WinFX - Learning the future. - All Comments

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My First Post

My First Post — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 02:07:18 GMT

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re: WinFS and System Maintenance

dalejrstwinTr — Sat, 03 Apr 2004 22:47:00 GMT

I think they should take it one step further.. Even DOS and mac OSX based file management. Basically I put all my stuff anyware I wanted on the disk, while anything that a pure install (run environment) from dos stayed in C:\DOS folder.

I'm so sick of every file dumping into the windows folder or program files. There should be two of each. One for the install, one for everything afterward that gets installed.

Since all the apps down install to windows\system32 or temp, or any documents and settings \common\<username> folders. MS
should call the directory \Longhorn and \windows
and \Longhorn\Program files\ (no one else installs to the Longhorn directory but the install of Longhorn itself.

Like its been said, it really a pain to clean out, and most of us have regulated to backup your data and format, re-install windows, copy your data files back (seperate partition a lot of us use for data) and that will make for sure clean your computer and make it run faster.

The other thing that comes to mind, why can't I kill running .dll files thru the process manager? Some are trojan programs that you cannot kill unless you delete the files from DOS so they don't start in windows.

Dale Jrs Twin.

re: WinFS and System Maintenance

Rob @ OxfordT — Sat, 13 Mar 2004 07:12:00 GMT

It sounds you want Mac OS X which doesn't have any of your Windows pain in the ass. It's available now (actually, 3 years ago), what's the point to wait 2 or 3 or 4 years for Longhorn?

I used to be a Windows user, but switched to Mac about 3 years ago, and never have to do any system reinstallation, disk defragmentation, or cleaning up Registry. Does Longhorn still use those silly drive letters? I just hate them.

re: WinFS and System Maintenance

Rob @ OxfordT — Sat, 13 Mar 2004 07:11:00 GMT

re: WinFS and System Maintenance

Edward Wohlma — Fri, 12 Mar 2004 21:40:00 GMT

Thats actually something I was wondering about in my earlier post. File system and registry virtualisation to help compatibility with older applications.
http://www.longhornblogs.com/ewohlman/archive/2004/02/26/2602.aspx
See "App Compatibility - or Security, Security Security"

I think the MSI system has solved a lot of the older installation problems. It seems to work very well in conjunction with system restore and windows file protection. The new stuff in MSI 3 and WindowsUpdate5 is looking even better.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/msi/setup/windows_installer_start_page.asp
It means that all the installation tools are now just MSI format generators, but maybe thats not such a bad thing. The system understands what is happening during an install and can maintain it's state and allow roll-backs more easily.

But I think there are too many other things that just accumulate over time that could be looked after better.

Another example is in installing device drivers. Plug the same device into different USB ports and it installs the driver again for that port. If the device is something like a multiformat flash card reader it installs several copies of "Generic Volume" one for each card slot.
My tablet has 2 USB ports on the unit itself and 4 more on the docking station. How many unused copies of "Generic Volume" do I have installed?

You can't even see them unless you use the environment variable to show unplugged devices.

set DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1
devmgmt.msc
"Show Hidden Devices"
I'm usually amazed at how many HID Devices etc I have listed, from plugging my mouse into different ports.

OK, so there may not be a more elegant way of organising things, I might have bought two of the same device and want to use them in different ports at the same time so it does need to install each device seperately into the hierachy. But I'd have though that if a device hasn't been plugged in to a particular port for a couple of months it could safely be removed from the tree.
Perhaps it shouldn't matter to have the same device enumerated several times. But it does seem to solve a lot of problems to periodically clear out the older entries.

A number of things that through day-to-day use subtly alter your configuration and either lead to ever more hdd space or memory resources being used or introduce subtle incompatibilites.

re: WinFS and System Maintenance

Keith Patrick — Fri, 12 Mar 2004 20:47:00 GMT

Ivan: XP physically protects the Windows and also supplies the Documents and Settings folder as a location for user-specific configuration data, but what I think n4cer is talking about is something I remember reading was slated for Blackcomb ages ago whereby a legacy app tries to write a DLL to System32 or a configuration setting to win.ini, but the OS intercepts the FS call and actually performs the actions on a local (Documents and Settings) version of the app, so the app, due to low-level OS FS interception, thinks everything is fine, but the OS is actually protecting the real copies of its files. I had actually done a similar thing using NTFS hardlinks to get Mirc32 running out of my user directory (it stores personalized settings in a global, app-directory .ini file, so by having local hardlinks to the app and true copies of the personalization files, Mirc thinks its running normally, but in reality, every user has his/her own configuration data.

re: WinFS and System Maintenance

TrackBack — Fri, 12 Mar 2004 15:42:00 GMT

re: WinFS and System Maintenance

Ivan Polchenk — Fri, 12 Mar 2004 14:14:00 GMT

thx n4cer
"Some parts of the system will also be virtualized so the application thinks it's storing a shared dll or installer executable (for example) into the system directory, but it is really installing to an app-specific folder."

don't they already have something like that in XP?
application data stored in individual folders in doc&sets/user folder no?

anyhow..
basically, what i was trying to suggest is to have an opposite to .msi so that
u wouldn't have to store ur own uninstaller bin's and resources.
-----------------
... so you are saying that, when you move in, you dont have to bring you own janitors and provide them with accomodation? kewl..

re: WinFS and System Maintenance

Anonymous — Fri, 12 Mar 2004 11:54:00 GMT

Longhorn will monitor application installation changes so that upon uninstall, the system state would be equivalent to before the app was installed. Some parts of the system will also be virtualized so the application thinks it's storing a shared dll or installer executable (for example) into the system directory, but it is really installing to an app-specific folder.

I believe this is diccussed in this session:

CLI371 - Advanced Deployment Topics: Installing Your Application
http://microsoft.sitestream.com/PDC2003/CLI/CLI371.htm

re: WinFS and System Maintenance

Ivan Polchenk — Thu, 11 Mar 2004 11:20:00 GMT

Hi.
You mentioned the C:/Windows/ dir size and all.
I've noticed something that Microsoft has left from Windows 9X and barerly changed
ever since. When you install new software on your computer it tends to put all the uninstall info into each, separate [hidden] folder right in Windows/ dir.
I think that with WinFS and Longhorn, Microsoft should offer developers new system
and 'standard' in a sense for all uninstall and install needs.
Maybe not install, because there is a market for different install wizards already.
But for Uninstall, i think that it would be better that 'install and uninstall programs' should be a service, and every .msi package should triger it for start up
and provide all the nessesary info to the wizard, so that u don't have to chose the install directory anymore. Now when it comes to uninstalling applications, i imagine "install and uninstall programs" service would create an "uninstall guidence script" so that in the start menu in app's category-dir there would be an unstall link that would be the executable script, which will trigure the "install and uninstall" service one more and guide it for a proper clean up.

Today you can find a lot of install wizards, but most of them are very buggy and
always tend to screw up here or there, and leave lots of garbage. The others dont even work, and seem to be wining about some .dll and .ini files.

So, I hope that MSCD (ms developers) guys realized it all and found a better way to take care of this 'problem'.

Thanks,

IP

re: WinFS and System Maintenance

Keith Patrick — Wed, 10 Mar 2004 20:16:00 GMT

Something like WinDiff, that shows a graphical representation of system snapshots would be a really helpful way to guage how much a system has deviated from its original state. Right now, my machine (6 months from top of the line) has an issue with explorer.exe sitting on an hourglass for a minute or two on startup. Spyware used to do it, but regardless, it would be very nice to run an Avalon-optimized WinDiff For System Restore and see a little red bar (or equivalent) at a point 2 months ago where I can see "Oh, Gator got installed right there!" and rollback to the fix (or even break non-dependent changes out and manually remove that event from the current point)

Other than that, I'd also say that more emphasis will need to start being placed on the File and Settings Xfer Wizard (I haven't actually tried it, but I would assume that it would grab the WinFS stores out of each users' personal folders), as the dynamic data on the systems are becoming longer lived and larger.

re: WinFS and System Maintenance

Robert McLaws — Wed, 10 Mar 2004 14:59:00 GMT

GREAT Feedback! Hadn't thought of that before. Looking forward to hearing some answers.

re: Longhorn- The missing pieces

Anonymous — Sat, 28 Feb 2004 16:58:00 GMT

LOL .. Sydney train "timetables". So that's the random number generator they use? ;)

re: Longhorn- The missing pieces

Chris Gervais — Thu, 26 Feb 2004 20:40:00 GMT

Wow...the MacAfee screen just seems slightly wrong for an application. I don't know if the combination of browsing metaphors (e.g.: pages, backwards, home, etc.) really belong in an event-driven application. When you browse you're essentially doing two prime tasks: reading or movement. The same isn't true in an application like Word or even in the front-end to a virus scanning engine. As a "fat client" application developer, I can't even begin to wrap my mind around what forward and back buttons would mean. Are they like undo and redo? Do I start thinking about my application's interface in terms of pages rather than mutable windows and dialog boxes? Yipes, my head hurts already!