[Bug 923] We should add default Explorer registry entries to avoid FS corruption (was: WINE DESTROYED MY SYSTEM!)
Wine Bugs
wine-bugs at winehq.com
Sat Jun 21 06:30:00 CDT 2003
http://bugs.winehq.com/show_bug.cgi?id=923
------- Additional Comments From z_god at wanadoo.nl 2003-21-06 06:29 -------
Bug comments restored from Gmane.org:
I've had wine on my Red Hat 7.2 system for a while. I finally got around to
experimenting with it last weekend (7/21). I used Wine Configuration in KDE to
set up my account and tried to install Cooper Luxicon lighting design software.
I could get it to install in start up, but it locks up at the open file screen.
I haven't been in Windows all week.
This evening (7/28) I booted up in Windows to get some business work done and
discovered that Wine had deleted my entire C:\Program Files directory and
replaced it with what appear to be Wine DLLs. I've never seen these files before
in this directory.
Now my C:\Program Files directory only contains:
!$!$!$!$.cfr
System
ado
msadc
OLE
DB
Common Files
!$!$!$!$.msr
dao2535.tlb
dao350.dll
odbc
Data Sources
System
ado
$!$!data.ie5
msadc
WindowsUpdate
Skins
Visualizations
Where are all of my programs files? Everything's gone!
What kind of demented programmer would do this without warning the user and
giving him a chance to back up the files somewhere else?
I'm really f****d. I have no way of restoring half of those programs and I can't
get my work done. I was depending on being able to finish a project that's due
tomorrow. I can lose my job over this!
Needless to say, I'm not going to trust Codeweavers software again.
------- Additional Comments From tony_lambregts <at> telusplanet.net 2002-07-28
23:05 -------
I'll bet you ran explorer.exe, and since you think your system is ruined I can
understand that you are ticked. I just want to ask you this. Do you always run
alpha software your system without backup?
Take a look at the README file that should have come with wine. In it you will
find this.
>>>>>>>>
Wine is not yet complete, so several programs may crash. Provided you set up
winedbg correctly according to documentation/debugger.sgml, you will be dropped
into a debugger so that you can investigate and fix the problem.
For more information on how to do this, please read the file
documentation/debugging.sgml.
You should backup all your important files that you give Wine access
to, or use a special Wine copy of them, as there have been some cases
of users reporting file corruption. Do NOT run Explorer, for instance,
if you don't have a proper backup, as it renames/cripples several
directories sometimes. Not even other MS apps such as e.g. Messenger are safe,
as they launch Explorer somehow. This particular corruption (!$!$!$!$.pfr)
can at least partially be fixed by using
http://home.nexgo.de/andi.mohr/download/decorrupt_explorer
>>>>>>
Now hopfully this little program can fix this up for you.
The Moral of this story: There is no such thing as too much backup.
------- Additional Comments From jfh6 <at> humboldt.edu 2002-08-01 03:54 -------
Maybe your work has some sort of backup of your files already. Don't bash
Codeweavers because they aren't as perfect as Microsoft :-/
Next time you want to use Wine, just make a fake windows directory that Wine
uses and it will be all gravy.
Just follow these easy to understand instructions:
http://www.winehq.com/Docs/wine-user/no-windows.shtml
------- Additional Comments From andi <at> rhlx01.fht-esslingen.de 2002-08-01 13:12
-------
Well, yet another luser who seems to be unable to do the first thing people are
expected to do (especially with alpha software):
reading the most important file, the README file.
(due to that amount of damage, I can understand such a reaction a bit, though)
To my parent:
"Don't bash Codeweavers because they aren't as perfect as Microsoft :-/"
Oh dear, I just hope you don't believe that.;-)
If anything, it is *Microsoft* who is not as perfect as CodeWeavers here,
since that filesystem corruption is being caused by *Explorer* renaming
directories to zilch due to relevant registry entries not being available (most
likely because people told Wine to use the Windows partition, but at the same
time they
forgot to tell it to also make use of the Windows registry entries !)
Wine has zero, zilch, nada responsibility here...
To the bug submitter: did my little script help ? Anything it didn't manage to fix ?
------- Additional Comments From pharouff <at> comcast.net 2002-08-01 21:34 -------
Thank you for the responses. The fix appears to have worked. I still need to reboot
into Windows to
try it out, but it looks like everything is there. There are still two files that did not get
fixed
by decorrupt_explorer, maybe someone knows where they belong. C:\Program
Files\!$!$!$!$.mm2
C:\Program Files\!$!$!$!$.msn As for the other comments, I did see the warning about
Explorer, and I
never attempted to manually run Explorer. But what happens when you try to install a
program that
automatically attempts to register the software via the internet? MOST programs do
this now. The
program I was trying to install is free vendor supplied software from a lighting
manufacturer who
registers the users. This might explain why the program locked up at the time that it
did. Everything
seemed to be working great, then BAM! It was probably trying to start the registration
process. As
for backing up, all the new files were stored in my $HOME directory on the Linux partit!
ion. I wasn't expecting it to screw with the Windows partition. While I understand this
is ALPHA
software, I was expecting this release to be more stable than the last, not less
(especially after
the glowing reviews I had read). Anyway, if your response is correct, the cause was
Windows and not
WINE. While I no longer believe it was your fault, I still feel that this is still a CRITICAL
BUG
that requires as a minimum some work around for protection. I tried the installation
twice. The first
time I used the temporary Windows directory approach. I know that after this attempt,
my C:\Program
Files directory was still intact, because I went looking for the Office files it was
requesting. When
that attempt didn't work, I followed the suggestion that pops up in the debug box and
tried a second
time with native Windows. I haven't done any programming since about 1988, so
needless to say I don't
understand the intricacies of c, perl, java, etc. But if you don't have e!
nough information to fix this problem yet, there should be a way to add a temporary
check to block
any system calls to start Explorer and return an error like "Program Not Found" to the
calling routine (or better yet redirect it to Netscape, Mozilla or Konqeror). So maybe
some programs
crash at this point, but at least it doesn't screw up the partition. If nothing else, get rid
of the
suggestion to try native Windows installation! This was my biggest mistake. After this
experience,
it's my opinion that any program that appears to run then locks up under fake
Windows probably needs
Explorer. While I'm impressed with the progress you've made since I first tried WINE
last Christmas,
I feel that, basically, WINE is completely unusable until this is fixed. Ever since
Windows 98 came
out virtually all Windows software uses Explorer. You can't avoid it. Bill Gates would
have us
believe it can't run without it. ;-)
------- Additional Comments From andi <at> rhlx01.fht-esslingen.de 2002-08-05 14:30
-------
C:\Program Files\!$!$!$!$.msn probably is C:\Program Files\Microsoft Network
(Some) Explorer (component) gets run in the background by a lot of programs.
Oh, and again, this is ALPHA software. This is synonymous with "don't expect
ANYTHING, except for the sky to fall" ;-)
The real "fix" (or rather: workaround) would be:
Someone would have to figure out which registry keys are being read here,
then they should be added to the default wine registry.
And if then people won't even add the default wine registry, then we'll
*really* know whom to blame ! :-)
------- Additional Comments From dclark <at> akamail.com 2002-08-05 17:57 -------
I would note one other apparent behavior. From my very unscientific vague
recollections of postings about this, including personal experience, the
corruption only seems to occur on shared Windows partitions.
For example, back when I was using a shared partition, installing the program
Viewmate invariably corrupted the filesystem (I tried it several times). When I
recently switched to a "fake" EXT3 Windows partition, I reinstalled Viewmate
from scratch, and no corruption occurred.
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