Hurry up and wait

[Moltuae]

Working with computers day in, day out, do you ever find yourself sitting watching a progress bar and wondering how much of your life you've spent waiting for computers to finish some task or other?

They tease you too .... They make out like those updates are going take a while, so you get up to make a coffee or start another job, then suddenly .... whoosh, 90% done! So you sit back down and wait ..... and wait ..... and wait .... until eventually you give up and get up again, then .... 95%!


On that subject, here's an old cartoon that always makes me laugh. No doubt some of you have seen it before ...

 

[jft135]

Why do you think we all spend so much time on Technibble?

 

[coffee]

What used to frustrate me is that whenever they decided to release an update to Internet Explorer you would have to click <accept> before that particular update would proceed. It could hold up all the other updates depending on where it was in the line of updates.

So, I would see like 103 important updates - click ok to install.

I click ok and go to bed. In the morning it would show that it installed 2 updates and waiting for me to click <accept> for the IE update! This always ****** me off especially since I selected unattended updates!!

coffee

 

[Krynn72]

What used to frustrate me is that whenever they decided to release an update to Internet Explorer you would have to click <accept> before that particular update would proceed. It could hold up all the other updates depending on where it was in the line of updates.

So, I would see like 103 important updates - click ok to install.

I click ok and go to bed. In the morning it would show that it installed 2 updates and waiting for me to click <accept> for the IE update! This always ****** me off especially since I selected unattended updates!!

coffee

That still happens if you let windows update install MSE. To this day I still accidentally select it by accident and let it go overnight only to find it needed me to hit next a couple times on the MSE installer. I think the Windows Live stuff does it too, but haven't done those in a long time.

 

[Moltuae]

What used to frustrate me is that whenever they decided to release an update to Internet Explorer you would have to click <accept> before that particular update would proceed. It could hold up all the other updates depending on where it was in the line of updates.

So, I would see like 103 important updates - click ok to install.

I click ok and go to bed. In the morning it would show that it installed 2 updates and waiting for me to click <accept> for the IE update! This always ****** me off especially since I selected unattended updates!!

coffee

Tell me about it!! That and MSE are the worst culprits for doing that.

You start the update process, the various boxes pop up asking you to pledge allegiance to Microsoft, give them your first-born, etc; the update process starts and you think you've clicked enough boxes to safely walk away .... but no! 5 minutes after you leave it sits there waiting for you, returning hours later only to find it's done bugger all!

After being caught out like that many times, I started unselected any IE or MSE updates to install them separately later instead.

Then there's the .NET updates that take about a week! .... I mean, what the hell takes them so long!?

Even on a fast system .... you'll install like 100 updates; 99 of which installed in minutes. You think it's almost done, then there it is .... #100, a .NET update .... and it takes FOREVER!

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

At least they're steady and "mostly" unattended.

I remember back in the Win3 and early Win95 days....installing the OS...you'd sit there feeding floppies for the longest time. I forget the count....mid or upper twenties? Thirty?

 

[Moltuae]

At least they're steady and "mostly" unattended.

I remember back in the Win3 and early Win95 days....installing the OS...you'd sit there feeding floppies for the longest time. I forget the count....mid or upper twenties? Thirty?

Those were the days!

I've still got a Win 3.11 set of floppies somewhere. If I find them I'll count them and let you know.

I can remember the company I was working for at the time purchasing one of the very first CDROM units (1x speed); external unit about the size of a small domestic DVD player. Philips I think, and I believe it cost around £1500. Seemed such a huge leap forward to be able to install stuff from CDs.

 

[FoolishTech]

I think Win 3.11 was on 6 floppy disks if I remember correctly.

95 was more like 40 some I think, something ridiculous like that... I remember installing it and getting to nearly the last disk only to get a bad sector or some crap with one. had to Spinrite it and start over from scratch... that was a headache!

 

[nlinecomputers]

I think Win 3.11 was on 6 floppy disks if I remember correctly.

95 was more like 40 some I think, something ridiculous like that... I remember installing it and getting to nearly the last disk only to get a bad sector or some crap with one. had to Spinrite it and start over from scratch... that was a headache!

Yep and Dos had 3 or 4 depending on the version. Never did a 95 install from floppy. My boss ordered one by mistake. He took one look and sent it back.

 

[Moltuae]

That's right, yeah. It was 95 that had the mountain of disks. I can remember having numerous bad disks too.

And in either case of course, you had to install DOS first.


Still, by modern standards those were extremely compact operating systems. Awful and unstable, but compact nonetheless. Imagine how many floppies you'd need to install Windows 7 or 8.

 

[lcoughey]

I always copied the disks to the hard drive, then installed from there.

 

[nlinecomputers]

That's right, yeah. It was 95 that had the mountain of disks. I can remember having numerous bad disks too.

And in either case of course, you had to install DOS first.


Still, by modern standards those were extremely compact operating systems. Awful and unstable, but compact nonetheless. Imagine how many floppies you'd need to install Windows 7 or 8.

No IIRC 95 was the first version of Windows that didn't need DOS. It wasn't a shell like 3.11 and lower was. It was the first version of Windows that WAS the OS.

 

[johnrobert]

I think win 95 was 17 disks and they were formatted 2 Megs so nobody at the time could copy them.
I borrowed them from a friend he still has all the old install floppies
I remember in the early eighties those giant 8 inch floppies and my trash 80
first computer I had.

 

[FoolishTech]

95 was built on top of DOS (which was v7.0.0 at the time) as was 98 and ME, but you didn't need a previous version of DOS or to have it installed first, it was all part of the Windows installation.

 

[Moltuae]

No IIRC 95 was the first version of Windows that didn't need DOS..

Yeah, I don't know why I was thinking you had to install DOS first with 95. Thinking back, I can remember when it was released and thinking how alien it seemed to not be able to exit to DOS nor to have to type 'win + enter' to start Windows. As FoolishTech points out though, 95 was of course still effectively a DOS application.

I keep a few old versions of Windows as VMs just for fun and occasional reference. I haven't got 95 but I have got 98 and a working 3.11 (VMware) VM. The 3.11 VM is a tiny 70MB; I'll be happy to share a copy if anyone wants it.