There is a forum called "windowssecrets.com" that has addressed (among many other things) the Karen's Replicator problem. If you haven't been following this, after a Windows 10 upgrade in April, Karen's Replicator would no longer create destination directories, thus no new files could be backed up unless they were going to an existing directory.

Go here for the full story.

In the most recent posts Satrow (a site administraator) said:

"Yes, we're going to release a fixed version to CD customers as soon as we can get a code signing certificate. In the meantime, there is a way around the install issue and the destination directory creation issue (the symptom of which is that it takes a long time, and never replicates new files).

They're (not well) documented on the Replicator download page, https://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptreplicator page.

We do have some pretty cool ideas for new features, but this next release will just fix these gotchas rather than rewrite much.

Cheers!

Joe"

and then a forum viewers posted this:

I've done some testing and just to let everybody know, here is the work-around as provided on the powertools web site:

Preface your Source AND Destination paths with [ \\?\ ] - without the brackets.

This will result in replications, File and Folder creations and deletions being successful.

I can't wait for the new version. ;-)

and I can verify that it does indeed work. As I type this, Karen's Replicator is busily, uhhh... replicating my C:\ drive given the parameters for source and destination as:

\\?\C:\
\\?\E:\Disk1\

Of course since it is the system drive I am replicating, there are some exclusions specified, most particularly the "Windows" directory. But my D:\, E:\, and F:\ drives will shortly follow, and I will no longer be under the shadow of CrashPlan.

This pleases me.

tanstafl.

Great, a brilliant tool

Two small bugs that will hopefully be fixed when WindowsSecrets comes out with the "new and improved" version.

1) Destination Drive always shows as having "-1 of -1 bytes free"
This is no big deal, it just doesn't show the true space available.

2) More serious. Apparently the Global Exclusions don't work.
This means backing up some files that don't need backing up, and makes the backup log really ugly with all the files I normally exclude that can't back up because of "File in use" or similar. Not a problem for me, but YMMV.

I also ran into a fixable problem when the extra \\?\ added to the directory paths ran me over the 256 character path length limit on about a dozen files in really deep sub-directories. To fix them I just made the filenames themselves a little bit less descriptive.

Example: D:\$ Music\_MP3s\CLASSICAL\Composers A-B\Beethoven, Ludwig van\The Piano Trios [Beaux Arts Trio], Disc 4\Beethoven - The Piano Trios Disc 4 - 06 - Beethoven-Trio in E flat, Op. 38 (after Septet, Op. 20)- VI. Andante con moto alla marcia - Presto.mp3

Yeah... That one is only 249 characters.

tanstaafl.

Thanks for this post, had this issue last night and I knew you'd mentioned it here

Microsoft has fixed whatever it was in their April update that killed the Replicator. The latest update to Windows 10 (#1709) allows the Replicator to run without the "\\?\" prefix in the Source and Destination paths. The Replicator now runs normally, with working Global Exclusions.

tanstaafl.

Thanks for the update

Glad that you have your trusted backup tool working again Doug. And it’s great Microsoft optimized the right places to be able to update and improve their OSes quickly. It also helps to be able to fix issues like this that come up while they continue to renovate a platform with a lot of history.

windows is certainly a lot better than it used to be, far fewer update related failures

I think it speaks volumes that you can still buy systems with Windows 7.

On another website I visit, the question was asked, "Why Windows 10? What happened to Windows 9?" and the answer, only somewhat tongue-in-cheek, was "Microsoft wanted to distance themselves as much as possible from Windows 8."

tanstaafl.

My daughter uses 10 and is ok with it. She learned early on to avoid Edge.

I tried 10 and found, with all the softwares I use, I was facing $4K to $5K just to regain the functionality I had in 7 (10 is old software unfriendly). So, I'm still using 7, just bought a new workstation class laptop with 7, and buying (today) a workstation with 7.

10 just seems to be an effort to ape IOS, but I have ipads for that...

Are you talking about the tile interface? I never use that. On most of my clients' computers I minimize that down to the weather widget and Office shortcuts.

For all intents and purposes, 10 is very much like 7. I don't like auto-updates, and I insist on using the control panel, but for the most part it feels the same to me...

Do you distrust Microsoft’s ability to update and improve the OS without creating ‘collateral damage’?

Does the distrust outweigh the advantages of rapid dissemination of newly released OS updates and patches?

For me, it speaks volumes about how much trust MS has to regain with their customer base, and the massive technical debt they have to pay off to do so.

It's always puzzled me why Windows users get so nervous about upgrades (both patches and new versions). Then I had to think back to my own experiences that are approaching 20 years old, and realize how it never really got better in that time. Meanwhile the world finally moved on and began recovering from the negative impact Microsoft's anti-trust illegal actions had, with competition slowly returning. Microsoft does not dominate consumer and enterprise worker computing like they once did with the rise of mobile and the total cost of MS's past solutions becoming clearer.

After the Balmer years, their need to compete properly again became strong enough that they are finally taking on the right work to change and improve. I overall like their new direction, and hope they can become a proper triple bottom line company alongside the rare others in the computing space that meet that bar.

Windows 8 to me was brilliant in that goal, but landed badly. Microsoft needs that room to experiment and move things forward, this time without illegal actions making barley shippable code something acceptable to press to a disc. Win 8 was still enough in the Balmer era that they thought they could still force their way forward like the old days, but it failed since it no longer works to force OEMs to buy unused licenses since consumers had a choice with Apple's rebound/mobile rise. It also still came across as a reaction to the rise of Mobile and old style "Windows Everywhere" monopoly thinking.

Win 10 on the other hand seems to be an attempt at a single OS with multiple UIs that adapt to where it's running. It's spanning the range now from AR glasses, phones (the few that exist), tablets, laptops, desktops, and game consoles. Then pieces are showing up in Windows Server 2016 where it makes sense, unlike the really odd Windows Server 2012 UI that was a copy of Win 8.

Microsoft is in a tough spot with how much legacy code they still drag behind them, and Win 10 has shown a few times where cutting that legacy hurt folks for a bit. They still have a long road in front of them, though so far the past few years of solid efforts have really paid off. I'm glad to see them once again taking lessons from general computing history and applying them properly in several areas, especially when it comes to providing competition in the "old but new" cloud computing hosting category.


Oh right, this was a story about Windows 9 and why it's not a thing. The true story is even more simple, and yet ties into much I typed above about legacy code.

When Microsoft began testing what many apps and installers do when they encounter a modern OS called Windows 9, they discovered a lot were running some ancient code paths. Which ones? The ones that decided Windows 9 = Windows 4.x, aka the Windows 95/98/ME series of releases that thankfully died off. And not the Windows version 6.x series meaning it's a different OS with very little in common, and started life known as Windows NT. Why? Well, so many ways to ask an OS what version it is, and lots of incorrect assumptions made 20-40 years ago. Oops. Under the hood for the first time in ages, they unified the version internally with the marketing name. Windows 10 = 10.0.buildnumber = NT side of the OS family.

Computers are terrible kids, remember that.

No, I suppose I could learn to live with that. What I mean is the app store and siri (cortana). I can totally understand why they want to do that, but it does me no good as I don't want that stuff outside of the ipads...



It's different in a lot of ways too, like most of my software, including MS stuff, wouldn't run on it. All the stuff I use does everything I need, I don't wanna spend thousands just to keep doing that same stuff.

Also, there's no XP virtual machine for the very few things I need that for. I started setting up vmware, but quickly decided there was more fun ways to spend a few hours.


What I'd really love to see is a desktop ipad with mouse and large screen, and could run quicken. That way maybe I could end the decades long nighmare of dealing with my friends' and family's never ending petty problems with windows.

I've finally accepted that sometimes legacy software has to be abandoned. What software can't you run on 10? I haven't had too many problems running old software.

The app store and Cortana are certainly iOS-like, but I have never once opened the app store on my laptop in the three years I've owned it. And I use Cortana in exactly the same way I've used Windows search since 7. I open the start menu and start typing to find the application or file I'm looking for. It works pretty well.


I really like the idea in theory. It's more secure. I've seen enough home users' computers that have gone a year or two without updates to know it's the right way to go. But I've also seen many cases where the updates actively break things. Even when they don't, it bothers me that things get changed without an option to bring them back. For example, they removed the link to the Control Panel from the context menu on the start button. I know they want people to stop using the control panel, but it's still there and I'm still using it and the average user has no idea about that particular context menu, so it seems weird to remove it.

But this is another thing that's very mobile OS and cloud service-like. The user experience gets changed without your input. But I don't have much of a choice in the matter, so I know I'm going to have to be the one to adjust. The only thing that will continue to worry me is that Microsoft hasn't earned the trust that they'll be good stewards of their own UI. What happens when they release the next major update to Windows 10? Will they keep the UI the same or decide to mix things up? Will the be the first time I'm forced to use 8/Vista/ME?