Win7 Can Delete All System Restore Points On Reboot

An anonymous reader writes "Astonishingly, the so-called system restore feature in Windows 7 deletes restore points without warning when the system is rebooted. This forum thread on answers.microsoft.com shows some of the users who have experienced the problem. Today I did a clean install of Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit (no dual boot), and noticed that whenever the machine rebooted after installing an application or driver, the disk churned for several minutes on the 'starting Windows' screen. Turns out that churning was the sound of my diligently created system restore points being deleted. Unfortunately I only found this out when Windows barfed at a USB dongle and I wanted to restore the system to an earlier state. This is an extraordinarily bad bug, which I suspect most Windows 7 users won't realise is affecting them until it's too late."

Comments

In Soviet Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

system reboots you!

Re:In Soviet Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need to communist to have your system rebooted, just install McAfee...

Re:In Soviet Microsoft

[tuxgeek]

Best decision I ever made was to dump Windows in 2002.
Life has been relatively uncomplicated since then
Sucks to be a Win7 user today. I feel your pain

Re:In Soviet Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Although you are joking, this has always been my pet peeve about Microsoft software.

Even in Windows 7, something that supposedly all these users designed, the system decides when to reboot after a Software Update. This includes when you have unsaved open work and cannot be around to postpone a reboot.

I understand all the replies about security and crap, but seriously, if someone can click a postponement indefinitely the auto reboot crap is just like airport security theater anyhow.

Items like that just prove that it's the same old Microsoft under all the marketing BS. Doesn't surprise me that Restore Points can get whacked during a reboot. Microsoft cares about your personal work/data/system as much as the Soviet Microsoft joke would suggest.

Re:In Soviet Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

If you haven't used Windows since 2002, what basis do you have for having any opinion about current versions of Windows?

Re:In Soviet Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

If you haven't used Windows since 2002, what basis do you have for having any opinion about current versions of Windows?

Most people don't have to eat excrement to know that it will taste bad.

You, however, are an exception.

Thanks for playing, Mr. Troll.

Re:In Soviet Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

some of us actually use point and click interface with great productivity gains. stop playing the command line elitist and embrace the 1990 advancements on user interfaces*

*doesn't apply if you actually jumped to a mac or on a system with a proper graphic stack, but chances are that you're a linux elitard and deserve all the pain X11 will give to you, while pretending to like the 80x25 terminal console.

How prevalent?

[valros]

So wait, how prevalent is this?

Re:How prevalent?

[The MAZZTer]

I thought I had this, but then I double checked and realized I had my system restore max space set to 700mb. My single restore point was taking up 555mb of this. I upped the space. Maybe some people are being too over zealous with cranking down the space? (I forgot how much it took up when I set it I guess.)

[Edit: Looks like the accepted solution on that thread simply increases the space allocated to System Restore! I could be right, maybe?]

Re:How prevalent?

[camperdave]

It is impolite, if not rude, not to throw up a warning message or error message, though. You never delete data without giving the user a chance to say no.

Re:How prevalent?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell that to Gentoo Linux and their default WIPE /tmp ON BOOT option!

Perhaps my own fault for keeping stuff i need in /tmp, but still no excuse.

Re:How prevalent?

[slimjim8094]

Are you kidding me? /tmp is TEMPORARY! It's transient - that's the whole point!

Programs that store data of ANY permanence in /tmp are broken. People who store data of ANY permanence in /tmp are foolish.

Re:How prevalent?

[wdsci]

I would temper the grandparent's statement by saying it depends on which data you're talking about. I mean, /tmp is supposed to be a temporary storage location - even the name tells you so. The whole point of it existing is so that you (well, the OS) can cache things there and trust that they're not going to sit around forever hogging disk space without having to remember to delete them explicitly. So I would expect that to be wiped on boot. (Same applies to temporary folders in Windows or any other system) Other data, though, I would generally expect to be kept. Especially System Restore points, which are pretty much useless if your last one is going to get deleted automatically.

Re:How prevalent?

[jhoegl]

Well just this week we had someone with a corrupted explorer.exe, it kept crashing.
After checking everything we figured it was an unseen virus or something and went to look at restore points
The restores were set to 0KB (seriously, they had KB as an option for a restore point on a Win7 install), so that was our evidence.
However, Im wondering if this is not somehow part of the bug. Ill wait and see what MS finds

Re:How prevalent?

[Z00L00K]

In any case - whenever I have encountered problems with Windows I have never been able to get any useful recovery by using the "Last known good configuration..." It has always been a reinstall if I weren't able to boot normally.

So I would say that the system recovery feature is erratic as it is at best.

Re:How prevalent?

[MichaelSmith]

my own fault for keeping stuff i need in /tmp

Yeah....

Re:How prevalent?

[Illogical Spock]

You are right about the times when the system is crippled and can't even boot. But when the system is OK but something starts to behave not that well just after you install a driver, a software or something like that, the System Restore can help you most of the time, specially when some computer illiterate friend calls you asking for help. 9 out of 10 times someone called me JUST AFTER the problem appeared (again, problems caused by the installation of something, not viruses of things like that) the System Restore solved the case. Some examples are the USB ports don't recognizing anything after a driver install (and no, uninstalling the driver and reinstalling the original one didn't help) or a very, very old version of something installed on top of a newer system that have affected some DLLs.

 

Re:How prevalent?

[Illogical Spock]

It can be the problem. But is this the default for Win7? If so, it's Microsoft's fault anyway, as if a single restore point eats up 550Mb the default total limit could never be set to 700Mb.

Another question is why the restore point uses half a gig, when XPs restore points are a lot smaller than that...

Re:How prevalent?

[Shadow of Eternity]

Foolish? I think that's an understatement. Using temp for storage is like getting angry when people flush your shit down a toilet.

Re:How prevalent?

[Spy Hunter]

On the contrary. It is *extremely* rude to throw up a confirmation dialog before every trivial system maintenance task.

As has been pointed out below, System Restore is basically only useful for resolving problems so severe they prevent your system from booting. Once your system has booted you don't really need older restore points, and they take up a *lot* of space. Deleting them is absolutely the right decision for the average user. The *real* problem here is probably the UI for creating system restore points not mentioning the deletion policies and generally misleading people into believing that creating restore points manually is a useful thing to do.

These people creating restore points all the time remind me of the people who get obsessed with defragmenting their disks every night...

Re:How prevalent?

[spongman]

i don't know about you but i prefer to be alone while i'm taking a dump, and I generally flush before opening the door. so, if someone is in there with me flushing before i leave, then i'd probably be a little pissed.

Re:How prevalent?

[Cylix]

That is where I keep all of my important documents.

I have a nasty habbit of wiping out my home directory and ever since the janitor app died it's been a good world writable location.

Now I can share important projects, personal documents and data troves.

In fact the tmp directory worked so well for my data needs that I moved all of home to that directory. I wanted to facilitate synergy between users.

Eventually a friend gave me a wonderful suggestion of migrating the entire operating system to tmp. Through a clever array of symlinks I have moved all the original folders to tmp and created links in the original locations. I now have the best of both worlds!

This is pretty much all thanks to a friend of mine who has a sys admin gig at a nearby college. He's even helping me work out a new system of backups via the high speed tape interface "/dev/null."

He is pretty friendly so if you are on irc you can look him up under his nick BOFH for some friend sys admin tips.

Re:How prevalent?

[__aaclcg7560]

There are some people who view taking a dump as an artistic expression and don't bother to flush the toilet. At one company I worked for, this became known as a "cherry bomb" whenever you come upon an unflushed toilet. Seriously, some people shouldn't be eating at Taco Bell everyday.

Re:How prevalent?

[ls671]

Well, haven't you ever been to one of those modern facility where people designing the toilet flush the toilet for you as soon as you stand up ? I have ;-)

This company even has an adaptation for your home:

http://www.touchfreeconcepts.com/products/auto_flush_toilets.php

Re:How prevalent?

[ADHVfFsvjLIViaglKlqo]

Speaking of auto-flushing toilets, am I the only one who is somewhat disturbed that the urinal knows when I put my manliness away?

Re:How prevalent?

[binarylarry]

I know, it's like FreeBSD's rm command, it literally DELETES your files without warning.

Crazy!

Re:How prevalent?

[deniable]

LKG isn't System Restore. It simply rolls back part of the registry (HKEY_SYSTEM/Current Control Set) to the last time it booted successfully. Any damage to HKEY_Software or the file system isn't covered. I've also had things crash after it decided that the current CCS is good, making the next reboot a pain. It's mostly there to deal with buggy newly installed drivers.

Re:How prevalent?

[ikono]

Because XP is nearing a decade in age.

Re:How prevalent?

[DeadboltX]

It makes perfect sense to remove the oldest restore point when there is not enough room to create a new one. No matter how much disk space you allocate to System Restore at some point you are going to fill it up. Having it prompt the user would cause it to prompt every time after that. For people who don't understand System Restore very well this kind of prompt might lead to more harm than good. If someone gets a warning saying their system restore space is full, they might clear it out completely, especially if they were getting this message on a regular basis.

Re:How prevalent?

[ls671]

> am I the only one who is somewhat disturbed that the urinal knows when I put my manliness away?

The though never crossed my mind so I would say it doesn't bother me at all.

On the other hand, having to stand up from the toilet and move around to flush when I am not sure I am done yet to avoid sharing my smell with the rest of the office as much as possible bothers me a little bit ;-))

Re:How prevalent?

[brxndxn]

I'm just glad it doesn't flush while I'm still going.

Re:How prevalent?

[Mistlefoot]

15% of disk space is the default size.

The point of system restore is to ensure that if you mess up your computer with recent updates or changes you have an easy restoration option. So, on a typical new PC with 1TB you would have 150GB. Per the grandparent, a typical restore was taking 555mb for him. You do the math.

Now to assume that a user will be prompted on every single boot or system change after the limit is pretty silly when this will almost only ever affect someone who has changed from the default value. Users who leave this setting to default will never suffer this fate.

It seems that the submitter of the article has "tweaked" his machine so much that he only saves 1 restore point and therefore waits EVERY boot for the system restore to do what it should do.

Re:How prevalent?

[iPhr0stByt3]

Just to help you understand: "Last known good configuration" is a copy of your registry (or rather a subset thereof) at the point of your last successful log in. If you log in successfully, but something does not work, then the "last known good configuration" was just saved and is of no use in that situation. This is NOT system restore.
System restore is more than just the registry. If you cannot login (even after trying "last known good configuration"), then you can try system restore by booting off of the OS CD/DVD and "repairing" your installation. If you log in successfully and something does not work, then you can also try system restore. And yes, system restore WILL fix your computer by bringing it to an older state at which everything worked, given that: 1) you don't have hardware issues 2) a virus has not infested your restore points and 3) you have restore points before the problem started.

Re:How prevalent?

[jabbathewocket]

The default? yes to overwrite the oldest with the most recent is the default.. this is not a problem it is by design.. and if users who where clueless would quit trying to make room for porn by underallocating for stuff like this (these are the same people who delete hibernation file, turn off virtual memory space, etc) rather than NOT having half their filesystems full of duplicate or triplicates of things (zip in temp folder, zip in downloads, zip moved to desktop, then the extracted zip in a subfolder, and then the actual "home" for that file.. and usually a few other stupid copies of the exact same file elsewhere.. As to the size.. restore points are a mirror of the changes made during whatever action happens to be going on. a restore made between large software installs can be enourmous (ditto service packs, etc)

Re:How prevalent?

[Anpheus]

The restore points use something similar to a snapshotting filesystem. So the restore point causes copy-on-write to occur on all data on the disk after it's created. So naturally, restore points can become quite large if you have any sizable amount of data churn on your disk. (I do, and my restore points are enormous as a result.)

However, I have set my disk to allow not only 30% of its total storage for restore points, and I also have a daily backup set up. The daily backup is greatly aided by the snapshotting, and so it runs in only a few minutes to an hour (if there's been a lot of changes) and the backup itself is snapshotting using the same features. So my oldest restore point is 8/30/2009 at 7:00PM, and that's when I bought the hard drive I'm currently using for backups.

There are pluses and minuses. But a lot of problems in any OS can be traced back to people doing the same thing that's the root of all evil in programming: premature optimization. They don't understand the implications of what they're doing, and reduce the allowed size of restore points, or manually create dozens (even though it's automatically done every time a program is installed or an update is applied.) Or they just plain don't know what they're doing but fire up the registry editor anyway. These things, or things like them, are bad ideas in any OS.

Re:How prevalent?

[magnusrex1280]

Yeah, that's pretty hilarious... "Perhaps my own fault for keeping stuff i need in /tmp, but still no excuse." Perhaps? No, definitely your own fault.

Re:How prevalent?

[Hognoxious]

Several times windows update has borked internet access outside the local subnet[1]. In one of the cases it wouldn't even connect to MS, so it couldn't fix itself. Rolling back to a restore point did the trick. I then waited a few days till the fix for the fix was out...

P.S. I have it set to "Check, but ask before installing". Anyone else find that sometimes it just goes ahead and does it?

[1] I think it does this when there's a pending update for IE.

Re:How prevalent?

[lukas84]

The default is 5% of the system drive.

For the default PC partitioning scheme (one giant partition with everything on it), this makes perfect sense. For people that use a system partition that's to small (20-30GB), they'll wind up without enough space.

Re:How prevalent?

[BikeHelmet]

Once your system has booted you don't really need older restore points

This is completely untrue. If the OS was perfect, you'd be correct, but Win7 is flawed. Just a few weeks ago I fixed an issue where an update had completely broken DNS for someone.

I had to roll back almost 2 months for the customer. I guess that's how long it took for DNS entries to expire, and them to get around to bringing it to me?

If you approach it from the angle that Windows 7 is flawed, and any part could break at any moment(from installing an update, a new program, a driver, etc.), then clearly deleting old restore points is not the way to go.

Re:How prevalent?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps my own fault for keeping stuff i need in /tmp, but still no excuse.

ProTip: You also should not store files you need to keep in the recycle bin in Windows, nor stapled to your front lawn.

I know that sounds like silly advice and everyone should know better, but clearly you are already storing permanent files in a temp folder that gets erased every boot, so my guess is you need to be made aware of the dangers of storing your tax returns in the recycle bin too :P

Re:How prevalent?

[Lally Singh]

.. False dichotomy. Warn only the first time.

Re:How prevalent?

[michelcolman]

Tell that to Gentoo Linux and their default WIPE /tmp ON BOOT option! Perhaps my own fault for keeping stuff i need in /tmp, but still no excuse.

I wish I had mod points, that was a hilarious comment, I wonder why so many people apparently didn't get it. What's the term for that, ironically challenged?

Re:How prevalent?

[hairyfeet]

Nope. I have run into this bug, and I have 20Gb set for SR. I figured it was a dual boot issue, as I noticed whenever I booted into XP32 and then back to W7 x64 my SR points went bye bye.

For those that have a single boot I would recommend Comodo Time Machine as I have been using this for quite awhile and it works great. Unfortunately it doesn't like how W7 changes partition letters on the fly, so if you dual boot with W7 installed on anything other than C: it won't work. But if you are running single boot XP/Vista/W7, it is a great tool to use and much better than SR IMHO.

Re:How prevalent?

[golden age villain]

A friend on mine was once saying that his grandma had the habit of storing all of her documents in the trash bin because it is easy to access.

Re:How prevalent?

[qubezz]

Whereas Windows 7 is more like when someone takes an upper decker at your party - you are in for a nasty surprise later...

Re:How prevalent?

[St.Creed]

Which version of windows? I've seen VIsta recover from many really bad driver issues by rolling back to a restore point. XP however was less robust.

Re:How prevalent?

[mysidia]

The user already decided their intent in selecting the size of the restore area. Don't expect the system to need babying about this.

And it's not truly an error condition, or even a system event. It is a selection of how much past data to retain, just like your web browser's cache size selection. A notification dialog every time you booted, as soon as you reached the restore point size you had config'ed would be very annoying.

The clueless users who don't think to set the restore point area size just click 'OK' anyways.

Re:How prevalent?

[mysidia]

Um.... on most REAL unix systems, /tmp is a memory disk, data there gets mapped from memory, therefore everything saved there is stored in either physical RAM or Swap, and goes away at every boot.

This is what most systems do... Gentoo's use of a persistent filesystem for a temporary scratch space, is ass backwards, and generally messed up behavior.

Re:How prevalent?

[naplam33]

hey hey, that it's temporary doesn't mean you want it wiped every time you reboot!! i don't know how prevalent it is now but php web servers used to store sessions on tmp, so, yeah it's temporary data, it doesn't hurt too much if it's lost, but you don't want users having to re-login just because your server rebooted do you?

Re:How prevalent?

[aed]

The urinal knows nothing...
The janitor on the other hand, sitting in his room behind his desk filled with rows of video monitors, VCR's and 'flush' buttons...

Re:How prevalent?

[dissy]

Tell that to Gentoo Linux and their default WIPE /tmp ON BOOT option!
Perhaps my own fault for keeping stuff i need in /tmp, but still no excuse.

To be fair, I blame this on a lack of good Linux documentation.

Referencing the gentoo howto titled "Production database environment on tmpfs ramdisk" section 3 subsection 2a, they provide clear and simple wiring guides for attaching a car battery to your RAM, thus removing the need to reboot and preserving your /tmp data.

To summarize, get yourself a car battery and a set of old jumper cables.
Cut the connectors off one end of the cables, and strip about 1/8th inch of insulation off the end, twisting the stranded wires together.

Then, take the exposed wire end of the jumper cables, and carefully align it with the 5 volt pin 134 of your first DIMM.

Take care not to touch either of the pins next to it, or any other exposed surfaces!
The 3/4th inch diameter wire of the jumper cables will make this especially tricky, but persistence is a virtue. Keep trying, it will fit eventually!

Just duct tape the negative wire to the metal of the case.

Then attach the jumper cables to the battery following normal car jumping procedures (Ground first, then hot, with the engine running) and crank gentoo over.

If you would like to help others avoid this simple mistake and many hours of frustration, you should join my freshmeat project group to form a policy to vote on the wording of the bug report to raise this documentation files priority for inclusion with the official documentation.

Re:How prevalent?

[johncadengo]

[Edit: Looks like the accepted solution on that thread simply increases the space allocated to System Restore! I could be right, maybe?]

Wait! You can edit slashdot posts after posting? I thought they were final! When did this happen?

[Edit: Wow. This is amazing. Looks like its working here on my end. How about you guys?]

Re:How prevalent?

[jonadab]

Well, I saw all the system restore points disappear on the one Win7 workstation we have so far where I work, but that system was at the time experiencing serious problems due to what turned out to be a stick of bad RAM, so I'm not sure whether any software bug was necessarily involved in that instance.

Re:How prevalent?

[Anonymous Coward]

Using temp for storage is like getting angry when people flush your shit down a toilet.

Last year a co-worker of mine had to replace the computer of our PHB of IT. When he set up her Outlook again he took the liberty of emptying her Deleted Items since it appeared a lot had accumulated there. When PHB found out she was irate and demanded he get the contents of the folder restored. She said she stores things there for safekeeping.

Re:How prevalent?

[Anonymous Coward]

You have been trolled. You have lost. Have a nice day.

Re:How prevalent?

[digitig]

I suppose the time to be disturbed is when it can't tell. Time to start looking at that spam!

Re:How prevalent?

[PopeRatzo]

People who store data of ANY permanence in /tmp are foolish.

There's a wealthy woman on my block who's been married so many times that she keeps her wedding pictures in a temporary folder.

(DVD's are on sale in the lobby, don't forget to tip your waitress.)

Re:How prevalent?

[GigaplexNZ]

This is what most systems do... Gentoo's use of a persistent filesystem for a temporary scratch space, is ass backwards, and generally messed up behavior.

Except that using the persistent filesystem does give the benefit of larger capacity.

Re:How prevalent?

[fireylord]

hey.... but you don't want users having to re-login just because your server rebooted do you?

one word.
YES!

Re:How prevalent?

[ZosX]

So every time the system restore cache is maxed out, it is supposed to warn you before it deletes files? You know how incredibly annoying that would be? You do realize that system restore is supposed fill up to its maximum and then start deleting older restore points as you make new changes to files. Imagine being asked nearly daily, if not more often, "would you like to delete the older restore point and create a new one?"

If the original parent is correct and these people just have system restore turned down to a small number, then really its their own fault their old restore points are gone. I mean, do these people expect them to be there for ever or something?

I've had system restore fail on xp, vista, and 7. I wouldn't exactly rely on its tecnology for something mission critical like a backup.

Re:How prevalent?

[Hatta]

We've got a bathroom full of auto flushing urinals and toilets at my work. The bathroom also has motion controlled lights. Somehow the flush sensors aren't quite calibrated correctly, so the first person to enter the room after the lights have been off for a while gets to experience a symphony of half a dozen toilets flushing together. It's pretty weird first thing in the morning.

Re:How prevalent?

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, I'm doing the math... 555 millibits is ... You know, for a bunch of Aspie tech types, there sure is a lot of sloppy use of units around here.

Re:How prevalent?

[Anonymous Coward]

This appears as if it might be a common practice. The number 2 person of a company I was doing systems work for did the same thing. 2 years of emails that she might want to refer to at some time stored in her deleted folder along with thousands of truly unimportant emails such as spam. I explained it was kind of like storing her pens and pencils in her trash can.

Turned out she was fired and I took her position to help out. Needless to say I didn't have time to sort that mess out. Just deleted her stuff and moved on.

Re:How prevalent?

[mhelander]

well....that sounds unorthodox, but in the end may be quite viable I suppose? Plus it has the added bonus that when your Granny deletes a file the computer will do what one might actually expect and delete the file, giving her back free space on the drive, rather than moving it to some weirdo trash bin :-)

Re:How prevalent?

[Alphathon]

Some people? Nobody should eat at Taco Bell, or any other fast food place, every day. Heck, anybody who eats the same thing everyday, no matter how nutritious it is, should stop. It just ain't healthy.

Re:How prevalent?

[dlgeek]

Yes, it's absolutely your fault, and there is an excuse. There's this thing called the Linux Standard Base (LSB) which was put together by all the major distros and is an agreement on how a variety of things should work in Linux to maintain a consistent platform. It's mediated by the Linux foundation. It includes by reference the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FSH) which is a map of how the filesystem should be laid out and how it should behave. The FSH recommends that /tmp be wiped on boot. They comment that it's only not a requirement because system administration decisions are outside the scope of the document.

Gentoo is just following the appropriate standards. I know that almost all Debian-derived distros delete /tmp on boot and I believe Red Hat derived ones do as well but I'm not sure about that. Regardless, it is the proper behavior as recommended by the appropriate standards.

Re:How prevalent?

[PhoenixFlare]

i don't know about you but i prefer to be alone while i'm taking a dump, and I generally flush before opening the door. so, if someone is in there with me flushing before i leave, then i'd probably be a little pissed.

Ah, I miss those days, before I had cats...

Re:How prevalent?

[b4dc0d3r]

If I did not create the data, I should not be involved in its deletion. If a service is supposed to happen invisibly (like shadow copy) it should work invisibly (by not deleting needed files, and by not asking if it's okay to delete unneeded files). So if you're writing an automated process, you're taking ownership of keeping track of what's needed and what's not.

In this case, manually kicking off a system restore does not mean I created or own the data. I just asked that the process be initiated. The user does not own the data, and does not own the responsibility of managing it.

Re:How prevalent?

[c 0xFF]

There are some people who view taking a dump as an artistic expression ...

Oops ... at first I thought you were talking about the film industry. What a crappy mistake to make.

Re:How prevalent?

[xOneca]

I have a tmp folder in my home for temporary stuff (unpack sources, quick scripts, etc). It's supposed to be temporal, but there are some things since January untouched.

Re:How prevalent?

[yoyhed]

I personally crank it down to 1%, because I usually have at least a 250GB hard drive. I've found the most useful thing in a system restore point is the registry backup, which is only maybe 50MB of it.

Oh, and this whole story is a terrible troll. THERE'S A BUG IN WINDOWS, better post a news story on Slashdot! :-)

Re:How prevalent?

[theurge14]

This is possibly the most disturbing software-to-real-life-object analogy I have ever seen on the Internet.

Re:How prevalent?

[v1]

Are you kidding me? /tmp is TEMPORARY! It's transient - that's the whole point!

so windows should be storing restore points in such a place? talk about "that's the whole point"...

Re:How prevalent?

[Vectormatic]

let's try

Re:How prevalent?

[Skapare]

That's an exceeding narrow role for restore points. Just because it comes up does not mean it is usable, or stays usable indefinitely when it is usable for a time. There should be a clear dialog for policy, with the option to specify how far back to keep restore points indefinitely (expressible by number, or space required, or maybe even flagging specific restore points). I would definitely keep at least some restore points across reboots.

Re:How prevalent?

[PincushionMan]

Darn. Edits must only be for LowIDs.

Re:How prevalent?

[CAIMLAS]

Except, restore points aren't useful when they don't work or don't have a restore point from before the change that was made.

Realistically, they need to be granular and track every change.

My experience with restore points has been that they are an absolute necessity on Windows 7, and that they unfortunately do not work all that well. Every third or fourth time I boot W7 (I spend most of my time in Linux with absolutely 0 problems but a couple games...) the damn thing bitches about changes which have been made. Usually it results in uninstalling a program (a game) which was installed multiple weeks and reboots prior, a "existential" driver (keyboard, nvidia card) getting rolled back or uninstalled, and so on. Completely worthless, since there's no apparent cause for the issue (drivers were working fine through multiple reboots).

Just last night I was trying to helpmy mom who installed some hostile software on a W7 machine a week or so back. She wasn't able to use the restore functionality because they only went back a couple days and the ones I'd made after building the system. So the system needs to be reinstalled anyway.

Re:How prevalent?

[Anonymous Coward]

if users who where clueless

Ah, Irony, thy name is jabbathewocket.

Re:How prevalent?

[gemada]

woosh!

Re:How prevalent?

[slashnik]

Let me check
[Edit: Works fine for me]

Re:How prevalent?

[Rexel99]

True, rude to prompt for each little issue, but at the time of creating a restore point (rather than when rebooting) noting, 'this restore point will remove previous ones. You can expand the size or allow the clean up yes/no' would be nice, just to inform us before it happens.

Re:How prevalent?

[zx2c4]

a) Most users desire this behavior, since /tmp is supposed to be temporary.
b) It can easily be fixed by wipe_tmp="no" in /etc/conf.d/bootmisc.

Re:How prevalent?

[jimfrost]

Oh please. This is Windows, where someone thought it was a great idea to put up annoying bubbles telling you that you have unused icons on your desktop, while simultaneously remaining completely quiet about the drive that is erroring away towards certain death.

In my personal experience, that is.

Frankly I think the only reliable restore point is a back-up image.

Re:How prevalent?

[kruhft]

/tmp has always been for data that is not to survive reboots. /var has always been for data that *is* to survive across reboots.

That's how it's always been in Unix land.

Re:How prevalent?

[Khyber]

"Anyone else find that sometimes it just goes ahead and does it?"

I have it turned off and I *STILL* get updates. I've also removed the HP assistant so that doesn't do the same damned thing twice.

Makes me miss the days of DOS.

Re:How prevalent?

[DeadboltX]

What would be the point of warning only the first time? What could your options be?

'Your Allocated System Restore space is full, would you like to:'
"Keep your current system restores and never create any new ones" or "Delete the oldest restore point in order to make room for new ones"

The only usefulness in warning at all would be if you could manually select which restore points to remove (if you were picky about that kind of thing) which would require a prompt on every check point creation after the allocated space was filled.

Re:How prevalent?

[lpq]

I've often experience restore point corruption on Win7.

What's more amusing is one I've seen twice -- a system restore failing and not being able to reverse the partial restore.

Then bunches of files are just 'gone'...mostly executables and little things like that that no one would miss or need...

Of course, no one was expecting more than Beta quality out of Win7, where they? I've only had to reinstalled 4 times, and feel fortunate so far. Win7 ain't your WinXP...WAY too much interpretive code -- slightest hiccup and the results are large compared to WinXP...alot more 'power', but the interface isn't at nearly the stability level of XP -- maybe never will be, MS seems focused on DRM working more than OS working, in order to fulfill guarantees to media producers. If those fail, MS will be hurt big-time in its desire to become the lynch-pin in your media playing experience.

If your OS fails, well you don't have anything important on there, do you?

Don't rely Windows backup either -- haven't had it work successfully yet to reliably perform a system reinstall after it ate itself -- because it doesn't keep revisions -- only keeps the latest, and usually anything severe enough to cause system corruption to the level that it eats itself, has been saved in your last backup.

Great that they removed named the 'named', full and incremental backup utils, 'ntbackup' from XP and before, and replaced it with a gutless "save last copy" version (can't let users store old versions...no telling what they might go back to).

Don't expect reliability on Win7, yet. It HAS gotten better -- MS is sending out patches and collects data on broken programs (if you let it), and every once in a while it will come back and tell me of a solution -- either a 3rd party patch for a program having been released, or (more rare) a patch of its own). Those they are probably rolling into a Service Pack update unless they are Critical or Important.

Just my experience.
-l

Re:How prevalent?

[Unequivocal]

I find that "Safe Boot" is often a workable compromise between reinstalling and last known good config. I agree that LKGC is pretty worthless (in my experience also). But Safe Boot has been valuable to me numerous times where I could get into the OS, figure out what's failing (by reading error logs, etc) and removing the offending driver or whatever, and rebooting. The biggest enemy of this strategy is windows' feature of reinstalling drivers that are "damaged" (ie intentionally disabled by me), so that has to be accounted for also in safe boot. Just another 2 cents on fixing broken things in Windows-land..

Re:How prevalent?

[Reziac]

I don't know how Win7 does it, but in XP only the first restore point is large, and not always then. It apparently only records incremental changes, not whole snapshots.

Re:How prevalent?

[RockDoctor]

someone takes an upper decker at your party

It's the little pieces of useful shit that you learn on SlashDot that make it such a useful resource. I'd never have thought of doing that until now.
Thank you.

Re:How prevalent?

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn... yesterday i still had 4 mod points ;-)

Well done!!

Re:How prevalent?

[BikeHelmet]

Woohoo!... we've got some Microsoft shills in the house. I went from +4 to Troll in a few hours.

Mod as you will - it doesn't change the facts. Silently deleting restore points is a bad idea.

Re:How prevalent?

[Richy_T]

On the other hand, many Linux distributions never actually wiped /tmp. This caught me out the first time I had to reboot a Debian system as I had some downloaded packages in /tmp. Fortunately, they were easily re-downloaded.

Personally, I'd say it makes more sense to have a cron job which deletes files when they get old or when /tmp starts getting full. Temporary may be temporary but who should decide how temporary? If I spend 4 hours downloading a file to /tmp and then a reboot occurs, that's time wasted for no apparently good reason if there was plenty of room in /tmp. Previously I have used /scratch for files which are only supposed to last for a trivial amount of time.

Then again, there are always other options for temporary storing of files that need to survive a reboot. and since this is something I wouldn't want to be hit by again, I'm happy to work with it but I just wanted to point out that it isn't as clear-cut as some would suggest.

Re:How prevalent?

[Hognoxious]

I have it turned off and I *STILL* get updates.

By 'it' do you mean the computer? 8-o [twilight zone tune]

Re:How prevalent?

[freedom_india]

Your toilets also flush automatically? WOW! I thought only Urinals did that.

Not That It Matters Much...

[Nemyst]

I don't know if anyone's been in the same situation as I have, but the only times I've had to use system restore were a disaster. For virus infections, the restore data tends to be infected too, so that's useless. For restoring from bad drivers, applications, etc. the only time I had to do that I went from no network connection to BSoD on boot which took me two days to fix.

I have disabled System Restore now, and I never ever suggest using it to anyone I know.

Re:Not That It Matters Much...

[ls671]

The only time I used system restore is when I couldn't reboot with new installed components or service packs so maybe MS decided that if you rebooted successfully, then you do not need the restore data anymore, hehe... ;-))

Re:Not That It Matters Much...

[rdnetto]

If you're going to use a 3rd party app, for God's sake keep a copy of the app as well. I used Norton Ghost once, and when I finally needed to restore the image I realised that the new version couldn't read the old format. Getting an old version was a pain.
These days my preferred backup solution involves dd|tar, which works perfectly on dual boot systems (although it works just as well from a LiveCD).

Re:Not That It Matters Much...

[Anonymous Coward]

I strongly disagree. I've fucked up several software installs on my machine by editing registry entries in an attempt to disable some DRM attached to certain programs. After which even a complete removal and reinstall of the software did not fix it. A system restore saved my ass twice. System restore may not have worked for you, but for others it has worked.

Re:Not That It Matters Much...

[B1oodAnge1]

I, for one, agree with you completely.

I clone my partition if I want a backup.

Re:Not That It Matters Much...

[B1oodAnge1]

Maybe you shouldn't manually edit the registry without backing it up?

Re:Not That It Matters Much...

[BikeHelmet]

I always disable it for XP and back. I leave it enabled for Windows 7.

Out of the half-dozen Win7 machines I fixed this month for friends/neighbours, 100% of the issues were caused by faulty Windows updates, and had to be corrected by either System Restore or (failing that) repairing from DVD.

It's a bit surprising that viruses aren't the enemy now - but rather updates are. It's a bit like Ubuntu, except Microsoft wants $120+ for the privilege.

Re:Not That It Matters Much...

[Zaphod-AVA]

I repair Windows systems often at work, and system restore is a very valuable tool when you are trying to avoid a format and reinstall. Even if the restore itself fails, or contains infected files, it is possible to manually pull out the registry files to undo registry damage.

Keep in mind that Windows 7 uses volume shadow copy instead of a hidden directory for system restore, and is therefore much less likely to be intentionally infected by malware. It's no substitute for a good backup system, but disabling system restore could easily end up turning a repairable problem into an unsolvable one.

Re:Not That It Matters Much...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the more I think about it, it wasn't a registry entry. I had manually removed a service that I shouldn't have.

Re:Not That It Matters Much...

[Anonymous Coward]

This argument is completely unacceptable.
Restoring data on the same disk has the limitations you underlined and a couple others, sure. There are many scenarios where people would want it. Trying out stuff and easily uninstall it. Having a copy of some data you are going to alter.

If an OS offers a functionality which silently disables, thats an HUGE bug which would stop the release in most commercial, opensource and AMATEUR projects.
And if the functionality involves data backup... man, if this were a linux or OSX fault Microsoft would buy two pages of major newspapers to tell it to everyone.

As for me, if an OS started churning minutes on the hd for no apparent reason, id ditch it. Thats what happened to my vista installation 20 mins after purchasing this laptop BTW.

Re:Not That It Matters Much...

[hoggoth]

Take a look at fsarchiver. All the benefits of a dd image, with many advantages.

It only clones blocks that in use, it compressed the image, and it can restore to a different sized partition.

Re:Not That It Matters Much...

[Anonymous Coward]

SR is bullshit. I tried exactly once to use it and got a message that the restore point (selected from its own fucking list) was not valid. Generalize from one occurrence -- so what? -- the goddamned thing failed exactly 100% of the times I tried it. One kick in the face per customer, please.

It's no different from all this "cloud" horseshit. You're turning over your data (and your business) to an outside agent. You have no guarantee they'll respond when needed.

Man up -- take responsibility for your own shit -- no matter how difficult or expensive it gets. If you don't, well, you've just set a very low value on all of it. If you can't afford to implement a good, secure backup plan, you likely can't afford good insurance or good employees, either.

Your call.

Re:Not That It Matters Much...

[rdnetto]

From the package description:

It's still under heavy development so it should not be used for critical data.

Thanks, but if I need more flexibility I'll just use 'tar cpzf Backup.tgz /'

Re:Not That It Matters Much...

[hoggoth]

Have you tried using tar on a Windows partition? It won't run when you restore it. There is some Microsoft voodoo that tar doesn't do.

Not a bug

[Dunderflute]

It's not a bug. It's a feature!

System restore stinks. Image your disk

[syousef]

System restore has always been awful. It doesn't play well with anti-virus, it's slow, it's always been buggy. Worst part is I've only had it work to fix a problem for me ONCE in the couple of years I bothered with it. These days if I want to save the state of a computer that is working well I simply image the disk. More expensive and potentially time consuming but a hell of a lot more reliable.

Oh and don't image it with Windows 7 Microsoft tools. I had an issue with Vista's system restore tool once that had me scrambling for a copy of Virtual PC to read the images. (Vista system restore would just wipe the existing partitions then fail with an error before restoring a thing).

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

tar zcvf `date '+%Y%m%d'`_configs.tgz /etc

m ... strange that your config backup isn't working. Mine is working beautifully!

Off course, I don't need to use it, ever, because my operating system works.

Come on guys! it's 2010! Computers are awesome, and we are exploring space more than ever. We discovered the whole human genome, and everyone has a touchscreen in their pocket! But ... many are still using windows and praying to their $invisible_man_in_the_sky. The future is here, but half of you didn't get the memo.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[gandhi_2]

My man,

the beauty of windows isn't windows.

it's active directory and all the other systems that ms puts together for fleet management.

i'll slap the shit out of the next person who says openldap. it is pretty easy to do stuff like point an entire OU to a WSUS server and specify how updates are done.

they've built an impressive system for enterprise setups that would take a shitload of work in linux. pushing down group policies to a fleet of macs?

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[Enderandrew]

It is easier to push updates to Linux boxes, except those updates aren't just a small smattering of MS updates, but rather for every application installed on the box.

There are some nice virtues to Microsoft's myriad of enterprise tools. But suggesting that Windows boxes are easier to manage for software updates is not one of them.

Then again, one can also argue that instead of fucking with group policy and MS exploit patches, you could just run Linux and run secure boxes that are far easier to secure in the first place.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[Anonymous Coward]

i'll freely admit that AD beats anything Linux has to offer in a number of ways, but for patch/package management, RHEL's tools blow WSUS out of the water. WSUS is misery to administer, and offers no way to legitimately push updates, only to make them available the next time the server tries to update. It also forces you to do everything by group, no one off specific updates to a particular server, which is a minor thing, except for when you need it.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[Anonymous Coward]

Start slapping then, because AD _IS_ LDAP. No if's and's or but's. You can configure LDAP on linux just as much as you can with Microsoft's shitty MMC. Think mysql vs postgresql... It's still SQL.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[gandhi_2]

you are a pussy, AC.

AD is ldap + bind + all the ldap client software + stuff linux doesn't have like gpos + ability to integrate with wsus, exchange, forefront, etc.

AD is BASED ON ldap, sure enough. it's way more than that.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[qupada]

I keep my /etc in a git repository now. Commit changes after each round of system updates and if I change anything major, keep a couple of copies of the repository on different machines. It has saved me from myself at least once when I kept the wrong copy of a config file after an upgrade.

You have to put up with a few apps (cups and wicd are good examples) that needlessly change files in response to hardware events, but in general the strategy has served me well.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[Keruo]

Are you saying Samba4 doesn't exist?

Granted, theres no production release yet, but there are few people running it in production already.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[Runaway1956]

What parent says. I've tried system restore most often on machines that were infected. System restore points always seem to be infected - it's like an infection automatically makes Windows discard old restore points, and create new infected restore points. The best strategy is to back up the system after a fresh install, and every time something major or something important is installed. Of course, the VERY best strategy is an enterprise solution, where the system is backed up regularly - like each Friday evening.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[phillymjs]

pushing down group policies to a fleet of macs?

Workgroup Manager. Between that and Apple Remote Desktop there's practically nothing you can't manage on a fleet of Macs that authenticate against OD on an OS X Server. Software updates, backups of workstations, printers, etc...

Of course, if you have your little heart absolutely set on managing Macs with actual Microsoft group policy on a DC, you can use Centrify DirectControl.

~Philly

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[gandhi_2]

It was my understanding that mac:wm was mased on MAC addresses and not rout-able. maybe i'm out of date on that?

I ran WM inside a LAN, and it seemed like a gui-fied LDAP. which was nice, but you can auth macs against openLDAP and put a web front end on the server. which would be much cheaper than the mac server.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[Ralish]

Security policy is just one aspect of Group Policy, and a small one at that relative to the total set of configurable options. In essence, if it is a configurable Windows setting, Group Policy can configure it; including settings that have no GUI front-end outside of the GPO configuration window (ie. typically registry settings without a Control Panel UI). The point being, of all the configurable settings in Windows (or any OS), security settings tend to be a minority considering everything else.

That aside, while deploying secure systems in the first place is unquestionably the smart thing to do, security tends to be dynamic, and security configurations change. When they do, even on Linux, a mechanism to quickly and easily update security settings company wide (e.g. for LDAP authentication or NFS/SMB authentication) is obviously incredibly useful, and pasting together scripts that modify the relevant files (hopefully at the individual settings level instead of just nuking the entire file with a new copy and potentially wiping out custom settings) is a clunky business at best, and definitely not elegant.

You're correct hands-down though that Linux is far superior for pushing out whole applications through an internal repo or other solution. There's some interesting stuff going on with using WSUS to deploy 3rd-party apps, and AD can do it with MSI packages, but it's still not even close to the power of rpm/deb and associated distribution technologies generally, and certainly not as easy to setup and manage.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[gandhi_2]

no, samba4 will be awesome if it ever gets done.

thing is, it will never match AD. just look at the list of samba4 functionality to see how ambitious AD is (and samba4 hopes to be). by 2012 we may have something MS built 12 years ago.

and then...will it interface seamlessly with an endpoint security suite like forefront? or will there be a version of clam for it? can it integrate with WSUS? i hope so. still a ways off.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[Anonymous Coward]

Hehehe. You are so obvious, and so predictable.

Your website ... "commie smasher" ...

  - You run m$ software and you believe it's better.
  - You most likely run only privative software
  - You believe communism is inherently a bad thing
  - You believe anyone that is not a raging capitalist is a communist.

I am sure you go to church on sundays, and suck on Allah's/God's/whatever's dick too. Let me guess .. you live in Texas, right?

Stupid asshole.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[siride]

Be careful. Git doesn't track file permissions and ownership, which, unlike in most repos, is actually pretty darn important for /etc.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[StuartHankins]

RHN lets you create a template and push it out. Also lets you patch a bunch of servers at once, reboot them etc. I can do it from my iPhone from anywhere in the world.

Of course if you know scripting at all you can automate just about any task to any group of machines. RPM makes sure dependencies are not broken too. Ksplice lets you update the kernel without rebooting. I wish Windows had these kinds of tools.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[Anonymous Coward]

i'll slap the shit out of the next person who says openldap.

Gandhi! You're doing it wrong!

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[Anonymous Coward]

Your pushing OU's like you work for Novell..... active directory my ass

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[DigiShaman]

For small to medium size businesses (3 to 8 servers), keep servers and workstations in separate OUs and apply the WSUS configuration to a GPO linked with an OU containing only workstations. This way, you can manually be in charge of server updates through the standard Windows Update applet.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[lukas84]

SCCM is pretty powerful, though. It can do a lot to deploy applications seamlessly. It's still nowhere near what Linux distributions can do out of the box for this, but it's better than AD and system startup scripts.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[Anonymous Coward]

"it's active directory and all the other systems that ms puts together for fleet management."
Yeah... especially when your AD crashes for good.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[lukas84]

The only way to clean a compromised system is a clean backup or a complete reinstall.

System restore points are filesystem snapshots. They can't help you with an infected computer.

I also see no reason in backing up desktop computers in an enterprise. Just reload the image and let SCCM reinstalled the applications needed on that machine. User settings will be on the server anyway.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[BikeHelmet]

tar zcvf `date '+%Y%m%d'`_configs.tgz /etc

Great backup plan! I did the same thing.

Off course, I don't need to use it, ever, because my operating system works.

Good for you. When my HDD died, I was left wondering how to restore the backup I had made.

After several hours of UbuntuForums.org and IRC (Strange how they tell you how to make the backup, but never tell you how to restore it?), I just did a fresh install onto a new drive, and extracted the few settings files I wanted. Overall it was a lot of hassle. Now I do this:

These days if I want to save the state of a computer that is working well I simply image the disk.

Trust me - it works way better.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[omglolbah]

Unfortunately the virtual machine running windows xp/7 on top of the linux machine would be just as vulnerable and you would need to deploy patches to that.
You would need this VM to get any work done..

As much as I love linux for my servers, I also realize that most of the corporate world cant live without windows-specific applications.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmz,

Windows? Easy? For companies?

Please consider the following 3 (of many) blocking issues that make Microsoft Windows completely useless in an (international) business environment.

How do you backup and restore an AD?
Not restoring the complete state, but imagine you just want to restore a single user that was deleted by accident? You can't.
For restoring the complete state, you even have to take the AD offline.
Can you imagine taking your entire fileserver off-line because you need to restore something?

For mail it is similar.
It's since Exchange 2007 that brick level backups of mailboxes are supported. You could do it before, but if you had a problem, Microsoft would not give support.

How do you use excel sheets between computers that have different language settings? (1.000,00 and 1,000.00 for numbers)
You can't.
It completely fails and breaks apart.
OpenOffice has it's own problems, but at least you can use it when working on a document that was created outside of your own country.
I realize for Americans this issue is not that big, but in Europe, with a lot of small countries with different settings, this IS a big issue.

How do you reliably use network servers and PC's in different languages, let's say printing on an English printserver from a Japanese client?
You can't because it uses different Unicode tables, and although it prints, it misses certain characters.
It's very subtle, but essentially it fails.

And I'm not even going to talk about all the inconsistencies in patches.
Another language in Microsoft is not just a language pack slapped on the English one, but it is a completely different codebase.
You can use language packs, but those have issues too and are inconsistent with the "real" language version.

I think I will stop here.
My opinion is: If you have a homogeneous setup, Windows might be the answer.
But for an international company, it's a nightmare.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[StoneOldman79]

I will admit AD is pretty neat for a Windows environment.
Although most features are copied from stuff company's already did before MS.
(E-directory & Zenworks e.g.)
On the Linux front I miss a REAL integrated solution with LDAP + Kerberos which is easy to setup.
IPA/FREE-IPA is getting there but its not really finished.
Desktop management...
All the windows tools for windows combined won't come even close to e.g. Puppet for management of Linux (desktops).

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[Anonymous Coward]

My ubuntu servers have been switching themselves off at night, and are powered on by the (ubuntu/vuurmuur) firewall just before working hours start. They never missed a beat. I spend about 3k on file, db, mail and backup servers, including a firewall, all networking hardware, UPS and all software. And I don't even want to know what OU or WSUS is.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[caluml]

tar zcvf `date '+%Y%m%d'`_configs.tgz /etc

Try date +%F for more concisosity. I made that word up, btw.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[rikkards]

My group manages 90000 workstations using SMS 2003, we are counting the days to go to SCCM, most of the annoyances disappear with it. Also we have started using the Preferences in GPOs and it is pretty impressive what you can do with it.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[rikkards]

Not sure about WSUS but we have been using ITMU through SMS 2003 to apply patches. With this one can force them on the machine. ITMU also allows you to specify a specific patch in the SMS Package. All done through the Windows Update Agent and SMS. With SCCM, which is the new version of SMS they have integrated WSUS with it so things may be different in there.
The only real annoyance is that creating the package is a tad clunky.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[kitgerrits]

it is pretty easy to do stuff like point an entire OU to a WSUS server and specify how updates are done.

Apparently, you haven't heard of Red Hat Network or Satellite Server.
It allows you to place all systems in groups and apply specific update packages to those groups.

Network Bare Metal Installation is blazing fast with PXE boot and kickstart.
System configuration can be completely automated with cfEngine or Puppet.

Even without these tools, basic scripting knowledge allows you to do this with pre-installed tools or little helper apps like clusterSSH

I admit all of the above tools have a rather steep learning curve, but they are fully customizable.
The only limit of these tools is your imagination.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[RAMMS EIN]

``the beauty of windows isn't windows.

it's active directory and all the other systems that ms puts together for fleet management.''

Yes, absolutely.

``i'll slap the shit out of the next person who says openldap. it is pretty easy to do stuff like point an entire OU to a WSUS server and specify how updates are done.

they've built an impressive system for enterprise setups that would take a shitload of work in linux. pushing down group policies to a fleet of macs?''

I'm not so sure about that part of your post. I don't know much about Windows (I don't even know what WSUS is), but, as near as I can tell, Windows admins swear by Windows, *nix admins swear by *nix, and VMS admins swear by VMS, and they all use the same argumentation: on $my_system, doing X is a breeze, but it's a nightmare on $other_system. Most of the time, they're wrong - they just didn't know how to do X on the other system. So, what are group policies, what do you use them for, and what makes you think that accomplishing that would be hard on non-Windows systems?

Also, from my personal observations, I see Windows admins doing a lot of running around and clicking mouse buttons, whereas I don't tend to see Unix admins a lot at all - but, when I seek them out, they are usually sitting at their desk, writing a script, reading the output of some monitoring process, or browsing some supposedly work-related website. Same for VMS admins. It makes me wonder if that is because Windows doesn't allow as much automation and remote work, because the Windows admins don't know how to do it, or because they simply like to do things manually and locally. I do know that Windows bombards me with popups and messages and warnings every time I use it. So maybe it is very nice for sysadmins, but, as a user, I hate working with it.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[vivaelamor]

i'll slap the shit out of the next person who says openldap. it is pretty easy to do stuff like point an entire OU to a WSUS server and specify how updates are done.

Why would you want OpenLDAP to do that? Things like Group Policy and WSUS are by and large kludges to do what most other systems manage with light scripting. I got so fed up of Group Policy's crappy application deployment that I was glad to find someone had written a lovely system written in Javascript called WPKG. I don't understand this fear of 'shitloads of work' on Linux, is it because not everything has a GUI? I long for the day that we can ditch Windows and move to Linux, I could pretty much make myself redundant after setting that up.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[LordLimecat]

and offers no way to legitimately push updates

You mean except for approving an update and setting the due date 5 minutes ago? That seems to work pretty well.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[Anonymous Coward]

it's active directory and all the other systems that ms puts together for fleet management.

And any time you save with that is eaten up via chasing malware infections and other random non-deterministic occurrences that (I find) happen on Windows.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

I actually don't use that method. I quickly wrote that line for the purpose of the post. I keep my server's /etc and other important dirs on SVN. It is the best way.

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[daniel de graaf]

He's probably using etckeeper, which is a wrapper that does keep permissions, ownership, and empty directories. It generates the commits automatically on update and daily for manual changes. Yes, I use it too. Very nice to be able to say "oh, looks like I broke the VPN configuration when I forgot to restart it last week... how did it look before?"

Re:System restore stinks. Image your disk

[WuphonsReach]

I keep my /etc in a git repository now.

Look at FSVS instead. It's designed for versioning Linux/Unix servers.

# cd /etc
# fsvs ci -m "getting ready to change stuff"
# (change stuff)
# fsvs ci -m "changed stuff"

I keep entire servers (except for temp files and user data that gets backed up in another manner) versioned using FSVS. The repositories are stored on a 2nd machine and I can use other SVN tools to browse that repository and review changes.

Don't rely only on system restore

[cosm]

Yea...uh...system restore...yea. Better off using a full disk imaging utility, or using a 3rd party backup manager like Acronis or whatnot.

Re:Don't rely only on system restore

[drolli]

Yes. if a system is important to you, then backup with a bare-metal restore is the only way to be sure.

Any professional who tells different is directly responsible for loss of data.

Re:Don't rely only on system restore

[TechForensics]

I'm not sure even tools like Acronis are really safe since they run under, and are subject to restrictions imposed by Windows. For example using Easeus Partition Manager to clone the boot partition of your main drive to another clean drive will not produce a bootable disk, even if you copy the hidden boot partition (whose raison d'etre M$ claims is bitlocker). I don't believe anything that runs under Windows will make a perfect duplicate of your boot disk-- if you want to have a spare drive in your desk that can be swapped in for your failed C:\ drive without a hiccup, do what I do and boot your system from, say, a FreeBSD Live DVD (I use PC-BSD) and use dd. That is as good as you can get, and I've proven it works (just don't boot the system with your clone installed alongside your boot drive). (Of course, be sure both drives are the same kind, i.e. PATA, SATA or SCSI.) (Note: Most Live Linux and Unix discs will not complete booting from a SATA optical drive-- not sure why. You must use PATA.)

dd if=/dev/ad0 of=/dev/ad1 bs=4096 conv=noerror (with Unix it's as easy as that, though the disk names in your system may be different). If you are going to do this, be sure your destination drive is the same size, or larger than, the source drive, even if you're only interested in copying the first couple of partitions (the partition table will be wrong, and that will cause an error, unless all partitions are present). What I haven't confirmed yet is whether you can shrink all partitions on your source drive so their combined size is smaller than a destination drive that's smaller than the source so that the partition table on the destination drive won't refer to areas beyond its physical boundaries, but logically, that should work. (How about cloning your C:\ drive to a nice (but smaller) solid-state replacement drive?)

It's too bad M$ doesn't make a more capable OS, but we know why they don't.

Re:Don't rely only on system restore

[biryokumaru]

...a bare-metal restore is the only way to be sure.

That, or nuking it from orbit.

Wait, what was the question?

Re:Don't rely only on system restore

[paulwye]

I don't believe anything that runs under Windows will make a perfect duplicate of your boot disk-- if you want to have a spare drive in your desk that can be swapped in for your failed C:\ drive without a hiccup,

Nope, Acronis (and I assume others as well--I specify Acronis because it was mentioned, and I use it) disk images can be used to do a bare-metal restore in the event of software or disk failure. You'd need either (a) previously-created rescue media, or (b) another machine with Acronis and (i) a spare SATA/IDE port or (ii) a USB disk enclosure. Works like a charm. In fact, IIRC, the replacement disk doesn't even need to be of the same size, except under certain circumstances.

Re:Don't rely only on system restore

[Enderandrew]

I've used Ghost and Clonezilla to make replacement bootable hard drives just fine. I can't imagine Acronis really fails in this regard, or it wouldn't be taken seriously.

Re:Don't rely only on system restore

[HeronBlademaster]

Note: Most Live Linux and Unix discs will not complete booting from a SATA optical drive-- not sure why. You must use PATA

Depends on the distro and your hardware. For example, Gentoo's minimal CD won't boot on my desktop (or wouldn't as of a few months ago), because it is missing drivers for my motherboard; Ubuntu's LiveCD works fine. (I only have SATA drives.)

Re:Don't rely only on system restore

[ls671]

> Yes. if a system is important to you,

I try not to keep anything important on windows boxes or laptops so I never have to bother to back them up. So far, the only thing I found out the hard way I had to backup is my configuration file for game controls that the Logitech Profiler uses. It took me quite a while to reconfigure my games when Windows failed.

In some way, I could pretend that I do not have to trust Windows for the integrity of my data. I use shares on my file server to save things and repositories when versioning is needed.

I would feel very handicapped with only a Windows box at my disposition. Yet, I realize that this is exactly what most people have. Most of the people I know lose data when their Windows computer crash. I just can't afford it so of course I also implemented a proper backup procedure on my Unix hosts but I swear I have none for Windows boxes.

Re:Don't rely only on system restore

[Machtyn]

See Partimage Is Not Ghost

Re:Don't rely only on system restore

[Anonymous Coward]

Yesterday I discovered Ntfsclone. This is a nice tool that can copy an NTFS partition more efficiently than dd (only copies the parts in use), and it can also back up an NTFS partition (only stores the parts in use). The same suite also includes ntfsresize, but be prepared for XP to force a disk check if you resize the partition.

Re:Don't rely only on system restore

[Concerned Onlooker]

I can heartily recommend Carbon Copy Cloner. :-)

Re:Don't rely only on system restore

[Skuld-Chan]

It's too bad M$ doesn't make a more capable OS, but we know why they don't.

You mean like the built in ms-backup tool like the one Windows 7 comes with? Which allows you to make system images, incremental snapshots and restore the entire system from the recovery console if needed?

BTW - when you spell MS with a $ you make it sound like your the kind of person who hangs out on Star Trek forums arguing about whether Captain Picard or Captain Kirk was a better Starfleet officer.

Re:Don't rely only on system restore

[StuartHankins]

Let me second the idea of using Acronis. Before I converted my XP laptop to a VM it saved my ass twice from hard drive failures. Inexpensive for workstations but a little pricey ($800 last I checked) for servers.

Re:Don't rely only on system restore

[devent]

Aren't Ghost and Clonezilla Live CDs? I know, Clonezilla is a LiveCD, which was the point of the GP post.

Re:Don't rely only on system restore

[StuartHankins]

I can confirm that Acronis works. Twice I inserted brand-new drives and it set them up and restored everything, down to the files in the Recycle Bin. This was using v9 and v10.

Re:Don't rely only on system restore

[Anpheus]

The fact is, advanced tools are just that, advanced. Windows comes with bare metal tools, and the ability to properly configure a daily, weekly, etc, backup on external disk. And there are more advanced features for the adventurous. I guarantee you I won't lose data if my Windows box dies. I have daily backups, a RAID10 internal with a hot spare, blah blah blah. But I'm not a typical user.

And neither are you. We both know how to use our OS to protect our data, even if it involved what appears to be wizardry to the average user. I really wish backup were easier. Windows 7 actually informs the user regularly that they don't have a backup, and will continue to warn them if a backup ever fails. That's great progress, but it's maybe not yet good enough. Let me know when a popular Linux distro supports bare metal backup and a snapshotting filesystem with the ability to "go back in time" to a good state, I look forward to that day. Until then, you have your wizardry, I have my slightly-less-magical-looking GUI that manages most of it for me built in. *shrugs*

IMO, I'd like to get to the point where OSes, Windows, Mac, Linux, really, seriously warn the user the moment their data isn't safe. It's one thing for Windows 7 to pop up a notification balloon, or for OS X to complain that Time Machine isn't set up, but I feel like there should be more than that. And on Linux, I don't think there's anything comparable at the moment.

Re:Don't rely only on system restore

[lukas84]

Obviously, Kirk is the better Captain.

Re:Don't rely only on system restore

[shutdown -p now]

The irony is that Acronis boot media is Linux-based.

Re:Don't rely only on system restore

[DrSkwid]

btrfs does snapshotting and copy-on-write from read only media.

I back my volumes up to Venti, it does black coalescing and daily snapshots, I can go back to any date I choose.

Gentoo ftw!

Re:Don't rely only on system restore

[xtracto]

You see... the problem I see is that theoretically "System Restore" is a feature of Windows, which has been improved for Windows 7.

I assume it kind of competes with Apple Time Machine (which I have never used). With the Win7 release, all these "features" are supposed to be available to *non tech savvy* users, like mom and pap (not *your* geek mom and pap of course).

Now, what happens if this "feature" provided by the OS does not work as expected, or if it has some problem? Mom and pap do not know about "full disk imaging utility" or arconis partitions backups or whatnot.

Re:Don't rely only on system restore

[mikechant]

There's only one type of person sadder than those who use 'M$', and that's the type that complains about it.

No, wait, there *is* one sadder type of person. The type that complains about people who complain about people who use 'M$'.

I'll get my coat...

Re:Don't rely only on system restore

[kitgerrits]

Let me know when a popular Linux distro supports bare metal backup and a snapshotting filesystem with the ability to "go back in time" to a good state, I look forward to that day.

I'll admit that Linux does not intelligently discern when your system has been successfully booted, but:
a/ Bare Metal Backup
Ever heard of 'dd', 'dump' or 'tar'?
They make a binary, filesystem of file backup of your system, respectively.

b/ Snapshotting
You mean like LVM snapshots?
As a general system, they provide copy-on-write snapshots for any block device, be it filesystems or Virtual Machines. http://www.heckofaworld.com/good-times-with-lvm-snapshots/

Re:Don't rely only on system restore

[Astronomerguy]

Acronis makes a perfect copy of the bootdisk. Not sure about the retail version, but the enterprise version has tools that will let you easily restore it perfectly on any PC, even if it has all non-identical components compared to the source PC. I've used it to restore several machines to 100% working order. An hour or so of reading a book while it works its magic beats the hell out of a day of swapping disks and being asked if I'm _really_ sure I want to run the installer.

Re:Don't rely only on system restore

[Anpheus]

BTRFS isn't release quality yet. I definitely wouldn't run that without a strong backup procedure (which is what you have.)

Re:Don't rely only on system restore

[Anonymous Coward]

And when you spell M$ WITHOUT the $ you make it sound like you are a butt wipe.

Re:Don't rely only on system restore

[Anpheus]

DD, Dump and Tar are great if all you want is crash consistency, which is not what Windows does. When Windows creates a binary snapshot the snapshot is of an essentially offline system. All critical data will be in a known good state. Any applications that run can participate in the snapshot process and additionally assert that their data is in a known good state. If you were to do a dd of a running MySQL with a database measuring in the tens of gigabytes, you would lose data and possibly corrupt your database. Even if you use a snapshot through LVM, you're essentially in a crash consistent state, and restoring that backup will require MySQL to rebuild everything. PostgreSQL has better logging and will simply roll back or replay transactions as needed.

LVM snapshots are a lot like snapshots on commodity or I guess low tier SANs. They're completely unaware of what they're snapshotting, so they have no choice but to rather dumbly create a snapshot volume where every single byte, sector or block that is altered has to be stored, and they aren't capable of intelligently rearranging those units (based on whatever its minimum is) to match filesystem access patterns.

Basically, they're an enormous performance hit, and having more than one snapshot concurrently is going to have your DBA screaming at you because your database throughput can now be measured with a notepad, ballpoint pen and your watch. If you want to experience what that's like, have LVM take six or more snapshots and keep them around for a while. On the other hand, an intelligent filesystem can snapshot and keep the changed blocks close to the original blocks, and minimize fragmentation or additional access indirections that would slow down the system.

I really hope you don't think the options you listed are really the best Linux has to offer. Because, first of all, they're not. There are some clever people who have smarter ideas about backing up (and dealing with MySQL intelligently.) And there are some significant benefits to improving the base filesystem. LVM snapshots are the wrong way to go. I'd only ever use those temporarily for a backup, but still, NTFS, ZFS, BTRFS snapshots have minimal overhead compared to those ugly things.

Re:Don't rely only on system restore

[Skuld-Chan]

Touche ;).

Re:Don't rely only on system restore

[LordLimecat]

Im not clear on why people want to do a drive clone, just boot to live linux and make a full copy of [partition]/WINDOWS and Program Files and Documents and settings. Need to restore to an earlier time? Just copy the windows and program files folders back. Need to restore from bare metal? Copy the folders back to a blank partition, and run fixmbr.

Heck you can even stick the windows copy onto the C drive in a folder called "backup" and swap the working and nonworking windows folders @ will.

Re:Don't rely only on system restore

[LordLimecat]

a snapshotting filesystem with the ability to "go back in time"

Will Back-In-Time work?

Can't be affecting all users

[Zouden]

I just checked and I have 9 restore points going back two weeks. I would have restarted several times in that period. The summary makes it sound as if this is a bug that affects all users. I don't think that is the case.

This is an extraordinarily bad bug, which I suspect most Windows 7 users won't realise is affecting them until it's too late.

Yeah or maybe it's not affecting most Windows 7 users.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[buchner.johannes]

Warning: Your style of discussion hinders M$ bashing on slashdot and might get you banned.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[vistapwns]

I also have old restore points, and in multiple systems I've installed Win 7, I've looked in system restore on several of them on multiple occasions and have always seen old restore points going back passed recent reboots. I guess we need something in the wake of all those ubuntu 10.04 bugs to make windows look like the monster.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Nimey]

It's kdawson. You can't expect fact-checking.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Megaweapon]

Posted by kdawson

'nuff said.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[kjart]

It's kdawson. You can't expect fact-checking.

I kind of think this guy takes a bit of undeserved heat sometimes, but the 'story' here is a link to a forum thread with fewer than 10 posts (at the time of this reply). That doesn't seem front page worthy, well, anywhere.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Mashiki]

Agreed, I've restarted over a dozen times due to me mucking around and changing stuff via the registry. I've got 9 restore points going back to the 5th of april.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[jabbathewocket]

its not affecting users who are not "too smart for their own good" and turned down the system restore size to the bare minimum that windows will require to do a windows update (without disabling it) IE user error blamed on software that is performing the way it should be.. same old same old.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps on a forum it's front page worthy?

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Anonymous Coward]

Warning: Your style of discussion hinders M$ bashing on slashdot and might get you banned.

It's not bashing discussing a feature of Windows 7. The delete restore points on reboot "feature" worked perfectly. There are no bugs in Windows just features you are using improperly. Personally I miss the helpful and friendly "blue screen". Also "Safe Mode" always reminded me of the cover of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Safe Mode may not have been very helpful but the name "Safe Mode" had a warm and fuzzy feeling and softened the blow of having a bricked computer.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if it is affecting about 2% to 5% of the users, that would be a LOT of angry users.

As long if the cause is not known, the next failure could be anyone - even you!

So - don't feel safe. Even if it affects only a small part of the users it could easily be you or one of your family members or clients..

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Anonymous Coward]

Except:

a) It appears to be far, far less than 2% of users, probably well below 0.0001% of users (certainly this forum post doesn't provide evidence that it's any better than one in a million).
b) Less than 0.1% or so is well within the threshold of probable user error.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Sir_Sri]

I've played around with a couple of configurations and cannot see any of my machines with the same problem. I'm wondering if it's related to a specific driver or hardware vendor or the like that my 3 different computers don't have.

It jumps out at me that something like the NVIDIA 196.75 drivers which are broken and kill video cards or the like might be the sort of culprit, like if you've got a system restore point with some driver that WHQL has flagged specifically as bad (or as an invalid WHQL certificate or something) it blows away those restore points. Not exactly a graceful solution but it's probably better than killing your computer.

There are a lot of things which can effect restore points though, remaining disk space, settings, age of the restore points and so on, for all I know there could be some esoteric option there which does it.

On both 7 and vista I've found restore points super helpful (definitely not so in XP), so I'd be interested to know what the thinking at MS is about when to silently delete restore points and when not to.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Anonymous Coward]

This is an extraordinarily bad bug, which I suspect most Windows 7 users won't realise is affecting them until it's too late.

Yeah or maybe it's not affecting most Windows 7 users.

Sounds to me like you are intentionally misinterpreting that quote for the sake of trolling.

Your quote claims the article said most Win 7 users were affected. However the actualy quote only says that of those affected, most won't realise it until it's too late.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[lukas84]

The default is 5% of the system partition. Small system partition, no place for restore points.

That's why i recommend at least 200GB for C:\

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Anonymous Coward]

I kind of think this guy takes a bit of undeserved heat sometimes,

Maybe so, but most of the time it is well deserved. Any time I see a highly inflammatory summary, and then read the article (ya, ya I know) and find it to be entirely opposite of the summary, I can safely assume with a 98% certainty that it was posted by kdawson. To the point where when I see a kdawson submission, I often don't bother even looking at it anymore (unless I'm really bored, like right now).

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[mdenham]

Eh, Safe Mode is great for getting rid of things that don't quite qualify as full-blown infections but are still irritating.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Anonymous Coward]

Again... Warning: Your style of discussion hinders M$ bashing on slashdot and might get you banned.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Anonymous Coward]

"Base? We have a turd in the punch bowl, repeat, we have a turd in the punch bowl"

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[DavidD_CA]

I have 14 restore points dating back to 3/29/2010 which is about when I installed Windows 7 on this machine.

A quick Bing search brought me to another thread where the guy's problem turned out to be a disk defrag utility that was deleting restore points on reboot. He disabled the utility, and the restores stopped disappearing.

For what it's worth, does a forum post from January with a total of five people reporting a problem really deserve to be on Slashdot? Oh wait, it's anti-MS. Nevermind.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Svippy]

For what it's worth, does a forum post from January with a total of five people reporting a problem really deserve to be on Slashdot? Oh wait, it's anti-MS. Nevermind.

The argument that Slashdot is simply anti-MS is getting a bit old fashioned. I won't deny it, but come on, if the defragmentation utility does not play nice with the system restore utility, then clearly something is wrong.

Now I'm sure most Windows users on Slashdot don't really much care for the defragmentation utility, because why should a filesystem even fragment in the first place? That's stupid. And so they turn it off. But most people, like regular folk, they probably would want it on (because they've probably heard (wrongly) it provides them with more space), and so their restore utility won't work.

So the bug may not be 'extraordinary', but it is stupid. Is what.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like all my restore points from more then 4 days ago have been deleted. I boot/shutdown my computer every day at least once and I should have quite a few restore points from software installs and whatnot... :\

I am running Windows 7 Professional (64 bit) and fully up to date with patches.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[sourcerror]

So the obvious step is to increase the sample size.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Anonymous Coward]

if the defragmentation utility does not play nice with the system restore utility"

Not "the" defragmentation utility, "a" defragmentation utility. This (having searched and found the same thread) was some third party utility that did some "clean up" before defragging, not the one that comes with the system.

But obviously Slashdot readers believe Microsoft is to blame for any software that runs on Windows.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah or maybe it's not affecting most Windows 7 users.

Yet. The next Microsoft cock-up with an automatic upgrade will have thousands of Win7 users howling.

One has to wonder what use system restore is if it doesn't preserve restore points. If it is entirely useless why the hell is it included?

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Anonymous Coward]

I installed Win 7/64 in the middle of April. Plenty of reboots, shut downs, and system crashes later and I still have 19 restore points. Interesting that Opera and Safari make system restore points but Chrome and Firefox do not.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Anonymous Coward]

I have 14 restore points dating back to 3/29/2010 which is about when I installed Windows 7 on this machine.

A quick Bing search brought me to another thread where the guy's problem turned out to be a disk defrag utility that was deleting restore points on reboot. He disabled the utility, and the restores stopped disappearing.

For what it's worth, does a forum post from January with a total of five people reporting a problem really deserve to be on Slashdot? Oh wait, it's anti-MS. Nevermind.

"A quick Bing search"

So how much are they paying you?

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Blakey Rat]

but come on, if the defragmentation utility does not play nice with the system restore utility,

He didn't say it was "the" defragmentation utility (that is, the one that ships with the OS.) He said it was "a" defragmentation utility (that is, one that was written by a retard in 20 minutes for Windows 98 and still ships because if it doesn't actually crash it *must* work correctly still, right?"

why should a filesystem even fragment in the first place?

It doesn't, actually. Unless disk space is critically low, but in that case you have bigger problems. I just opened the Disk Defragmenter on my mostly vanilla Windows 7 install: C: 0% fragmentation. D: 0% fragmentation. I don't even know why they include that utility anymore, frankly.

But most people, like regular folk, they probably would want it on (because they've probably heard (wrongly) it provides them with more space),

Maybe that's why Microsoft still ships it: placebo effect.

So the bug may not be 'extraordinary', but it is stupid. Is what.

You still haven't demonstrated the bug has anything to do with Microsoft's code.

I'd bet a hundred bucks it's an ancient third-party defrag utility that hasn't been updated to understand the concept of shadowcopy. (Just because a disk block shows as unused doesn't mean there's nothing useful there.) It's particularly shameful because shadowcopy has been around since Windows XP.

Or it may be malware trying to cover its tracks. If a piece of malware knows it can be defeated by System Restore, I could see it removing restore points at boots to prevent that.

Either way, it's nothing that ships on the OS DVD.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Anonymous Coward]

Deleting anonymous coward's restore points...

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Nimey]

I do vote against stupid articles, but after the fact - I usually can't be bothered to read the firehose.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Deliveranc3]

System restore, WTF. Here's what we want, all of our documents or other USER created changes (probably less that 5 MB saved, a record of all media (MP3, Wav, .AVI), probably just file names so we can restore our music when some RIAA shill app deletes them.

And a full system restore, just EVERYTHING, like EVERYTHING. If drivers need to be installed or verified we might need an application but this should be suplemental.

This is such a hassle it's starting to make me paranoid, but I suppose it has succeeded in making it so I don't buy a computer that comes with Opera, Open Office and a whole bunch of illegal production software like Adobe products.

So they reduce our ability to retain our information easily and receive modest success in supressing piracy... super.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Anonymous Coward]

Why was this not tagged 'kdawsonfud'?

That was the most useful tag in all of slashdot.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Anonymous Coward]

I appreciate it when obscure info is dug up from some forum thread and presented to me here on /. Many people on here including myself are system admins or support their own and friends computers and deal with this kind of stuff. This type of info is invaluable. Remember, this is slashdot, not cnn.com so the definition of newsworthy is different. For many readers of slashdot this is very good info, may not be earth shattering front page news material in a lot of places, but remember this is slashdot.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Nimey]

It's the /tone/ that people object to. kdawson likes sensationalist language and loaded words.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the summary, it happens when installing drivers and rebooting. In your two week period, did you install drivers?

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[ari_j]

All heat on kdawson is well-deserved. Find a counterexample if you think there is one. I haven't noticed it yet, though.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[QuantumRiff]

Thats been a published thing since Server 2003. If you have a cluster size of less than 16k clusters, then when you run defrag, it sees it starts tossing out old restore points. (was hurting us because of VSS and the "previous Versions' feature.)

Old news.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[DavidD_CA]

So you're suggesting that Microsoft is to blame for a third-party defrag utility that is deleting these files?

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Reziac]

[blink] Which defrag utility, do you recall? The other day someone was whining to me about WinXP restore points having gone walkabout after defragging, and all I could tell 'em is that I'd never heard of such nonsense. Well, now I have!!

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Reziac]

This is with the default defragger, right?

It must exist but behave different for XP -- mine is on FAT32 with 4k clusters, I think (yes, it's old) and has no such problem. Someone just complained to me about their WinXP having lost all its restore points after defragging; his is NTFS with cluster size at the default (which IIRC is 4k). Got any insight on that??

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Eythian]

Is it really necessary to name-drop the product that you use to google something? :)

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Blakey Rat]

It's awesome that you have to scroll through 30+ off-topic "System Restore sucks" posts before you get to the first post discussing the actual story and, more importantly, why it's complete crap.

I used to think that only the editors of this site sucked, now I'm starting to think the entire thing is beyond hope.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[DavidD_CA]

There were at least two listed in the article that I found -- sadly I don't remember which and I didn't keep the link.

I really don't know why anyone would need to run a third-party tool.

Re:Can't be affecting all users

[Reziac]

Only 3rd party defragger I can think of that there's a good reason for is Diskeeper for enterprise use (realtime continuous defragging, a very good thing for big active databases). IIRC, WinXP's defragger is a basic version of Diskeeper anyway.

I sometimes use VOPT v7 for speed and to get a more compacted final result (run it first, then DK), but no longer really trust it... it ain't the same app as it was in the DOS era. I'm not entirely sure it's really doing the job anymore, and found ways to crash v5 while in action -- something defraggers need to be immune to.

If any of the defraggers still had a Sort By Date function, 99% of the need and risk goes away -- if files are sorted by date, only the very arse end of the drive is ever fragmented, so it's extremely fast to do and only the most recent files are touched.

Don't jump the gun blaming Win7

[MSTCrow5429]

I've used System Restore on my Win7 64-bit systems. If Win7 really had a habit of deleting System Restore points, it would have been detected and harped upon within hours of its release, 32-bit or 64-bit. Whatever the problem is, it's hard to believe it's Windows' fault.

Re:Don't jump the gun blaming Win7

[TechForensics]

I've used System Restore on my Win7 64-bit systems. If Win7 really had a habit of deleting System Restore points, it would have been detected and harped upon within hours of its release, 32-bit or 64-bit. Whatever the problem is, it's hard to believe it's Windows' fault.

Are you kidding?

Re:Don't jump the gun blaming Win7

[shutdown -p now]

It can be a perfectly legitimate bug that just requires stars to be aligned in certain way etc - it's not like Windows source code is fully verified for correctness.

It's probably not really newsworthy if it only affects so few people, though. At best, if this gets verified as a genuine bug, you'll see it fixed on some Patch Tuesday next month, and that's it.

Re:Don't jump the gun blaming Win7

[jim_v2000]

Are you kidding? It's entirely probable that this is some sort of conflict with 3rd part software, or even a malware infection. Windows 7 was in beta testing for a long time, and this bug would have popped to the surface long ago if it was an issue with Windows.

Re:Don't jump the gun blaming Win7

[lukas84]

5% of the system partition. If you don't have enough space, you won't enough space for restore points.

You can set it higher manually, though. But you'll need to know about it.

Re:Don't jump the gun blaming Win7

[owlstead]

Yeah, right, because bugs are always appearing right when something is launched, on your particular system setup no less. There are probably many things that can be said about this issue, but your comment must be the most clueless comment on this article. Anyone that has done *any* test work will confirm this. I'll inform my boss that all my programs are bug free because they are currently running fine on my development PC, shall I?

Re:Don't jump the gun blaming Win7

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

I'm guessing that OP ran out of system restore space, at which point windows will delete the oldest. Perhaps he decreased the amount of drive space available for system restore... or perhaps by taking them so meticulously, he simply took too many for whatever capacity he had.

Re:Don't jump the gun blaming Win7

[MSTCrow5429]

You're arguing against a nonexistent premise. Thanks for the irony, though.

Re:Don't jump the gun blaming Win7

[mrdtr]

"Whatever the problem is, it's hard to believe it's Windows' fault."
Are you serious? Oh right, I forgot that all things that go wrong with Windows nowadays is someone else's fault - the user is stupid, it was a virus, shitty 3rd party applications, bad hardware, etc. etc.

Re:Don't jump the gun blaming Win7

[Blakey Rat]

So should we submit a Slashdot article for every bug in every Linux distro of this approximate severity?

Look, if you don't like Windows, that's fine. I can understand that, and I can even emphasize with it. But articles like this are just embarrassing. If you have to stretch *this* far to make Windows 7 look bad, then Windows is looking pretty goddamned good.

This is not news. It's certainly not "stuff that matters."

System restore! So we meet again, my nemesis!

[assemblerex]

Last resort of the desperate! Failed restore ahoy!! Batten down the ram hatches, load the cache cannon and pray lads, pray!
It's going to be a rough one! A working restore is like catching the white whale. Sure you can do it but it might kill you
in the process.

Re:System restore! So we meet again, my nemesis!

[slimjim8094]

Does anyone actually know someone whose problem was fixed by System Restore? I sure don't...

Re:System restore! So we meet again, my nemesis!

[__aasqbs9791]

I know of problems caused by trying to use it, does that count?

Re:System restore! So we meet again, my nemesis!

[Anonymous Coward]

It helped me once. Windows update suggested a driver update for my mouse. (Yes, I know, it was silly to bother with a mouse driver update in the first place, but I figured, what could go wrong with a WHQL-certified driver for a USB mouse?) The new mouse driver caused bluescreens during boot. A system restore got rid of it.

Re:System restore! So we meet again, my nemesis!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had three separate instances where it fixed the problem. Each was on a different system. Two of those problems were from services preventing normal login at boot, and the third case was caused by a trojan infection on a parent's PC. Shadow Copy Services in 7 have also been mighty helpful when working with systems people have brought to me.

I do have to say, System Restore has improved a lot since the XP days. Back then the first thing I'd do on a fresh install would be shut it off. Now I'd be keen on leaving it on. That's just my opinion, though.

Re:System restore! So we meet again, my nemesis!

[Runaway1956]

Not recently - but yes, I did rescue some WinXP installations with system restore. I don't think your question is fair or reasonable, because a lot of computer illiterates manage to make Windows work again after a driver update or some such thing. And, in rare cases, system restore actually does rescue a system from a computer virus - if caught early. Those computer illiterates don't report to techies that "HEY! System Restore worked!"

I have absolutely no idea how often SysRestore works world wide on a percentage basis, but it's almost certainly over 50% or MS would get so many complaints that they would rework it somehow.

We, the computer literate, see cases of SysRestore failing time after time, because the illiterates only bring us the machines on which SysRestore has failed already.

Re:System restore! So we meet again, my nemesis!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had it work for me a couple of times when I managed to bork my XP system with a bad software install. Sure beats praying.

Re:System restore! So we meet again, my nemesis!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Back when Vista was new, and McAfee enterprise 8.0 was completely incompatible, I had a number of machines that were rendered unbootable because someone had installed McAfee 8.0 instead of 8.5. System restore fixed them with no muss, no fuss. Hit F8, select restore point, hand working machine back to user.

Now... that was Vista (and my experience with Windows 7 has been similar). XP restore points? Ha. It is to laugh. Or cry. Or just reimage.

Re:System restore! So we meet again, my nemesis!

[vlueboy]

Does anyone actually know someone whose problem was fixed by System Restore? I sure don't...

It's still a failure 10 years after its birth. It is really blood-boiling when you realize 10Gigs in your hard drive are storing garbage that you find to be failed "restore points." Two months ago, I tried restoring my XP machine. None of my safer saves worked. I did restore to just 1 week prior and fixed the bluescreens and netbios connection drops. My extended family has 6 months max Restore "coverage." The failure rate with SR for restore points overall is about 2 out of 3. I coun't failure as 'eventually restored but went through a bunch of other failed states that would have been better'. You'll use 3 or so old restore points and waste 20 or more minutes total.

When someone brings you their machine with "popups" they usually don't remember how far back you should restore. Worse yet, if they do but the infection goes back a full year. Your chance of success halves for every 30 extra days you move backwards.

Just a couple nights ago I got a driveby selfinstalling "scanware" on Vista. System Restore failed again, which annoyed more than it surprised me. If you'll excuse me, I'll be uploading my files and bookmarks for another couple days.

Re:System restore! So we meet again, my nemesis!

[DigiShaman]

It saved my fathers Win7 PC.

He got infected with a face AV. I was able to remove the virus and all remaining infected files. However, there were still some entries in the registry is made. I simply used System Restore to roll back the system prior to the infection. Aside from any system files that got rolled back, it also restored the system registry from that point in time (which is what I was after.

So yes, a System Restore point (prior to infection) is a good thing to do post virus cleanup.

Re:System restore! So we meet again, my nemesis!

[TangoMargarine]

We ended up having to use it to fix our borked Windows ME machine on at least 4 separate occasions, and I believe it actually worked every time. Which is all the more surprising, considering it was ME. Hell, it sometimes booted directly to a bluescreen.

Re:System restore! So we meet again, my nemesis!

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone actually know someone whose problem was fixed by System Restore? I sure don't...

In all the years I've been using Windows, I think there had been one time that I had relied on a System Restore point to return the Windows Configuration back to the state just prior to a rather annoying install. I think it was Windows XP SP 1a or 2 (I don't remember, it's been that long). In that one time, it had worked rather well actually. The other times, I had relied on the Recovery Console and once in Safe Mode. All times went rather well, albeit annoying with the Safe Mode.

Then again I don't push my system to badly and don't install various questionable tools/software routinely. Hell, come to think of it the last time I accidentally installed a questionable program that ended up being a trojan was back with Windows XP SP2.

It's just one more reason...

[jex.pwn]

...to go and download linux.

Re:It's just one more reason...

[jex.pwn]

Well, the one thing that I have to say I like about Windows 7 ( 1 thing isn't enough for me to use it) is the fact that they finally decided to do a livecd. Great recovery option. Which I believe Linux did first, and if the recovery options for windows are anything like what they used to be ( boot into safe mode ) then Linux has it beat there too.

Re:It's just one more reason...

[Shikaku]

There's no buggy restore feature for you to try and save it

chroot. And yes it can be buggy just like AC suggests.

Re:It's just one more reason...

[Anonymous Coward]

chroot isn't a backup and it's not a restore.

Re:It's just one more reason...

[gandhi_2]

My last 2 upgrades of ubuntu were pretty crappy.

I once did an upgrade of suse that lost everything. Every. Last. File.

You can do disk imaging in any OS pretty much.

But nice karma whoring.

Re:It's just one more reason...

[Shikaku]

Neither is System Restore on Windows.

Re:It's just one more reason...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it is a restore. Herp.

I don't use this feature.

[tpstigers]

I've never actually used this feature on my own computer (running Win7 or earlier Windows incarnations). I keep everything important backed up, so I'm never in a place where I can't just wipe everything with a clean install. Am I unusual in this?

Re:I don't use this feature.

[spikeb]

yes

Re:I don't use this feature.

[Anonymous Coward]

i do it too...it's easier to do a clean install when there's a problem

Re:I don't use this feature.

[chebucto]

With Windows, it's nice to do a clean install every year or so anyway, to handle bitrot.

Win7 Can Dlete All System Restore Points On Reboot

[Anonymous Coward]

and yet it can't see why kids LOVE cinnamon toast crunch.

Q/A and the Left hand?

[Anonymous Coward]

In avoiding the obvious chance to bash Microsoft here, and from a simple implemented feature and coding perspective, is this a seriously bad case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing?

I'd like to think that the code organization and Q/A within Microsoft is respectable and better than most, but in an organization whose primary product is fairly recycled after 20+ years, how does something like this make it through to the shelves? I'm honestly wondering where the breakdown is here.

Just because it's evil windows

[Superdarion]

So a few people have a problem with windows? It's not even widespread!

This wouldn't have made it to slashdot if it weren't for the oh-so-common hatred for windows around these lands.

Re:Just because it's evil windows

[Runaway1956]

Great attitude. As opposed to any open source community, which begs, "Please, tell us about bugs!"

Re:Just because it's evil windows

[Superdarion]

So I take it you can give me a shitload of examples of slashdot articles covering minor Linux bugs which affect just a handful of individuals.

Re:Just because it's evil windows

[Runaway1956]

You have the very same search bar at the upper right corner that I do. Just type "linux bug" and give it a second. Click on any article. Most bugs, after all, affect "just a handful of users" because everyone sets his machine up differently. A bug that is a serious problem for Joe, is only an irritant to Greg, and Walter never notices it, and wonders what the fuss is about.

Meanwhile, as I already said, every single open source project that I have EVER looked at prominently displays a request that you REPORT BUGS!! They don't care if only 1 in 1 million users ever finds the bug, or if it is 75 out of a hundred - it it's a bug, they want to know, and they want to fix it.

Restore points???

[mkozusnik]

Whatever happened to rsync and mysqldump??? Oh it's windows, nevermind, I don't use it. :)

I'm confused?

[Anonymous Coward]

How can I complain about how I love Flash and hate Steve Jobs? This article is about Microsoft!!!!

Re:I'm confused?

[Anonymous Coward]

...How can I complain about how I love Flash and hate Steve Jobs?

Just take off your clothes (aka Open Source Flash) and when you see Jobs, stuff an apple in his mouth, and roast him in a preheated oven until his rib is done. Then poop on his head and barf on your penis. That Job will blow the Apple out of Eden and the fig leaf off of Jobs.

Re:I'm confused?

[indi0144]

It's easy, look:

So this win 7 OMG21122012ENDOFTIMESBUG just affect (I'd say its a feature) a handful of people at random, well at least I get FLASH hardware acceleration on my W7 box, and if I feel I don't like FLASH anymore I can block or delete it, unlike Apple.. oh wait! You can't choose on Apple land, Steve already decided whats good for you^h^h^h^his-H.264-portfolio, the same W7 decided you don't need your lame ass malware ridden back ups.

See? it's not that hard, COMPUTERS/CORPORATIONS/EGOS SUCK!

Linux = Does not run my software
Mac = I would not put up with their shit ever
Windows = you have to fight your way to gain control of the OS

We need another option! we need a 4th option, IBM wtf are you doing? oh righ, you're too busy with the green fad and milking corporations to care about developing a real OS.

Why move to 7 ?

[unity100]

xp works quite fine and does everything. did you ever hear the motto 'if it aint broke, dont fix it' ?

Re:Why move to 7 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Better support for SSD.
Better support for 64bit.
Better support for running under a non-administrator account.

etc...

Re:Why move to 7 ?

[upuv]

Yes XP works. However it carries a monster sized piece of baggage. It is the most infected attacked security problem ridden OS on the planet.

Because of XP we still see a stunningly large number of IE 6 users. People who are basically handing over the keys to the house and the wallet each time they go on the net.

XP needs to die. Vista needs to go along with it. Win 7 needs to super cede. For simple privacy and security reasons.

XP is broke. You just can't see the monster sized crack. Others have seen it. A lot of others.

Re:Why move to 7 ?

[unity100]

had 7 had the same level of widespread usage, it would be in the same position.

Re:Why move to 7 ?

[shutdown -p now]

had 7 had the same level of widespread usage, it would be in the same position.

Not really. With 7, you can actually reasonably work under a non-admin account, because it is easy to elevate as needed. XP didn't have that - at best, you could explicitly do "run as administrator" on the shortcut, or use "runas" in command line, but there were several other problems with that, and, of course, the convenience just isn't there.

Re:Why move to 7 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because of XP we still see a stunningly large number of IE 6 users.

Don't blame that on XP; the reasons are more complicated. IE 7 and 8 auto-installed ages ago on XP.

Re:Why move to 7 ?

[lukas84]

No longer. The EU forbade it. You need to explicitly click on the yellow icon and allow newer IE versions to be installed.

Re:Why move to 7 ?

[upuv]

Of course I blame XP. IE 6 doesn't run on VISTA or 7.

No XP no IE 6 simple.

Re:Why move to 7 ?

[upuv]

My post got a Troll?

Because I was blunt?

Re:Why move to 7 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even worse; turfing in the astral plane with a blunt fists makes you an astral troll.

Re:Why move to 7 ?

[Antiocheian]

I agree 100%; I have helped many people upgrade their laptops/netbooks from Vista7 to XP with slipstreamed SATA drivers and updates.

The procedure after installation is easy:

1) Castrate IE6 (don't need to upgrade that because we won't be using it anyway) by securing all Internet Zones to high level,
2) install Firefox and make it default (do install Adblock plus as well for users with children),
3) combine a good HIPS firewall and a heuristics-capable antivirus (Comodo and Avira are both free),
4) disable the Hardware shell detection service (which prevents autorun without causing problems),
5) install XBMC to counter the loss of "wow" as well as Openoffice and Foxit to let them open all kinds of documents quickly

and you get an operating system with security, compatibility and ease of use that will give the user many years of happy and trouble free computing. It's always a nice feeling watching a system that previously took more than a minute to boot, get up and running in 15 seconds while providing greater functionality compared to your typical trialware laptop software suite.

And an added advantage to this goodness is using Firefox and Openoffice which can make the final jump to the freedom of Linux easier in the future...

Re:Why move to 7 ?

[unity100]

i meant in regard to hacks, viruses that are going about. even if you ran under non admin, the sheer number of viruses and hacks that would go out would eventually make it a similar situation.

Probably a good thing

[countertrolling]

Antivrus is always finding stuff in there.

Re:Probably a good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never had that problem with XP, Vista or 7.. maybe *gasp* it's because you have a virus?

Stop preaching Linux

[syousef]

But ... many are still using windows and praying to their $invisible_man_in_the_sky. The future is here, but half of you didn't get the memo.

Please stop preaching Linux like a religion.

The fact is I can get a lot of software on Windows that is unmatched on Linux. When I want to run Linux software, I can usually get a version that works on Windows, but if I can't I run Linux (either on a VM or on physical hardware).

Oh and by the way I have a degree in Astronomy. In this area there's a lot very good Windows only software, and a lot of very good Linux only software. I'm not about to shut myself out of using any of it.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[scrib]

Yeah, it's great, which is why I run Windows in a VM on Linux. I keep a snapshot of a working XP virtual disk handy.

Why? I'm the go-to geek in the family and I've had to call Microsoft registration many times to reactivate XP after an upgrade or salvaging a drive from a dead MB. They're always polite and friendly, and reading the seven sets of six digits over the phone and typing in the response only takes about 10-15 minutes. But...
What about when that 800 number goes dead? Or they stop giving out activations for older XP systems? Or they finally say "sir, that's an OEM license and only valid for the broken machine, not the new MB."

Ironically, what I need the Windows VM for the most is iTunes. Thanks, Apple!

Linux issues can be fixed.
Windows can be reinstalled. Probably. Or you can buy a new version and migrate your data. Perhaps.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[kainosnous]

That begs the question: Is the value of an operating system the programs that are built for it? Certainly that is the reason why a lot of people use Windows, but does that make it a better OS, or a better marketed OS?

If it were the case that the software could not have be easily written to work on another OS, then the answer would be easy. Anybody who has tried to do socket programming in Windows knows what a pain that can be. However, is that the case with these Windows only programs? I'm skeptical because I've personally never seen a FOSS project that couldn't be ported outside of Windows. I would appreciate insight from somebody who works on Windows only software.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[Illogical Spock]

Please stop preaching Linux like a religion.

You sinner!!! I hope that when you are done in Earth you get a Job(s) as the doorman in hell's Gates!

(All right, all right, this one was awful!)

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

stop being a schmuck pussy.

i run windows only software too. it's on a couple of workstations.

everything else i run is mac or linux. numerous servers, desktops, and several netbooks.

the only reason for putting up with such an inferior piece of garbage, i'd loathe to call an OS, known as windows, is because of a handful of apps. an for those apps, i have those two dedicated boxes. i'll call them appliances. and they are restricted from accessing the internet by mac address.

all my other apps, servers, utilities, daemons, development, etc, are done mostly on linux, and some on mac.

just because i'm beholden to those handful of apps, doesn't mean i'm going to lie and tell my associates, friends and family about how great windows is.... it's a piece of shit.

most of my family is on macs, and a few on linux, and they are wayyy better off that way.

fuck windows.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[Ralish]

Inexperienced Linux user:

Windows issues can be fixed.
Linux can be reinstalled. Probably. Or you can get a new distro and migrate your data. Perhaps.

Do you see the point I'm trying to hammer home?

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[MartinSchou]

Linux issues can be fixed.

Considering that the grand parent was talking about niche software that have no equivalent on Linux, when are "you guys" going to throw together a replacement or port of AutoCad?

You want to run it in a VM? Alright ... which VMs will let Windows access the GPU properly to allow an OpenGL driver to work, so that we can get more than fractions of frames per second?

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[B1oodAnge1]

You still can't say that first part, I'll give you the second part, but even experienced power users reinstall windows all the time because of unfixable errors.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could use a Mac, which doesn't require activation, doesn't phone home, and will happily run your Linux and Windows virtual machines - oh, and iTunes runs just fine on it. Don't forget that more or less any Linux/Unix software does as well, and you even have your choice of debian-based, ports-based, or other package management systems. Or mix and match.

Posting anonymously as I just *know* people are going to mod this down to oblivion.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[jabbathewocket]

Experienced Power Users do not reinstall windows all the time because of unfixable errors, they do it because they are incompetent boobs who think all things require a reinstall to fix OR because they are tired of "fixing" an idiots computer for the 37th time due to "i turned off the antivirus because the thing i downloaded from limewire told me to" The whole "the only way to fix it is to reinstall" is extremely rare since XP, and anyone saying otherwise clearly is not quite the experienced power user they think they are.. more likely they have just enough knowledge to do things they really don't understand, and hosed their computer with their stupidity. That behavior is not OS dependant and is just as likely to happen under any and all OS, even Linux.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

or, you can learn how to use and maintain a windows system with the same skill as you have in linux.

The only times I've imaged a system to fix the issue it was because it would have taken longer to fix the problem than it does to roll back to a recent ghost image & get back up to date. I have never come across an issue in windows (that wasn't something godawful stupid like deleting system files) I couldn't see a way to fix, given the time.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[devent]

> Yeah, it's great, which is why I run Windows in a VM on Linux. I keep a snapshot of a working XP virtual disk handy.

I just was thinking as I read the GP post, I get with Linux a lot of free software, many of them are unmatched in Windows and for the few applications that are Windows-only, I have VirtualBox. Thanks to my school, btw., because they insisted that we have to use ASP.net and Visual Studio.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

And if you use Snow Leopard and log in like Guest, your data is gone. That is a Bonus.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[Ralish]

Then they're not competent, or more likely, they did something catastrophic to the operating system that makes reinstalling the easier solution than hunting down the actual cause(s) and fixing it/them. For example, a seriously nasty virus infection that hoses operating system components, or disk corruption that takes out half the registry without a backup. Linux, while less susceptible to some of these problems for various reasons, isn't immune to them.

I have well over a decade of experience using MS operating systems and I've never had to reinstall a system because I absolutely couldn't fix it; I've chosen to reinstall systems that were compromised by an infection because, although I could remove it, I lack confidence that it is 100% removed and the system is back to a pristine state. I've done the same for Linux boxes that were hit by rootkits; I simply can't guarantee trust of that system anymore knowing that install has been thoroughly compromised. As far as configuration issues go, versus security or data destruction issues, I've never had to revert to a reinstall.

Typically, I also find it unproductive, as you don't learn anything. Even if it's a bastard to track down the issue, you learn a lot from the experience, and that will help you solve the same or similar problems in the future. Reinstalling any operating system is a very blunt approach. More to the point, for most systems I use as well as friends and family, reinstalling is more time consuming in the long run for sheer time and effort invested backing up data, reinstalling apps, restoring data, and getting the configuration back to a state that you like. Then there's the problem that sometimes the reinstall didn't fix the problem, and you've wasted a monumental amount of time. So I view reinstalls as a solution on any OS as a particularly poor solution; it's frustrating it is so common on Windows systems as to me it demonstrates a lack of technical proficiency by many who would claim competence with the system.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[VinylPusher]

Unfortunately, most users do not want to hear "this is going to take potentially a couple of days to fix and I'll need to take your computer away to do it", which is what can happen when you're presented with an unknown, transient problem which may or may not be related to the OS, a 3rd-party application, virus, PSU fault, RAM fault or motherboard fault.

Sometimes it can be quick to fix a problem. This usually means a driver needs an update (or roll-back) or a particular piece of malware needs removing. There are many problems which, if tackled head-on, may take longer and yield fewer benefits than just reinstalling the OS and configuring it properly.

If you're charging by the hour, it is perhaps more fair to take the least time to bring a PC back to a usable condition. If the user then has a professionally configured Windows install, they have added bonuses of a machine that likely boots much quicker, possibly runs a lot smoother overall and is a heck of a lot easier to maintain (should any after-sales or repeat visit be needed).

OK, those with a million 3rd-party apps, for which they have questionable sources (like the hand-scrawled "Photoshop" CD I saw just the other week) you might not want to sit through all those installs. It's something you have to balance between time VS usefulness VS value.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[IRoll11!s]

Tired of this misconception. Seriously. I've been using Windows software for 14 years, and I have NEVER had to do a full system reinstall. EVER. People who need to reinstall Windows all of the time are doing something really really wrong. I'm not sure what, nor do I care. I'm not a zealot, Windows sucks in more ways than I can shake a stick at. I've done my fair share of cursing and screaming at it over the last decade and a half, but there hasn't been a damn thing I haven't been able to fix without the need to reinstall the whole thing.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[syousef]

That begs the question: Is the value of an operating system the programs that are built for it? Certainly that is the reason why a lot of people use Windows, but does that make it a better OS, or a better marketed OS?

Windows is a piece of shit. So is Linux. I haven't seen a good OS. A good OS does not have you spending hours trying to fix things that should never be broken or begging people with more knowledge for assistance because either the source is closed, or the developers are rude and expect you to worship them. It's all SHIT. An OS is a tool used to run programs and make hardware work. Nothing more.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[syousef]

stop being a schmuck pussy.

/quote>

Wonderful start to an AC troll. As Eliza would say: "Extra ignored!"

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[syousef]

Yeah, it's great, which is why I run Windows in a VM on Linux. I keep a snapshot of a working XP virtual disk handy.

...and then...

Windows can be reinstalled. Probably. Or you can buy a new version and migrate your data. Perhaps.

Well you're still using it!!! So what does it matter if it's a VM or physical machine? I can't believe you were modded up for this nonsense!

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[syousef]

I just was thinking as I read the GP post, I get with Linux a lot of free software, many of them are unmatched in Windows and for the few applications that are Windows-only, I have VirtualBox. Thanks to my school, btw., because they insisted that we have to use ASP.net and Visual Studio.

Surely it makes sense to just run Windows if you run a lot of Windows only software and just a handful of Linux apps (on a VM). Likewise if you use more Linux apps, run Linux native and Windows on a VM.

I'm fucking sick and tired of people offering Linux as a Panacea. It's not one. It has it's own problems. Before VMs I use to dual boot but I run so little Linux only software that it makes no sense at all to make it my primary OS.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[devent]

It makes sense. Like, it's free and secure, no cost and no viruses. And in my opinion, it's just more user friendlier than Windows, the system and both Gnome and KDE.

In addition, uou won't be bothered with re-activiation or with re-installations. Just keep your snapshot of Windows and if something happens, revert it.

Of course, you can keep your Linux snapshot and if something happens revert to it. But it's just a fact that nothing will happen to your Linux system. No re-activation because of new motherboard, no virus or trojan, no cluttering up the system. So it makes more sense to have Windows in a VM with a snapshot to revert to.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[Drinking Bleach]

VirtualBox and VMware both do OpenGL pass through (and VirtualBox even has experimental Direct3D support, by using Wine libraries to translate it to OpenGL at runtime).

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[dunkelfalke]

I have, once. It was not a Windows problem, though. I've decided to do a full defragmentation in the night and went to sleep. In the next morning I found out that Paragon Total Defrag froze. After the reboot I also found out that it froze after doing some defragmentation work but before writing back the modified MFT. Since NTFS is a journalling file system, this should never happen, but it did - maybe Total Defrag uses its own NTFS drivers, I don't know. Anyway, most of the files were damaged beyond repair and I had to reinstall.

I had a backup of some files, but not of all, so quite a lot of photos and C sources were lost. I don't blame Windows for that, though.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[Zen Hash]

That begs the question: Is the value of an operating system the programs that are built for it? Certainly that is the reason why a lot of people use Windows, but does that make it a better OS, or a better marketed OS?

That begs the question: Is the value of an operating system the programs that are built for it? Certainly that is the reason why a lot of people use Windows, but does that make it a better OS, or a better marketed OS?

Many people do value an OS based on whether or not it'll run the software they want to use. Windows is also a better marketed OS. However, I think the main reason why it has more software is simply due to it having the largest install base. Keep in mind that when IBM (the largest and most influential corporation in the computer industry at the time) started mass marketing personal computers, those machines ran Microsoft's OS. Then came the surge of IBM clones, further reducing hardware costs through competition and improving availability, which also ran Microsoft's OS so that people could use all the same software.

Microsoft's success in the early 80's, during the beginning of the personal computing boom, gave it the influence and name recognition that allowed it to grow into what it is today. It had more to do with very effective business practices than any technical superiority of their software. For free/open source software, there is no comparison. By the mid 80's, Microsoft already had staff working full time developing Windows. It wasn't until the mid 90s that a GNU/Linux OS even came into existence in an experimental/proof-of-concept form among a relatively small group of hobbyist programmers. It was never mass marketed to your average consumer as an OS for personal computing, especially not during a time when the PC market was so new there didn't already exist such a wide array of incompatible software that the average consumer would be expecting to run on it.

If it were the case that the software could not have be easily written to work on another OS, then the answer would be easy. Anybody who has tried to do socket programming in Windows knows what a pain that can be. However, is that the case with these Windows only programs? I'm skeptical because I've personally never seen a FOSS project that couldn't be ported outside of Windows. I would appreciate insight from somebody who works on Windows only software.

I do not develop windows-only software, but my theory is that this is due to there being much more demand for software to run on Windows than any other OS. Porting software that was designed to only run under Windows may also be more time consuming, depending on how it was written. Especially if it extensively relies on closed-source libraries that are only available for Windows. On the side of the spectrum, porting open source software written to run on an open source operating system using open source libraries won't necessarily require you to make as many fundamental changes to the design of the software. Of course, you may still choose to make further changes, for one reason or another, and use libraries that are native to your target environment (Windows, in this example).

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[Zen Hash]

Sorry for the double quote. Maybe I should have heeded the warning to proof-read before hitting submit...

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[MartinSchou]

And how good are the Linux drivers for the FireGL and Quadro cards compared to their Windows brethren again? What kind of performance are we looking at, when doing it that way?

Or put another way - why on Earth would you want to sacrifice performance, just to run your workstation app in a VM on a Linux machine, instead of just dual booting if you have a need for Linux?

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact is I can get a lot of software on Windows that is unmatched on Linux. When I want to run Linux software, I can usually get a version that works on Windows, but if I can't I run Linux (either on a VM or on physical hardware).

Yes, there is lot of software on Windows that is unmatched on Linux (and even more Linux software unmatched on Windows), that doesn't mean you can't do everything you can do in Windows in Linux with ready-made software (but usually not vice-versa), and usually it is less complicated and time consuming. You usually do things different in Linux: Instead of one big, bloated software that don't play well with other software, you have to use several small tools that play well with each other and you can, with a minimal cost in relearning and time, adapt your workflow when your needs change by simple replacing those small tools that doesn't do what the new situation demands with some other small tools (that you usually already have knowledge of, because they are used somewhere else in your production system).

And then there is the problem of making software work on Windows: Downloading or buying disks. Installation usually includes reading a unreadable EULA, registration of the software and typing endless series of numbers. Make it not crash. Make it not crash any other application. And finally uninstal it when it is not needed anymore, which is usally not possible in practice without removing files anad registry entries by hand (sometimes impossible because there is no working uninstaller and almost always impossible because you have a limited number of times you are allowed to reinstall an application and you might need this one again)).
I'm not a computer nerd, in fact I hate computer (but love the things you can accomplish with them), I shouldn't have to spend time doing these things. In linux I usually have to click on a few buttons, or copy a command to the terminal, it is usually done in a couple of minutes, download time included. Worst case scenario, and very rare, in Linux is to have to download the zipped source-code to a new directory, unzip it, check the readme-file for dependencies (that usually can be installed with a few clicks), then take a quick glance on the configuration files (described in the readme-file, usually with good enough defaults), and then copy the installation commands from the readme-file to a terminal (usually: " ./configure & make & make install"). Manual installation from source, if you only done it just once before, is less confusing than windows installers and with the hardware of today usually much faster.

And then there is the lack of automation and customisation in Windows software, you have to do almost everything by hand, you do exactly the same thing houndreds of times every day when it could be solved automagically. That is sure to kill any creativity you got and steal most of your time.

If you had claimed that there is a lot of (new) hardware that you need, or would like to use, that doesn't work with Linux, then I would have to agree. But when it comes to diverse, useable, solid software, nothing beats the Linux universe.

PS
I'm a visual arts geek. I admit that since Photoshop became scriptable it has been a valid replacement for GIMP (but not CinePaint) (please, no comments about that GIMP has a useless interface, GIMP is practically unusable in Windows because of Windows useless default windows manager, it doesn't mean it has not a good interface paired with a matching WM). But all the other tools I use for pixelpushing is usually missing in Windows and if there is such tools they are usually very hard or impossible to automate. If they exist they are usually very expensive, I have sometimes (usually with 2-3 years in between) the need of using Octave for image manipulation, the Windows alternative is Mathematica (yes I've heard that Octave is cross-platform, but many of the other tools I use to make Octave do what I need aren't and only have alter

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux issueus were fixable in the past, but not anymore. I upgraded my ubuntu netbook remix from 9.4 to 9.10 recently. The result started out unbootable (some strange problem with the swap space). After fixing that, I lost sound, wireless network, the shutdown button, the possibility to hibernate (went down, came up 2 seconds later, can't go down anymore because it believes to be shutting down already). Instead I got duplicates of most icons in my favorite applications. I tried removing .gconf .gnome end such from my home directory, but this only fixed half of the problems. Well, I copied usefull folders from my home to an usb stick, and reinstalled from scratch. Everything perfect now.

Linux the kernel + basic stuff is easy. Gnome, however, has every problem windows has, and a shitload extra as bonus. And KDE is as stable as an upside down pyramid sinds version numbers started with a 4.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why? I'm the go-to geek in the family and I've had to call Microsoft registration many times to reactivate XP after an upgrade or salvaging a drive from a dead MB."

There are numerous tools available to disable WGA and alternate ways to get system updates. All my XP licenses are legitimate but I've *never* called Microsoft or gone through any of that DRM nagging. While I am technically breaking the EULA I'd like to see them try to legally enforce it when I've paid my money for the product and number of machines == number of licenses. Save the headache. It's a waste of your time and WGA is one more way for the system to fail.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux issues can be fixed, someday, in the future, could be, perhaps. Still waiting for that day though. Been waiting a while, but it is still fragmented beyond belief with every non-conformist deciding to make his own build rather than finally fix one that already exists. Meanwhile, I've never had a windows problem that couldn't be fixed easily without reinstalling and without a go-to geek programmer living under the same roof.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[syousef]

I've had plenty of trouble with Linux over the years. It's certainly not friendlier. Windows can be unfriendly but overall it's easier to stumble your way around than any Unix clone.

By the way I've taught Unix/Linux systems programming at University as an elective (went back and taught a couple of classes I took) so I am not just someone who hasn't bothered learning the system.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[Dunkirk]

... I've never had to revert to a reinstall. Typically, I also find it unproductive, as you don't learn anything. Even if it's a bastard to track down the issue, you learn a lot from the experience, and that will help you solve the same or similar problems in the future. Reinstalling any operating system is a very blunt approach.

Whatever. I just did my umpteenth virus cleanup on a friend's computer. It took me 6 hours of fooling around with it (off and on) to get it cleaned up. As I didn't know the user's password, I had hacked the Administrator account, and used that one for the exercise. Turns out the virus had some stuff still stuck in the user's profile, and reinfected the machine when she started using it again.

So I'm done with trying to "clean" a PC with one of these newfangled super-virus/rootkit/remote-spam-server/fake-antivirus infections. The next time someone comes to me with a virus-infected PC, I'm going to get their data off, scan it with a couple of online virus checkers, wipe and reinstall their machine, and put their data back on. I could be done in a couple of hours.

Unfortunately, that's probably too much work as well, considering how few people keep their reinstall disks. If they haven't, it would be a reboot-fest of installing service packs, drivers, updates, and software. Bleh! Is this the best you can do, Microsoft? Really?!

Maybe next time, I'll just tell them to sell the PC on eBay and buy a Mac. (I'll even wipe the disk for them!) Will it solve everything? No, and spare me the usual rhetoric. The bottom line is that they'll be better off.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[Dunkirk]

I've been using Windows software for 14 years, and I have NEVER had to do a full system reinstall.

You must have been using it with a VERY low duty cycle.

I keed, I keed.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

what I need the Windows VM for the most is iTunes. Thanks, Apple!

Spot on...

Oh, and spot on for the rest of it as well.

Andy
(an experienced Windows and Fedora user)

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

So are you still using the same machine you installed windows 95 on?
If the answer's yes, then you're not running the latest version of Windows.

If the answer's no, then you've had a full re-install.

Second question:
- Do you buy a new computer every time you want to run a later version of Windows?

Andy
(only AC 'cos I didn't back up last time I re-installed.....)

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[alonsoac]

I have the same situation but I use Linux as primary OS and run windows in a VM. I have a Win98 VM for some old software I use. A "safe" XP VM for some some other software and I make sure not to install anything new on this one. And finally a "junk" XP VM where I play and install all kinds of stuff. Sometimes the "junk" VM messes up so I just delete and copy the "safe" to make a new one.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[Khyber]

"The whole "the only way to fix it is to reinstall" is extremely rare since XP"

Bullshit. I watch XP, Vista, and 7 machines eat their own NTLDR on reboot all the goddamned time.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[Khyber]

"Tired of this misconception."

It's not a misconception. In fact there are multiple ways for Windows to break entirely requiring a full reinstall because even the repair option on the install disc won't work.

Let me install Norton on your system and give me ten minutes - you'll need a full reinstall.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[B1oodAnge1]

Sorry, I would consider any problem that takes longer and is more trouble to fix than to reinstall unfixable.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[devent]

The only difficulties I had with Linux were all hardware related, the lack of drivers.

I had more the interface, like Gnome or KDE and the applications in mind. Like the utilisation of the mouse and keyboard, management of files, the 3D effects with compiz or kwin, etc. Furthermore, the "slimness" (i.e. you have the whole system plus applications in 4GB), the stability and speed of the system. The default applications are more user friendly than the Windows counterparts, too. Last but not least, the package management.

All this things are far more superior than anything I ever saw in Windows, and I have been using Windows since the 3.11 times. But I must say, I started using Linux first with Ubuntu 6.x and I didn't liked it. But since the more recent versions I'll never change back to Windows, except for the games. Linux, as a desktop system, is really starting to mature now and beginning to innovate. If there were only more hardware drivers and more commitment to the Linux system from the OEMs.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Tired of this misconception. Seriously. I've been using Windows software for 14 years, and I have NEVER had to do a full system reinstall. EVER.

I can't believe this comment got a Score:4, Interesting on /.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[sjames]

Except that all things being equal, Linux is more fixable at any given level of experience. And in the case where a reinstall is necessary, I will never EVER have to call Debian or Redhat and beg for permission. I can have either of those to the "go have dinner and by the time you're done it'll be ready" install phase before you can even get MS to permit you to begin the install process.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[Reziac]

Having removed Norton from a few systems and left Windows perfectly intact (and working much better), I beg to differ.

As to the original complaint -- I've never had to reinstall either, and my four "everyday use" Windows setups (95, 98, ME, and XP) have a combined service history of 38 YEARS.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[Khyber]

You've *NEVER* had the OS degradation of 95 or 98 after about half a year due to the crappy registry back then?

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[im_thatoneguy]

And how much time do you spend finding the source of those problems?

I can re-install a system in about 4 hours. I very rarely have a virus or problem on my computer, even without anti-virus or a firewall but I had one a coupe years ago that nigh on impossible to kill. It was a multi-headed hydra of frustration. 2 hours after giving up I was mostly back up and running on a fresh install of windows. Much easier than mucking around for an entire day beating my head on a wall.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[syousef]

Dude, you so should not be preaching to me. My first install was a text-based Slackware install in the early to mid 90s. There are people here that have 3 times that amount of experience.

If you've only seen hardware issues it is only because you're a newb.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[MrNiceguy_KS]

I agree. I've been supporting Windows desktops professionally for over a decade, plus a lot of moonlighting doing tech support for friends,family, co-workers, friends-of-friends, and people who I have no idea how they got my number but were willing to pay me to fix their PC. In the day job, where all the data is stored on the server, and there's a limited number of apps that they actually use, most problems are fixed with a wipe and re-install, because it's the fastest way to get the job done.

But for a home user that's got a lot more apps, some of which they've got the install disks in storage, or "in a box in the basement somewhere", wipe and re-install is a last resort. Since Windows doesn't have a good way to back up program settings, there's always time spent getting everything set up the way it was before, there's always stuff you miss that leads to more phone calls and customer frustration. Even an unbootable machine can usually be fixed with a repair install, rather than a full nuke-and-pave.

I've done backup-and-reinstalls on machines rendered unbootable by failing hard drives, but almost never otherwise. The last time I wiped a machine with good hardware was shortly after SP2 for XP was released. The customer had gotten tired of waiting for SP2 to finish installing, and pulled the plug. The machine would still boot - extremely slowly - but a lot of core functionality was broken, including any file operations in Windows Explorer. A repair install didn't fix it, so I had to wipe.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[devent]

> If you've only seen hardware issues it is only because you're a newb.

Fair enough, as I said I started with Ubuntu 6 or 7. Or maybe, because I'm just a normal desktop user who like that his system just works and don't get in my way like WindowsXP does it all the time.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[Reziac]

Nope. The real killer is total failure to defrag, and it won't hurt Windows any, it'll just slow things down, and make apps that use a lot of file handles unstable (frex, browsers with their large collection of cache and temp files; email clients that rewrite the entire database every time they do anything; shit like that). Windows gets the blame but it's really not the problem, other than the filesystem and design limits that were pretty much the rule in consumer OSs back then.

Yeah, it helps to run a registry scrubber now and again (I use ToniArts EasyCleaner -- free from http://personal.inet.fi/business/toniarts/ecleane.htm), and I beat my clients over the head until they get in the habit of doing so (along with defragging), but fact is W9x can survive without it. It takes about 3 years of total neglect to finally get to the aforementioned unhappy state, which can be fixed, usually back to 100% perfect, with two minutes of EasyCleaner and the hour or so it takes to kill tempfiles and do a defrag.

Mind you I also think using RegEdit is normal, so I'm pretty familiar with rooting around in there. I've learned that you DON'T find bales and bales of the sort of crud we've been led to believe. I've never seen a genuinely "corrupted" registry. The worst is conflicting crud left by crapware with shitty uninstallers like Norton, and even that cleans up readily enough.

We get numerous machines donated to the club that have Win95/98, had belonged to schools and gov't offices, and have never had the first scrap of maintenance -- and in most cases just basic cleanup per above fixes what ails 'em. It's very rare that I deem one a reinstall candidate.

As to whether maintenance should be necessary... You wouldn't let your car struggle with the same old tired oil and filters for years on end, would you? Why should you expect a computer, an equally complex beast, to do without the most basic maintenance? Yet people do, including people who should know better, and then wonder why after a few years it no longer runs well. Your car wouldn't do so well on clogged filters and gummy oil, either. :)

As to "but it shouldn't be vulnerable to shitware like Norton, or malware either" -- do you say the same when you hit a major pothole in the dark and knock your car out of alignment??

Being an old DOShead myself, I initially approached Windows with skeptical disgust, and I glare suspiciously at each new incarnation, but over the years I've found it's actually pretty durable, especially considering the neglect and abuse most people heap on it.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[syousef]

Well I remember when a Redhat Linux upgrade (before the Fedora days) locked me out of my system because it the upgraded version required strong passwords to log in. All of a sudden my weak password was not good enough but instead of just enforcing a change it locked me out as both my normal and root user. Had to jump through hoops to rescue the system. Not my only non-hardware issue but a good example.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah I see. If their use is different than yours, then theirs is wrong because yours is right.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not exactly true. There are hundreds of problems that can only be solved by a re-install, and that's straight from the Windows dev team. I work for a Fortune 5 company with a huge install base so we have hooks into their dev and PS people without really having to pay for it(cuz we've already been pillaged).

Conversely, the worst problem you can get on a Linux system is a kernel rebuild that requires a reboot.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Happened to me today. Nasty infection with Virut. The only way to be sure I had gotten it all was a full reinstall from clean media, since it had also infected the reinstallation partition.

Sure, I could have reverse-engineered the virus, written a Python app to disable the virus and patch all the EXE files on the hard drive, but it was more efficient to backup uninfected files and reinstall.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[ergean]

Le me tell you this... you can fix windows in 3-5-10h of work... or you can install it, image it and forget about it in under 2h. And any time you have a problem that takes more then time that you need to reinstate an image guess what we do?

So stop saying that you can fix windows... yeah, fix the damn "Windows Antivirus 2010" - you can, but you waste time by fixing it and you will never be 100% sure you have a clean system.

Make a script to grab all the user data... desktop/my documents/outlook profiles/mozilla backup/messenger profiles and what ever they have in there and just slap a new windows.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[ergean]

You are doing it wrong or you never play games and don't install all the shit you find on the internet.

My laptop has the same windows xp for more then 5 years... but then again it has only open office/firefox/winrar/the bat/panzer general II and a chess game on it.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I just realized you admitted to running ME willingly.

While I am sure you believe what you are saying is true, I must make the assumption that you have such an insanely low standard of quality when it comes to your computers that your opinion and experience are useless to me.

Re:Stop preaching Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly he either can't tell the difference or just doesn't care. He's using ME for Christ's sake...

Windows won't go away by mocking it

[h00manist]

Got to be smarter than that. I dislike monopolies and MS as much as anyone, but finding problems and publicizing them will only help test it and reduce QA labor costs for Microsoft. It won't make people not use it, or wonder if Linux or anything else is better. Testing some programs for Linux will be better, talking to people managing various projects, writing user manuals for a few programs. Wine HQ has lots of programs that need testing and installation instructions. Questioning copyrights and patents could get some results, campaigning for legislation change. But just bashing Microsoft and saying "in Linux it is better" won't do much.

Probably not a Win 7 bug...

[ghostis]

Given the recent similar issue with supposedly buggy Windows updates, I say this is an undetected root kit cleaning up after itself.

Re:Probably not a Win 7 bug...

[indi0144]

mod up!

It's a feature...

[Anonymous Coward]

In the next service pack it will prune the whole c:\windows\ directory...

A New Microsoft Sales Strategy?

[Anonymous Coward]

System restore promises (in theory) that you should be able to roll back to an earlier state, perhaps before installing an app or upgrade that messed your system up.

Now, we know Microsoft has had problems getting people to adopt upgrades -- users are still happy to run XP or IE6 or whatever. Could this "bug" be another method to force upgrades?

You see the "system update" in your system tray... so you just install upgrades without thinking. Suddenly, you have a new browser -- or even a newer version of the OS. You never worried about this before and don't keep backups before installing upgrades because you believe in System Restore. Except now all of those restore points are missing.

And then it gets worse -- you accidentally upgraded to a "trial version" of the new OS, but you can't roll it back. So, you either pay Microsoft $100 for the full version of the new OS, or you go through the pain in the ass of reinstalling from scratch.

Of course, I don't think MS would actually do this. But I bet such a scheme would ensnare a few million casual users. Watch out for a similar "bug" appearing in older versions of Windows during some sort of "security update"....

wtf

[Anonymous Coward]

So I single thread with a total of 8 posts spread over nearly 4 months classifies as an 'extrodinary bug' and makes it to the frount page.

Welcome to slashdot, credability going rapidly out the window.

Re:Gotta love M$...

[indi0144]

I'd advice Madriva as a real alternative (the Ubuntu option may backfire), well, if that person does not NEED things like desktop publishing or audio/video production they should be fine, right?

On the other hand, who cares about system restore anyway, the favorite pub for your average malware, I use snapshot on a live CD to make my backups, no bloat, good compression and have never barfed on me.

http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/intro.htm

(not affiliated in anyway)

Restore points never worked for me anyway...

[TavisJohn]

I tried to use restore points to fix things like were described at the top of the page... And not only did the restore point not fix the problem, often times the problem was the same, or worse.

So I never relied on it anyway.

WIndows 7 is still overall stable, but...

[antdude]

... it has weird quirky bugs. I have this desktop refresh problem on my new office machine with 64-bit Windows 7 HP. Hopefully, SP1 fixes these things!

Re:WIndows 7 is still overall stable, but...

[antdude]

Oops, I forgot to post the URL to the refresh problem: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproui/thread/09fd46ff-65f1-4fa7-ae2d-9f3b2644fad6/ ...

Bugs on your Windows 7 system restore?

[Bob_Who]

Seems like they (Microsoft) have managed to continue flawed restore data loss in each new release. Ironically, it restores (through social engineering) our familiar role as beta testers that also get to (once again) pay for the privilege of a windows operating system loaded security concerns, flabby feature creepiness, and a corporate eula that is guaranteed to serve their interest and cost you time and money. We are subjected to this, repeatedly, in order to ease the headache of unnecessary risk, expense, and effort. All of this transparency is like living in a glass house, and we seem to have lost our stones. Gee, each new release its getting to be a ritual like a national or religious holiday. The tithe is more a mobster protection racket for your system and the life of the Motherboard and Godfather. Perhaps the Gates fund will one day heal malaria, but in the mean time they're hopelessly infected with "bugginess by design". The day they "cure" windows, it the day we stop buying it again and again like neurotic addicts chasing that elusive sense of clarity.

Re:Bugs on your Windows 7 system restore?

[jim_v2000]

Wow.

I destest windoze

[Ralph Spoilsport]

I think it is an abomination against man and nature. I would like to see Microsoft erased from the planet.

That said, I have a Windowze piece of shite at work and I've done what the article describes and I've only lost 3 pointers, and they were off the tail end. furthermoer, I back it up enough that it doesn't matter.

So - does MS deserve to be hit an asteroid? Yes.

Does this problem exist? Not for me.

Re:I destest windoze

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you stopped taking your medication again? May I suggest Yoga or meditation or breathing into a paper bag, just please don't act on your fantasies.

Why Baby Why?

[b4upoo]

The latest Ubuntu 10.X is so good it is scary. Why anyone wants to run a Windows machine is really beyond my understanding. Do yourself a huge favor and climb off the Microsoft teat.

Re: Why Baby Why?

[DragonTHC]

PC games.

When I can play every single PC game on Linux, I will.

I'm not against Linux, I'm actually an LPI and Novell certified Linux admin. I just play games.

Re: Why Baby Why?

[Mr. Flibble]

The latest Ubuntu 10.X is so good it is scary. Why anyone wants to run a Windows machine is really beyond my understanding. Do yourself a huge favor and climb off the Microsoft teat.

Maybe because some people have work to do? Maybe because they get paid to use windows applications? Or maybe because they want to run some specific applications such as games that won't run well on the latest Ubuntu?

Not everyone WANTS to fiddle with their computer, some just want to do stuff with it then go away and do something else. This is why the Mac is popular too. Narrowing yourself down to a single choice of OS and outright saying "Ubuntu is better!" is just foolish. It is like saying that Perl is better than C - but you don't even know what the problem is that is trying to be solved yet! It might be that a totally different language is better than perl or C, but without knowing what the goal is, you can't pick the best solution.

For the record, I am typing this on an iMac, with a XP Pro system next to me, and a Mythbuntu system off to the side as well as 2 other machines that I often change out OS'es on for different purposes. (Currently Redhat is on them at the moment).

Outright saying "Why anyone Wants to run Windows" ignores that different people want different things from their computers. Your solution is not theirs.

Re: Why Baby Why?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Because some of us do technical work with software tools (schematic capture, PCB layout, FEA, 3D CAD) that are not available on Linux. So it's either work with a pretty good OS (Windows 7) or hit the unemployment line with the OS choice of geeks.

Re: Why Baby Why?

[DAldredge]

You know some people actually LIKE Windows.

Re: Why Baby Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perl better than C? Someone needs to pull out the ban hammer!

-NAAH-

Re: Why Baby Why?

[GF678]

You know some people actually LIKE Windows.

I've found freetards are completely unable to comprehend this. They simply can't fathom how anyone could LIKE Windows, which is why they feel anyone using Windows must be in pain while doing so. It's this flaw in their logic which makes them so frustrating to deal with.

Re: Why Baby Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice post and all, but this is /., where windows is shit and linux is amazing and that's all there is to it. Don't waste your time trying to reason linux zealots out of something that they never reasoned themselves into in the first place.

Re: Why Baby Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu is better.

Re: Why Baby Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I run music applications and video editing. Two things that Linux is at best woefully inadequate at. Yes, I might be able to try to get some hodgepodge working, but there is no real system a professional can use on the platform.

Macs, I can buy a Macbook with Logic Studio and be off and running. This will work with almost all MIDI hardware without issue. Windows, I can do similar with ACID, or variety of applications. If I wanted to deal with Cubase's brain dead license dongles, I could go that route, but I avoid products with that type of DRM just like I do a white hot poker near the eye orbits.

Linux just has nothing professional in this department whatsoever. So until someone gets a standard for music stuff on the Linux platform that is more than ripping/MP3ing CDs, Linux on the desktop will be a novelty at best.

Re: Why Baby Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you.

The first thing I ask people who are interested in Linux is, "What do you use your computer for?"

I'm comforted to see that other people (especially on this forum) understand that there is a time and a place for all OS's.

This is a surprise?

[NicknamesAreStupid]

Perhaps, many never even ran Vista.

Re:Win7 Can Dlete All System Restore Points On Reb

[Anonymous Coward]

sent from my iPad

Black Screen

[Psychotic_Wrath]

This is somewhat offtopic and will probably be modded as such, but since its related I thought I would put it out there.

I am using Windows 7 also and I have an HDTV. I connect with an HDMI cable (HDMI on both ends). If I turn off my screen then it will not come back on without unplugging the screen. This is another annoying bug. It works normally when I don't use HDMI to connect to my computer, and convert it to DVI.

Re:Black Screen

[MillionthMonkey]

This is also somewhat offtopic but I was wondering if anyone out there has seen my red stapler?

Get Over It Already

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm really getting tired of these newbie "Microsoft sucks, Linux rocks!" type posts. You guys are either (a) not experienced/professional enough to deal with an inferior OS and "Make I.T. Work" or (b) just figured out how to Ubuntu, then immediately set fire to your MCSE certificate.
Seriously; Grow up. Every OS has a place in the Enterprise. If you need to slap something together that isn't going to freak users out...that's what Windows is for. If you need to roll out 500 workstations with a printout of URLs taped to the LCD...that's what Windows is for. If you're going to bust some heads with the latest F.P.S games...that's what Windows is for.

Now, if you want to place something powerful in the hands of a competent, experienced user, *then* you can look at doing a "Power User" or "One-Off" build with a different OS.

Oh, and to the guy that touted A.D. as the end-all be-all; I seriously think you need to give iPlanet a shot, or maybe Novell iDirectory. Active Directory is just LDAP, DNS, DHCP and a few other whiz-bangs held together with "Microsoft Glue 2003 R2 SP3 Hotfix Q938878".

Posting as A.C. because I'm pulling data from a reiser4 filesystem on a Gentoo LiveCD load. (Thanks, fuck-nut, for killing your wife, now I have to manually recover nine systems)

Re:Get Over It Already

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, AD is the de facto standard. Mainly because of Exchange. Like it or not, Exchange is the killer app of the enterprise. PHBs want their Blackberries working with it with BES. The bean counters like the ability to remote wipe devices if some exec loses their phone while at a night club. The legal eagles find that it is easy to find a commercial third party package (or just use Exchange's built in functionality) for archiving messages so they can show they are HIPAA or Sarbanes-Oxley compliant without much paperwork. Other customers clients like Exchange because it can create message transports between two sites with exchanging of SSL keys so E-mail never leaves the site unencrypted between the two companies. Exchange can also be installed where the mailbox hub machines are inside the corporate network while the edge servers handling incoming and outgoing mail are in the DMZ, so if they get compromised, everyone's E-mail is not easily at risk. And of course, Exchange can replicate mailboxes for failover capability.

There are could services for E-mail, but in reality, would you want your corporate mailboxes stored where it is unknown who has access? Even if the company outsourcing has extremely rigorous data security measures (which most do), they are a fat, juicy target for attackers, compared to keeping messaging in-house where it is a far smaller target.

Of course, in reality, a sturdy machine or cluster running Zimbra/SMTP/POP/IMAP can do most of Exchange's functionality with a good sysadmin with a clue about Sendmail. Even clustering is possible using VMware, a SAN, and two hosts, Exchange ends up winning in most companies, just because the execs like having their appointments shot to them in Outlook, and Exchange support is relatively easy to find.

So, with Exchange comes Active Directory. And since AD is a must for users to be in so they can open their mailboxes, most companies just end up using it as the core authentication and directory server.

think hardware history

[Geomonster]

Here's perhaps something new to bash: -AMD. Naw, -kidding. Take It Easy. EASY now...but listen. Forget the OSes. What's getting better, or should be getting better is the hardware. After all, 2010 has arrived. Let's talk cache, and RAM. I feel some AMD processors with less cache run steadier than those that try to match Intel's stuff. It's like the difference between a snap and a thud, performance -wise. It's well documented some motherboard manufacturers actually set their bioses to take older Athlon 64's HyperTransport down a step, for instance-and it actually improved some benchmarks. So either your machine is BROKE and its a miracle ANY OS can keep integrity what so ever, or your stuff is good, and it'll probably run most anything just fine. OF COURSE Restore should delete itself-especially if you have good enough ram quantity/quality, just like all that Virtual Memory stuff in the background should erase itself,too.?? Just a thought.. Then there is, of course hard drive mushiness as well. What we don't know about hard drive error algorythyms won't hurt us. ?? Is there perhaps a reason Acronis comes free only with Seagate drives? Or am I guessing wrong?

Windows Restore FAQ

[David_Hart]

Maybe some people should read the FAQ on Microsoft's site as this happens if System Restore does not have enough disk space or if the user turns off system protection for the hard-drive (i.e. the C: drive). Sounds like a PEBKAC problem to me...

System Restore FAQ:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/System-Restore-frequently-asked-questions

System Restore Disk Space:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/How-much-disk-space-does-System-Restore-require

Huh?

[uvajed_ekil]

What is this "system restore?" I switched to Linux Mint years ago and have never since needed to "restore" my system. Worst case scenario, I've had to close an unresponsive windows, and reboot just for good measure. Do I need this restore partition thingie? I backup once in a while but have never needed it. I reboot once every month or two, just to be safe. Will my system be more stable and secure from virusess if I upgrade to the latest and greatest windose?

Re:Huh?

[shutdown -p now]

The main purpose of "System Restore" in Windows is to recover from an installation of a badly written and malfunctioning driver, when said malfunction hampers normal OS functionality, or even prevents the system from booting altogether.

The reason why you don't have that problem in Linux is because, most likely, the only third-party driver you use there - if any - is the graphics one.
So the chances of running into a badly broken one are lower (though not non-existing; e.g. the recent kernel update has messed up networking for many Linux installs with Ralink wireless chipsets out there).

Re:Huh?

[Lehk228]

linux mint is spyware laden shit, have fun with that

Re:Huh?

[mikechant]

linux mint is spyware laden shit, have fun with that

Any evidence for this? I've searched with no relevant results.

Or is this just an obscure joke or troll?

Re:Huh?

[TheSunborn]

Why not just uninstall the driver? (Or if it is a vital driver, re-install the old version?)

Re:Huh?

[shutdown -p now]

Tricky to do that if driver gets loaded on startup and immediately bluescreens, for example.

Then, also, for a casual user, you'll lose him at the moment you say "uninstall the driver". Installing those things is easy - pop the CD into his computer, watch autorun to start up, and click "Install". Uninstalling means going to Device Manager, which most people don't even know exists.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I'm a PC...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a PC, and this was not my idea.

hmmm

[thatskinnyguy]

I don't mean to troll, but in order to recover from something incredibly bad, normally FORMAT C: is the only option to be 100% sure. Then I use my version of System Restore called "Ghost" and I'm back up and running in 20 minutes.

Sounds convinent

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, don't have to disable it and delete them myself... wait people still use that feature?

rofl

[Yfrwlf]

As a Linux user, what in the hell is a "restore point"?

Re:rofl

[amcdiarmid]

It's kinda like a backup that's available on Disk, you know
- It takes a backup of system files on every successful boot.
- it provides fast access to those backups if you need them.
- best of all (for most users), it's infected with a virus by the time you want to use it;)

Re:rofl

[mlts]

Two semantics for a restore point:

1: A snapshot of the OS.

2: Snapshots of the OS filesystem.

#1 I've found is iffish. Sometimes a restore of the OS to an earlier PIT works, other times it doesn't. I don't depend on it, and if "last known good" configuration doesn't work after a driver causes issues, I just restore the machine from an earlier time, then copy any newer document files.

#2 is of good benefit. I've had a number of times where I've been able to recover corrupt or deleted files using the Previous Versions functionality.

To be honest, do NOT consider restore points as something to use in place of backups. At the very minimum, get a copy of Retrospect (or a decent backup program), a decent external hard disk (or disks) that are bigger than the data stored on the machine, and configure daily backups. This way, if something does happen and a restore point fails, recovery of everything is still possible without having to format and reinstall.

Re:rofl

[fnj]

It's a lame imitation of file system snapshots for losers.

EVIL_ENT

[Anonymous Coward]

The restore future is crap
It happened to me twice (once with the RC and once with the original one) that it just formatted my harddisc when trying to fix some system issue which came out of nowhere
Fortunately, I backed up every shit but of course it's a pain in the a**

Pushing GP to Macs - there's an app for that

[Anonymous Coward]

Want to push Group Policy to your Macs? Try a product called Centrify. It will help you bind the Macs to AD and has a boat load of policies that you can play with.

But you can also get a helluva lot of control over your Macs by using Open Directory on OS X Server, and running the Software Update Server where you can have the server download and host the updates for your users so they point directly to your server rather than out to Apple - giving you a chance to test the OS updates before approving them for deployment to the desktops, which you can do with a number of products (ARD and Casper are two I know of off the top of my head).

The PC administration has been trying to shoehorn the Macs into AD for a while - rather than just use the OD they already have on their Mac servers. Lots of wasted time and money in that effort. Once we take AD out of the equation, life just gets much easier. the lesson here: Use PC tools to manage PC's - Use Mac tools to manage Macs.

Most Users?

[shermo]

I'm pretty sure that most users have never heard of system restore points.

System Restore is a security problem

[flyingfsck]

The System Restore function is a favorite hiding place for malicious programs. So Microsoft finally fixed it?

Re:System Restore is a security problem

[iPhr0stByt3]

The problem with malware in the restore points is not a flaw with system restore. Malware will hide itself in any of your backups if it can. If you clean a virus from your PC, I would recommend to delete all restore points after you contracted the virus (which is likely all of your remaining restore points as the virus probably already deleted all restore points prior to it's coming on board). However, if your anti-virus does not completely clean the PC, then the malware might automatically restore itself from the restore points. Of course, if it can do that it can also just copy itself back onto your drive. But anti-virus tools can cause confusion when they report the malware located in the "system volume information" directory and therefore most malware removal procedures simply recommend disabling system restore (to clear all restore points).

go-to geek...

[Anonymous Coward]

and you complain that you need Windows 'mostly' for itunes?

There is so much wrong with that statement when combined with the inference of your post about.

Some geek you are.

Re:Win7 Can Dlete All System Restore Points On Reb

[Anonymous Coward]

wat, beign an Apple product my iPac ist licenced for doing iArtsy work, like this extreme advertizing master Piece iHave presented yo tou. iLike youLiek it! <3

/. = bug reporting system for MS

[iPhr0stByt3]

Why are we posting a small bug report on /. anyway?

how did this get on slashdot?

[strstr]

There's no evidence that this is a bug in Windows at all, or that it's a wide spread issue. There's not even a method of reproducing the problem, or any details on the cause...

Re:how did this get on slashdot?

[joelleo]

well, I for one am not affected:

C:\Windows\system32>vssadmin list shadows | findstr /i time
      Contained 2 shadow copies at creation time: 4/20/2010 1:04:24 AM
      Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 4/23/2010 8:41:14 PM
      Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 4/23/2010 8:44:13 PM
      Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 4/23/2010 8:45:18 PM
      Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 4/23/2010 8:47:44 PM
      Contained 2 shadow copies at creation time: 4/26/2010 3:00:41 AM
      Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 4/26/2010 3:33:43 AM
      Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 8/12/2009 12:26:15 AM
      Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 8/12/2009 10:19:21 PM
      Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 8/13/2009 2:15:41 PM
      Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 9/15/2009 8:34:40 PM
      Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 9/23/2009 7:52:40 PM
      Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 9/23/2009 7:59:05 PM
      Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 9/24/2009 1:14:49 PM
      Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 9/25/2009 1:18:36 AM
      Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 10/2/2009 2:23:48 AM
      Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 10/2/2009 10:28:52 PM
      Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 10/3/2009 9:39:41 PM
      Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 10/5/2009 2:35:10 AM
      Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 10/5/2009 2:40:03 AM
      Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 10/5/2009 2:44:26 AM
      Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 10/5/2009 3:27:32 AM
      Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 10/5/2009 3:34:46 AM
      Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 10/5/2009 3:36:32 AM
      Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 10/5/2009 3:37:27 AM
      Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 10/5/2009 3:39:03 AM
      Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 10/5/2009 4:19:47 AM
      Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 10/5/2009 4:21:54 AM
      Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 10/5/2009 4:23:33 AM
      Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 10/5/2009 11:44:25 PM
      Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 10/7/2009 11:37:10 AM
      Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 10/8/2009 1:14:00 AM
      Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 10/9/2009 12:39:08 AM
      Contained 1 shadow copies at creation time: 12/11/2009 3:25:05 AM

I've rebooted my machine a few times since August of '09 =)

Ghost can do many different ways

[Sycraft-fu]

For the enterprise version, which is all I have experience with you've got three choices:

1) Hot image. Here the ghost client running in Windows takes an image of the system while it is live. It monitors things to make sure that it succeeds and will either fail the task, or use another method if it fails. I don't know what can cause failure, I'd expect if someone was using the system and chaining too many files or something.

2) Offline image, from the client. Ghost will make a virtual boot partition on the drive (called virtpart.dat) that it puts the necessary files in. This can be DOS with NDIS drivers, Windows PE, or maybe Linux (I've not played with their Linux options) along with the ghost files. The system then is rebooted to that partition, a connection with the console server is established, and all cloning operations are done offline. All OS and ghost files are memory resident so the disk is available for uninterrupted access.

3) Live CD/floppy/USB. The ghost console server can build a boot media of your choice. You then take that to the system and boot from it. It'll load up the OS (as I said, DOS, Win PE, or Linux) and load Ghost. You can then manually establish a connection to the server, or simply do local operations.

So hot imaging is possible, though I don't know how well it works as we don't use it. However hot imaging isn't needed. A program like ghost can take the system offline, boot to its own environment, image the disk, and then boot back to the OS. I do it all the time for managing labs. However, hot imaging, as well as the other methods, are supported for Windows XP/Vista/7 with Ghost Solution Suite 2.5.1.

In terms of hot imaging I have used, VMWare Converter does an excellent job. It's somewhat awkward in terms of setup IMO, but it will remotely install its client, take an image of a live system to your computer, and make the necessary changes to boot it in a VM. Works with XP and Vista, but I don't think it supports 7 yet. Works great though. I can build a system, install all the drivers and have the hardware working well. Use VMWare converter to take it to a VM on my desktop. Do all the software installs and so on I like, with the benefits of things like snapshots. Then I can use Ghost to pull an image of that VM, and push it out to systems using that hardware. Works perfectly.

The Vundo virus deletes your system restore points

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not saying you have a rootkit infection, but since deleting system restore points is the first thing that the Vundo virus does - this is highly possible.

Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

This can happen when you cut power when W7 (or Vista for that matter) is closing and finalizing updates.. Also remember : W7 does has imaging on board if you don't trust system restore. It is not a wide spread problem.

Must be incorrect settings

[xenobyte]

I have a fairly fresh Windows 7 Home Premium (5 days) and I can chose between 12 restore points at the moment.

Uninformative documents

[leuk_he]

Actually that faq is as good as a manual that says "click File -> save to save your current document". It does not explain exactly what is changed, what is saved and what files are saved, nor does it explain where it is saved. That is all fine until you actually have a problem that you tried to troubleshoot with other means. You cannot manually do anything with a restore point.

Example:
There was a a USB to serial driver installed that caused system instability. The driver was uninstalled, AND a previous restore point was activated. Somehow these 2 actions caused a conflict and the system was bluescreening on logon.

After a lot of tries the system became stable again, but system restore was not a time saver since it never told what was changed.

Conclusion:
-Simple users are able to fix some problems, but are never prevented to make the same mistakes again because lack of feedback what was fixed.
-Advanced users are not able to tinker with individual setting of a system restore point, and can only make it work without understanding, or making shortcuts. (e.g. only touch the driver system)

The Bad interaction with antivirus sofware is just one result of this. Since antivirus software is mostly handling individual files, and not the system, bad interactions can occur. Virusses can reside in the restore point, and all a antivirus can do is damage the restore point or not scan it all all ,hoping it will catch the virus(/false positive) if the restore point is applied.

Re:Uninformative documents

[Joce640k]

You need to read up on what a "shadow copy" is.

No files are "saved", a snapshot is made of the MFT and areas of the disk are marked so that if a file is overwritten it won't overwrite the disk sectors where the original file is stored.

Any notion that there's some sort of hidden zip file somewhere with a backup of the system files in it is completely wrong.

I've used it, works fine.

[pyster]

I've used restore points with no issues. Tested it pretty thoroughly the first time I installed. Abused the system. Installed ATI drivers without removing the old one. Misc system changes. Etc... Right now I have my 20 gigs dedicated to restore and it works fine to roll back changes. I partition my drive tho. C is only for drivers, small programs, and the OS. I've mklined my most of my user directory to D:. Never keep data on a system drive, and if you care about it back it up, more than once, over multiple drives or a remote site. You can schedule basic backups easily in windows 7.

I've still backed up the system using clonezilla, but only out of force of habit.

Someone stated 'doesnt play well with anti virus software'. Um, if you are using anything other than microsoft security essentials for this on windows 7 you are wasting your time.

As for 'one more reason to install linux', um, no. You still need do a lot of work to get windows programs to run in linux, and in some cases they run like ass. The answer of 'find a linux alternative' isnt an answer for users locked into pieces of software for the variety of real world reasons, or because it's just the software you want to use. Ever notice how a lot linux (or mac) users have windows partitions, or at least one machine with windows on? It's a must if you do any amount of gaming. Not knocking linux. It's great on many levels. Plus, switch to linux due to a bug that might never effect you? Does not seem to add value.

Sticking with XP? Sure, if you want to be part of the bot net and have no desire to use modern hardware. SSD, hard drives using the new 4096 byte sector standard, etc. I loved XP too, but its 10ish years old. Lacks features like the resource monitor, better multi monitor support, etc. Or just the over all stability 7 offers over XP.

Windows 7 silently deletes desktop shortcuts

[CuteSteveJobs]

It does this automatically. I kept noticing that shortcuts (to oft got places deep in my filesystem) I'd put on my desktop kept vanishing without warning. After some googling I found out it was a new "feature" of Windows 7. Where as XP used to tell you, Windows 7 assumes the user is too stupid to comprehend and blunders off to do it without so much as a warning.

Eventually I found there was an undocumented (and confusingly named) service I could disable to stop this from happening.

What would posses Microsoft's programmers to do this? Presumably the same thing that possesses them to delete system restores. Really, Microsoft is so made of fail.

Re:Windows 7 silently deletes desktop shortcuts

[Blakey Rat]

Do you have any kind of documentation or link at all to back this up? Smells of complete bullshit to me. (And yes, I've used Windows 7 daily since release, I've never had an icon disappear. They get moved sometimes, but never deleted.)

Mod parent UP.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good comment.

The big picture: The first release version of Windows is always service pack 2 or later. The whole world is Microsoft's beta test site.

OP responds:

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm the person who submitted the story.

Thanks, all, for the replies so far.

Putting to one side - for now - the Windows vs Linux debate, it's clear that this IS a bug, even if it doesn't affect all users.

What is striking is that the affected system was NOT tweaked in any way that would cause the problem. I didn't tinker with any Windows services. Heck, I only changed the desktop wallpaper.

It was a clean install on a virus- and spyware-free PC, with just a handful of essential hardware drivers installed (printer, graphics card, etc - mostly supplied by Windows and nothing esoteric), and no third-party applications whatsoever.

I also tried varying the disk space available for system restore data, right up to 100%. It didn't make any difference.

I'm familiar with the practice of making system images rather than using system restore points; I've done this for years in Windows XP with Acronis True Image, imaging my system and user files partitions. But because Windows 7 does a better job of keeping user and system files separate (yes, admittedly what Linux has always done), and it has a backup tool built-in, I thought that rather than pay for the new version of Acronis, I'd use system restore for OS snapshots and the backup tool for imaging my files. (I mention this to dispel any impression that I'd bought the PC from Walmart and am an unthinking Microsoft fanboi!)

At any rate, I'm certainly glad to hear the problem isn't affecting everyone. As I see it, there are basically two issues:

(1) That the automatic deletion of system restore points can happen *at all*, even if only in a minority of cases (and not caused by extensive system tweaking).

(2) That the user isn't informed that the deletion has taken place (this is the real sting in the tail! Why no 'There has been a problem with saving your system restore data. Please follow these steps to troubleshoot...' message?).

Thanks again for the responses to my post.

Just Like Novell ten years ago

[amcdiarmid]

with the requirement that you have ten times the processing power.

solution, delete system 32

[Lehk228]

the problem is 64 bit windows conflicting with legacy code, you will need to delete your /windows/system32/ folder if you are running on x64

Re:solution, delete system 32

[Rockoon]

That folder contains 64-bit binaries.

To be fair:

[amcdiarmid]

Caution: This paragraph will say Windows Restore has ... issues, but the Windows Backup may be OK.

The major problem with system restore is that you can't mark any specific restore point "good". What you are left with are a few system restore points that usually are somewhat corrupted by the time you need them: EG: The Good restore points are wiped by infected ones by the time Mom tells you her computer was acting funny. You know she really didn't want to bother you about it... If you could mark a restore point as known, it would be better. (I would probably keep the initial set + just after each SP.).

To be fair, Windows Backup appears not to suck any more .. at least on 2008. (I have not seen Windows Vista or 7 yet.)Server wants a separate disk for the backup, You can pop in an install disk & use that backup image to restore the entire system. (although I don't think it's recommended for exchange...) If the backup on 7 is as good; can let me target a network share... that's a huge improvement for ms.

(has anyone tried this on 7? I'm too lazy to look this feature up. Kinda like OP who didn't notice that he made so little space for system restore that it overwrote each and every one.)

Re:To be fair:

[mlts]

Windows Backup on Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 is decent. It allows for decent full and incremental backups, with restores being easy to do on a file, directory, or even whole system basis.

The restore utility in Windows 7 and Windows Vista is a lot more rudimentary. On Vista Business, Windows 7 Professional, and higher, it allows one to make a restore image (in .WIM format), then will save files made after that incrementally. On the lower editions, it will only save files off, with no image capability.

Because of this varying of how machines are backed up, I highly recommend people use a decent third party backup utility (Acronis TrueImage or EMC Retrospect come to mind) with Windows. This way, it doesn't matter what version of Windows someone is using, backups will get done and done right, and a complete bare metal restore is just a boot CD away.

That wasn't an upgrade...

[IANAAC]

I once did an upgrade of suse that lost everything. Every. Last. File.

That wasn't an upgrade. It was a fresh install. And it probably warned you it was going to be a fresh install too.

You mean you USE system restore points?

[Snaller]

I thought it was one of those idiot "features" you disable 30 seconds after you have installed the OS.

Yeah

[SmallFurryCreature]

And they erase all my memory too! All of it just gone, empty blank state every time I pull the power! And when I took out my HD and cleaned it under the tap to get the dirty bits out, Gentoo totally failed to work with my freshly cleaned drive!!!

And to remain on topic, anyone actually use system restore? Always disable that as fast as possible.

Re:Yeah

[Orbijx]

If you're into pain, there is a use for system restore.

Having worked with small business customers who can't afford to go the nuke and pave route when Windows XP manages to shit the registry hive, you learn how to get around things, and then teach an important lesson.
I've started those phone conversations with suggesting to mount the drive via an external device, but some do not have one immediately available.
Those conversations turn to "Take a bathroom break and get a cup of coffee now. We're going to be at it for an hour."
I'll walk them through the steps to attempt to recover the registry hive, which depends on a restore point being there.

If that fails, I tell them two things. Get an enclosure to mount the drive and back up their stuff because they have no choice, and for the love of dog, next time, BACK UP THEIR STUFF.
If it works, then I have 'em back stuff up, explain that they'll want to reinstall the OS if any complications arise. If they don't have a backup solution, then I'd be glad to help them pick one out.

Wipe /tmp on boot?

[multipartmixed]

Wait 'till move to a UNIX where /tmp is actually mounted on a ramdisk. SunOS for one, is like that -- and has been for as long as I can remember (1992?)

Could be worse

[Rydia]

Yesterday I needed to boot into windows (the D&DI Character Generator doesn't work in wine, as far as I can tell), and I was greeted after boot with a lovely screen telling me that the system was broken and in need of repair. So my two options were restore from backup or repair. I had no backup, so I went to repair, and under "select drive," there was no system install. Windows had apparently uninstalled itself.

I'm still trying to sort out what happened.

Re:Could be worse

[StikyPad]

Sounds like your boot files or boot block got mangled, possibly by the installation of a boot manager. It's fairly straightforward to fix using the installation media.

1 thing the mods here understand, is this... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

"Biased Journalism sells more... magazines" - Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias, from "The Watchmen"

It's really in the site owner's best interests to most likely FOSTER this ongoing "Linux vs. Windows" type sentiment around here, and the reasoning's quite simple - material that generates arguments online, means more people come view and post (and perhaps even join) the forums here... which in turn, means more page hits/views, which = "mo' money" for the owners of /.!

(Pretty simple/in a nutshell)

APK

P.S.=> Are they actually DOING that (fostering this type of sentiment around here)? I don't know, but, it would make a LOT of sense from the site owner's perspective @ least, to actually do so, for the purposes of monetary gain via website page hits adbanner monetary generation! apk

New /. meme: Toilet Analogy

[mangu]

The question is not someone flushing your dump, it's more like having an automatic toilet that flushes as soon as you get up.

This could be a real inconvenience, suppose you wanted to submit a picture to Rate My Poo?

Re:New /. meme: Toilet Analogy

[Ethanol-fueled]

This could be a real inconvenience, suppose you wanted to submit a picture to Rate My Poo?

...Or finish wiping your ass, for that matter. Funny that some places use flushless urinals to be "green", but then waste the water with automatic toilets that flush twice for one dump's worth*.

* Toilet AI: Courtesy-flushing gone wrong?

Re:1 thing the mods here understand, is this... ap

[Blakey Rat]

P.S.=> Are they actually DOING that (fostering this type of sentiment around here)? I don't know, but, it would make a LOT of sense from the site owner's perspective @ least, to actually do so, for the purposes of monetary gain via website page hits adbanner monetary generation! apk

My guess is that they're too incompetent to be doing it on purpose, but they might luck into it.

The really scary part is...

[Joce640k]

The scary part of that story is that it takes "several minutes" to delete it.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Who is REALLY to blame?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, in my opinion, Windows itself (all versions) is a computer virus and should be banned from all use! Microsoft and others of their ilk (Apple included here) are, in my opinion (and only my opinion) are extortionists and thieves! So, all I have to say for all of you out there in Computerlandia who use MS products, you only have yourselves to blame for this cruft! Stop feeding the beast(s), and maybe they'll just die as they deserve!

That is your problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Try using Google instead of Bing.

With Google you get Oodles, but with Bing Not a thing!

Re:1 thing the mods here understand, is this... ap

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations, special boy. Did it take you long to figure that out?

Links Windows 7 silently deletes desktop shortcuts

[CuteSteveJobs]

Links:
http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2010/03/stop-windows-7-from-deleting-your-desktop-shortcuts/
http://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/9570-some-desktop-shortcuts-disappeared.html
http://www.ghacks.net/2010/03/30/fix-windows-7-desktop-shortcuts-disappearing/

BTW noticed someone modded my post as a 'Troll'. Come on Slashdot. You really need to crack down on people who mod down anyone they don't agree with. In this case the mod didn't even do rudimentary research.

This is stupid

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

I can assure you that restore points (shadow copies) DO work, and they have saved my ass more than once. However, Windows can only keep as many shadow copies as you give it room to store. If you fill up your disk, shadow copies WILL be deleted. This is a persistent issue on my Intel X25-m 80GB SSD, which is pretty much constantly near full because of its small size. I usually only get a few days of shadow copies as a result.

That said, neither Linux nor Mac OS X have anything like shadow copies unless you go configure them yourself.

On Linux, you can use a COW filesystem like ZFS or btrfs to get similar functionality, but practically no one uses either on a personal machine since ZFS runs in FUSE on Linux and btrfs is not entirely stable yet. The vast majority of Linux distros today default to ext4, which is a file filesystem but doesn't offer any sort of snapshotting.

On Mac OS X, you would need to configure Time Machine, which is great but requires an external disk or a Time Capsule (or a hacked NAS). I would bet that a substantial portion of Mac users never set up Time Machine simply because they don't have the necessary hardware.

The point is, Windows - even with shadow copies off - is no worse than Linux or Mac OS X out of the box. Shadow copies are not a backup mechanism and they aren't intended to replace one. Obviously if there's a bug here, it's serious and needs to be fixed. But the very nature of shadow copies means that they cannot be a long-term disaster recovery mechanism. If you're relying on shadow copies instead of backing up, you're stupid. Shadow copies offer zero protection against hardware failure, disasters (fire), or malware, even when they work.

That said, shadow copies are one of the best reasons to use Windows 7 (some versions of Vista had them too). No, they're not perfect. But the fact that they're on by default means that millions of users who are too lazy or uninformed to do backups have at least some minimal protection against the most likely (in my opinion) cause of data loss: user error.

fuck windows seven in the ass

[Anonymous Coward]

I despise windows seven. Fuck it and it's glossy bullshit. Everything is 3 menus deep!

STOP LIVING IN THE PAST!

[Philip K Dickhead]

Get over it. You're about to be famous for 15 minutes, anyways!

Yeah right! Please tell us ALL about it..

[Anonymous Coward]

So how's Windows 95 these days? Should be lightning fast on new hardware, or are you using Pentium-IIIs still? Do you know the Pentium-III unique ID number is still in place in every Intel-chipped computer today and is entirely accessible by software alone, even when disabled in BIOS? This is despite the privacy outrage in the late 90's and public demand to nuke this unwanted "feature".. Power users observe THESE kinds of details.

Not sure if I can make myself actually believe your story. If you have NEVER ever needed a reinstall, then you haven't really done anything "powerful" with computers, like swapping harddrives, PCI-cards or anything beyond Word and perhaps Excel and ooooh, let's not forget Notepad... Incidentally, whenever someone tells me they are "power users", curiously they tend to gravitate towards Notepad or OS X for some maschosistic reasons (mistaken for machosistic?).

Power users tend to BREAK their installations! Notice the s in installations? It may happen because of a little "oops", power-failure during repartitioning, an OS-install scrambling the master partition table beyond repair (yeah, can happen in Linux too by software fault alone), general virus (NOT "VIRII"!) outbreaks on Windows or you just don't feel like feeding your login credentials to any random trojan for all eternity like most people do. It CAN be general curiosity too, but not too often, then it's just lame. Power users are NOT lame. But you have probably never heard about dual-boot if reinstall is so foreign to you, so that's not the problem.

Not to mention how Windows 95 / 98SE just tended to die on boot one day, especially when raining, and your only recourse was a full reinstall. But I'm not sure if those are part of your "14 years" of Windows software usage, or if your usage was really that extended. Having set-up several machines for office use in my part time, I can tell you all Windowses before NT just suddenly died because of driver issues and "bit-rot", irrespective of limitations placed on the login user.

The most pitiable thing is that people like you, who play with Safari and Opera, instead of using real browsers like Firefox, Lynx and w3m, and claim you are power users, tell US (the power users), that we suck when we break things and that YOU are the power users.

You aren't.

You are pitiable and mistaken. Ever tried using the same partition for Bootcamp and Parallels? I have. It wasn't pretty, but it worked for some time and was a good idea in theory, until XP borked because of too many driver-issues between Bootcamp and Parallells. Ever been locked out of Windows because the partition was in use by both a VM and a dual-boot? Happened with me on VMWare over 10 years ago. Yeah these things happen to real power users. Not to people like you. People like you don't get to call yourself Power Users, just because you choose that in the "User Type" field in Windows. You've got to earn it by your sweat and swearing in front of the computer.

And yes, the reinstalls.. Always the reinstalls..

You insensitive clod! (yeah, sarcasm or irony or whatever you believe this smiley means.. ;-)

You always that clever, chicken-head?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd wager it didn't take him as long as it took for you to figure out where each letter of your sentence above was located on your keyboard (as you typed it with your nose, chicken-head. LOL, picture that!).

No viruses?

[Anonymous Coward]

> there hasn't been a damn thing I haven't been able to fix without the need to reinstall the whole thing.

I bet you haven't had many viruses, then? Or many games (think DRM).

Those are the main situations where you end up doing a reinstall. Or restore from backup if you work on the system regularly enough, rather than being called in when it's toast.

Been using 7 since launch...

[Anonymous Coward]

Never had anything of this nature occur. In fact I've had *more* luck with 7's restore feature than I ever did with the useless one in XP.

Well, I tend to disagree (how/why etc.)... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

"My guess is that they're too incompetent to be doing it on purpose, but they might luck into it." - by Blakey Rat (99501) on Sunday May 02, @12:27PM (#32064524)

Actually, I think the opposite.

Why?

Well - Because this website, alongside "The Register", are the 2 overall BEST multi-subject news sites I've seen online to date imo, for what it's worth (E.G.-> I've been online on the public internet since late 1994 here, and used it many times before that in academia, through the 1980's up to the present, and to date, I haven't seen the likes of this site or The Register... oh sure, some are close, but these 2 are the ones that are "outstanding in their field" in this capacity (providing current information on a plethora of "geeky topics")).

(I.E.-> They can't be "stupid" (for whatever that means), and have done so well. Not in my estimation @ least...)

APK

P.S.=> Once in a while though, they do post some inaccurate info. (that may not be their fault, I've been misled by inaccurate info. too), & there's NO shortage of "trolls" here or elsewhere online though (which at times, makes it fun to "put them in their place" & make them look 'stupid' as you state... but, they are a PAIN in the behind too to deal with as well by the same token)... ah, anyways, those are my thoughts, such as they are and for what they're worth based on years of observation online here & elsewhere... apk

Re:Well, I tend to disagree (how/why etc.)... apk

[Blakey Rat]

First of all, your typing teacher must be spinning around in his grave. Who taught you that -> is acceptable punctuation in English? Or completely unnecessary double-nested parenthesis?

Secondly, the Register sucks donkey. Much like Slashdot, it's only a "good" news site if you compensate for the fact that a full third of the articles are flat-out lies, and that you need to read the comments for corrections. Which, given, might be the evil master plan here: "Hey, if we post flat-out lies, people will go to the comments to get the real story!" But I sure don't consider that as being a "good" news source.

It would be more accurate to say that Slashdot and El Reg, once in awhile, go an entire day without posting a single misleading story.

But, hell, remember this story? Load of crap. And, more recently, this one from just this weekend? Completely misleading.

What's more scary is that I bet you just read the Slashdot homepage, and not the comments most of the time. (Because if you posted in the comments, I'd recognize your particular brand of pissing on the written English language.) Meaning, you're seeing the *uncorrected* version of the bullshit they're shoveling out... I can't even conceive of what kind of sick twisted BS-filled head that gives you.

Re:Well, I tend to disagree (how/why etc.)... apk

[Blakey Rat]

Haha, I just realized one of my "crap story" examples was the one I'm posting in! The hazards of responding to the emails, sorry.

I do enjoy that you have to read through two dozen "System Restore sux!" comments before you get to one actually discussing the issue. (And pointing out how crap the story is.) Of course they aren't modded off-topic, because they're critical of Microsoft.

Win7 image transfer

[Anonymous Coward]

I just finished using the Win7(Ultimate-x64) image create & transfer, took 5 1/2 days to complete from beginning to finish.
But i must say, I did not loose one VM, I have 6 created under Virtual-box and all are working fine.

All other progs also working fine.

So, Except for the time period, it was not a bad experience.

Luckily i have my Linux box to fall back on if something were to go wrong.
 

English critique? Off topic my man! AND...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to thank you BlakelyRat. Why? Well... you're letting me "demo" my fav. 'anti-troll' weapons, vs. your off-topic & most likely (not sure though, so excuse me if you really AREN'T trolling me) trolling of myself here - because there is no "English Grammar & Spell checking forums" here on /., for starters!

Ah... anyhow, here goes, by what you wrote in quotes:

"First of all, your typing teacher must be spinning around in his grave. Who taught you that -> is acceptable punctuation in English? Or completely unnecessary double-nested parenthesis?" - by Blakey Rat (99501) on Monday May 03, @10:08AM (#32071938)

She's not dead, and she'd seen me reach 100wpm, error free, & that was before places like this (but mostly IRC before I was into forums boards) helped increase that I am sure.

"Who taught you that -> is acceptable punctuation in English? Or completely unnecessary double-nested parenthesis?" - by Blakey Rat (99501) on Monday May 03, @10:08AM (#32071938)

Nobody. This is NOT a formal examination of my grammar or spelling first of all. Secondly, is there an "English Grammar & Spelling section" of this forums?? No. Thus, you're "off-topic" Blakely! Also, to establish your credibility as an expert in written English... do you have a PHD in English to your credit/name??

(Blakely, I have to say not on the last portion but... we'll see, lol! Hey, if not? Then your "trolling performance" is DOWN lately, lol!)

"But, hell, remember this story? Load of crap. And, more recently, this one from just this weekend? Completely misleading. - by Blakey Rat (99501) on Monday May 03, @10:08AM (#32071938)

Yes, and they do have "exceptional situations" in them both, so, I agree. Recently, a submitter here (or mod? Not sure) named Timothy posted an article on "Germany warns its users to stay away from FireFox", and they indeed, did. However, Timothy had a footer that said the Mozilla/FF team would patch it later this month... I assumed, in good faith, that was legit. Timothy probably did too. However, the FF team decided to do one, the next day, and it caused ALL KINDS of 'havoc' in a debate I had with a user named clone53421 here.

Funniest part of that, is that clone53421 said Germany did the same for Opera. They did not, but, they did for IE earlier than for FireFox. I pointed this out, clone53421 then began libeling me and calling me names etc. et al (as those frustrated by 'geek angst' are often "wont to do", lol) & what happened then? Well, FireFox turned up YET ANOTHER ERROR in their DOM and what did the mods here do before I could put it up to show that Firefox has a LOT more errors in it typically than does Opera??

They closed the thread... lol! Talk about CHEAP SHOTS... ordinarily I've noticed, /. articles stay up for comment @ LEAST 15 days. That one shut in 12... I think it was a fellow named sopssa who closed it in fact, but I am not certain. Ticked me off, because I was going to "floor" clone53421 with that new error in Firefox, showing it does indeed, typically show more security vulnerabilities in it than does Opera over time (and, Opera's faster on ALL fronts too).

Ah, anyhow, on Timothy? He tries I am sure, but he also posted a story about GOPHER being archived recently, & in its content he put up "GOPHER WAS A TEXT BASED METHOD" etc. et al, and that's NOT quite true, because I was using WS-GOPHER 32-bit to access GOPHER websites as far back as 1996 using it & it's a GUI tool for Windows!

APK

P.S.=> LOL, well, turns out you were NOT really "trolling me", & that you just like "correct english". I do too, when it REALLY matters, but on forums? I am more about ACCURATE TECHNICAL CONTENT personally. That way, I get to grow by it, and that's also the thing that I dislike sometimes here (and yes, elsewhere too, like "El Reg" also) - sometimes, you DO get INACCURATE or MISLEADING in

I agree: The "Pro-*NIX" crew here? Unreal!

[Anonymous Coward]

Here, we agree totally: There are some SERIOUS "Anti-MS" &/or "Anti-Windows" people around here.

Use what you like I say, as they're ALL pretty good (especially nowadays, & Linux? It's grown the most, I'll give it that).

Each OS family has their strengths & weaknesses really.

E.G.-> AD beats the tar out of anything LINUX has going for it in that capacity and so does Microsoft's apps integrating w/ one another. Linux and its apps are cheaper for initial purchase price though (can't beat 0 dollars).

Also, in defense of Linux? They've got only a loosely knit band of guys working their stuff (though MOST of them now are typically PRO DEVELOPERS with many years to decades of experience to their credit I found out recently).

However/Personally, I still favor Windows the most, overall, & because of a couple simple reasons:

1.) Windows runs more peripheral equipment for x86 based PC's & Servers (the most used type by FAR on this planet no less) more "solidly & reliably" because of driver availability which is USUALLY very good nowadays (because of MS-DDK being so "smart" with templates to start with for various types of equipment. The interfaces are solid enough to get basic functionality out of device contexts, and then, you add the rest via customizing the base stuff, for example, to YOUR particular board or device etc.).

2.) Plus, Windows is OUT THERE FAR MORE, & that? That gives you a "greater surface area" of employeability really in the "real working world".

(Because being able to make money is GOOD, you know?)

Still, it's GOOD to "test the waters" in other OS' because you never know when you're going to have to deal with them (in supporting them, or coding for them and networking them also).

APK

P.S.=> Ah, anyways... good conversation, and you appear to not have really been "trolling me" in my estimation now, after reading all your comments in their entirety now finally, after all. Also/lastly: Sorry for the late reply - busy boy here all day, finally done doing what I do in my days for work and also academia too (heading into finishing my B.S. in CSC now, 90++ credits of 120 done this semester, thank goodness)... apk

Actually no

[Anonymous Coward]

I've really held that belief for a while now and for many websites: They're in it for the money, and are making hay while the sun shines is all. Seems like common-sense. Controversy sells... it's up to you whether or not you as the consumer, buy, though, in the end.

APK

OP responds

[Anonymous Coward]

After a further 16 hours (!) of reinstallation, here's what I discovered:

If you install Win7 over an installation of XP that stored user data ('Documents and Settings') in a different partition to the system drive (e.g. by installing XP from a slipstream CD), system restore in Win7 won't work. It will delete restore points without warning upon boot.

In other words, this produces the same effect on system restore as dual booting between Win7 and XP - even if system restore was turned off in the original XP installation.

So it's nothing to do with tweaking Win 7 or not allowing enough space for restore points. Ironically the one tweak I'd made to XP was to use a slipstreamed installer disc to change the user data path.

Plan 9 got backups right ages ago...

[CondeZer0]

Plan 9 had a rock solid automagic snapshot backups system working twenty years ago.

And more than ten years ago the folks that created Unix and C figured out a really innovative, efficient, and reliable way to archive snapshots and do backups to other media.

It is sad to see that no other operating system has learned anything from all this great work done at Bell Labs.

And no, zfs and Apple's "time machine" have not learned anything.