May 11, 1998
Windows 98 troubleshooting tools are a dual-edged sword
By Bob O'Donnell
I like finding products and features that fill real needs. With today's overly bloated
applications and a global outbreak of "featuritis" affecting software vendors in
virtually every niche of the market, it's really refreshing to find something that is
specifically intended to fix real-world problems.
So, I'm happy to report that the new troubleshooting utilities included with
Microsoft's upcoming Windows 98 look to be truly beneficial for end-users and help-desk
personnel. Unfortunately, as I discussed in last week's
column, I think they're about the only truly useful part of the new OS. Plus, I have a
philosophical problem with charging money for tools that help fix known problems -- but
I'll get to that a bit later.
Windows 98 features a whole rash of new utilities including the Microsoft System
Information Tool, System Configuration Utility, Dr. Watson, Version Conflict Manager,
Automatic Skip Driver Agent, System File Checker and Registry Checker. In addition, the
Tune-Up Wizard helps automate the use (and usefulness) of existing utilities, such as Disk
Defragmenter and ScanDisk. The standard boot floppy created by Windows 98 even includes a
generic CD-ROM driver to get around the ridiculous problem of having to build a boot
floppy with a real-mode driver. In fact, there's so much there, I have to wonder how
several popular Windows utilities, such as Symantec's Norton Utilities, Helix's Nuts and
Bolts, and CyberMedia's FirstAid 98 are going to be able to distinguish themselves.
The hub of the new toolset is Microsoft System Information (MSInfo), which provides a
very handy, informative overview of all the hardware and software being used inside your
currently running PC. The Resources category offers details on hardware settings, the
Components section lists information on drivers, networking settings and other
system-configuration information, and the Software Environment category lists all software
-- broken into categories such as drivers and DLLs -- currently loaded in memory. MSInfo
also lets you launch many of the other utilities from its Tools menu.
What's great about these utilities is that they provide lots of help in trying to solve
the most common problems that have afflicted Windows 95 users: start-up file problems or
the inability to start up (System Configuration Utility), registry corruption (Registry
Checker), system file corruption (System File Checker), driver conflicts (Automatic Skip
Driver Agent), overall software conflicts (Dr. Watson), and even DLL problems (Version
Conflict Manager and Dr. Watson, to a degree). I haven't used them all long enough to know
for sure how well they work (and they are still in beta testing, after all), but the logic
behind them is very solid and my initial experience has been quite good.
But I discovered an interesting thing about them in the course of my experimenting:
they all work under Windows 95. So, my question is, why doesn't Microsoft make them
available to all Win95 users? Think how many problems could be solved and how much time
could be saved just by giving existing Windows 95 users access to these tools.
Of course, Microsoft officials feel differently on this subject. Their argument is that
they're extending the capabilities of the operating system with these new tools and that's
a feature worth paying for. While I can understand that logic, I don't buy it, for a
number of different reasons. First, I have a hard time putting troubleshooting tools in
the same category as new features. After all, the ultimate purpose of these tools is just
to make your (or somebody else's) computer work right. Call me crazy, but I don't think
you should have to pay extra money just to get your computer to function properly.
Second, Microsoft has already released these types of tools in the past. The RegClean
utility, for example, was developed and released for free by Microsoft to solve problems
that were known to occur to the Windows 95 Registry. How are these new tools any
different? Microsoft has also bundled a previous version of the System Information Tool
with many of their applications, including Front Page 98.
Ultimately, I feel like Microsoft is using these utilities as a carrot to lure us into
upgrading to Windows 98, even though most people don't need or aren't even interested in
the really new "features" of the OS. There's no doubt in my mind that with these
utilities the company has done a good job of addressing some long-standing issues with
Windows 95, but making us pay for fixing their problems just isn't right.
©
Copyright 1998, by InfoWorld Publishing Corp., a
subsidiary of IDG Communications, Inc. Reprinted from InfoWorld,
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