Green Ribbon of Death is back with venegeance

[Kookoo]

I see that you have 2 or 3 HDD's, the issue may stem from your secondary drives.
C:\ drive is always active and indexed, the other 2 drives go into standby mode.
If you use access either of the 2 they have to come back online and it causes Windows 7 to wake them up and you'll see the explorer bar in green move very slowly as the drive is being indexed.

Right, the issue is back , and I think you are the closest to the truth here .
I am using Vantec EZ Swap mobile rack (like the one here) to hot-swap hard drives, although I never hot-swapped while having the issue - I always booted with either the rack empty or having an hd in it.
Now, after reinstalling RC I tried hot-plugging a hard drive into the rack. Inserted the hd, went to Start->(Right-click)Computer->Manage->Storage->Disk Management->More actions->Rescan disks.
Done, the inserted HD got identified, I opened it with Explorer, and then the issue was back for all partitions, not just the inserted HD.

Is there another way to work with racks like that in 7?

 

[Adrian]

I see that you have 2 or 3 HDD's, the issue may stem from your secondary drives.
C:\ drive is always active and indexed, the other 2 drives go into standby mode.
If you use access either of the 2 they have to come back online and it causes Windows 7 to wake them up and you'll see the explorer bar in green move very slowly as the drive is being indexed.

Right, the issue is back , and I think you are the closest to the truth here .
I am using Vantec EZ Swap mobile rack (like the one here) to hot-swap hard drives, although I never hot-swapped while having the issue - I always booted with either the rack empty or having an hd in it.
Now, after reinstalling RC I tried hot-plugging a hard drive into the rack. Inserted the hd, went to Start->(Right-click)Computer->Manage->Storage->Disk Management->More actions->Rescan disks.
Done, the inserted HD got identified, I opened it with Explorer, and then the issue was back for all partitions, not just the inserted HD.

Is there another way to work with racks like that in 7?

Are you configured as a redundant AKA RAID?

 

[Kookoo]

[Are you configured as a redundant AKA RAID?

No, IDE...

 

[Adrian]

[Are you configured as a redundant AKA RAID?

No, IDE...

So the drives are SATA connected but configured as IDE in the BIOS?

 

[Kookoo]

[Are you configured as a redundant AKA RAID?

No, IDE...

So the drives are SATA connected but configured as IDE in the BIOS?

Exactly

 

[Lens Pirate]

I had issues very much like you are having. It was caused entirely by a bad secondary drive. Not a failed drive, just a messed up one. Once that drive was RMA'd and replaced
all my issues and general weirdness went away.

If I were you I would do complete check disk on all of you drives includeing the long winded "looking for bad sectors" check

 

[Kookoo]

Yip, done that, no problems found.
However, I've had some issues with one of the drives before - it used to be inside a Maxtor external case, which I threw away. It seems to be perfectly ok now though, and I don't have any problems with it under XP...

 

[Kookoo]

A bad workman always blames his tools...

I don't blame the tools, I blame the workbench.

 

[Kookoo]

I had issues very much like you are having. It was caused entirely by a bad secondary drive. Not a failed drive, just a messed up one. Once that drive was RMA'd and replaced
all my issues and general weirdness went away.

If I were you I would do complete check disk on all of you drives includeing the long winded "looking for bad sectors" check

THANK YOU. Yes, a bad disk was the culprit.
And this is a VERY worrying sign about Windows 7. Why would a single bad disk, which is not active and not even being accessed (on the face of it, anyway), make the complete OS unusable?! The fact is that having this disk gave me no problems under XP what so ever, but under Windows 7 not only did it have problems with the disk as such, but it practically brought the whole system down without even accessing it - simply through some background processes. That's just poor design.

 

[Adrian]

I had issues very much like you are having. It was caused entirely by a bad secondary drive. Not a failed drive, just a messed up one. Once that drive was RMA'd and replaced
all my issues and general weirdness went away.

If I were you I would do complete check disk on all of you drives includeing the long winded "looking for bad sectors" check

THANK YOU. Yes, a bad disk was the culprit.
And this is a VERY worrying sign about Windows 7. Why would a single bad disk, which is not active and not even being accessed (on the face of it, anyway), make the complete OS unusable?! The fact is that having this disk gave me no problems under XP what so ever, but under Windows 7 not only did it have problems with the disk as such, but it practically brought the whole system down without even accessing it - simply through some background processes. That's just poor design.

No, not really. Windows 7 has to deal with so many configurations its an excellent OS! When you figure it deals with Legacy configurations, X86, X64 RAID, IDE ADAPI etc and finally remains stable thru out, Kudos to the design team.

 

[fseal]

Actually I do agree that W7 (and all versions of windows before it) could use some better error recovery/. I mean it is actually quite good, but there are some places it needs to be better, and HD problem mitigation is definately one of them.

ANother one that a huge number of people run into is, a single bad control panel app kills the entire control panel itself. THis is comepltely unacceptable. I mean I even KNOW what kills it and the fact that the control panel app (well expllorer itself actually) cannot handle a crashing "plugin" is pretty bad. I was particularly dissapointed that this issue as stil in 7 as it was so bad in Vista and actually worse than 2k/XP were.

But anyway Heh, W7 is the best yet, but yes, there are some places like that that still need work. No program, service or Dll crash should affect anything other than the work it was supposed to do, and anyone relying on it must have an out and not hang the user up on infinate waits or crashes itself.

 

[Zidane24]

Actually I do agree that W7 (and all versions of windows before it) could use some better error recovery/. I mean it is actually quite good, but there are some places it needs to be better, and HD problem mitigation is definately one of them.

ANother one that a huge number of people run into is, a single bad control panel app kills the entire control panel itself. THis is comepltely unacceptable. I mean I even KNOW what kills it and the fact that the control panel app (well expllorer itself actually) cannot handle a crashing "plugin" is pretty bad. I was particularly dissapointed that this issue as stil in 7 as it was so bad in Vista and actually worse than 2k/XP were.

But anyway Heh, W7 is the best yet, but yes, there are some places like that that still need work. No program, service or Dll crash should affect anything other than the work it was supposed to do, and anyone relying on it must have an out and not hang the user up on infinate waits or crashes itself.

The crashes are one thing they hope to rememdy through MinWin's progress...many dlls in Windows right now are very connected which causes the issues...if one breaks, the other than another than another (domino effect)

By seperating the system out and making it layered and organized...it should really help when something does crash

 

[Kookoo]

No, not really. Windows 7 has to deal with so many configurations its an excellent OS! When you figure it deals with Legacy configurations, X86, X64 RAID, IDE ADAPI etc and finally remains stable thru out, Kudos to the design team.

Now, this is a perfect example of a techie seeing things for a techie perspective.
If you think from a customer's perspective, then the fact that Windows 7 deals with a bunch of different hardware architectures becomes completely irrelevant.

The best analogy I can think of is buying a car. Imagine that you bought a station wagon, which looks great (if a station wagon can look great at all) and most often drives smoothly too, but it has a problem. The problem is that every time one of the light bulbs burns out, the car loses electric power to everything but the engine. You take it to a mechanic who tells you "You know, considering the fact that the manufacturer uses the same chassis/engine combination in a bunch of other models, including a truck, a school bus, an SUV and a sports car, this combination they worked out is a great one. Kudos to the design team." :huh:

You know what I am saying? From my perspective, MS's decision to develop a single OS to support a bunch of platforms, despite the obvious differences between the platforms and the tasks that they are expected to perform, was based purely on economics. How does MS leverage the economy of scale they are - easy, build a single OS for all. Good on them, but the creation an OS like that, while it is a technological achievement which benefits the company, does nothing for the customer.

 

[Dzomlija]

No, not really. Windows 7 has to deal with so many configurations its an excellent OS! When you figure it deals with Legacy configurations, X86, X64 RAID, IDE ADAPI etc and finally remains stable thru out, Kudos to the design team.

Now, this is a perfect example of a techie seeing things for a techie perspective.
If you think from a customer's perspective, then the fact that Windows 7 deals with a bunch of different hardware architectures becomes completely irrelevant.

The best analogy I can think of is buying a car. Imagine that you bought a station wagon, which looks great (if a station wagon can look great at all) and most often drives smoothly too, but it has a problem. The problem is that every time one of the light bulbs burns out, the car loses electric power to everything but the engine. You take it to a mechanic who tells you "You know, considering the fact that the manufacturer uses the same chassis/engine combination in a bunch of other models, including a truck, a school bus, an SUV and a sports car, this combination they worked out is a great one. Kudos to the design team." :huh:

You know what I am saying? From my perspective, MS's decision to develop a single OS to support a bunch of platforms, despite the obvious differences between the platforms and the tasks that they are expected to perform, was based purely on economics. How does MS leverage the economy of scale they are - easy, build a single OS for all. Good on them, but the creation an OS like that, while it is a technological achievement which benefits the company, does nothing for the customer.

Actually, it does plenty for the customer: It keeps prices down.

The semi-open nature of Windows is what makes it great. Anybody can develop for it. Anybody can create and market hardware that will work with it.

compare that with Apple. Mac OSX will not work on hardware that does not carry Setves Jobs stamp of approval - this is why Apple hardware cost so much in relation to Windows hardware....

 

[Zidane24]

No, not really. Windows 7 has to deal with so many configurations its an excellent OS! When you figure it deals with Legacy configurations, X86, X64 RAID, IDE ADAPI etc and finally remains stable thru out, Kudos to the design team.

Now, this is a perfect example of a techie seeing things for a techie perspective.
If you think from a customer's perspective, then the fact that Windows 7 deals with a bunch of different hardware architectures becomes completely irrelevant.

The best analogy I can think of is buying a car. Imagine that you bought a station wagon, which looks great (if a station wagon can look great at all) and most often drives smoothly too, but it has a problem. The problem is that every time one of the light bulbs burns out, the car loses electric power to everything but the engine. You take it to a mechanic who tells you "You know, considering the fact that the manufacturer uses the same chassis/engine combination in a bunch of other models, including a truck, a school bus, an SUV and a sports car, this combination they worked out is a great one. Kudos to the design team." :huh:

You know what I am saying? From my perspective, MS's decision to develop a single OS to support a bunch of platforms, despite the obvious differences between the platforms and the tasks that they are expected to perform, was based purely on economics. How does MS leverage the economy of scale they are - easy, build a single OS for all. Good on them, but the creation an OS like that, while it is a technological achievement which benefits the company, does nothing for the customer.

Even if the car breaks down from having one component go broke...you can take it to any mechanic to get it fixed...unlike the one stop-one price-no arguments style of Apple (to contradict)

I will also add that you need to read my post above. Microsoft realizes this issue and is attempting the ungodly task of breaking Windows apart, line by line

I remember reading that Windows 7 is ~40 million lines of code so that might be a reason why MinWin isn't finished yet

 

[Kookoo]

Actually, it does plenty for the customer: It keeps prices down.

The semi-open nature of Windows is what makes it great. Anybody can develop for it. Anybody can create and market hardware that will work with it.

compare that with Apple. Mac OSX will not work on hardware that does not carry Setves Jobs stamp of approval - this is why Apple hardware cost so much in relation to Windows hardware....

Err... no. Apple pricing has nothing to do with development and all to do with branding. Your statement about MS price/cost would only be true if MS priced their OS at cost+margin. I have real doubts this is the case. In fact, MS are in the perfect position to price at customer value, think about it - the question of how much value does an average customer place on having the benefits of Windows is paramount to them. And you can't blame MS for doing just that - most organisations struggle to discover the true monetary value of their product to their customer, so once MS got it right (and they obviously did), they stick to it no matter what. I am quite sure there is enough fat there for the Windows product line to remain profitable even if the cost of development grew tenfold because of the need to develop dedicated legacy products separately from Windows 7.

By the way, why is there a need for Windows 7 to support legacy hardware anyway? What's so strange about telling the customers - you want Windows 7 - get yourself decent machines. Can you imagine any other software industry operating like MS? "Oh, we are sorry System Mechanic has bugs and issues and it messed up your machine, but at least it's compatible with 486dx2!"

 

[logicearth]

By the way, why is there a need for Windows 7 to support legacy hardware anyway? What's so strange about telling the customers - you want Windows 7 - get yourself decent machines. Can you imagine any other software industry operating like MS? "Oh, we are sorry System Mechanic has bugs and issues and it messed up your machine, but at least it's compatible with 486dx2!"

Why is there a need for Windows 7 to be compatible? Givin the number one complaint about Windows Vista was all about compatibility...so you tell me why it needs it?

 

[win7clutz]

You know what I am saying? From my perspective, MS's decision to develop a single OS to support a bunch of platforms, despite the obvious differences between the platforms and the tasks that they are expected to perform, was based purely on economics. How does MS leverage the economy of scale they are - easy, build a single OS for all. Good on them, but the creation an OS like that, while it is a technological achievement which benefits the company, does nothing for the customer.

Wow, what nonsense... How many OS's do you think MS should develop? What are the platform differences you're talking about, I only see 64 bit and x86. After reading your post in this thread it's hard to decide where to even start with a comment or reply.

Seems MS needs you on the payroll for consultation and guidance. But until that happens I'll accept the fact that regardless of their limited capabilities, Win 7 is a BAD A$$ OS and I for one are grateful for a stable, secure OS that works well on everything I've put it on...

Best to you...

 

[Kookoo]

Wow, what nonsense... How many OS's do you think MS should develop?

As many as they need to develop to meet customer requirements. But really - just one. They already have more than enough OS's out there, all designed with the same idea - that they should be able to be chucked at anything. The inherent issue of this approach is that in the car analogy above. Honestly, I have an IDE DVD R/W and I don't believe it makes any sense for Win 7 to support that. In fact, if I knew (for example) that Win 7 was perfectly stable, had no driver issues (I had to replace my PCI WiFi card with a USB dongle to work with 7) and had the ability to handle errors AT LEAST to the same extent as XP, then getting Win 7 would have been enough of a stimulus for me to get a new DVD writer, if I knew that Win 7 doesn't support IDE. And everyone wins - I get a superb O/S which is not held back by legacy issues, MS get the sale of an O/S and the hardware manufacturer gets a sale of a DVD drive. Oh well, I guess I can keep on dreaming.

 

[Kookoo]

Why is there a need for Windows 7 to be compatible? Givin the number one complaint about Windows Vista was all about compatibility...so you tell me why it needs it?

It's about managing customer expectations, not compatibility. Tell the customers "I am introducing a new OS. It has DirectX 11 and will only work with DirectX 11 capable cards. You want it - get yourself Radeon 5XXX series." Well, that's overdoing that a bit, but that's the idea. Establish a cut-off point and let customers know that the new OS is not compatible below these cut-off points. Don't release it and then try to fill the drivers void with updates. With the obvious benefits Windows 7 delivers, and with the market position Microsoft enjoys, they have the ability to do it. "The new OS doesn't support IDE ATAPI, USB 1.0, AGPx4 (or may be AGP as such), etc.)." Swift, brutal, BUT this also means they can't use the excuse of "legacy compatibility" to justify issues that may arise with the OS on perfectly new machines.