Owning A Windows PC Guarantees Stoopidity

As Yogi Berra said, “It's like deja vu all over again”. The feeling I get each time our Windows PC does something randomly stoopid out of the blue. Every Windows PC owner knows the accompanying frustration well, and that lost feeling of trying to solve the problem as the unwanted “time suck” occurs, sometimes stretching across hours and days. I recently had two such experiences. Perhaps they sound familiar to you even if you don't use the exact same software involved in my problems.

Episode #1

The first occurred a little over a week ago when I clicked on the tray icon for Abobe Lightroom 6 in order to import and edit a single photograph. Instead of the familiar main dialog of Lightroom I was greeted with a tiny dialog titled “Server Busy”. It had three buttons; “Switch Too” which did nothing, “Retry” which did nothing, and “Cancel” which was disabled. Figuring that perhaps Lightroom had not closed out properly last time I used it I decided to restart Windows thus beginning one of the most common “time sucks” in the Windows world, waiting for the system to start and become usable. Tick, tick, tick. After the restart I clicked on the Lightroom tray icon and voila … “Server Busy”.

A Google search produced a nice little article from Adobe itself about the server busy problem with a list of four possible solutions. The first suggestion was to upgrade Lightroom to a newer version. This was the last thing I wanted to do, especially since the last upgrade from version 3 to 6 was a battle in and of itself. The second suggestion was to disable the Windows Superfetch service. I have a slight advantage over the average PC user when it comes to enabling and disabling services since a huge chunk of the product I work on for my job runs as Windows services. So I stopped the Superfetch service and disabled it, after which Lightroom properly started.

It would have been nice if that was the end of this particular saga but it isn't. Although Lightroom was now working properly I noticed several tasks, like starting Chrome and browsing common web sites were very sluggish. What I have run into is an all too frequent catch 22 in Windows. There are multiple background tasks such as Superfetch and Indexing that help a PC run faster yet have bugs and sometimes use an excessive amount of CPU or cause disk thrashing. You can find a lot of posts where people turn off these services to solve slowness problems but you can also find a lot of posts where people turn on these services to solve slowness problems. In my case I have now turned Superfetch back on and made sure that Lightroom would start properly (it did). I have the feeling that I will see the “Server Busy” dialog sometime in the future and have to revisit this issue. Tick, tick, tick.

Episode #2

I have been using Carbonite to automatically back up files on our Windows PC for the last five years. About three years ago, when reports of ransomware attacks started to surface, I realize that the Carbonite backup could be made worthless if it automatically backed up maliciously encrypted files. Doing periodic backups to an external hard drive, something I had done for many years before buying our current PC, seemed like good insurance. So I did a little research and decided to use highly rated ShadowProtect by StorageCraft.

A few days ago I started a full backup before going to bed in much the same way I have many times over the past three years. In the morning I discovered that the backup had failed with read error -31, unexpected end of file. Once again turning to Google it looked like the first thing to try was running Windows Chkdsk. So I went through the process of requesting Chkdsk run after a restart and away it went. Slowly, very slowly. Tick, tick, tick. So slowly that I left it running and went to work. When I got home from work I fired up ShadowProtect. Periodically checking on the backup status, the progress bar was advancing as it always had. Until I came in to check on it and Windows was at the logic screen. The backup had cause a blue screen of death. Yes, this was becoming a major “time suck”.

Next suggested solution was to upgrade to the latest version of Shadow Protect. Which I did. Tick, tick, tick. Once the new version was installed I fired up another backup, immediately noticing that it was progressing along slower than the prior version (new compression algorithm using more CPU?). Tick, tick, tick. Over three hours later, blue screen. I opened a case on the StorageCraft web site. It's the Friday before Christmas. I have the feeling I won't hear back from them for days. I also have the feeling that when they do get back to me the next set of suggestions will venture into the “Stoopid Support Punt Zone” (remove all 3^rd party software?).

So I go back to an old friend and download Acronis TrueImage 2018. Once installed I initiate a full backup. Tick, tick, tick. It worked!

The Wait Begins

So for now life on little Windows PC is back to normal. Looking forward to hearing from StorageCraft so I can ask for a refund of the $19.99 yearly license fee I just payed less than a month ago. Also looking forward to the next episode of Windows PC stoopidity, which is inevitable. Tick, tick, tick.

Windows Update Has Been Stoopid Forever

Toshiba Netbook NB505 and Acer Switch Alpha 12

Everyone who thinks Windows Update is great please raise your hand! Oops. I don't see any hands. That's because Windows Update is stoopid and has caused grief forever. Yesterday I had some spare time and decided to update two devices. As you guessed, if both updates had gone smoothly I would not be writing this.

The first device was a Toshba NB505 netbook which came with Windows 7 Starter. Purchased 6 years ago, it doesn't get used nowadays. For a couple of years I kept it alive because it was the only portable device in the house that had Windows and an Ethernet port, allowing me to it direct connect to our wireless router when there was a problem with the router or the router needed firmware updates. When we moved into our new house a little over a year ago there was an existing Ethernet run to the bedroom where our main desktop PC is located. This provided a direct connection to the router and put the little netbook out of business.

Every few months I get the netbook out and do Windows Update out of habit and for no other reason. Yesterday was such a day and 23 updates were installed without a hitch. It was a slow laborious process taking a couple of hours because the Toshiba NB505 netbook is a glacially slow device and everything it does is a test of patience.

The second device was an Acer Switch Alpha 12 2-in-1 I purchased back in September. I opted for the i5 processor (middle ground between the i3 and i7). It came with Windows 10 Home. It is a nice little device and can run circles around the Toshiba. Windows 10 will automatically perform Windows Update in the background but in this case I manually went in and checked for updates. This began the process of downloading and installing the Windows 10 Creator Update (version 1079), a major update to the operating system with new features I didn't particularly know about or care about. It took over seven hours to download and install the update. Seven hours!

Needless to say I was off doing other things while the update crawled along. Checking on it periodically there were several times during the “preparing for installation” and “installing” phases that I would have sworn that Windows Update had hung. Fortunately for me I had a recent experience with a PC at work where Windows Update took way longer than usual (over an hour in that case, not seven hours) and I had learned to simply walk away and give Windows Update as much time as it wants to get the job done.

Seven hours for an update is ludicrous but that's not my main gripe. After all of these years you would think that Microsoft would have added a better progress indicator to the Windows Update mechanism. If “Preparing For Updates” or “Configuring Updates” takes a long period of time, having a percentage indicator “freeze” is unacceptable. During that long period of time when the percentage does not advance, many shorter duration operations are being performed. It would not be all that difficult to display something like the name of the file being processed or the key of the registry entry being updated as the software is installed. This common practice serves as a decent pacifier during long updates and reassures the user that the process is indeed not hung. Will Microsoft ever make this sensible improvement? Doubt it.