Windows woes

[Juan Jose Comellas]

At some point in the past, the only way to be able to be certified
"Windows-logo compatible" was if you used the registry to save your
program's settings. I guess they wanted to make it really difficult to
switch computers without reinstalling. The registry is probably the worst
abomination to come from Redmond and it's the cause of most of the problems
Windows has.


Walter Bright wrote:

> 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>.