From: ce1zzes@prism.gatech.EDU (Eric Sheppard)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.misc
Subject: Bad Karma? The install adventure continues!
Date: 12 Apr 92 23:51:12 GMT
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology

I'm close to giving up installing OS/2.  Almost nothing's working right!
Particulars: 20 Mhz 386sx, 200 meg IDE, EGA display. Computer has Intel chipset
and AMI BIOS, and 11 megs of memory.

I've wasted hours and hours on this, installing it again and again.  Each time
I get a different problem!  The current problems:

1.  No printer object was created for my default printer.  Help system,
    documentation, etc. are absolutely no help, because it assumes the
    appropriate objects were already created.  I've got an Apple Imagewriter
    II on my computer, but the vast majority of os2 drivers are Postscript.
    Windows supports my printer, but to use that printer driver from 
    Windows, I have to install the Win-os2 support.  Bad news, Win-os2
    apparently doesn't support EGA.  See below.
2.  I set up Dual boot, and os2 DRIVES doesn't see the MSDOS partition.
    OS2 partition is HPFS, MSDOS is FAT.
3.  The first time I rebooted after install, I got the tutorial window.  I
    clicked Exit, and the system locks up.  This has happened often.  When
    I reboot, it reports an allocation error with SWAPPER.DAT, then about
    ten minutes later, I _finally_ get a desktop after an unhelpful generic
    dialog box: "Cannot find file."  This time around, I notice I now have
    two objects called 'os2 desktop'.  
4.  I can live without the seamless Windows support for now, but why can't
    I even have full-screen Windows for an EGA?  (Selecting full-screen windows
    gets me a full-screen DOS session for a moment, then a 'fatal error code 
    10' or nonesuch message, before closing.)  This is a bad incentive to
    move up to VGA. Even if costs are plummeting, that's several hundred
    dollars more to spend, and this EGA has lot of life left in it!
    Please, no 'you should spend the $65 to get a VGA card' jabs, because
    the card's not the expensive part, it's the monitor!  VGA is just _not_
    an option for me right now.  MS-Windows supports my EGA just fine.
    You'd think that with the warehouse full of clones they tested os2 on, 
    that just one of them would have an EGA display.
5.  Where is the ATM support?  All I get are a piddling few bitmap screen 
    fonts.  I also have to manually switch the applets default font to EGA,
    but this is a minor nuisance.

I've almost lost count of the number of times I've installed os2 (about 8!!
times now, I think), and I get different results every time.  Just before
my last install, every time it booted, all of the settings boxes activated,
the device-driver install activated, the system install activated.  I start
to close the windows, and I get a SYS3175 error (I forget), and the windows
open again!  (Looked like it got the Startup folder confused with the Install
folder, cause all the windows that opened matched the contents of the Install
folder.)  A couple of installs before that, no objects came up on the desktop 
at all.

On top of all this, it's just too darn slow!  windows take a while to open,
programs take a while to start.  Not what I expected.  I think I've risked
damaging my floppies when closing its drive window, because I naturally
assume it's done accessing the floppy when the window closes.  Nope, gotta
wait another 20 seconds or so for os2 to finish closing the floppy.  I
missed that a few times already, wanting to quickly look at the contents of
my floppies and swapping them before the previous one's finished closing.

I want to give OS/2 its day, but I just can't see past the WASTE of
my time so far trying to get it to install correctly!  Sour grapes?  Hardly.
But if the 'superior' operating system/environment can't keep its senses 
long enough to install correctly, then I may just have to go back to that
'inferior' environment which installed with no problems on my machine. 

Eric
-- 
Eric Sheppard      Georgia Tech    |   "Of course the US Constitution isn't
Atlanta, GA                        | perfect, but it's a lot better than what
ARPA: ce1zzes@prism.gatech.edu     |             we have now." -Unknown
uucp: ...!{allegra,amd,hplabs,seismo,ut-ngp}!gatech!prism!ce1zzes
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.misc