(Untitled)

[chronicfreetime]

I just tried to install SP2 for XP on the Windows box I use at home. Halfway through the process, I get an error message whining about a missing file. I verify that the original cab contains a compressed version of said file. I look in the directory where the installer unpacked itself; same file there too. I try to uncompress it with extract.

Comments

[scathedobsidian]

I had a nearly identical situation a few weeks ago. Exciting, it was.

I wish I didn't need Windows, and I still hold out hope that someday, I'll start gaming again.

[theformersol]

What was the outcome?

[scathedobsidian]

It turned out to be the logic board. I replaced it with a board from an identical model and everything works fine.

[mopalia]

I installed SP2 yesterday. A bit into the install, I got a message that the ATAPI file was missing. Since this was the result I'd gotten every time I'd tried to install the stupid patches (and the only reason I was trying it again was that I'd been infected by a Trojan that would have come through the hole the patch fixes), I just clicked ahead, got the message "install without this file?" and said "yes." The install proceeded without further problems.

It's clear to me now that the trojan came from school - from a system so locked down that I can't play good games like the Dyson telescope with my classes, but which have no protection from popups and lousy virus protection. I need a new job.

[roadriverrail]

Shit like this is why I have a "if it a'int broke, don't fix it" mentality with a lot of my home machines. Of course, installing SP2 is a necessity in my book, so I wouldn't have avoided any misery there. Still, every time I have to do some sysadminning work on my machine, it's the same old story...SNAFU after SNAFU that leaves me cursing for a couple of hours. Many people I know wonder why I don't tweak my settings more or why I prefer running Fedora over Debian. The reason why is because, frankly, I want to do more than sysadmin my own machines all the time. I want to get my work done.

[roadriverrail]

I think it's time to revisit Unix on the desktop; maybe something has improved in the five years since I last tried it.I went through a long phase of not using any flavor of Unix on my systems after the catastrophically awful RedHat 5.x series. As I spent most of my development time writing in Java, I just didn't see much of a point. I started to get back into using Unices in my daily life when I purchased my Sun station back in 2001. My laptop, until recently, had a partition for a Mandrake installation on it

[kiwitayro]

flash works now on debian... AS LONG AS YOU DON'T HAVE A MAC!! *sigh*

:)

there are some wierd java-flashy-internet-doobie things that don't work on PCs too well either... that might just be firefox. i dunno. i miss homestar but i use someone else's computer when i need it. whichi s just as well or i might lose an entire day to sbemail.html :)

[chronicfreetime]

the persisting "Unix attitude".

Well, what made this such a disaster was the "Windows attitude". Halt the patching process with an error message which gives little hint of the root cause; reboot without asking, even though the rollback failed; when a service fails during boot, bluescreen instead of limping along so the admin can fix it; run chkdsk /f on an unrelated disk without prompting first.

Windows is just so goddamn opaque. When everything is working, it's more or less fine, aside from a few design mistakes (file locking, GDI in ring 0, multiple users as an afterthought, confusing untrusted data with trusted code, etc.) But when something breaks, you don't get any best-effort subset of functionality, and you can't easily change the system internals by hand.

[roadriverrail]

To be more complete in my previous statements, I have no love for Windows, either. The opacity you mention irritates me. I guess that makes me an annoying whiner- I want transparency and a system that can limp along, but I don't want to constantly have the responsibility of absolute transparency and I don't like my system to be in a constant state of limping along. I guess I find Windows too opaque and Linux to not leave enough self-managed. Linux is getting better about that, though

[kiwitayro]

definitely check out linux. redhat and debian are the best, i hear.

i run debian on my laptop (a 5 year old mac) and it's just peachy. even jlynn, josiah's 8 year old likes debian beter than windows. she just runs windows for games. :)

feel free to email me or wmjosiah for more info or to get disks mailed to you, etc.

or you could come visit! ;)

[chronicfreetime]

I use Debian on multiple servers and routing devices. I have just always found X Windows to be unpleasantly kludgy.

[roadriverrail]

X Windows to be unpleasantly kludgy

The continued use of any X impementation on desktop is itself quite the kludge, so that's no shock.

[roadriverrail]

Oh..I have Fedora Core disks I could give you on Friday. I don't need them.