Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Microshit

Did I say that I "dislike" Microsoft? Wrong. I hate them, I loathe them, I despise them, I revile them, I curse and abhor and disdain and deplore and imprecate and execrate and contemn and spurn and abominate them. I piss on their shoes. I kick their pets. I fart in their general direction.

I spent four hours yesterday reinstalling Windows XP, in order to fix a problem which prevented the PC from connecting to the Internet. (In fairness I should state that this did fix the problem, just as amputating your arm at the shoulder will fix a hangnail.)

I was clever enough to fear that I might lose a file or two during the process, and so made a backup on CD of the database development and installer-maker files. What I didn't know, being a pampered Mac user, is that reinstalling Windows renders all data on the computer unuseable.

You see, when you reinstall Mac OS, it does nothing more than to reinstall the operating system; anything that isn't part of the OS is not touched. The list of users: unchanged. Those users' data: unchanged. The record of who-owns-what: unchanged. This is (dare I venture to opine) the way it should be.

I assumed, silly me, that Windows - which everyone tells me is a mature and reliable operating system - would be similarly user-friendly, not to say intelligent. Ha. It would be to laugh, were it not to cry.

Reinstalling Windows deletes the PC's list of users. It does not delete the now non-existent users' data, nor does it reassign these files to somebody else's ownership, oh no. They remain in place, but become unuseable - because they aren't yours. Not even the administrator login (once you figure out how to enable it) has enough authority to see these leftover files. You can't even delete them to free up the hard disk space, because they aren't yours.

Like Tantalus, you sit there and stare at the closed folders containing your data and applications, but cannot open them.

Moral of the story (and call this another public service announcement): should you ever (God forbid) need to reinstall Windows, then you might as well reformat the hard disk while you're at it - because you will lose all your data in any case.

[Updated on June 28] it is in fact possible to recover from this problem, and restore access to your data. I described how to do so in this post. But the rest stands: It is absurd and insulting, a thumb in the nose at their customers, that re-installing WinXP should cause this problem. Thanking the doctor for putting a cast on your leg does not make you forgive the drunken-fool-cardriver who ran over you.

7 Comments:

Blogger brooksba said...

I don't know if you get the ads that Mac has been recently running here. There's an older man representing a PC and a young, hip kid representing a Mac. They talk as if they were computers. And in each one, the Mac ends up showing the PC what it can do just as well or extremely better. The ads never say, "Don't buy a PC," but more say, "Macs are way cooler." I have been smiling at each ad and thinking of your loyalty to Macs. PCs are a bitch.

June 6, 2006 at 10:24:00 a.m. GMT+2  
Blogger SavtaDotty said...

I've been hating Microsoft for 25 years! I think Window is the biggest calamity perpetrated upon the Western World since the invention of elevator music. And much more destructive.

June 6, 2006 at 11:39:00 a.m. GMT+2  
Blogger Udge said...

Brooksba, thanks for the tip, I hadn't seen the ads. They are very good, cool and quiet and no fuss. (Anyone else who doesn't get American TV can see them on the Apple website.)

June 6, 2006 at 5:46:00 p.m. GMT+2  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Omg I am in tears on the floor laughing. Isnt it amazing after all this time Microsoft still don't get what "user friendly" means? I have never owned a Mac but am seriously considering one.
Curtis
dog training

June 7, 2006 at 5:25:00 a.m. GMT+2  
Blogger Zhoen said...

When D got rid of the Atari, we replaced it with a Mac, and never looked back. But I have friends in the business, and oh, all the rationalizations for having PCs have such the tone of an addict, or a smoker... They know they should quit, but... Well, and some just can't change the work environment, so that isn't their fault at all.

June 11, 2006 at 12:18:00 a.m. GMT+2  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Microsoft continues to screw us. When the Mac first came out, we devoted DOS jockeys claimed our preference to the command line and stayed loyal to MS only to have them come out with an inferior version of the Mac OS, called Windows. I never have been a Mac man even though I know they are superior. I wish someone could develop a mainstream OS to compete with Microshit. But until then, many of us are stuck using the crappiest OS ever invented.

April 14, 2008 at 11:47:00 p.m. GMT+2  
Blogger Udge said...

Anon, I can only say: Agreed.

April 15, 2008 at 12:43:00 a.m. GMT+2  

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