That was actually the whole point of his post. Giving back the kind of treatment he felt he received.
You’re absolutely correct with this. The user should download a good registry cleaner and try to clean up the WIndows registry and try again.
Barring that, if you are running Windows 10 you can do a file/system refresh before you finally resort to having to do a reinstall of te OS.
That being said, a reinstall of the OS is a good idea to do on a Windows PC on a semi-regular basis. Every other year isn’t an unreasonable schedule for it.
I actually re-install my Windows desktop PC once a year and hence, I rarely have any trouble with software. Of course, I also install Hyper-V and run a Windows VM for anything I’m not sure about installig on my main pc too (and that’s saved my machine a few times).
I installed Scrivener on my roommates PC last night as a test, her PC is setup the same way with a C:, D: and E: drive and it worked flawlessly. I do believe this is more of a localized PC problem than any issue with Windows 10 or Scrivener of the 1.9.x series.
I believe they’ve increased expiration rate down quite a bit recently, since it’s getting closer to finished. Back when it started, the release schedule was more like your Avenue 2, and expirations were almost quarterly I think.
But by that same token, it’s probably a bit late in the game to be retooling the beta program. Food for thought the next time we need to do an extended public beta though.
Mm… Registry cleaners. Can be quite handsome little helpers, can’t they? However, I do feel a slight aversion towards actually recommending anyone to use something as powerful as those critters, as in the wrong hands and without knowledge of how the OS and the app itself works, they can often do more harm than good, and end up a user in a whole hurricane of problems. :mrgreen:
I guess I’m just a bit more careful with asking people to use those things and generally prefer a good “clean up everything (including ears, toes and navel) and start over from scratch” as a more suitable recommendation. But that’s just me. And my being lazy and not wanting to get involved with doing the extra cleanup duties if things get messed up.
In any case, sorry Catty, for not having arrived at a better solution for you. I hope it turns out well in the end, after all.
It was just a wild idea I had. I totally realize things are getting a bit too close for any of that, but as you say, it might be worth an extra thought in a few years, when we’re all in the midst of the wait for “episode 4” of this tale.
I can’t say I hesitte to recommend them anymore, programs like CCleaner back up the changes they make to the registry so if you need to, a boot to safe mode and re-import resolves any issues that were caused. I’ve recommended this one alone hundreds of times for people and never had a bad report back.
That being said, before one does any cleaning or reinstall of their system they should always make a verified back up of their data to prevent data loss. Unexpeted things can happen - components fail, software is too corrupt to be fixed, bugs, etc.
and you are the only one responsible for your own data.
Lastly, you can always take it to some computer store for them to do it for you if you are worried about the complexity of it.
Now personally, I think a whole start-over from scratch is a lot more complex and invasive and more work, but sometimes it is the only solution to solve a problem with Windows.
But follow one of my suggestions or not, it’s worth absolutely everything you paid me to get it lol
Well… I’ve had mixed experiences with this solution. If you have enough knowledge to solve the problem yourself, that’s almost always the best answer. If you don’t, always take a backup before you hand your device over to someone else.
For me, it’salways been mixed experiences with car mechanics I’m total rubbish with cars. With the existance of Google Reviews and Yelp and the like, it’s doesn’t have to be as much of a gamble as it used to be, dependng on where you live of course.
But I agree, if you can do it all yourself then you really should, including regular backups of your data. But if you have to take it in, any decent place will offer to do a backup of your data for a service fee.
Just make sure you clear those browser histories, cache and personal picture directoried LOL
Heh, for what it’s worth, it isn’t just you! At least once annually, usually twice annually, I prefer to double-check all my backups and do what I call a “nuke and pave”, a process that Windows 10 has made far easier than any previous version.
Never worked IT support specifically, but I do design my own machines and have done clean-ups for other people in the past. Plus, there’s the small matter ( ) of having been a professional, degreed, Software Engineer and having worked, among other jobs, as a lab manager and as an adjunct college professor in the Computer Department!
You can kinda patch up your install for a while, but - especially with Win10’s lovely reset feature - you really ought to be periodically nuking and paving.
Same goes with the cell phone! I’m finally finding myself having to replace my three-year-old smartphone, and it’s mostly because I want the security updates; otherwise, I would have simply ordered a new battery! My teenager practically ‘lives’ off of other people upgrading because ‘their phone was getting kind of slow’ and giving him the phone. Simple nuke and pave later, it’s just like new!
For me, the issue is cross-compatibility. I use Scrivener on Mac, Windows, and iOS. I can either use the beta, or try exporting every time I use Scrivener on my Mac, or wait for a version that automatically syncs all of my projects. I chose the latter, which would be fine except that I would like to upgrade my Mac OS to Catalina. If I do that, I will have to upgrade to Scrivener 3.
It’s not an earth-shattering problem, but I would like some idea of when I can expect to be able to upgrade, just so I know.
I still prefer recommending a clean install or a real system refresh. There are so many reasons underlying that.
To begin with, even the best reg-cleaning apps do very strange things to a system (especially if there are many apps already installed, or if there has been a few uninstalls over time - or if the registry, mbr or somesuch is actually corrupted, in which case the extra damages can be really awkward).
And if you recommend such an app to people, it usually helps if they even know what a system backup, and preferably a data backup, actually means and how to do it. And that they have a solution in place to do that, to begin with. Which a painfully large majority of people don’t have even today. And so, when things go bad, they tend to go really bad, and it might be all too late to try and fix anything at all.
And even with a backup being made by a reg-cleaner, someone will have to try to apply it again and hope it works as planned. And that one pretty much always turns out to be me. Because I would have been the one who said the thing would work to begin with, and I’m the resident “fix this or else” come to-person for a lot of people.
And I mean… I trust a “computer firm” pretty much as much as I’d trust the devil. And that’s usually what most people I know would say as well. So… I end up with cleaning duty more often than not anyways. And I prefer to keep things simple. And as effective as they can possibly be. Turns out that saves me quite some time and extra work, so it turns out it works the best for me, at least.
If it makes you feel any better, 10.15 is still beta quality, from what I can tell, so it’s better to stick with the current stable fork of macOS in my opinion. I typically don’t install Apple’s updates until late Spring, as that’s about when they approach what I would consider to be acceptable stability for an operating system.
And this release particular, I would say, there is nothing wrong at all with holding back an OS upgrade that invalidates decades of older software. Why narrow the field unless you really have to? It’ll probably be a long time (years maybe) before I install it on my work system.
So, we obviously have very different IT experiences we pull from. In mine, geneally doing a re-install of a system is the last thing to do or recommend, especially if a user doesn’t have an expert present to help them.
While reg-cleaners (and even other pc utilities) used to be a hit and miss, they are a far cry from that these days and are genreally pretty useful. For instanes, I’ve recommended CCleaner an used it for over a decade now and I’ve never run across any strange isseus with it or had someone come back to me complaining about it. I’ve even used the undo feature from it and suffered no issues afterwards. I do understand you have a problem with them, but tht doesn’t actually mean they are bad solutions for people in general, especially if the other option is an inexperienced person doing a system reinstall. Refreshes can be okay, but if you have any issues with adware or viruses, they will just come right back.
While everyone should have up-to-date backups of their critical information and knowing how to do those backups is always helpful, it’s rarely like that with the typical user. Installing an app and running it is far more reasonable than having to prep them through a re-install, which usually requires backing up all their data, making sure their windows key is valid, BIOS changes for USB or CD boot, getting a copy of Windows onto that and making it bootable, having a list of their installed applications, their hardware and drivers (because WIndows 10 doesn’t always find something compatible), a backup way to get to the internet and software from it for unexpected problems, etc. It’s easy to have all this prepped if you are an expect, but if you are a typical user, it’s not as simple as a software install.
With google reviews and yelp, it’s not so hard to find reputable comptuer firms. If you aren’t an expert and you don’t know one or want to craigslist or Geek Squad your computer, you are limited to another shop or you-tube and doing it yourself (which can be fine, I’ve had to do small things to my car this way and I have -0- mechnaical skill). But you have to pick a poison lol.
So, I think we have veered far off the topic of the thread, so you do you and make recommendations based on that and I will do the same thing based on my experiences. Hopefully other people will find these posts educational and take something good from them.
There’s a new manual with version 3 stuff in it? I’m not sure how I have missed this.
Can someone provide me with a link to it please? I’ve poked around a bit, but I’m not seeing it…bad eyes and a small phone screen probably aren’t helpful.
If you have the beta for Windows Scrivener 3, it’s under the help menu. Also the window that pops up when you don’t have any projects open should have it as an option to choose, even though it’s just a PDF.
Food for thought the next time we need to do an extended public beta though.
:mrgreen:
I’m total rubbish with cars. With the existance of Google Reviews and Yelp and the like, it’s doesn’t have to be as much of a gamble as it used to be, dependng on where you live of course.
) of having been a professional, degreed, Software Engineer and having worked, among other jobs, as a lab manager and as an adjunct college professor in the Computer Department!