Isaac Whatever

I'm so tired of Windows.

I'm an IT guy. I fix computers and handle problems. Today I was standing behind a user, having a conversation with him, when his computer crapped out.

I think he had outlook open. I'm not sure. What I do remember, very clearly, is that his hands were nowhere near the computer when the Blue Screen of Death appeared, and it had been idle for a while.

Startup failed. Then on rebooting in safe mode we got the dreaded Mup.sys error. Which doesn't really have anything to do with Mup.sys. After loading Mup.sys windows does a ton of different things, but "Loading Mup.sys" is the last message displayed.

I feel a sort of pity for the creator of Mup.sys. I imagine him traveling from town to town, an outcast, haunted by the Mup.sys error that actually has nothing to do with him.

This is my third dreaded Mup.sys error, and I've never successfully solved any of them. I tried the USB peripheral switching fix and then gave up and popped in Knoppix and started backing up his files. I won't even try the other fixes anymore - they're time consuming and they didn't work before - I just put the computer out of its misery.

(We could talk about backups here. I don't feel like it. We don't do backups on salesguy computers. The DB barely gets backed up. An argument for another day.)

There's the reformat, the reinstall, the driver hunt, updates, antivirus, office, outlook, configuring the VPN, reconfiguring outlook (it never seems to take the first time. I don't do anything different the second time), then favorites, documents, and pictures.

The new version of Office deleted the printer drivers when it installed. So I had to install them again, minutes after installing them the first time. Then a few minutes later, after a reboot, the original printer drivers were back. Great. I deleted the extra ones and soldiered on. Finally I was finished. Now the user is back to exactly where he was before his computer crapped out on him for no reason at all.

This is one of my best users. He didn't blame me, and he even listened to my Mup.sys explanation. Then he asked me - and this really kills me - what he could do to avoid this problem. And I had nothing to tell him.

Damn windows.

When one of my personal computers has a problem now I just turn it off. I ran off Knoppix for a week to avoid even trying to figure out why my burner was making coasters - they burned flawlessly in Knoppix. I only went back to windows because Knoppix locked up. And I was done burning CDs. My curiosity kicked in later and I found that I had installed rival cd-burning programs, which were engaged a war of attrition over my burner.

I'm tired of this. I'm getting close to buying a Mac again. The first time I did it I loved it - until I had to pay for it, and pay for support. Then I swore I wouldn't do it again unless I was rich. But maybe, just maybe, it is time.

I miss it. Especially Mail.app.

Labels: apple, crash, irritation, IT, mup.sys, windows, work