G
Guest
28-Apr-06
Win XP PRO SP2 / INTEL CELERON 2.66 GHz / 224MB RAM
System Restore Sucks (just like ERUNT says).
This popular refrain came true for yours truly recently as well. Fortunately
System Restore does still have its good points.
All I wanted was to fix my batchfile problem. Somewhere in there I tried to
check my so-called 'file associations' to get the default 'Edit'or (Notepad)
altered to the much more sensible and presentable 'EDIT.COM' editor on the
right-click menu.
But the process there was so contorted, unintelligible, non-intuitive,
misleading and language-obfuscated (as if created by the man from Mars),
that I must have accidentally changed the default 'Open' to EDIT.COM,
instead of the default 'Edit'to 'EDIT.COM'.
For the record, I couldn't find the "BAT" extension anywhere in the list,
neither before nor after I clicked 'new' (about a hundred times, eventually)
and went thru all the other contortions the same number of times.
Gosh-a-mighty, when are our high and mighty programmers going to come down
to earth and learn some SENSIBLE, negotiable English in the process? IMHO
this should have been a simple, intuitive, one-click, operation! Otherwise,
we'll all have to become programmers so we can understand each other. Back
to Babylon...
Since then it's been an unending battle trying to get ANY of my batchfiles
to RUN (much less, run properly) - which is a bit of a hassle in any case,
in XP.
At one stage there I had a message box come up, asking me if I wanted to
'run', 'save' or 'cancel' any batchfile I clicked on. And this repeated each
time I clicked 'run'. There were several other similar quirks during my
travails but which I just don't remember now.
Then I downloaded tons of knowledge base and website support articles and
programs - none of which did any good whatever. A small zipped ap (via Guys)
that was to correct this exact same problem by restoring the file
associations
to default in the Registry, went up in smoke and didn't do a darn thing.
Finally I decided to risk the dreaded System Restore and found, to my dismay,
that all the assurances given by the dialog boxes about "not affecting any
of your data" and so on and so forth, were all complete B.S.
I'm wondering now, what other files of mine it "restored"...
I spent the last 10 days working on that batchfile which was to simplify
and largely automate the running of the MS OFFRHD tool from the command line,
(plus a few extra neat little features) so that multiple folders and multiple
Office files could be cleaned at once, in one session, by a single click on
the batchfile (with Menu).
Came to find out that 'Restore' did exactly that. Not only did it 'restore'
the batchfile AND it's support (... .txt) files in root to earlier mucked up
versions, but it did so also for several backups of them (I'm paranoid that
way from long experience with you-know-who) in 3 different folders -
including 2 sub-folders! Fortunately I also had them on diskette - but not
quite the latest.
I had to finally un-do Restore, copy my final versions there to diskette
and then Restore again to the day before and replace the old files there
with my latest ones, manually.
Whatever happened to Efficiency ... ? (I'm sorry, by the way but 'batch
files'
is as far as I got in 'programming school').
The saving grace was that Restore did restore the default 'file association'
settings to what they were before the fiasco. So at least all my batches can
run now. (I won't go so far as to say 'run OK' because I'm still trying to
decipher the Help language for the 'SET' cmnd, which looks totally beyond
me and I'm still wondering whether it's Greek or old Latin. There's supposed
to be a way, also, to simulate "command/y/c" - which is gone now from the
lexicon - via 'SET', but Im still totally unclear on the concept and would
greatly appreciate some clarification on this).
I'm still as confused as ever over the process of selecting the correct
program to 'Open' (there's another one for you) / run / execute files w/ the
'BAT' extension. I could use a bit of enlightenment there from anyone who's
clearer on the concept than yours truly.
Babylon, here I kum.
Ted the Frustrated ...
Win XP PRO SP2 / INTEL CELERON 2.66 GHz / 224MB RAM
System Restore Sucks (just like ERUNT says).
This popular refrain came true for yours truly recently as well. Fortunately
System Restore does still have its good points.
All I wanted was to fix my batchfile problem. Somewhere in there I tried to
check my so-called 'file associations' to get the default 'Edit'or (Notepad)
altered to the much more sensible and presentable 'EDIT.COM' editor on the
right-click menu.
But the process there was so contorted, unintelligible, non-intuitive,
misleading and language-obfuscated (as if created by the man from Mars),
that I must have accidentally changed the default 'Open' to EDIT.COM,
instead of the default 'Edit'to 'EDIT.COM'.
For the record, I couldn't find the "BAT" extension anywhere in the list,
neither before nor after I clicked 'new' (about a hundred times, eventually)
and went thru all the other contortions the same number of times.
Gosh-a-mighty, when are our high and mighty programmers going to come down
to earth and learn some SENSIBLE, negotiable English in the process? IMHO
this should have been a simple, intuitive, one-click, operation! Otherwise,
we'll all have to become programmers so we can understand each other. Back
to Babylon...
Since then it's been an unending battle trying to get ANY of my batchfiles
to RUN (much less, run properly) - which is a bit of a hassle in any case,
in XP.
At one stage there I had a message box come up, asking me if I wanted to
'run', 'save' or 'cancel' any batchfile I clicked on. And this repeated each
time I clicked 'run'. There were several other similar quirks during my
travails but which I just don't remember now.
Then I downloaded tons of knowledge base and website support articles and
programs - none of which did any good whatever. A small zipped ap (via Guys)
that was to correct this exact same problem by restoring the file
associations
to default in the Registry, went up in smoke and didn't do a darn thing.
Finally I decided to risk the dreaded System Restore and found, to my dismay,
that all the assurances given by the dialog boxes about "not affecting any
of your data" and so on and so forth, were all complete B.S.
I'm wondering now, what other files of mine it "restored"...
I spent the last 10 days working on that batchfile which was to simplify
and largely automate the running of the MS OFFRHD tool from the command line,
(plus a few extra neat little features) so that multiple folders and multiple
Office files could be cleaned at once, in one session, by a single click on
the batchfile (with Menu).
Came to find out that 'Restore' did exactly that. Not only did it 'restore'
the batchfile AND it's support (... .txt) files in root to earlier mucked up
versions, but it did so also for several backups of them (I'm paranoid that
way from long experience with you-know-who) in 3 different folders -
including 2 sub-folders! Fortunately I also had them on diskette - but not
quite the latest.
I had to finally un-do Restore, copy my final versions there to diskette
and then Restore again to the day before and replace the old files there
with my latest ones, manually.
Whatever happened to Efficiency ... ? (I'm sorry, by the way but 'batch
files'
is as far as I got in 'programming school').
The saving grace was that Restore did restore the default 'file association'
settings to what they were before the fiasco. So at least all my batches can
run now. (I won't go so far as to say 'run OK' because I'm still trying to
decipher the Help language for the 'SET' cmnd, which looks totally beyond
me and I'm still wondering whether it's Greek or old Latin. There's supposed
to be a way, also, to simulate "command/y/c" - which is gone now from the
lexicon - via 'SET', but Im still totally unclear on the concept and would
greatly appreciate some clarification on this).
I'm still as confused as ever over the process of selecting the correct
program to 'Open' (there's another one for you) / run / execute files w/ the
'BAT' extension. I could use a bit of enlightenment there from anyone who's
clearer on the concept than yours truly.
Babylon, here I kum.
Ted the Frustrated ...