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Thursday, June 26, 2008

Hell Freezes Over

I agree with Bill Gates about windows.

I go to my add/remove programs place to make sure it is there.

It is not there.

What is there? The following garbage is there. Microsoft Autoupdate Exclusive test package, Microsoft Autoupdate Reboot test package, Microsoft Autoupdate testpackage1. Microsoft AUtoupdate testpackage2, Microsoft Autoupdate Test package3.

Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable*. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up.


Quite. Pity Bill Gates can't do anything about it.

* Dear Normal windows user who is not a super genius like Bill Gates (read the whole e-mail at Brad's place).

This is a typo. There is no such thing as a "file registry". You can't edit it by searching for "regedit" (it is not c:\windows\regedit.exe) and double clicking.

In any case Don't. Ever. Do. This.

If you're like me, you really hate the fact that windows treats you like a dangerous idiot, who has to be prevented from modifying anything, or you will mess it up, but This. Time. They. Are. Right.

I never destroyed a computer editing the file registry, but I did come close once (I had saved the old one).

Bill Gates is so right. The "add/remove programs place" was functional. It just took windows 30 seconds just to open mine.

hmm do I really need Microsoft.NET Framework 1.1 Hotfix (KB928366) ?

I'll never know. I don't dare mess with add/remove programs anymore, because I have no way of knowing what the hell they are. Oh if you happen to know that Microsoft.NET Framework 1.1 Hotfix (KB928366) is a virus please tell me in comments.

Ah sigh, I just opened dos prompt and typed cd\ (why the hell does it send me to C:\Documents and Settings\rjw?)then dir autoexec.bat ahh dir dir dirrest autoexec.bat
it is empty. 0 bytes. But just seeing the filename brings tears to my eyes as I remember those sweet long long gone days when I knew what the hell was on my hard disk. I know I'm showing my age but once upon a time, back in the stone age, the stuff on our hard disks was DOS plus stuff we had put on it by using the command "copy " and these two cute little files "autoexec.bat" and "config.sys" which we edited with a text editor.

1 comment:

pj said...

Oh gawd, you're making me feel old too.

There was a time I knew what everything inside my PC did (because I'd built it myself) and exactly what was going on in my operating system. If it broke I could fix it.

Nowadays my laptop is a complete bug-ridden virus-infested mystery to me and I wouldn't even consider embarking on the horror of reinstalling the operating system.

It strikes me that Microsoft programmers feel the same when they look at windows.