Thursday, April 12, 2012

Another 4:00 a.m., another bathroom visit..... and a Win-8 snag.


I now know why old folks go to bed early. It's so we can get some rest before we have to get up halfway through the night to make sure the bathroom's still there. The good news is, by this point in our lives, we're long ago retired, so we can take a nap after lunch if we start nodding off, except, of course, if we happen to be on the freeway going half the speed of sound at the time....and
I have to tell you, all the bending metal and flying glass can really be a most unpleasant way of waking up. No matter what time of the day or night you do it, it's something you never get used to. And you should just take my word for that. Don't try this yourself. The last time I did, in 1996, I wrote off a perfectly good 1992 minivan, and got a broken collarbone and other injuries from it.

But I'm digressing again.... The above picture is the opening screen of Windows 8, and was taken with my camera, because this precedes the log-on screen, and therefore you can't do a screen capture of it, because Windows isn't officially running yet. If you look closely at the picture, it looks like there are some sheep grazing in the middle distance. And all that blacktop running off into the distance means that this was considerably later than when John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara made 'McLintock!' with Yvonne De Carlo and a cast of thousands (if you count the cows) back in 1963. John Wayne probably wouldn't approve of those sheep in this picture, but he won't see them.

And I still miss that little 'Feedback' icon we had in the test version of Win-7
with which we could instantly connect to Microsoft to report a snag in the program, or send them our bouquets or beefs. It was the latter they got tired of, and why they didn't repeat it with Win-8, I'm fairly sure. I could use it now
to ask them why 'Homegroup' in Windows 8 can't see 'Homegroup' in Windows 7, on two computers which each have both Windows 7 and 8 on them, and the two Windows 7s have no problem seeing their 'Homegroup'. If Homegroup is Homegroup, then it ought to be the same thing in both Win-7 and Win-8, wouldn't you think? Win-8 is very good at running programs from previous Windows incarnations, so why not this? Yesterday, I wasted so much time on trying to link up one PC's Win-8 Homegroup with the other PC's Win-7 Homegroup, I finally resorted to making a DVD of the files I wanted to move,
and that turned out to be a hell of a lot faster and less frustrating than trying
to link Win-8 to the Win-7 Homegroup. I think maybe this could be improved.

6 comments:

  1. "why 'Homegroup' in Windows 8 can't see 'Homegroup' in Windows 7"

    Please don't say this is true, Ray. This is the same as Win 7 seeing a network with Win XP. You have to fight all the way in order to get them to "talk" with each other. :-(

    Go back to bed!!

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  2. @ Tommy -

    With a lot of diddling around with the Troubleshooter and re-trying to establish a HomeGroup in Win-8, it finally recognized that there was "another HomeGroup on this computer" but when I was invited to enter a password to access it, it wouldn't accept the password I wanted to use, which would have connected me to the only HomeGroup already created on either of these two PCs. So it could tell there was a HomeGroup already created, but it wouldn't let me into it.
    The one already created was the one I had made between the two Windows 7 partitions of these two PCs.

    Since in a dual-boot arrangement each partition of it can access the other's files and folders through Windows Explorer, I would assume that this would mean one
    partition's operating system should be able to access another's HomeGroup, but that evidently is not the case. I have no idea why not, because it seems reasonable to me. All we have to do now is convince Microsoft to do it.

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  3. Ray, while the two operating systems might be on the same physical computer. They are independent of each other. There are things internal to each call an SID (Security Identifier) and they will definitely be different for each OS.

    It's like if you have a domain controller setup for a network and have to reinstall the OS on the server, the individual workstations won't be able to access it for this reason. All the workstation will need to removed and reconnected to the server to get fresh SIDs.

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  4. @ Tommy -

    Yes, I understand about the SIDs,
    but in both cases (in each O/S) I'm the only user, and both O/Ss on the same computer use the same Physical Address codes.
    The left panel of Windows Explorer shows both partitions under the Heading of Computer, and clicking either one lets me into that one's folder tree, so no matter what O/S
    I'm using at the moment, I can still access the other's folders.

    But I wasn't able to connect Win-8 to the HomeGroup previously created
    to link my two PCs via Win-7 O/Ss.
    Win-8 detects that there is one, but if I try to enter the Password
    for that existing HomeGroup, the
    Win-8 grays out the buttons needed for applying it, and I don't get in.
    I didn't try creating a new group to link the Win-8 of one PC to the Win-7 or Win-8 of the other PC because I only want one HomeGroup,
    and apparently this means I can't include the Win-8 on one PC with the group already linking the two PCs Win-7 O/Ss.

    It's nothing life-threatening, but I wanted to see if it was possible, and apparently it isn't.

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  5. Ray, I'd report it to Microsoft. If I understand you correctly it sounds like a problem to me..

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  6. @ Tommy -

    "...it sounds like a problem to me."

    Yes, to me too - but I think I'll wait and see if Mighty Microsoft discovers it themselves and fixes it for the the next release of Win-8.

    They don't have the Feedback icon this time around, and reporting something in those forums is a lot more bother than it's worth. And to be brutally honest about it, I'm not that impressed with Win-8 anyway. For those of us using our desktops without touch-enabled screens, Win-8 is a less-user-friendly version of Win-7, which leaves Win-7 still the best choice.

    ReplyDelete