Poker Perambulation

I worked and played with computers a major portion of my life. I really enjoyed the challenge. To operate effectively, you need Spock’s logic, Bone’s humanity, and Scotty’s fatalism. You don’t need Kirk unless it is for reservations.

Sanity relates to control. Today that is missing with Windows. I won’t get into the hassle over Microsoft. Windows is a fait accompli. It would be a different world if the anal retentive folks over at IBM and figured out how to market a better operating system built to a different standard of client commitment. Well, that didn’t happen to today and toward Windows 7 lacks any consistency.

The inspiration for this article is another blogger’s plight. (I seem to get on cycles referencing people over and over.)

I don’t know what his problem is. It is unique. In a broader sense it isn’t. Windows has a long history of poor health on user’s systems. Improvement to reliability waxes and wains. In the earliest, it was atrocious. The design did many thing without thinking them out. That positioned itself well against the glacial change at IBM. It was also happy to compromise far too many little things.

So, people end up like Poker Grump. The problem isn’t being experienced by the majority of players. The problem is localized. The solution is brutal for most. You need to reinstall and, to be 100% certain, you need to reformat. That takes all those stored blogs and all the old mail and, well, that host of data that makes it your machine and part of your life. And, the process of backing all that up is the land of gotchas. If you think you’ve done it and can do the reinstall and get back to where you were, it a fool’s paradise.

I do have a solution. It requires drive space. It isn’t perfect but it prevents the finality of that reformat to new machine conditions. You need to partition. There are programs that can be bought that let you repartition and move data around in the process. If you have only a drive C:, it is using the entire disk and will require a smart application to create free space. You can look at a demo and feature list of it here.

If I have a decent size drive, I would install the operating system in 1/3^rd of it. The second drive created would be another 1/3^rd and the remainder would be a reserve. I’ve also done it with a minimal size drive c: and an extra partition where I’d install applications. It is a matter of taste. The split to thirds is easier.

Alright, you’ve got it set up this way and you Windows world goes flaky. The first thing you do is head to Google and enter error message searches or little descriptions. Sometimes you’ll get lucky and heal the wound before it becomes terminal. But, our friend is in deeper do-do. Here is where my solution at least comes close to saving the day.

You have this blank third. You install your flavor of Windows there. It is a brand new install that is just like the day you got the computer. That’s just like reformatting would have done to your C: but there is a difference. That old drive C: is still there. You can return to it at any time. When you installed the new copy out on E: or whatever you called it, Windows will have created a dual boot setup. It now asks which you want. If it is booting with you off to get coffee, it will go to one or the other as you’d selected after a brief wait.

The benefit is obvious. All your good old stuff/data is still available. You can salvage over time. You don’t have to depend on some awkward or incomplete backup. If you limited failures as outlined, you can switch back and forth and work on getting the two partitions as alike as you desire.

There are just a ton of things that make the best intentions that you can get back to close to that old installation fail. Passwords stored. That old tax return that you thought you’d not need. Aunt Saddie’s recipe buried in an oddball subdirectory. Everything is still there.

Windows will over time fail. It has done it to me when I was conscientious as any. I’m in over my head with it as easily as the next guy. Yet the program I’ve outlined has saved my butt numerous times over the years. It is one of the smartest things I’ve done around computers.

A few basic are to buy for overkill. Windows isn’t quite as ugly with extra memory. The pagefile remains an abomination. If you can avoid it more, you will be rewarded over time. Think about installing a second drive. They are cheap and add flexibility. If you can do a minor plumbing job, you can install the second drive.

ADDENDUM:

Here is a little help that will improve many of your lives. Click on Start-Run and then type in msconfig. It brings up your system configuration program. Problems like the grump is having may be solvable there. Every Tom, Dick and Harry seem to want to put something in your startup. This little applet has a startup tab that displays all those. Over time these things can run away on the user. They consume memory and often add their own hooks to let them appear seamless or do nefarious things to their benefit. Adobe, Macrovision and host of others load in the boot. That’s why that screaming fast boot you got on the new machine slowly went away over time. The only programs that should be in your startup are ones you are always using. Even there you can disable them temporarily and maybe find that better. This program lets you disable instead of eliminate. So, if you want to put it back to the old way, not a problem.

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