Caged posted:

Just remembered another thing that used to piss me off daily - why does Windows act so retardedly with removable disks? Half the time when I gave someone a flash drive at work, Windows would give it the same drive letter as one already in use. Is it really too difficult to just loving check first?

such a nice boy posted:

Oh, I'm totally aware. I've installed tons of printers, and I know you have to choose "local printer". It's just that it makes no drat sense, especially if you've never done it before. If a printer is not locally connected to my computer, it's not a local printer. MS has completely retarded ideas about what a "network printer" is, and just because we've all learned to work around them doesn't mean that they aren't infuriating.

Xenomorph posted:

"I put my thumb drive in and nothing appeared in My Computer".

hyperborean posted:

This poo poo sucks. I have a S-ATA drive bay on my computer. If the computer's already on but there's no drive in it, I can put one in and it shows up IF IT FEELS LIKE IT. The first time, it always does. The second time, only sometimes will it show up. The third time, never. It has a letter that nothing else has. When it doesn't show up, it's not in Disk Management. I have to reboot to get it back.

Xenomorph posted:

This.

I get trouble tickets a lot that have to do with this.

"I put my thumb drive in and nothing appeared in My Computer".

I open Computer Management, point out that Windows happily gave the thumb drive the SAME drive letter that is already in use.
It's a simple fix, but only if you know what is going on.

Some peoples' first thoughts are that the thumb drive is bad, or the USB port is bad, or their install of Windows is trashed... "Do I have a virus?" is something I've been asked.

"No, ma'am, Windows simply decided to give it a drive letter of F: even though you already have drive F: mapped to something else."

Hopefully this was fixed in Vista.

Arsten posted:

This only works well with AHCI active on the SATA bus, which XP will not boot off of without specific drivers fromt he manufacturer.

Casao posted:

I have not once had this happen or seen it.

Caged posted:

I think what arsten meant was that it's possible your drives are in IDE emulation mode hence why hot-swapping them doesn't work reliably.

Casao posted:

I have not once had this happen or seen it.

hyperborean posted:

OK, I'm not booting off that disk, that's how I put the drive in and wonder why it doesn't show up in Disk Management. The computer boots every time without issue. It's the second drive that I keep media files on that likes to play this game.

FigBug posted:

It only happens if you have a network drive mounted as the next available drive letter. E: on most systems.

tripwire posted:

This has been mentioned umpteen times already in this thread but it bears repeating:

Progress bars which don't meaningfully indicate progress at all, and in particular, the variety that are a series of progress bars with no indication how many more there are to go.

Like this:
Starting...
.
..
...
....
.....
......100%!
Starting another thing...
.
..
...

etc. etc.

Arsten posted:

But if it's the same SATA controller (said bus, meant controller),

quote:

turning on AHCI will have adverse reactions with Windows XP booting.

quote:

And hot swapping while in IDE mode for the SATA controller has never yielded positive results, in my experience.

brc64 posted:

I saw a progress meter hit 102% once.

Ryouga Inverse posted:

I've seen progress bars move backwards. Explain that poo poo.

Ema Nymton posted:

hyperborean posted:

Office Compatibility Pack?

hyperborean posted:

Office Compatibility Pack?

Sock on a Fish posted:

Your IT folks should be pushing this with a GPO if they've still got people on 2003. There's no way you can expect that people outside the company aren't going to be sending you Office 2007 documents.

Caged posted:

Did Sony not even loving test it?

Lowclock posted:

Sony got their $0.06 from Webroot.

Caged posted:

Not if people return the laptop because it's throwing errors on first boot.

brc64 posted:

I have, and it is frustrating. In every instance I've seen, it was Windows trying to assign a USB drive a letter that was in use by a drive mapping. I don't know if disk management just doesn't bother to look at drive mappings when picking the next available letter or if there's something else going on that causes this, but it's always been that scenario.

Most of our drive mappings start with the letter M, so it doesn't come up very frequently.

tripwire posted:

This has been mentioned umpteen times already in this thread but it bears repeating:

Progress bars which don't meaningfully indicate progress at all, and in particular, the variety that are a series of progress bars with no indication how many more there are to go.

Like this:
Starting...
.
..
...
....
.....
......100%!
Starting another thing...
.
..
...

etc. etc.

Ema Nymton posted:

True, but my point is that it's unfair to expect others to have the same software you do, especially when it's the latest and greatest, and especially when you want others to care to read your file.

Factor Mystic posted:

Vista file copying progress meter: it displays % done not by time, as you would want/expect, but that file # out of the total number of files in the operation. Copying a giant directory? Forward, forward, OH! discovered a subdirectory with a billion files, so...backwards a few notches, then zoom to the end, then wait for that last sliver of progress while the final huge file copies. They changed the control panel to show physical ram, but they didn't change the progress meter to time. Dumb.

Skulk posted:

Something that annoys me is when I download drivers for a customer (or even for myself sometimes) and the default file names are retarded.

For instance, the last few drivers I downloaded were for a Foxconn motherboard. One was entitled 811B-5.964.507.2008. Another Intel-6.14.10.4964-32-bit. I mean, would it kill them to put a "video" somewhere in the video driver name? Or even the video chipset name? Really, I can understand why they would name them by verion number and date, but if only they made it easier to understand.

I think Dell is the worst for this. The default names don't even have a date or version number. Just random letters. Sure, they MUST mean something, but I'm lazy and when I download about 10 drivers per computer I sometimes lose my place when installing them and attempt to re-install a sound driver or something.

Or maybe I am just lazy.

hyperborean posted:

While I essentially:
-agree with you
-feel proprietary formats are harmful in a social sense where computing is concerned
-would guess Microsoft really only came up with the new MSO formats to encourage sales of Cash Cow #2 version 13
-and don't have any version of MSO and would therefore not be able to read such a file, and would react similarly,

for yourself you can at least make things easier. You may find this useful in convincing people to be aware of the above, but it is chock full of super frothing-nerd-rage and you should probably truncate, summarize, or temper it.

Ryouga Inverse posted:

Also on the progress bar shitlist: progress bars that zoom to 95% and then sit at 95% for an eternity.

Casao posted:

There is a free MS Word viewer, there is a compatability pack that lets you read Word 2007 docx files. There is absolutely no reason not to be taking advantage of this in the real world.

Arcsech posted:

The problem as I see it is not so much "M$ can go to hell" as "Use the right tool for the right job". Would you rent an 18-wheeler to go to the store to buy a loaf of bread? Of course not, but that's what using .doc or .docx for formatted text is like.

This is not to say the MS formats are useless, but that they are used far more often than they are needed. RTF (or even just plain text) is much, much smaller, quicker to open and view or edit, you don't need a special viewer for it, and it does what most people use .doc in less time, with less effort to view, and for less money. Yes, businesses still need more advanced formats for various things, but simple formatted text is not one of them.

Arcsech posted:

This is not to say the MS formats are useless, but that they are used far more often than they are needed. RTF (or even just plain text) is much, much smaller, quicker to open and view or edit, you don't need a special viewer for it, and it does what most people use .doc in less time, with less effort to view, and for less money.