I’m back. I think.
In case you missed it, yesterday’s routine Windows update totally boogered my computer. It booted, looked normal, but none of the icons worked. Eventually, it would throw up a series of error messages and fall right over.
“No problem,” thinks the intrepid weasel, “I’ll just do a system restore.” There were no previous states to restore to.
See, it’s supposed to do a little backup file before it installs updates, so you can step back if there’s a problem. I worked out later why it hasn’t been (all these years, apparently): backups were somehow allocated 0% disk space. Thanks for the error message, Bill.
So I had to sort it the old fashioned way, with a hammer and brute ignorance. I’m not absolutely convinced everything is totally back to normal, but I can run Photoshop and a video game at the same time, so it’s got to be good enough.
Meanwhile, tomorrow’s Dead Pool was never in any doubt. I got internets in all kinds of places these days. See y’all back here tomorrow, 6WBT.
Posted: April 10th, 2014 under personal, technology.
Comments: 15
Comments
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: April 10, 2014, 9:02 pm
We’ve just checked this on Uncle B’s new Windows 7 machine: saving restore points defaults to off. Can you believe it? Worth checking, if you haven’t.
Comment from Stark Dickflüssig
Time: April 10, 2014, 9:26 pm
Back everything up to punch cards & hope your warehouse doesn’t catch fire.
Comment from Mrs Compton
Time: April 10, 2014, 9:56 pm
Phew! *wipes brow*
Comment from dissent555
Time: April 10, 2014, 11:33 pm
Welcome back.
Just checked mine. System Protection was “off” for my data drives, but “on” for my OS and programs drive. Good thing to check on indeed. I can’t remember – I wonder if Windows asks about this during the install?
Comment from Skandia Recluse
Time: April 11, 2014, 12:06 am
Windows updates is a thing with me. I have more than three thousand updates now, and I don’t know what any of them do.
“Security Updates” sounds nice until you begin to suspect it means digital rights management software that prevents you from making copies; i.e. security for the owner of the copyright, not you, the user.
And this old hardware has a long history of problems that never get fixed by these updates. There were a couple of years when it worked fine, but now those same problems are back again.
Comment from Oceania
Time: April 11, 2014, 12:32 am
Glad I still use XP … screw 7 and 8 …
Linux does the rest.
Someone will bring out a ‘super XP’ type OS – and make a killing.
People like simple things, that work … 7 and 8 – well, suck.
Comment from QuasiModo
Time: April 11, 2014, 1:29 am
I always have automatic updates turned off…it always picks the wrong time to bog down my system and net connection.
Comment from Pavel
Time: April 11, 2014, 1:58 am
I hate when my system goes tits up like that, but I totally love it when I have a nice new fresh install of the OS.
Comment from Nina
Time: April 11, 2014, 2:48 am
At times like this I’m glad I’m an Apple fangirl.
Comment from David Gillies
Time: April 11, 2014, 4:38 am
All operating systems suck to some degree. Even my Linux boxes go loopy once in a while. Upgrading from Ubuntu 12.04 to 12.10 killed the window manager and had to be fixed via wizardry (fortunately I am a wizard). My Mac has been acting somewhat petulantly lately, for instance logging me out of a user session in the middle of the night when I am asleep. I think it is a nasty interaction with Parallels Convergence which may get deep-sixed as a result. One absolutely awesome thing about OS X is Time Machine. The first thing I did when I got my new machine was buy a 1TB external drive as a backup, to add to the 2 x 1TB externals with my music and movies. Add in Internet OS re-installation and it’s pretty robust.
Backups: it’s not whether you’re paranoid, it’s whether you’re paranoid enough.
Comment from Some Vegetable
Time: April 11, 2014, 11:54 am
Hooray! Well done, Ms. Weasel!
Comment from Mojo
Time: April 11, 2014, 5:24 pm
I dunno, Mac OS always struck me as “assume the user is an idiot” default. Which may be true, but there’s no need to be insulting. Same for the snide hipster-type commercials. Really off-putting, yannow?
Pretty GUI, admittedly. But it’s BSD under the bonnet.
Comment from BJM
Time: April 11, 2014, 5:42 pm
@David Gillies Backups: it’s not whether you’re paranoid, it’s whether you’re paranoid enough.
One can never be too paranoid and it is axiomatic that when you really, really need to restore the backup will be corrupted.
Comment from Stark Dickflüssig
Time: April 11, 2014, 5:59 pm
I still have a 6G HDD from the days of Windows 98. Thinking back on it, I guess MS has always made horrible garbage.
Comment from Oceania
Time: April 14, 2014, 12:18 pm
I have a DVD … somewhere .. with my OS on it … throw it isn the drive – vop!
Up and running in seconds … straight image to C:\
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