I have a web browser I use. It’s old and offically outdated but unlike many newer products it works.
I also have Internet Explorer - an older version that came with my computer. I don’t use it as often but it’s there. Recently IE has been acting worse than usual so I decided to update it. Which apparently was a mistake.
Because as soon as I installed it, I began getting messages that my hard drive had corrupted files on it. Which I thought was unlikely - the only program I’d been having problems with was Internet Explorer. So everytime I turned on my computer, I had to tell it not to run scandisk. Apparently Windows got annoyed with me for not doing what I was told because it finally just went ahead and ran scandisk yesterday without waiting for authorization. And it eliminated all those “corrupted” files.
And today I found out what was “corrupted” on my hard drive - I was using a non-Microsoft product. Windows was deleting my other web browser.
So fuck you, Microsoft, once again. Another example of how you can’t compete with other products on the marketplace. You put out shitty products and the only reason you survive is because you won’t allow any competition.
Do you know what scan disk does? It is the equivalent of FSCK on Unix.
The reason your browser broke isn’t some plot on Microsoft’s behalf. Scandisk is a standard utility that has been around forever. You should be running it from time to time. It repairs bad sectors on the hard drive.
There are a bunch of ways you can get bad sectors on your drive. Lock ups and powering of the PC incorrectly can cause these problems if the OS is in the middle of a write. Or a bad install.
I very seriously doubt this was Microsoft intentionally eliminating the competition. I (any many, many others) have used non MS browsers under Windows for years, on many different Windows machines, and never had a problem like this.
Likely the files of the non-MS browser simply did actually get corrupted, which happens without any malicious cause.
So I should just accept Microsoft’s greater wisdom on these issues? It shouldn’t be my decision if I want to keep using a program that’s working fine? If Microsoft decides it’s corrupted, it’ll just go ahead and delete programs on my computer?
If Microsoft were systematically deleting non-MS Web browsers from people’s computers, I think we would have heard about it before now.
Can you just reinstall your other browser? Even if it’s an old version, a lot of times you can find stuff like that archived somewhere online. That’s what I did with Media Player Classic when I got tired of dealing with Windows Media Player’s bloatware.
I have back-ups. But it’s going to be a major pain in the ass to reinstall all of them.
Which has nothing to do with my anger. If I’m mad at somebody for stealing my car, I don’t want to hear “Why didn’t you have better insurance?” or “It wasn’t a very good car anyway. You should buy a better one now.”
It was something I had. I was happy with it. And I mad as hell that it was taken from me and my anger at the people who took it is justified.
But if you put off doing any maintenance on your car, and when you finally do take it to a mechanic and he charges you an arm and a leg to fix various problems that have developed, is it reasonable to blame the mechanic for your negligence?
Normally I’d agree with the “If it aint broke, don’t fix it” attitude here. But Browsers are an unusual case. If you don’t keep your browser up-to-date then YOU are contributing to the difficulties that plague the web design industry. Web designers have to spend a lot of time making their creations work for older browsers because so many people insist on using them. The web is evolving all the time so it is reasonable for developers to want people to keep the tool that views the web up-to-date.
Were he a mentally defective fellow who bungled most tasks and took advantage of local circumstance to charge a monopolizing price ten times the average, who proceeded to rip out the working transmission and expensively replace it with some inferior home-made piece of crap on a hunch, I’d be quite annoyed.
I thoroughly enjoyed Netscape Navigator in its heydey. Then those AOL pricks ran it into the ground, just like the rest of their lacklustre ISP. I started out with Mosaic (dating myself, aren’t I?), then Netscape at the suggestion of a High School teacher I trusted, followed by I.E., then firefox, then back to I.E., and right now I’m at Google Chrome, which I’m crushing on just a little bit. It’s a very clean and smooth operating browser.
My condolences to the OP for his loss of bookmarks. That would be the last thing I would think to backup if my PC was fried; I’d probably remember “My Documents” and my Outlook Express bins, at the very least.
I doubt Microsoft is “muscling out” competition with an outdated web browser with only a very small following. However, it wouldn’t be without precedence. I do remember having an IBM Aptiva that ran Windows 3.1 and OS/2 Warp at the same time, allowing you to swap between the two. When my upgrade CD for Windows 95 came in the mail, it politely explained to me that OS/2 Warp was “incompatible” with Win 95, and had to be quietly expunged from my hard drive.
Oh, OS/2 warp. You were doomed from the moment Patrick Stewart was swapped as your spokesperson in exchange for Kate Mulgrew.
Well, to be fair, Microsoft has done similar things in the past, and most people haven’t heard of them.
(In this particular case, however, I agree it’s probably not malfeasance, but rather anomalous corruption that by coincidence affected the OP’s browser.)
If Microsoft were deleting Firefox, there would be a outcry and companies would fight back. My guess is that Netscape is vulnerable because of its age and its orphan status. Windows is able to search out programs that aren’t up to Microsoft’s current standards and define those programs as “defective” and premptively delete them.
Keep in mind this may have been an old program but it’s been working fine for years. I use it because it works and it has features I like and I’m used to it - and because it’s my choice to make. It was after all IE that stopped working not my old Netscape program.
To use the car analogy, I’m driving an old car but it runs okay and I’m happy with it. Maybe a new car would have a GPS unit and a MP3 player but that doesn’t mean my car is broken because it lacks those things. So I don’t want some car salesman to tow away my car in the middle of the night because they decided it needed maintenance. And then claim that the best way to “fix” my problem would be to buy a car from them instead because they’ve already put my car in the crusher.
