Will Windows ever have sane error messages?



  • Try to run Windows Explorer or access Control Panel, get error message:

    Server Execution Failed
    

    What actually happened: If you move the My Documents folder somewhere other than its default location, and that location becomes unavailable, you get that error message. WTF?

    Try to set DNS server from command line. Get error message:

    The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect.
    

    What actually happened: Specifying a non-existant network connection. For example, starting with Windows 8, the default names for network connections were changed. "Wireless Network Connection" is now called "Wi-Fi". WTF? You can't just say that the name Wireless Network Connection is invalid or does not exist?

    Turn on computer, won't boot. Get error message:

    ntldr is missing.  Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart.
    

    Pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del reboots and ......... displays the same exact message. Well, DUH!! If you can't boot because ntldr is missing, what good is it to press Ctrl-Alt-Del and do it again?


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Spanky587 said:

    Well, DUH!! If you can't boot because ntldr is missing, what good is it to press Ctrl-Alt-Del and do it again?

    How else are you going to get Windows to run the repair CD, which can replace ntldr, if you don't C-A-Del to reboot?


  • 🚽 Regular

    @Spanky587 said:

    What actually happened: If you move the My Documents folder somewhere other than its default location, and that location becomes unavailable, you get that error message. WTF?

    Never seen that and we used folder redirection on many machines running XP, Vista and Windows 7. You should have just seen the offline-file cache while the server was unavailable. How did you set up the redirection?

    I've seen it fuck-up in uncountable ways apart from that though...


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    @Spanky587 said:

    Pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del reboots

    If you're lucky. For some reason mine always hardlocks at that point and no amount of button mashing (Note: Mashing. Holding down the power button on the case still works) reboots it.



  • @FrostCat said:

    How else are you going to get Windows to run the repair CD

    There was a time when computers used to have a button labeled "reset".

    Filed under: Selling any Windows computer without a reset button should be punishable as a crime.



  • @Spanky587 said:

    Well, DUH!! If you can't boot because ntldr is missing, what good is it to press Ctrl-Alt-Del and do it again?

    It's not saying "this will fix your problem," it's saying, "this is pretty much the only thing you can do at this point."



  • @Cursorkeys said:

    Never seen that and we used folder redirection on many machines running XP, Vista and Windows 7. You should have just seen the offline-file cache while the server was unavailable. How did you set up the redirection?

    He probably didn't, he probably just made himself Admin and moved the damned thing, then was surprised when things didn't work.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    surprised when things didn't work.

    "Well, don't do that," is the appropriate response to the things the OP mentioned. However, an error message that identifies the actual problem, rather than misleading the user, might be, ya know, a little bit nice.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election Banned



  • I never said otherwise.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @HardwareGeek said:

    However, an error message that identifies the actual problem, rather than misleading the user, might be, ya know, a little bit nice.

    Yeah, if you want to try to individually catch all eleventy billion ways that an OS could shit itself, and write individual messages for them, then sure. Otherwise, give them something and let Google do the heavy lifting for finding most likely causes.

    This is not really a :wtf:, unless we are talking about a picky user who needs everything spoon fed to them.



  • @Spanky587 said:

    Pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del reboots and ......... displays the same exact message. Well, DUH!! If you can't boot because ntldr is missing, what good is it to press Ctrl-Alt-Del and do it again?

    As a kid I found out that compressing files saved space, so I compressed all files ever and noticed that some files were automatically skipped from compression...unless you specifically tell it to only compress that file. So that computer now displays the message ntldr is compressed. Yep, it can tell that the file is compressed but it can't do anything about it.



  • "Please take me by my feet and hold me upside-down to change state."

    Filed under: That way you get a better view of my recent surgery too.


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    Fun fact: if you corrupt NTLDR it also considers it "compressed". ;)



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @Cursorkeys said:
    Never seen that and we used folder redirection on many machines running XP, Vista and Windows 7. You should have just seen the offline-file cache while the server was unavailable. How did you set up the redirection?

    He probably didn't, he probably just made himself Admin and moved the damned thing, then was surprised when things didn't work.

    No, you can move My Documents to another location and it will work just fine. Just right click on the My Documents folder, select 'Properties' and then go to the 'Location' tab where you select the new location. All perfectly legal and allowable.

    You can even move it to a different drive and it will still work just fine. But, if that drive becomes unavailable or has it's drive letter changed, for example if you hook up a memory card reader and Windows decides to re-arranged your drive letters, then Windows won't do something sensible like tell you that My Documents is not accessible.

    Instead, if you try to run Windows Explorer or anything that relies on Windows Explorer (Control Panel, etc) you get a very unhelpful error message: Server Execution Failed.

    What's so special about My Documents and why is it tied to Explorer?



  • @Spanky587 said:

    No, you can move My Documents to another location and it will work just fine.

    Obviously you can. Who said otherwise?

    We were conjecturing that you didn't. Not that you couldn't.

    I'm not going to read the rest of your post because your avatar looks stupid.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    I'm not going to read the rest of your post because your avatar looks stupid.

    A cromulent reason in this forum.



  • Given that, for Windows, the boot sector's job is to find ntldr and then run it, what exactly were you expecting it to do?

    Remember, we're talking about a program that has to be 512 bytes or smaller.



  • Did I ever tell the story of how I managed to delete the Recovery Partition on a Windows 8.1 machine? I figured I might be able to make use of the disk space. It took an hour or so of fiddling with the Partition tool and an Administrator prompt until I was able to unlock it. The machine continued to run for roughly 25 seconds before it fell completely over and I had to restore it from the recovery USB...


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    I did that because the idiots that imaged my machine didn't do it right.
    I have a 1 TB disk in my laptop, and how do you think the partitions laid out? 1 UEFI, 1 main, and 1 recovery, right? Sure! No problem!
    What about sizes? 200 MB for UEFI, 498 GB OS, 499 Recovery. Wait, what?!

    That's right, folks, we have a 499 GB partition to hold 22 GB of recovery data! And no, the partition isn't normally accessible because it's GUID marks it "special", so even if I wanted to, say, use it for Windows Backup purposes (:wtf:), I can't.
    So, a GUID switch, mount, xcopy, unmount, delete, resize (main), create, mount, xcopy, unmount, undo-GUID switch, I now have a great recovery partition capable of bringing me back! ... to Windows 8.0. :sadface:

    I'm going to need it too eventually, because something went wrong in the Vaio control panel and my battery refuses to charge above 50% (WHY?!? Why would they make that an option?!?!)


    Filed under: It's not even useful anymore!



  • @Tsaukpaetra said:

    I'm going to need it too eventually, because something went wrong in the Vaio control panel and my battery refuses to charge above 50% (WHY?!? Why would they make that an option?!?!)

    Check your power management settings for the model. I have something similar on my system, where it won't charge over some weird number like 76% (I don't remember the exact number right now and I'm too lazy to look). This is a setting, and the manufacturer recommends this to supposedly extend the battery lifetime, at the expense of not having a full charge.

    That setting can be changed if you're going on a flight or something and need the battery fully charged. Always takes me 10 minutes to find it.


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @CoyneTheDup said:

    power management settings

    It's apparently controlled by the Vaio Control Center, which won't install with the proper settings to control that function in a clean situation (I've tried upgrading/downgrading the software, but it's extremely pickyparanoid how it installs).
    At best, I can get the app to recognize that this is indeed a Sony laptop, and that the battery is "good". ;)

    I don't really care about the life-cycles of the battery, when the capacity drops enough I should be able to get a replacement cell (even if it is an "internal" battery).


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