Chatter Of The Squirrel

Tech: Windows Vista, Changing File Attributes

October 7, 2009 on 5:00 pm | In Tech | 2 Comments

It takes Windows Vista almost 20min to switch off the Read-Only attribute of 55,399 files.

User wants to move a folder.

Because she doesn’t want to waste an “extra step” to click on My Documents, then the folder, to reach the sub-folder.

So I try to move the sub-folder.

Only, Vista refuses to do so. Saying that only Administrator users can do so. But I’m already logged in as an Administrator. Only then I find that one folder has the Read-Only attribute set. I wonder why Vista’s error message wasn’t clearer, telling me it’s the file attributes. Instead of telling me there’s no permissions. So I need to un-set this attribute first.

Only that it takes 20min to do this.

20min of my lunch hour. Watching Vista change attribute settings of file after file.

Before I can move a folder.

Just so that this user can “save a step”.

How many times will she need to click on this folder. So that the microseconds she shaves, will eventually offset this 20min it’s costing me now?

I am highly allergic to histrionics.

I’ve already had to spend an hour explaining to her some fundamentals of physics why she can’t have the same video resolution on the projector as well as on her 1280×800 laptop LCD display. Then explaining to her why she can’t have the same fonts for all the websites in the world. Explaining why she can’t control the text formatting that email senders use when writing to her.

Being in the department of IT, I would expect her to understand what’s in the realm of possibility and what isn’t.

Gawd. Spare me Histrionics!