Scott Boehmer

Tag: Windows

  • A Blue Screen :(

    On Thursday, I was in a hotel room using my laptop. It suddenly blue screened, and then when it restarted, something was wrong. After logging in, I got a bunch of error dialogs about various programs not being found or missing the permissions to access them. Then as I poked around, File Explorer claimed that I lacked permissions to open the main C:\ drive. Since I was on vacation, I just shut it down. I’d deal with it when I got home.

    The next evening, back home, I opened it back up. I plugged in a USB hard drive and copied the few files that weren’t in cloud storage already. Then I ran through the Windows reset flow in an attempt to get things working again. After a wait, I went through the Windows setup experience and then after setting up my account, logged in, and got a similar set of error prompts. The reset hadn’t fixed anything.

    At this point, I started digging in a bit more to see if I could figure out what the actual problem was. After a bit of poking around and comparing to my other computer, I came to the conclusion that the drive permissions had been messed up by the blue screen. At that point, I could either try to replicate the correct settings using my other computer as a template, or attempt a reformat of the drive.

    Since I had already erased everything from the computer, I decided to go ahead with a reformat. I created a bootable USB to reinstall Windows and then started that process all over again. This time, Windows setup informed me that it lacked network drivers and couldn’t reach the internet. I briefly tried to find the right drivers on my other computer and then copy them over, but the right way to accomplish that eluded me. Luckily, I have a USB wifi adapter, so I grabbed that and Windows setup was able to work fine through it rather than the onboard wifi.

    With the drive reformatted, Windows was finally working properly on my laptop again. The process of getting there was just a pain well beyond what a normal user could deal with. Reset should have examined and fixed the drive permissions, and with it not solving the issue, I think most people would just be stuck. If I wouldn’t have had a wifi adapter around, I’d have gotten stuck with no way forward without running to a store.

    Going through Windows setup twice also drove home just how hostile Windows has become to users. Setup tries to get you into subscriptions to Microsoft 365 and Xbox and then leaves your computer littered with recommendations (ads) and unwanted software. The clean Microsoft install was better than the Lenovo-customized reset (which included more pre-installed software), but neither was a good experience. It’ll be a while before the computer feels properly personalized again.

  • My Career: Microsoft Edge

    The internet famously caught Microsoft unprepared. Netscape was the first widely used browser, but when Bill Gates redirected the company to focus on the internet, the ability to set the default browser for Windows allowed Internet Explorer to gain dominance. That lasted into the early 2000’s when first Firefox and then Chrome took advantage of Microsoft’s lack of investment in IE to take over the market. As its market share cratered, Microsoft started actually investing in IE again, but by that point its brand was tarnished with a reputation for missing features and poor performance.

    The later part of my work on Windows Phone had been leading a team of engineers that worked on the interface for Internet Explorer for Windows Phone 8.1, but that was fairly separated from the team working on Internet Explorer for desktop Windows. When the Windows and Windows Phone organizations merged together to work on Windows 10, the browser teams merged too. My team and I became one of the teams in the browser app group so that we could use our experience to continue delivering a mobile-friendly browser experience for the converged Windows 10.

    A combination of factors meant that the team could make a big bet. Internet Explorer’s brand image was considered to be badly tarnished, and everyone wanted Windows 10 to be a clear signal of a reset from Windows 8. Then we also were aiming to deliver an OS with apps that could be unified across computer and mobile form factors. With those combined, the decision was made to build a new browser with a new brand. Eventually, the branding folks would name it Microsoft Edge, but internally we were calling it Spartan.

    Spartan involved an entirely new application built as a universal Windows application using C++/CX and XAML. Then the rendering engine was forked from mshtml in order to allow for breaking Internet Explorer compatibility to pursue web standards and Chrome compatibility.

    In that effort, my team was in charge of the mobile interface, downloads experience, and gesture navigation. As the member of the broader Spartan team with the most background in XAML, I also got to play a large role in deciding on the overall app’s architecture to allow for sharing interface components across different presentation modes.

    It was a huge project to get Edge ready for release with Windows 10, so there were definitely some rough edges in that first version, but overall, I was pretty proud of what we delivered.

    At the time, Microsoft had an ambitious vision for the future with Windows as a seamless experience across desktops, laptops, phones, gaming consoles, virtual reality headsets, and mixed reality headsets. Execution towards that goal was uneven though. Within the Windows team, there was a culture that only “Big Windows” (desktop OS) mattered, so it wasn’t uncommon that phone builds would get broken by teams that just didn’t bother thinking about Windows Phone. Other initiatives, like the Creators Update and Paint 3D ended up being trimmed to the point of being disappointments. There were some great ideas in the mix though. One of my favorites was Continuum where a Windows Phone could be connected to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse and then present a desktop-like experience.

    Under Satya Nadella’s leadership, Microsoft’s ambitious vision for Windows started to wither. With Windows Phone considered a low priority and then cancelled, the entire idea of a unified OS across different types of consumer devices no longer made sense. It felt like Windows was done trying to build something interesting and instead was resigned to a gradual path towards irrelevance, at least on the consumer side of things. With that feeling of a lack of purpose for the team, I started looking for a way out of the Windows organization.