Windows woes

[Unknown W. Brackets]

I'm just waiting for not the DRM rootkit from Sony, but the DRM virus 
from Mr. Hacker that makes it so all my files are processor-enforced 
going to expire in three days, and can no longer be copied off my hard 
drive.  That will make my life interesting.  Then, I will finally switch 
my primary machine to Linux.

As for Windows reinstallation... I've done it enough times I already do 
all those things ;).  Windows 98 was so much worse than XP too... with 
XP, depending on how you do it, you can usually keep the registry. 
Unless of course it's corrupted, that is.

Hope things work out more favorably with after all this mess.  For what 
it's worth, many other newsgroup clients - like Thunderbird, which I'm 
using now, and Opera - don't use the registry and have a directory you 
can just backup or copy over :).

-[Unknown]


> 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>. 
> 
>