Day 066 - Strange Windows Vista

September 16, 2007 — Kartik

_Captain’s Log, StarDate 2007.09.10_

Somebody got a new laptop today so I spent my whole evening imparting tips and advice. It was an HP dv6000 running Windows Vista. We left it running with nothing but the web browser on and came back from dinner to find that it had unexplicably crashed. Several attempts later, we got the system to boot but then we got this weird message saying that the OS installation had crashed and needed to be repaired. The best part was that according to the message, “only installations listed below can be repaired”, and there was absolutely nothing listed below. The message went on to explain that if no installations were listed, then we should “load the appropriate hard disk drivers”. Isn’t that wonderful? Your OS telling you to load the hard disk drivers so that it can recognize itself? I mean, if I have to load hard disk drivers myself, what do I need an OS that takes up 17 GB for? Insane!

Posted in Montreal 2007, Operating Systems, OS, Questionable Quality, Sanity Check. 1 Comment »

Operating Systems, OS

September 16, 2007 — Kartik

There are two categories of Operating Systems. The first, like Linux, manage system resources and provide an interface between the user and the underlying hardware/software, enabling humans to effectively use computers.

The second, like Windows, basically look good and pretend to do a million different things, but can’t do any of them correctly or efficiently. As is the case with everything else in life (such as music, for example - think Britney Spears vs Pink Floyd), the second category has a much larger and much more visible fan following (ahem, sorry, “user base”*).

*I’m referring to Desktop Operating Systems

All that apart, Operating Systems pose the ultimate technical challenge in computer programming, and that’s the reason I’m writing about them here.

“UNIX is an operating system, OS/2 is half an operating system, Windows is a shell, and DOS is a boot partition virus.”

-Peter Coffin

Resources:

References:

  • Operating System Concepts (6th Edition), By Abraham Silberschatz, Peter Baer Galvin, Greg Gagne (Wiley, 2001 )
Posted in Operating Systems, OS. No Comments »