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Black Screen of Death Not Microsoft's Fault
Barence follows up to the ongoing Black Screen of Death Saga by saying "Microsoft says reports of 'Black Screen of Death' errors aren't caused by Windows Updates, as claimed by a British security firm. The software giant claims November's Windows Updates didn't alter registry keys in the way described by Prevx, which said that the Microsoft Patches caused PCs to boot with just a black screen and a Windows Explorer window. Microsoft is now blaming the problem on malware. Prevx has issued a grovelling apology on its own blog."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Grovelling? How sad it is that an honest apology gets an insult. If you find "We apologize to Microsoft for any inconvenience our blog may have caused." as grovelling, then I feel very sad for you and your vision of how people should relate to each other.
When users are happy to type "sudo rm ...", it doesn't really matter how impervious the system is.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Maybe one day Microsoft will get rid of the Windows Registry. It's like putting port holes on the bottom of your boat. Sure, they let you see the fish, but sooner or later one is going to break and sink your ship.
The Windows registry has always been a bane of Windows use since it's inception.
What do you want them to replace it with? hundreds of .conf files scattered randomly about the filesystem, with no standard format?
After having used Linux and Windows and OS X systems for years, OS X does this right.
Yes there are "hundreds of conf files". But they are not scattered around, they are all in ~/Library/Preferences.
And they are usually named via the company name + app convention, like com.apple.mail.
And as opposed to being in "no standard format", they are all plist files (which are basically XML).
So it's easy to find where they are, easy to figure out what plist file belongs to what, and easy to edit or remove them as needed. If there is corruption (which I have never actually seen in practice) it would be limited to a single file - and an app encountering a preference file it could not read would simply replace it with a new default version. You would at worst lose a few custom settings for one app - and even then only as long as it took you to pull a backup of that single file out of Time Machine, since it's easy to restore the preferences for a single application from any backup.
However, I have to add that even if you went with a Linux system where the conf files are scattered all over in many different forms, I can say with confidence it is still 100% better than the nightmare of the registry. In practice the files are very easy to edit regardless of format, it's really only the question of the location that gets annoying.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have 700-800 plist files in my Preferences directory. All those widgets I tried, apps I installed, removed, run one time.
It must be like 1 line of command on Terminal or basic "Finder" order by date to find the old/unneeded ones and delete them but I don't bother. Why? Because it has zero effect on OS X. OS X wouldn't really care if there were 1000000 pref files there since it is not its business to maintain them let alone read them.
On Windows, while I hate the idea from the beginning, if you don't clean up your registry, OS will do it for you. Last time it was like 20% overhead required to clean it up at boot. If you get enough junk on that already huge, complex file, it will effect the entire performance of system. Windows _has to read_ that gigantic database to function and find its way in it.
ps: Now you understand why Windows technical user switchers insist on having "uninstall tool" or be amazed at "no add remove programs" on OS X? They generally think having redundant, old files, needless files will somehow effect their system. You can even add "universal binary haters" to that camp. I don't blame them, I blame Windows.