A Pain in the Whatchamacallit
By Tiny Ruisch
Have you ever heard the theory that every other version of the Windows operating system is junk? (Many people use a different word than “junk”). I’ve used every Microsoft operating system (except for the server/network versions) since I first changed to MS-DOS from the IBM version.
Personally, I think that all of the Windows versions were OK. They did what they were supposed to do, operate my computer system. I’ll admit that some of them were uglier and not as efficient. You could probably compare them to the Ford Edsel. The car didn’t look good, but it got you where you were going. I wonder if somewhere in the world there is somebody with a Betamax recording of the Edsel?
After 30 years, I’m thinking of becoming a Microsoft basher myself. My theory is that the software engineers deliberately insert a “reinstall” bug in their operating systems. For years, I’ve listened to stories about computer users that had to reinstall Windows as the only way to fix their system.
I always razzed them a little and bragged about how my computer maintenance routines were so good that I never had to reinstall. Then it happened. Last November my desktop froze and no amount of safe mode fiddling would cure the problem. I checked all of my hardware to make sure it was working properly. (I was kind of hoping that I would find justification to buy a new machine.) Alas, it wasn’t a hardware problem.
Finally, I broke down and got out the system restore disks I had made so long ago. Two computer years is about fifteen dog years. The only problem with doing a factory restore is that you also reload all of the crapware. Oh well, at least I know how to take the junk off before I install any software. After I got my PC up and running, I restored my backup data and checked my Belarc list and reinstalled the same programs I had before. I wanted to see if I could figure out which program caused the problem. It never did reoccur.
Then it happened again. A couple of weeks ago, my machine started to experience random slowdowns. I checked all of the usual suspects. There weren’t any Trojans, key loggers, viruses or bad memory chips. None of the services were slowing it down. The system wasn’t overheating.
Finally, I sucked it up and got ready to reinstall again. It was a lot easier the second time because I restored from my Windows upgrade disk. No crapware was installed. This time I ended up with a much better system as I haven’t reinstalled a lot of programs that I seldom use.
Curse you Microsoft. I know that my problems couldn’t possibly be because of anything I did. You’ve obviously sneaked the reinstall bug into my operating system. I’ll bet it was done during a Windows Update, probably to punish me for not choosing to do automatic updates.
I’m ready for the next time that evil hits my computer. If it happens again, I have a system image disk ready to use. Sadly, I can no longer say that I’ve gone more than twenty years without having to reinstall Windows.
That’s all for this month. Thanks for reading.