

I've used firefox for quite a while now. It's reliable and easy and is great for user accessibility.

Can i ask?

Something thats always intersted me, whats the point in have 2 OS's? whats wrong with 1?

Most popular is to dualboot Windows and another OS family like Linux or Mac OS X, because certain OSs have certain qualities that the other lacks, or people blame the OS for their own incompetence at operating a computer. It can go in many directions. Another common dualboot is XP and Vista or 7, fx: XP for playing older games that don't work on Vista/7.

I have no use for 2 OSs myself. XP is my OS of choice right now but I will permanently switch over to 7 x64 in the near future along with a GPU upgrade.