I can recount this because it is against myself.
This morning, I was in the middle of a PC session when a pop-up message
announced that the network connection had been lost. For convenience, I
decided to reboot the PC and hope the network had sorted itself out.
However, the PC failed to boot. It got to the first screen of system
checking and failed with "NTLDR not found". I powered down, then tried
again. Same result. Phoned systems support who diagnosed the NT loader
had failed (it's an NT workstation running Win2000) and suggested the hard
disk had failed. Prognosis: reimage or replace hard drive, lose all files
not backed up.
The PC went to the workshop, and shortly afterwards I got a call that the
problem was ... a floppy disk in the drive.
Comments: after twenty years of "Non-system disk" as the warning, some
"designer" thought "NTLDR is missing" was more informative, and the screen
did not hint that it was trying to boot from A: rather than C:. Secondly,
the problem occurred immediately after an unrelated failure, which had
precipitated action on the user's part.
Moral: design needs to take account of the user as well as the task. Among
the complexities of the design task are the need to anticipate what
happens when something goes wrong or is misused, rather than assume every
user is perfect on every occasion or can be blamed for system-induced
errors.
R. Allan Reese Email: [log in to unmask]
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