Microsoft programmers need to be shot first.

I finally get the inside joke: Vista is Microsoft's foray into Clockwork Orange type movie-making; except, instead of being entertaining, it simply leaves one with only the homicidal rage.

This sentence shows considerable restraint, and has replaced 20 pages consisting entirely of obscenities.

I've already decided to limit my exposure to Vista/W7 as much as is possible, and am copying off all my data from the Vista system, so I can wipe it and put on a real operating system (it's a toss up between FreeBSD and a linux strain; ashame Haiku is still not an option).

Vista can barely copy.  Removing a directory around 5gb with tens of thousands of files on XP takes nearly no time at all; on Vista, it's still calculating, ('discovering') 5 minutes later.  That's pathetic.

Vista likes to add the current computer name to your credentials for CIFS shares.  That's pretty aggravating; screwing with local security policies 'sort of fixes' it.  Apparently, Microsoft's rightly decided people shackled with its crappy OS are too stupid to properly provide a domain name when required.  Shrug, I got past it.

But, dear reader, this rant is on account of the fact that Vista CAN'T EVEN PROPERLY COPY TO A DEVICE!

Augh!

There's never a good time for your NAS to die, but when you've just filled up almost two terabyte worth of platterverse with valuable data, ... certainly leans towards 'a worse time than most'.

I'm pretty sure my playing with installing silly SCM addons like Git was to blame; no biggie, right?

(Update 2010-03-25: It was a biggie; I lost everything --- my ReadyNAS is one of the Sparc-based ones; I finally coaxed a Ubuntu livecd into compiling ext2fuse so I could deal with the file system that likes 16k page sizes, only to find lvm wouldn't give me any love by finding a valid volume.)

Well, except, my old ReadyNAS doesn't exactly recover gracefully from having its config files manually edited.  No worries, I'll just use the TFPTD recovery method.

Or not.  Well, no worries, then, I'll just yank the CF card out and dump the raw image to it.

Enter The Vista.

Vista CANNOT concurrently copy files!  I'm typing this in 2010.  15 years ago, on a 386, I could copy files to a floppy drive AND a secondary hard drive.  Really!  And... and... just 5 years ago, I could copy files from two optical drives to multiple hard drives, all at the same time... EVEN on Windows XP!

But, here we are, and Vista shits itself ... oh, my, there's my profanity rearing its ugly head again.

I've been backing up what's left on the Vista system to a crappy Maxtor external drive (truly only slightly better than nothing, but since two of the four drives on the Vista system are also dying... gotta shove bits somewhere) and its been at it for some hours.  Trying to copy the firmware for the NAS to its CF kept resulting in errors writing sectors.  The card reader is hooked up to one of the motherboard's usb headers; the external drive is going direct to soldered usb connectors (and not the one in the card reader, nor any other expansion ports <-> headers).

After failing with Sector Edit (from the same guy who wrote Unstoppable Copier --- and which, oddly enough, doesn't keep copying when faced with an error) and even trying to use Hex Workshop's "Open Disk..." tool to try to copy, I gave in and snagged NTRawrite.

It failed.


D:\tmp>NTRawrite.exe
NTRawrite v1.0.1 by Blake Ramsdell


Please type the image pathname: RAIDiator-3.01c1-p6
Please type the diskette drive: M:
Please insert a diskette and press any key.
Copying image file RAIDiator-3.01c1-p6 to floppy drive M.
........................................]
NTRawrite: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.

Went through that hoop a few times, until I got a clue, and realized I could just put it on the command line:


D:\tmp>ntrawrite -f RAIDiator-3.01c1-p6 -d M: -n
NTRawrite v1.0.1 by Blake Ramsdell


Copying image file RAIDiator-3.01c1-p6 to floppy drive M.
*****...................................]
NTRawrite: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.

If at first you don't succeed, keep trying... (snipped slightly)

D:\tmp>ntrawrite -f RAIDiator-3.01c1-p6 -d M: -n
Copying image file RAIDiator-3.01c1-p6 to floppy drive M.
****....................................]
NTRawrite: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.


D:\tmp>ntrawrite -f RAIDiator-3.01c1-p6 -d M: -n
Copying image file RAIDiator-3.01c1-p6 to floppy drive M.
*******************.....................]
NTRawrite: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.


D:\tmp>ntrawrite -f RAIDiator-3.01c1-p6 -d M: -n
Copying image file RAIDiator-3.01c1-p6 to floppy drive M.
**......................................]
NTRawrite: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.


D:\tmp>ntrawrite -f RAIDiator-3.01c1-p6 -d M: -n
Copying image file RAIDiator-3.01c1-p6 to floppy drive M.
**************..........................]
NTRawrite: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.

Good clean fun, especially when one doesn't have any paint to be mesmerized by as it dries.  At this point, logically, I figured it was time to order a new CF card; after all, this one must be corrupted, if nothing can write to it.  But, then... my copy to the external drive finished.  As a ditch effort, I started shutting down all my open windows, in preparation to try a boot disc (Hiren's or a linux livecd, whichever was handier), and figured I'd give it one more go:

D:\tmp>ntrawrite -f RAIDiator-3.01c1-p6 -d M: -n
NTRawrite v1.0.1 by Blake Ramsdell


Copying image file RAIDiator-3.01c1-p6 to floppy drive M.
****************************************]
Verifying image file RAIDiator-3.01c1-p6 with floppy drive M.
****************************************]
Completed!
D:\tmp>

Yup.

Worked without a single hiccup.

System's a core2duo; I'm positive it can handle copying through two usb ports at once. The external drive, of course, is powered with a wall wart, and not via the usb cable.  I have absolutely no explanation for this; while there must certainly be a rational reason involving gremlins and fairy lanes, I'm going with the obvious: Vista's device stack SUCKS.  In the interest of my own piece of mind, I plan on obtaining another CF card, and dd'ing in 'nix while copying to the same external hdd.  I'm betting it'll work without any issues whatsoever, on the exact same hardware.

Data's important.

Eyecandy isn't.

Microsoft's really taken to heart the success of the mediawhore darlings of Hollywood, and crafted their latest OSes to be pretty (debatable) and useless.

I say good riddance; even Apple's running a modified BSD core these days, and Macs have typically been the machines for the absolutely computer illiterate.

Life's too short to waste time with operating systems that can barely copy data.

[This sentence continued the thought about the shortness of life, but my lawyers informed me it entered the realm of 'real threat' and as such, I was forced to remove it.]

Vista/Windows 7 - Can't Stop Itself From Being Fresh

Here's the scenario:  I've got two folders open, one with sorted folders, and the other one containing over 500 files that need to go into the sorted folders.  Many of the files need minor correcting: say, a file is named SOMEJUNK-And_The_Rest. It needs to be just And_The_Rest.  So, I hit F2, slash off SOMEJUNK and... my file disappears!  It's gone up to the 'A' section of the file list, while my view is still in the 'S' part.  I then need to go to the 'A's, select the file, and move it to the folder with the sorted directories.

This is annoying.  In XP, editing a name left the file where it was, until you hit F5 to refresh the folder, or changed the sort order by clicking on a column name.

Turns out, there's no fix for this behavior in Vista and Windows 7; no setting to revert to not auto-refreshing/auto-arranging Explorer fews.  According to a Microsoft employee:

"Windows Explorer in Windows 7 uses a new custom list view control that doesn't support custom ordering like the old one did. So in folder views you can no longer drag items around to rearrange them. Basically, pretty much nobody used this (except on the desktop, where it is still supported), and re-implementing it in the new virtualized list view wasn't worth the cost.

You can sort the items by any of their properties, such as name, date, etc.

Why do you want to arrange them differently?"
(source: Brandon Live's post at http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/813020-rearrange-folders-in-the-user-folder/)

I especially enjoy the last bit; this is a developer on the Windows Desktop team that asserts no one used a feature, and can't fathom why anyone might have wanted it.  Except, a quick google search on terms relating to turning it off reveals quite the opposite: people are butting their heads against this and desperate for a way to turn off this new 'feature'.

Some further digging shows that Microsoft sort of documents this on MSDN:
"By default, the Windows 7 item view does not support custom positioning, custom ordering, or hyperlinks, which were supported in the Windows Vista list view. Use this interface when you require those features of the older view. If, at some later time, the item view adds support for those features, these options will automatically use the newer view rather than continuing to revert to the older view as they currently do."
(source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd378351(VS.85).aspx)

So, Vista and Windows 7 both not only get confused and occasionally can't be bothered to refresh media in one's optical drive, but when it comes to folders, there's no way to stop it from refreshing.  There's a very nice explanation from the Classic Shell developer(s) FAQ:
"Can Classic Shell disable the "Auto-arrange" feature in Explorer?
No. The Auto-arrange is not a feature, but rather the absence of the feature to "remember the position of any icon in any folder". As far as I know there is no switch to turn on and the feature has to be implemented from scratch. This is further complicated by the fact that Explorer in Windows 7 uses a new undocumented control "DirectUIHWND" instead of the documented "SysListView32" control like all the versions before it. Most likely when the functionality was moved from the old control to the new, this feature didn't make it.
I understand many people are upset about this (since it worked fine on Vista and before), but I don't believe this can be solved by a shell extension. You have a better chance complaining to Microsoft about it."

(source: http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/faq.html)

I become more disgusted with Vista daily, but there is a work around on it; in a folder where you're working on your files, simply select one and move it 'out of order'.  This prevents Vista from refreshing after every rename --- for that folder, until you close it.  

The long term solution, obviously, is to use a replacement explorer, or, for those adventurous sorts, buy a Mac or run a 'nix and leave the Redmond nightmare behind.