Windows woes

[S. Chancellor]

I Have to wonder why you were using Outlook Express in the first place...

-S.

On 2006-03-29 00:57:14 -0800, "Walter Bright" 
<newshound at digitalmars.nospamm.com> said:

> A few days ago, Outlook Express starting acting flaky - my account 
> names were forcibly converted to 1, 2, 3, etc., and retyping in the 
> correct ones refused to stick. Then, windows update started failing 
> with useless messages consisting of 8 digit hex numbers.
> 
> So I thought I'd try Microsoft update tech support (which is free for 
> update failures). They asked me to send them logs, which I did. Then, 
> came an endless series of "try this ...", which usually involved 
> unregistering a dozen dlls, rebooting, starting/stopping services, 
> reregistering them, renaming system files, booting in safe mode, wiping 
> directories, deleting files, rebooting, rebooting, all to no avail 
> (except the 8 digit hex number would change).
> 
> Then came the exhortation to run a virus scan, with a couple links. The 
> symantec virus scan crashed after a half hour. The other one completed, 
> and found nothing.
> 
> At this point, it was apparent that tech support had no idea why this 
> was happening, and I was beginning to worry there was either a rootkit 
> installed, or there was just creeping corruption going on. I gave up on 
> Microsoft tech support, and decided to reinstall Windows.
> 
> Do you know it takes THREE HOURS to install Windows from scratch? Gads, 
> you install XP from the CD which requires rebooting several times, then 
> again from the XP SP2 update CD (rebooting n more times), then you log 
> in to Windows update and update/reboot 4 or 5 more times. Why can't 
> Windows Update download everything at once and reboot only once?
> 
> So now I've got Windows reinstalled. Now comes the dance of 
> reinstalling everything else. The worst is, of course, Outlook Express 
> which completely loses track of everything after a reinstall. I have a 
> crib sheet of most of the settings, but even so, there's no way to 
> restore which newsgroup files are read/unread. I also use the 
> undocumented method of finding which gawdawful directory O.E. squirrels 
> the files away in (all in deeply nested hidden directories with 80+ 
> character tty noise filenames) and saving/restoring the dbx files 
> manually.
> 
> Most of the other apps aren't too bad, if you were smart enough to keep 
> a crib sheet of all the serial numbers, registration numbers, and funky 
> passwords. The whole job takes about 12 hours.
> 
> Morals of the story:
> 
> 1) Keep a crib sheet of all the settings, passwords, serial numbers, 
> registration follderalls, etc.
> 
> 2) If you're going to provide an update program, fer cryin out loud, 
> make it a monolithic program that doesn't depend on everything else in 
> the OS working perfectly. After all, when you need it, it's probably 
> because the rest of the system isn't right. And if the update program 
> itself is corrupted, then tech support can just send you a new one.
> 
> 3) If you're writing an app, don't require it to be reinstalled if 
> Windows is reinstalled. DM programs don't need to be. Store your 
> configuration in some text file that can be saved/restored. Please!
> 
> 4) If you're going to need to muck about with the system registry, do 
> it like Quicken does. Quicken has a menu item "Backup" which, amazingly 
> enough, backs up all its settings and crud to a file you specify. Then, 
> I reinstall Quicken from the CD, hit "Restore" and give the file name, 
> and it fixes itself. Quicken is full of horrible design choices, but at 
> least they got that right. No other app I've used does that.
> 
> 5) Never, ever install anything with DRM on it on your work computer. 
> DRM often involves rootkits, installing new drivers that destabilize 
> your system, etc. This includes most game software. Use a separate 
> computer for DRM, one that you won't mind regularly reinstalling 
> Windows on.
> 
> There, I feel better now <g>.