Journal yagu's Journal: what is the Microsoft chargeback code? 5
Another morning, another 30 minutes until my Windows XP box was ready enough for me to begin productive work. Today it was an automatic reboot I'd been trying to defer all day yesterday since I had some things I wanted to finish. Apparently over night Microsoft thought better of my wish to defer and rebooted.
Aside from time needed getting all my applications back online and in a state I wanted, I also had to re-configure and recover lost session work (minor, but an annoyance).
No matter the memory, no matter the CPU, no matter the patch level of Microsoft boxes, time and again I find my start up time eroded around the edges tending to Microsoft's rough edges. (Over the last couple weeks I've begun to get "low virtual memory" dialog from XP, even with a 2G machine, and the machine is barely asked to do much work (I mostly use it to support my cygwin Xwindows, and maybe one instance of Firefox), and ultimately I must reboot to get back responsiveness.)
This is standard operating procedure it seems in corporate PC America. This is what Microsoft has brought to the IT groupthink. This is not the way it always was. Sigh.
Thirty minutes here, ten minutes there, 5 minutes there... it all adds up (including the time to finally stop and write this journal entry), and anecdotally I know others in IT experience Microsoft platforms the same way. I wonder sometimes collectively what the world pays in lost slivers of time fixing and cleaning up Microsoft's mess. I'm betting it's more than the GNP of many small countries. I'd love to have a Microsoft chargeback code... If Microsoft wants to farm out their not-so-superior technology for the world to babysit, and rake in obscene profits with their tacit monopoly, I think it only fair we should be able to charge back our time to Microsoft for our time spent working for them.
Something is wrong (Score:2)
If you have virtual memory errors, something is eating your system alive. Find out what it is and kill it unless it's a necessity.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, the reboot is mindless... and as a matter of fact it was up and running when I walked into the office this morning. But, there were open apps when I left, a couple in XP itself, and about 15, depending on how you count, on my linux box, which I access in cygwin's Xserver on the XP box. So, I had to restart X server, let all of the killed processes recover as gracefully as they could, which wasn't too bad. But I had 8 consoles, all logged into various machines around our office, doing specific t
Re: (Score:2)
I too have seen, though very rarely, a machine reboot itself even if you tell it not to. Not sure why they did but it happened. Fortunately for me, there wasn't anything open that was critical. In fact, on those occasions when I do updates, I close everything just in case. Obviously a server is a different matter.
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And, to put an exclamation point on this thesis, ...:
Last night I looked at my wife's portable computer to determine why its wireless wasn't working. Of course, since the wireless wasn't working for her, the first thing up when I fixed that? Yep! Microsoft updates downloading, installing, etc. Since she is not really a computer expert I had to babysit the laptop through the whole process to ensure that was complete before returning to her. Total wasted time last night, a little more than 45 minutes (s
forced reboots are evil (Score:2)
I hate the forced updates I get that, after they run, open up a forced "reboot in T-15 minutes" dialogue box. You are given a countdown and then your PC is rebooted. Trouble is, sometimes we have to work at night (for releases to our many websites) and when you are using VPN, testing your changes, at night and therefore on YOUR TIME, the last thing you want to