All posts by onlyconnect

microsoft, vista, windows

Moving Vista to a larger hard drive using built-in backup and restore

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I was running out of space on drive C, on my Vista 64-bit PC. Luckily hard drives are cheap, so I purchased a 1TB drive and then contemplated how to transfer the system. I have a slightly complex setup, with 3 physical drives installed and four versions of Windows (XP, XP64, Vista 32 and Vista 64) – Vista 64 is the one I use most of the time, but I find the others useful for testing or running otherwise incompatible software. Virtual machines are good for this too, but there is still a place for real installs

Last time I did this, on a laptop, I used an excellent tool called Drive Snapshot. It worked well; but I figured this was a good opportunity to test the backup and restore built into Windows. In effect, I would do a backup, then pretend my drive had failed and restore to a new one. I attached an external USB drive, opened Windows Backup and selected Create a Windows Complete PC Backup and Restore image of your entire computer, which can be used to recover from a hardware failure.

It started badly. As I mentioned, I was running out of space:

The backup failed: not enough disk space to create the volume shadow copy on the storage location.

I had a plan. Windows automatically creates a file called hiberfil.sys, which is roughly the same size as the amount of RAM in the system. Removing hiberfil.sys is easy, and frees up plenty of space. Just open a command prompt with administrator permissions and type:

powercfg.exe –h off

You can guess how to re-enable it later. I retried the backup and it worked. Next, I removed the old hard drive – my insurance policy – and attached the new one.

A little-known fact, which many people discover in bad circumstances: restore is harder than backup. This was no exception. I was expecting to boot from the Vista setup DVD, choose a restore option, and have my system back as it was. I was also hoping that I’d be able to resize the partitions, otherwise I’d be no better off than before, but if necessary that could be tackled later.

It didn’t go well. I booted from the Vista setup DVD, and clicked through several repair options selecting to use Windows Complete PC Restore. I arrived at this dialog (with apologies for the quality; it’s a photo of the screen):

The dialog says: This will delete any existing partitions and reformat all disks to match the layout of the backup. Yes, I had four partitions to restore. Still, this dialog caused me some anxiety. There were other physical disks in the machine, which I had not backed up recently; would Vista also format and re-partition these? I thought probably not; but to be on the safe side I powered down, disconnected the other drives, and started again. I then confidently clicked Finish.

Unfortunately I got this notorious dialog:

There are too few disks on this computer or one or more of the disks is too small. Add or change disks so they match the disks in the backup, and try the restore again.

Do you ever want to argue with your computer? I’d removed a 180GB drive, and replaced it with a 1TB drive, but Vista was insisting that it was too small.

Time to Bing, or should that be Google? I found this discussion, headed discouragingly A Windows Complete PC Restore always fails.

Luckily there were some tips in the thread, though not from Microsoft (a fact that has not gone unnoticed) even though this is an official forum. I rebooted and selected Command Prompt from the System Recovery Options. Then I ran diskpart, a command line tool which makes no pretence to user friendliness. I created four partitions, each bigger than the ones I was restoring. I tried to assign the correct drive letters, but the tool would not let me, advising me to check the system event log for more information. In the recovery environment? Thanks.

I tried again, but it still failed. Then I rebooted, just in case. This time it worked. Why? I’m not sure what was the key. It appears that the restore does not like to see a raw drive; yet as I discovered, it re-partitions it anyway. So I can’t give any definitive solution here, except to say, try fiddling with diskpart.

I went away for a few hours, and when I returned the restore was complete, the PC had restarted, and it was waiting for me to log in.

There was one snag. Rather than using the partitions I had created, the restore made its own, of the same size as on the old drive. Fortunately – and I’m not sure if this was accident or design – the partition I cared about was at the end of the drive, followed by free space. Unfortunately, the Extend Volume option in Disk Management was disabled and greyed out. Unfortunately again, the equivalent option in diskpart also failed. Whatever size I selected, I got The volume size you have selected is too large for the disk. Either select a disk with more free space, or specify a smaller volume. More lies. My drives are set to Basic; I guess that changing them to Dynamic might fix this.

I’m slightly distrustful of Dynamic drives, so I booted into a different version of Windows located on a different drive (I said this could be useful). This time, diskpart was happy to extend the volume. I then also typed extend filesystem. It worked:

Overall, I’m glad that the process worked, but not impressed with the fragility of the restore process and the lack of help with these puzzling error messages. I suppose Microsoft considers this an advanced task undertaken by professionals, who know how to Bing. I don’t see why the emergency restore should not be able to prepare a new hard drive, restore to it, and even offer to resize the partitions in a sensible manner.

I’d be interested to know whether Windows 7 handles this better, but not interested enough to try it.

Fortunately, I’ll never again need to do this. I mean, 750GB free is enough for anyone, right?

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microsoft, software, windows, windows 7

For your nightmares: 10 more things which could be unbundled from Windows

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Microsoft is caving to the EU and unbundling Internet Explorer from Windows 7 in Europe. Arguments over whether bundling a browser with Windows is anti-competitive go back many years of course, and were central to the US Department of Justice case in the late nineties. The DOJ won in court, but too late to save Netscape.

But which other vendors have lost market share when the functionality of their products became a standard part of Windows? There are numerous examples. Trumpet Winsock was a popular TCP/IP implementation for Windows 3.0, for example.

Windows didn’t always come with a built-in firewall. You had to use a 3rd party product such as ZoneAlarm.

Windows now has basic CD/DVD writing built-in, which can’t have helped the market for Nero and the like.

Media players of course from iTunes to Real Player, which have to compete with Windows Media Player. The EU’s solution was the useless Windows N.

Application runtimes like Java – the .NET runtime comes standard with Windows.

Video editing and authoring: Movie Maker is free with Windows, which can’t help Sony Vegas products, for example.

Zip compression and extraction: building this into Explorer must have been a blow to WinZip.

Email clients – Outlook Express / Windows Mail comes free, which reduces the market for Thunderbird and the like.

Fax clients – remember WinFax? Now we have Windows Fax and Scan built-in.

Hard disk defragmentation – does Diskeeper like having to compete with utilities built into Windows?

What would Windows be like if third-parties insisted on either the removal of the competing functionality, or some sort of equal billing with user choices or OEM bundling deals (to some extent we have the latter already)? Most likely vile. We would all flee to Apple, which seemingly has no problem bundling all this stuff, or to Linux, which in many ways is designed for this kind of free-for-all.

I am no lawyer; but I can’t help wondering which other third-parties are queuing up to say, “You did this for Opera, what about us?” In fact, the EU’s January 2008 press release specifically mentions desktop search and Windows Live as other topics about which complaints were received.

Competition is good; but so too is a rich, stable and complete operating system.

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internet, microsoft, web authoring, windows, windows 7

Microsoft unbundles Internet Explorer from Windows 7 – in Europe, that is

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Microsoft is to offer a special version of Windows in Europe. Called Windows 7 E, it will be identical to Windows 7 elsewhere except for one thing:

The E versions of Windows 7 will include all the features and functionality of Windows 7 in the rest of the world, other than browsing with Internet Explorer.  Computer manufacturers will be able to add any browser they want to their Windows 7 machines, including Internet Explorer, so European consumers who purchase new PCs will be able to access the Internet without any problem.  Consumers will also be able to add any Web browser to their PCs, to supplement or replace the browsers preinstalled by their computer manufacturer.

There’s only one reason for this. It’s an effort to comply with EU competition law:

We believe that this new approach, while not our first choice, is the best path forward given the ongoing legal case in Europe.  It will address the “bundling” claim while providing European consumers with access to the full range of Windows 7 benefits that will be available in the rest of the world.

The post linked above is from Microsoft’s VP and Deputy General Counsel Dave Heiner, who notes that Microsoft is keen to avoid a delay in shipping Windows 7 in Europe. In other words, it would rather give up whatever advantage it gets from shipping with IE included, than risk some sort of sales injunction and/or fine which would be hugely costly. It has more pressing problems than its share of the browser market, including competition from Apple and Vista’s poor reputation.

It may be fined anyway, of course, for past misdemeanours in the EU’s eyes.

Personally I have mixed feelings about the EU’s legal efforts in relation to Microsoft. Last time around we got the absurd Windows N, to address a Windows Media monopoly that hardly existed – Apple and Adobe are winning in media, and that’s nothing to do with Windows N, which nobody bought. That said, the EU may have made life better for the Samba folk by forcing the publication of Windows protocols, which is an interoperability benefit. It’s unfortunate that fines go, apparently, straight into EU coffers; the anonymous Mini Microsoft blogger says:

EU: you say "ee-you", I say, "ewwww!" As long as the Microsoft ATM continues shooting out cash fines the EU is going to keep mashing our buttons.

and I see his point.

What are the implications this time around? It’s worth bearing in mind that OEM vendors can already make other browsers the default in Windows. Still, on the face of it this is good for competing browser vendors, though they may find themselves having to pay for prime position in OEM installs. It could be annoying though for users installing or re-installing Windows from shrink-wrap editions, who find they have no browser; presumably Microsoft will include some sort of download utility other than a web browser to get them started.

More interesting questions: how much will this affect the market share for IE, which is already declining, and how much does that matter? Believe it or not, there are reasons to use IE, particularly in a business context where its integration with group policy and the fact that security updates flow through Microsoft update mechanisms are an advantage. Most web sites work well with IE, because they still have to. I expect IE to remain popular in Windows 7; and I expect change to be driven more by a move to web applications which require fast JavaScript or other such features found in rival browsers, rather than by OEM defaults.

There is a war being fought for the next generation of the client, and whether it runs on Flash (Adobe), on Silverlight (Microsoft), on Java (Sun/Oracle), on HTML 5 (Google), on native Windows (Microsoft again), or on OS X (Apple). Unbundling IE from Windows 7 removes a small advantage from Microsoft, but I doubt it will be decisive.

Incidentally, I expect this unbundling to be mostly cosmetic. The IE executable, iexplore.exe, is a wrapper round other components in Windows that pretty much have to remain, otherwise lots of applications which rely on them would break. The presence of these components does no harm to other browser vendors though, so gives them no reason to complain.

apple, google, javascript, sql, web authoring

Local SQL support in Safari vs Google Gears: what is happening?

Today I installed Safari 4.0, and one of the features which caught my eye is its local database support. No, it’s not new, but perhaps has not received the attention it deserves. The feature lets you use a local SQLite database from JavaScript, both online and offline, and works on the iPhone 2.0 and higher (2.1 for offline support) and in Safari 3.1 and higher. The API is rather simple. windows.openDatabase returns a database object, and you then work with methods like transaction.executeSql, reading the results in a callback function. Security restrictions mean that access to the database is restricted to pages served by the domain from which it was created. Apple has more information in its Safari Client-Side Storage and Offline Applications Programming Guide. Safari’s local database features implement the HTML 5 W3C Web Storage API.

It’s a great feature, and strengthens Safari on the iPhone as an application runtime that avoids the hassles of the App Store. Does it have wider value? A problem is inconsistent support across other browses. Microsoft’s IE8 supports DOM Storage (key-value pairs), which is also part of the HTML 5 standard, but not SQL. FireFox also supports DOM Storage, but its SQLite support is restricted to components and extensions only.

A possible reason for the lack of wider SQL support is that Google has its own implementation in Gears, which works in Safari and FireFox on the Mac, in IE and Firefox on Windows, and in Firefox on Linux. One place you cannot install Gears though is on the iPhone. A possible solution is to create a wrapper API that uses HTML 5 on Safari and Gears elsewhere; Malte Ubl has done some work on this, for example.

Personally I’d like to see the HTML 5.0 specification more widely supported, since along with the iPhone issue, not everyone wants to install Gears. I would have thought it could be added to both Chrome and FireFox relatively easily; but would be interested to know what is planned.

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google, microsoft, search, yahoo

Bing’s disappearing search share gain in the US

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Web stats site StatCounter caused some excitement last week when it announced that Bing had overtaken Yahoo in search market share, as tracked by its site analysis tools.

I took a look at the figures today, and they make depressing reading for Microsoft:

I’ve annotated the image to show Live Search share on 29 May, compared to Bing share now. They are nearly the same; within the normal daily variation. Yahoo is actually slightly ahead of where it was. Note that all Live Search hits automatically became Bing hits on the day of transition (1st June). As for Google, it is back a little above where it was before.

One odd thing about the StatCounter figures is that at the beginning of this period there was around 5% share for “other”, which has now almost disappeared. Gone to Google? Who knows; and I don’t particularly trust these figures.

There are two organizations with more reliable numbers, one of them Google, because of the number of sites signed up for its Web Analytics, and the other Microsoft, which can count actual hits, but these numbers are not published.

Well, Ballmer said it was a long haul. I’m actually impressed with Bing; the results seem decent, there are some good UI features, and the re-branding is sensible. If StatCounter accurately reflects the market though, the immediate affect of the launch is vanishingly small.

Update: Things look a little better today – Bing is up to 8.52% (note that the figure changes dynamically during each day). A long haul; I’ll be tracking the figures with interest.

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bbc, internet, web authoring

BBC seeks web response from unconnected users

This really needs a cartoonist. I thought I should grab it before it gets changed.

“The BBC was surprised by the lack of response to its latest Internet survey”

The serious point: now you have another reason not to trust web surveys.

Update: The BBC’s form is not completely daft: it says “at home” and you might be on the Internet at work or in a café. Still, that’s going to be unrepresentative of the 30% – it is exactly the sub-set which is already proven to be Internet users, whereas we most want to hear from those who are not and need to be “persuaded to go online”. Thanks to @rupertg and @putsimply on Twitter for the correction.

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apple, google, internet, software, software development, web authoring

Will Microsoft respond to the JavaScript speed challenge?

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While people argue about JavaScript performance in Chrome vs Safari vs FireFox, there’s one fact that is beyond dispute. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 is hilariously slow in comparison. On Apple’s figures, IE8 is 5.9 times slower on its i-Bench JavaScript test and 7.7 times slower on the SunSpider test.

You may hardly notice this in normal browsing. It most likely takes longer to download the JavaScript than to execute it. In fact, download speed is still the most significant factor in browser performance, and changing your browser will do nothing to change that (though different approaches to caching might).

This could change though, if more web applications appear that make heavy use of JavaScript. Google Wave could be an example. In fact, this seems to be Google’s game plan: make the browser (backed of course by the Internet) the operating system. The larger these web applications become, the more difference that JavaScript performance will make.

Offline is another interesting case, enabled in Chrome by the Gears add-on. In this scenario, content is served locally so browser performance has a better chance to shine.

The big question: will Microsoft step up to the challenge and fix JavaScript performance in IE? The company could do so relatively easily, either by using one of the open-source engines (unlikely) or by applying its existing knowledge of just-in-time compilation, used to good effect in .NET and Silverlight, to JavaScript in the browser.

The horns of Microsoft’s dilemma: improve JavaScript and undermine the advantage of Silverlight, which runs code much faster. Don’t improve it, and see market share continue to decline in favour of faster browsers.

The right thing to do, of course, is to fix the JavaScript engine; but companies do not always do the right thing – and Microsoft may still be comforted by its 65% market share for IE. That’s false comfort; the share is in long-term decline.

Incidentally, I’ve noticed that Google, while not exactly taking the gloves off, is stepping up its promotion of Chrome. When I go to youtube, which is the 3rd most popular web site in the world according to Alexa, I now see this on every page, if not using Chrome:

I don’t always see an ad on the Google home page itself – Alexa’s number one site – though occasionally I do see this on the right:

All very low-key; but I reckon we’ll see Google step-up its campaign as Chrome itself gets better and the Mac version appears. With Apple, Google, Mozilla and of course Opera all gunning for Microsoft, it would take extraordinary complacency not to respond.

apple, google, internet, web authoring

Is Safari the world’s fastest browser? You need to test more than just JavaScript

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Apple says its new Safari 4 is the world’s fastest browser:

Still the world’s fastest web browser, Safari outraces Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Chrome. On even the most demanding Web 2.0 applications, Safari delivers blazingly fast performance thanks to the industry’s most advanced rendering technologies.

Using the new Nitro Engine, for example, Safari executes JavaScript nearly 8 times faster than Internet Explorer 8 and more than 4 times faster than Firefox 3 based on performance in leading industry benchmark tests: iBench and SunSpider.

In addition to superior JavaScript performance, Safari offers top-flight HTML performance — the best on any platform — loading pages 3 times faster than Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes at zdnet has tested Safari vs Chrome and IE8, and says Apple’s claims do not stand up to scrutiny. In his tests, Chrome is faster. Unfortunately, he used a different build of Chrome than Apple – 2.0.172.30 vs 2.0.172.28. In addition, he is using a quad core processor, Intel’s QX9770, whereas Apple is using an iMac with a Core 2 Duo processor. Chrome is still work in progress on the Mac, so the results for this are on Vista.

ZDNet’s results certainly cast doubt on Apple’s figures. On the SunSpider JavaScript test, used by both, Apple quotes 609.07ms for Safari vs 870.00ms for Chrome, whereas zdnet has 808.8ms for Chrome and 846.2ms for Safari.

That said, JavaScript performance is not the same as browser performance. If you read Apple’s claim carefully, it talks about rendering technologies and HTML performance as well as the JavaScript engine. Focusing exclusively on JavaScript would be like assessing the performance of Windows vs Mac, for example, simply by timing some number-crunching operations.

In practice, what users care about is the time it takes to load a page and its responsiveness thereafter. Apple claims its best advantage over Chrome in i-Bench HTML, claiming that Chrome takes 40% longer. Unfortunately I cannot currently find the test which Apple used, but I’m presuming it tests DOM rendering speed rather than just non-visual JavaScript performance; an earlier i-Bench HTML used actual web sites.

Bottom line: I don’t trust Apple’s figures either, but I’m retaining an open mind. You need to compare like with like, and not focus exclusively on JavaScript, to test browser performance.

Update: Blogger Luca Filigheddu backs up Apple’s claims with some real-world tests.

internet, media

Farewell to Personal Computer World: 30 years of personal computing

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Today I learned that Personal Computer World is to cease publication. This is a long-established UK magazine to which I have been a contributor since May 1993. For PCW, that counts as its latter days. Today you might think that the PC in the title means “PC rather than Mac”, and perhaps in a way it does, but that was not the case when the first issue appeared in 1978, for obvious reasons (the first IBM PC did not appear until 1981). No, the computer on the cover of the first PCW was the self-assembly and long forgotten NASCOM 1.

Although the cover stated “Europe’s first magazine for personal computers for home and business use”, PCW was really an enthusiast’s publication; and in those days being a computer enthusiast meant being relatively technical and willing to do your own programming.

The story of personal computing is about how these devices evolved from a geeky hobby into a tool and plaything for everyone; and the magazine morphed accordingly, becoming steadily more mainstream as time went by.

The early years were particularly engaging, thanks to the variety of new devices that appeared and disappeared with bewildering speed. Some had more staying power than others, like the 1981 BBC micro, for example:

 

One of my favourite PCW covers was that for Windows 3.0 in 1990. Sub-titled Child’s Play, it was prophetic in identifying how Microsoft’s OS would bring personal computing to the masses.

It was Windows which inspired my first piece for PCW, a massive survey of 17 Windows database managers in May 1993. Not long after I reviewed Visual Basic 3.0, correctly predicting that its built-in data access would make it popular in businesses. I went on to do a series of Visual Basic tutorials, and then a programming column that evolved from Visual Basic to all things related to software development.

Last year PCW celebrated its 30th anniversary.

 

So why has it ended? According to this Press Gazette post:

Managing director of Incisive’s professional services division Graham Harman said … "Sadly, no amount of hard work or innovation was going to turn around the structural decline in advertising and newsstand sales. The depth of this recession and the ease of access to information online has only served to accelerate the long term downward trend within this particular sector.”

PCW’s last published circulation figure (Jan-Dec 2008) was 54,000, which is respectable, and more than double that of some rivals, like Future’s PC Plus which recorded just over 22,000 for the same period. The bigger problem, as you will see if you browse through a recent issue, is the decline in advertising. Before the days of the world wide web, magazines like PCW were critically important to computer manufacturers and retailers, but that is no longer the case.

Another problem, as one of the editors explained to me a few years back, is that PCW found itself caught between the demands of an aging readership which had grown up with the magazine, and that of a new generation.

It still has a considerable reputation and I’m surprised that the publishers have not found a way to make it work for a little longer, though the long-term trends have been against it for years.

Still, it has had a good run, and no doubt future researchers will have a lot of fun going though its archives as they explore the days when computing became personal for the first time.

google, microsoft, search

Bing, Blind Search and electoral fraud

It’s election fever in the UK: in dramatic results, the incumbent party is being pummelled at the polls. So too for search engines? Microsoft employee Michael Kordahi set up a blind search test. Perform a search, select your favourite from three columns of results. It started well for Bing, but market leader Google soon asserted a lead:

Blind search engine test at http://blindsearch.fejus.com Right now: "Google: 45%, Bing: 33%, Yahoo: 21% | 8,518 votes"

said Mr Google Matt Cutts.

Still, that’s not bad for Bing, considering that its market share is tiny in comparison to Google. 5.5% vs 81.5% according to stats I dug up for this Register piece. The real loser is Yahoo, whose second place in search is now under threat from the Microsoft juggernaut.

But can you trust the results? At some point last night Yahoo started an unlikely surge:

Internet search blind test: Google: 34%, Bing: 26%, Yahoo: 40% Try it out! http://blindsearch.fejus.com/

tweeted Bill Hamilton a few hours after Cutts. Someone was gaming the system:

not surprisingly, #blindsearch has been compromised you can still play, but i’m not currently showing results

said Kordahi, as Yahoo hit 57%.

Will Kordahi be able to insulate his test from fraudsters? Who knows; but it is still an interesting experiment.

I tried the test and found the results generally close, with a small edge to Google in my searches. Still, it would be interesting to measure not only which results are best, but also the margin of difference. In the past I’ve found Live Search almost useless, so Bing has made a substantial improvement from my perspective. The UI changes are important too. I’m a minimalist at heart, which again favours Google, but I like some of Bing’s features, especially the site and video previews.

Google’s Wave is of course more interesting from a technical perspective; but it would be a mistake to downplay the business significance of Microsoft improving its search market share. Search drives advertising income.

It’s also worth noting that in search, quantity drives quality. Program Manager Nathan Buggia explained to me how Bing’s categorisation feature works:

For the categorised results those are driven more off the search behaviour we see on our web site, not actually the semantic information that we infer from their web site. What we’ve done is to take all the queries that come into live search and analysed them to see what user intent those queries have. We take a look at the other search terms that they use to figure out where they go, we aggregate that information and use that to define categories, and we are able to draw on that.

Currently Bing only displays category tabs for around the top 10-20% of searches. The reason it is limited to that, according to Buggia, is insufficient volume of data. Using the Xbox as an example, he told me:

If we have a high enough volume of XBox data and we’ve seen that there are a specific set of intents that people are looking for, then we feel confident enough to show the quick tabs.

In other words, Bing could improve its results simply by more people using it.

What happens next? The easy prediction is that Bing will make at least small gains in market share, and that Yahoo will likely decline, perhaps to third place. For Microsoft, that would be no small achievement, but would do little to dislodge the big G. Further, if it sees significant traffic moving to Bing, Google will be quick to counter it with its own improvements. Personally I would like to see more competition in search, which for many users forms a portal that controls which sites they see and which they do not see, but a good launch for Bing is not enough to effect real change.

It could be the beginning of a change though, and that possibility makes Bing worth watching.

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