Last Wednesday was The Day. IE9 had me convinced that it was time to finally leave Vista behind and move to Windows 7, ignoring the iron rule that you should never change a running (Windows) system. I got what I deserved: A failed Windows 7 upgrade that destroyed my Vista installation, a screwed up hard drive with new partitions and useless support from Microsoft. Having spent more than 40 hours to restore my PC, once again, I am ready to leave my wimpy self behind. It is time to switch to Linux.
Never promise what you can't keep: Needless to say: It did not restore any files.
Seriously, can Microsoft ever get an operating system upgrade right? Perhaps I just have bad luck. I entirely messed up my beloved Windows XP PC (which was purchased with a Vista Express Upgrade coupon) by upgrading to Vista. I bravely resisted the Windows 7 trend on my business machine, despite the fact that I believe that Vista has been one of the worst operating systems Microsoft has ever released. Vista worked and if you have been around for a while, then you just know that you don’t upset your Windows by throwing it out and replace it with a new one, especially with an upgrade.
It so happened that IE9 Beta refused to download to my Vista PC, but worked just fine on my Windows 7 laptop. Common sense: It was time to possibly consider Windows 7. I had a RTM disc here and ran the install. 2 hours later, Windows 7 told me the upgrade had failed and that it would revert back to Vista. It did not. I ended up with a boot failure, an impossible system restore with no further information what the problem really was, and useless Microsoft support that pointed to a Knowledge Base article indicating that Microsoft has been aware of the problem for several months, but has not released a hotfix yet. Instead, there is a rather aggravating step-by-step solution, that ended for me with the rather dumb note:
“If this command provides no data, this problem is not caused by shell folder redirection, and the remainder of the steps in this article should not be followed.”
This was a dead end. No further advice. Translation: Dear user, we hate to inform you that you are screwed and we have no idea how to fix the mess we created.
What else is new, Microsoft? Your support really sucks and your OS upgrades are a pain in the butt, seriously.
Who can blame those who believe it is enough and buy a Mac?
Mac isn’t for me. But I decided it is time to leave Redmond. Windows has wasted too much of my time already. A friend from Germany told me that “real men run Linux”. I never considered Linux in the past, but there is a first for everything. My business-critical machine is switched over to Linux and we will see how this experiment turns out. Oh, I am also embracing cloud capabilities now, as I am grateful that some of my data is still available in the cloud (thanks to Google and Mozilla).
Yes, it was partly my fault. I should have known that a full backup is necessary before you upgrade your PC, just in case. And, on Facebook I was told that Windows 7 is not meant to be installed as an upgrade, but as a clean install (was not possible anymore, by the way, after the failed install, since Windows 7 said there was no DVD ROM driver after it had booted into the install routine from DVD). But it is somewhat outrageous that the consumer has to take these precautions in anticipation of an upgrade failure and we generally accept this scenario as given. Shouldn’t Microsoft know by now how not to wreck a user’s PC when it upgrades the OS? Of course it should.
This one really sucked, Microsoft. I am just stunned how little you care about preserving the data on a user’s PC. It took me four days to restore my PC and a few hundred dollars of new software purchases just to repair what you screwed up. Thanks, I won’t attempt upgrading to Windows 7 again.
Do real men use Linux? I’ll find out.
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