Posted 3:58 PM by Floyd

This week I have been trudging through my recovered files. Many of them are corrupt, but I was not too concerned as I had made a backup a few months ago.

I got the backup file pieces off zip disks and joined them. Then I rooted around for the Win2K backup utility. It did not recognize my "backup.qic" file and could not do anything with them.

I was disturbed, but not unduly so. Surely Microsoft had not lost backwards compatibility with backups. I'll repeat that one more time for your amusement. Cue the cute little kid voice and puppy eyes:

Daddy, you can upgrade to a newer Microsoft O/S and not lose your backups. Right Daddy?

I went to the Microsoft site and searched for qic in the knowledge base. And there it was, in ASCII and white:

The Backup tool in Windows NT and Windows 2000 uses a different format for tapes and files than the Backup tool in Windows 95/98. The two formats are not interchangeable.

You must restore the data from the tape or file using the Backup tool on a computer running Windows 95/98.

Ever see the movie Dreamscape? It came out around 1984 and starred Dennis Quaid as a person who could enter others' dreams. His enemy was a nasty young man with the same power. At some point in the movie Quaid points out that an old lady had died while the villain was in her dream, to which the villain sneers, "That's a fucking shame."

The Microsoft knowledge base would be greatly improved, at least from an honesty point of view, by the use of this phrase:

The Backup tool in Windows NT and Windows 2000 uses a different format for tapes and files than the Backup tool in Windows 95/98. The two formats are not interchangeable. Your hard drive crashed and you need your backups? That's a fucking shame.

You must restore the data from the tape or file using the Backup tool on a computer running Windows 95/98. You don't have access to one? That's a fucking shame.

By the way, taunts from Mac cultists and Linux weenies will be sent to /dev/null.

That is, if I had a /dev/null.