Sometimes when running Resilio Sync on Windows, one of the machines may get stuck for a long time at a certain percentage, with no clear reason why it fails to complete.
Ok, here’s a super odd bug on Windows. I started getting a bunch of errors in various programs.
CoolTerm said: “Runtime Error” with “Failure Condition: mutex.mLockFile”
Process Explorer complained that it was “Unable to extract 64-bit image. Run Process Explorer from writeable directory.”
This of course didn’t make sense, as the program was in a writeable folder, but then it dawned on me that both of these programs could be trying to use my account’s TEMP folder.
So, I’m super annoyed. Somehow my user account’s TEMP folder got wiped out, and replaced as a file instead, which obviously can’t contain more files.
The solution in this case was to erase the Temp file and create a new TEMP folder. But it is insane to me that all the programs that rely on a writeable TEMP folder would give such terrible hints that this was the problem’s source. It also would be awesome if Windows would autorepair this condition at startup.
So I may or may not have bought a new laptop recently, and it may or may not have been a Lenovo.
tl;dr: It was a Lenovo, and there are some things you might want to uninstall from your Lenovo.
I reinstalled Windows 7 from a recovery disc recently and have had to suffer through the seemingly drawn-out process of applying all the patches via Windows Update. After failing to install Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 a number of times, the Service Pack installation finally succeeded, and I was then greeted with the option to install 164 other patches.
Seriously? I wish Microsoft could figure out a way to slipstream the install, or just do like Apple does and download the latest operating system image before doing a clean install
And if they still can’t do this, if they still can’t override the inertia of useless business units and middle management (seriously, who came up with Windows Home Premium versus Ultimate, and why? What benefit was it to all users to sell a crappier version of your OS, en masse? The incremental price for one additional unit of software is what, exactly?), they should get one of their people at Microsoft Research to figure this out. It’s only a few million man hours per year of wasted time at stake.
What an utter waste of bandwidth and time, not to mention the wear and tear on the hard disks of the world.
As it chugged through the 164 patches, I also noticed that the memory usage on my system seemed to be rising inexorably.
And wouldn’t you know it, Process Explorer told me this:
That’s right. The Trusted Installer component felt the need to consume over 4 gigabytes of memory during the update process. Why? I have no idea, but screw you for asking! Seriously, does nobody test this stuff in Redmond?
Thank goodness my system has 8GB of RAM, or who knows how badly the system would be swapping right now.
Update
And of course, right after I finish that big batch of updates, after the next reboot, Windows Update tells me I have 21 more:
I feel like I’m living Zeno’s Paradox. It’s a mathematical certainty that I will reach my goal, but from the halfway point it certainly doesn’t feel like it.
*I know, I know, I’m not a huge fan of Apple’s Software Update system either, why they can’t do binary diffs like Google or JetBrains can, doesn’t make sense to me.
Damn it, not again. So Windows 7 started bluescreening immediately at boot, before I was even logged into my normal user account. Reason? Turns out my solid state disk is hosed. I’m not happy, but I’m also not surprised.
I’d bought two OCZ Vertex 2’s sometime in 2010, and not put all too many bytes onto them over the past four years. One of them had already died some years back, but I was too lazy to call in the warranty service. Now the second drive has died, and both of them are out of warranty! Booo. I thought they had 5 years, but turns out it was only 3. Oh well.
I put a copy of Ubuntu Linux onto a USB stick and booted off of it to see if there were any kernel messages reminiscent of what I’d seen a few years back. Sure enough, ad infinitum:
[...] [ 45.391281] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] [ 45.391282] Add. Sense: No additional sense information [ 45.391284] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] CDB: [ 45.391284] Write(10): 2a 00 00 60 d1 a8 00 00 a8 00 [ 45.391339] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] [ 45.391340] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE [ 45.391342] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] [ 45.391342] Sense Key : Aborted Command [current] [descriptor] [ 45.391344] Descriptor sense data with sense descriptors (in hex): [ 45.391344] 72 0b 00 00 00 00 00 0c 00 0a 80 00 00 00 00 00 [ 45.391349] 00 60 d6 40 [...]
And:
[ 45.392104] ata1: EH complete
[ 45.392338] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x50 SAct 0x7fffffff SErr 0x400801 action 0x6 frozen
[ 45.392339] ata1.00: irq_stat 0x0c000000, interface fatal error
[ 45.392341] ata1: SError: { RecovData HostInt Handshk }
[ 45.392343] ata1.00: failed command: WRITE FPDMA QUEUED
[ 45.392346] ata1.00: cmd 61/a8:00:78:dd:60/00:00:00:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 86016 out
[ 45.392346] res 50/00:e8:40:d6:60/00:00:00:00:00/40 Emask 0x50 (ATA bus error)
[ 45.392347] ata1.00: status: { DRDY }
[ 45.392348] ata1.00: failed command: WRITE FPDMA QUEUED
[ 45.392351] ata1.00: cmd 61/a8:08:d0:dc:60/00:00:00:00:00/40 tag 1 ncq 86016 out
[ 45.392351] res 50/00:e8:40:d6:60/00:00:00:00:00/40 Emask 0x50 (ATA bus error)
[ 45.392353] ata1.00: status: { DRDY }
[ 45.392354] ata1.00: failed command: WRITE FPDMA QUEUED
[ 45.392357] ata1.00: cmd 61/a8:10:28:dc:60/00:00:00:00:00/40 tag 2 ncq 86016 out
[ 45.392357] res 50/00:e8:40:d6:60/00:00:00:00:00/40 Emask 0x50 (ATA bus error)
[ 45.392358] ata1.00: status: { DRDY }
[ 45.392359] ata1.00: failed command: WRITE FPDMA QUEUED
[ 45.392362] ata1.00: cmd 61/a8:18:80:db:60/00:00:00:00:00/40 tag 3 ncq 86016 out
[ 45.392362] res 50/00:e8:40:d6:60/00:00:00:00:00/40 Emask 0x50 (ATA bus error)
So I guess I need a new hard drive. Lame.