The last two days have been very frustrating for me and frankly not a pleasant experience in using virtual softwares. My computer’s network configuration is gone (I will explain the symptoms later in the post) and neither was I successful in trying to restore network configuration nor was I able to restore my data completely after attempting to restore my computer from a backup image. Actually, I experienced problems with virtual software in the past but I have always been fortunate in resolving the problems. But, as luck would have it, it was just not my day Thursday when the problems started. In order to keep the torch of blogging burning though I am writing this post by using my wife’s computer.
My very first virtual software was Microsoft Virtual PC 2004. This was so long ago that my memory is hazy about my experiences in using it. Not long ago I installed Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 and I still use it today and I don’t have any problems with it. Some time back I installed VMware Server 2.0 beta and did not have any issues in using it but there was a serious side effect when I uninstalled it. Basically, after uninstalling it my network configuration was gone and when I would use IPConfig in command window all I would get was the text “Windows IP Configuration”. It was as if the adapters had disappeared from my computer. I never was able to find out why this happened and how it could be fixed perhaps because I did not do enough research but nonetheless these problems should not have occurred. Fortunately, I had a backup image of the computer and I was able to successfully restore my computer. I am the kind of person who does not accept defeat so easily so I uninstalled the software and restored my computer from a backup image again when I had the same problem. This went on for a few times. Finally, I decided not to restore the computer from the image instead I decided to reboot my computer several times. Magically, after several reboots my computer became normal. My adapters were working again.
I like to work with and learn new technology. After my initial experience with virtual software I developed keen interest in virtualization. I started reading about virtualization especially products offered by VMware. Furthermore, to quench my desire for learning and exploring new technology I decided to try out a couple of virtual softwares thinking that what happened to me in the past with virtual software was an isolated incident. So I picked a freeware virtual software namely VirtualBox offered by Sun Microsystems and a commercial virtual software namely Parallels Workstation offered by Parallels.
So a couple of weeks back first, I installed and tested VirtualBox on my primary computer and did not have any issues. Next, I installed Parallels Workstation but my computer crashed during installation because of either a hardware or I/O fault. I rebooted my computer, got the usual message from Windows operating system that the system has recovered from a serious error. The situation now was that Parallels Workstation was half installed i.e., Start Menu shortcuts were present, program files folder was present but there was no entry in the Add/Remove programs. I was stuck with it because neither could I use it nor could I uninstall it. I have Windows Installer Cleanup utility but Parallels Workstation did not show up in this utility because either the installation never completed or the installer was not MSI based. Anyway, I got busy with other things and forgot about these softwares for sometime.
Last week, I decided to uninstall these softwares. As usual first I made a backup image of my computer. Since there was no uninstall available for Parallels Workstation I decided to uninstall VirtualBox. The uninstall started but it would not complete. It got stuck halfway through for hours. I cancelled the uninstallation and my problems started. I would have expected that cancelling the installation would have rolled back the changes and restored VirtualBox but I was wrong. The same problem relating to network adapters and IP configuration that occurred in the past re-occurred. I was confident however about restoring my computer because I had a backup image. Having full faith in the backup image and without a moment of hesitation I initiated restore of my computer from the backup image and stepped away from my computer. When I came back I was shocked to see the image restore operation stopped because of an error. The error message was that there was an inconsistency in the backup image. I was horrified because first image restore overwrites hard disk and second this was my only backup of my computer. I thought maybe this was a fluke error and tried the restore again. I got the same error. Initially, I panicked but after careful observation noticed that C partition was restored fully and the failure happened during initial stages of D partition restore. I was relieved because at least I had the operating system to reboot my computer. When I rebooted my computer and logged on I got error message after error message because there were some programs that were set to auto start and the programs were installed on D partition. Furthermore, my user profile was on D partition and the auto start programs crashed because they could not access their data stored locally in my user profile. Since image restore failed during initial stages of D partition there was practically no data in D partition. Whatever files I had majority of them showed a file size of 0 KB. I made several attempts to restore data on my D partition but to no avail. I am still in the process of restoring my data and I will hopefully have some good news tomorrow. I will also give my opinions on how to avoid and recover from this type of scenario and talk about virtual software in later posts after I fix my current problems. I have simply stated my experiences and I have no aspersions against any of the softwares. I am sure they are fine softwares and as a developer I understand that softwares behave differently on different configurations and systems (computers). I should have been more cautious in my efforts. Until my next post…goodbye.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment