# Fuck you, Microsoft, once again **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [September 25, 2010, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-microsoft-once-again/555015 "2010-09-25T16:20:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![sleestak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/919ad9/32.png) [@sleestak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sleestak)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2010, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-microsoft-once-again/555015/61 "2010-09-26T19:00:05Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I thought this was a very simple issue. I don’t think somebody else should be deleting files from my computer without my permission - even if they believe they’re doing it for good reasons. Am I so far out on the fringe here? You guys are really okay with that? If so, then I guess I just have a different view on the subject. It is apparent that you do not understand how hard disks work or what scan disk/chkdsk does. A little explanation. Your hard drive is divided up in to sectors. The easiest way to think about it is to imagine that it is divided up like a pie is cut. There are tons of these little slices on your hard drive. When an OS writes a file to a hard drive it writes it to a slice. Most files take up a lot of slices so there is a thing called a file allocation table\* which tracks which files are on which slice. Sometimes there are problems. These problems are usually caused by not shutting down the computer correctly or having the PC powered off when it is writing files. Actual hardware issues can also cause problems. The problem is that some files were written to some slices on the hard drive but the file allocation table no longer knows what those files are or where they belong. At this point it doesn’t matter if they are deleted because the system _already_ doesn’t know what they are. The damage was already done, chkdsk just found it. The utilities chkdsk and scan disk check the file allocation table and repair any errors before they get too bad. You should be running chkdsk regularly. This is standard computer maintenance. All operating systems have file allocation tables. All operating systems have issues with losing sectors on hard drives. All operating systems have utilities to check the hard drives integrity. On Unix, the utility is FSCK. I love telling people they need to FSCK their drive. As others have said, you need to do backs up NOW as your hard drive might be dying. Slee \*There are FATs for different operating systems. ---
**Author:** ![Canadjun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/76d3ee/32.png) [@Canadjun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Canadjun)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2010, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-microsoft-once-again/555015/62 "2010-09-26T19:07:28Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > No, they were not gone. They were files I used every day and had been using only an hour before. Hell, it was files like the URL of this message board and you can check my posting history to verify how often I used it. Just believe what everyone is trying to tell you - you don’t understand how scandisk works or what it is used for. It works at a lower level than normal programs, checking whether the file system “makes sense” and if not it does its best to fix things so the file system “makes sense”. Your file system was corrupted (i.e. didn’t “make sense”), and scandisk did its job. The fact that repairing things trashed your old browser is unfortunate, but coincidental. Two possibilities of file system problems that **might** not be immediately obvious but that scandisk would clean up - two file names pointing to the same location on disk; or a sector on disk being both allocated (i.e. it is part of a file) and free (it is on the list of sectors that is [supposedly] available for allocation when a new file is created). There are other possibilities as well. In both those cases at some point bad things are going to happen, but not necessarily immediately or even quickly. **IF** everything \*\*always \*\*goes as it should then things like that can’t happen. However, that is a very big IF. Has your system ever crashed (particularly recently)? Have you ever turned off your computer without shutting it down properly, or had a power failure while you computer is running? Then your file system could have had problems resulting from that. As I said in my other message, scandisk isn’t even a sensible program to use for what you are dreaming that Microsoft has in mind. A little sneaky code in IE or any other of your Microsoft programs would be much easier. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2010, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-microsoft-once-again/555015/63 "2010-09-26T20:00:08Z")
> [@Hunter\_Hawk](#): > > > [@septimus](#): > > > > Although his diagnosis of his specific problem here may be flawed, I agree with OP about the undesirable behavior of some PC software. I’ve even thought of starting my own BBQ Pit thread to complain about some egregious examples. But reading some of the responses OP got in this thread convinces me not to try arguing the matter here. > > No, legitimate complaints are fine, and you’ll often find people agreeing with you. Feel free to complain. Agreed, people frequently and often quite understandably bitch about things that are truly wrong with Windows-based software/the OS itself. This, however, does not appear to be an actual error, but quite possibly a dying hard drive. ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2010, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-microsoft-once-again/555015/64 "2010-09-26T20:18:28Z")
**Little Nemo** , my apologies if it seems like we are piling on to you. For what it’s worth, at least recognize that your disk might be starting to fail, and you should do whatever you can to get any other important files/info on it copied to somewhere else. If want some further ideas about how to do that, feel free to ask. ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2010, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-microsoft-once-again/555015/65 "2010-09-26T20:27:54Z")
> [@Ferret\_Herder](#): > > > [@asterion](#): > > > > I’m still trying to figure out what the hell you do with 10 years of bookmarks. I could probably count the number of sites I went to in 2000 and still visit regularly today on one hand. Note that I’m not counting the “big” websites I never bookmarked to begin with such as Google, Yahoo, NY Times, Amazon, etc. The amount of cruft that must be in a 10-year list is probably huge. > > I have a lot of bookmarks for things that I might visit **irregularly** and probably want to again, like recipes, knitting patterns, video game hints, that kind of stuff. However, I also tend to back up files like that semi-regularly. > > And yeah, for surfing/computer safety, you should really be using a modern, supported browser that can put out prompt updates should vulnerabilities be found. I understand that bookmarks are often used for the irregularly-visited website, or one with a long name that would be a pain to enter manually, or even just because you use it a lot. But I would be astounded if a list that’s 10 years old isn’t full of dead or missing links and if most of them had been opened at any point in this year. I have bookmarks that I did need several times a couple years ago but will never need again and I just haven’t gotten around to deleting them yet. It just makes me wonder how much of any real value was lost. ---
**Author:** ![Steophan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steophan/32/9595_2.png) [@Steophan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steophan)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2010, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-microsoft-once-again/555015/66 "2010-09-26T20:36:11Z")
R Tape Loading Error - (0,1) Time to upgrade… ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2010, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-microsoft-once-again/555015/67 "2010-09-27T19:06:17Z")
> [@Merneith](#): > > Windows stores its bookmarks in your Favorites folder. In WinXP, this used to be at C:/windows/favorites. C:/Documents and Settings/COMPAQ/Favorites on my XP Laptop. (Am I the only one that would prefer not to have spaces in file or folder names?) I was surprised to see that a single “bookmark” is a file sometimes exceeding 1 MB in size! I didn’t try to study the contents but noted that the bookmark for SDMB has many many advertisement URLS. ---
**Author:** ![DWMarch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dwmarch/32/1010_2.png) [@DWMarch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DWMarch)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2010, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-microsoft-once-again/555015/68 "2010-09-27T21:19:52Z")
You can also export bookmarks to a file using Import/Export from the File menu in IE. I would do this (it spits out an .htm or .html file) and then back this file up online somewhere as it should be fairly small. Attach it to an email and send it to yourself or put it on a USB drive or something. As for the OP’s problem, there is no conspiracy here. The part of the computer he used the most is the part that broke. The sectors surrounding his old browser were the sectors being written to every day hence they were the first ones to fail. No mystery at all. The only mystery at this point is how much longer that hard drive has left in its life. ---
**Author:** ![Hrududu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Hrududu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hrududu)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2010, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-microsoft-once-again/555015/69 "2010-09-28T13:11:31Z")
This thread reminds me of the time my mother got it into her head that the reason she couldn’t log into her email was because there was something wrong with the fonts on her computer. ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2010, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-microsoft-once-again/555015/70 "2010-09-28T20:50:57Z")
> [@Revtim](#): > > FYI, regarding bookmarks backup, there’s a nifty add-on called Xmarks, for IE, Chrome and Firefox, that syncs your bookmarks to the Xmarks server. It’s not only useful for backup, but it will sync them between different browsers and different machines. > > [http://www.xmarks.com/](http://www.xmarks.com/) Well, looks like xmarks is closing down by the end of the years, dammit. [http://blog.xmarks.com/?p=1886](http://blog.xmarks.com/?p=1886) ---
**Author:** ![DarrenS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/977dab/32.png) [@DarrenS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DarrenS)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2010, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-microsoft-once-again/555015/71 "2010-09-29T04:57:44Z")
> [@Steophan](#): > > R Tape Loading Error - (0,1) > Time to upgrade… …or use good quality, metal tapes…and turn off Dolby NR. I always read that one as “Ahh…tape loading error :(” Wow…that took me back a few years. ---
**Author:** ![Cazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cazzle/32/75_2.png) [@Cazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cazzle)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2010, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-microsoft-once-again/555015/72 "2010-09-29T05:23:21Z")
> [@Hrududu](#): > > This thread reminds me of the time my mother got it into her head that the reason she couldn’t log into her email was because there was something wrong with the fonts on her computer. It reminds me of the time my dad advised my uncle that Hotmail was bouncing some of his email because his hard drive was too full. ---
**Author:** ![Palooka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/palooka/32/2902_2.png) [@Palooka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Palooka)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2010, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-microsoft-once-again/555015/73 "2010-09-29T05:27:54Z")
I saw a server that was bouncing all traffic that didn’t come from IP Address: _123 Fake Street_. ---
**Author:** ![BleizDu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@BleizDu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BleizDu)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2010, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-microsoft-once-again/555015/74 "2010-09-29T08:44:29Z")
> [@Cazzle](#): > > > [@Hrududu](#): > > > > This thread reminds me of the time my mother got it into her head that the reason she couldn’t log into her email was because there was something wrong with the fonts on her computer. > > It reminds me of the time my dad advised my uncle that Hotmail was bouncing some of his email because his hard drive was too full. When we switched internet providers in 2000, my dad thought it meant you couldn’t access to the same parts of the internet. ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2010, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-microsoft-once-again/555015/75 "2010-09-29T15:49:45Z")
Just another person chiming in to say: You don’t fucking understand computers at all. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2010, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-microsoft-once-again/555015/76 "2010-09-29T16:25:18Z")
> [@gravitycrash](#): > > I find that _checks date_ you were still using Netscape disturbing. [Peter Cushing voice] **gravitycrash**! Release him![/P\_C\_v] ---
**Author:** ![Dude111](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ba8739/32.png) [@Dude111](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dude111)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2011, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-microsoft-once-again/555015/77 "2011-02-25T17:07:41Z")
[QUOTE=Little Nemo] I have a web browser I use. It’s old and offically outdated but unlike many newer products it works…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. [/QUOTE] Yup… Newer is usually NOT BETTER!! (Newer is usually ugly/over bloated crap!!) They purposely detect bad things IF IT ISNT THIER OWN S/W cause they naturally want you using thier over bloated/intrusive crap! (They have become QUITE intrusive into ppls lives and its sad) ---
**Author:** ![Harmonious\_Discord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/74df32/32.png) [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2011, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-microsoft-once-again/555015/78 "2011-02-25T17:25:32Z")
I sure hope he’s OK after five months of not complaining.:rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2011, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-microsoft-once-again/555015/79 "2011-02-25T21:55:32Z")
> [@Palooka](#): > > I saw a server that was bouncing all traffic that didn’t come from IP Address: _123 Fake Street_. You can 't prove that. ---
**Author:** ![Fuji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a9a28c/32.png) [@Fuji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuji)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2011, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-microsoft-once-again/555015/80 "2011-02-25T23:06:09Z")
A couple things: 1. I’ve seen plenty of people mention that the OP’s HDD might be failing, but another consideration might be spyware. No idea what he has for anti-virus/firewall protection, but it’s possible Norton or what-have-you is detecting an infection and trying as best it can to destroy the threat. 2. I do PC & laptop repairs in a small shop, and spyware and re-installations are our bread and butter. I don’t think that ScanDisk or ChkDisk is part of any effort by Microsoft to eliminate rival browsers. In fact, I’m sure of it because I’ve seen several occasions where after running anti-malware scans, on reboot ChkDisk actually target files like iexplore.exe, without which you can’t even run IE. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-microsoft-once-again/555015.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-microsoft-once-again/555015.md?page=5)