Verily I say unto thee, that geonik spake thusly:
> I would put the windows registry contents for comparison but
> 1. I don't run windows
> 2. 1Mbps upstream is not enough to complete uploading it before
> christmas
When any of those five binary blobs called "The Registry" are damaged
then you're screwed, because they're the only repository for all your
configurations; they cannot be viewed and edited like text files from
the initial console; and the only way to "recover" from this mess, is
to have had the foresight to install the Recovery Console /first/ and
use it to restore boilerplate configurations that let you boot so you
can "restore" backups, assuming you had System Restore turned on. For
those (like me) who turn off System Restore for performance; security
(ref: Malware that hides in Restore Points and SFC's backup location)
and space considerations, then you really are screwed.
Restoring from backups is no more an acceptable repair operation than
rebooting, except of course in Windows la-la land, home of the reboot
-first-ask-questions-later crowd, which is kind of like repairing the
car's engine by simply taking it out; putting back in, then hoping it
"fixes" itself. The backup-as-a-repair operation is equally retarded,
sort of like mindlessly replacing every component in the car, without
even bothering to diagnose it first, only to discover that it was the
very last component at fault, and meanwhile you've wasted time; money
and the opportunity to learn what went wrong, to prevent it happening again.
I have not seen an X config helper screw-up an X config in years, but
I'm greatly relieved that Linux uses the sensible approach to configs
that it does, because the thought of battling The Registry on Windows
is enough to make me want to give up on computing entirely.
Trusting the OS vendor to do everything for you is all well and good,
*if* that vendor actually has the means to do so. MS has demonstrated
their utter incompetence so often that I'd be surprised if anyone has
any faith in the "simplicity" of Windows any more, because it is only
"simple" when it works - and Windows patently doesn't.
This is a lesson that certain GNU/Linux vendors need to learn from:
http://media.slated.org/albums/userpics/10002/ubuntu.png
--
K.
http://slated.org
.----
| "At the time, I thought C was the most elegant language and Java
| the most practical one. That point of view lasted for maybe two
| weeks after initial exposure to Lisp." ~ Constantine Vetoshev
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Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) on sky, running kernel 2.6.25.11-60.fc8
02:51:05 up 2 days, 11:46, 3 users, load average: 4.52, 4.21, 4.13
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