Microsoft releases "Wife 1.0"

Last year, my friend upgraded his GirlFriend 3.1 to GirlFriendPlus1.0 (marketing name: Fiancee 1.0).

Recently he upgraded Fiancee 1.0 to Wife 1.0 and it's a memory hogger, it has taken all his space; Wife 1.0 must be running before he can do anything.

Although he did not ask for it, Wife 1.0 came with Plug-Ins such as MotherInLaw and BrotherInLaw.

Some features I'd like to see in the Upcoming GirlFriend 4.0...

• - A "Don't remind me again" button
• - Minimize button
• - Shutdown feature
• - An install shield feature so that Girlfriend 4.0 can be completely uninstalled if so desired (so you don't lose cache and other objects)
• - "Abort" button
• - An option to run the network driver in promiscuous mode which would allow the systems hardware probe feature to be much more useful.

I tried running GirlFriend 2.0 with GirlFriend 1.0 still installed, but they tried using the same i/o port and conflicted.

Then I tried to uninstall GirlFriend 1.0 but it didn't have an uninstall program.

I tried to uninstall it by hand, but it put files in my system directory.

Another problem with all versions of GirlFriend that I've used is that it is totally object oriented and only supports hardware with gold plated contacts.

******** BUG WARNING ********

Wife 1.0 has an undocumented bug.

If you try to install Mistress 1.1 before uninstalling Wife 1.0, Wife 1.0 will delete MS-Money files before doing the uninstall itself.

Then Mistress 1.1 will refuse to install, claiming insufficient resources.

****** BUG WORK-AROUNDS *****

To avoid the above bug, try installing Mistress 1.1 on a different system and never run any file transfer applications such as Laplink 6.0.

Also, beware of similar shareware applications that have been known to carry viruses that may affect Wife 1.0.

Another solution would be to run Mistress 1.0 via a UseNet provider under an anonymous name.

Here again, beware of the viruses which can accidentally be downloaded from the UseNet.

Microsoft "Wife" Testamonial!!

Last year a friend of mine upgraded GirlFriend 1.0 to Wife 1.0 and found that it's a memory hog leaving very little system resources for other applications.

He is only now noticing that Wife 1.0 also is spawning Child-Processes which are further consuming valuable resources.

No mention of this particular phenomena was included in the product brochure or the documentation, though other users have informed him that this is to be expected due to the nature of the application.

Not only that, Wife 1.0 installs itself such that it is always launched at system initialization where it can monitor all other system activity.

He's finding that some applications such as PokerNight 10.3, BeerBash 2.5, and PubNight 7.0 are no longer able to run in the system at all, crashing the system when selected (even though they always worked fine before).

At installation, Wife 1.0 provides no option as to the installation of undesired Plug-Ins such as Mother-In-Law 55.8 and BrotherInLaw Beta release.

Also, system performance seems to diminish with each passing day..

I myself decided to avoid all of the headaches associated with wife 1.0 by sticking with Girlfriend 2.0.

Even here, however, I found many problems.

Apparently you cannot install Girlfriend 2.0 on top of Girlfriend 1.0.

You must uninstall Girlfriend 1.0 first.

Other users say this is a long standing bug which I should have been aware of.

Apparently the versions of Girlfriend have conflicts over shared use of the I/O port.

You think they would have fixed such a stupid bug by now.

To make matters worse, The uninstall program for Girlfriend 1.0 doesn't work very well leaving undesirable traces of the application in the system.

Another thing that is very irritating-all versions of Girlfriend continually popup little annoying messages about the advantages of upgrading to Wife 1.0 Microsoft "Wife" Newsflash!!

I came across more tech notes about this product on the Usenet News Groups.

You should immediately add this to your README.TXT and update your WIFE.INI file as noted.

***** BUG FIX *****

Another bug has surfaced with the uninstall feature of WIFE 1.0.

A TSR program stays resident in memory after uninstalling WIFE 1.0 that on a recurring basis takes up to 50% of your system resources before allowing any of your programs to run.

In cases of complex or "messy" uninstalls, resource losses can be as high as 80%.

This TSR can be negated by adding the following line to your WIFE.INI file:

DEVICE=C:\WIFE\SETUP\PRENUPTL.386

IMPORTANT - This line must be inserted before the

DEVICE=C:\WIFE\SETUP\WDDNGDAY.386 statement in order to work properly.

This new driver will redirect all calls to

C:\WIFE\UNINSTALL\CMNLPROP.DLL to C:\WIFE\UNINSTALL\WAIVEALL.DLL

during the uninstall process.

WIFE 2.0 is currently in development and should be ready for release shortly.

WIFE 2.0 takes 30% less disk space while featuring a flashier, more attractive, User Interface. Unfortunately, this upgrade is expected to require significantly more resources than Wife 1.0. For those users unable to upgrade to Wife 2.0, addins RedSprtsCar and NewBoat are currently in beta testing.

These addins will work with the executable C:\WIFE\MIDLIFE.COM.

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