File: WIN-95.TXT         Guy Dunphy          Dec 1997



           (more of)   My Gripes about Windows 95



* How to make dir listings show by default as lists, not icon matrixes?

  There doesn't seem to be any 'global set default' for this parameter.



* How change the icon for a folder (anywhere, but especially on the desktop)?

  Or is the 'folder' icon a hard coded 'look and feel' constant?



* Some desktop icons are 'special' - ie MS doesn't want you to hide them in

  a folder. And especially not delete them. eg-

    (My) Computer

    Network

    Inbox

    The Internet

    Recycle bin



* In Windows 95, where is the logon script control (if any) for connecting

  winsocks to an ISP? (ie loggin on to dialup internet.)

  Where do you tell it what the 'login' and 'password' prompt strings are,

  and how to start ppp? How to observe its logon process (ie the messages

  sent and received.)

  Why do there seem to be no mention of these things in the Windows docs?

  While dialing into an ISP under Windows 95, there always seems to be a

  very long delay during the phase: "Verifying user name and password".

  - Why does this take so long in Win95? This is a really simple process.

  - Where is the script that controls this?

  - If there is really no no script (as I've been led to believe), why not?

    - Why did MS have to change the accepted method of logging on?

      (Wait for the 'username?' prompt from the ISP, and send username.

      Then wait for the 'Password?' prompt, and send that too.) This worked

      fine, was simple to set up, and allowed manual supervision and 

      monitoring. OK, so maybe the password needed encryption. That could

      have still been done in printable text, and still allowed manual

      entry of the plaintext password if desired.

      And where is the info in a MS Win95 help file on the new method, and

      how logon works now? What, none? 



* In the network setup menus, Microsoft has deceitfully lumped 'TCP/IP'

  under 'Microsoft protocols'. Like they invented it - which is crap.



* The scroll bars - often gets locked in 'scroll down' mode despite releasing

  the mouse button. This is awful! This happens to many people I've asked

  about this, so its not just something weird about my PC/setup.



* Why does Win 95 take sooooo fu*king long to boot?



* It also insists on doing a reboot, just because of a changed screen colour

  depth. Pathetic! And with _no_ applications running.



* In operation, all those mysterious disk and modem accesses. What the heck

  is it doing? How do I find out?

  Also the mysterious momentary pauses in responsiveness to user actions.

  This is particularly unpleasant in games, which is why I only play Quake

  and the like in DOS.



* Directory listings don't show true, exact file sizes. They are rounded

  to the nearest K. So can't visually use size to check for altered/same 

  files.



* Similar complaint re the non-display of file attributes.



* W95's philosophy of wanting to know everything about the system config,

  has some very nasty consequences. It means all equipment must be turned on

  at Win95 boot time - since at boot W95 checks everything (modems, printers,

  scanners, etc.) and if any are not found, it modifies it's system setup.

  This is totally insane. A computer should only attempt to access things

  when the user requires it to - that is, when the user expects the access

  to occur, and knows that the device is present and functional. And so

  can understand what is going on if something goes wrong with that device.

  Even then the system should _never_ attempt to reconfig itself without

  asking user permission first.

  The basic rule should be that a system config should remain unchanged

  unless a user _expects_ (ie requests) it to change.



* Long file names - stupid implementation. Also incompatible with older disk

  utilities. No util to 'behead' LFNs, ie convert all/selected LFNs to 8.3 

  names. W95's scandisk has no option to force doubtful LFNs to be 8.3 only. 

  LFNs deliberately designed to obsolete old software. W95's implentation of

  LFNs is a a disk cancer.

  See notes on how LFNs should have been done, to remain compatible (and

  give lots of other benefits, like unlimited attribute extensibility,

  file purpose comments, etc.)



* Hard disk Defrag utility legend:

  [] Belongs at beginning of drive

  [] Belongs at middle of drive

  [] Belongs at end of drive

  [] Data that will not be moved

  

  But WHY!!!?  There is no doco.

  Points:

  - Lots of 'not moved' clusters. It doesn't say, but these are actually

    's+h' hidden files, of which there are very many. Stupid & deceitfull.

    Why does MS hide files, & why so many? Need a tool to 'normalise' them

    all. They stop defrag from working properly.

  - Whats with the 'begin/middle/end' stuff? No doco on this - seems weird.

  - Need tool to point at the cluster map and say what file(s) the selected

    clusters are in.



* Arrrgh! Sometimes, for no reason I can identify, W95 spontaneously 

  rearranges the icons in windows - losing all my functional grouping.

  There needs to be a 'lock this layout' control.



* Infuriatingly non-specific error messages. My dot matrix printer, on LPT1,

  works fine in DOS & Win 3.1. But in Win95 it won't work - shows an error

  message "user intervention required" in the (hung) print queue. I've tried 

  everything, even the patronising Win95 printer diagnostic help system.

  Still no hint of _what_ 'user intervention' it wants. An attack with a

  hammer, maybe?

  Ah! Since found out that because the printer was off when Win95 booted,

  W95 decided that there was no printer, and set the printer mode to 'work

  offline'. Which means you have to tell it when you have connected the

  printer again. But why can't it just use the bloody '~BUSY' handshake

  line on the printer port to simply print when the printer says its OK?

  Like every other printer driver always has? Gees! And a more informative

  error message would have been nice, too, like: "User needs to tell Win95

  to get its act together, and try the dammed printer again _now_."



* Any decent operating system should survive a sudden hard reset or power

  loss. Why should I have to wait around for painful ages, just because I

  want to turn off my PC? Why can't it check every few seconds to see if

  it has anything that needs to be written to disk, and do it _then_?



* More version number gripes (see 'VER' command notes).

  MS has a chronic inability to be honest about version numbers, or deal

  with them openly. MS even tries to lie about something as basic as the

  version number of Windows 95 itself.

  In the PC hard disk boot sector, there is a string with the _true_

  version number. For Win 95, I've seen this string contain either

  

    "MSWIN4.0"  First release of Win 95. Or-

    "MSWIN4.1"  The recent version, with all the embedded network/IE crap.



  In the later case, the My Computer: Help: About Windows 95 popup

  just says "Windows 95", while the DOS 'VER' command says

    "Windows 95 [Version 4.00.1111]"  (No kidding!)



  What is it with them? Don't MS _know_ what version their software releases

  are? Or do they just not like their customers to know? And why not?



* File navigation utilities (eg Explorer, MyComputer) that don't display 

  important and useful info like:

   - free space left on drive.

   - total size of files in the current directory.

   - actual, exact size of files.

   - total size of selected files.

  If an old DOS tool like XtreeGold could get this right, why can't MS?



* "Setup is now performing a routine check on your system. Please wait."

  This sort of message gives me the willies. Its the kind of thing the

  Gestapo or KGB probably told their victims, as they rifled through their

  houses at 2am in the morning looking for 'evidence', before taking the

  unfortunates off away in dark vans, never to be seen (alive) again.



* MS Win95 (Ver 4.00.111) lies about which files are hidden and which are

  not. For example, in the Win95 directory there are two subdirs:

    win95\sysbackup    Holds .dll files, duplicates of those in win95\system

                       (Incidentally, when I tried to delete these for space,

                       two of them -lzexpand.dll & ver.dll - were locked as

                       'in use' here. Why!? The originals in win95\system

                       were exactly the same, and OK.)

        - DOS Xtree shows this as a hidden dir, but sub-files not hidden.

        - Explorer shows the dir always, but hides _subfiles_ if not set

          to 'show all files'.

   

    win95\temporary internet files  - Xtree & Explorer agree: a normal dir.

      but subdirectories: \cache1,cache2,cache3,cache4 are shown in Xtree

      as hidden dirs, while Explorer _never_ shows them, or any sub-files.

  Conclusion: the win95 file-system extension to DOS must have a new file

  attribute: 'secret, never let the user see this'.



* Further, the fact that disk utilities like Explorer absolutely refuse to

  reveal some of the things on your disks is another sign of Microsoft's

  dishonest mentality. For eg, even with 'show _all_ files' options checked,

  both 'My Computer' and Explorer won't show the sub-directories or sub-

  files in win95\Temporary Internet Files. Actually, there are four sub-dirs,

  called cache1, cache2, cache3 and cache4. Each contains at least two files:

     MM2048.DAT (size 8192), and MM256.DAT (also 8192).

  Incidental points:

    - You can delete the whole 'Temporary Internet Files' tree, and Win95

      recreates it, despite having no Internet Explorer in sight, no login,

      no network access of any kind.

    - XtreeGold won't display the MM2048 or MM256 files. Why? What has MS

      done to the file system to make simply displaying a file not work?



  **** IMPORTANT POINT ****

  The Explorer utility clearly lets you specify 'show _all_ files', yet

  even when you do this, Explorer does _not_ show you all (your own) files.

  It seems to me that MS could be sued for false advertising over this?

  Breach of contract maybe? (you expect your OS to obey your commands.)

  Conspiracy even, perhaps? (MS are a group of people, conspiring to hide

  the contents of your own computer's storage system from you.)



  Still more on hidden directories & files: Web browsers such as Netscape

  Navigator and Internet Exploder can be used to view your local disk

  contents as well. Just type in a drive:\path spec instead of a URL, and

  you'll be shown your own disk structure. Cool. However whats especially

  amusing is that Netscape's Navigator ignores all 'hidden' attributes,

  and displays _everything_ thats on your disk. Hidden directories, files,

  everything. Naturally, MS's Internet Exploder doesn't.





* .DLL files don't seem to contain any information about which application

  or function they exist to support. Explorer just says 'Type: Application

  Extension'. Which is no use at all when you are wondering what all those

  hundreds of .DLLs are for, and if any could be deleted to save disk space.