Sysadmin Reformat WTF



  • Some clever sysadmin managed to push a reformat across an entire university campus, which flattened each machine (including servers) and installed Windows 7.

    Can you imagine how the person responsible felt when they realised what had happened?

    As an aside, I'm sure that Windows 7 would be a better OS choice for a server than this hobbled metro crap that my company has got on our new Rackspace servers. Who on earth thought that metro was a good choice for servers? It's almost painful to use.



  • @DoctaJonez said:

    Who on earth thought that metro was a good choice for servers? It's almost painful to use.

    They are going after you, personally. Your paranoid delusions are all true. Sleep tight.



  • @DoctaJonez said:

    Who on earth thought that metro was a good choice for servers? It's almost painful to use.
     

    Almost?

     


  • Considered Harmful

    @Mason Wheeler said:

    @DoctaJonez said:

    Who on earth thought that metro was a good choice for servers? It's almost painful to use.
     

    Almost?

     


    It is literally figuratively painful to use.



  • @DoctaJonez said:

    Who on earth thought that metro was a good choice for servers?

    Had to be a fuckhead marketroid who has never operated a server. Either that or some putz with several years of "Linux system administration" who doesn't know what /usr/bin is for.

    First thing I did with the first Windows Server 2012 VM I ever configured, after swabbing up the vomit pool, was stick IOBit Start Menu 8 on it. Never had a reason to regret it.

    Second thing I did was install the Desktop Experience feature and change the desktop and window border colors to something that would not bring on further vomiting. Uninstalled it again after noticing that Windows Media Player and piles of shit all over the Start Screen are mandatory inclusions, wtf? The colors remain as I set them - there are presumably registry settings for those - but why a theming UI needs to be bundled with the world's worst media player and all its fucking ridiculous little friends is more than I can understand.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @DoctaJonez said:

    Some clever sysadmin managed to push a reformat across an entire university campus, which flattened each machine (including servers) and installed Windows 7.
    Already spotted - not that anyone commented on it there....



  • To all you Server 2012 haters out there, you can always just install Server Core and use PowerShell..  /ducks

    But really, I hate it too.



  • Really, Metro seems better-suited to a server than to a desktop. Do you have any specific grievances?



  • Hot corners on the desktop will do for a start; in a remote desktop or VM window they are completely fucking useless. But mostly it's that I have long found Metro utterly foul to look at, have absolutely no use for managing servers from a phone, and resent the deathmarch to dumb-down.

    One of the things that's always annoyed me about dealing with Windows boxes is the insane lengths an admin needs to go to in order to get meaningful information about what's just gone wrong, whenever something does. The entire Metro ethos seems to be about removal of information that could potentially confuse my grandmother (did Grumpy Cat Guy also get a gig in an MS focus group?); it could have been designed by level 1 help desk monkeys for all the use it is to me.

    Tell you what, why don't we just leave out all the error messages and just tell everybody to restart the box and hope for the best? After all, that really does fix 75% of Windows problems, and besides it's well known that technicians can just fix anything by telepathy.

    Something's gone wrong? Oh look, here's another shiny new automated fix tool that doesn't fucking work. But tell me exactly what didn't work, so I have some chance of tracking down the cause and fixing it? No, that would require the use of confusing words like "file" or "disk drive" or "network adapter" or "boot loader". Why do the candidates for my Windows user account avatar show up as a grid of useless generic Picture icons instead of the thumbnails they should obviously be instead? Who TF knows. Why has this Windows 8 laptop got itself into a state where Windows won't boot, but just keeps insisting you use the troubleshooter that has just declared for the sixth time that it can't find out why not, and what do I advise my customer to do in order to make sure it doesn't happen again? Who TF knows... and on and on and on. "Discoverability" seems to be one of those concepts that's completely fallen by the wayside.

    And then they went and threw all of that horrible consumer-grade fail into what is supposed to be a professional server environment - one that's even alleged to be usable without any GUI at all, for those insane enough to enjoy trying to make sense of glaring red Powershell error messages that are 90% boilerplate. It's all just WRONG, built for the kind of drooling moron who doesn't give a shit about detail and would click the tile with the death's head on it that wipes every box on an entire site at once, and I hate it.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    Really, Metro seems better-suited to a server than to a desktop. Do you have any specific grievances?
    Err, that there aren't even any metro applications at all on a typical Server 2012 (R2) install? The only thing it's used for is the Start Screen abomination, and when you use a non-maximized RDP connection (e.g. when using a managing program like RoyalTS), it's nearly impossible to get to the Start Screen with a mouse?



  • @ender said:

    @morbiuswilters said:
    Really, Metro seems better-suited to a server than to a desktop. Do you have any specific grievances?
    Err, that there aren't even any metro applications at all on a typical Server 2012 (R2) install? The only thing it's used for is the Start Screen abomination, and when you use a non-maximized RDP connection (e.g. when using a managing program like RoyalTS), it's nearly impossible to get to the Start Screen with a mouse?

    That pretty much sums it up. Using metro just for the sake of getting rid of the start screen is an exercise in pointlessness. They went to so much trouble to get rid of the start screen for pretty much no benefit at all. I'd go as far to say that it's actually harmful on a server. I do feel quite grumpy about the whole situation so I might be a bit biased, but I do hope they release an update akin to what they're doing with Windows 8 to make a non-crippled version.

    I hate this whole "Start screen is old, so therefore it must be bad" bullshit. I'm not opposed to the start screen being changed or replaced, but I'd like the successor to be an actual improvement, not just different for the sake of it.



  • @PJH said:

    @DoctaJonez said:
    Some clever sysadmin managed to push a reformat across an entire university campus, which flattened each machine (including servers) and installed Windows 7.
    Already spotted - not that anyone commented on it there....

    Wow, I had no idea that thread was still going. That's dedication...



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    Really, Metro seems better-suited to a server than to a desktop. Do you have any specific grievances?

    Off the top of my head, logging off is a lot less discoverable. It used to be just click the start button and click log off. Now you have to click the start button, click a couple more things, and then log off. I can't remember how you do it (and can't be arsed to log in and check), but stuff like this just isn't discoverable.

    The metro screen has replaced my start button, takes over the whole screen, but displays much less information than the start button used to. That's a pretty impressive accomplishment. I haven't done anything to customise it yet, but the fact that it's much less useful right out of the box is an eye opener. I don't intend to customise it much either to be honest, I've got too many servers to look after to go around tweaking each one to my exact preference, and I log into them too infrequently.

    I'm sure it'll be fine in a few years when it's the norm, I'll be complaining about the new Windows 2020 server instead where they've abolished the concept of Windows entirely and everything is presented as infinite scrolling plaintext JSON.

    By the way, I like your signature guy. It's the first one to make my laugh in quite a while.



  • @DoctaJonez said:

    @morbiuswilters said:
    Really, Metro seems better-suited to a server than to a desktop. Do you have any specific grievances?

    Off the top of my head, logging off is a lot less discoverable. It used to be just click the start button and click log off. Now you have to click the start button, click a couple more things, and then log off. I can't remember how you do it (and can't be arsed to log in and check), but stuff like this just isn't discoverable.

    Or restarting/shutting down. I did not know that you can right-click the Windows icon to get a list of those options until another colleague showed me. I was hitting Windows key and typing "shut down" then browsing through all the retarded shit options to finally get to the one I want.

    Metro isn't bad because it's different, it's bad because it takes a giant shit on the years of muscle memory that long-time Windows users have built up. I'm used to clicking Start -> Run, not pressing Windows > R. I'm used to doing all sorts of other things with the mouse, things I can no longer do. Fuck Metro, and fuck Microsoft for foisting it on everyone... if they had decided to throw out Win32 and replace it with .NET at the same time I would've been more forgiving, but they didn't even get THAT right.



  • @DoctaJonez said:

    Or restarting/shutting down. I did not know that you can right-click the Windows icon to get a list of those options until another colleague showed me. I was hitting Windows key and typing "shut down" then browsing through all the retarded shit options to finally get to the one I want.


    Seriously? How is it Microsoft's fault that you missed the incredibly simple, two click way of restarting/shutting down (right click for menu, left click for selection)? There's two basic ways to interact with an icon: left click and right click, how is it not discoverable? There's plenty of legit MS and Windows 8 complaints, really can't see how this is one.



  • I haven't used Server 2012 yet but when I first got Windows 8, I actually had to go to YouTube and look up a tutorial video on how to shut down my PC because I could not figure it out myself. And I've been using Windows since I was 4 years old.

    Now that I'm used to Windows 8, I don't really have any complaints, but discoverability is awful and stuff was definitely easier to find on Vista/7.



  • @The_Assimilator said:

    the years of muscle memory that long-time Windows users have built up. I'm used to clicking Start -> Run, not pressing Windows > R.
     

    I shut down my Win8 home machine by Start+D, Alt+F4

     meditate on that.



  • @dhromed said:

    I shut down my Win8 home machine by Start+D, Alt+F4

    meditate on that.

    That totally works. You have shown me wisdom.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @dhromed said:

    I shut down my Win8 home machine by Start+D, Alt+F4

    meditate on that.

    That totally works. You have shown me wisdom.

     

    ...I have taken my own advice and meditated on it: the power button of my PC is set to shut down Windows.

    ...but it's also way down there.

     



  • @KillaCoda said:

    @DoctaJonez said:

    Or restarting/shutting down. I did not know that you can right-click the Windows icon to get a list of those options until another colleague showed me. I was hitting Windows key and typing "shut down" then browsing through all the retarded shit options to finally get to the one I want.


    Seriously? How is it Microsoft's fault that you missed the incredibly simple, two click way of restarting/shutting down (right click for menu, left click for selection)? There's two basic ways to interact with an icon: left click and right click, how is it not discoverable? There's plenty of legit MS and Windows 8 complaints, really can't see how this is one.

    If I have some task that I'm not sure how to do, right-clicking is usually one of my first lines of defense. That being said, I don't think I would ever have right-clicked on the start menu (if indeed that what's we're talking about, I have not used Windows 8 yet).



  • @KillaCoda said:

    Seriously? How is it Microsoft's fault that you missed the incredibly simple, two click way of restarting/shutting down (right click for menu, left click for selection)? There's two basic ways to interact with an icon: left click and right click, how is it not discoverable? There's plenty of legit MS and Windows 8 complaints, really can't see how this is one.
    Please tell me how to do this on Server 2012, which has neither the Start button, nor are there power options in the bottom-left corner menu.



  • @ender said:

    Please tell me how to do this on Server 2012, which has neither the Start button, nor are there power options in the bottom-left corner menu.

    You put the tip of your mouse pointer on the invisible 1x1px control in either of the right hand corners of your VM window, wait for the Charms bar to animate its way in from the right hand side, then pick the Settings gear wheel, then pick Power, then it's discoverable. Because shutting down a machine is obviously the kind of thing that's best done by getting in under the hood where the gears and stuff are; putting a simple key switch within reach of the driver is so 2007. After all, this machine knows much better than you do when you should have it switched on. Just imagine your horror if you suddenly had an urge to watch a Grumpy Cat video and you couldn't instantly do that? Doesn't bear thinking about.



  • @flabdablet said:

    You put the tip of your mouse pointer on the invisible 1x1px control in either of the right hand corners of your VM window

    Your ludicrous exaggeration lends credibility to the rest of your post.

    @flabdablet said:

    Because shutting down a machine is obviously the kind of thing that's best done by getting in under the hood where the gears and stuff are;

    So the Charms bar is now "under the hood", huh?

    @flabdablet said:

    putting a simple key switch within reach of the driver is so 2007.

    Yeah, a one-click shutdown button in the most-frequently-accessed part of the UI is a great idea for production servers. nods

    @flabdablet said:

    After all, this machine knows much better than you do when you should have it switched on. Just imagine your horror if you suddenly had an urge to watch a Grumpy Cat video and you couldn't instantly do that? Doesn't bear thinking about.

    Your life sounds really full and rewarding if you get this worked up over an extra click to shut off a machine, a task I do maybe once a month..



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    Yeah, a one-click shutdown button in the most-frequently-accessed part of the UI is a great idea for production servers. nods

    Yes, it's rare that you'd want to actually shut a server down. I've seen it done before and result in a few hundred miles drive to switch the thing back on again!

    My use case was to logout of the machine which I do all the time, otherwise it'll prevent the server from installing automatic updates because there's a session logged into the box. Disregarding the fact that there is no start button on Server 2012, I'll echo Mike's sentiment that I'd never have tried right clicking the start button while searching for the log off option.

    The fact that they had to shoe horn metro into their server OS is the thing that really annoys me. It's just another bit of bloat that's been added to the OS. Considering that some people like their servers without a GUI (how's that for no bloat?), I don't understand why their server OS should have a touchscreen GUI shoehorned in there.

    @dhromed said:

    I shut down my Win8 home machine by Start+D, Alt+F4

     meditate on that.

    Nice! I like it. How much would it annoy you if they removed this behaviour?



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @flabdablet said:
    You put the tip of your mouse pointer on the invisible 1x1px control in either of the right hand corners of your VM window

    Your ludicrous exaggeration lends credibility to the rest of your post.

     

    True. It's something like 8x8 pixels. And it's stupid and dumb, just like Discourse. And It's not a ludicrous exaggeration; it's a real problem. Just like Home and End not working in Discourse.

     @morbiuswilters said:

    @flabdablet said:
    putting a simple key switch within reach of the driver is so 2007.

    Yeah, a one-click shutdown button in the most-frequently-accessed part of the UI is a great idea for production servers. nods

    Same problem on regular desktops. The shutdown feature is buried behind menus and really awkward UI interactions.There's a good reason I useAlt-F4 to shut down Windows: it's more convenient and faster, which is incredible. You need to go out of your way to sabotage the GUI to make a stretchy keystroke (alt, nnnggg, F4) more convenient than a clickable button.



  • @DoctaJonez said:

    Nice! I like it. How much would it annoy you if they removed this behaviour?
     

    I would consider taking my life.



  • @mikeTheLiar said:

    @KillaCoda said:
    @DoctaJonez said:

    Or restarting/shutting down. I did not know that you can right-click the Windows icon to get a list of those options until another colleague showed me. I was hitting Windows key and typing "shut down" then browsing through all the retarded shit options to finally get to the one I want.


    Seriously? How is it Microsoft's fault that you missed the incredibly simple, two click way of restarting/shutting down (right click for menu, left click for selection)? There's two basic ways to interact with an icon: left click and right click, how is it not discoverable? There's plenty of legit MS and Windows 8 complaints, really can't see how this is one.

    If I have some task that I'm not sure how to do, right-clicking is usually one of my first lines of defense. That being said, I don't think I would ever have right-clicked on the start menu (if indeed that what's we're talking about, I have not used Windows 8 yet).

    If it's a button, maybe you wouldn't think to right click it. But it's an icon, right clicking it is such a basic thing. People are talking about the charms bar, yet that isn't necessary. Just right click the windows icon that is always on screen, and select your required option. 2 clicks, simples. It could be different on a server I suppose but people specifically mentioned the Windows icon being there so...



  • @dhromed said:

    Same problem on regular desktops. The shutdown feature is buried behind menus and really awkward UI interactions.There's a good reason I useAlt-F4 to shut down Windows: it's more convenient and faster, which is incredible. You need to go out of your way to sabotage the GUI to make a stretchy keystroke (alt, nnnggg, F4) more convenient than a clickable button.


    Older windows: left click start button (always in bottom left of screen), select shutdown/restart/whatever.


    Windows 8: right click windows icon (always in bottom left of screen), select shutdown/restart/whatever.


    Seems a bit of minuscule thing to be complaining about?



  • @dhromed said:

    True. It's something like 8x8 pixels. And it's stupid and dumb, just like Discourse. And It's not a ludicrous exaggeration; it's a real problem.

    Really? The problem I have more often is accidentally triggering the Charms bar when I get too close to the edge. That said, I don't like auto-hiding menus that pop-up based on proximity, but once I understood how it worked (which actually took awhile because it wasn't instantly intuitive) I can get to it quickly.

    @dhromed said:

    Same problem on regular desktops.

    Well, sure. That's why I said Metro actually makes more sense for a server. (I mean, not the only reason, but part of it.) I know Metro is kind of a pain at times for a desktop, but it seems for a server it would be okay.

    @dhromed said:

    The shutdown feature is buried behind menus and really awkward UI interactions.There's a good reason I useAlt-F4 to shut down Windows: it's more convenient and faster, which is incredible. You need to go out of your way to sabotage the GUI to make a stretchy keystroke (alt, nnnggg, F4) more convenient than a clickable button.

    Once I found where it was, it's never been hard to navigate to. And it's shutting down the computer--how often are you guys doing that? I imagine I shut down more frequently than most people because all of my Windows machines are VMs that take about 10s to boot so I shut them down to save memory when not in use, and I don't find the shut down button a pain at all.



  • @KillaCoda said:

    It could be different on a server I suppose but people specifically mentioned the Windows icon being there so...
    Windows 8 (not 8.1) and Server 2012 (without R2) don't have those options. And while upgrading from Windows 8 to 8.1 is free, there's no such upgrade path for 2012 to 2012 R2. And even better - the Sign out option is nowhere near other power options (the Charms bar has Disconnect, Shut down and Restart, while Sign out appears if you click your username on the Start Screen).



  • @ender said:

    @KillaCoda said:
    It could be different on a server I suppose but people specifically mentioned the Windows icon being there so...
    Windows 8 (not 8.1) and Server 2012 (without R2) don't have those options. And while upgrading from Windows 8 to 8.1 is free, there's no such upgrade path for 2012 to 2012 R2. And even better - the Sign out option is nowhere near other power options (the Charms bar has Disconnect, Shut down and Restart, while Sign out appears if you click your username on the Start Screen).

    In short, it's ridiculous.



  • @DoctaJonez said:

    @ender said:
    @KillaCoda said:
    It could be different on a server I suppose but people specifically mentioned the Windows icon being there so...
    Windows 8 (not 8.1) and Server 2012 (without R2) don't have those options. And while upgrading from Windows 8 to 8.1 is free, there's no such upgrade path for 2012 to 2012 R2. And even better - the Sign out option is nowhere near other power options (the Charms bar has Disconnect, Shut down and Restart, while Sign out appears if you click your username on the Start Screen).

    In short, it's ridiculous.

    Gotcha, my apologies. When the Windows icon was mentioned I thought you had been able to update to 8.1. That does sound poor.

  • ♿ (Parody)

    @KillaCoda said:

    If it's a button, maybe you wouldn't think to right click it. But it's an icon, right clicking it is such a basic thing.

    I never knew it was an icon. It seemed like a button. It's always been a button. I don't think I right click on a lot of icons. I mean, occasionally, when I need to tweak a shortcut or something.

    @morbiuswilters said:

    Yeah, a one-click shutdown button in the most-frequently-accessed part of the UI is a great idea for production servers. nods

    I haven't touched 2012, but older servers have a next step to identify why you're shutting the thing down. Did they get rid of that, too? I know I've clicked on that before when I meant to log out.



  • @KillaCoda said:

     

    Is that from Windows 8.1? On Win8 there's no such shut down option.

     



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    That's why I said Metro actually makes more sense for a server.
    I wouldn't know about that. I don't manage that sort of thing, so you can have all the handy opinions you want as far as I'm concerned.

    @morbiuswilters said:

    Once I found where it was, it's never been hard to navigate to.

    I still find it more difficult than Start+D, Alt+F4 in terms of dexterity. The keystroke is also so much faster it's not even funny.

    @morbiuswilters said:

    And it's shutting down the computer--how often are you guys doing that?

    erry day bro!

     Startup is fast anyway, so "slow cold boot" not an argument against shutting down.

     

    Also my video card [driver] is busted so "Zero Core Power" puts it into a permanent coma and I have to reboot. No goddamn fix as of yet.

     

     



  • @dhromed said:

    Same problem on regular desktops. The shutdown feature is buried behind menus and really awkward UI interactions.There's a good reason I useAlt-F4 to shut down Windows: it's more convenient and faster, which is incredible. You need to go out of your way to sabotage the GUI to make a stretchy keystroke (alt, nnnggg, F4) more convenient than a clickable button.


    Microsoft has been trying to get people to stop shutting their computers down for ages. They did the same thing in Vista.



  • @anonymous234 said:

    Microsoft has been trying to get people to stop shutting their computers down for ages. They did the same thing in Vista.
    Now, if only their Security Essentials were not leaking memory in kernel, one would not have needed a shutdown.



  • I had to shut down a bunch of Windows 2008 and 2012 servers today. Oh man, that extra click to get to the power menu is killer! I mean, Jesus, M$ is breaking my balls here..



  • I usually access power options by keyboard. With Start Menu that's a tap on the Windows key, then two times right arrow. With Windows 8/2012 it's Win+C, Down, Down, Enter, Down, Down, Down, Down, Down, Right, Enter. Such improvement!


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @morbiuswilters said:

    I had to shut down a bunch of Windows 2008 and 2012 servers today. Oh man, that extra click to get to the power menu is killer! I mean, Jesus, M$ is breaking my balls here..

    Just count your lucky stars that the power menu doesn't do infinite scrolling.



  • @boomzilla said:

    @morbiuswilters said:
    I had to shut down a bunch of Windows 2008 and 2012 servers today. Oh man, that extra click to get to the power menu is killer! I mean, Jesus, M$ is breaking my balls here..

    Just count your lucky stars that the power menu doesn't do infinite scrolling.

    That reminds me... Is Android the only mobile OS that actually presents a draggable scrollbar when you start scrolling? I've been trialling Win phone 8 for a while and I hate flicking repeatedly to scroll menus, pages, lists and dropdowns, particularly the system time picker where the minute box has 60 entries and you can see about 4 at a time.


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