Kein Betreff

Fre Mai 16 09:22:03 CEST 2003

Rejoice (????)

Claude

-----Message d'origine-----
De : owner-triumph-of-content-l at usc.edu 
De la part de gary satanovsky
Envoyé : mercredi 4 décembre 2002 00:11
À : undisclosed-recipients:
Objet : The Unsolved Mystery Of `Intermittent Error'

BOOMTOWN --
File Called agp440.sys:
The Unsolved Mystery
Of `Intermittent Error' 
By Lee Gomes 

12/02/2002 
The Wall Street Journal 
Page B1 
(Copyright (c) 2002, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.) 

`YOU'RE GOING to pay for this, Bill Gates; Not only should your company
be broken up, but you should be forced to move out of your big lakeside
mansion and into a studio apartment next to Seattle's busiest freeway." 

That was me talking to myself one evening a few weeks back. Ordinarily,
I am the quiet type, and something of a Microsoft fan to boot.

Hell, though, hath no fury like a Windows user whose machine suddenly,
and for no apparent reason, quits working. That's what happened to mine.
I turned it on, and after being teased with the Windows XP welcome
screen, I saw only darkness. 

I tried this several times, with the same result. Besides rage directed
against Microsoft's most famous executive, my other emotion was
overwhelming, lost-at-sea helplessness. 

Just like so many people before me. 

I did a little diagnosing. Apparently, the last thing Windows did before
"hanging" was load a file called agp440.sys, which is involved with
graphics. I checked online on Yahoo; other people had had the same
problem. In each case, the last thing they saw before things died was
Windows loading agp440.sys. It was like that scary videotape in the
horror movie "The Ring." 

NOTHING I DID would get things working. I even reinstalled all of
Windows, which is the software equivalent of packing up and leaving
town. Nothing. 
The average person with this problem would, at this point, face the
prospect of lengthy telephone calls with support staff of varying
degrees of competence. Columnists doing the people's business, though,
get to phone the Microsoft PR department. I was soon on a conference
call with not one but four technicians. No waiting on hold, either. 

In dealing with Microsoft over the years, I have noticed that the
average employee, no matter how angry one might be about something,
inevitably responds with a cheery obliviousness. "Gee . . . let's see
how we can work this out," they always seem to be saying. They use a
kind of jujitsu to sidestep your anger: Maybe it's one of the secrets of
their success. 

During my telephone meeting, everyone was so earnest and un-defensive.
They asked lots of polite questions, and never tried to blame the
victim, aka me. 

At one point, they asked if they could install special software on my PC
that would allow them to control it remotely, just as though they were
sitting at my desk. While I don't believe any of the Microsoft
conspiracy theories you hear, I was a little nervous about giving them
free reign. Who doesn't have something on their PC they don't want
anyone else to see? 

I agreed, but to no avail; they couldn't get the software to work.
Instead, they collected some detailed info about my machine. This was a
Friday; we agreed to have another conference call on Monday. 

On Sunday, I wanted to get ready for the next day's meeting by writing
down the exact sequence of events that would make my computer fail. 

By now, I had figured out that agp440.sys was a symptom of the problem
rather than its cause. The actual culprit appeared to be a recently
added disk drive. I put in the suspect drive, turned on the machine, and
waited for Windows to die. 

This time, though, it booted just fine. I tried again. Once more,
Windows was ready to work. 

This was alarming. My next Windows therapy session was hours away, and I
tried everything I could think of to make it break, and nothing, no
combination, would work. 

HOW HUMILIATING! Surely, the folks at Microsoft would wonder if my
machine had ever really been broken in the first place. They'd probably
think I had just forgotten to plug it in, or some other doltish blunder.
But my new Microsoft friends took the news with equanimity. My problem
was pronounced an "intermittent error." These are software bugs that
come and go with no apparent rhyme or reason. Since you can't recreate
them, you can't really fix them. 

At least mine was gone, for now. 

At the start of my quest, I imagined it as a detective story: Who Killed
My Windows? In the end, the perpetuator would be revealed in the drawing
room, never to harm anyone again. 

But this turned out to be a post-modern narrative, offering no such
satisfaction. An "intermittent error": That doesn't exactly engender a
feeling of finality or closure, does it? 

Some anti-Microsoft partisans might say Windows itself was the bug.
Maybe. But maybe the reason Windows seems to break more than Linux or
Macintosh is simply that more people use it for more things. 

And while I can't afford to worry about it, I live with the knowledge
that my agp440.sys problem may crop up again at any time. Those who
don't learn from past bugs are condemned to repeat them. 

--- 

Send comments to lee.gomes at wsj.com, and check back Friday for selected
letters at WSJ.com/BoomTown. 