PowerTurn Consulting (PowerTurn, Inc.) Blog

As I mentioned in my Windows Shock and Awe (well almost) article, Windows 7 periodically marks all folders on my D: (data) drive to READ ONLY or to no attributes at all.  Research via Google has shown that this is a common problem and happens in Win Vista, too, even occasionally on Win XP, although I never had it happen to me there.

Unbelieveably, one of the Microsoft “solutions” is to reformat the drive because sometimes Windows Vista and 7 have problems with NTFS drives formatted on an earlier version of Windows.  Oh, brother!

I only started having this problem in mid-April, after some update (SP1 or a bit after that).
I thought the problem was solved by making sure that I took ownership of the folders on the drive … it actually went away for 2+ weeks, but came back today after another … you guessed it … Microsoft update.  Arg.

Another annoyance is that periodically the icons on my desktop are “randomized” — moved around in no particular order.  Seems to mostly happen on the left side of the screen top to bottom.  Again, happens after an update.  I’ve decided to turn off updates for awhile and only install them when I have time to put things back to normal. Of course, now I’m being nagged by the system to update, update, update. Sigh.

Earlier this year I decided I wanted to have a Windows 7 machine at my disposal.  I had a circa 2005-2006 Dell XPS 400 that was not being used, so I upgraded the RAM, the video card, and a few other things, bought Windows 7 Professional 64-bit and installed it.

I was shocked at the Mac OS wanna-be look of Windows 7.  What’s with this “pinning” nonsense?  I have a 24″ Samsung monitor so I’m not hard up for screen space, but the icons pinned to the task bar took up a ridiculous amount of real estate.  And where was my beloved Quick Launch bar?  Well, it didn’t take me long to find how to restore my favorite things from Win XP (isn’t Google search a wonderful thing?).  Now, I quite like Win 7 and when I go back to Win XP, I actually miss some of Win 7′s better features.

One of my favorites is the breadcrumbs style navigation bar at the top of a Windows Explorer window.  At first I was going crazy looking for the essential up-arrow I used so frequently on Win XP.  As I complained about it to my son, he kindly pointed out that all I had to do was click on the folder I wanted in the breadcrumbs and voila!  I was instantly transported 1, 2, 3 or more levels up (I like nesting folders for organization).  Duh … okay, I’ve been on PCs since 1981 and know them inside and out, but I just missed that.  Thanks, son!

When I’m on the Mac, I often wish that OS X had the breadcrumbs feature.  I sometimes have similarly named folders on multiple drives (local and NAS) and I can’t easily tell where I am like I can on Win 7.

Another feature I like is the left hand navigation frame that lets me quickly switch to another drive or location on my PC.

Later I’ll continue with some of the things I’m not so happy about, like since SP1, updates either randomly rearrange my desktop or worse still set my D drive (where I keep my working data) to READ ONLY!

While I use Oops!Backup for daily data backups, occasionally I do an entire disk image back up.  I use Acronis and Active Disk Image; I boot either from a CD so I can capture my C drive without conflicts.  I also use them for my data (D) drive, too.  They both have the option to shutdown when done … a very handy feature for overnight back ups.

I’ve always been concerned about backing up my data but was usually disappointed in the software I tried.  Forget Windows backup: it’s okay in a pinch and I use it to backup my system settings, but on use it on a regular basis?  No, thanks.  It is slow and (when I was using it) didn’t have the option to shut down the computer when it was done.

I tried using Memeo (see my comments on my website at http://www.powerturn.com/memeo.html) but it was unbearably slow and I just couldn’t live with it.

When I bought a Mac Pro in order to develop an iPhone app, I just LOVED the Time Machine backup software that came with it.  I started hunting for something similar that would run on Windows XP and found Oops!Backup by Altaro. It’s great!  It operates quietly in the background and only occasionally gives me grief when I try to shut down the machine while it’s doing a back up.

I recently moved to a Windows 7 machine and Oops! works fine on it, too.

Kudos to the Altaro folks.