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Bug of the moment 2006-09-07


Regular visitors will doubtlessly be aware of the recent (as of 2006) screenshots gallery update, and how I have continued to mock Explorer as a file manager. Maybe I will let it off this time; a friend expressed complete disbelief that Windows could run for this long:

138 days, according to the 'uptime' command

However, I think I was in just as much disbelief when I discovered this file lurking in my Temp folder:

Ironically, Windows Explorer was as dumbfounded as I was, asserting that there was no way that Windows could track dates before 1970:

A spot of research does in fact show that NTFS can in fact handle dates all the way back to … 1601. So this is a file with a NULL date. I am still curious why two parts of the same program disagree on what a NULL date represents: 1601, or 1970. Is Explorer schizophrenic?

More puzzling is this. On Wednesday September 6th, 2006 (okay, enough poking fun at Wikipedia) I had temporary files dating back well over a year, thousands of them. Only about 80 megabytes, but at least five thousand files. My computer was last booted on April 22nd, so I threw all files up to that date into the Recycle Bin (excluding my really ancient file).

Take a look at what is left. Is it just me, or does Windows no longer know what sorting means?

Also, some of those files are from 2005, and should be amongst the ones sleeping with the fishes. All files from 2005 and those from this year up to 21st April 2006 are thrown out. Again, the schizophrenic Explorer agrees: “They’re not even within 100 miles of the Temp folder. They are not in any place. They hold no place in Windows …”

“This is an illusion …” But no, clearly something has gone very badly wrong for Explorer:


Posted 7th September 2006 – Comments and questions?