hard drive - Full formatting, HDD controllers, and bad-sector locking

We get periodic questions about manually locking and reassigning bad sectors on hard disk drives. There seems to be apparently conflicting information on one aspect of this, the hard drive controller and full formatting.

Hard Drive Controller

Hard drive controllers perform some automated recognition of bad sectors, lock (mark) them, and automatically reassign the contents. This is reported in the SMART information. My understanding is that this is a "random" process, i.e., it happens when the controller stumbles across a bad sector during drive usage.

Full Format

The accepted answer on this question, How to isolate bad sectors on a hard disk in Windows 7?, quotes Microsoft in describing a full format. It talks about the process including a scan for bad sectors, and that in Vista and later, this is accomplished by writing zeros to the entire partition.

Implication

The implication seems to be that the full format uses the drive controller's automated process, and the zero-fill provides a means for the controller to examine every sector. It's possible that sector verification is controlled by the format utility, itself, but this is not described.

No Inherent Read Verification

In a recent question, How do Zero-Fill, Full Format, and CHKDSK fix bad sectors?, there is discussion of this in comments on the answer. In this comment, user sawdust states,

Zero-fill or "formatting" for a filesystem use ordinary write operations. There's no automatic verify or read after write, but there would have to be a read in order to detect a bad sector. So I would not expect any change in the bad sector lists maintained by the controller.

My attempts to research this issue did not uncover any articles on bad sector cleanup that mentions using a full format as a means to accomplish this, which would be consistent with sawdust's comment.

Which brings me to this question, and these two components:

• How does a full format identify bad sectors? i.e., is the bad sector identification (read verification) managed by the controller as part of its automated response to the zero fill, or does the format utility perform reads of each sector?




• What condition triggers the hard drive controller's automated process to lock a sector and reassign the contents? i.e., if writes don't inherently involve read verification, is the action triggered only by an inability to correctly read a sector (at least on the initial try)?




• And corollary: if the format utility performs its own read verification, which I assume would be against the zero-fill (and then marks an external bad sector list, as described in cybernard's answer), wouldn't that read action also trigger the automated verification by the controller? i.e., wouldn't that create redundant checks, and so why would the external list be needed?

memory - Would I see benefit if my RAM is faster than my processor's FSB?

I always thought processor's FSB was the limit of how fast the RAM could be. However, while configuring a Lenovo laptop, I see options for RAM that's faster than the CPU's FSB

CPU = Intel® Core™ i5-560M Processor (2.66GHz, 3MB L3, 1066MHz FSB)

RAM = 8 GB PC3-10600 DDR3 SDRAM 1333MHz SODIMM Memory (2 DIMM)

Answer

In short, no, some benchmarks may reveal a small advantage, but its nothing you would notice in the real world.

http://www.overclock.net/intel-memory/129552-ram-faster-than-fsb-better-performance.html

This answer does not include overclocking the cpu fsb, which is another subject all together.

Do I really have to re-install Windows XP, then Windows 7, to make my upgrade activate?

I had Windows XP Professional installed in a VMWare virtual machine on my Mac. I bought Windows 7 Professional to replace it, and installed it on a fresh virtual machine, then deleted the old XP VM once the new Windows 7 VM was working alright.

Unfortunately, I didn’t make sure to activate the new VM first. I thought I’d bought the full version, but it looks like I’ve bought an upgrade version, because when Windows 7 prompted me to activate today, it said it couldn’t, because I’d bought an upgrade version and done a clean install with it.

As far as I can tell from Microsoft’s help, I can’t activate my fresh Windows 7 install. To make it activate properly, I need to reinstall Windows XP, then reinstall my Windows 7 upgrade on top of that.

Are they f—ing kidding? I’ve spent a fair bit of time setting up my new Windows 7 VM. Now I have to trash all that and start again? I’ve still got my copy of Windows XP, and the license key for it. Can’t I just enter that somewhere and have the damn thing work?

Answer

Yes, it's possible, but it can get messy.

Here's a fairly in-depth guide:

http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows-7/clean-install-windows-7-with-upgrade-media.aspx

windows 10 - AutoHotKey triggers Ctrl while scrolling

I'm not sure if this is Windows, Chrome or AHK related so I wanted to post this question.

I've been using AHK for years to make some shortcuts control my volume and media, like Win+PageUp for volume up, Win+PageDown for volume down, Win+End for next track, Win+Home for previous track, etc.

Today I suddenly got the idea to make Win + "scroll wheel up or down" control my volume, for easily turning it way down or way up.

However, when using Win+WheelUp/Down my start menu started flashing open en closed, and Chrome would zoom in or out the page once every so often. I thought switching it to Alt+WheelUp/Down would fix that, and it did fix the start menu flickering, but Chrome is still sometimes zooming in or out when using the shortcut, forcing me to reset the zoom.

As far as I know zooming while scrolling in Chrome is only triggered by holding Ctrl. I've tested and holding Alt while scrolling does not zoom the page. I then tried it in Windows Explorer and using the Alt+WheelUp/Down shortcut also zooms files and folders every so often. Because of this I'm pretty sure it's an AHK issue.

Does anyone have any idea why AHK is apparently pressing Ctrl every so often and making Chrome/Windows zoom the page?

Using the latest version, v1.1.30.01

Also posted on the AHK forums

Answer

On the AutoHotKey forums I managed to get some answers and fix my issue.

User gregster said:

Ctrl is the #MenuMaskKey for Alt (and also the windows key).

You can change it. Try #MenuMaskKey vk07 at the top if your script...

But this suddenly opened up a load of "is this a game, want to open gamebar" notifications, freezing Chrome up.

User swagfag said:

!WheelUp::Send {Blind}{Volume_Up 2}

!WheelDown::Send {Blind}{Volume_Down 2}

should suppress it too

ah yes, the exact reason why eluded me, but gregster appears to have already posted it

i wonder, though, why was CTRL chosen as the default masking key, and not vk07

That (adding {Blind}) fixed it, no more weird side effects from using the shortcut.

hard drive - Recovering data on an MBR partition converted to GPT

first time poster but I've been a long time reader! Here goes...

I've just converted a WD Green, 2TB HDD (data only) NTFS - using Minitool Partition Wizard 9.1 from MBR to GPT. Drive was about 67% full.

Using Windows 10. I have a UEFI GPT boot drive. The website specifically said this does not lose data! Using the convert mbr to gpt command only took a couple of seconds (should it have been a long process?)

It now shows up as Basic GPT - Unallocated - empty space.
Also no drive letter is assigned.

Its not a system disk so no activity should have over written any data yet.

Before I try to recover the partition, does anyone have any experience - should I:

1 - first convert the drive BACK to MBR then try and recover the data?

or

2 - Is it safer to stick with the GPT and attempt recovery from its current type?

or

3 - Assign a driveletter and reboot, maybe the system will then see the GPT?

Thanks for any help!
AP

windows - How did my computer get compromised?

How is it possible that my up to date install of Windows 7 with UAC enabled and Microsoft Security Essentials running became compromised, seemingly in a website drive-by?

I've run ostensibly the same security setup for many years now and never been compromised, what has changed? Has the nature of attacks become more advanced? What could I do to prevent another attack being successful?

Edited to add: Browsers used are mainly Chrome & Firefox, IE only on certain sites that require it and/or we know are safe.

Edit: Thanks for the answers. I've gone through everything and nothing was permanently damaged (no MBR virus etc.) but at the same time I didn't find anything that would point to the vector. Chalk one up for experience I guess.

microsoft excel - Fill group of rows with incremental shades of color

I would like to fill each row with an incremental shade of a base color (or some range). So far, I could do it using Conditional Formatting with a "rule" based on the ascending numerical values.

However, I wish to achieve the same effect with the group of rows that have no content. Is there an automatic way to do it?

EDIT:

There are 6 rows in the column. Currently they are color-filled from white to orange with incremented shades. Such color fill is done automatically using Conditional formatting rule that maps the shades of the color to the values (1-6) in the rows. I wish to fill an arbitrary number of rows with such incremental colors without dependency on the actual content of the cells. Thus, if I select 10 rows, I want to see each row of slightly darker shade of the specified color, BUT even if the cells are empty.

windows 10 - Computer freezing unexpectedly?

I recently upgraded to Windows 10, but this problem started when I had Windows 8.
At random times the computer will completely freeze and require a restart. It is a work computer and it is connected to several networks. My connection to the networks is lost but so is my local connection. Whatever program I'm in will stop responding and I cannot open any files or other programs (including internet browsers, everything just lags).

Several times I have closed out of everything and restarted but most times the computer won't even restart properly. Restarts usually take a matter of seconds for Windows but it's stayed on the restart screen (with those little dots going round and round) for up to 10 minutes sometimes. I usually end up manually restarting it.

I can't pinpoint the freezing to a specific program because it has happened while I'm working in various programs (microsoft suite, autocad, etc.)

Is there something I can look into to see why my computer is doing this? It has happened consistently for a few weeks now.

Edit: I realize as a work computer, this is an IT problem. They have been notified and are getting me a new machine. For various reasons I still have to use this one for the next few weeks. I was hoping to find a temporary/permanent solution until then so my work can go on uninterrupted.

Windows batch file not running when double clicked

I have two Windows batch file. Both work when called from command prompt. Only one of the two run runs when double clicked. How come?

The following script (named CopyToStation9.bat) runs with a double-click:

@echo off
for /R "C:\Users\XXX\Documents\XXX" %%f in (*.csv) do copy "%%f" "\\192.168.0.10\c\X"

The following script (named CleanUp.bat) doesn't run with a double-click

@echo off
set delFileList=.\test\
for %%A in (%delFileList%) do (
    del /Q %%A
    echo file %%A  deleted
)

Answer

It looks like you are try to use a UNC path, try using pushdand popd.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9013941/how-to-run-batch-file-from-network-share-without-unc-path-are-not-supported-me

Is there a limit on how much more ampers can I supply for a laptop?

My laptop uses a charger outputting 6.4A with 19V (120W). This charger was a replacement for the old one, the specs were almost completely matching (19.5V and 6.15A on the old charger), everything works perfectly.

There is, however, another laptop, which doesn't see the charger when working and barely charges with the 20V and 2A of the AC adapter, which is 40W. It sounded like a clear indication of not enough Amps, so I checked that the voltage and connector were (almost) matching and tried it with my adapter (3 times more powerful), and it worked perfectly.

I have heard before that it is completely safe to bring more Amps, because amperage is pulled, not pushed, so I believed the experiment to be safe, and was going to buy the same charger for the laptop's owner -- but she has also asked her brother, and her brother told that it is not safe to change amperage by more than 2A, some googling revealed the same statement about 1.5A. So I would need to find out the original amperage and choose a charger carefully.

So: Is it completely safe to use a charger with considerably bigger amperage if other specs, including polarity and connector shape, are matching? Is there any limit to this?

Answer

You are correct, it is completely safe to use a charger with a higher amp rating. Her brother does not understand basic electronics.

The electronics formula is quite simple: Voltage=Current * Resistance.
Therefore Current=Voltage/Resistance.

The voltage is fixed, and the resistance varies depending on the exact paths the power takes to feed the components of the computer - thus the current drawn varies DEPENDING ON THE PARTS IN THE COMPUTER - not the power supply.

There are - as you appear to be aware - an instance where this is not true - where the available current is less then what is desired - in which case the voltage would drop (assuming there is no protection circuitry). If - hypothetically - the manufacturer were to design the computer to expect a lower voltage because of the current drop by drawing too much current, then your brother would be correct - however this design choice would be insane, because it means building a system that is dangerous and designed to fail in a dangerous way, and there is no advantage to it (even if the manufacturer wants the system to eventually fail, there are safer ways to accomplish this - without exposing them to the same unquantifiable liability)

windows 10 - Single quote marks in a batch file don't make the chosen program to be executed

When I try to get the output of a command in a batch file by using single quotes I am getting the following info:

C:>for /f "tokens=2 delims=:." %a in ('chcp') do (echo %a)

'chcp' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

This command can be run from the same location directly:

C:>chcp

Active code page: 437

I have already checked env variables and they seem to be set correctly.
Above problem occurs also when I use 'dir' instead of 'chcp'.

Any ideas what can be the reason and how to fix that?

OS: WIN 10

hdmi - Have a Thunderbolt port, need DVI to display on monitor

I have an external monitor which accepts DVI, VGA and HDMI.

I have a MacBook Air which has a Thunderbolt port only.

Can this MacBook Air use the monitor as a secondary display, and what adapter will I need?

Answer

You will need a Thunderbolt to DVI adapter. Or, Mini DisplayPort to DVI, since Thunderbolt's display connection is essentially the same as Mini DisplayPort.

The Mini DisplayPort to DVI Adapter lets you connect an advanced digital monitor […] to a Mac with a Mini DisplayPort or Thunderbolt port.

windows 7 - Diagnosing RAM issues

I have an old Acer Aspire T180 desktop. The specs are as follows:

• AMD Athlon 64 3800+ 2.4GHz


• 1GB DDR2 SDRAM


• 160GB


• DVD-Writer (DVD±R/±RW)


• Gigabit Ethernet


• 17" Active Matrix TFT Color LCD


• Windows Vista Home Basic


• Mini-tower


• AST180-UA381B

According to the information in the computer's documentation the computer comes with 1 GB of RAM. It has two DDR2 SDRAM sticks. I used to have Windows Vista installed. Then I removed it and install Windows 7, and now I have since removed Windows 7 and installed Windows XP.

According to Windows XP with both RAM sticks in the computer has 768 MB.
Isn't this supposed to be 1 GB of RAM or 1024 MB of RAM?
Is the amount of RAM installed only partly used by the Operating System?
Is there's something I'm missing?

If I remove either one of the RAM sticks I'm left with 448 MB of RAM. These numbers don't seem to add up. If each of the RAM sticks contains at least 448 MB of RAM shouldn't they (both being in) provide 896 MB of RAM. Even then, isn't that less than a GB of RAM?

I'm not too experienced in hardware so I thought this would be the best place to ask.

As a follow up question, is the RAM I have enough to run/multitask with Windows XP efficiently? I plan to do a lot of computing with the system (although not gaming), should I invest in more RAM?

Answer

I would suggest using the free Speecy utility to check out your system. It can provide amazingly detailed information about the sizes and types of RAM modules installed in your system.

If it turns out your graphics card is using up some of your RAM by sharing it (as looks the case like from reading the specs for your system), you can either get a new graphics card that has its own memory or get additional memory to fill up the two empty memory slots available. It's not entirely clear which would be your best option from the information you provided.

How to monitor an external hard drive for data quality / health

Not knowing anything about hard drives, I am wondering how a cloud service provider monitors their hard drives for problems (data corruption, loss of data, hard drive failure, etc.). Searching google doesn't reveal much other than "download your hard drive manufacturers repair kit and press repair". I would like to know what is happening in that repair process, and better yet, how a cloud provider regularly monitors their hard drives for quality. I read somewhere that BackBlaze does a daily SMART stats analysis sort of thing, to see how their hard drives are doing, but I'm not sure really what that means.

We use Smartmontools to capture the SMART data.

The repo is here, but I would like to know what this Smartmontools is doing. Not necessarily in detail, but a quick outline. Can't really tell from the repo what it does.

What I imagine would happen (to monitor a hard drive) is this. Create a database with MD5 hashes of every file. Periodically scan the entire hard drive and do a checksum with every file against the saved MD5 hash. But this seems like it would be very slow, especially on terabytes hard drives. I am not really sure what kinds of failures you can have, and what kinds of notifications you can get. Maybe you can use file system events, but I'm not sure how that would work on an external drive rather than on the main machine. But even if it did work on the external hard drive, I'm not sure it would be notified when data got corrupted because of the device getting old. So it seems the only way to check that the data is correct is to actually compare the current data with the old data. But other than a checksum I'm not really sure what efficient way could be done to do this.

The main thing you would want in the monitoring process is to know when a drive is starting to not work as well, so you can get ready to change it. Repairing a drive is a whole other thing which I don't know how it works, but I won't ask that here. I would just like to know how you typically monitor an external hard drive, and and how you know when it is starting to not work correctly (i.e. how you know if data has been corrupted/lost in an efficient way, and things like that).

This seems to offer some information.

Instead of just knowing "just apply x technology", I would like to know how to actually implement it as like an app or or something, at least the basics to get started.

Windows 7 - missing free HDD space

I have Windows 7 installed on a 45 GB partition, and every now and then it gets full, and I have to resize that partition. I always thought this was quite normal. But it happened again today and this time, I'm sure it is not normal, because since last resizing (35GB -> 45GB) I did not install any new apps or anything and the sum of the folder sizes is off.
Everything, including hidden, system, root folders and files is ~18GB, yet Windows is indicating that all 45 GB are used up.

Does anyone have any idea what is going on?

Answer

Try to see what is taking disk space with a tool like WinDirStat.

It will show you how the space is used, and by what, so you will be able to understand and take measures according to this. Don't hesitate to edit your question with what exactly is taking more space, if you want more details about it.

logging - how can I log all incoming IP traffic from a certain IP address on Windows XP?

I am seeing unusual traffic from one computer on my home network, but I don't know why.

The reason I see it is because my Mcafee firewall is blocking that host because of a UDP port scan.

Is there any way for me to log all incoming traffic only from that host?

I am running Windows XP.

How to stop Background Intelligent transfer service(BITS) from downloading stuff on Windows 10

There are several methods you find if you google

1. Setting the BITS Start Key under HKLM\Services\CurrentControlSet to 4


2. Run "sc stop bits"


3. Run mscongig & go to startup and uncheck Background Intelligent Transfer Service.

I tried all of these but none of these prevent BITS from downloading stuff in the background.

Normally, it's not so bad, but I had a Windows Update download stop in between when my internet connection went down. When my internet connection came back up, the BITS choked up my internet connection downloading stuff continously. You will see it in Task Manager Performance Tab Monitor Resources as hostsvc -k netsvcs.

Answer

None of the above methods worked. What actually worked was setting my Wifi Connection as a metered connection.

The way to do this is

• Go to Network and Settings->Wifi


• Click on your connection


• Click on Advanced options below the list of your Wifi Connections


• Set Metered Connections to On.

This seems to be the only thing which can stop BITS from download stuff in the background.

BITS had made my laptop unusable for a few hours before I found this workaround.

How to change window properties for Visual Studio Command Prompt?

Visual Studio installs shortcuts for a few command prompts. You can get to them via Start → All Programs → Visual Studio → Visual Studio Tools → Visual Studio Command Prompt. I have two problems with them:

1. Quick Edit mode is not enabled


2. The screen buffer is 300 lines

I know how to change the properties on a regular command prompt (and have already done so). I've tried to change both properties on the Visual Studio Command Prompt, but it results in a non-meaningful error "Unable to modify the shortcut . Check to make sure it has not been deleted or renamed".

The command prompt is actually just a shortcut with the target %comspec% /k ""C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\vcvarsall.bat"" x86.

How do I change the properties of the Visual Studio command prompts?

Answer

Modify the properties of the shortcut file. The shortcuts are located under \ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Visual Studio XXXX\, with possibly another subfolder (in VS2015, it's Visual Studio Tools). You can also just right-click the entries in the Start menu / screen and go to the location of the shortcuts.

Then, right-click the shortcut and select Properties. You can edit the fonts, options, colors, etc. for a console program by editing a shortcut to that program. Note that in order to save the changes, you'll need Admin privileges (it will prompt you) because this is the "all users" Start location.

network shares - Sharing laptop's internal optical drive running windows XP Media Center Edition with Netbook running windows 7

just got a new HP netbook with no optical drive and guide said I should be able to share the optical drive of another windows computer. The netbook is running Windows 7 and the laptop, also HP, with the internal optical drive is running Windows XP Media Center Edition. I have wireless network that both the laptop and netbook access without a problem. The instructions did not seem to work in my case. When I right clicked on Properties of the optical drive and went to the Sharing tab, there was no selction for Advanced Sharing as the instructions said. XP made me go to Network wizard and set up a network, (which I already had). After doing that I could not access the drive from Windows 7. Has anyone benn able to do this?

Why is the recommended memory on a VirtualBox guest OS 512MB?

I am preparing to create a virtual machine on VirtualBox. The wizard asks for the memory size to use for this guest machine and it is recommending 512MB. I have 16GB of memory on my computer so I would expect to be able to utilize more then just 512MB.

• Why does VirtualBox recommend 512MB?


• Is this a hard-coded value or is this a calculated value based on the amount of memory I have?


• What would be the ramifications of using a higher value, such as 4GB?

UPDATE:

I just read the following from the VirtualBox online documentation...

Depending on what guest operating systems you want to run, you will need at least 512 MB of RAM (but probably more, and the more the
better). Basically, you will need whatever your host operating system
needs to run comfortably, plus the amount that the guest operating
system needs. So, if you want to run Windows XP on Windows XP, you
probably won't enjoy the experience much with less than 1 GB of RAM.
If you want to try out Windows Vista in a guest, it will refuse to
install if it is given less than 512 MB RAM, so you'll need that for
the guest alone, plus the memory your operating system normally
needs.

So it sounds like they 512MB recommended is just a minimum and I will want to use as much memory as possible without taking up the memory my main computer will be using. But I would still be interested in learning your experiences with this issue.

Answer

The issue with odd initial values—like the setup wizard recommending 512MB for the guest OS—is a known quirk in VirtualBox’s setup wizard that is nicely explained in this article on the recent release of VirtualBox 5; bold emphasis is mine:

The GUI for creating a new VM is similar to previous versions, though
it provides odd default values. When creating a new Windows 7 64-bit
VM, the wizard recommended allocating 512 MB of RAM to the VM; the
minimum requirement for Windows 7 64-bit is 2 GB of RAM, making the
recommended value inadequate. The host system has 8 GB RAM, over half
of which was free at the time the wizard was started. The audience for
VirtualBox is IT professionals who would likely know better than to
attempt to use Windows 7 with that default value, so it is not a
particularly substantive issue.

Also, the official VirtualBox end user documentation addresses the odd minimum of 512MB of RAM recommendation; again bold emphasis is mine:

Depending on what guest operating systems you want to run, you will
need at least 512 MB of RAM (but probably more, and the more the
better). Basically, you will need whatever your host operating system
needs to run comfortably, plus the amount that the guest operating
system needs. So, if you want to run Windows XP on Windows XP, you
probably won't enjoy the experience much with less than 1 GB of RAM.
If you want to try out Windows Vista in a guest, it will refuse to
install if it is given less than 512 MB RAM, so you'll need that for
the guest alone, plus the memory your operating system normally needs.

Which is all to say, while VirtualBox has a “wizard” that slightly eases the setup/install process of a guest OS, it’s not designed to make every single decision—or assume decisions—you should make. VirtualBox is not a simple end-user piece of software like Word or Excel; it’s really a true power-user/admin tool.

There is a certain basic assumption of a user’s skills/knowledge that is connected to using virtualization software like VirtualBox. And ultimately at the core of that assumption is that someone using VirtualBox will know enough to make their own basic decisions when it comes to resource allocation when setting up a guest OS in VirtualBox.

For example, I can definitely use Ubuntu 12.04 (server) as a guest OS on my Mac OS X install of VirtualBox with 512MB of RAM. But it noticeably lags if I stress the server a bit. I prefer to keep it running with anywhere from 1GB to 4GB of RAM to make sure things run smoothly; depending on what I am doing/testing at the time.

power supply - How do laptop batteries and chargers communicate with the laptop and what do they 'say'?

I have an HP laptop that does not like its new after-market battery (original parts are no longer in production). I am having a curious problem in that when the battery finishes charging, that if the AC adapter lost power, the computer will shut down immediately. However if the power connector is pulled out of the laptop itself, it doesn't.

What different information might the laptop be receiving from the adapter that it can tell the difference between losing AC and being unplugged at the connector. I can see the HP uses a 3 pin connector and have read that it is effectively a dual layer coax cable so I assume the centre pin is for communication.

I have tested many different chargers and found that the effect is identical with all, and even tested across several laptops. The common denominator is the battery. Batteries have many terminals, 8 in this case, so the laptop and battery must communicate. The running assumption is that the battery is not correctly switching to discharge mode when AC power is lost, however the case is very specific.

What then is the communication protocols, standards etc. that are used in the charger <> laptop <> battery that might help me unpick this issue?

memory - DDR3 RAM compatability with GA Z87X-UD5H motherboard

I have a GA Z87X-UD5H motherboard. I recently bought two modules of 16GB ram (total of 32GB in two sticks). The ram is 16GB DDR3 1600Mhz Reg ECC (Samsung M393B2G70BH0-CK0).

The boot does not go past code 15 Pre-memory North-Bridge initialization is started. (from the manual)

I've read that some boards only support 8gb per slot. Is this my case? The CPU i7-4770k supports much more RAM than the motherboard makes available however.

From the manual, the motherboard supports:

4 x 1.5V DDR3 DIMM sockets supporting up to 32 GB of system memory
* Due to a Windows 32-bit operating system limitation, when more than 4 GB of physical
memory is installed, the actual memory size displayed will be less than the size of
the physical memory installed.
Dual channel memory architecture
Support for DDR3 1600/1333 MHz memory modules
Support for non-ECC memory modules
Support for Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) memory modules
(Go to GIGABYTE's website for the latest supported memory speeds and memory
modules.)

What is the compatibility issue with the RAM, and would any 16GB module work with this board?

Thanks so much for your time.

Answer

You bought registered and ECC RAM.

Your motherboard and CPU expect unregistered and non-ECC RAM.

• Registered RAM will not work in board that expects unregistered.




• ECC RAM may or may not work in a board that expects non-ECC, but even if it works it won't be in ECC mode.

Basically, your RAM is not supported by your system. You need to buy unregistered ("normal") non-ECC RAM. (If you happen to have unregistered ECC RAM lying around you can try it, but it won't be in ECC mode anyway and there's a chance of incompatibility so don't go and buy any new.)

Generally, registered memory and ECC are considered special features, so will be called out explicitly in product descriptions. If they are not mentioned then you can probably assume the product is 'normal'.

---

While most RAM listed as DDR3 (without "registered") should work, your best bet if you want 100% certainty is to look at the memory support list provided by your motherboard manufacturer, as these are the ones they have tested. However, this will likely be the more expensive option, and being on that list is by no means a requirement for compatibility. Most PC builders and enthusiasts don't bother with these lists.

hard drive - GPT disk unaccessible lost HFS+ partitions

MBP early 2011 running OSX 10.11.6
3TB Seagate external HDD

My Seagate had all (not sure how many) HFS+ partitions working ok until one day it stopped mounting.

currently listed as /dev/disk3 and gdisk finds no partitions:

Type device filename, or press  to exit: /dev/disk3

Warning! Read error 5; strange behavior now likely!
Warning! Read error 5; strange behavior now likely!
Partition table scan:
  MBR: not present
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: not present

Creating new GPT entries.


ommand (? for help): p
Disk /dev/disk3: 8089950 sectors, 3.9 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 9FBCC48E-F444-4824-8A65-37982CD1297B
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 8089916
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 8089883 sectors (3.9 GiB)

Disk size is 8089950 sectors (3.9 GiB)

MBR disk identifier: 0x00000000
MBR partitions:

Number  Boot  Start Sector   End Sector   Status      Code
   1                     1      8089949   primary     0xEE

Verifying only scans what it can find:

No problems found. 8089883 free sectors (3.9 GiB) available in 1

segments, the largest of which is 8089883 (3.9 GiB) in size.

I tried a hexdump:

MBP3OS:~ tivadark$ sudo dd if=/dev/disk3 bs=512 count=1 | hexdump -C
Password:
dd: /dev/disk3: Input/output error
0+0 records in
0+0 records out

0 bytes transferred in 0.151342 secs (0 bytes/sec)

I am afraid to use the gdisk r options. Can someone advise how I can go about restoring my partitions?

Can't receive updates in Windows 10

I just bought Asus ROG G752 which had Windows 10 preinstalled. So, I choose the standard configuration when I started it for the first time and everything was fine. However even after 3 days it hasn't installed a single update. The update history is empty and it doesn't download any updates. It is showing several updates that are available such as:

Update for Windows 10 for x64-based Systems (KB3125217).,
Upgrade to Windows 10 Home, version 1511, 10586.
etc.

But the downloading is at 0% and not moving.

I tried different things, including WindowsUpdateDiagnostic.diagcab, but it is just stuck at "stopping bits service".

Same thing happens even if I do it with run command, it just says that it "can't be stopped".

I am out of options.

Answer

Try using the Windows 10 Windows Update Troubleshooter tool from microsoft, I think they made this to fix such issues:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows-10/windows-update-troubleshooter

If this does not fix your issue, you could also try this PowerShell script to reset Windows Update, Don't forget to run as admin!

https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/reset-windows-update-agent-d824badc

Laptop power supply unit compared to PC power supply unit

PC power supplies are relatively huge compared to those used with laptops.

But why is this so when a laptop today can have an equal level of performance as a high end PC?

Are they both switching power supplies or is the laptop PSU something completely different?

Also, why is it that a laptop power supply does not need a cooling fan but a PC one does?

And is there some serious difference in electricity consumption that one should factor in when deciding on whether to buy a laptop or a PC?

Answer

Laptops don't have an equal level of performance as a high end PC. Even high-end laptops generally use different CPUs, different memory, different GPUs, fewer drives, and so on. High-end laptops have larger power supplies, close to the size of desktop power supplies.

Keyboard media keys force assigned to Grove Music (Windows 10 and Logitech K400 Plus)

My keyboard's media keys recognize Grove Music as standard media player and I can't change it. I'am using "Logitech Options" manager, because "SetPoint" manager not compatible with this keyboard. I try this options:

• Uninstall "Groove Music", but it not work. After media key pressed it automatically installed again.


• Force assigning application to media key, but other buttons: Rewind, Play/Pause and Forward still assigned to "Grove Music".


• I try to change extensions ".cda", and AudioCD default media player to mine preferred (AIMP), but still not working.


• Of course i changed default media, audio, video player in windows settings, but media keys always assigned to "Groove Music".


• Found only option do not use "Logitech Options" and mine preferred player assigning to media key, but other applied options lost.

Batch conversion for images from command line on Windows

I have a script based on GIMP batch tutorial:

  (define (batch-colorize pattern
                              hue
                              saturation
                              lightness)

  (let* ((filelist (cadr (file-glob pattern 1))))
    (while (not (null? filelist))
           (let* ((filename (car filelist))
                  (image (car (gimp-file-load RUN-NONINTERACTIVE
                                              filename filename)))
                  (drawable (car (gimp-image-get-active-layer image))))
             (gimp-colorize drawable
                            hue saturation lightness)
             (gimp-file-save RUN-NONINTERACTIVE
                             image drawable filename filename)

             (gimp-image-delete image))
           (set! filelist (cdr filelist)))))

So now in the folder with my images with cmd I run:

SET gimpEXE="C:\Program Files\GIMP 2\bin\gimp-2.8.exe"

%gimpEXE% -i -b "(batch-colorize *.png 90 73 15)" -b "(gimp-quit 0)";

But then GIMP says:

batch command experienced an execution error:

Error: ( : 1) eval: unbound variable: *.png

So then I tried:

%gimpEXE% -i -b "(batch-colorize ""*.png"" 90 73 15)" -b "(gimp-quit 0)";

But then GIMP says:

GIMP-Error: Failed to open file C:\myfolder\with\png\90: No such file or directory

GIMP-Error: Failed to open file C:\myfolder\with\png\73: No such file or directory

GIMP-Error: Failed to open file C:\myfolder\with\png\15: No such file or directory

GIMP-Error: Failed to open file C:\myfolder\with\png\0: No such file or directory

So then I tried what was in an original example (witch I assume is for Linux):

%gimpEXE% -i -b '(batch-colorize "*.png" 90 73 15)' -b '(gimp-quit 0)'

But then GIMP says all above and:

GIMP-Error: Failed to open file "C:\myfolder\with\png*.png": Unable to open "C:\myfolder\with\png*.png" for reading: Invalid argument

Answer

You're assuming that the OS is going to expand the *.png for you, but since it's buried inside the quoted string for the command line argument, the expansion won't happen. This should fix the issue:

SET gimpEXE="C:\Program Files\GIMP 2\bin\gimp-2.8.exe"
for %%i in (*.png) do %gimpEXE% -i -b "(batch-colorize %%i 90 73 15)" -b "(gimp-quit 0)"

Note that the %%i is only necessary if this is contained in a batch file. If you're running the command directly at the prompt, %i is required instead.

regex - How can I rename files in directory, while keeping part of the name unchanged?

I have multiple files (about 1000) named as such:

abcdefg123456.xyz
abcdefg123457.xyz
abcdefg123458.xyz
abcdefg123459.xyz

Some of the files have 4 additional random numbers and letters (in any order) after the name. These are possibly duplicates, but not always, so I need to change them to the original format to verify whether they are duplicate or not. They have this format:

abcdefg123456a789.xyz
abcdefg123457b987.xyz
abcdefg123458c879.xyz
abcdefg123459d897.xyz

On occasion, there is a wrong extension as well,

abcdefg123456.xyzedf
abcdefg123456.xyzfed

I want to rename these files to the original format of abcdefg followed by the original 6 numbers - i.e. to delete the trailing 4 random numbers and letters, and to delete the trailing extension back .xyz What I have so far is this:

rename -n "s/[a-z][0-9]{6}.xyz/.xyz/g"  *

But it doesn't seem to work. For some reason the output is:

abcdef.xyz (no numbers)

EDIT: I was a bit torn between which answer to choose from, because both helped in finding the solution. I went for stuts because he helped with the second part of the question as well. But your help is greatly appreciated too Mark Perryman - and the commenters as well of course.

Answer

Solution

To remove the 4 numbers/letters preceding the full stop for all files you can use the following loop:

for file in *.xyz ; do
    NEWFILE=$(echo "$file" |sed -re 's/[a-z|0-9][a-z|0-9][a-z|0-9][a-z|0-9](\.)/\./g')
    mv -v $file $NEWFILE
done

Explanation

for file in *.xyz ; do

Loops through every file with a .xyz extension

NEWFILE=$(echo "$file" |sed -re 's/[a-z|0-9][a-z|0-9][a-z|0-9][a-z|0-9](\.)/\./g')

Create a variable called NEWFILE containing the name of the file after stripping out a pattern that matches [a-z|0-9][a-z|0-9][a-z|0-9][a-z|0-9] (a mix of 4 numbers or letters)and is followed by a full stop ((\.)).

mv -v $file $NEWFILE

Move the file to its new name, the -v will print the move process in the following format

`abcdefg123456a789.xyz` -> `abcdefg123456.xyz`

This currently does not cover the fixing of extensions but a similar solution to the above can be used but with the sed command being sed 's/\.xyz.*/\.xyz/g'.

linux - Recovering data off of a drive with a corrupt partition table - GPT Protective Partition?

A friends windows 10 machine crashed and the hard drive now won't boot.

We took the hard drive and put it into my desktop. Booted linux, but we can't force mount the drive and the volumes don't come online by themselves. The drive is 1TB in capacity. It is a hybrid drive HDD/SSD.

Here is fdisk on /dev/sda:

It only sees one sector on it.

Gparted doesn't see much either. Gparted says that it does not know the physical block size of the drive - 2048 bytes vs 512. I've read that it's impossible to recover data unless the software knows the correct block size.

gdisk didn't clarify things for me either:

This is when I looked at disk management in windows, and the drive comes up as a protected GPT Partition

What are the next steps to try? I've read there is software that claims to convert GPT Protective partition to MBR without data loss but I am skeptical about that.

---

UPDATE:

---

The drive is on disk 0 and the model is:

WD10S21X-24R1BT0-SSHD

I tried EaseUS partition manager to try and recover the partition table, but it does not see any partitions. I did not take any further action using easeUS. The automatic recovery of the regular easeUS program did not do much.

I also tried ZAR, and it failed to read any partitions on the drive as well. Since it does not know the size of the drive, it fails to create a meaningful disk image. When I manually specify 1024gb for the disk image, the image created off the drive comes out to only 512 bytes (0).

Minitool partition recovery can't seem to identify any partitions on the drive either:

Windows 7 Backup & Restore makes backup of external hard drive partition although unchecked in backup settings

I ran into a strange problem with Windows 7 Backup & Restore.

I've got the following setup:

• Internal ssd with c: (system), 80GB


• Internal hard drive e: (data), 320GB, 100GB used


• External hard drive (3TB) with three partitions: g:, h: and I:

g: and h: have data (mainly movies), I: is my backup partition for Windows Backup & Restore.

In the Backup & Restore control panel, under 'change settings', g: and h: are unchecked (--> no backup for g: and h:). Nevertheless, when I choose 'restore my files', g: and h: appear in the files that can be restored, with many movies that are on those two partitions.
Consequently, my backup file is ~500GB and I almost reached the limit of my backup partition. Also, backup takes ages (~1 hour, without system image) to complete.

So here are my questions:

1. How can I exclude partion g: and h: from being backuped? What else could I try, except unchecking these participions under 'change settings'?


2. I wouldn't like to have a 500GB backup file for my 100GB data disk (e:). How can I delete all the movies from g: and h: without deleting the backups of e:?

Edit:

• 'Include a system image of drives: System reserved, C:' is unchecked in the backup settings.


• I'm sure that on neither g: nor h: are any programs, system files or installed services. Data consists of exclusively movies and music.

Edit 2:

Thanks for all the answers. None of the proposed solutions worked in my case. I finally solved the problem by formatting partition h: of my external hard drive. I then chose this partition as my backup drive, with exactly the same settings, and everything worked as expected (~150GB backup size, 10-15 minutes for incremental backup). Why? No idea...

I marked Nick Josevskis answer as the right one, because it might help others with the same problem.

PS: Sorry, don't have enough reputation to up-vote your answers.

Answer

As a separate answer to other one I posted:

Have you created any symbolic links / junctions from folders on drive C: that maps to your other drives?

For reference see:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16226/complete-guide-to-symbolic-links-symlinks-on-windows-or-linux/

After a quick search I found this tool to help find them, there may be others (note: I have not used this tool so proceed with caution).

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/ntfs_links_view.html

macos - Can I get back my Boot Camp Windows partition?

On my Mac, I had a Boot Camp partition that contained Windows 7. I recently got a new hard drive fitted, and have the one with the Boot Camp partition in an external USB enclosure.

Is it somehow possible to restore my old Boot Camp partition back to my new hard drive, or is it stuck in limbo for ever?

what is eating my memory? Windows 7 in VirtualBox

this is rather weird. I have a work laptop with Ubuntu and Windows 7 virtual machine in VirtualBox in it. In that VM I usually run just 2 RDP sessions, SciTE editor, Evernote, Total Commander, but once I start Excel or FireFox it starts to complain that the computer is low on memory and I should close somem programs! It has 2.3GB of RAM assigned, so how can this amount of memory not be enough for these apps? I remember using a Windows 7 machine with 512MB RAM just fine back in the old days. Task manager does not really help me with that. Any idea what could be holding all this?

Paging file is set to system managed for C drive and there is 10GB free out of 40GB total on C:

c:\pagefile.sys file was 960MB, but when I got into settings I get this error. Then I saw it was "no pagefile", so I set it again to system managed. But anyway, shouldn't it work without pagefile also? What is using 2GB of RAM? I can't see it in Process Explorer either.

EDIT2:
so pagefile seems to be working now, but I am still curious why is commit so high and what does this number actually consist of...

Answer

The official minimum memory requirement for Windows 7, 64-bit is 2GB. You have that. So you should be okay. But it's a bit tight. That means you need to be able to make use of RAM effectively. Without a working page file, you can't do that. Fix the page file and the problem will go away. The page file will likely not be used, it just needs to be available.

It's a bit complicated to explain accurately, so permit me a grossly oversimplified explanation. Imagine if a process asks Windows to reserve 1GB for it. You'd be pretty annoyed if it said no. You have lots of RAM free, more than 1GB, and the program only wants 1GB. So Windows says yes. But say that process doesn't use any of that memory. Still, Windows can't assume it won't, so it has 1GB of RAM that it can't let any other process reserve. Ouch.

With a working pagefile, Windows knows that it can make free RAM whenever it needs it by writing to the page file. So it can let other processes use and reserve memory without having to fear that it will promise more than it can deliver.

With no page file available, Windows can't commit more memory than it has RAM, and that makes for horrifically inefficient use of RAM.

partitioning - HDD: lost partition table and bad sectors

I have an issue that's been running for the past few days. This weekend, I could use my external (Seagate Backup Plus Slim) HDD just fine, I even put a couple dozens GigaBytes worth of movies on it without an issue. However, a couple hours later, it started being faulty while watching those same movies, randomly disconnecting, and giving VLC a hard time decoding all of this.

I now am almost positive that a couple of issues on my computer caused this, more precisely what seems to be a faulty USB hub driver (and?) memory issues. But that's not the point here.

My issue is that I need to be able to recover files from this hard drive (optional as well as completely mandatory), but I am facing a couple of issues.

The first of which is that I, for several hours, couldn't access it consistently. I just got stubborn and tried to get it to work (on the buggy computer) and I think it finished messing it up. And after a moment trying to understand where the issue was coming from, nothing. The hard drive just wasn't there for any computer.

I tried it on my girlfriend's, and it detected it... Under the RAW format. The size was right and everything, but no file was there, and I didn't want to format it over. So I headed to my Debian-operated computer, on which I fiddled for a couple hours more with TestDisk. There, using the Deeper Search, I discovered that Cylinder 3759/XX/YY (or something like that) was unreadable every time. I can find the files with PhotoRec, but my HDD being a 2TB one (and me not possessing anything as large as this), I can't just do a whole PhotoRec recovery.

Hence why I need to figure out how to get my partition table back despite the faulty sectors. I could just repair the sectors (well, check the drive and everything) but I don't know of my partition table would still be recoverable after then. And, in the case of the other way around, if I even can recover the partition table with faulty sector(s).

So, any help would be more than greatly appreciated! Just keep this in mind: my files are there. It's just not a normal process to get them back, since I have two issues going on at once. Thanks in advance!

Always present password field on Windows login instead of fingerprint

I've recently enabled the fingerprint reader on my laptop running Windows 8.1 and now use it for login as a supplement to my password. When I login using my fingerprint, the default login method is changed to fingerprints, and Windows displays this when I turn on the computer:

However, when I'm at home and my laptop is plugged into my docking station, I can't access the fingerprint reader underneath the laptop lid. Thus, I have to click Sign-in options and then the password icon before being able to type my password:

When the password field is shown, I can still login using my fingerprint, and thus, having the password field shown always would be ideal, so as to save clicks each time I log in a home. Is this possible?

Answer

This has been fixed in Windows 10. The sing-in screen now always shows the password field, even if I last signed in with my fingerprint.

How to install GRUB2 on a USB flash drive to boot into Linux Mint on HDD in UEFI mode?

I have Windows 8.1 installed on an SSD in my PC. It is my main OS and I use it the most. I currently need Linux for development purposes and I installed Linux Mint on the same SSD where Windows is installed. I want to have a USB flash drive, which, when plugged in, will show the GRUB bootloader and let me boot into Linux. Otherwise the PC should boot straight into Windows. When I was installing Linux Mint, I selected the USB flash drive as a "device for bootloader installation" but it seems that nothing was installed on the flash drive but I now have an "ubuntu" option in my UEFI BIOS boot devices list, which just launches Linux from its main partition and does this in Legacy BIOS mode, even though I installed Mint in UEFI mode. Also, I think that nVidia graphics drivers don't work because of the Legacy mode.

Can anyone provide me a complete, step-by-step noob tutorial on how to make a UEFI and Secure Boot compatible flash drive and install GRUB2 EFI on it, so it will let me boot into Linux Mint installation straight from the flash drive?

Answer

EDIT: To explain a bit more what this will do. This will install a bootloader on your USB drive and it will allow you to enter a bootloader when plugging the USB drive in the computer. Booting the OS' on the computer.

!This is not grub but it does exactly the same.!

It is very simple.

You can download rEFInd here and burn it on a USB drive with rufus you can download it here.

1. Open rufus and select your usb drive


2. Navigate to the iso file you downloaded earlier by clicking on the cd icon.


3. Click on start en wait until the progress is finished.


4. When booting on the usb drive you will get a boot loader where you can choose a OS.

windows - Hard disk suddenly extremely slow

EDIT: New discovery! It seems there is something about idling that's getting to it. If I load a program immediately as after the OS is finished loading the speed is perfect and phenomenal! But if I wait for say half an hour or more before loading anything from disk its dirt slow. I suspect windows 10 is doing something on it if its left for idle too long

I have a SSD as main disk drive for frequently used applications and OS (windows 10) and a second HDD 1TB Seagate barracuda.

The SDD is fine the problem is with the HDD

It has the exact same issue as it was with the previous unit before it was replaced:

Early on the Disk was running fine for about a month or two but recently it became slower than dirt. Any read write action would lead to 100% disk usage with barely a few KB of data transfer actually happening.

I in the Task manager I noticed it was msmpeng.exe scanning it all the time which is window's antimalware tool , so I added the drive into exclusions for it so that it no longer scans the disk leading to disk usage because of it, but the problem stopped only temporarily

Opening a large file like a video is so slow that the playback become choppy as the system struggles to read the file as it is being played. It sometimes becomes universally slow as in anything that uses the drive becomes dirt slow as well, including de-fragmentator , chkdisk , image thumbnail generation or any disk check utilities.

I used seatools on it and did pass the SMART check

Since it was sealed packed and everything like its predecessor I don't suspect a vendor foul play yet, but rather something wrong with the configuration of the system or damage from a faulty power supply etc.

How can I set up a shortcut key for changing selected text to a preferred font in Libreoffice?

How can I set up a shortcut key for changing selected text to a preferred font in Libreoffice?

Preferred font in my case is Segoe Print

I have come this far:

Tools → Customise → Keyboard
selected my hotkey for assignment (here Alt+x)
then selected Format → Font Name

Pressing Alt+x now, after selecting a portion of text makes me do extra steps which I am hoping can be done with the original shortcut.

That is here I have to do Ctrl+A to select Times New Roman, then press Del key to delete it, then type Segoe Print, then press Enter. How can I automate this? Probably via another shortcut key?

Answer

Consider using a character/paragraph style. Here are some tutorials:

Dual boot with BIOS and EFI?

I installed Ubuntu on a different PC than the one it's running on right now. The old one only had BIOS support, so it's installed that way. I recently installed Windows 7, using UEFI, because it wouldn't install if I did it using BIOS. (I was told that the new motherboard only had UEFI support, but Ubuntu still working.) However, GRUB only recognizes Ubuntu and not Windows, and the Windows bootloader did not even overwrite the MBR for GRUB - booting normally, without invoking the boot menu, boots Ubuntu.

So in short:

• Ubuntu was installed first, using BIOS.


• Windows was installed later, using UEFI.


• Neither bootloader can discover the other OS. I want to add Windows to the GRUB menu.

How do I make GRUB recognize the Windows installation, or is this not possible?

macos - How do I make Mac OS X remember "Modifier Keys" remappings for my external keyboard?

(to be clear, I know there are similar questions such as "How can I remap windows and alt keys in OS X?" - I'm not asking that. I can make the changes I want, they just get reset every time I unplug the keyboard)

So: Mac OS 10.6.5 on a MacBook Pro, with a Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 plugged in via a USB hub, along with other peripherals.

I want to switch the Alt and Windows keys, so their positions match that on the MBP's keyboard (Win key works as Command key with the Mac).

Sys Prefs / Keyboard / Modifier Keys does the job, until I unplug things to work elsewhere. Come back, plug the USB hub in as before, and my Option/Command swap has been forgotten.

Any suggestions as to how to get Mac OS to remember the swap?

Update:

The problem has vanished for me under OS X Lion. Same hardware, same hub, all of the modifiers are remembered.

Answer

This appears to be an issue for a lot of people, including me. The apple support forums seem to have the same conclusion that this is some kind of bug with Mac OS X and usb hubs:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2364069?threadID=2364069&tstart=0

Their suggestion is to plug the keyboard in directly to the Mac.

I've starting using KeyRemap4MacBook to deal with this issue. What you can do is tell it to remap command to option and option to command for ONLY external keyboards and any non apple external device.

screen sharing - Labeled grid desktop wallpaper?

Summary:

I'd like a desktop wallpaper that:

• is a grid


• has cells that are each and all labeled with ascending numbers (across) and letters (down), such that the top-left cell is A0


• is larger than the width and height of my largest display (1920 for me)

Details:

When I'm sharing my screen with a remote audience, their screen viewer sometimes isn't able to view my entire desktop at once. Sometimes, the audience isn't savvy enough to coordinate resolutions. I want a way to quickly discover what of my screen their desktop viewer is currently displaying.

If I had a grid wallpaper like what I've described above, I could simply show my desktop when there's confusion about what of my screen they're viewing, exactly. I'd ask them to identify the cells at the boundaries of what they could see, and I could take the appropriate steps to cater to (or change, if necessary) that viewport.

This would be a simple, objective measurement that's easy to communicate, regardless of what is being showcased during the desktop sharing session.

Does a grid image like this exist anywhere online already, or is there a tool that makes generating these easy?

What factors other than clock speed influence the performance of a CPU?

Having seen various people test powerful emulators on their computers, I have come to surprise hearing about how one CPU can have triple the clock speed but still have worse single-threaded performance; or how one CPU can use 16 threads but one forced to use a single-thread can wipe the floor using 1 thread and tons of rapid context switching, even assuming a multi-threaded app.

Some of the best Intel CPUs can be as underclocked as much as possible and still run very demanding programs perfectly, and some of those Atom CPUs can be overclocked as much as possible and still not run them without chopping/lags, etc. Here's what I've noticed:

A 1.5 GHz Intel i7 5960x can run latest Photoshop and Adobe After Effects, including PS2/GameCube/Wii emulators and games fullspeed; an overclocked Celeron 450 @ 3.3 GHz can barely do the same, and it's technically more than twice as high in clock speed.

Also, a 4 GHz Atom N270 seems to perform worse than a 1 GHz i7 5960x. Why is this?

With these really new and expensive Intel CPUs, clock speed seems to mean very little, as they can be 1.9 GHz and run everything, whereas some 3/4/5+ GHz CPUs of yesteryears can't even.

So fast that even forced to use a single core while another CPU uses multi-core, they can do better.

hard drive - Can someone explain RAID-0 in plain English?

I've heard about and read about RAID throughout the years and understand it theoretically as a way to help e.g. server PCs reduce the chance of data loss, but now I am buying a new PC which I want to be as fast as possible and have learned that having two drives can considerably increase the perceived performance of your machine.

In the question Recommendations for hard drive performance boost, the author says he is going to RAID-0 two 7200 RPM drives together. What does this mean in practical terms for me with Windows 7 installed, e.g. can I buy two drives, go into the device manager and "raid-0 them together"?

I am not a network administrator or a hardware guy, I'm just a developer who is going to have a computer store build me a super fast machine next week. I can read the wikipedia page on RAID but it is just way too many trees and not enough forest to help me build a faster PC:

RAID-0: "Striped set without parity" or
"Striping". Provides improved
performance and additional storage but
no redundancy or fault tolerance.
Because there is no redundancy, this
level is not actually a Redundant
Array of Inexpensive Disks, i.e. not
true RAID. However, because of the
similarities to RAID (especially the
need for a controller to distribute
data across multiple disks), simple
strip sets are normally referred to as
RAID 0. Any disk failure destroys the
array, which has greater consequences
with more disks in the array (at a
minimum, catastrophic data loss is
twice as severe compared to single
drives without RAID). A single disk
failure destroys the entire array
because when data is written to a RAID
0 drive, the data is broken into
fragments. The number of fragments is
dictated by the number of disks in the
array. The fragments are written to
their respective disks simultaneously
on the same sector. This allows
smaller sections of the entire chunk
of data to be read off the drive in
parallel, increasing bandwidth. RAID 0
does not implement error checking so
any error is unrecoverable. More disks
in the array means higher bandwidth,
but greater risk of data loss.

So in plain English, how can "RAID-0" help me build a faster Windows-7 PC that I am going to order next week?

Could not boot Windows 8 from grub2 nor rEFInd on UEFI-system with Archlinux

I have followed the archlinux beginner's guide thoroughly and was able to install archlinux in UEFI mode and has been able to succesfully boot from it. Everything works fine except that I am unable to boot Windows 8 from GRUB.

I have tried os-prober,as suggested by the Arch Wiki; and when I boot from the menuentry generated by os-prober, it shows:

error: can't find command 'drivemap'.

error: invalid EFI file path.

Press any key to continue...

The following are the commands shown when i press e to edit the above menu entry:

setparams 'Windows 8 (loader) (on/dev/sda1)'

insmod part_gpt

insmod ntfs

set root='hd0,gpt1'

if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint =xy ]; then

search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root --hint-bios=hd0,gpt1 --hint-efi=hd0,gpt1 --hint-baremetal=ahci0,gpt1 5618A11A8A0F9DF

else

search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 5618A11A8A0F9DF

fi

drivemap -s (hd0) ${root}

chainloader +1

And I have also tried adding entries manually through /etc/grub.d/40_custom

menuentry "Microsoft Windows 8 x86_64 UEFI-GPT" {

insmod part_gpt
insmod fat
insmod search_fs_uuid
insmod chain
search --fs-uuid --no-floppy --set=root --hint-bios=hd0,gpt1 --hint-efi=hd0,gpt1 --hint-baremetal=ahci0,gpt1 5618A11A8A0F9DF
chainloader /efi/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi

}

This is the result:

error: file '/efi/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi' not found

Press any key to continue...

Please help!! I'd be glad to provide any additional Info needed!! Thanks in advance!! (do help me edit the formatting above, I'm quite confused by the usage of Blockquotes)

windows xp - create XP usb boot disk in Vista

My netbook (running on XP) recently encountered "NTLDR is missing" problem. However, since I don't have an external dvd, I need to create a USB boot-up disk to re-install XP. Unfortunately, my other laptop is running Vista.

Is it possible to create a USB boot-up disk using Vista?

Thanks,
Erwin

Answer

Use WinToFlash to prepare a bootable USB drive from any Windows installation disk.

video - Linux On-Demand Streaming Server

I'm looking for a server software for Linux, with which I can stream
Video files via the network.

I'd prefer a Software with a (web) GUI or one where you only have to point your
media player to a URI.

The Problem with VLS/VLC is, that you start a Stream and it runs always, you just switch it on like a TV show. But I want it in an on-demand fashion, so the films starts when I want to watch it. Also I had other issues with it.

I felt FFmpeg was too difficult and I had trouble getting it to run.

I'd like to be able to sit down and watch a film from my server at my girlfriends place. There isn't even SSH on her laptop and I don't want to fiddle around with putty forever, it has to be easy and quick or the solution won't work :)

I wasn't able to have a look at XMBC yet, is it possible to use it to stream over the network (I read that somewhere)?

Answer

Assuming that you're streaming over LAN (and not over the wider internet), what you want is a UPnP media server. While UPnP media servers can (IIRC) be used with a web browser, you're best experience will probably come from a dedicated media player. Fortunately, more or less every platform has a player capable of connecting via UPnP - VLC and XBMC are two popular, open source media players which have built-in UPnP clients.

Now, the question is - what server do you want to use? There are several listed on the fairly comprehensive Wikipedia page, although a particularly popular one is MediaTomb which should be availble for most distributions. I've used MiniDLNA to stream to an Xbox before, and configuring it is fairly simple.

The other issue you might have is video encoding, unless you choose to use something like VLC or XBMC as a client, since they can play every format uner the sun (more or less). If you're going to use something like Windows Media Player instead, make sure to look at their list of supported codecs and containers.

windows - Can't write HFS+ in OS X

I've an external HDD of 500GB and in HFS+ format. It works normally on my Mac running OS X 10.5.8. After I plugged it into a machine running Windows, I found a vacant partition of 128MB and formatted it to NTFS. I used Paragon HFS+ for Windows to read and copy files.

Now I'm not able to write to that disk on my Mac. What is the problem?

Answer

this problem has been solved by booting in to the Lion Setup disk and using the disk utility to repair it, now it's working fine.

installation - Cannot install windows 7 in dual-boot SSD

I previously had a Windows 8 and Ubuntu dual boot on my SSD in my desktop. Before that I had a Windows 7 and Ubuntu dual boot on my HDD. The only BIOS setting I changed was I put my SATA controller in AHCI mode from IDE in order to support booting from my SSD.

I had some issues with support for programs I needed in Windows 8 so I decided to re-install windows 7. But after installation my computer couldn't find an operating system.

I tried installing again multiple times, clearing both internal drives, trying different combinations, and using boot-repair under an Ubuntu live CD to fix the MBR, nothing worked and it would occasionally tell me Windows could not install to the drive I had selected. Now I managed to install Ubuntu by itself on a partition of my SSD.

Now when I tried to install Windows 7 SP1 onto the other partition, it simply wasn't recognized and Ubuntu would just boot up instead. Using boot-repair to reinstall grub fixed the recognition issue, but when I booted Windows to complete the setup it told me "Windows Setup could not configure Windows on this computer’s hardware" and the setup just failed. Each time I try to boot into Windows again it tells me I need to re-install.

I've never had these problems before and I don't understand why Windows 7 refuses to install.

MSDN Subscriptions = Windows 7 Ultimate License?

If I were to get a MSDN Operating Systems license, would that also mean I would have access to download the Windows 7 ISO, along with Windows Vista, and XP? Can anyone with access to MSDN show us all what kind of privileged it grants you?

I'm asking because I need a Windows 7 License myself, I want to get Ultimate, and I will soon. But I also help a lot of friends with their computers, and I find myself in need of access to different versions of windows install media. Would getting an MSDN subscription offer me that benefit? Could I download the XP, Vista, or 7 ISO files if I needed to and just use their Serial Number to re-install their OS for them?

Answer

Just to be clear: MSDN is not licensed for you to let all your friends install using the keys you would get, but yes, you have access to a great range of ISO's to re-install using their keys.

You would have access to virtually every OS, every version, going back to DOS, except for ones (95/98/ME) excluded by a settlement over Microsoft's virtual machine (Java settlement).

Also, although the activations never expire, technically, you are supposed to renew your subscription yearly to keep using the software.

This is not MSDN, but TechNet. This is VERY similar to MSDN, except that MSDN has virtually every language under the sun. There may be some other difference that I am not aware of, but based on the sample screenshots, I suspect that you will be well-served by TechNet alone. One other benefit other than it is only about $325 ($250 renewal), so much cheaper than MSDN, is that you also get two Microsoft Support cases yearly. So you can call them for support at no cost twice (regularly $260 per call, so worth it for this alone).

These are sample screenshots of the download pages, which are very similar for MSDN. Note the all editions for the OS, and Office. This is one of my greatest tools for learning.

Keyboard sends "tab" characters after each key

I have had something really weird happen today:

While typing, all of a sudden, almost each key of the keyboard was sending a tab after the key's own character, or deleting several characters or ...

For instance, I would type "a" and the screen would show "a ". Inside dialogs, any key would result in shifting focus to the next control (just as if I had pressed the tab key).

I tried an other keyboard layout, same problem. I checked to see if the tab key was somehow stuck. It wasn't.

I updated the virus definitions of Microsoft Essentials and ran a scan which returned clean. I rebooted the computer, and the problem remained. Eventually, I closed the lid of the laptop and took it over to the shop. And of course, as soon as I got there, everything was working perfectly fine.

As of right now, it seems to be working, but since I haven't done anything that should "logically" solve the problem, I assume it can happen again.

Any idea what the problem could be and how to solve it?

There have been no major changes to the system recently (except for the installation of a brand new USB 3G dongle from a reputable phone company, and everything worked fine afterwards).

I am running Windows 7 HP 64b.

---

Edit: The problem seems to be a hardware problem. I have tried booting in the Linux partition and the problem persists.

I plugged in an external keyboard which seems to work fine so the problem definitely looks like a hardware issue.

Answer

I would try to narrow it down to find out if it is a hardware or a software issue first - a good way to do this would be to plug in a different keyboard and see if it makes any difference.

If you find it's a software issue, then try closing all of your applications and as many processes as possible, and see if the problem still occurs when you're just using Notepad and nothing else.

linux - Can't kill a sleeping process

I don't seem to be able to kill -9 a process which is in an interruptible sleep (S) state:

[root@jupiter ~]# ps -elf | grep yum
4 S root     16790     1  0  75   0 - 73779 -      Jan15 ?        00:00:04 /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/yum -y install python-pip
[root@jupiter ~]# kill -9 16790
[root@jupiter ~]# ps -elf | grep yum
4 S root     16790     1  0  75   0 - 73779 -      Jan15 ?        00:00:04 /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/yum -y install python-pip

How is this possible? Is there any way to kill the process without rebooting?

BOUNTY: I am really more interested in an explanation of how it is possible for this to occur.

UPDATE: This is the output of lsof:

[root@jupiter ~]# lsof -p 16790
COMMAND   PID USER   FD   TYPE             DEVICE SIZE/OFF      NODE NAME
yum     16790 root  cwd    DIR         1166,56842     4096  16886249 /home/del
yum     16790 root  rtd    DIR              253,0     4096         2 /
yum     16790 root  txt    REG              253,0     8304 336177337 /usr/bin/python
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0   144776 346128569 /lib64/ld-2.5.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0  1718232 346128573 /lib64/libc-2.5.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    23360 346128599 /lib64/libdl-2.5.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0   145872 346128584 /lib64/libpthread-2.5.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0   615136 346128602 /lib64/libm-2.5.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0  1244792 336171087 /usr/lib64/libpython2.4.so.1.0
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    95464 346128744 /lib64/libselinux.so.1
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    53448 346128750 /lib64/librt-2.5.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    13960 336187564 /usr/lib64/libplds4.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    58400 346128752 /lib64/libgcc_s-4.1.2-20080825.so.1
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    78384 336173796 /usr/lib64/libelf-0.137.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0  1139672 336187570 /usr/lib64/librpmdb-4.4.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0   407792 336187568 /usr/lib64/librpmio-4.4.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0   233144 336171420 /usr/lib64/libnspr4.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0   375656 336187569 /usr/lib64/libsqlite3.so.0.8.6
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    17992 336187563 /usr/lib64/libplc4.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0   386784 336187571 /usr/lib64/librpm-4.4.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0   154776 336170228 /usr/lib64/librpmbuild-4.4.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0   647608 346128759 /lib64/libglib-2.0.so.0.1200.3
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0  1297136 336176959 /usr/lib64/libxml2.so.2.6.26
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    15584 346128756 /lib64/libtermcap.so.2.0.8
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0  1234328 336187566 /usr/lib64/libnss3.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    18152 346128670 /lib64/libutil-2.5.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    34240 336177071 /usr/lib64/libpopt.so.0.0.0
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    67792 336187567 /usr/lib64/libbz2.so.1.0.3
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0   143144 346128763 /lib64/libexpat.so.0.5.0
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0 56434416 336184082 /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0   132656 336560181 /usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages/rpm/_rpmmodule.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0   154016 336187565 /usr/lib64/libnssutil3.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    96885 345638632 /usr/local/greenplum-loaders-3.3.0.0-build-3/lib/libz.so.1.2.3
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0   247496 346128741 /lib64/libsepol.so.1
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0   369144 336168883 /usr/lib64/libsoftokn3.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0   312336 336178453 /usr/lib64/libfreebl3.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    20240 336530067 /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/timemodule.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    25048 336529953 /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/stropmodule.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    18984 336530051 /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/cStringIO.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    21816 336529943 /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/collectionsmodule.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    52152 336530044 /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/_socketmodule.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    17200 336530045 /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/_ssl.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0   315080 346128749 /lib64/libssl.so.0.9.8e
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0  1366912 346128748 /lib64/libcrypto.so.0.9.8e
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0   190976 336187552 /usr/lib64/libgssapi_krb5.so.2.2
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0   613928 336184245 /usr/lib64/libkrb5.so.3.3
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    11760 346128747 /lib64/libcom_err.so.2.1
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0   153720 336181723 /usr/lib64/libk5crypto.so.3.1
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    35984 336177832 /usr/lib64/libkrb5support.so.0.1
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0     9472 346128681 /lib64/libkeyutils-1.2.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    92816 346128730 /lib64/libresolv-2.5.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    75384 336530050 /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/cPickle.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    23736 336530064 /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/structmodule.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    27336 336528958 /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/operator.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    21520 336529958 /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/zlibmodule.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    37944 336528952 /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/itertoolsmodule.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    21528 336528929 /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/_localemodule.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    21208 336529939 /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/binascii.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    12080 336530062 /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/shamodule.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    13168 336530058 /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/md5module.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    18000 336529947 /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/mathmodule.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    12504 336529934 /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/_randommodule.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    15320 336528948 /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/fcntlmodule.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    32816 336530049 /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/bz2.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0     8608 336529946 /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/grpmodule.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    38696 336529819 /usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages/cElementTree.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    42672 336530047 /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/arraymodule.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0     9368 336528915 /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/_bisect.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    74992 336529944 /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/datetime.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0   372912 336560510 /usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages/M2Crypto/__m2crypto.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0     7120 336529937 /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/_weakref.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    17496 336528966 /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/selectmodule.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    46448 336528961 /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/pyexpat.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    33896 336529820 /usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages/_sqlite.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    41784 336530075 /usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages/_sqlitecache.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    25104 336530066 /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/termios.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0     7280 336530065 /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/syslog.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    25464 336265457 /usr/lib64/gconv/gconv-modules.cache
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    66544 336528926 /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/_cursesmodule.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0   380336 336181932 /usr/lib64/libncurses.so.5.5
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0   405880 336529957 /usr/lib64/python2.4/lib-dynload/unicodedata.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    24576 236520047 /var/lib/rpm/__db.001
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    53880 346128424 /lib64/libnss_files-2.5.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0    23736 346128408 /lib64/libnss_dns-2.5.so
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0  1318912 236520050 /var/lib/rpm/__db.002
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0   663552 236520051 /var/lib/rpm/__db.003
yum     16790 root  mem    REG              253,0   769074 336174965 /usr/share/locale/en_US/LC_MESSAGES/redhat-dist.mo
yum     16790 root    0u   CHR              136,8      0t0        10 /dev/pts/8 (deleted)
yum     16790 root    1u   CHR              136,8      0t0        10 /dev/pts/8 (deleted)
yum     16790 root    2u   CHR              136,8      0t0        10 /dev/pts/8 (deleted)
yum     16790 root    3u  unix 0xffff8104388d2e40      0t0   4675113 socket
yum     16790 root    4w   REG              253,0        0 236522326 /var/log/yum.log
yum     16790 root    5u   REG              253,0   605184 236520025 /var/cache/yum/WANdisco-dev/primary.xml.gz.sqlite
yum     16790 root    6u   REG              253,0    20480 236524002 /var/cache/yum/addons/primary.sqlite.old.tmp (deleted)
yum     16790 root    7u   REG              253,0 12578816 236519970 /var/cache/yum/base/primary.xml.gz.sqlite.old.tmp (deleted)
yum     16790 root    8u   REG              253,0 17972224 236523993 /var/cache/yum/epel/317109b44f1b0b40d910dc60c9080e62c7f4b16a-primary.sqlite.old.tmp (deleted)
yum     16790 root    9u   REG              253,0   967680 236524055 /var/cache/yum/extras/primary.sqlite.old.tmp (deleted)
yum     16790 root   10u   REG              253,0   459776 246415366 /var/cache/yum/pgdg92/primary.sqlite.old.tmp (deleted)
yum     16790 root   11u   REG              253,0  4927488 236524060 /var/cache/yum/updates/primary.sqlite.old.tmp (deleted)
yum     16790 root   12r   REG              253,0 65204224 236519434 /var/lib/rpm/Packages
yum     16790 root   13r   REG              253,0    45056 236519438 /var/lib/rpm/Name
yum     16790 root   14u  IPv4            4675317      0t0       TCP jupiter.example.com:33597->riksun.riken.go.jp:http (ESTABLISHED)
yum     16790 root   15u  IPv4            4675939      0t0       TCP jupiter.example.com:52708->freedom.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk:http (CLOSE_WAIT)
yum     16790 root   16r   REG              253,0 65204224 236519434 /var/lib/rpm/Packages
yum     16790 root   17r   REG              253,0    45056 236519438 /var/lib/rpm/Name
yum     16790 root   18r   REG              253,0    12288 236519440 /var/lib/rpm/Pubkeys
yum     16790 root   20r  FIFO                0,6      0t0   4676024 pipe
yum     16790 root   24w  FIFO                0,6      0t0   4676024 pipe