[GRLUG] grlug Digest, Vol 41, Issue 9

[Adam Tauno Williams]

On Wed, 2009-08-12 at 21:44 -0400, Michael Mol wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 8:11 PM, <peyeps at iserv.net> wrote:
> > "Notepad does not itself require network access.  It does, however, use
> > the Common Dialogs component of Windows, which get activated whenever you
> > browse to open a file in the vast majority of applications.  "
> I've seen Explorer go non-responsive for several seconds in scenarios
> where I believe it was waiting for a mutex or other process to
> respond, but those always had a timeout associated with them, 

We occasionally have the file-open dialog hang for 10 - 15 minutes if
someone had bookmarked some network resource that was deleted or they
had previously used a share they no longer have access to.  As far as I
am concerned this is the single largest outstanding bug in Windows - I
just don't get why those requests can't be queued asynchronously.  But
that bug is still infrequent.

> and I don't recall the screen blanking at the same time.

I haven't seen XP crash, on good hardware in a long time.

> If the update kills the video, you boot into Safe Mode, which uses
> good ol' hardware-agnostic VESA, and get into Control Panel that way.

Just like going to Ctrl-Alt-F1 to reconfig X, only you have to reboot to
get there.

> > "Run Windows Update to deal with other instability and security issues."
> > Remember IE8 and WGA were passed out as critical updates.
> IE8 is honestly an improvement over IE7, 

Understatement.  IE8 is a not-half-bad-browser.  IE7 is @*&^&(*@(.

> WGA is a necessary evil.  Put up with it, or don't use Windows on a

I prefer to think of it as a genuinely necessary evil.

> Then fix your Windows; It's capable of working, if you maintain it
> like you would your Linux system, and don't arbitrarily restrict
> things where you don't have a full understanding of their purpose.

Pop on to any distro list, like @opensuse, etc... you can find lots of
people accusing the distro [or LINUX] of being bollox'd because they
insist on ignoring generally-accepted-practices or 'normal' procedures
for doing things.  Nothing unique to Windows there.  You have to admin a
Windows systems as though it is a Windows system [because it is].  LINUX
users, or a segment of them, are much more frequent victims of
themselves then [at least that segment] are willing to admit.  Maybe the
same is true for Windows users but most Windows users I know just don't
to any "admin" at all on their pitiable machines.