Built-in Vista components - A Bane
Friday, January 12, 2007
I have been using the release edition of "Microsoft Windows Vista - Ultimate" for quite a while now, and until yesterday I was quite satisfied. I must say the operating system has a lot of eye candies and few nifty features. On the serious down side note: To me M$'s offering is not just an OS, but rather applications tightly coupled with the OS. There seems no way to remove or repair the built-in components.
I would consider this as a serious design flaw (or another minting money strategy).
To my bad luck I happened to make the default "Windows Media Player" go kaput and there is no known way to fix the corrupted component except to:
(1) Reinstall the entire operating system
(2) Revert back to a previously saved restore point (which i don't have and I as a user, am I supposed to create restore points after and before every install/uninstall?)
Well if M$ was going to bundle these components so tightly coupled with the OS, they should have ensured a way for the public to reinstall or at the least repair the individual component(s).
The issue
Yesterday while watching an online news I was asked to download an activex control. As this was coming from a reputed news channel I presumed it was okay to download the same. Well, after I downloaded the control I was not able to play any video online – be it a webcast, online streaming audio, basically anything which uses windows media player activeX control.
Well i can't say it for sure that it might be the problem with the activex but what ever the reason it be, I for one has corrupted my windows media player for some reason and I have no clue on how to fix such an issue.
To my surprise I glanced through the logs and this is what the log says (See screen grab below). Everyone but Microsoft knows, windows media player cannot be un-installed from the OS.
I would consider this as a serious design flaw (or another minting money strategy).
To my bad luck I happened to make the default "Windows Media Player" go kaput and there is no known way to fix the corrupted component except to:
(1) Reinstall the entire operating system
(2) Revert back to a previously saved restore point (which i don't have and I as a user, am I supposed to create restore points after and before every install/uninstall?)
Well if M$ was going to bundle these components so tightly coupled with the OS, they should have ensured a way for the public to reinstall or at the least repair the individual component(s).
The issue
Yesterday while watching an online news I was asked to download an activex control. As this was coming from a reputed news channel I presumed it was okay to download the same. Well, after I downloaded the control I was not able to play any video online – be it a webcast, online streaming audio, basically anything which uses windows media player activeX control.
Well i can't say it for sure that it might be the problem with the activex but what ever the reason it be, I for one has corrupted my windows media player for some reason and I have no clue on how to fix such an issue.
To my surprise I glanced through the logs and this is what the log says (See screen grab below). Everyone but Microsoft knows, windows media player cannot be un-installed from the OS.
Until a workaround is found I will not revert back to Vista again and am royally pissed with their OS design. OS should be the kernel and not the applications tied around it. Sad that this is coming from one of the biggest companies in the world, after 4 years of design and development.
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How to choose cd/dvd archival media
Thursday, January 11, 2007
I came across this comprehensive document on how to best choose a cd/dvd media. The document talks about the essential difference between DVD -R/+R media. It's a well written article that goes in depth and explains the technicality behind the archival media.
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