Posts Tagged ‘Windows Vista’

Windows is Just a Ridiculous Operating System

By Chief Oddball on June 11th, 2008 at 1:52 pm

Over the last week, during which I have been extremely busy working with Windows night and day, I have repeatedly had the feeling that certain portions of this OS were designed by a bunch of toads.

I just did a search for some work-related files I haven’t used in a long time, because I need them again now. First of all, unless you open up Vista’s “Advanced Search” panel, you will only be searching in “Indexed Locations.” Query: Why does the concept of “indexed locations” even exist? If I want to search for something, that means I don’t know where it is. Either index the whole fucking hard drive by default, or just search everything by default. Why does the search system default to “indexed locations only” if Windows only indexes a tiny fraction of your data unless instructed otherwise? Why do I even have to waste time setting indexing up in the first place?

Okay, forget indexing. Let’s say you actually get some search results. You browse to a folder within those results, decide this isn’t the right folder, and then hit “Back.” You’d expect to be taken back to your search results so you can continue browsing, but oh no, Windows is too stupid for that. It can’t do anything intelligent like, you know, cache the results of your last search as long as the window is open. No, it has to repeat the stupid search all over again. Real efficient.

The process for making a copy of a file in the same folder where it already lives has gotten less convenient for me since Windows Vista. In XP, when you did that, the copy of the file would be renamed to “Copy of [original filename]” so that it did not conflict with the original file. Now, in Vista, the file gets named “[original filename] – Copy”. That in itself isn’t so bad, but here’s the worst part. Now, Vista alphabetically resorts the file list automatically, as soon as you perform any file operations like copying or renaming.

This makes it really hard to just do stuff quickly. Like, make copies of 10 files within a folder containing hundreds or even thousands. In XP, those 10 files would have appeared at the end of the file list in a nice group so you could rename them or mess with them in a contiguous unit. In Vista, as you start renaming them, they start zooming to whatever place in alphabetical order they belong, and the view scrolls with them, so you have to keep going back to where the rest of the copies are. And don’t even get me started about unzipping a file into a folder where other files already live. The zipfile contents, which formerly would also appear in a nice group at the end of the list, now get sprinkled alphabetically all throughout the list. RAGE!

But my absolute favorite Windows stupidity crisis is the one where the OS will conveniently forget the view settings you wanted for a particular folder. Yes, this is STILL HAPPENING in Vista, and it’s been happening since Windows 2000 if I remember right. You know how this goes: You expect all of your folders to display in “List” view, and then one day you go into a folder that you go into a hundred times a day, and suddenly it’s in “Tiles” view for no reason. Because Windows has ostensibly “run out of memory” to store all the folder customizations. Except that I didn’t customize any of these folders, I just changed all folders globally to display in “List” view until I set otherwise. Are you telling me that this sets a customization on every folder in existence? And is it so hard to dynamically adjust the allotted memory space for these customizations so that it, you know, never runs out? It’s not like I don’t have dozens or even hundreds of spare gigabytes on my hard drive. Why can’t Microsoft just fix this shit?

Gah. Sorry, had to get that out.

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WAMP, Vista Style: Pitfalls to Avoid

By Chief Oddball on February 2nd, 2008 at 2:29 am

Filed under Journal, Rants ··· Leave a Comment

Last week, I decided to try migrating to Windows Vista again. Yeah, yeah, save it. Anyway, after spending the last two hours trying to figure out why Apache’s mod_rewrite feature was not working, and then discovering it was the stupidest of the most stupid possible reasons, I decided to post a few “warning signs” here for you comrades who are traveling the WAMP road. (For the unitiated, that’s “Windows/Apache/MySQL/PHP.” And if you don’t know what that means, then this post isn’t for you anyway.)

And hey, it’s already two in the figgin’ morning and I’m sure Apple is already asleep by now, so I might as well waste even more time. <sarcastic smirk>

Pick the Right Version

When installing Apache on Windows Vista, use Apache 2.2.x, not 1.x. Of course, you could always install IIS instead, if you like that sort of thing. I like to run both — since I often develop for both ASP.NET and Linux/PHP architectures. Two HTTP servers will coexist if you bind them to different ports — say, 80 and 8080.

Fixing Slow Apache Response

After Apache is installed, accessing it through your computer name (in my case, http://exeter) may be very slow. To correct this, add this line to your HOSTS file (you’ll find it in C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc):

127.0.0.1 exeter

Of course, you’d replace “exeter” with your computer name. This is not necessary if you prefer to access your server via http://localhost or http://127.0.0.1, as those should be working perfectly right out of the box.

Can’t Get the PHP MySQL Extension to Load?

No matter what your settings are in php.ini, The PHP MySQL module will not load unless you copy libmysql.dll to C:\Windows\system32. You will find this file in the PHP root directory.

MySQL Instance Config Wizard Hangs on Last Step

When configuring your MySQL 5 server with the Instance Config Wizard, when you get to the last step and press “Execute,” the wizard may lock up. If so, open Task Manager, right-click on the MySQLInstanceConfig.exe process and select “Properties.” On the “Compatibility” tab, check “Run this program in compatibility mode for:” and then choose “Windows XP (Service Pack 2)” from the drop-down menu. Click OK, then terminate the process. Run the MySQL Instance Config Wizard again. It should work this time.

Lastly, Make Sure You Edit Config Files on C: with Elevated Privileges

This is the pain-in-the-ass step that cost me two hours of time tonight. When editing config files for your server software — for example, Apache’s httpd.conf — make sure you launch your text editor as Administrator. In other words, with elevated privileges. Otherwise, it may not have the ability to write to files on the C: drive — but it may not tell you so, either.

I have my favorite text editor bound to a shortcut in my context menu, so I can right-click on any file and open it in my editor. But this context menu shortcut does not launch the editor with elevated privileges. Absurdly, I spent two hours continually editing, checking and re-checking httpd.conf, thinking I had enabled Apache’s mod_rewrite module, when in fact I had not — because the file was not getting saved, due to the editor’s lack of security privileges.

Unfortunately, the editor threw no error messages and in fact behaved as if everything was normal. It wasn’t until I shut down the editor, started it back up and opened httpd.conf that I noticed none of my changes had actually been saved. RAGE!

By the way, this “elevated privileges” crap is a new requirement of Windows Vista, which is the first Windows operating system that runs the typical user account with a restricted set of privileges. It’s safer to do this, but it’s a new concept to Windows users (and developers of Windows software). This creates problems with all kinds of older, pre-Vista software in particular, because all of it was designed around the assumption that every user would have admin-level access all the time. That is no longer true.

Sigh. Anyway, everything with my WAMP setup is finally working now. This rigmarole was the perfect way to terminate a screwed-up, costly, merry-go-round of a week, which I’ll tell you about in more detail tomorrow. For now, suffice it to say, I’m going the frak to bed.

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That About Sums It Up…

By Chief Oddball on August 6th, 2007 at 1:44 pm ··· Leave a Comment

Check out what Reaper sent me today — a link to the daily User Friendly comic strip. It totally sums up my experience with Windows Vista, sadly enough.

Ultimately, Vista Fails To Deliver

By Chief Oddball on July 25th, 2007 at 3:05 pm

Filed under Journal, Rants ··· 2 Comments

By the end of the week, I will once again be running Windows XP.

Although it wasn’t long ago that I wrote about upgrading to Windows Vista, and how it was going pretty well so far, I’ve now had a few weeks to work with Microsoft’s new OS. Having used Vista in both a business and leisure capacity, I’ve come to the conclusion that this OS is just not ready for prime time. Or, at the very least, it’s just not ready for me.

In the beginning, I actually had very few problems with Vista. Sure; my firewall of choice wasn’t compatible, but I found a new one. Yeah; file transfers take longer than it seemed they should, but I learned to live with it. But over time, more and more of these little idiosyncrasies started to pile up, culminating in the huge headache I had to deal with today when I attempted to install Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition.

Visual Studio 2005, a Microsoft product, has “known compatibility issues” with Windows Vista, another Microsoft product. At least, that’s what I was told in a dialog bog about halfway through the installation of Visual Studio. I admit I had a chuckle over this, since practically every piece of non-Microsoft software I’ve used so far has been perfectly compatible, but one of Microsoft’s own most prominent development tools isn’t. However, it wasn’t a big deal, because this same dialog box also informed me that a service pack for Visual Studio was available for download, and it would fix these issues. Great, I’ll get the service pack and be on my way.

I completed the install (which took more than half an hour, as VS2005 is such a huge piece of software that gets its tendrils into everything). Then, I used Vista’s built-in update manager to go out to the web and get that service pack. It was almost 500 MB, so it took a little while to download. When it finally came in, Vista proceeded to install it — and then seemingly got stuck.

The installation progress bar quit moving, and all hard drive activity stopped. I could still use the computer, but that wasn’t very helpful, given that I needed to use Visual Studio for something. I decided to give Vista a bit more time, and in the meanwhile, got out my laptop — which runs Windows XP, and already has Visual Studio installed — to finish my assigned task.

Fifteen minutes later, with that task finished and ready to be emailed out, the Vista update still hadn’t installed. In fact, it hadn’t budged.

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Windows Vista Infiltrates Oddball Headquarters

By Chief Oddball on July 7th, 2007 at 8:27 pm

Filed under Reviews ··· Leave a Comment

It’s been a long time since I posted — nearly two weeks, I think. Since that just won’t do, here’s a piece about my recent experience with Microsoft’s newest operating system, Windows Vista.

Historically, I always move up to the latest edition of Windows within two weeks of its arrival. More often than not, these upgrades are “gotta have it” responses, rather than motivated by any tangible reason. Yeah, I even bought Windows Millennium Edition, although I wound up regretting it in a scant few hours. But I’ve held off from upgrading to Windows Vista, even though this is the first new version of Windows that won’t cost me a dime (thanks to my company’s Microsoft partnership).

Last year, when the Vista beta was floating around, I was just as excited as usual. I signed up for the program and installed the beta on a spare machine. Unfortunately, the results were not encouraging. Vista’s new security features (particularly User Account Control) were supremely annoying, simple file copy procedures took dreadfully long, half of my old PC’s hardware did not have any driver support, and worst of all, the Vista beta hosed the hard drive it was installed on, rendering it unbootable and invisible to every machine’s BIOS. Needless to say, I decided that I was going to steer clear of Vista for a while, and see how things went after its release.

The release date came in January, but still I held off, hearing lots of bitching and moaning — more so, it seemed to me, than is usual for a Microsoft OS launch. At first there were a lot of driver support issues, but gradually, these were remedied. By the time June arrived, I could feel that “gotta have it” impulse gnawing at me, and decided it was time to give Vista a real-world try and see what would happen.

Because my computer is my workstation now, and the device I use to make my living, I needed to be careful about this. I backed up a complete image of my Windows XP installation, to which I could seamlessly restore in case Vista really just started to suck. With this safety measure taken care of, I then cloned my XP install onto a spare hard drive and set up a dual-boot, so I could still fire up XP and do my day’s work before I finished preparing my Vista install. Finally, I burned an image of Windows Vista Business from our Microsoft partner library, obtained the key from management, and got it installed.