Had a power outage and lost DBCS - Redux

[George Hester]

I rebooted and ran sfc. My DBCS characters are still messed up in Windows
Explorer. But now they don't look like a Japanese House on a hill with a
hat. Now they look like a fork with a a very squiggly piece of goop on the
prongs. All the DBCS characters look like this. In other words all my DBCS
characters have reverted to a generic goop sort of like the default Windows
icon which appears when a application is removed which was pointed to by a
desktop shortcut. Ever seen this and can suggest a fix? Windows 2000
Server SP3.

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

In

I rebooted and ran sfc. My DBCS characters are still messed up in
Windows Explorer. But now they don't look like a Japanese House on a
hill with a hat. Now they look like a fork with a a very squiggly
piece of goop on the prongs. All the DBCS characters look like this.
In other words all my DBCS characters have reverted to a generic goop
sort of like the default Windows icon which appears when a
application is removed which was pointed to by a desktop shortcut.
Ever seen this and can suggest a fix? Windows 2000 Server SP3.

What's DBCS?

Also, get a UPS....

 

[George Hester]

Well they all went back to normal. Another Power Outage is all it took.
D(ouble)B(yte)C(haracter)S(et).. U(interrupted)P(ower)S(upply) is a waste
of money Lanwench. They are very specific to the type of Power Outages
which can occur for which they will work as expected. Hence the more types
they cover the more they cost and when it comes down to apples and oranges
none can guard against them all. They are a waste of money. I know you
don't believe me. That's fine. The only UPS that works is those which
Hospitals have namely their own Generators.

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

In

Well they all went back to normal. Another Power Outage is all it
took. D(ouble)B(yte)C(haracter)S(et)..

Thank you - and I'm glad your mysterious problem disappeared.

U(interrupted)P(ower)S(upply)

is a waste of money Lanwench. They are very specific to the type of
Power Outages which can occur for which they will work as expected.
Hence the more types they cover the more they cost and when it comes
down to apples and oranges none can guard against them all. They are
a waste of money. I know you don't believe me. That's fine. The
only UPS that works is those which Hospitals have namely their own
Generators.

Really? So all the myriad times my clients have had power surges/spikes, and
failures, and their APC SmartUPS and even (BackUPS) units handled it, logged
it, and even performed a graceful shutdown / automatic restart if called
for, I was just the luckiest admin on the planet? I don't buy cheap 'n
cheerful stuff, ever. Maybe that's why. Can't say. ;-)

 

[George Hester]

Well it's too bad you weren't around when our company experienced ours.
Because we blew out the UPS also. When the guy came to give us another he
told me the unvarnished truth about them. More types of Powrer Outages
which can occur that they cover the more expensive they are. That ended my
quest for a PSU mighty fast around here. Let the Power fail. So far they
haven't done any real damage except for the loss of the DBCS in Windows
Explorer which it seems the solution was two more Power Outages which the
Power Company was very happy to oblige I'm sure.

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

In

Well it's too bad you weren't around when our company experienced
ours. Because we blew out the UPS also. When the guy came to give us
another he told me the unvarnished truth about them. More types of
Powrer Outages which can occur that they cover the more expensive
they are. That ended my quest for a PSU mighty fast around here.
Let the Power fail. So far they haven't done any real damage except
for the loss of the DBCS in Windows Explorer which it seems the
solution was two more Power Outages which the Power Company was very
happy to oblige I'm sure.

Sorry you've had this experience. I don't use UPS devices on workstations
unless the building is known to have extremely flaky power. I *always* put
them on servers, and they have served me very well - and yes, I have
experienced power outages as well as major spikes. Etc. I've also lost minor
things like RAID configs in servers *without* UPSes attached. I wouldn't
dream of not putting one on a server. I monitor the logs to make sure the
battery is in good shape, and the regular self-tests are running
successfully. I'm totally sold.