posted
Many of you may recall a major data loss crisis I encountered. This post is not about that, but slightly related, so for background... those lost files had been deleted from my hard drive to free up space since they also existed on an external hard drive set up by a guy I've trusted with various computer work over my head. As it turned out, his employee set it up wrong & it came up for it's weekly backup & replaced the external hard drive contents with the internal hard drive contents (20 gigs less due to deleted files representing over 6 months work) So, anyway after attempting to "restore" the deleted files, I've found over 50% to be corrupt & as a result just browsing through folders that contain some corrupt files often crashes illustrator or windows explorer. Sometimes I can search quickly for a file & find it before the program crashes. once I can copy the file out of the folder with corruption, if it's a good file, no further trouble is encountered, so I have on several occassions tried 3 or 4 times to "hurry up" & get the file & this has worked. Previous to this issue with the 20 gigs of deleted files, I've never encountered this type of instability in illustrator or windows explorer.
Here is the current problem...
I have years worth of files saved to CD & have never encountered problems searching those discs for files, & nothing gets written to those discs, just read & copied. But now I am having the same type of crashing problems with those older archive discs. The process of finding older files for re-orders & getting them up & ready for use has usually been a 5 minute job. I am not consistently running into 30 minutes of game playing fighting these crazy new issues on discs that have never fouled me up like this before.
Yesterday it occured to me that I first started noticing this craziness after buying some new computers for the shop. The new machines came with XP Pro service pack 2 which I had avoided upgrading to for all the reasons posted here & elsewhere when it first came out. I went to one of my older computers & was immediatly able to browse to my hearts content & copy files off a CD that I was not able to get files off fast enough before crashing on my new machines. This was only one quick test & I haven't went further into testing it, but wondered if anyone has experienced or knows about an issue like this.
[ August 10, 2005, 08:41 PM: Message edited by: Doug Allan ]
We finally upgraded one of our computers, and like yours, it came with XP SP2 pre-installed. After spending a not-inconsiderable amount of time reloading all our stuff, we then found out that our Signlab e6 had an "issue" with SP2. Luckily, we found someone with a SP1 disk and used that along with our legit install key.
-------------------- Graham Parsons Signs 'n Such Ltd Swift Current Saskatchewan Canada. www.signsnsuch.com
"Saskatchewan - hard to pronounce, easy to draw" Posts: 710 | From: Saskatchewan, Canada | Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
SP2 is rousing its ugly head in more ways than can be counted. M$ is slowly but surely going towards securing copy righted products in every media. Some changes are being discovered as they appear.
For example media player 10 is shutting down screen capture. This all is being done to secure streaming concerts and other movie type content from being captured / copied.
So, I would educated guess that SP2 is limiting certain CD access as well. Or the header is the files is somehow slightly changed and SP2 is looking at it as a possible virus? WHo knows.
And just for the record. As I predicted heavy problems with SP2 and certain dongled software.. I now predict certain software dongle problems with the new Vista. That is unless the authors get ahead of the game and have it fixed before Vista appears.. which I seriously doubt.
-------------------- Leaper of Tall buildings.. If you find my posts divisive or otherwise snarky please ignore them. If you do not know how then PM me about it and I will demonstrate. Posts: 5274 | From: Im a nowhere man | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Ok, here's another question for you.. I bought XP PRO before sp2 & I gave the disc to my computer guy... OK, wait, I can hear you thinking... hmmm, 2 boneheaded moves by his "computer guy" in as many posts... who's the bonehead here?? ...but the guy is really good, does all his work for me in trade, was his employee who botched the other job (& he won't be working on sensitive issues here again)... & this issue was an honest mistake.. but, I digress, the guy was reformatting one of my computers & reloading the OS from my disc... whoops... dropped the disc, awwwwwwwhoa, smack on the metal chair leg & shattered!!
..so he comes in the next day, smailes, says it's all done & I ask him how it went.
"Well.. it cost me (him) $300 bucks!! but, I got it done"
I asked him what happened & when he told me about having to rush out to office max just before they closed to replace my XP PRO disc at full price (yeah, you guessed it..SP2) I asked couldn't we have got another one from M$ for the price of burning & shipping a CD? I mean even $50 would be fair for them & me I would think... if I have proof of registering the original purchase.
Anyway, he said NO & gave me that $300 sore-loser look that said "end of discussion"
I give him credit for getting it done on time & taking that hit without question, & I know him well enough to have absolutely no doubt in the truth of his story, BUT COULD I GET ANOTHER SP1 DISC FROM M$ ?
[ August 11, 2005, 02:42 AM: Message edited by: Doug Allan ]
posted
Bullshyt! Those cd's just don't break from droppping them. Oldest trick in the book.
Don't know about getting a SP1 disk from M$. Never had to do it. But all you need is your KEY. Any cd will work. The product is keyed to your machine not to the CD. It reactivates via M$ to a unique hash of machine component serial numbers. One XP cd, and one internet connectin and you have SP1. If he cannot do that he needs to go back to computer school. ALso, he owes you one SP1 CD.
Something very fishy in this deal.
-------------------- Leaper of Tall buildings.. If you find my posts divisive or otherwise snarky please ignore them. If you do not know how then PM me about it and I will demonstrate. Posts: 5274 | From: Im a nowhere man | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
hmm, ok, well thanks for catching this post Curtis. I'm going to try to go back to SP1 on at least one of my newer machines that I can use for searching my archives.
posted
The only way I know of to get an SP1 disc is from ebay. Even then you are just as likely to get ripped off or get a stolen key.
As for the corruption...I had a problem with XP corrupting especially large eps and ai files for a while. The problem was caused by XP's thumbnail process that would hang the file system when it tried to create a thumbnail for the large files. Once that happened, I couldnt open the file because the attached thumbnail was corrupted. This sounds similar to what you are experiencing.
My solution was to eliminate the associations XP had for those file types. Then I cleared the thumbnail cache and all has been fine since.
The downside is that I cant open illustrator or photoshop by double clicking an art file anymore.
-------------------- Paul McDowell 7 Hills Signs Virginia Posts: 84 | From: Lynchburg, Virginia | Registered: Oct 2004
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