microsoft, software development, windows

Windows is an adventure game

2 Comments

Many video games in the adventure genre are in essence collecting games. You have to get the gem to open the gate, and to get the gem you need the three pieces of tablet, etc etc.

Windows is like this sometimes. I want to try Windows Azure. I need SQL Express. I download SQL Express 2008. Try to run, it tells me I need Windows Installer 4.5. I download Windows Installer 4.5. Try to run, it tells me “The system cannot find the file specified.”

This makes me pause. Is it a broken download, or is my system broken? Maybe it’s because I downloaded to a network drive. Yup – copy it to a local drive, and it runs fine. This is the adventure game equivalent of a puzzle.

Now the dialog says, “You must restart your computer for the updates to take effect.” To be continued, then.

Shame Microsoft hasn’t (as far as I know) issued a VM image with all this ready to go.

2 thoughts on “Windows is an adventure game”

  1. Funny you should post this as yesterday I was also trying to install SQL Server 2008 Express. This is what I had to do:

    1. Create virtual machine with Windows Vista.
    2. Install Visual Studio 2008.
    3. Download SQL 2008 Express (500mb)
    4. Try and install SQL2008 only for it to fail each time while extracting the files.
    5. Manually extract the setup archive using WinRar.
    6. Run the setup only to be told I need to install .NET 3.5.
    7. Download and install .NET 3.5.
    8. Run the setup only to be told I need to install Windows Installer 4.5.
    9. Download and install WI 4.5.
    10. Run the setup only to be told I need to install VS2008 sp1.
    11. Download and install VS2008 sp1.
    12. Run the setup and it works!

    I am sure prior versions weren’t so hard to install.

  2. Linux used to be worse, to download and install a package (an RPM) you would download it and then it would tell you that you needed another RPM and you would download that and discover that you needed another RPM… This could go on for 10 or 20 packages… Thankfully now with systems like “apt” it is really easy. So I would suggest that the advertures game rankings are (with 1 being the easiest):

    1) OS X
    2) Linux
    3) Windows

    Gone are the days when Windows was the easy to use OS!!!!

    Gary

Comments are closed.