[OT] NT, software reliability, and the lack thereof.

From: Max Eskin <max82_at_surfree.com>
Date: Tue Mar 16 17:27:07 1999

On Tue, 16 Mar 1999, Derek Peschel wrote:
>*starting over again*, seemingly at random. The defragmentation program
>would be happily scanning C: and then it would put up a notice ("I need to
>start again") and then redo everything it had done until then. This could
>happen a couple of times in a row.

The reason for this is disk accesses. If you moved the mouse, and it tried
to swap in some tooltip code, that would restart the utility. After
screwing up my system quite severely several times with Norton Utilities,
Defrag, etc. I've resolved never to fiddle with Windows again. The thing
is, I once stopped Defrag, by clicking the stop button, saying yes, etc.
It must have forgotten to flush the buffer, since half the hard drive's
contents vanished.

 --Max Eskin (max82_at_surfree.com)
Received on Tue Mar 16 1999 - 17:27:07 GMT