MS-Girlfriend and MS-Wife 1.0 -
By: Unknown

GirlFriend 1.0

I'm currently running the latest version of Girlfriend and
I've been having some problems lately. I've been running the
same version of DrinkingBuddies 1.0 forever as my primary
application, and all the Girlfriend releases I've tried have
always conflicted with it. I hear that DrinkingBuddies won't
crash if Girlfriend is run in background mode and the sound
is turned off. But I'm embarrassed to say I can't find the
switch to turn the sound off. I just run them separately,
and it works okay. Girlfriend also seems to have a problem
co-existing with my Golf program, often trying to abort Golf
with some sort of timing incompatibility.

GirlFriend 2.0

I probably should have stayed with Girlfriend 1.0, but I
thought I might see better performance from Girlfriend 2.0.
After months of conflicts and other problems, I consulted a
friend who has had experience with Girlfriend 2.0. He said I
probably didn't have enough cache to run Girlfriend 2.0, and
eventually it would require a Token Ring to run properly. He
was right - as soon as I purged my cache, it uninstalled
itself. 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 unistall 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.

GirlFriend 3.0

Shortly after that, I installed Girlfriend 3.0 beta. All the
bugs were supposed to be gone, but the first time I used it,
it gave me a virus anyway. I had to clean out my whole
system and shut down for a while.

GirlFriend 4.0

I very cautiously upgraded to Girlfriend 4.0. This time I
used a SCSI probe first and also installed a virus
protection program. It worked okay for a while until I
discovered that Girlfriend 1.0 was still in my system. I
tried running Girlfriend 1.0 again with Girlfriend 4.0 still
installed, but Girlfriend 4.0 has a feature I didn't know
about that automatically senses the presence of any other
version of Girlfriend and communicates with it in some way,
which results in the immediate removal of both versions.

The version I have now works pretty well, but there are
still some problems. Like all versions of Girlfriend, it is
written in some obscure language I can't understand, much
less reprogram. Frankly, I think there is too much attention
paid to the look and feel rather than the desired
functionality. Also, to get the best connections with your
hardware, you usually have to use gold-plated contacts. And
I've never liked how Girlfriend is totally
"object-oriented."

GirlFriend 5.0

Some features I'd like to see in the Upcoming GirlFriend
5.0...

* - 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.

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

GirlFriend Plus and Wife 1.0

A year ago, a friend of mine upgraded his version of
Girlfriend to GirlfriendPlus 1.0, which is a Terminate and
Stay Resident version of Girlfriend. He discovered that
GirlfriendPlus 1.0 expires within a year if you don't
upgrade to Fiancee 1.0. So he did, but soon after that, he
had to upgrade to Wife 1.0, which he describes as a huge
resource hog. It has taken up all his space, so he can't
load anything else. One of the primary reasons he decided to
go with Wife 1.0 was because it came bundled with
FreeSexPlus. 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.

Well, it turns out the resource allocation module of Wife
1.0 sometimes prohibits access to FreeSexPlus, particularly
the new Plug-Ins he wanted to try. On top of that, Wife 1.0
must be running on a well warmed-up system before he can do
anything.

---------------------------------------------------
***** 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 accidently
be downloaded from the UseNet.
---------------------------------------------------

MS-Wife 1.0 Testimonial

Wife 1.0 is not only a memory hog that leaves 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). Also, system
performance seems to diminish with each passing day..

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.

---------------------------------------------------
***** UPGRADE ANNOUNCEMENT *****

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.
---------------------------------------------------