Why I Dislike Windows

[javacontour]

Yesterday, oilBabe says she cannot save a document in Word 2007. Asks me what's wrong. Not amused when I said use Star Office, especially since her work was already in progress.

Ultimately, she saves as a PDF, likely no more edits.

Of course, I'm on my way out the door when she springs this on me, so I hit the gym and return. Can't fix itself with the downloaded repair program. Seems to only work for users with Admin rights, refuses to work if you say Run As Administrator... and even after briefly promoting her account to Administrator, it doesn't help. I look at some documents and try some of the fixes, removing the Normal.dotm registry entries, etc. None of that works for her account. I also make sure that she owns her files and they are not read only. No joy!

I figure out she's the only user who is unable to save documents in Word. My account and our quicken account we share to run quicken out of has no problem. Neither does our administrator account.

The ultimate fix was a day of backing up her documents, Firefox settings, pictures and music, I delete her account and create a new account, and restore her data and non MS configuration (iTunes) and things are working.

Seems like a lot of trouble to run one application. Needing to delete an entire account in order for the application to run just seems flaky to me. And why does it fail for her, but not other users on the machine?

At least I figured it out. Yet I can see why non-tech savvy users would be stumped by such an issue. Of course, they probably run everything with Admin rights and that solves a whole host of issues, but opens up other vulnerabilities.

Seems like Windows doesn't really support security if you have to have admin rights to fix your personal configuration for Word.

Should have only needed to delete her Office App Data and templates and it acted as if she was a new user, creating those the next time she ran the program.

Instead, it took wiping out her entire account after saving her data and Firefox configuration and creating a new account to resolve the issue.

 

[simple_gifts]

A great gem we come across @ work is the permissions on folders on shared drives that are owned by particular departments get modified and Administrator account is removed from read access.

Can't read=no backup, even tho the backup agent is running with admin rights. Exactly what does the admin role do, if it cannot read information stored on a machine it is admin to?

Thankfully I admin linux and solaris boxen, so my dealings with this are minimal.

 

[UNC151]

Originally Posted By: simple_gifts
A great gem we come across @ work is the permissions on folders on shared drives that are owned by particular departments get modified and Administrator account is removed from read access.

Can't read=no backup, even tho the backup agent is running with admin rights. Exactly what does the admin role do, if it cannot read information stored on a machine it is admin to?

Thankfully I admin linux and solaris boxen, so my dealings with this are minimal.

This a perfect example of why we prevent the users from setting/changing permissions on files/folders on the file servers. They never have "full control"; only modify and sometimes "special" to prevent this mess from happening.

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

Originally Posted By: 2010_FX4
Originally Posted By: simple_gifts
A great gem we come across @ work is the permissions on folders on shared drives that are owned by particular departments get modified and Administrator account is removed from read access.

Can't read=no backup, even tho the backup agent is running with admin rights. Exactly what does the admin role do, if it cannot read information stored on a machine it is admin to?

Thankfully I admin linux and solaris boxen, so my dealings with this are minimal.

This a perfect example of why we prevent the users from setting/changing permissions on files/folders on the file servers. They never have "full control"; only modify and sometimes "special" to prevent this mess from happening.


Some piggy micro-managers will politically force control of the file server, or sections of it, into their own hands. I've seen this happen a time or two. It's not pretty.

One of these never-fun-to-with micro-managers did just that to me in 2011. Well, last fall, I get a call, and several emails from people I used to work with saying "Hey, ****** (name omitted) moved all the files around, everyone lost their permissions,no one can do anything". I'm surprised she didn't disconnect the iSCSI volume mounpoint and all it "progress".

5 days later, they were able to access their data. 5 days. 400 peole w/o data access.

This isn't a Windows fail as much as political fail. And there's a way to bypass no-access directories for backup software using API calls in the file system even if an admin can't read the files. NTFS has has this for years, Seagate Backup Exec and many other backup programs are able to use this method.

And that micro-manager has run to the end of her road, she has left. I guess that's #WINNING.

Moral of the story: she puts the cow in coworker.

 

[javacontour]

Seems odd.

In the Linux/Unix world, root generally means unfettered access locally.

Remotely, such as NFS, root on a client may be nobody as far as the file server is concerned. But locally, no issues.

Of course, when I see most people's personal computers (not work machines) they run with Admin rights and then wonder how they got a virus/malware/broke the OS, etc.

I should probably just run a Unix/Linux host, give everyone their own account and create VM's in each account and let folks go crazy, using the host file system to share files with the client OS.

That way, my wife can have her own instance of Windows, run what she wants to run, have admin rights, and backing it up would be as simple as taking a snapshot of the VM image.

She would never go for it. Too complex. What do you mean log into Linux, start VitualBox, then log into Windows?

Originally Posted By: simple_gifts
A great gem we come across @ work is the permissions on folders on shared drives that are owned by particular departments get modified and Administrator account is removed from read access.

Can't read=no backup, even tho the backup agent is running with admin rights. Exactly what does the admin role do, if it cannot read information stored on a machine it is admin to?

Thankfully I admin linux and solaris boxen, so my dealings with this are minimal.

 

[pandus13]

Originally Posted By: javacontour
Seems odd.
In the Linux/Unix world, root generally means unfettered access locally.
Remotely, such as NFS, root on a client may be nobody as far as the file server is concerned. But locally, no issues.
Of course, when I see most people's personal computers (not work machines) they run with Admin rights and then wonder how they got a virus/malware/broke the OS, etc.
I should probably just run a Unix/Linux host, give everyone their own account and create VM's in each account and let folks go crazy, using the host file system to share files with the client OS.
That way, my wife can have her own instance of Windows, run what she wants to run, have admin rights, and backing it up would be as simple as taking a snapshot of the VM image.
She would never go for it. Too complex. What do you mean log into Linux, start VitualBox, then log into Windows?
Originally Posted By: simple_gifts
A great gem we come across @ work is the permissions on folders on shared drives that are owned by particular departments get modified and Administrator account is removed from read access.
Can't read=no backup, even tho the backup agent is running with admin rights. Exactly what does the admin role do, if it cannot read information stored on a machine it is admin to?
Thankfully I admin linux and solaris boxen, so my dealings with this are minimal.

You speak wisdom!
can you kind of elaborate? minimum requirements? problems with this setup (beside user resistance to change)?