On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 3:45 PM, Joseph L. Casale JCasale@activenetwerx.com wrote:
which is about as useful as Microsoft Windows support... is it broken? "reinstall windows"....
FFS, this attitude amongst opensource guys that MS is the devil and are trying to murder your family or sabotage your life is such BS.
I don't know what Microsoft's support is like for servers, but on the desktop they *definitely* tell you to reinstall for almost any major problem. I don't work on computers for a living anymore, but my wife is always telling people that I can help them when their Windows computers go down. An older lady at our church had a Vista machine go KSOD (black screen of death on her). It was a fairly new Dell. I called them and explained to them that I couldn't get it to boot -- they gave me instructions on reinstalling. Microsoft's support suggestion was to reinstall. I found out later why, there must have been 10 different ways to fix KSOD (that worked for some people but not others) and I tried every one. Finally using MSCONFIG I was able to open a "hive" (I've purposely avoided Vista so this is all new to me) and backed up the user directories to a portable hard drive. And then I did what I almost always have to do with Windows... reinstalled it. The KSOD "event" occurred after an automatic Windows update (which isn't all that uncommon I found out).
Take the Tin Foil Hat off and settle down, MS support is easily on par w/ or *the* best support there is.
Again, telling you to "reinstall" is not good support, in my opinion.
I maintain both Linux/Unix and Windows machines, and since high school days I have been using PSS and there is nothing like it. They have have *ALWAYS* fixed everything but one issue I have had, where that one issue I resolved before them.
Okay, what did they tell you about KSOD? Even if I can't fix it, I would at least like to know what really causes it. (There are a lot of theories out there.)
Spreading your FUD reflects on _you_ not MS.
All he said is that they tell you to "reinstall" which is what they do. It's not FUD.
I love Linux (and prefer to toil in this forest) but don't preach that anti-ms crap, its utter malarkey.
Seems to me you're a little bit too sensitive here. I've reinstalled Windows on many personal computers for friends and family, and have seen many Windows computers "re-imaged" in the corporate environment. "Reboot" and/or "reinstall" are two of the most common "fixes" for Windows. This is not "tin-hat" malarkey, it's the simple truth -- and it's one of the big reasons I moved to Linux.