The computing stuff rant thread

[geoff]

Microsoft screws up your data...who knew? 

[Mr Larrington]

Microsith has also screwed up mine.  Backed up the data disk on the old PC, powered on the new one, restored the backup.  Most of the file permissions are b0rked.  Whole directory trees are inaccessible.  Format drive, mount backup as a disk, copy everything over.  This will take at least three hours.  Bah.

[Mr Larrington]

No, it won’t, because that didn’t work either.  Remove drive from old PC, bung in new one, doesn't appear in File Mangler.  Replace in old one which now decides it won't boot because the boot device has gone walkabout.  Give up and repair to the bathroom, there to lie in cool water until I stop feeling sick from all the rolling around on the floor plugging stuff in and looking for dropped screws.

Piss.

[Mr Larrington]

Policy of backup upon backup seems finally to have paid off as everything that had fscked security settings in the pukka backup also has at least one not-fscked version somewhere on TowersNet.

[Mr Larrington]

And another thing, Microsith.  It's 2020.  Storage costs peanuts.  So why do you make it so fucking difficult to move your so-called “libraries” onto a disk that doesn’t have the operating system?  On it?  Here's a thought: why not, when $LUSER starts Windies for the first time, ASK them where they want to put Stuffs of divers sorts instead of having to do:

• stuffs that doesn’t work, followed by
• tricksy and potentially dangerous titting about in the registry?

And don't get me started on “Group by” in the “Downloads” wossname.  I use this mainly for keeping the install programs for all sorts of stuff, so I want it sorted by name, you fucking chumps.  Not by “today”, “yesterday”, “the other week” and “megayonks ago”.

[Feanor]

Microsith has also screwed up mine.  Backed up the data disk on the old PC, powered on the new one, restored the backup.  Most of the file permissions are b0rked.  Whole directory trees are inaccessible.  Format drive, mount backup as a disk, copy everything over.  This will take at least three hours.  Bah.

I've only just noticed this thread, so too late to help, but a bit of info...

On A Windows system with an NTFS filesystem, all the files have an Owner, and also various Permissions for other Users.
This is called the Access Control List, or ACL.

In the situation where you have an existing hard drive containing files from an old windows install, and mount it as a secondary drive in a new windows installation, and then wish to copy files from the old drive to the new, then you will encounter permissions problems.

Because the User on the New System is not the same as the User on the old system, you are regarded as a wrong 'un, and access is denied.

Even if the User Name is the same, that's not good enough.
The User Name is just a 'Pretty' display name.
The actual 'user account' is a long unique ID called an SID.
The SID for user Fred on the new system is not the same as the SID for user Fred on the old one.

In this situation, you need to use your Admin account Fred on the new system to 'take ownership' of the files on the old disk.

[Mr Larrington]

Microsith has also screwed up mine.  Backed up the data disk on the old PC, powered on the new one, restored the backup.  Most of the file permissions are b0rked.  Whole directory trees are inaccessible.  Format drive, mount backup as a disk, copy everything over.  This will take at least three hours.  Bah.

I've only just noticed this thread, so too late to help, but a bit of info...

On A Windows system with an NTFS filesystem, all the files have an Owner, and also various Permissions for other Users.
This is called the Access Control List, or ACL.

In the situation where you have an existing hard drive containing files from an old windows install, and mount it as a secondary drive in a new windows installation, and then wish to copy files from the old drive to the new, then you will encounter permissions problems.

Because the User on the New System is not the same as the User on the old system, you are regarded as a wrong 'un, and access is denied.

Even if the User Name is the same, that's not good enough.
The User Name is just a 'Pretty' display name.
The actual 'user account' is a long unique ID called an SID.
The SID for user Fred on the new system is not the same as the SID for user Fred on the old one.

In this situation, you need to use your Admin account Fred on the new system to 'take ownership' of the files on the old disk.

I tried that.  It still complained bitterly and wouldn’t let me access my photos or music (though it was quite happy with assorted other inconsequential gubbins).  But it happily allows me to Do Stuffs with the same files if I copied them from a NAS.

<== Was a VMS BOFH when ACLs first appeared in said OS.  Their presence in Windows is thus probably the fault of Dave Cutler.

[Tim Hall]

For yesterday and today's computery chaos you'll need:

(a) outsourced tech support
(b) Dropbox for business
(c) Unspecified computery problem for a colleague
(d) over keen use of the delete key buy someone at (a).

Marvel out the messages flashing up on the screen as files get deleted! Just like that bit in Clear and Present Danger when the baddie is covering his tracks with Harrison Ford in the next office. Hollywood OS FTW.
Gasp as the netjbex grinds to a halt
Curse as the netjbex is still running at snail pace this morning as the gazillion files are being restored.

[Mr Larrington]

“I know” said Mr Larrington, “while you have the new Babbage-Engine in bits to add extra diskery, why not put the memory from the old one into it as well?”

Because it doesn’t fucking fit, that's why not

Also, why did the new one object to the extra SSD and hurl me into the BIOS, whence I exited and the box booted just find, complete with all disk present and working?  Stupid article.

[Kim]

Just like that bit in Clear and Present Danger when the baddie is covering his tracks with Harrison Ford in the next office.

I generally forgive that one, because non-technical users are that stupid, and because that film contains one of the most realistic^[1] attempts to crack a password I've seen Hollywood manage.

(click to show/hide)

[1] Our hero takes the encrypted files to the CIA's super top head computer h4xx0r, who instead of firing up some password-cracking program on their top-secret mega-mainframe, just starts manually trying random combinations of family birth dates from the subject's file.  Harrison Ford wanders off, shaking his head in disbelief, but is called back because the correct combination is found before he reaches the door.

[Greenbank]

[ian]

So, I fix the parental laptop. Full reinstall of Windows 10. Put everything back. Reconnected email etc. Sent it back, tested and ready to use.

Less than one week after I sent it back to them, he's broken it again. FFS.

[SoreTween]

F###ing computers.

• UPS is dead.  I shut everything down during a long powercut on Monday and now the bastard UPS will not switch on.
• Desktop acting wierdly this morning so I rebooted it (old habit, I'm on Mint now) - endless POST cycle.  Eventually I figured out the BIOS was corrupt.  The flattery was only giving 2.1v but it doesn't entirely stack up as it was only rebooted not power cycled.
• Still wouldn't boot with everything plugged in but would with just keyboard, mouse & screen.  By a process of elimination it seems our scanner is dead.  There was a very short power cut yesterday, at a guess that's what killed it.

I say again, f###ing computers.

[Ginger Cat]

The big update for Windows 10 which is out at the moment. Whatever you do, try to avoid installing it.

It wiped out my Outlook and printers- basically it stops ever remembering email passwords and asks for them every time you log in. Then tries to resync the whole account- sometimes it works and sometimes not. Solution- switch email client (if not already done). Printers (especially HP) probably need removing and reinstalling, if you're lucky the printer will be a new-ish one and will reinstall. The client 365 email I have, I had to remove that totally (view via webmail only now).

No doubt I will discover over the next few days some other "features" it has left me with.

A friend who has an IT business confirms these "features" are a characteristic of the update and he's not putting it on his clients' machines until the issues are sorted.

Thankfully my SO is computerate and fixed stuff but I've lost a good day of work due to this.

Grrrrrrrrr.

GC (in growley mood).

[Mr Larrington]

The big update for Windows 10 which is out at the moment. Whatever you do, try to avoid installing it.

It wiped out my Outlook and printers- basically it stops ever remembering email passwords and asks for them every time you log in. Then tries to resync the whole account- sometimes it works and sometimes not. Solution- switch email client (if not already done). Printers (especially HP) probably need removing and reinstalling, if you're lucky the printer will be a new-ish one and will reinstall. The client 365 email I have, I had to remove that totally (view via webmail only now).

No doubt I will discover over the next few days some other "features" it has left me with.

A friend who has an IT business confirms these "features" are a characteristic of the update and he's not putting it on his clients' machines until the issues are sorted.

Thankfully my SO is computerate and fixed stuff but I've lost a good day of work due to this.

Grrrrrrrrr.

GC (in growley mood).

See also rants passim about its refusal to mount elderly NAS disk drives as, well, disk drives.  Though it's perfectly happy to have them as "network locations"

The new box in the Great Hall hasn't got it yet but there were many Bad Swears when the laptop and the Estate Office machines updated.

[TheLurker]

The big update for Windows 10 which is out at the moment. Whatever you do, try to avoid installing it.

It wiped out my Outlook and printers- basically it stops ever remembering email passwords and asks for them every time you log in. Then tries to resync the whole account...

If this is release 2004 then banjaxed Credential Manager might be the problem.

[ian]

Microsoft Word. God, I hate it. It's the software equivalent of despair. Abandon all hope, ye who open Word.

I have to replicate a document, so I need to know where some text boxes (I think they're frames in Word-speak) are in the Word document, and how big they are. Is there anything in the everchanging nest of ribbons and menus, the formatting settings, anything at all willing to divulge this information? I gave up trying to count notches on the ruler and printed the bloody thing out and used an actual ruler. Old skool.

[Polar Bear]

The big update for Windows 10 which is out at the moment. Whatever you do, try to avoid installing it.

It wiped out my Outlook and printers- basically it stops ever remembering email passwords and asks for them every time you log in. Then tries to resync the whole account- sometimes it works and sometimes not. Solution- switch email client (if not already done). Printers (especially HP) probably need removing and reinstalling, if you're lucky the printer will be a new-ish one and will reinstall. The client 365 email I have, I had to remove that totally (view via webmail only now).

No doubt I will discover over the next few days some other "features" it has left me with.

A friend who has an IT business confirms these "features" are a characteristic of the update and he's not putting it on his clients' machines until the issues are sorted.

Thankfully my SO is computerate and fixed stuff but I've lost a good day of work due to this.

Grrrrrrrrr.

GC (in growley mood).

See also rants passim about its refusal to mount elderly NAS disk drives as, well, disk drives.  Though it's perfectly happy to have them as "network locations"

The new box in the Great Hall hasn't got it yet but there were many Bad Swears when the laptop and the Estate Office machines updated.

The big update for Windows 10 which is out at the moment. Whatever you do, try to avoid installing it.

It wiped out my Outlook and printers- basically it stops ever remembering email passwords and asks for them every time you log in. Then tries to resync the whole account...

If this is release 2004 then banjaxed Credential Manager might be the problem.

This problem has not affected me at all and I was curious to understand as to why.  On reading various articles it seems to imply that if you use a local account as oppose to a Microsoft account which I do, then you will not be affected.  I don't use Edge either but I do use Google Chrome which is apparently affected but in fact no issues at all for me.

My reluctance to become enslaved to these $corps may well have been my food fortune this time.

[Mr Larrington]

I did have an odd password-related glitch in the matrix last week when trying to download Stuffs from one particular site, but then it went away of its own accord

[Mr Larrington]

Bloody fondleslab! I removed the emoji keyboard, because I have no need to pepper my nonse with little pictures of fucking unicorns and iOS goes and bungs an “Enable Dictation” key there instead.  I don't want to talk to the thing either.  Just make it go away

Edit: made it go away

[pcolbeck]

The SDN controller for this fabric is a complete git. You stupid piece of software the TOR switch no longer exists its been de-racked and moved to use in a new fabric which you also control so why the f**k wont you let me delete it from the fabric without also deleting its redundant partner which currently is the only thing keeping the servers connected.
Now I'm going to have to get a cable monkey to run some fibre to another rack so I can move the servers to another pair of switches to keep them connected whilst i nuke the config for both TOR switches from orbit.
SDN is great they said, much easier than using the CLI .....

[Mr Larrington]

Thank you, Mega-Global Fruit Corporation of Cupertino, USAnia, for updating this fondleslab to iOS 14.  Now, Mega-Global Chocolate Manufactury of Mountain View, USAnia, if you could see your way clear to fixing Chrome so's it doesn’t need a restart every time I wake said slab from its slumbers, that’d be just groovy.

[Mr Larrington]

Babbage-Engine, why is your connection to TowersNet creeping along like a geriatric slof with a gammy leg?  You are supposed to be a Gigabit Thing, so doing a backup at 90 Mb/s makes you a Very Naughty Teddy, as does taking about an hour to add one album to iThings.  If a post-backup reboot doesn’t sort you out, there'll be Trubz0rz.

[citoyen]

I clicked on a bookmarked link to a shared Google Sheet this morning, but instead of opening the file it took me to a Google help page with instructions on how to clear my cache... WTF?

Tried logging in with a different account. Same happened.

Tried opening different files. Same happened.

Tried opening in Safari. Worked!

Tried opening in Chrome on a different computer. Worked!

So obviously a problem with this installation of Chrome on this computer. Can't be arse with going through the rigmarole of deleting and reinstalling it right now though.

Searched online for help and apparently this is a known problem that people have been suffering with Chrome going back AT LEAST THREE YEARS. But trying to find any useful advice in Google's help forums is an exercise in chasing your tail.

Working on my deep breathing exercises as an alternative to throwing the computer out the window.

[chrisbainbridge]

Interesting, Chrome on one computer has stopped opening my NhS email account. Password is correct and accepted but it just gives a page not found response.