Friday, September 22, 2006

A Feature You Don't Ever Want to See

All of a sudden this past week, Windows XP SP2 stopped groggily (If you have never seen a Mac wake from sleep, it is stunning the first time you see it since OS X is ready to work with full WiFi in 5 seconds tops) but reliably waking up out of sleep mode, Windows was just hung tight, had to power off. This has happened a few times since yesterday and I haven't started the investigation yet, but I might not even bother since I am getting a MacBook Pro as my One Computer To Rule Them All and the day job is buying. Score!
Most of the time a Windows hang wouldn't matter because I have been conditioned by Windows past and present to save compulsively. But here is a downside to working with OS X part-time, I get lazy with saves sometimes because OS X sleep/wake cycle just works. So this Windows problem is hitting me hard because I was doing some development work for Approver.com (more on that in another post) and I was in the middle of a session when my train pulled into Penn Station and I had to put the ThinkPad to sleep and forgot to save everything first. I nearly cried and it was with concerted effort that I didn't stab a pencil through the LCD when I tried to wake the ThinkPad when I got into the office on the day job, and I had to hard reset. I actually didn't relaunch Visual Studio 2005 for a day because I wasn't looking forward to figuring out where I was when Windows keeled over.
But behold, I present the Visual Studio 2005 Recovered Files dialog, which was able to get all my work back

I had no idea this feature was added to Visual Studio 2005, but I am extremely grateful it is. I can only hope I don't need it much if ever again, and I hope this is the first and only time you lay eyes on it as well dear reader.