Just FYI, Shadow Copies have existed in the last couple iterations of Windows. If System Protection is turned on, previous versions of documents and folders can be saved and retrieved.
Thanks HardlySanguine, very useful!
Frankly, if you are stupid (your word) enough to work for hours on something without ever saving a copy, you deserve to flunk the class. Especially since you mention a compiler, making me think it’s probably a computer-related class. Computer programmers who never think about backup, security, etc.? – We do NOT need any more of them. (Aren’t they the types that gave us Windows in the first place?)
Oh, and this ‘working on the project the night before it’s due’ – another trait we don’t need in our computer designers. It usually means they run out of time just before the due date, so they skimp on the testing phase – so we customers get to do the debugging after we get the product. Yeah, we’ve had enough of that, too.
These are management problems. Did the prof, or does corp management:
-Set policies and procedures for frequent saves and backups?
-Ensure saves/backups are logged?
-Ensure saves/backups are tested?
-Review logs?
-Set up in progress reviews to prevent shoving everything to the end?
-Have consequences if policies are not followed?
-And do they REALLY do all this, or do just enough to satisfy the occassional audit?
Sounds like the prof decided it’s hard enough teaching a (presumably intro) programming class without setting up a complete and intrusive management environment, for which he did not have the staff or support. Corporate management often makes the same decision. Problem is sometimes the lone, tempremental artisan does better work faster tgan the theoretically correct management structure of thousands.
I thought I had finally been pitted.
Are you a CS student? You mention running a compiler in the background. Let me let you in on a secret: do not use Windows for any CS assignment, unless it is absolutely required (i.e. a game development class, or something). Your life, and the lives of your lab assistants and lecturers will be much easier if you just switch to Linux.
I can’t even understand the point you’re trying to make. You don’t agree that Windows is mediocre, but do you think it’s great or terrible? In any case, “Windows is mediocre” is pretty clearly an opinion and not possible to be proven factually incorrect. I don’t know what you mean by literally incorrect.
OK, it’s been less than a month, so i’m bumping this thread.
As i said earlier in the thread, the first thing i do when i install Windows is disable Automatic Updates. Instead, i set Windows to tell me when updates are available, but not to download anything without my permission.
After all the brouhaha in this thread, i decided to do a little experiment. I went into the Windows Update setting, and changed my settings to Install updates automatically (recommended).
This morning, when i turned my computer on, a little bubble popped up from my system tray telling me that Windows was beginning the process of automatically downloading and installing my updates. When i saw this notification, i opened Word and created a new document, typed some gibberish, and then just left it open without saving, to see if i would lose any information.
Well, a little while later, this is what popped up on my screen. No sudden, unexpected shutdown. Just a little dialog box telling me that my computer needed to restart in order for the update process to finish, and that this would happen in 15 minutes unless i delayed the procedure or restarted the computer myself.
I have a regular, vanilla installation of Windows 7 Home Premium.
And Word’s autosave should have re-loaded the document had Windows gotten to the end of its countdown.
I’m an engineer and I’m fine with Windows. IME the only people who make the claim that you just did are either Apple-worshipers whose default answer to anything is “Get a Mac” and borderline autistic Linux trolls who can’t see the fact that the OS is irrelevant if the software people want to run isn’t available.
In short- I don’t use an OS. I use the software that runs on the OS. OS X and Linux both are inadequate for me.
Clearly you should be using FreeBSD.
I can’t agree with this enough. It doesn’t matter to me if Linux and OS X are 100x better than Windows, plus clean my house, wash my clothes, and cook me dinner at the same time. The software I need to run to do my work on and the games I play at night to relax me are on the most part only available on Windows. I can’t change unless I quit my job and find new hobbies. I’m not going to do that no matter how much of a Linux/OSX fanboy you are.
And the reality of the situation is that most other people are in the same boat, too. My mother asked me once about a Mac; I said “sure, get a Mac, but I can’t support it, you’ll have to learn a whole new OS, the Photo software you took ages to learn doesn’t run on it, and you’ll have to learn a new email program too.” This isn’t minor stuff to a 75-year-old woman who is not particularly technical, and “it just works” is Apple hoo-haw. It doesn’t “just work” to people not familiar with Macs; I’ve learned that over and over when friends/relatives switch to Macs and then call me to figure out where Outlook is and why can’t they find IE and where’s the backspace key and where are the menus for their apps and why can’t they close windows by clicking the top right corner?
And when it comes right down to it, these are computers we’re talking about, not religions. Use what works for you and get on with your life.
And this is exactly what happened.
After i made my previous post, i let the timer run down with Word still open, and Windows restarted the computer. After my desktop loaded, the first thing that happened was that Word fired up, and my document was right there, as an Autosaved document, with nothing lost.
Based on previous experience, I was on mhendo’s side in the analysis of “what happens at Windows updates” until just this morning. Unlocked my computer, started my normal checking-mail-and-webnews morning routine and after about 15 minutes, the computer just closed all my programs, logged off and gave me the well-known “Configuring Windows - do not shut down your computer” message. WTF??? I never saw any dialog box asking if I wanted to reboot NOW! or in ten minutes!
So, yes, it does happen (and yes, I’ve developed that Ctrl-S twitch over the years, too)
BTW, I’m running Win7 x64
I have a Pentium-V vintage box that’s about 11 years old now, still running Winders 98. I don’t recall that it’s ever crashed, not even ONCE. (True, I only use it anymore for one legacy app that I can’t easily run on newer boxes.) This box has never had a network card. I used to get on-line with a dial-up modem. (I use other newer mochines to get on-line now.)
A certain friend of mine tells keeps asking me when I’m going to dump the old wood-burner (his words). I expect I’ll still be using this box for some time to come.
I use Linux for most of my casual work now, like spending my life on SDMB.
Older Winders systems: Sometime dumber is just better.
This whole process of Automatic Updates is very insidious.
I subscribe to the Automatic Settings at my approval.
**Start -> Control Panel -> Automatic Updates **
Then I choose Notify Me But Don’t Automatically Download Or Install Them
I usually try to make sure there are no changes to my computer. I’m just a bit paranoid about folks on my puter.
Today, I got the little yellow shield from MS that suggested automatic updates for me. Since it checked out, I downloaded them and restarted the computer.
After all that, and reading this thread, I decided to check my settings. Sure enough, MS auto updates had changed my setting from “Don’t auto d/l” to “auto d/l at this specific time every day”. **Without my approval. ** I had to change it back manually and reboot and double check.
I don’t like that. Just proves me right about the evil MS corporation. I’ll have to remind myself to check each time I accept the auto updates.
I’m running Win XP home. with Service Pack 3.
I feel your pain. I think most of us feel your pain.
I felt your pain before reading this thread. Yesterday, this situation happened to me. Just decided to download, restart, and too bad if I didn’t save everything. The best part was it happened at 2 AM, so I wasn’t awake. But the computer was on, so off it went…
Time to change those damn defaults. MS is only partly to blame. I’m to blame for not changing my settings. Everytime it happened, I said “I need to change those settings”, but I inevitably forgot. Not this time.
I’m doing it as I type this response.
Nonsense. I’m an engineer and I absolutely abhor the abomination that is Windows.
Absolutely not. I’m willing to bet that the automatic update implementation in Windows must cost our economy billions of dollars every year due to lost work, lost productivity, etc.
I’ve made triple-sure that Auto Updates were set to manually download and install them, only to have some occasional update literally change the settings of the Auto Update control panel surreptitiously behind my back, then later updates causing lost work.
Some people are unaware of how many engineering programs work, but a lot of the analysis, simulation and software compiling programs work in-memory, and they are left to work for hours, days and weeks on end sometimes. There is no method to save your work in the mean time. In such cases, Microsoft’s ineptitude causes the problems we see demonstrated in this thread.
In fact Windows is demonstrably inferior operating system when it comes to unleashing the raw power of the computer. I have done the benchmarks myself with several of the engineering softwares we use. It’s simply inferior. That’s the stone-cold hard fact of the matter; it’s a demonstrable fact, repeatable by any competent engineer. And finally when it comes to stability, security and usability, Windows all come in last place. Yes, even Windows 7.
Fundamentally speaking, in a well-engineered operating system, there is no reason why an update should require a restart, with very few exceptions. The fact of the matter is that Windows’ feature called Windows Side-by-Side is the most horrific piece of garbage unleashed upon humankind. Go ahead, if you have Vista or 7 and take a look at the size of your C:\Windows\WinSXS directory. That what you see there is a trashcan, a dumpster, a landfill that is permanent, with no method of being cleaned up, ever. In there is every piece of outdated system files, that have been replaced by a new copy sent through Auto Updates. Just in case it’s not perfectly clear of what I’m talking about here, the old, vulnerable, insecure, buggy, infested system files all reside here cozily, awaiting for any app you have installed to call them up, circumventing the newest (supposedly fixed) system file. After two years of using Vista this WinSXS directory punched in at 25GB, while the original size of Vista by itself weighs in at 17GB.
So right in there you have the “quality” engineering spewed out by Microsoft.
In the end all this means is that whenever Microsoft pushes new updated system files, it requires a restart, because Microsoft engineers cannot figure out what impact there will be if they do an “on the fly” shutdown/restart of system services and components.
Winner, winner, chicken dinner. 
Right.
And pray tell, what would have happened if let’s say you are employed by a company, and such a company might have “team meetings” and “staff meetings” and “lunch” and fancy things of this sort? What would have occurred had you to attend such an event while Windows pooped up this dialog box?:dubious: