windows 7 - My computer freezes irregularly

My computer started to freeze at irregular times for 3 weeks now.

Please note that this question change with each things that i try. (For additional details)

What happens

• My computer freezes, the video stops. (No graphic glitches, it just stops)


• Sounds stops too.


• Sometimes, randomly, the screen on my G-15 keyboard flickers and I see characters not at the right places. Usually happens for about 1-2 seconds and a bit before my computer freezes.


• I have to keep the power button pressed for 4 seconds to shut my computer down.


• I still hear my hard drives and fans working.


• Sometimes it works with no problems for a full day, some other times it just keeps freezing each time I restart my computer and I have to leave it for the rest of the day.


• Sometimes my mouse freezes for a fraction of a second (Like 0.01 to 0.2 seconds) quite randomly, usually before it freezes.


• No errors spotted by the "Action center" unlike when I had problems with my last video card on this system (Driver errors).


• My G-15 LCD screen also freezes.


• Sometimes my G-15 LCD screen flickers and characters gets carried around temporary under heavy load.


• Now, most of the times, the BIOS hard disks boot order gets reversed for some reason and I have to put it to the right one and save each times I boot. (Might be unrelated, not sure, but it first started yesterday)

What I did so far

• I have had similar problems in the past and I had changed my hard drive (It was faulty), so I tested my software RAID-0 array and it was faulty so I changed it. (I reinstalled Windows 7 with this part). I also tested with unplugging my secondary hard drive.


• My CPU was running at about 100 degree Celsius, I removed the dust between the fans and the heat sink and it's now between 45-55.


• I ran a CPU stress-test and it didn't froze during the tests (using Prime95 on all cores)


• Ran a memory test (using memtest86+) for a single pass and there were no errors.


• Ran a GPU stress test with ati-tools and furmark and it didn't froze during the tests. (No artefacts either)


• I had troubles with my graphic card when I got it, but I think that it got fixed with a driver update.


• I checked the voltages in my BIOS setup and they all seemed ok (±0.2 I think).


• I have run on the computer without problems with Fedora 15 on an external hard drive (apart that it couldn't load Gnome 3 and was reverting to Gnome 2, didn't want to install drivers since I use it on multiple computers) I used it to back up my files from the raid array to my 1TB hard drive for the reinstallation of Windows. (So the crashes only happened on Windows) [The external hard drive is plugged directly on a SATA port]


• I contacted EVGA (My graphic card vendor) and pointed them on this question, I'm looking for an answer.


• Ran sensors on Fedora 15 and got this output: http://pastebin.com/0BHJnAvu


• Ran 6 short different CPU stress test on Fedora 15 (Haven't found any complete stress testers for Linux) and it didn't crash.


• Changed the thermal paste to some Artic Silver 5 for my CPU and stress tested the CPU, temperature was at 50 idle, then 64 highest and slowly went down to 62 during the test.


• Ran some stress testing with a temporary graphic card and it went ok.


• Ran furmark stress test with my original graphic card and it froze again. GPU had a temp of 74C, a CPU temp of 58C and a mobo temp of 40C or 45C (Dunno which one it is from SpeedFan).


• Ran a furmark stress test and a CPU stress test at the same time, results: http://pastebin.com/2t6PLpdJ


• I have been using my computer without stressing it for about 2 hours now and no crashes yet. I also have disabled the AMD Cool'n'quiet function on the BIOS for a more regular power to the CPU. When I ran Furmark without C'n'q my computer didn't freeze but I had a "Driver Kernel Error" that have recovered (And Furmark crashed) all that while running a CPU stress test. The computer eventually froze without me being at it, but this time my screen just went on sleep and I couldn't wake it.


• Using the stability tester in nTune my computer froze again (In the same manner as before). I noticed that Speedfan gives me a -12V of -16.97V and a -5V of -8.78V.


• I have swapped my G-15 with another basic USB keyboard (HP) and I have run furmark for about 10 minutes with a CPU stability test running each 60 seconds for 30 seconds and my computer haven't crashed yet.


• Ran some more extended tests without my G-15 and it freeze like it usually do.


• Removed the nForce Hard disk controller.


• Disabled command queuing in the NVIDIA nForce SATA Controller for both port 0 and port 1 (Errors from the logs)


• Used CPUID HwMonitor, here are the voltages: http://pastebin.com/dfM7p4jV


• Changed some configurations in the motherboard BIOS: Disabled PEG Link Mode, Changed AI Tuning to Standard, Disabled the 1394 Controller, Disabled HD Audio, Disabled JMicron RAID controller and Disabled SATA Raid.


• "A little hope", my computer frozen while watching a youtube video, but not from GPU and CPU 10 hours straight test.


• I have put my BIOS back to defaults and: Disabled PEG Link Mode, Disabled HD Audio, Disabled JMicron RAID Controler, Disabled Serial Port Address, Disabled Parallel Port Address and Disabled Onboard 1394 Controller.


• I changed the SATA cable for the 750GB hard drive and I also changed the slots at which they were plugged (1->2, 2->3, 3->4).


• Changed the power saving feature of my graphic card from "Adaptive" to "Maximum performance".


• Ran ECGA OC Scanner and got no freeze and no artifacts


• I installed the Logitech drivers for my G-15 keyboard and my G-500 mouse and it restarted to freeze.


• I removed the Logitech drivers for my G-15 keyboard and my G-500 mouse and it still freeze.


• After changing everything except the hard drives, graphic card and power supply my computer is running very fine and I haven't run into any problems (This is with the exact same install of Windows that I had problems with my old motherboard). After removing my motherboard I have found some cambered capacitors (2) which might be the source of the problems. Since it almost clearly was a motherboard problem caused by these capacitors I am going to accept the answer that is the most related to this solution.

When it happens

• When I play video games (Mostly)


• When I play flash games (Second most)


• When I'm looking at my desktop background (It rarely happens when I have a window open, but it does, sometimes)


• When my Graphic card and my CPU are stressed.


• Sometimes when my Graphic card is stressed.


• Sometimes when my CPU is stressed.

Specs

• Windows Seven x64 Home Premium


• Motherboard: M2N-SLI Deluxe


• Graphic card: EVGA GTX 570 (The non-oc one) [nVidia driver version 275.33 from EVGA's website]


• CPU: AMD Phenom 9950 x2 @ 2.6GHz


• Memory: Kingston 4x2GB Dual Channel (Pretty basic memory sticks)


• Hard drives: Was 2x250GB (Western digital caviar) in raid-0 + 1TB (WD caviar black), I replaced the raid array with a 750GB (WD caviar black) [Yes I removed the array from the raid configurations]


• 750W Power supply


• No overclocking. Ever.


• There have been some power-downs like 4-5 weeks ago, but the problem didn't start immediately after. (I wasn't home, so my computer got shut-down)


• Event logs (Warnings, errors and critical errors) for the last 24 hours: http://pastebin.com/Bvvk31T7

I would like to thank everyone who have been participating, it's really nice to see that much people ready to help others. There was many great answers that might help other people with similar problems in the future (at least I hope so).

In this situation, how can I successfully pin-point the current hardware problem? (If it's a hardware problem)

Answer

100 deg C is WAY too hot! It's possible that your processor has already incurred some damage. But in the interest of being optimistic, I'd say to run memtest86 for another 2 passes to be sure it's not the memory. Are you sure the timings and speeds are being detected correctly?

Did you check your motherboard for bad/puffy capacitors? If it's not your motherboard, then your PSU is either going bad on you, or is insufficient to power your hardware. That sounds like the most likely cause to me.

Use CoreTemp to measure CPU temps, since it's one of the most accurate programs around. Don't use ATI Tool, as it's incompatible with Windows 7. Try RivaTuner instead.

Windows Update can't install Windows Vista SP1

If you install Windows Vista RTM and run Windows Update, many updates are offered and will successfully install. Once all other updates are installed, Windows Vista service pack 1 is offered.

When you attempt to install Windows Vista service pack 1, the service pack installation wizard appears, presenting the license agreement and so on. However, shortly after the installation starts the wizard disappears. Windows Update says that the update was installed successfully. However, service pack 1 is not in fact installed, and will be detected as needed again on the next update check. Repeat ad nauseum.

On checking the Windows Update log (WindowsUpdate.log) the client version is 6.0.6000.nnn or 6.0.6001.nnn. There is a message saying "Skipping SelfUpdate check based on the /SKIP directive in wuident".

There may also be an error 0x80190194 appearing, associated with the URL http://update.microsoft.com/vista/windowsupdate/redir/vistawuredir.cab.

Why won't service pack 1 install properly and how do I fix it?

Answer

The underlying problem is that the Windows Update self-update mechanism is not working.

In order to successfully install Service Pack 1 you need at least Windows Update version 7.6.7600.256. Windows Vista RTM ships with version 6.0.6000.16386, and this version will not self-update because the file wuident.cab (as of the version digitally signed July 14, 2012) provided by Microsoft's Windows Update servers contains an explicit instruction that WU versions 6.0.6000 and 6.0.6001 should not self-update. It is not clear why.

There may be one or more missing files on Microsoft's servers, because error 0x80190194 means that a 404 (File Not Found) error was received from the web server. However, this error does not occur if you are using a WSUS server, but the client still won't self-update. It is therefore possible that error 0x80190194 is not directly related to the problem.

Microsoft Support advised me that the problem is being worked on and that a KB article will be released in due course. They did not give me an ETA. Addendum: two years and counting. I think it safe to assume that the problem is unlikely to resolved at this point!

There are two ways to work around this issue:

1. Download and install Windows Update version 7.6.7600.320 using the download links provided in Microsoft's Knowledge Base Article KB2887535. Although no download link is provided for Windows Vista, the Windows 7 version installed successfully when I tried it. (Note: this download was not available when I originally wrote this answer, and I have not tested it on a Windows Vista RTM system. If you have done so, please let me know. The third-party download I originally linked to is no longer available.)




2. Download and run the off-line version of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (or the all languages version) from the Microsoft Download Center. This will take longer to download and install than using Windows Update, but is officially supported.

In either case, once Service Pack 1 is installed, Windows Update will offer some additional updates and then Service Pack 2. Service Pack 2 should install successfully.

Note: Microsoft provides free phone support for problems installing service packs. See Microsoft's support page for the contact number for your area. In some countries this may be a toll call.

How does Windows 7's activation works?

I know there have been issues with it and some of its predecessors and I've run into some of those, but I still don't understand all that is going on. Some specific questions.

• Can a given key be transferred to another machine? If so, will it require a phone call?


• Will an activation revert with hardware changes? If so, what hardware?


• Are there any counts/limits on activations?


• How do activations work if I am using virtualization? Will a single activation work for a Bootcamp image (dual boot) on a Mac as well as a Parallels/VMWare Fusion instance (virtualization)?


• What is the countdown listed when a system has not been activated?


• Are there differences between developer, consumer and business copies?


• Can I activate without an internet connection?


• Can different activation keys enable different functionality?

Answer

• Can a given key be transferred to another machine? If so, will it require a phone call?

depends on how many times it was used

• Will an activation revert with hardware changes? If so, what hardware?

yes, i seem to remember it being based on the quantity of hardware changes

• Are there any counts/limits on activations?

yes

• How do activations work if I am using virtualization? Will a single activation work for a Bootcamp image (dual boot) on a Mac as well as a Parallels/VMWare Fusion instance (virtualization)?

if the virtual hardware looks like different devices to the OS no

• What is the countdown listed when a system has not been activated?

time before it limits functionality to only activation

• Are there differences between developer, consumer and business copies?

yes - for detailed licensing answers check the MS website

• Can I activate without an internet connection?

yes - requires phone-call

• Can different activation keys enable different functionality?

yes - all versions of 7 for a single architecture are on the DVD to facilitate the "anytime upgrade" functionality

Refurbished computer have unwanted "user" folders, can't delete

I bought a refurbished computer, installed with Windows 10.

I have copied the folders/documents into an established user folder (named 'aaaa').

The problem is that there are 2 other user folders ('aa', and 'aaa') which i can't delete, as well as being unable to rename the 'aaaa' folder to something more appropriate.

Each time I try to rename the 'aa', or 'aaa' folders I get "The action cannot be completed... folder or file is open in another program'

There is no rename option for 'aaaa'..

If I try to do anything else with 'aaaa', I get either a warning saying I don't have access. Or a 'permissions' denial with the reference 'S-1-5-21-4185342265-3133696845-3663335998-1001'..

I'm at a loss.

ntfs - How do I delete a file that Windows says doesn't exist?

This is a very similar problem to this QA ( How can I delete a file that "Does not exist" ), except I'm on an entirely Windows computer, whereas the OP in that question was SSHing to a NAS running Linux.

I was using git with GitKraken and was performing a merge that I later aborted. During the merge I was diffing two files from two commits in the same branch and git (or GitKraken - I'm not sure who was responsible for the file, exactly) created two files on-disk representing a merge-conflicted file, each file represents the file's state from each commit.

When I was done, I tried to delete the files (it failed to clean-up after itself) - one of the two files was deleted successfully, but the other file cannot be deleted.

• The file exists on a local volume (a Samsung PCI-Express NVMe SSD )


• The volume is formatted NTFS 3.1 running Windows Server 2016


• The file appears in Windows Explorer and dir (see screenshot above)



• Attempting to perform any operation on the file in Windows explorer, including Move, Rename, Delete, and Shift+Delete, results in this error message:

  
  

  
  

  Item Not Found
  Could not find this item
  This is no longer located in C:\git\redacted\
  Verify the item's location and try again.

  
  

  DemoServiceClient.cs~WIP
  Type: File
  Size: 8.35KB
  Date modified: 2017-12-14 12:30

  
  

  [Try Again] [Cancel]

  
  




• The File Properties dialog is empty:

  
  

  




• The File Properties dialog's Security tab says:

  
  

  
  

  The requested security information is either unavailable or can't be displayed

  
  




• The total filename length is 130 characters, well within MAX_PATH (260 characters)




• The file appears in dir /a as a normal file (i.e. not an NTFS link or reparse point):

  
  

   Directory of C:\git\redacted
  2017-12-14  12:36              .
  2017-12-14  12:36              ..
  2017-12-14  12:30             8,559 DemoServiceClient.cs~WIP.
              1 File(s)          8,559 bytes
              2 Dir(s)  223,416,360,960 bytes free
  




• Running del DemoServiceClient.cs~WIP gives me this error:

  
  

  
  

  Could Not Find C:\git\redacted\DemoServiceClient.cs~WIP`

  
  




• chkdsk reported no issues:

  
  

  Stage 1: Examining basic file system structure ...
    1140992 file records processed.
  File verification completed.
    19089 large file records processed.
    0 bad file records processed.
  Stage 2: Examining file name linkage ...
    1527444 index entries processed.
  Index verification completed.
    0 unindexed files scanned.
    0 unindexed files recovered to lost and found.
  Stage 3: Examining security descriptors ...
  Security descriptor verification completed.
    193227 data files processed.
  CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
    34291080 USN bytes processed.
  Usn Journal verification completed.
  Windows has scanned the file system and found no problems.
  No further action is required.
   499526655 KB total disk space.
   290439980 KB in 856509 files.
      464848 KB in 193228 indexes.
           0 KB in bad sectors.
     1258155 KB in use by the system.
       65536 KB occupied by the log file.
   207363672 KB available on disk.
        4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
   124881663 total allocation units on disk.
    51840918 allocation units available on disk.
  

mac - How to recover from Insert Key when using Apple Remote Desktop

If I happen to press the Insert key when connected to a remote Mac from another Mac via Apple Remote Desktop, I loose the ability to send further keystrokes to the remote computer.

Whilst in this 'mode':

• the remote computer stops responding to any keyboard input (but mouse input works as normal)


• the mouse cursor changes to a question mark when hovering over things like text fields (within programs on the remote host).


• typing continues to work as normal within programs on the local machine (just not the via the remote session).


• closing and reconnecting to the remote host does not resolve the problem.

I happen to be using a non-Apple branded, but otherwise fairly standard usb keyboard (with a Windows key).

The only way I've found to recover from this is to use the mouse to log the remote user out of the remote computer, then log back in.

What's going on here? Can I resolve the problem without having to log out? What can I do to prevent entering this 'mode' in the first place?

How to install AMD driver for ATI Dynamic Switchable Graphics in Windows 7?

I have a ATI Dynamic Switchable Graphics on a HP Pavilion g7 (hp pavilion g7-1246ef).

I had some graphics problems with this VGA card in Linux and I found (here) that I have this double-VGA type of GPU (if my terms are correct). I gave up using Linux on that PC but now I want to have a bit more control in Windows (7). The system works fine in windows, but sometimes the cooler gets noisy for minute tasks and I guess that is because the discrete card is used: I want to be able to control the way this works.

It seems that I have 2 VGA controllers:

• One on-CPU Intel for energy-efficiency


• One discrete card (an ATI/AMD Radeon HD 6470M in your case) for rendering.

I searched here for the Catalyst Control Center utility (the one presented here)

But when I try to install the catalyst_mobility_32-bit_util.exe, I get this:

When I try to use the AMD Driver Autodetect (from here), the same error happens (although for some reason this utility chooses the 7xxxM series instead of 6xxxM series).

---

Following Ramhound's comments, I searched specifically for an OEM driver (AMD driver modified by HP) and found (here only 64-bit version for Win7 and Win 8 versions. The Win8-32bit manager installs on the system but then reports that it cannot find any drivers.

---

To sum up, the AMD Catalyst Install Manager can be installed from here (called "Latest AMD Catalyst™ Drivers for Radeon™ R9 200, R7 200, HD 7000, HD 6000 and HD 5000 Series") but then it looks useless to me. I cannot run it, although it looks installed in add/remove list. The installation procedure has these stages:

But the folder C:\Program Files\ATI Technologies is empty!

What should I do?

---

Can this be because of the Intel Graphics and Media Control Center which is installed?

Answer

Thanks to the advice given by and31415 (in the comments under other question) I was able to install the Catalyst driver and the Catalyst Control Center (and the rest of the Catalyst/AMD suite).
The advice was to find first the harware's id.

(See - How To Find Unknown Device Drivers By Their Vendor & Device ID)

I will paste here the comments:

"The AMD card ID is PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_6760&SUBSYS_1672103C&REV_00, which corresponds to Radeon (TM) HD 6470M. Despite the fact no 32-bit driver seem to be available, the 64-bit package actually contains both. Make sure to uninstall the current driver, restart, and then install the one provided by HP. As for the Intel card, the 32-bit package for Windows 8 is compatible with Windows 7 as well."

So, the driver and the CCC application that I had to install were those modified by HP (downloaded from here). As stated in the comment, I used the 64-bit AMD driver and the Intel Win8 32-bit driver on a Win 7 32-bit system. This also confirms the comments made above by Ramhound on using the OEM drivers.

---

This is the answer to the present question.

However, I have to add that after a short while I noticed that the Catalyst AMD/ATI driver was taking a lot of resources, which made me doubt that I needed that in fact. It is intended for game playing and other intense use of the GPU, but I do not need that. In fact, I was just searching for a proper driver that would make the fans as quite as possible while keeping the system safe. The AMD driver and card are made for high-energy consuming tasks and the fans would by used more in such cases; so, fans were not quieter, on the contrary (one is incited by CCC to add more applications to the list of apps using the discrete card); while the Task Manager was showing oddly 6-7 instances of the ATI driver each using 25-50 MB of RAM (and that did not happen before).

The solution that works for now is:

• Keeping the Intel driver from HP (which is designed for Windows 8 but works in 7)




• Uninstalling the AMD driver and CCC from HP and using Windows update to install the latest AMD driver (there is no CCC there though). That brought me close to what I was looking for.

(For gaming and other GPU intensive use the OEM driver with CCC may still be the best solution.)

Why is this macro not working correctly in Excel 2010?

Well, I'm curious as to why this macro isn't working.

The macro is supposed to work like this. I have a cell with black background and black text. What is supposed to happen is that this cell's background is supposed to turn to white once the macro has been clicked.

When I record this macro, what happens is that when I click this macro, whichever cell(s) has been highlighted will get the white background, instead of that particular cell.

I have about 25 cells I want this to happen to, but I want them to have their own individual macro. So whenever, in the macro code, it needs to mention the cell's name, simply put something like 'C/L' (cell location) or whatever, just to tell me.

All help is appreciated. :)

Here is the faulty macro code that I am using:

Sub CaseOpen1()
'
' CaseOpen1 Macro
'

'
    With Selection.Interior
        .Pattern = xlSolid

        .PatternColorIndex = xlAutomatic
        .ThemeColor = xlThemeColorDark1
        .TintAndShade = 0
        .PatternTintAndShade = 0
    End With
End Sub

Once again, all help appreciated. :)

Answer

The "With Selection" in your code causes it to operate on the highlighted (selected) cell. What you need to do instead is to declare which cell you want the macro to operate on.

Sub CaseOpen1()
'
' CaseOpen1 Macro
'
    Dim rng As Range                   '// declare 'rng' as variable of type Range
    Set rng = ActiveSheet.Range("A1")  '// assign the cell to be acted on to 'rng'
    With rng.Interior                  '// change color of 'rng' rather than Selection
        .Pattern = xlSolid

        .PatternColorIndex = xlAutomatic
        .ThemeColor = xlThemeColorDark1
        .TintAndShade = 0
        .PatternTintAndShade = 0
    End With
End Sub 

windows 10 - use winkey for other software in win 10

I want to set winkey +z as hotkey for third party software(specifically "Everything") in win 10.

---

when I press winkey nothing show in field ,and I remember it will show "Win" in win 7.
I think the reason is the default behavior(show start menu) has priority. So, how can I finish this job? my ideas:

• use autohotkey(never used before,not know whether work) to set hotkey


• similar to first,but just remove default behave of winkey so I can use
  I think the best way is just to get higher priority for winkey . Which way is best?how?

Answer

I search the web not find a perfect way to do this,maybe like someone suggest I shouldn't take priority over Windows(I do think Windows should offer preference to set its hotkey),so I make compromise to change my hotkey .By the way ,I don't want to learn using AutoHotKey for now.

cpu - Why are so few applications 64-bit?

I've come to realize nearly every application I use is for 32-bit processors. Why are most programs still like this, considering almost all PC's on the market now seem to be 64-bit. Is there any real advantage to using 64-bit programs?

Answer

On Windows (and possibly other 64-bit operating systems), 32 bit applications are supported. One possible advantage of a 32 bit application is therefore greater portability.

The main advantage of a 64 bit application is that it can access 4GB or more of memory as a flat address space. However, relatively few applications benefit from that. The disadvantage of a 64 bit application is that every pointer takes up 8 bytes of memory instead of 4 bytes. This means that program code and data structures take up more memory, which means they can be slower. How much slower varies a lot. It's possible for a 64 bit application to be a tad faster, due to memory alignment issues, though my guess is that the larger memory footprint will outweigh this for a while.

As processors get more optimised for 64 bit code, and less optimised for 32 bit, over time - and as the savings get less relevant compared with the hassles - these issues will become as irrelevant as the potentially slightly better efficiency of 16 bit code for applications that only need 64K of memory. To some degree that's already happening - but as long as lots of people keep hanging on to Windows XP, the portability issue will remain.

On Linux, "old 32 bit apps" are virtually a non-issue. Because source code is available for most software, either a 32 bit or 64 bit compile is usually just as easy to get, even for old apps. If you're using 64 bit Linux, all your apps are probably compiled as 64 bit code - I haven't checked whether any 32-bit binary support is included in 64-bit Linux even though I use 64-bit Linux every day, because it's a non-issue.

bash - How do I reload .inputrc?

Background

I have heard that the readline module is reading ~/.inputrc and that is how it changes the behaviour of keystrokes under programs such as bash.

Question

How can I reload this after editing to see the changed behaviour without restarting my terminal program?

Answer

By default, C-x C-r is bound to re-read-init-file.

See the Bash Reference Manual for explanation.

windows 10 - How do I run cmd as admin from a batch file without clicking yes or no

How do I run cmd as admin from a batch file without clicking yes or no. I have figured out how to auto run a bat file from a USB, now all I need to figure out is how to run cmd as admin without clicking yes or no and without a prompt asking for consent.

Plus: this will be for a admin user

freeze - Windows 7 freezing randomly

I have a dual boot under W7 x86 and W7 x64. Both are freezing randomly. sometimes the HDD led is fully on. Waiting only brings sometimes a black screen. here is when It freezes

• Playing a game, mostly AC


• Running chrome sometimes freeze while loading a page


• Seems it is rarer in 32 bit


• Sometimes, when I try to stop the screensaver, it is not responding (keyboard + mouse) which let me think that it froze while sleeping since I have to hard reboot since #3. Note that CD ROM reader is working.

Here is my config :

GPU: Nvidia GT 610
PSU: Antec EA-430 Green
CPU: AMD Athlon X2 64 5000+ @2.6GHz
RAM: 8 Gigs Kingston

Also, the ACPI is s1 &s3.
Finally, it seems that freezes came by session : I get a freeze after a long time and then I reboot, then I can get several freezes quickly. It makes me think it's b/c of overheating but I ran a GPU stress test and it get past 100 °C w/o freezing. Besides, according the following charts, it doesn't get past 90 - 95° C.

Here is a chart of my log while playing until it freeze (open in a new tab to enlarge):

A second one uring an other session of gaming:. I usually overclock my GPU from 810 MHz to 830 MHz but this time:

I ran a GPU stress test and it is boiling (get past 100° C) without any freeze. Stop there to avoid burning out my GPU

UPDATE #3

I removed the latest version of the nForce drivers into a lower one, it seems freezes in game are rarer.( I got one after)

So,

• What can I try to solve the freezes ?


• Is it worth upgrading my config? please use arguments

UPDATE #4

It froze while poking around in the BIOS.

I must also precise that I don't have any inverter I had one but it was dead since some times - perhaps the freezes started just after. Anyway, I bought one just now. We'll see.

UPDATE #5

I manually tested my Power Supply, it displayed 12.36 for +12V, and didn't seemed to change anything. However it seems I applied too much thermal paste on my CPU (grey one).

UPDATE #6

I cleaned the cpu and the paste but i stil got freezes...

Answer

Man, I had a similar problem some time ago, and it was driving me crazy!
So, that's what solved my problem: change the Memories of slot.

I started to think what changes I did until this problem came annoy me, and then I realize that I had bought a new FAN for my FX-8350 and I've needed to change the memories of slot because of the size of the FAN, then I turned on the PC and performed a stress test of Memory, at some point the Windows Freezes, so that were the problem.
I changed the FAN and put the memories back on the original slots, then the problem disappeared!

Hope this help! :)

Edit: This could also be a motherboard slot problem or a memory problem.

macos - Move Mac OS Hard Drive from One Mac to Another

I currently have two Mac Minis, one is the current gen, another is a 2009 model both loaded with OS X Lion. I am trying to boot the new Mac Mini with the hard drive pulled from the old one using a SATA to USB adapter. When booting, I pressed and held the Alt key. When the old hard drive appears as an external drive, I choose that drive to boot the Mac. That's when the prohibitory sign appears on the screen.

Windows 10 Pro 1709 update to 1803, 1809 or 1903?

I am using Windows 10 Pro 1709 (OS build 16299.1087).

The update settings are as follows:

• "Semi-Annual Channel"


• 365 days delay of feature updates


• 30 days delay of quality updates

Now Windows has downloaded update 1803 x64 2019-07B and wants to install it by restart. However, I have postponed this so far.

Since I use my PC professionally I want a stable running system.

I know that there quality and stability issues with 1803 and 1809. So my question is: Should I update to 1803, 1809 or 1903 to get the most stable system?

Answer

I am using Windows 10 Pro 1709 (OS build 16299.1087).

Windows 10 version 1709 End of Service (EOS) date was back on April 9, 2019. So if you want a stable system you should immediately upgrade to one of the supported versions. Windows 10 version 1803 will reach End of Service on November 12, 2019.

Windows 10 version 1809 and Windows 10 version 1903 will each End of Service on May 12, 2020 and December 8, 2020 respectfully. The next feature update (19H2) will be a cumulative update for 1903. This likely will result in an extension of the End of Service date to 1903 more than likely.

Since I use my PC professionally I want a stable running system.

Windows 10 version 1809 and Windows 10 version 1903 are both considered stable. The majority of the issues that were blocking users from 1903 have actually been resolved. Most issues that exist on Windows 10 version 1903 also are also a problem for Windows 10 version 1809 (outside issues specific to Windows Sandbox).

I know that there quality and stability issues with 1803 and 1809. So
my question is: Should I update to 1803, 1809 or 1903 to get the most
stable system?

Those stability issues have been resolved for months. Windows 10 version 1709 has numerous issues that are open currently, so it's not like that particular version of Windows 10, isn't without it's own flaws. At the end of the day, most Windows 10 issues, apply the majority of the features. It's only when an issue is specific to a feature, that only exists within a single Windows 10 version, is a feature release affected by that issue.

I plan to go for 1809. As I mentioned in my question the system already downloaded 1803. How do I avoid the installation of 1803 and go directly to 1809?

You should use the Disk Cleanup tool to cleanup the temporary files, then download a Windows 10 1809 ISO, and perform the upgrade to Windows 10 1809 by mounting the image within Windows.

Relevant Information:

Windows 7 Installer Constantly Running

I'm running Windows 7 RC. Recently I noticed that my CPU was being pegged by msiexec.exe. Another symptom is that when I try to uninstall applications from the control panel I see this error:

"Another program is being installed. Please wait until that installation is complete, and then try installing this software again."

It's like the installer service is performing an installation in the background. I've rebooted several times, but nothing has worked.

Is there a way to get the msiexec service to forget about whatever installation it's trying to perform?

Thanks for any help!

Answer

Solved:
Disabled the Windows Installer service in the administrative services list.

Reboot.

Re-enable the service (set to manual start)

Reboot.

windows 7 - outlook freezes on splash screen - loading profile

I have a user with a frustrating application crash issue without Outlook:

Windows 7 x64 Outlook 2010 crashes on the splash screen with the message "loading profile." I have deleted the users .ost file in "..\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\" and this crash occurs for multiple users including those with administrator privileges.

I have also tried running outlook at the command prompt as an admin with the /safe command-line switch.

I tried the repair utility in "programs and features by clicking Change after selecting Microsoft Office:" ~~ Microsoft office failed to successfully repair your product . I tried to uninstall Microsoft Office ~~ Microsoft Office failed to successfully uninstall this product.

I am trying to avoid reimaging the machine for obvious reasons. Is there anything else I can try or insight any one has on this issue?

windows - Serve up PC hard drive as USB mass storage

Is there a software package available that can serve up a hard-drive internal to a PC and make it available over USB to other USB Master nodes as mass storage?

Ex: take your C: or /dev/hda drive on a PC (let's call the computer PC-A), and run a driver program which makes your C: or /dev/hda drive available to external devices as USB mass storage. When you'd hook up another PC (PC-B) to PC-A via USB, it would detect a USB mass storage device, which is C: or /dev/hda on PC-A.

Is this even possible?

---

EDIT: I know that there are other ways of making data on a drive available between two different computers (eg. putting PC-A's hdd in a USB-drive-enclosure, or having PC-A make the hdd available via a network share). But I'd like to know if the method that I describe above is even technically possible.

Answer

No.

If you use a normal cable, the hosts will both try to provide power over the usb cable causing a short with the end result ranging from fried usb ports to dead motherboards. You need to buy a special USB to USB transfer cable with a controller somewhere between the jacks.

windows 7 - Word freezes when I open a second document

I have Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2013 installed (v15.0.4797.1000) on Windows 7 Ultimate edition and all of the relevant patches installed that I'm aware of. Whenever I open two documents side by side, my CPU jumps to 16%-18% for the WINWORD.EXE process and both documents suffer from extended freezes of 5-30 seconds each.

I've tried the following:

1. Applying all Windows 7 & Office Updates


2. Disabling all Microsoft Office Add-Ins


3. Running winword.exe /a from the command line per this question: Microsoft Word 2010 crashing when opening a second Word document while first is still open


4. Disabling Antivirus (latest version of Norton Security)


5. Disabling Dropbox (since it seems to have a weird sidebar thing)


6. Rebooting


7. Disabling Hardware Acceleration for Word


8. Disabling Ultramon and AquaSnap (apps that provide additional window management capabilities).


9. Updating Norton Security, UltraMon and AquaSnap


10. Reviewing ProcessMonitor and ProcessExplorer to determine if anything is touching those files which shouldn't be.


11. Extensively searching Google, StackOverflow, SuperUser, etc for answers

I can't for the life of me figure out what's going on or where else I should be looking. I noticed this happening in the last 2-3 weeks but I haven't had any hardware changes since December.

Computer: Core i7 Extreme CPU, 64GB RAM, 512GB SSD, 4TB spinning metal drive, plenty of free disk space, 4GB GeForce GTX 970 MSI video card, etc. There's no good reason I can see that's hardware related.

Anyone have any ideas where else I should be looking? This is driving me nuts and I have a lot of reports I need to be writing but with Word locking up, I'm not making much progress.

Answer

This had "something" to do with saving. I had auto-save set to save every 1 minute and if I manually saved a document, the CPU usage in Word would spike a bit and it would lock up.

I have various theories about specifically what was going on. The issue was limited to a specific set of documents which were created by a template. However after ripping out all of the metadata from those documents and deleting the template setting within Word (pointing it back to the "Normal.dot" template), it didn't really seem to make a difference.

I also looked into the possibility of it flaking out due to OneDrive and did pretty much everything I could to remove/disable it. Nothing seemed to matter.

Eventually, I uninstalled & upgraded to Word 2016 and the problem seems to have gone away. Thanks to anyone who looked at this. I'll keep Procdump in mind for next time something like this happens.

windows 10 - Keyboard typing random letters

I am running Windows 10 build 18945 and random applications (most of them) are getting typed in random letters. I have found many things saying check your input language but i only have one that is English (US).

And the random letter a key will type is not always the same. I can hold down 'a' for instance and it'll type a series of numbers and letters. So it is not consistent

Example, copy and pasted holding down 'a'

d9wmw9dmdkdjw9wmwjw9woekwoiwmwekwnd

One of the only applications that correctly recognizes the input is Firefox

Pretty sure it isn't a hardware issue, because it is not in all applications.

This is an integrated keyboard in the Lenovo ThinkPad T430s

It also seems to be intermittent

EDIT If i remember right, this started around disabling credential and device guard (I can't use any emulator/virtualization with them on because the virtualization is then exclsuively used by Hyper-V, and i needed to run Intel HAXM)

Answer

I was having this exact problem. I work IT and found it rather annoying after performing a ton of troubleshooting steps from changing keyboards to trying to configure Windows settings. It was also happening on both my laptops.

I then came across an article from another IT person who said it was his Kaspersky/Zone Alarm anti-keylogger. Which is a program I don't use, though I do use Sophos which has a similar function. He was able to update Zone Alarm and it worked. I uninstalled Sophos and watched as the list of components were removed. As soon as the keylogger was removed it started to work again. Check your anti-virus! I will be reaching out to Sophos for an answer.

command line - How to specify a space as part of a wildcard string for bulk renaming of files

I have approximately 1200 songs in a folder whose filenames are structured as follows:

artist_name - song_name.mp3

For example:

Billy Joel - Piano Man.mp3
The Beatles - Nowhere Man.mp3

I'd like to use DOS commands in Windows PowerShell to do a bulk rename of these files to remove the space on either side of the hyphen. I don't want to remove all spaces, however. The basic problem is to be able to include spaces in the filename specs in order to change " - " to "-" in all files in a directory. Here are some examples of what I'd like to change:

Existing filenames

Billy Joel - Piano Man.mp3
The Beatles - Nowhere Man.mp3

Desired filenames

Billy Joel-Piano Man.mp3

The Beatles-Nowhere Man.mp3

Can someone think of a DOS command that could be executed at the command prompt to make such a change on all files in the directory?

I've found that to list all such files with a DIR command, I can use:

DIR asterisk+doublequote+space+hyphen+space+doublequote+asterisk+dot+asterisk

I had to write it out that way because the actual syntax appears to be treated as formatting instructions here in this forum.

This lists all files which have the 3-character string of space-hyphen-space.

Surely, there must be a way.

Answer

You can run this command:

ls | %{ ren $_ ($_.name -replace ' - ','-') }

using Powershell. This replaces {space}-{space} with -.

windows 7 - Win 7 crashes, PC reboots and says "Hard drive 0 not found" until I turn if off and on again

I recently made the move from Windows XP to Windows 7. Since then, when my computer is on for a few hours it always ends up rebooting without warning. Then the BIOS won't recognize my hard drive (hard drive 0 not found).

If I turn off my computer and then on again, it boots normally.

Some details:

• Dell Dimension 9150


• Windows 7


• I updated the BIOS



• I updated all system drivers with the latest version from Dell (SATA, Chipset, etc.)


• Other drivers updated too (Graphic card, sound, etc.)

There is one thing that I tried after some Googling: I turned off the DMA access to the drives, but it's still rebooting after a few hours.

Any clue?

UPDATE 2010/12/13

Here are the events from the Event Log for today, from when I turned the computer on until it crashed:

19:17 - Error - ID 10016 - DistributedCom

20:06 - Error - ID 1008 - Customer Improvement Program (could not send data to Microsoft)

21:48 - Critical - ID 41 - Kernel-Power (System was restarted without proper shutdown)

21:48 - Error - ID 6008 - EventLog (Previous system down was not planned)

21:48 - Error - ID 1101 - EventLog (Audit Event ignored)

21:49 - Error - ID 10016 - DistributedCom

Both DistributedCom events have a description along these lines (translated from French):

The authorisation parameters specific to the application are not allowing Local Execeution for the COM server application with the CLSID
{C97FCC79-E628-407D-AE68-A06AD6D8B4D1}
and the APPID
{344ED43D-D086-4961-86A6-1106F4ACAD9B}

to the SID AUTHORITY NT\User System (S-1-5-18) from the address LocalHost (LRPC usage). This security authorisation can be changed with the Component service administration tool.

UPDATE 2010/12/31

Here are the error messages I have on blue screens :
STOP C000007xA - Kernel_Data_Inpage_Error
"Unkown hard error"
C00000135 - Can't start because &hs is missing

Answer

Kernel_Data_Inpage_Error

indicates an error reloading memory that was paged (swapped out) to disk. I'd run a check on the hard disk; it sounds like you might have something failing there.

windows 7 - Is it possible to repair the boot sector on an external hard drive?

Is it possible to repair the boot sector of an external hard drive

1. without a Windows installation disk,



2. without any CD-burning capabilities,


3. and without a USB key drive?

In other words, I have an external hard drive with Windows 7 on it, hooked up via USB on a hard drive dock, whose MBR I want to fix. I imagined simply downloading a utility, running it, selecting this external hard drive (A:\), and hitting "Go." So far, I haven't been able to find such a utility.

Why?

My only USB memory stick appears to have called it quits, and I don't have any blank CDs to burn. I have a genuine Windows 7 installation disk, but I get this error when I try to enter the "Repair" option:

This version of System Recovery Options is not compatible with the version of Windows you are trying to repair.

Background

I just wanted to upgrade from my 250GB SSD to a 750GB SSD—both happen to be the same make and model, in fact.

I used EaseUS Backup, selecting the "Optimize SSD" and "Sector by Sector" options. It finished in about an hour.

When attempting to boot from the new drive, BIOS did detect the device, listing it under bootable devices, but selecting the device only led back to the boot menu.

I read that cloning can fail under certain conditions, but that usually fixing the MBR would resolve the issue. So all this time, I've just been trying to fix the MBR on the new drive,.

Shortcut created with Batch To Exe Converter stays in memory

I have created several .exe shortcuts on my drive using Batch To Exe Converter for ease of access. (See "Integrating non-portable apps into the PortableApps Platform")

So for example, to make a shortcut to git-gui, I made the following batch .bat file, then converted it to an exe using Batch To Exe Converter.

cd cmd & git-gui.exe

The issue is that the .exe shortcut seems to stay in memory even after the main program closes. As a result, I can't safely eject my drive due to it being "in use". Why won't my shortcut exit once it's done running?

Answer

The CMD shortcut is waiting for your main program to exit. You need to use the start command to run it instead.

cd cmd & start git-gui.exe

Source: Why won't cmd exit after execution of batch file?

macos - Internal Small SSD, External (usb, firewire?) hard drive

This is three questions in one, but: I'm thinking about getting a Macbook Pro with an internal SSD, and the prices are prohibitive for anything aside from the 128GB SSD. So the questions are (links to other Superuser questions welcome!):

1. Is SSD really that much faster than 7200RPM? I've seen some Youtube videos that make it look 4-10x as fast with OSX


2. Is Firewire 800 really faster than USB 2.0 for a 7200RPM hard drive? I have seen some questions on Superuser arguing that, but they've had no hard data (just anecdotal "in my experience" stuff)


3. Can Firewire 800 drives be powered by bus-power only? Or do they need a power source as well (that would be a serious buzz-kill).

Note: Regarding #3,the Macbook Pro has only the little firewire connector (Firewire 800, I think).

hard drive - Harddisk space used by unknown data on Windows 10

I'm really stuck on a problem with two of my drives (1 hdd + 1 ssd):
Both show they are almost full after I have cleaned (wiped) the free space of the drives using PartitionGuru. (that finished without any error)

According to recommendations from the forum I have checked the drives with WinDirStat and Treesize (both running with SYSTEM priviliges) with the following results:

The drive is a 120GB SSD (showing 111.8 GB in windows) with shadow copies etc. disabled
WinDirStat showing 78.5 GB of data, 31.7 GB of and 1.7 GB of free space
Tresize showing 78.5 GB of data and 1.7 GB of free space

My second drive (a 1 TB HDD) even shows several hundred GB as unknown.

I have tried all I could think of - but i couldn't access the "unknown" data. How can I get the free space back?

Thanks

Edit:

Disk Management:

Answer

After running Chkdsk over the night for the d: drive. That one seems to be fixed.
So I guess that is the solution.

I ran the following command: chkdsk d: /r /f (for the d: drive)

(I ran it with SYSTEM priviliges)

windows 7 - Card reader driver not installing correctly, but same driver used to work

I have an Acer Aspire 7720G-813G32Bn laptop. It has integrated (maybe 3?)-in-one memory card reader. The reader uses Ricoh chip from R5C8 series. I don't know the exact model number. I can't see the chip itself because it's covered by plastic and is very difficult to remove.

My problem are drivers. Acer has some drivers (unfortunately, driver I used, the "CarReader_Ricoh_352.02_Vistax64" is unavailable at this time, but there is still 351 version) for Vista SP1 64 bit. So far I've used those. However since the last reinstall of Windows, when I install those drivers, nothing happens. Normally, Windows would detect a bunch of unknown devices and the SD card reader. Once I install drivers from Acer, those unknown devices turn into various card readers.

Now, however, Windows only detected SD card reader and installed the SDA Standard Compliant Host Controller. The card reader would work sporadically with that driver. After some time it stopped working altogether. At first I thought it was a hardware problem and thought is was unsolvable. Later I was trying to force the installation of Acer's drivers but when I select the .inf files, I get the "The folder you selected doesn't contain a compatible driver blah blah blah make sure driver is for win64 blah blah" error. When I try to right-lick install the .inf files, I get the "The INF file you selected does not support this method of installation" error. It worked several months ago, but doesn't now.

While looking among available drivers in windows, I found Ricoh Secure Digital host controller R5C841 driver which I installed. Now SD card reader seems to work, but won't read SDHC cards.

Any ideas what to do to solve this problem?

EDIT1 I just downloaded some drivers from Microsoft(warinig: IE-only link!). With them too, I get the "The INF file you selected does not support this method of installation." error. This is strange since those drivers are from M$'s official driver website.

EDIT2
Here are the screenshots:

The unknown device is CIR receiver which I do not use and which has problematic driver

Answer

I have managed to find a newer device driver than the one from Microsoft, which also supposedly supports 64-bit:
Asus N51Vg Notebook RICOH R5C8xx Card Reader Driver 3.57.01 (Vista)

Another and somewhat older driver is here :
Asus X58L Notebook RICOH R5C843 Card Reader Driver

However, for obvious reasons, I cannot test them.

Is pushing zfs backup to tape for long term redundancy efficient?

Its quite expensive to move to tape, so for my setup, would it be efficient? Im looking for suggestions for efficiency towards either just building up my existing backup (SAN), and documenting it for ease of use for others, or combining that with adding a tape backup too, which others could just eventually replace out the SAN completely thereby eliminating the complexity(after i back out of managing).

So, I have a home file storage and share server(main home used win7 box) that contains 2 large extra drives, one is a User only drive containing only user specific files, and the other large drive is public files music/videospublic upload/download, all LAN accessible (shared by user credential).

Now this data is backed up somewhere. The backup is via freefilesync, awesome.. ITs backed up to the SAN, which is on a linux box. However, it's still fairly vulnerable(except in the likely event of a simultaneous failure of 1 backup and 1 primary drive during ANY 2 week span of drive failure recovery). This makes me nervous. I will beef up my backup to a raid 5/6 soon to alleviate that. So no longer a problem for single drive failure, but a problem would still exist for any other single point of failure of the linux box combined with a drive failure on the primary.

So i want to get rid of these vulnerabilities. They cause me to lose concentration in moments of need, and to be a bit haphazard when backing up data in a rush upon the 'single-point-of-failure emergencies`'

Im now thinking of something, to which i wanted to ask the community about. I believe that tape is still king, after reading up here on server fault. So what if i backed my SAN with a TAPE http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16840108119 on some periodic schedule, or loop?

If i tape backup will i still need my SAN? Im thinking of leaving my normal backup system in tact, that is the Win box to SAN using frefilesync, and then backing up the SAN 4 times annually. Alternatively, does one suggest that is scrap the SAN, and replace it with tape? I think i would waste a lot of tape that way.

Now, if you have an opinion, would it change things knowing that my SAN was built on the highly superior ZFS file-system? Is it still necessary to tape backup once i have a RAIDZII setup?

scenario 1) A single bus bar failure, and my backup is offline, then when the win drive kicks off, i lose files in the downtime of the bus bar i think.. However, the tape backup didn't run anyway, or do i leave that looping, and now SHUT IT OFF?

scenario 2) a drive kicks off, no problem, i have redundancy now..

So suggestions here on a proper fail-safe backup policy? This is for PRICELESS family pictures/documents/geneaology etc.., and should lead to easier maintenance for my wife/extended family once i KICK off ideally.

Windows Update not logging updates/not seeing system updates

So coming into work today, I found that my Windows 10 machine had rebooted itself, force-closing several applications and losing data, which seems like insane default behavior, and I thought to myself "Maybe this was a critical security update at least?", so I went to "View installed update history"

The last update it displays was 1/14/2018. It is now 1/30/2018, and I know an update was installed last night. Visual Studio 2015 told me that's why it was force-closed (and it at least, was able to recover the data).

Does anyone know why updates are not being logged or logged updates are not being displayed?

Edit

Based on comments, I've reviewed the event log and it appears the problem MAY be related to crashes that MAY be caused by the updates. What I see is 3 crashes since 1/14/18, all occurring within 2 minutes of "successful" updates of components like "Windows Store" or "Paint". Windows Defender Definition updates are occurring regularly and successfully with no indications of problems, I should note. (They do tend to occur immediately AFTER crashes, however). Further, I have the startup message from VS 2015 telling me it was shut down by an update, when only one shutdown occurred last night--the one caused by a crash. I do not see any explicit failures logged by Windows Update. (And all updates logged as starting in the event log are logged as finished successfully there.)

The "Setup" Log in Event Viewer indicates the last successful install as occurring on 1/14, with KB4043961 marked as superseded on 1/16.

The windows updates logged in the "System" log since 1/14 are all "Windows Store", or Defender updates, application updates "Paint", "Advertising", "mscommunication". I don't see any normal-looking OS updates.

Further, I've opened up the most recent memory dump in windbg. Not enlightening, for me at least. The last crash was caused by a stack overflow in csrss.exe. Beyond that, the stack trace isn't clear enough for me at least to determine any clear cause.

The Windows Update troubleshooters repeatedly indicate I have pending updates, which Windows Update itself is apparently not seeing.

If this is enough information for anyone else to pinpoint or guess at the problem, I'd love to hear it.

Since this problem seems increasingly bizarre and specific to my machine, it's probably worth mentioning it's a relatively fresh and unmodified Win 10 install. VS 2015, VS 2017, Windows SDK, and WSL (bash), and TeamViewer are the only installs of any note. I have not edited any Windows files from within WSL.

linux - *nix One-Liner: Recursively find files by extension, and copy them to a new directory named for the extension

Given many directories/sub-directories containing many different file types (csv, txt, jpg, etc.), what command will search each directory recursively and copy files out into a new top-level directory named after each extension.

Is there a way to accomplish this with a one-liner?

printing - Visio 2003: How to remove blank pages

I have a visio diagram (using the database model diagram) that I'm trying to print.

Originally, it was 5 pages wide, and 5 high. I've reorganized the diagram so that it's now just 3x3, but I can't figure out how to get rid of the now-blank pages.

Under page setup, the print setup tab, paper is letter size, landscape, and print zoom is set to 100%.

Under the Page Size tab, it's set to "Size to fit drawing contents".

It seems that anything I do to try to eliminate the un-needed blank pages also re-organizes the shapes on the drawing. Is there a way to avoid that?

Answer

One way to do this is hold down the Control key and put your mouse over the edge of the "paper" space in Visio. The grip changes to resize shapes so you can modify the drawing size.

Hope that helps. It seems there are many different ways to do this in Visio, but it's hard to use the one that sticks when it comes to printing...

linux - Windows 8 is not booting up in my sony vaio laptp

Here is my problem:

I have Windows 8 which came preinstalled on my laptop. My laptop is a sony vaio sve15127cnb.

I tried to install kali linux on my laptop as bual boot.

So I restarted my laptop and went into the BIOS, the secure boot option was already disabled. UEFI settings were already selected. I changed my 1st boot device to external drive and restarted the laptop, but the USB was not detected as I was trying to boot from USB.

Then I changed it to legacy mode and restarted, and ran linux as live.

Then I shutdown the laptop and again changed back the mode to UEFI, after that I'm getting

GNU GRUB version 2.00-19ubuntu2
grub>

At this point, I tried many things but my Windows 8 is not booting. I tried to enable secure boot and restared then it is showing the error "secure boot failed operating system not found".

I tried going back to legacy mode with my USB detached and then get the error "operating system not found".

How can I boot Windows 8? (I will think about installing linux later)

if i install linux in legacy mode, will it help? and also usb is not recognising in uefi mode for boot from usb. but it is recognising in legacy mode. is there a separate software to do so or is it just some other thing?

Windows 10 - Can't launch programs via search bar

I've had this problem for quite some time now, and so far I've found no solution - but it's really beginning to get on my nerves.

Basically, when I search for a program via the Windows start menu (the search bar), I will get the correct results - but some programs I simply cannot open.

Example: I click on the start menu and begin typing "control panel". It will show me the control panel as a search result, but when I hit enter, or click on it - nothing happens. It simply stays there as if nothing happened.

This is the same with ALL apps except the "metro" applications from the Windows Store (whatever they call them now).

The problem began after I changed the system language from English to German, and even if I switch back to English, the problem won't go away again.
Here's what I have tried so far:

• Running sfc /scannow in an elevated Powershell multiple times.


• Reindexing the search via control panel multiple times.


• I've run lpksetup /u in an elevated cmd multiple times.


• I've killed Cortana and Windows Explorer.


• I've obviously run the "troubleshooter"


• I've made a new account for myself. It worked until I changed the language back to German.


• Running Get-AppXPackage -Name Microsoft.Windows.Cortana | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"} in the powershell


• Starting Windows in Safe Mode

If I right click on the item in the search results and try to launch it that way, it says the item is not found and asks me if I want to remove it from the list.

Any help would be appeciated :)

Thanks in advance

Answer

Okay, I've finally found a solution. To everyone who might need this in the future: the solution to this is to go to your privacy settings and enable background applications. You can turn all of the apps seperately, only the main switch has to be turned on.

Found here:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-win_cortana/windows-10-creators-update-search-not-finding-apps/eaf70556-2344-474d-b633-e00140b0466d

keyboard - Creating a custom function key in Windows

I would like to "create" a fn key ( similar to what laptops have ) on a desktop keyboard. What I would like to do is to bind Capslock to a new custom key, so that I can add new shortcuts involving that key.
For example, remapping the jkil keys to left/down/top/right keys. So when
Capslock + J is pressed, a left arrow keypress is simulated.
I cannot bind the capslock key to an existing key like Win/Shift/Ctrl/Alt, because it will cause conflicts in my text editor because of the additional custom functionality I have within it.

macos - Can't access Leopard (Mac Mini) from Snow Leopard (Macbook) - Remote Management & File Sharing

Solved - It was my router, that had some issues routing this traffic in between Wired & WiFi connections. When I switched both to WiFi, it worked right away.

Problem - Can't access Mac Mini's shared folders and screen via the Macbook

Problem Machine - Mac Mini running 10.5.8

Test Machine - MacBook running 10.6.7

This is an odd support request for me. I have never ever had this issue with my macs. Currently running Lion, Snow Leopard, Leopard on MBPs, MBs, Minis & a Hackintosh box as well. Everything has worked flawlessly forever.

However, I suddenly had to reformat a hard disk on my mac mini and I decided to try out Leopard (for reasons I forget & most likely will upgrade to SL tomorrow). Now I can't access Remote Desktop or share files with that box via any of my devices. I have tried all the usual stuff - Connect As, Change permissions -> no permissions, checked net connections, wifi -> wired, cleared nvram blah blah. Everything anybody has mentioned I have done.

At this point, I am ready to move to SL but just for the sake of knowing what could ever go wrong, I wanted to figure this out. Any help is appreciated.

Thanks.

Update: So as it turns out, I can use Screens (iPad app for VNC) to access my mini's desktop. But I can't seem to get it going on my SL machines yet. I tested my SL macbook to remote control other boxes & it works flawlessly.

Answer

1) Look in System Preferences/Sharing.
2) " " " " /Security.
3) Into which disk format did you reformat the Mac mini and why?
4) What does System Profiler tell you about the network?
Regards
Paul

laptop - Sony Vaio VPCF115FM screen broken and external display output not working under Win7 x64

I have a Sony VAIO laptop series # VPCF115FM model # PCG-81114L in which the laptop screen is broken (smashed that is, cracked I say), no picture at all, not all black, mostly white, that flickers and changes a bit as the computer boots up (It appears as if a video signal is being sent to the laptop display). I bought this on the cheap - 50 bucks - fixing is not economically viable/ practical at current market rates, ~200$ @ 2015 dollars. It works, I know it works, I've installed Linux on it. No problems at all, just pop the Ubuntu installation into the drive and it displays right nice through the VGA display port onto an external monitor.

Now my question is how in the hell do I install Win 7 on this machine? Ultimately I want to update the BOIS in order to fix 'the know issue of over heating and thus the crazy loud fan noise' and (and maybe or) I want to install Win 7. Seems simple enough, right. Wrong!

While trying to install Win7 on the laptop it does not display on the laptop screen (of course! its broken!) or through the external display output. That's the problem! The laptop has VGA and HDMI outputs. I've mostly tired just the VGA output. I've tried both 'Win 7 Installation Media' and WinPE to boot/install to no avail both with and without the laptop screen-lid open or closed shut and with an external USB mouse/keyboard, neither display through the VGA output port on to a external monitor, at all what so ever.

My thinking, was I could use a 'technical computer' (a computer with different hardware that is used to setup/configure a Win 7 installation in order to deploy on computer with different hardware) to install Win7 onto and then use Microsoft 'SYSPREP' tool to do a 'system audit' and generalize the computers hardware and then transfer/swap that hard-drive to the Sony Viao laptop. I tried this, and it sort of seemed to work. Video didn't display, but I heard the windows chime start-up sound. This gave me hope that the installation I made was working, kinda working. I tried fn+f7, 'windows key' + 'P' and a few other keys, didn't work. Maybe it wasn't in the right order? The Win 7 installation that I made using this method works, I am using it right know as I type this (on the technical computer) after I transferred it to the Sony Viao Laptop and then back onto the technical computer after I repaired/fixed the installation by using a image I made of the installation that I created earlier.

The laptop does not display the boot up screen during boot up.

So far I've only gotten Linux Ubuntu to install and display onto a external VGA compatible monitor. Normally I close the laptop lid right after I turn it on, with a the USB keyboard/mouse pluged in. I believe that the Sony laptop has a Nvidia graphic card (there's a sticker on the case), I don't know what kind though.

hard drive - Windows 8.1 - Cannot Format Partition as NTFS: "There are no volumes"

I've got two hard drives in a system, one of which (disk 1) is the Windows boot disk, and the other (disk 0) has a partition (partition 1) that I'd like to format with NTFS. However, Disk Management won't let me; the option is greyed out. Diving into diskpart tells me that I cannot format the partition as NTFS because there is no volume selected. When I go to list the volumes to see which one to select, I see that none of them are what I want to format.

DISKPART> list disk
  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disk 0    Online         1863 GB      0 B        *
  Disk 1    Online          232 GB    35 GB              <-- This is the boot disk
DISKPART> select disk 0
Disk 0 is now the selected disk.
DISKPART> list partition
  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
  Partition 1    Unknown            500 GB  1024 KB      <-- Format this one
  Partition 2    Unknown           1363 GB   500 GB
DISKPART> select partition 1
Partition 1 is now the selected partition.
DISKPART> format fs=ntfs quick
There is no volume selected.
Please select a volume and try again.
DISKPART> list volume
  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
  Volume 0         System Rese  NTFS   Partition    350 MB  Healthy    System
  Volume 1     C   Root         NTFS   Partition    116 GB  Healthy    Boot
DISKPART> detail disk
ST2000DM001-1ER164
Disk ID: {DFD83667-1983-40B6-9EE3-03AFDD902518}
Type   : SATA
Status : Online
Path   : 1
Target : 0
LUN ID : 0
Location Path : PCIROOT(0)#PCI(1F02)#ATA(C01T00L00)
Current Read-only State : No
Read-only  : No
Boot Disk  : No
Pagefile Disk  : No
Hibernation File Disk  : No
Crashdump Disk  : No
Clustered Disk  : No
There are no volumes.

Neither of the listed volumes are 500 GB, which is the size of the partition that I want to format.

Using student disk to upgrade to Windows 8.1

I live in New Zealand, where most peoples internet is terrible. In order for me to upgrade all of my computers to Windows 8.1 I would need to download 11.5GB of files, the same files mind you.

However, I am a university student and as such have access to Microsoft Dreamspark. I downloaded the ISO from Dreamspark prior to the official release. My computers all use legitimately purchased Keys (not my student key) with Media Center enabled. I tried to upgrade to Windows 8.1 via the student ISO, but got a message stating that "The key doesn't work with this version of windows". What is the best option here?

Also, why is the update so big, it seems to be the same size of the FULL Windows 8 ISO. Seeing as most will only ever update via the Windows Store, it makes more sense to me to just include an incremental update. Is there a deeper problem here?

I can't find my removable disk K on windows vista

I can't find my removable disk K on windows vista. What should i do. Normally when I shut down my computer it shows up. I did it today and it just did not show up so please tell me what to do...........

windows 10 - How to prevent "Allow this device to wake the computer" from resetting itself when a device is plugged back in

Extremely similar problem as the linked post below, but for windows 10. There isn't a solution for windows 7, but I'm hoping windows 10 has something I can use to permanently disable the ability for a device to wake anything up.

Similar post

More specifically, My xbox controller wakes up my monitors within a minute of them turning off unless I disable it here:

Once disabled, the monitors stop turning themselves back on, but it's a temporary fix. If I unplug the controller and plug it back in, the setting is reset to allowing the controller to wake the computer.

partitioning - What's the point of hard drives reporting their physical sector size?

I have an SSD that can be configured to report its physical sector size to an OS in two different ways:

Option 1: Logical = 512 Bytes, Physical = 512 Bytes

Option 2: Logical = 512 Bytes, Physical = 4096 Bytes (4K)

What benefit does an OS gain by being aware of the 4K physical sector size, considering:

• The OS must talk to the drive in 512-byte sectors regardless




• All modern OSes align to 4K and utilize 4K or multiples of 4K I/O regardless

The setting seems pointless, because modern OSes are already optimized for 4K sector drives. Modern OSes don't need to "ask" a drive whether its sectors are 512b or 4K, because the OS does everything in a 4K-friendly way by default.

For example, Windows 7 aligns partitions to 1MB (a multiple of 4K), NTFS cluster size is 4K or multiple thereof, and all I/O is done in 4K or multiple thereof. Windows doesn't give a damn what hard drive you have, it will apply the above behavior in all cases.

Anyway... my SSD has this "physical sector size" setting and so it must be there for some good reason... it's the reason for this I'm looking for.

BTW, for what it's worth, the drive is an Intel SSD DC S3510. The drive's datasheet says this (page 27):

By using SCT command 0xD801 with State=0, Option=1, ID Word 106 can be changed from 0x6003 to 0x4000 (4KB physical sector size to 512B physical sector size support change).

Answer

The 512-byte emulation is intended for compatibility with older systems. However, writes involving only part of a physical 4K sector can cause reduced performance because the sector needs to be read and modified before it can actually be written.

When a legacy operating system tries to write to an Advanced Format disk, performance issues can arise because the logical sectors written may not match up with the physical sectors.

• When only part of a 4K physical sector is read, the data is simply read off the physical sector and there is no reduction in performance. However, when the system tries to write to part of a physical sector (e.g. an emulated 512-byte sector rather than the whole physical sector), the hard drive needs to read the whole physical sector, modify the changed portion in the hard drive's internal memory, and write it back to the platters. This is called read-modify-write (RMW), an operation which requires an extra rotation of the disk and therefore reduces performance. Seagate explains this as follows:

[...] the hard drive must first read the entire 4K sector containing the targeted location of the host write request, merge the existing data with the new data and then rewrite the entire 4K sector:

In this instance, the hard drive must perform extra mechanical steps in the form of reading a 4K sector, modifying the contents and then writing the data. This process is called a read-modify-write cycle, which is undesirable because it has a negative impact on hard drive performance.

Disk partitions that are not aligned to a 4K boundary can cause degraded performance as well.

• Traditionally, the first partition on a hard disk starts at sector 63. Windows XP and older operating systems partitioned disks in this manner. Newer versions of Windows will create partitions on a 1 MB boundary, ensuring proper alignment to the physical sectors. This is called Alignment 0.

  
  



• Because LBA 63 is not a multiple of 8 (eight 512-byte legacy sectors fit into a 4K sector), an Advanced Format disk which is formatted in the old manner will have clusters (the smallest unit of filesystem data allocation, typically 4K in size) that are not aligned to the physical sectors on a 4K disk, a condition called Alignment 1. As a result, an I/O operation that otherwise involves 4K of data now spans two sectors leading to a read-modify-write operation that reduces performance.

While information about physical sector size is unnecessary if the OS always writes data on a 4K boundary, this information may still be needed by applications which perform low-level I/O.

• When a drive reports that its physical sector size is 4K, the OS or application can tell that it is an Advanced Format drive and therefore must avoid performing I/O operations that do not span full physical sectors. A drive that reports 512-byte native sectors does not impose this restriction. While newer operating systems will usually try to read or write data in 4K units whenever possible (making this information irrelevant), applications which perform low-level I/O may need to know the physical sector size so that they can adjust accordingly and avoid misaligned or partial-sector writes that cause slow RMW cycles.

Your SSD provides the ability to change the reported physical sector size because it is necessary for compatibility with certain storage arrays.

• Datacenters often have storage arrays consisting of legacy 512n drives. 4K drives, even those that emulate 512-byte sectors, may not be compatible with such arrays, so this feature is necessary to ensure compatibility. See this forum thread:

  
  

  
  

  We can't just stick a 4K drive in an array formatted with 512b disks. Many arrays (most notably ZFS based storage, which is increasingly popular as software defined storage makes waves) will not accept a replacement drive with a different physical sector format.

  
  

  
  

  Note that better performance will be attained on modern systems if the drive is configured to use 4K sectors.

display - Can you use a DVI-VGA Adapter on a monitor instead of a video card?

I suspect the answer to this is "no", but here goes:

I have a monitor with inputs for DVI and VGA. I want to be able to share this display with two computers (one at a time, of course) that both have VGA only. I also have a DVI->VGA dongle that came with a video card that's in a different computer.

Can I connect this dongle directly to the DVI port on the monitor so that I can connect both VGA computers? I'd rather not resort to a kvm.

Answer

No, you'll need to use the KVM option or buy a couple of VGA extension cables and manually switch between the two (bring the two monitor ends of the extensions and the PC end of the monitor's table up to you test and hold them there with something like http://lifehacker.com/5499838/binder-clips-as-cable-catchers-redux%5D and just plug the monitor one into the right extension when you need to). You might find a cheap 2-machine KVM with the required cables doesn't cost much more than a couple of plain VGA extension cables though.

A DVI->VGA "converter" doesn't actually convert any signals at all. Most DVI ports on graphics cards also carry the analog RGB signals needed by a VGA monitor along side the digital signal lines (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Visual_Interface for relevant pinout diagrams) and all the adaptor does is connect these pins to the right pins of the VGA port. So unless your monitor can accept the reverse (analog signals through its DVI input), which I doubt many (if any) do, this does not work the other way around.

display - Connecting 2 External Monitors to a Laptop?

Equaling 3 Displays Total (or 2, if the laptop display cannot be used).

I work at home on two large monitors, but at the office on a laptop with a single large monitor. Is it possible to attach two (or more?) external monitors to a laptop without having them clone each-others display?

Answer

Matrox DualHead2Go (for two monitors) or Matrox TripleHead2Go (for three monitors) could be a solution.

Jeff Atwood also has a blog post about this.

python - Installing Trac on Windows

I am new to project management and I have no idea about Python. Now, I want to setup the Trac program.

I read the installation process on their web site, but I could not understand it. Can you help me with installation please?

At the moment I have installed these to my laptop:

1. python-2.5.msi


2. setuptools-0.6c7.win32-py2.5.exe


3. Genshi-0.5.win32-py2.5.exe


4. uberSVN-1110_beta.exe

What should I do next?

windows - Failed to install Oracle client with an error "path is too long"

I'd like to know how to install Oracle Client on my Windows 10 pro PC/Dell Vostro 3860 properly cause of I got a problem to install the client software that "PATH is too long" error.

What I tried to installed it with administrator tools after I got an error message?

1. Deleted unnecessary program path in PATH variable such DELL and
   INTEL after I backed up them.


2. Amended program path in PATH variable to 8.3 format if
   it's over 8 character length.


3. Saved them and Reboot PC just in case.


4. Tried to install Oracle Client with Administrator privilege after I copied installer files and folders locally just in case.

No luck.

It's still same message appeared when to install it.

So, I'm stuck there that I can not proceed to install it due to the error.
This is brand new Windows 10 pro PC that has latest patches.

Oracle Client: Oracle 11g

Could you tell me how to install Oracle client properly and fix this issue?

Otherwise I have to reinstall Windows 10 pro that will be taking so long to setup in my environment due to no internet connection. Unfortunately.

Answer

A long long time ago and in some far away Windows,
environmental variables were limited to 1023 characters.

Older installations still remember with longing those times and behave as if
they still have validity today.
Unfortunately the Oracle installation is one of these time-frozen ones.

Your problem is the PATH environmental variable for SYSTEM,

which is too long for Oracle.
You need to reduce it so that after Oracle adds its own, the entire length
will not exceed 1023.

The trimming of PATH could be made easier by using the free
System Path Commander.

Of course, nothing stops you from adding everything back to PATH once
you have finished, and Oracle will keep on working quite happily.
System Path Commander can help in that by using the right-click menu

command "Copy Checked Dirs to Clipboard" for saving and the "Add..." command
for restoring.

As a safety measure, you could create first a system restore point,
just in case.