Vista 0xC1F5 Bug Fixed With Linux, Frenchmen
By kowalski Posted in Technology — Comments (6) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Here's the ultimate update, short and simple:
It works. Can you believe it? Yes, you must believe it.
The procedure outlined in my last post, authored by Tom Karpowitz, who runs The Galactic Toilet blog and is a Senior Staff Engineer for Sun Microsystems, recommending the use of a Linux system repair disk authored by Francois Dupoux, Pierre Dorgueil, Franck Ladurelle and Isaiah Salinas -- works.
Using the links in the post above, I downloaded the System Repair ISO, burned it to a DVD with ImgBurn in Windows2KPro, and followed the instructions, almost to the letter. The SysRescue DVD booted flawlessly. The only difference was that I used the following commands on my system once I determined where my Vista32 installation resided using the mc file/directory browser:
ntfs-3g /dev/sdc1 /mnt/windows -o force
Once the NTFS volume was mounted, I navigated to the proper hidden directory with the command:
cd /mnt/windows/\$Extend/\$RmMetadata
An ls command revealed the $TxfLog file which I recursively deleted with:
rm -rf \$TxfLog
I umounted the NTFS volume as per the instructions, popped out the DVD, and rebooted directly into the Vista Installation distro. DVD -- which worked for the first time in more than a month. I followed the "Repair Your Computer" link, and within 20 minutes the system was running. I'm installing my hotfix and Service Pack 1 for Vista right now, writing this from Internet Explorer 7 in Vista32, with all my programs and files right where I left them.
Lessons learned:
1) Microsoft is far from infallible. They make mistakes, sometimes big ones, and produce hotfixes to those mistakes that don't always solve the problem.
2) Good open-source system repair tools can be the difference between wasting your life and getting your life back on track. All told, I spent more than 15 hours researching, working with and around this bug. The fix outlined here took less than half an hour. The takeaway is self-evident.
3) I'll *never* badmouth SourceForge again without a damn good reason.
4) A big *THANK YOU* goes out to Tom Karpowitz for his expertise and his willingness to share it and fix the broken Microsoft Vista systems of the world, even though he works for Sun. He saved my bacon. I owe him some supplies of his favorite beverages.
5) The System Rescue CD authored by the people listed above is now an indispensible part of my "I Wear Many Hats" toolkit here at my company. Très cordialement.
Excellent live disc. You can actually get work done with it.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
well done. What did your dad have to say? He was probably thinking,"Heh, welcome to my world son," with reference to some of the stuff he and I used to have to do to get things working again in those really old days.
We did not have a revolution in order to have democracy - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
We just finished talking about it. As a former CE for IBM he knows, and I know you know, that there was a time in the computing world where you just did what you had to do to solve problems for your customers, particularly when the problem was caused by something you did. And the irony of the situation wasn't lost on him, believe me. ;)
This was a very specific opportunity to highlight the kind of ethics that I think have eroded in this business. I mean, his Vista32/Vista64/Win2KPro workstation is virtually identical to mine, and he needs that computer every bit as much as I need to use mine to do business. He said: "Yeah, that was an unforced error on Microsoft's part. I used to fix those for free when I worked for IBM, no matter what it took, no matter how long it took, no matter where it was." Like Reykjavik Iceland, for example.
Prior to Vista being released, I was confident in my belief that Macs were solely for communists and starving artists. For years Microsoft has been a company that made shoddy software that required patches on release day, but with the 2007 line (Office/IE/Vista), you get the impression that they're not just out of touch with their users, the problem has become pathological on their part.
Like your comment about sourceforge, I always point out I'm the furthest thing from the drooling slashdot doofus who feels open source is automatically better then any alternative, but I've gotten to the point where I just refuse to work with/support windows machines.
It was kismet, I suppose, that this particular bug had all the planets in alignment to demonstrate a number of important things at once. I don't intend to stop using my Vista systems -- I paid for them and the software that's running on them. On the other hand, in many ways this experience with what can only be described as an unforced error on Microsoft's part -- the generation of a pathological bug that they first tried to minimize and then would not fix properly, caused a shift in my thinking.
I could have forgiven them completely if they had done what I knew from virtually the first hour needed to be done: produce a utility, even a one-time utility in limited distribution, that would just delete that stupid corrupt log file and let the distribution DVD boot.
But they did not do that, and the hotfix they produced was useless to anyone who had already been bitten by the bug. Their grade is "F" in every respect on this one.
I'm a very loyal customer and I understand that even Microsoft has a lot of considerations when it produces its programs that are not obvious to the consumer. However: this was an inexcusably shoddy treatment of a bug that I'm 99 44/100% sure they caused themselves. And that is what inspired me to stick with the bug and follow wherever it led until it was fixed, instead of just formatting the drive and reinstalling everything, as Microsoft had wanted me to do, and I was advised to do by their product support people.
It was quite clear to me that once they had bequeathed this little monster on the world they wanted no responsibility for fixing it once it had actually damaged someone's system -- and that is *unacceptable* when you have paid the premium for the Ultimate version of their premiere product. If Mercedes did such a thing they would be OUT OF BUSINESS.
It's a similar kit.
Glad to hear you solved your problem.
--
Gone 2500 years, still not PC.