I hate Windows

[PhotonWrangler]

So I've been running a Windohs machine using a RAID mirror array. Everything was fine until yesterday when one of the critical OS files got corrupted. No sweat, I thought - the mirrored drive should still have a workable copy of it.

Nope! The mirrored drive has the identical munged file on it, rendering both of them unbootable.

Why does Windoze have to be so damn delicate and cranky? Can't they write an OS that can just do it's thing and stay out of the way so I can work?! :whoopin:

Sorry, just had to vent. The machine will get fixed but it aggravates me to no end that these systems need so much babysitting.

 

[Carpenter]

That's the funny thing about mirror sets. The backup drive is an exact duplicate of the primary drive. At least if the RAID card is working right

 

[Valpo Hawkeye]

thank the heavens for Vista, I'm sure it will clean all this up...

 

[greenlight]

 

[Empath]

Valpo, according to CPF rule # 4:

4. Flaming/Baiting/Trolling/Banning
None of these will be tolerated. In most instances, you will be asked by a moderator to edit your post.

You're being asked.

Edit: Thank you!

 

[borax]

This happens a lot with mirrored RAIDs, because of being an exact copy. The best solution to this (if you want to continue with a mirror) is to make a backup of a freshly installed OS.

What I normally do is install my OS, update it, install the software I want on it, do a few scans, then make a backup. That way if anything goes wrong in the future, sure I might lose some files, but I can just restore it quickly, and not have to spend hours reinstalling software.

Of course, make sure to backup your files too so you don't lose those.

 

[PhotonWrangler]

Thanks for the advice, Borax. I'm on a different machine right now and I've already burned a CD of the files needed to repair the bad one. I also have a backup of the C:\ partition of the dead machine; I just don't have it on-site. Murphy strikes again!

 

[eluminator]

RAID is the bane of my existance. It's never made any sense to me, but it mocks me at every turn.

I have two machines with Asus motherboards. They both have two SATA connections I can't use because they are RAID only. Every time I think of it, it ticks me off.

So I bought a PCI to SATA board to plug in my new SATA DVD burner. Don't you know it wants to give me RAID? Fortunately it will also handle non-RAID devices even though it requires a "RAID" driver.

 

[PhotonWrangler]

I have two machines with Asus motherboards. They both have two SATA connections I can't use because they are RAID only. Every time I think of it, it ticks me off.

My dead machine has an Asus Mobo (A8 I think) and it has SATA RAID as well as IDE connectors. When I first built that machine, I was able to use a single SATA drive and it worked fine. When I was finished building it I slipped in a second SATA drive and ran the mirroring sync-up utility to get it caught up with the first drive.

 

[raggie33]

i dislike windows to the thing that i haten the most is the updates g how many updates do they need belivwe its a lot

 

[zigziggityzoo]

Staying on topic...on how I happen to hate windows...

I was in a lecture today, where the professor used his Windows XP laptop, giving a presentation in Powerpoint, and cycling between said presentation and Internet Explorer (Version 7! He uses Windows update!). At any rate, During the presentation, every time he switches to IE7, a nice little info bubble pops up in the taskbar corner.

"Help make Office better!

Want to learn about how you can improve the features you use? Click here to learn how..."

EVERY single time he closes the window, and EVERY single time he cycles between the programs, it pops up again.

Thank you, Microsoft, for one of your excellent innovations.

 

[snakebite]

i use raid to protect important data.
the os is considered disposable.i set up whatever os and apps,do all updates,and use norton ghost to make a backup.
no user data goes on the boot drive.
if something eats it no loss.
the raid gets backed to a large single drive and a tape.
i store the large disk(external usb) and tape offsite.

 

[jch79]

Hi - I'm a PC. And I'm a Mac.

 

[TigerhawkT3]

Yep, that's RAID. Exact mirror copy of everything, good and bad.

zigziggityzoo, I'll bet that if your professor had clicked on the balloon instead of closing it, and then canceled whatever it wanted to do, it would have left him alone for a while. For example, when I see the "unused icons on your desktop" bubble, I click it, then cancel the wizard that pops up. If I just close the bubble, it pops up again a minute later.

 

[ViReN]

on my desktop I use Use 2 Physical HDD
1) System Drive (holds all programs, installed) and nothing more usually 40 - 80 GB is sufficient. (I NEVER STORE ANYTHING IN TO MY DOCUMENTS FOLDER)
2) Data Drive (holds all Installables, MP3's, Documents, Videos... everything else that I need and should be saved) + occassional backups of very important data either monthly or yearly

whenever my system crashes... I simply re-install everything... (its pain) but then data remains safe.... .. I plan to take a copy of System HDD after my Main Install next time.

Ideal setup should have Mirrored Data Drive and System Drive with backup of both from time to time, depending upon your requirement.

 

[light_emitting_dude]

If your running XP try system restore (that is if you can get into safe mode)

 

[gadget_lover]

RAID is the bane of my existance. It's never made any sense to me, but it mocks me at every turn.

I have two machines with Asus motherboards. They both have two SATA connections I can't use because they are RAID only. Every time I think of it, it ticks me off.

The good news; You can use it with one disk. In the raid software, set it to raid 0. That will act just like an un-raided disk.

Raid protects against hardware failures, not software corruption. I recently worked at a shop where they had everything on a NAS (network attached storage). They thought they were protected because the NAS was replicated to a a remote site. The shop was going to 100% windows, including the backup and intrusion detection system. The next virus that gets through is going to be quite a surprise.

Now for the "I hate windows" rant;

I have a computer that I use just for games and microsoft centric software like GPS map installers. I boot it once every 4 or 5 months. It works perfectly well, but MS is no longer supporting Win98, so no new patches, not even security patches. So I have to shell out $100 to have an OS that has current patches.

Second rant; That same system is seldom used, so I made it dual boot; Win98 + Solaris 10. Memory was cheap, so I dropped a gig in the system. WhenI rebooted onto windows a month or two later that darn thing had all sorts of fits. Seems win98 can't handle 1 gig. SHEEESH! It's not like 1 gig was impossible when win98 was created. Woudl it have been that hard to code in a few kernal paramters to handle it?

Daniel

 

[PhotonWrangler]

Seems win98 can't handle 1 gig. SHEEESH! It's not like 1 gig was impossible when win98 was created. Woudl it have been that hard to code in a few kernal paramters to handle it?

Daniel

I agree. I seem to recall that the older versions of Windohs would actually run slower if you added ram beyond a certain point because it took a lot of CPU time to handle the paging. Or something like that.

Remember when Bill said "nobody will ever need more than 640k of RAM"? :huh:

 

[nemul]

me too.... always letting light in so i can't use my flashlight!

 

[borax]

Seems win98 can't handle 1 gig. SHEEESH! It's not like 1 gig was impossible when win98 was created. Woudl it have been that hard to code in a few kernal paramters to handle it?

Daniel

This was a common problem and there is actually a fix for it, you have to edit a system file / reg file manually to do it. Try doing a google search for how to make win98 work with more than 64mb of ram.

I had an old computer running win98 on 512mb of ram, and then I was reading some articles in a PC magazine (don't remember which) about win98 not being able to recognize more than 64mb of ram, hence why it would always give memory errors and/or run slowly if it had more than that. The article walked through how to edit the system / reg files to fix the problem and after I did that it ran smooth as a hot knife through butter and there was never any trouble after...until the hd failed a couple months later...

As for hating windows...I'm not a big fan of windows, but I've -never- had any trouble with WinXP on my personal computer. Never had any trouble with Win2K either, guess I'm just lucky...:laughing: