Since I will be traveling for the foreseeable future, I’ve recently transitioned my main machine to my new laptop: an Asus G1S.

One of the first things I normally do with a new system (2nd time for me because of this) is copy over all my news feeds. I use the awesome, free feed reader GreatNews. After installing the latest version and then copying over my existing feed database (GreatNews.ini and newsfeed.db), GN refused to recognize the updated files. Thinking this was a problem with GN didn’t solve the problem for me.

After digging around my backup files, I finally noticed what the problem was. Because Vista uses the universally-hated UAC, by default your admin account does not have permissions to write to the “C:\Program Files” folder. So what Vista does is shadow the folder to your “C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files” folder.

So looking up this folder under profile, I indeed found my INI and DB file in here with the out-of-the-box default file. After replacing these files with my backed up INI and DB file, GN is now able to load up all my existing feeds and settings.

I’ve made it clear that I hate Vista in the past and the latest incident does not surprise me of all the blunders coming from up north lately. In this InfoWorld report, someone at Microsoft uploaded a bad patch onto the Windows Update servers, which in turn all Windows machines automatically downloaded and installed. Because of my recent move, my current main machine is now an Asus G1S which I recently bought that came with Vista preloaded. While I could have easily reformatted and reinstalled to XP or even Linux, I decided not to since the machine seemed to be working pretty well and I had other things I had to worry about. I even went as far as thinking Vista is finally usable now since I haven’t had any crashes while using the new laptop.

Unfortunately for me last week, I was hit with the WGA bug and Vista in turn reported that my copy was pirated. Having just bought the laptop which came with Vista pre-installed, of course that wasn’t the case. Windows refused to let me access my machine nor my files and the only thing I could do was enter in a “valid” product key or use Internet Explorer to browse the net for more information. At first I thought my machine had failed for some reason due to bad Asus software so I was desperately looking for hints at the Asus website. Only now did I find out this was Microsoft’s fault (should have known). Normally when this happens to me, I bust out my repair toolkit to try to fix the problem or at least backup my files. But unforunately for me since I’m currently traveling, I didn’t have access to all my system repair utilities. In the end, I gave up and reformatted and reinstalled the entire machine using the Asus system restore CD’s.

As a result of the system restore, I lost some blog posts that I was writing and some screenshots. Luckily I didn’t lose too much since the laptop was still pretty new. As a paying Microsoft consumer, we should not have to deal with this. As many people have preached, DRM such as WGA only makes it harder for legitimate users. Those who want to pirate stuff will always have a way. GG Microsoft.

On another note, having worked at a company that works closely with Microsoft, I know about all the hoops and red tape that are in place to prevent such things from happening. I’m surprised that Microsoft calls this an employee blunder and I think they’re just trying to find a scapegoat so the company overall doesn’t look bad to the public. I’m starting to think that all the stories of all the smart people leaving Microsoft for other companies are true.