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Comment by olyjohn | Hacker News Reader

I haven't used Windows in years. But one of the main things that pushed me away was how they constantly just shit all over your hard drive. I used to keep a really, really clean Windows filesystem, but I wasn't able to keep it up after I started getting tons of folders called C:\fli32uf09823f0u32fj3209f8u. Total disrespect to your users.

Don't get me started on the services control panel. Where it used to be clear what was running and what wasn't. Now the whole OS just looks like Malware.

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I especially remember that Windows CE (or Pocket PC) carried this over to handhelds, a shitshow of random/temp files.

Small correction, Windows CE and Pocket PC weren't Windows so we didn't "bring it over". That mess didn't come later until windows phone.

In the defense of ce/ppc, we weren't really thinking about the fs as user visible so didn't give it much thought. Also, while I'm not shifting all of the blame, lots of that cruft was driven by OEMs as well. Our internal images were pretty clean on the fs from what I can remember.

Appreciate the clarification. It may not have literally been ported over, but it certainly felt like it was culturally imported. Anytime I used one of these devices it made me wince feeling like having a little messy desktop os in a piece of consumer electronics seeming more complex and fragile than it ought to be.

Yeah, I think you're right, it was cultural. For me, rather than the influence from Windows what I see is the focus on what we called "enterprise customers" at the time and leadership was obsessed about them because they were guaranteed huge orders for large numbers of devices. They largely don't exist as a thing anymore, BYOD killed them.

Enterprise customers and operators didn't view the fs of a mobile device as a thing the end user should manage or care about. So neither did we, or our OEMs (for the most part).

Of course, this is all just the opinions of one guy decades after the fact. For reference, I was a dev, lead, dev manager in the CE/mobile/phone teams from ~00-08 and contributed to ActiveSync, device PIM sync, device stability, and later worked directly with OEMs to design and build new phones (things like the Samsung BlackJack).

Agree 100%

Quick... "AarSvc_86dfc" service- malware or not?

Yeah not to mention everything now runs under svchost.exe. So when it spikes to 100% CPU usage, you can't actually figure out what's causing it easily.

But you know it has something to do with Windows Update.

After multiple decades of using Windows almost exclusively, I have never seen a folder named like that in the root of any drive, which leads me to conclude that your problem was cause by malware rather than Windows.

Going to go out on a limb and say that you must use it in a vacuum. I only have used Windows over the last decade in VMs and have seen this often with Windows tooling and updates. A quick search on the topic will confirm a lot of end users have experienced this sloppy system maintenance by Microsoft. [0]

[0] https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/window...

No, the OP is correct. Windows updates totally did that. For the most part that stopped when Component Based Servicing got rolled out (Windows Vista).

Sorry, no, Windows always has and still does generate garbage all over your hard drive.

Most won’t notice or care. For those who do it’s infuriating.

That looks like a folder created by malware. Crazy if Windows created folders like that on the regular. (I stopped using Windows regularly after Windows 7.)

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