The computing stuff rant thread

[barakta]

Windows users can use www.ninite.com for some common apps which saves a bit of time. I need to do an "installation snapshot" for windoze and linux before I build my new PC.

[Feanor]

Back in the days of Win9x, I had to re-install fairly often.
Since Win7, I don't re-install very often any more.
Usually, it's because I'm swapping a hard drive to something bigger, or an SSD.

Now, my strategy is:

Have all my documents/pictures etc backed up elsewhere. For some things, like thunderbird, I need to take special precautions to ensure I have it's working directory backed up, and know how to restore it to a new install.

Remove all partitions on the disk, and re-install on bare metal.

Add programs only as they become necessary.  So I will install Office straight away, and other things I use every day: Filezilla. Garmin Mapsource and all my maps. Notepad++. etc, etc

Other stuff is installed as and when it's needed; I don't try to re-create my old setup from the get-go.

[Mr Larrington]

Gagh.  Everything I've tried to make the latest Windows update install has failed because PAGE FAULT IN NON-PAGED AREA.  Nuking from orbit appears be the only feasible way forward.  “Damn and blast Microsith” shouted Mr Larrington, the words coming easily from force of habit.

[ian]

Moaning and groaning of the wrong sort from the upper deck. What benighted shenanigans can this be? The Lady of the Loft wants to connect to her phone's hotspot as a prelude to The Magical and Smart Electrometering Experience Tomorrow which portends a dark spell of no electricity at all unless we generate our own by running around each other with magnets. Probably around the time I get my mid-morning toast-urgery.

How hard can it be? On my Mac I click the wifi icon, select the correct phone and, erm, that's that.

It's Windows. Sigh. Come on, Microsoft, it's 20-fucking-20, humans have been using their phones as hotspots for several months at least. Maybe even years. It's got to be an official thing that can be done.

Click the option. The icon goes swirlymungo. Limited connectivity, it eventually bleats one ice-age later. What exactly is limited connectivity? I'll tell you. IT'S ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY NO CONNECTIVITY AT ALL. It's a complete absence of connectivity. That's what your version of limited is, you porridge-crammed clungebot. Go on, do you feel lucky, offer to fix it. Go on diagnose and fix my problem. Has this option ever worked, ever? At any point in the history of time?

IT WORKED! It said so and everything. Well drop my giddy aunt on a trampoline. I shall make my words into a sandwich and take them on a picnic right now. I shall compose hymns to the glory of Microsoft's greatest creature. For I am truly blessed.

Admittedly it solved the problem by reconnecting to the house wifi and hoping we wouldn't notice.

Fucking square-wheeled shitwagon.

[barakta]

This entire rant made me LAUGH OUT LOUD!

Windows....

[Kim]

Can I put in a word for the other edge of that particular sword^[1], and nominate all those OSes that incorrectly assume that just because a given network doesn't allow them to reach their special snowflake chocolate factory server in a timely manner, it doesn't mean the connection's broken?  There is in fact a perfectly good reason this particular LAN isn't connected to the internet, and I'd really quite like it if you could  a) stay connected for more than 30 seconds and  b) actually have a go at loading that URL before whining that there isn't any connectivity.  Go on, just try it.  No, you don't even need to use DNS, I promise; that's why there are all those funny numbers.


_{[1] In the seppuku sense.}

[citoyen]

Fucking square-wheeled shitwagon.

Insult of the day.

[FifeingEejit]

Moaning and groaning of the wrong sort from the upper deck. What benighted shenanigans can this be? The Lady of the Loft wants to connect to her phone's hotspot as a prelude to The Magical and Smart Electrometering Experience Tomorrow which portends a dark spell of no electricity at all unless we generate our own by running around each other with magnets. Probably around the time I get my mid-morning toast-urgery.

How hard can it be? On my Mac I click the wifi icon, select the correct phone and, erm, that's that.

It's Windows. Sigh. Come on, Microsoft, it's 20-fucking-20, humans have been using their phones as hotspots for several months at least. Maybe even years. It's got to be an official thing that can be done.

Click the option. The icon goes swirlymungo. Limited connectivity, it eventually bleats one ice-age later. What exactly is limited connectivity? I'll tell you. IT'S ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY NO CONNECTIVITY AT ALL. It's a complete absence of connectivity. That's what your version of limited is, you porridge-crammed clungebot. Go on, do you feel lucky, offer to fix it. Go on diagnose and fix my problem. Has this option ever worked, ever? At any point in the history of time?

IT WORKED! It said so and everything. Well drop my giddy aunt on a trampoline. I shall make my words into a sandwich and take them on a picnic right now. I shall compose hymns to the glory of Microsoft's greatest creature. For I am truly blessed.

Admittedly it solved the problem by reconnecting to the house wifi and hoping we wouldn't notice.

Fucking square-wheeled shitwagon.

<stackoverflow>Oh, when ever I've used it, it just works.</stackoverflow>

That includes the standard microshit stuff on the laptop at the caravan and on the cisco bullshit that struggles with the wired connection at work but is absolutely fine creating a vpn on any wireless network including the one I'm not meant to use in the office because its for patients, of which we have zero... (we also get a signal for eduroam but I don't have a login for that).

Have you tried turning off the house wifi so it can't rry to use that while setting it up?

Sent from my BKL-L09 using Tapatalk

[Feanor]

I'd like to place some of the blame for that at Apple's door.

<Twinkly rainbows> Sorry, we can't connect right now!

Well, why not?
Give me some technical details!

<Twinkly rainbows> You don't need to know that! Try again later! Look! Sqrls!

And windows followed that paradigm.
And in fairness, you have complained about technical detail in UIs recently.

Hiding technical details is fine, right up to the point where it isn't.

[FifeingEejit]

Windows Update, why can lt you tell me how big it will be before I initiate it with a shut down? I'm now likely to have my sleep disrupted by fan noise all night.

Also this is going to fuck up the dingy unsigned minidisc driver again isn't it...

Sent from my BKL-L09 using Tapatalk

[TimC]

My main Win10 box has just failed to start up. Repeatedly, and none of the non-destructive repairs or workarounds have worked. Bum, and double bum.

[ian]

I'd like to place some of the blame for that at Apple's door.

<Twinkly rainbows> Sorry, we can't connect right now!

Well, why not?
Give me some technical details!

<Twinkly rainbows> You don't need to know that! Try again later! Look! Sqrls!

And windows followed that paradigm.
And in fairness, you have complained about technical detail in UIs recently.

Hiding technical details is fine, right up to the point where it isn't.

I'm fine with technical details, just don't throw them in people's faces. Error X458GD Rebound in bumpipes expected at Z758. Give people human-legible errors and hide the specifics under a nerds-only button or in the console where people can watch lines of code scroll and pretend they're computer hackers. Don't disturb me, I'm hacking NASA with machine code. Ha ha ha. (that's an evil hacker laugh, btw).

My bigger gripe with Windows is the troubleshooter which have never worked ever. Would you like Windows to try and fix this problem. Sure, but maybe we – you and me – should agree now that you're not really going to fix it are you?

Anyway, I gave up.  I had no wish to spend the rest of my evening doing battle with Windows, a war in which I've yet to see a victory.

[Morat]

The most common error is, of course, the "An Error". Users report it all the time.

[Feanor]

Indeed, the windows troubleshooter is a waste of bytes.

[Kim]

Anyway, I gave up.  I had no wish to spend the rest of my evening doing battle with Windows, a war in which I've yet to see a victory.

The best you can hope for is mutually assured destruction with fdisk...

[ian]

As it turned out, it only took about 10 minutes to smartenify the electricity meter, which was far less time than even the most tentative skirmish with Windows.

[citoyen]

The most common error is, of course, the "An Error". Users report it all the time.

I like the ones that give you an error code, typically a four-digit number or similar. It has no readily apparent meaning, but at least I can google it for a full and detailed explanation, and even occasionally come up with something I can understand.

[Mr Larrington]

The ongoing failure to complete the installation of $UPDATE on Bruiser McHuge, the big PC in the Estate Office, is accompanied by a QR code.  Which disappears as soon as you look at it.  Whichever Microsith droid thought THAT was a good idea wants badly to be tied to a post and shot in the face with a blunderbuss loaded with his own shite.

[TheLurker]

The most common error is, of course, the "An Error". Users report it all the time.

I like the ones that give you an error code...

Right up to the point where it's Microsoft and they re-use the same one for tens hundreds thousands of different faults, especially that all time classic 0x80004005. Which, roughly translated to human, means, "Oh shit.  Something went wrong, but we don't know what."   There are others, but that one ...

[darkpoint]

My favourite was always:

An error occurred, please inform your system admin

I am the admin, do you want to give me a clue?  how many letters?

[Mr Larrington]

Likewise the ones along the lines of “I'm sorry Dave, but I'm afraid I can’t do that.  Please contact your network administrator”.

[citoyen]

Right up to the point where it's Microsoft and they re-use the same one for tens hundreds thousands of different faults, especially that all time classic 0x80004005. Which, roughly translated to human, means, "Oh shit.  Something went wrong, but we don't know what."   There are others, but that one ...

 

[SteveC]

That was one thing I really liked about working with HP1000s back in the day.
Every manual (and there were loads) had an Appendix A, error messages. A list of the errors, however obscure and unlikely, that the system could generate, along with what to do about them.

[Afasoas]

It's Windows. Sigh. Come on, Microsoft, it's 20-fucking-20, humans have been using their phones as hotspots for several months at least. Maybe even years. It's got to be an official thing that can be done.

Microsoft's Windows usually complains of limited connectivity when:
- No IP address is assigned from a DHCP server
- DNS queries cannot be resolved.
The trouble shooter will try and fix this be effectively restarting the network connection.
And technically it is right; the computer is connected to a network and packets can be emitted. It is essential protocols on top of the physical network that are not working.

Either there is a connectivity problem which means packets are getting lost between the computer and the phone. Or there's a fun VPN/network-filter thing breaking the network stack on windows. Or the phone isn't hot-spotting properly.

The Networking stack in Windows, excepting Vista, is something that does work reasonably well, or at least has broke less often than on the other OSes I've used.

[ian]

Yeah, but I just wanted to connect to a mobile phone personal hotspot, which ought to just happen (and it did on the Mac without preamble). And the cheeky little bugger of a troubleshooter claimed to have fixed it, but by re-connecting to the house wifi, which – as solutions go – is splendidly evil.

But any 'limited' connectivity in practice means no connectivity because they want the internets.