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Another three hours sacrificed to Mount Doom on Lake Washington

Last night, the Windows machine in the library decided, mysteriously, to reboot several times Aaaand to have the event service report that it was repairing a stack of broken system programs up until the point where the event log reported that the autorepair script was turned off.

So, I brought out the nuclear devices and decided to clean the network up for once and for all, since it looked like one of the local script kiddies had found Pete and was having a little fun driving me to the point of homicide. After

  1. flipping the whole network over to a private network (and setting up dhcp+named to do windows-style dynamic dns, which was not particularly fun because the ISC couldn't write legible documentation even if their lives depended on it), and
  2. putting what I'll call "wireless security" on the wireless network,
I loaded up windows and reinstalled everything.

Here's what I spent three hours doing

  1. booting the windows CD (at 9:55pm)
  2. formatting the system disk
  3. loading the boot software onto the system disk
  4. reboot
  5. accepting a license
  6. installing the rest of windows 2000 onto the system disk
  7. reboot
  8. clean up icons, hide IE and **tl**k
  9. accept the license for the wireless ethernet
  10. install the "windows installer" for the wireless ethernet
  11. reboot
  12. accept the license for the XML parser for the wireless ethernet
  13. install the XML parser for the wireless ethernet
  14. accept the license for DirectX 9 for the wireless ethernet
  15. install DirectX 9 for the wireless ethernet
  16. reboot
  17. accept the license for the wireless ethernet driver
  18. install the wireless ethernet driver
  19. configure the wireless ethernet for the new "secure" wireless network
  20. accept the license for updates to the wireless ethernet driver
  21. install the updates to the wireless ethernet driver
  22. accept the license for Norton Antivirus
  23. install Norton AV
  24. run Norton Liveupdate
  25. reboot
  26. run Norton Liveupdate again
  27. reboot
  28. run Norton Liveupdate again
  29. reboot
  30. run Norton Liveupdate one more time
  31. accept the license for Palm Desktop
  32. install Palm Desktop
  33. reboot
  34. install FrameMaker
  35. install, s l o w l y, the software for the HP 940 printer
  36. accept the license for the Nero cd burning software
  37. install the Nero cd burning software
  38. reboot
  39. install the software for our ancient Vivitar scanner
  40. reboot
  41. install Quicken
  42. reboot
  43. clean up the desktop
  44. accept the license for Phoenix firefox
  45. install firefox
  46. clean up the desktop
  47. install firefox extensions
  48. join the local domain
  49. reboot
  50. scan for hardware (to detect the audio hardware)
  51. install Irfanview and plugins
  52. install PuTTY
  53. install Foobar 2000
  54. install Nero burnrights
  55. reboot
  56. install achron
  57. install and accept the license for 9 additional microsoft fonts
  58. reboot (yes! The microsoft fonts require a reboot after they're installed)
  59. run windows update to pick up updates (but not any of their service packs)
  60. reboot
  61. and finally log in as a real user at 12:38

Yes, that's 15 reboots and 17 licenses. Windows may be prettier than MacOS and and of the Unix desktops, but jesus it's a pain to install. And after all this installation has gone on, firewombar doesn't seem to want to open multiple windows anymore, so I'll have to go back in and see what's going wrong there.

It probably won't require more than one full reinstall and 30 reboots.

—orc Sat Mar 5 01:19:58 2005

Comments

Actually, no, it didn't take a reinstall. All it took was deleting julie's profile directory and letting Pete generate a new one.

I'm beginning to believe that the essential tool for system administration on modern Unix and windows machines is the rm command, used liberally when something isn't working properly.

For extra credit, things can be backed up, but it's not essential.

David Parsons Sat Mar 5 02:54:26 2005

Windows is "prettier" than OS X? ok, that's a matter of taste I guess.

no modern OS should require all those restarts, though. how 1998.

42 Sat Mar 5 09:26:21 2005

Well, first I'll qualify by saying that I'm not talking about windows XP; the first thing I do with windows XP when I have to use it is to flip it over to the Windows 95/95/NT/2000 compatability mode. The Windows 99N2 interface isn't very cluttered, and I like uncluttered interfaces. The MacOS desktop, with the topbar being attached to the foreground process (and, in MacOS 10, that annoying dock at the bottom) is too "surprising" for my tastes; I prefer to have the big screen just be the window manager (not surprising to someone who used X windows for 10 years) and to have all the programs sit quietly in their little windows.

In the grand scheme of things, it's not enough to stop me from getting a teeny tiny powermac (the lack of framemaker -- Adobe can bite me -- and the $1000 studio display or $??? adapter box to connect the SGI 1600sw to the ttpm are the primary constraints), but I do think the software is prettier.

David Parsons Sat Mar 5 11:27:55 2005

Comments are closed