why is this product so popular?

So things have been moving along reasonably well in my new Windows world. Cygwin helps me get things done that the all-singing all-dancing interface doesn’t manage. I installed gkrellm to keep an eye on what it’s doing (since the command line is useless and the task manager’s performance metering is too limited).

Today I hit an obstacle.

I wanted to rename a folder/directory. I clicked to select it, used the right mouse button to select the ‘Rename’ option ant typed the new name. I am informed that there might be “a sharing violation.” Not that there was, or how it migth be resolved, just the possibility of one. Hmm. Permissions problems? On my local disk? Wha?! I tried a couple of variations. Nothing doing.

So I drop into the command line and do a simple ‘mv oldfolder newfolder’ and watch the CPU utilization spike to 100% on gkrellm. It stayed there a couple of hours, or as long as I watched it. Could be pegged still.

This is an 800 MHz machine — faster than anything else I’ve ever used — and it feels boggy slow periodically, but this was beyond anything else I had seen. So gummed up, it couldn’t send email. It could print, but slowly.