Microsoft

The Great Computer Upgrade Debacle

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Alright, you’ll have to excuse me for today’s post, but I need to complain.

For about 5 months or so, my computer has been complaining to me that it cannot install Windows 7 Service Pack 1 or Internet Explorer 9. These are two huge updates that are very important, but in particular Sara has some major, major problems with Internet Explorer 8, so I would love to get the new version for her. However, my computer cannot install these updates, no matter what I do.

It’s embarrassing. I make my living on computers. I have a Master’s Degree in Software Engineering. I pull the strings and the computer dances. And yet, I just can’t do it.

Every month or so, I would roll up my sleeves and say, “That’s it, this is not going to beat me. I am going to do whatever it takes to solve this problem.” After a day or two, I go down in flames and give up again. Rise, wait a month, repeat.

I have googled, I have downloaded, I have installed for hours and hours at a time. There is a specific “System Readiness” program that I run every time I see the version change. We’re on something like version 22 now. It doesn’t fix my problem. From all my googling, I know that this is a common problem that many people have. Why can’t Microsoft fix my problem??

So the other day, I rolled up my sleeves and said, “That’s it, this is not going to beat me. I am going to do whatever it takes to solve this problem.” I got down and dirty. I was looking through Microsoft support posts, I was looking in obscure log files, I was installing, downloading, uninstalling, and rebooting for hours on end.

I seemed to make some progress. If I am understanding properly, the root of the problem came down to this:

Failed to parse package manifest: \\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy3\Windows\Servicing\Packages\Microsoft-Windows-Client-LanguagePack-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~nl-NL~6.1.7600.16385.mum

Now, as you can clearly see, that means I didn’t have the Dutch language pack installed (obviously). Why would I need the Dutch language pack installed? Your guess is as good as mine. Nonetheless, I found some illicit tool to install the Dutch language pack and cleared that error. Lookin’ good, but no installation.

That’s okay. The instructions told me to expect that. Now I simply have to try to install, check the logs for errors, and clean those errors up one at a time. You simply scroll through for obscure log syntax, see which Knowledge Base article had a problem, then uninstall that update and restart. What could be simpler? The people in the forums had to do this once or twice, and eventually they were able to install.

I did it for four hours. FOUR HOURS, and I didn’t get to the bottom of it. Eventually I had to go to sleep, so I had to give up. Maybe I could devote another day or two to trying to solve the problem. But wait: while I was sleeping, Windows RE-INSTALLED all of the “important updates” I uninstalled trying to get this to work. As far as I can tell, all of my work was undone by my super-helpful Windows 7 installation. Thanks Microsoft!

If I can’t figure out this problem, who is going to be able to solve it? Do you think Average Joe Windows User is going to dig through logs and install Dutch language packs? Is he going to spend 20 hours trying to solve this?

No, he’s not.

But I am, because if I allow a computer to beat me, then my whole life is a lie. Besides, I think if I just solve this *one last problem*, it’s all going to go smoothly…

Seattle Part Two – Work Interrupts

/ Shane / Leave a comment

The second part of the trip was a little less interesting because I had to attend to what I was really in Seattle for; work. Let me start by saying that Microsoft is a crazy, crazy huge confusing place. It is as big or bigger than any university you have been too, complete with tons of young people walking and biking all over the place. I was not prepared for the size of it all.

Since I had to attend a training / conference, Sara and Evie took Seattle and the surrounding area by storm. Without poor old dad, they hit up the zoo where Evie got to feed a giraffe (seriously, how did they manage to get “zoo.org”, were they like the first zoo with a website?), the Pacific Science Center, a children’s museum and a full tea service. The coolest part was that our existing Chicago zoo and museum memberships got them into the first two completely scott free.

We also managed to hit up our first really good meal of the trip at Pomegranate in Redmond. Not only did everybody get something that was delicious, they had a really cool kids meal that seemed very fancy, but was really things like mac and cheese and carrots underneath.

As a side note, our rental car was actually very enjoyable. Usually I always end up with something awful, like a Purple PT Cruiser (no seriously, I had one), but this time we landed a nice, respectable Ford Focus. It was small and zippy, the perfect size to fit all of our stuff, and we averaged around 32 mpg. I had some trouble with how small it was until I figured out the manual pump seat adjustment thing, but after that I appreciated the smallness for parking and navigating. It also had this really sweet dash option that gave you minute by minute updates on how your driving was affecting your fuel economy, which was pretty cool. All in all, probably the best rental car I have ever had. Of course I would never buy something non-GM, but I guess buying any new, American car right now can’t hurt.

Unfortunately, the rental car led to another theme of the trip, which was the dreaded Elmo CD. For her birthday, Evie got an Elmo CD that is customized to say her name. I thought it was really cool, at least at the time. More and more Evie was excited that Elmo was saying her name. “He’s talking to me!” It all came together in the perfect storm on the trip when Evie insisted on listening to the CD over and over again, every time we were in the car. Sara had it worse than me with all the side trips, but we probably listened to it a hundred times. It became torturous and the songs would haunt me in my sleep. I can tell you for a fact that hell is listening to Elmo on an endless loop.

I apologize for this part of the trip being less than exciting. Maybe Sara can expound on some of the fun stuff I missed in the comments. Or you can go back and re-read Part One.