"It gets even harder with inline posting, and even worse in inline inline
posts. So, in deference to the old school who insist on bottom posting (and
in many cases bottom feeding), I whack a line or two in at the bottom."
Mike Hall - MVP Windows Experience
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/
Mike--
I referenced the newsgroup post issue below, but I want to finish the status
of the recovery disk maker in Vista first, because I'm interested in your
reaction as to why MSFT took it off the programs menu in Vista SP1, hid it
in System 32 and requires a UAC/permissions tweak to get it to run. None of
this is happening with this app in any build of Win 7 through 7106. My
second screenshot on the flickr link is from Win 7.
Even if the Recovery Disks/Partitions do work 100% of the time, my
understanding is a so-called non-destructive recovery has a confusing name
because it doesn't save settings, docs, pics, music, etc. It still returns
to factory settings. And if users are confused by the terms/choices in a
Recovery Disk than HP or anyone else who is an OEM hasn't lifted a finger to
explain them to that end user in their GUI, in a folder on their OEM
desktop, or with a plain old fashioned paper brochure or simply a screenshot
on their website. Maybe they exist and people don't know to look for them
or by the time they have to use the recovery disk they only have one box and
they can't acess the help for them. I dunno.
And some people (who have backed up) might like the idea of wiping
everything and returning to factory settings to be sure. But if you haven't
backed up, you want to save everything when you recover.
Mike, do I have this correct, and do you know why this happened?
This is a screenshot that represents what I think is going on with the
Repair Disk App in Vista:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chadharris16/
Microsoft did a very nice thing and in the Beta of Vista SP1 they had a
Repair Disc tool at Maintenance. Unfortunately for reasons that are
perplexing, they took it away from the All Programs Menu>Maintenance but
Easter Egged it into System32. If you go onto one of your Vista builds
updated for SP1 or possibly a Beta Build of SP2. you'll see that in
C:\Windows System32 there is an app called recdisc.exe.
From Richard, and many others on the socialtechnet group, it appears you
have to tweak UAC/permissions at the Security taba to make it work in Vista.
As I've said in Windows 7 it works perfectly from the All Programs Menu, and
you don't have to tweak permissions, and you can simply drag it anywhere
from System 32 as a copy if you wanted. You can do the same in Vista SP1,
but you have to tweak permissions first (a couple easy ways).
But if MSFT is trying to make it available to the average end user to help
them rescue their system with the full panoply of Startup Repair on a disc,
they went about it a non-intuitive way. I say this because:
1) MIcrosoft snips it from Vista SP1 RTM.
2) They hide it in System 32. A lot of us are very familiar with looking in
System 32 every build of a Beta or RTM to see what interesting might lurk
there, but the average end user or beginner is not.
3) Although they completely and admirably fixed this in builds of Win7
(unless they hide it again in RTM), so far it's been fine in every build of
Win 7, the average end user isn't going to know to look in System 32 Vista,
nor or they going to know how to tweak permissions at the security folder.
The first time I read Ed Bott's chapter on permissions in his XP Inside Out,
I was flumoxed. Now I know that every build of a new OS, I'm going to want
to shortcut to the desktop of the other OS on a dual or triple boot, and
I'll get a lock on the folder, or because of UAC even in Win 7 you'll run
into random folders that don't want to let the admin in so you have to go
and tweak permissions.
Richard Urban confirmed for me early this morning that it did not make the
cut for RTM SP1 (I don't have Vista on my box anymore but I assumed what was
in Windows 7 was in SP1 because I had read the tool was in SP1).
Do you know why in the world things played out with this repair disk maker
app hidden in System32 in Vista needing a permissions tweak? That's asking
way to much of an end user, particularly people who don't have playing with
the OS in their blood and have other priorities IMHO, and it is the opposite
of all the advertising MSFT does with 6-8 year olds telling you they are a
PC in their ad campaign.
With all respect to the teams that made that thing. I applaud that they
made it, but I can't begin to understand their motivation for hidiing it
unless it went down like this:
The storage teams, the Win RE teams listened to complaints from Beta testers
that they were having to fix people most of whom didn't have a DVD. For
whatever reason, confusion, etc. they didn't make the recovery disk work.
MSFT agreed with some of us who were complaining to them during Vista Beta
that they needed to correct this problem so they did. Then close to Escrow
of SP1, along comes the Business types or MBAs and Accountants--maybe Scott
Di Valerio before he departed in October of 2007 and they say "Uh Uh--don't
give them the Startup Repair Features." The teams who work on booting Vista
and Startup Repair disagree with the biz types so a compromise is reached by
the program managers and Jim Allchin's people before he leaves and they hide
it.
And here's another mind boggler Mike. If any of these talented guys and
girls had tested this just once, besides knowing they hid it where few
people would find it, they would know it wouldn't work without imposing a
permissions/UAC tweak on the bewildered end users.
It defies my ability to figure out what was going on in their heads when
they did this.
Yeah, they have fixed it again in Win 7, and not as many people as Ballmer
and Rudder want have Vista, but millions do.
Here's my picture that summarizes what's going on--again. Do you have any
reaction?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chadharris16/
Thanks for your time Mike.
Mike and Wharf Rat--
The only irritating thing to me about posting in the "old school convention"
that Wharf Rat and some of the guys favor--I think when we I was on the OE
group in previous years or one that had to do with newsgroups there was a
lot of talk about that is those darn >s you have to strip out of the post
becaue to me they are irritating to look at so I get them out of the way.
Most people who post old school just leave them there. I wonder, since I
don't write code (not a developer) how hard it would be for the Windows Live
Team's developers to code things so that automatically the post would
functionally and "aesthetically" do what everyone wants and not keep adding
lines as wharf rat complains about top posting or cumulatively using server
storage space if thousands of people do it every day.
You'd think that they could configure things so that all the poster would
have to do is hit reply. This is the familiar problem for me that I can
come up with ideas all the time, but since I'm not a code writer/developer,
I don't have enough empathy for what the code writer must do or programmers
to implement many of my ideas that I envision would be good on a gui and
logic level as features.
Sometimes not being a developer and speaking limited MSDNese hurts me
another way. I like to follow MSFT closely, but when I read a story like
this one
http://bink.nu/news/microkernel-expert-shapiro-to-join-microsoft-midori-effort.aspx
I have to research to try to appreciate what Bit C language does and what it
and a Microkernel based OS like Midori that is "a distributed object
oriented OS" that Eric Rudder is heading up will mean in the context of the
OS's I already know, and how it will be if and when it replaces them.
Thanks,
CH
