*Rant ahead.*

Often I praise the good things when stuff is neatly integrated, and different software talks nicely through different API’s.
It’s something where Microsoft gets things done, where OSS keeps changing the API.

But as allways, it gets ugly when you realise you only have this (proprietary) API to talk through. you only get to patch something with binary patches you select on filtering by a specific error message.

Error and solution conditions which sometimes do not match the exact environment and versions you behave in. This problem was patched in the lateest service pack of the preceding version. D’uh. And that often is not even a regression.

It’s that bad that even with lots of experience, you don’t get to fix the problem by gut feeling – short of logic as usual. You’re really on your own, ’cause the software version is that new that even google isn’t helpfull. Even all those years of experience don’t give the assurance of where to look, what kind of problem you’re facing, and how fast (or not) you will solve the problem.

Just googling one specific error message giving 3 hits in return (at least from here), pointing to some not publicly released hotfix is one of the many possible trial and error solutions.

Luckily it helped.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, cheer, party and dance. My customer has again backups, the first since one week.

Until it will again suddenly stop working that is.

Windows really is full of binary closed crap. And don’t ask how often I needed to reboot. Even installing the bloody hotfix took twice: one to be able to start the patch process (it hang because some windows update process already hung before), and one after the setup, of course.

Windows still needs too many reboots. It even sometimes asks for it after an ip address change.