Messages

1

Living Room / Re: happy new year 2025

« on: January 02, 2025, 01:09 PM »

Happy New Year to everyone here.
I hope you all have a wonderful 2025.

-mouser (January 01, 2025, 01:01 AM)

Happy New Year, Jesse xx

2

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for QuickBooks Alternative

« on: November 01, 2024, 04:21 PM »

Not used the subscription version of QuickBooks but the old version used to allow everything to be exported in CSV format. Is that no longer possible?

Alternatively just keep the Quick Book Files - an accountant should be able to read them if it becomes necessary or resubscribe and import them when necessary. Chances are no one will ever want to look at them.

3

Living Room / Re: [Important] Known DC Issue

« on: July 23, 2024, 09:24 AM »

Cloudflare is now doing a good job of keeping things online!

-KynloStephen66515 (July 20, 2024, 12:22 PM)

I understand why you do this, but beware that Cloudflare comes with its own set of problems:
https://blog.cloudfl....com/tag/post-mortem

-Tuxman (July 22, 2024, 03:40 AM)

I understand why it is used but Cloudflare is a pain in the arse!!! I made my host turn it off because it caused endless issues.

4

Living Room / Re: Upgrading/migrating server prepare for some downtime

« on: July 06, 2024, 07:57 AM »

Well done 

5

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 11 Announced

« on: October 05, 2021, 12:24 PM »

I found it "interesting" that they had to update their hardware requirements to include the Surface PCs they are still selling (even though the CPUs were not supported).

I have no hardware that will run Windows 11 and I have just about had it with Microsoft and paid for software. I am now looking at moving to Linux by W10 EOL - there is nothing I can't do with Open Source software that I currently do with ridiculously expensive software - now everything mostly moving to really expensive a monthly subs model that I can't afford.

I have a feeling by 2025 and almost no corporate users have moved to W11 there will be a change in requirements to allow us to all upgrade but by then I suspect many users, including the bigger corporate users, will have spent a couple of years planning a transition to Linux or Mac. I think MS have finally shot themselves in the foot and will limp into IBM oblivion.

6

Living Room / Re: My new project is now live: Co-op For Two on YouTube

« on: July 08, 2021, 10:29 AM »

Subscribed - can't say I am a huge game player these days but don't mind passing the time ...

Was caught when I saw a couple of films pop up!! Particularly Into Thin Air (read the book a long time before the film) and Endurance.

Look forward to catching up - I do pop in here fairly regularly and look at topic titles but since retiring tech has taken a bit of a back seat in my headspace (partly 'cos I can no longer afford or justify buying stuff any more - mostly decluttering from years of hoarding computer bits!).

7

General Software Discussion / Re: Cannot claim free space in C:\

« on: April 07, 2021, 07:12 AM »

Try running CHKDSK C: /R in PowerShell (you will need to restart).

Sometimes if there are issues with the file map on the drive space remains marked as in use after deleting files.

You could also use the built in Windows utility Disk Cleanup from the start menu (just click start and type Disk and it will popup, run it and click Clean System Files). If you have old leftover windows installations after updates they take up a lot of space (sometimes 30Gb+). Note it can take a long time to delete some stuff so be patient.

-Carol Haynes (March 30, 2021, 07:53 AM)

A Carol sighting! It's great to see you again! Not as long as between your prior posts- but still a while without you around!

-wraith808 (March 30, 2021, 11:22 AM)

LOL - still lurk from time to time. Have retired now and am actively avoiding technology these days (no money so it saves disappointment when I don;t see new toys I want to play with )

8

General Software Discussion / Re: Cannot claim free space in C:\

« on: March 30, 2021, 07:53 AM »

Try running CHKDSK C: /R in PowerShell (you will need to restart).

Sometimes if there are issues with the file map on the drive space remains marked as in use after deleting files.

You could also use the built in Windows utility Disk Cleanup from the start menu (just click start and type Disk and it will popup, run it and click Clean System Files). If you have old leftover windows installations after updates they take up a lot of space (sometimes 30Gb+). Note it can take a long time to delete some stuff so be patient.

9

Adventures of Baby Cody / Re: Where is Baby Cody

« on: June 12, 2020, 08:31 PM »

Oops he is still with me in the UK - sorry. PM me your address if you would like him to fly home - but it may be best to wait until post returns to more normal service (currently international postage is in a hell of a mess).

10

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Vegas Pro Edit 14 $20 on Humble

« on: December 11, 2018, 03:27 PM »

Vegas 11 Pro is great (I still use it).

I upgraded to 14 Pro and absolutely hated it - constant crashes, missing audio in rendered files. Even worse it blue screened once during rendering and now it won't render at all because it BSODs every time.

Total waste of money apart from the free Pro plugins thrown in which I now use in Vegas 11. Vegas 11 is rock solid and does everything apart from missing 4k but then I produce DVDs and YT clips and don't have the bandwidth to mess about with 4k size files.

Since Sony sold off Vegas and Sound Forge all that seems to be added in each version are new bugs. Plus there is absolutely no support any more except for limited support for installation immediately after purchase. Sony's support was very good - they used to take emails and were helpful, the new bunch just want your money. Google it. I won't spend another pound on the programme.

11

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« on: November 16, 2018, 08:07 AM »

Time MS allowed users control over updates again - won't happen but that is why I have gone back to Windows 7 on all my systems!!

12

Living Room / Re: Windows 7 update stuck on constant "need to restart" - end of my tether

« on: October 31, 2018, 03:10 PM »

For anyone interested I found a fix for this issue - at an admin command prompt:


fsutil resource setautoreset true c:\

Then in SAFE MODE or Recovery Console at command prompt:

C: (in Recovery console use the drive indicated)
cd Windows\System32\SMI\Store\Machine
attrib -s -h *
del *.blf
del *.regtrans-ms
cd Windows\System32\config\TxR
attrib -s -h *
del /q *



Restart!! Fixed!! Finally!!! Hope someone else finds it useful

13

Living Room / Samsung SSD 860 EVO woes - workaround

« on: October 30, 2018, 06:22 AM »

I have jsut added a 1Tb Samsung SSD 860 EVO to my aging system (and upgraded to a Radeon RX580 at the same time). Motherboard i a Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 with and 8 coure CPU and 36Gb RAM.

Windows 7 Pro installed in AHCI mode happily enough (I hate windows 10 and am sticking to Windows 7 as long as I can) but seemed to take longer than I expected and then I started suffereing 30 second freezes every few seconds - the system logs confirmed the devie was being reset each time. I used Samsung Magician to see if I could get a sense of what was happening and the speeds were terrible when I benchmarked the drive (it took 14 minutes to do the benchmark!!!)

After a bit of research there seems to be compatability essues with the SSD and AMD drivers - I updated the AMD Chipset drivers to the current version but it mad no difference. I also couldn't update the SSD firmware to see if the latest firware fixewd the issue (it just kept saying there was no firmware but couldn;t install it).

FWIW I seem to have found a workaround - I unstalled AMDs chipset drivers and then went into Control Panel and use the Standard AHCI driver from Microsoft. Now I have updated the SSD firmware and everything seems to be running stable.

Benchmark now runs in about 30 seconds and I seem to be getting reasonable speeds but RAPID Mode is still disabled and compatibility checker says:

VID 1002 Under the current system environment, some functions in Magician CANNOT be run.
If multiple iterations of Read and Write are performed, RAPID mode may become inactive due to system internal errors on some of the AMD / AsMedia Controller or Driver.

If you have an AMD/ATI system and have long freeze issues it is worth making a note.

Anyone else come across this and have a better solution???

14

Living Room / Re: I'm getting married, wish me luck!

« on: October 15, 2018, 10:16 AM »

Sorry not sure how I missed your original post but huge congratulations to you both. Long life and happiness xxx 

15

General Software Discussion / Re: How to REALLY stop ******* Windows Update on Win10?

« on: September 13, 2018, 11:29 AM »

The other approach is to say your connection is metered - although it will still pester but should not download without permission

16

General Software Discussion / Re: How to REALLY stop ******* Windows Update on Win10?

« on: September 13, 2018, 09:47 AM »

One way that seems to work is to change the permissions on the windows update service and explicitly deny access to SYSTEM

I haven't tried this but have read reports that it works.

Having said that I guess MS will one day reset the permissions.

You could try replacing the windows update service file with another file of the same name.

Alternatively go back to Windows 7!

17

General Software Discussion / Re: Et Tu, CCleaner!

« on: September 12, 2018, 06:18 AM »

System Ninja is a replacement for CCleaner. Last  time I tried it, the interface was much more spartan than CCleaner's, but feature-wise it is very similar.

By default it is also more thorough than CCleaner (in default setting). Be advised though, that thoroughness can sometimes be a double-edged sword. And if you pony up the cash, it also comes in portable format, the free version only comes as an installer.

-Shades (September 11, 2018, 06:18 AM)

The nice thing for tech support people is that if you buy the pro version you can brand it and distribute it freely to your customers - not sure how that model will pan out into the future!

18

General Software Discussion / Re: Ophcrack Failed to find my password on Windows 10

« on: September 06, 2018, 07:43 AM »

There is a convoluted work around to enable the hidden admin account - you can then login as admin and reset local passwords on other users. I have used this method to help clients but don't want to publish the details here - though a quick google search will help ;-)

Not sure there is a solution if you use an MS account to login other than their password reset tools online.

19

Living Room / Re: Windows 7 update stuck on constant "need to restart" - end of my tether

« on: July 21, 2018, 04:31 PM »

Statistical validity: Without further substantive data on relevant hard drive failure-rates and performance, it would be incorrect to attribute statistical significance to one person's anecdote/experience of eventual failure of only two drives of the same brand.

-IainB (July 21, 2018, 02:38 PM)

The drives I bought were subject of a large class action lawsuit because they were notoriously unreliable and gave no warning of sudden failure.

Its not the first time seagate drives I bought had this reputation  within months of product launch.

Whether my experience is statistically relevant I no longer trust Seagate drives.

20

Living Room / Re: Windows 7 update stuck on constant "need to restart" - end of my tether

« on: July 21, 2018, 04:21 AM »

On another note:
While the interface of Windows 10 is not everyone's cup of tea, it is not that bad in my opinion. Having said that, Google reveals quite a lot of links that can make your Windows 10 installation look and "feel" like Windows 7. In that sense you would have the best of 2 worlds and you could get rid of dual-boot altogether. From Gizmo's Freeware or find your favorite link with this search term: make Windows 10 look and feel like Windows 7

-Shades (July 21, 2018, 01:57 AM)

Trouble is I have some stuff I need that does not work well on Windows 10 so need Windows 7 at the moment.

Its not really a look and feel thing (I can live with W10 style) but more importantly the thing that winds me up about Windows 10 are the constant updates that break things - the last major feature update (Fall Creator Edition) left my system completely unbootable (including Windows 7) and it took me days to get anything working again and involved reinstalling Windows 10 from clean as it wouldn't even start recovery from USB or CD. I haven't let it install the Spring Creators Update and don't trust it too but I can't stop it forever so I am thinking of simply dumping Windows 10 on this machine. I have fixed too many customer computers recently that have had problems with the Spring update (two of them needed wiping and starting again).

I just bought a 1Tb Samsung SSD and graphics card and plan to unplug all the existing drives and do a clean W7 install on the SSD and then connect by dual booting with my exisiting Windows 7 until I can transfer everything and make sure it works. That is a long term project though - and to be honest I am not sure all the software is still installable (eg. I have an old copy of Quickbooks 2012 and don;t need to pay a monthly subscription to pay for features I will never use - just not sure I can get that activated and all the updates - if not there is no support for recovering data from my QB file so I may just need to clean up the existing install and make it minimal to use odd bits like this).

21

Living Room / Re: Windows 7 update stuck on constant "need to restart" - end of my tether

« on: July 20, 2018, 08:35 PM »

Thanks for all the suggestions ... no it is not in a domain

No I don't have a useful backup as my stupid 3Tb Seagate drives packed up (one of the heads stopped working and a second drive purchased at the same time also had a failing head). I will never EVER buy Seagate crap again! I have been burned before but never again.

I left it updating over night last week and didn't immediately notice there was an issue until it started popping up saying I need to restart - I did but no sign of updates installing and when it rebooted it just popped up again which is when I checked what was going on. There are no older restore points.

A number of side issues - I have Windows 7 and 10 dual booting (mostly use 7 as I hate 10) but it has the unfortunate effect of I can't boot from a Windows 7 repair or installation DVD because the boot sectors tell it I have windows 10 and the installer complains it is not the right version. This means an in place upgrade is not happening - there doesn't seem to be any way of restoring the W7 boot code as I can't get to the 'Repair your computer screen' (I don't mind trashing the W10 dual boot if I can get the W7 boot system working again).

Re. system restore points - it does create system restore points - I can only assume that in all my efforts so many restore points have been created that the useful ones have been deleted.

I have been checking system integrity - SFC reports issues it can;t fix but there is noting the CBS.LOG file to give me a clue.

I ran Microsoft's System Readiness tool (which basically actsa as DSIM in Windows 7) - this was much more helpful and identified 8 corrupt or missing files. It fixed 7 of them. The 8th is listed as this:

   servicing\packages\Package_for_KB976933_vpc~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~nb-NO~7.1.7601.17514.mum
   servicing\packages\Package_for_KB976933_vpc~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~nb-NO~7.1.7601.17514.cat

The manual fix instructions say to download the correct from from MS Dowload Centre but nothing is listed there under KB976933

Download the package from Microsoft Download Center or Microsoft Update Catalog.
Copy the package (.msu) to the %SYSTEMROOT%\CheckSUR\packages directory. By default, this directory doesn't exist and you need to create the directory.
Rerun the System Update Readiness Tool.

I think the original file was part of SP1 - any ideas how to extract it from the SP1 package or do I need to reapply SP1 (if windows will let me - I seem to remember last time I tried that it just said already installed?)



System error log seems to have a lot of errors that look like this:

- System

  - Provider

   [ Name]  Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Tm
   [ Guid]  {4CEC9C95-A65F-4591-B5C4-30100E51D870}
 
   EventID 1
 
   Version 0
 
   Level 3
 
   Task 0
 
   Opcode 0
 
   Keywords 0x8000000000000000
 
  - TimeCreated

   [ SystemTime]  2018-07-19T03:53:34.581684300Z
 
   EventRecordID 2332315
 
   Correlation
 
  - Execution

   [ ProcessID]  13864
   [ ThreadID]  21048
 
   Channel System
 
   Computer OFFICE-PC
 
  - Security

   [ UserID]  S-1-5-18
 

- EventData

  TxUow {DFDD7667-8AA1-11E8-99CA-50E549C546E8}
  TxDescriptionLength 0
  TxDescription 
  ClfsStatus 0xc0000061


The Transaction (UOW={dfdd7667-8aa1-11e8-99ca-50e549c546e8}, Description='') was unable to be committed, and instead rolled back; this was due to an error message returned by CLFS while attempting to write a Prepare or Commit record for the Transaction.  The CLFS error returned was: 0xc0000061.

The details vary but "was unable to be committed, and instead rolled back; this was due to an error message returned by CLFS while attempting to write a Prepare or Commit record for the Transaction.  The CLFS error returned was:" is common

There also seem to be quite a few of these:

- System

  - Provider

   [ Name]  Microsoft-Windows-BitLocker-Driver
   [ Guid]  {651DF93B-5053-4D1E-94C5-F6E6D25908D0}
 
   EventID 24620
 
   Version 0
 
   Level 2
 
   Task 0
 
   Opcode 0
 
   Keywords 0x8000000000000000
 
  - TimeCreated

   [ SystemTime]  2018-07-18T15:48:43.551730900Z
 
   EventRecordID 2330167
 
   Correlation
 
  - Execution

   [ ProcessID]  4
   [ ThreadID]  56
 
   Channel System
 
   Computer OFFICE-PC
 
  - Security

   [ UserID]  S-1-5-18
 

- EventData

  ErrorCode 0x80000010
  Volume \\?\Volume{3ccee3f6-1e28-4872-994b-a3c9066ba7e6}
  WritePhase 0x0

Encrypted volume check: Volume information on \\?\Volume{3ccee3f6-1e28-4872-994b-a3c9066ba7e6} cannot be read.

Which is odd (I am not using BitLocker - the drives are not encrypted). I suppose this might be related to drives that have been removed (the knackered Seagate drives for a start).


I am away for 10 days from tomorrow - I am not being rude if I don't reply to ideas quickly - I will be slaving behind a cello and my only tech access will be sporadic via an Android phone. I will check out any ideas when I get home. Thanks everyone.

22

Living Room / Re: Windows 7 update stuck on constant "need to restart" - end of my tether

« on: July 17, 2018, 02:23 PM »

I have followed all the advice from Microsoft - which ends with reinstall windows which I haven't got time to do at the moment.

I only have 6 system restore points - all from today.

23

Living Room / Windows 7 update stuck on constant "need to restart" - end of my tether

« on: July 17, 2018, 12:14 PM »

I have spent most of the day on this and have tried everything I can think of - anyone got any other suggestions other than a lump hammer ...

Windows 7 did some updates the other day - now I am getting pop up reminders to restart

After numerous restarts the pops keep coming

I can't check for updates (I need to restart first).

I have run the Windows Update Trouble shooter numerous time --- comes up with an error unfixed every time but when I look at the detailed version it says it is fixed





I have run the MS FixIt Tool for Windows Update in non-aggressive and agressive mode --- says it is complete --- restart and back to square one. No no update history though.

I have manually reset Windows Update (renamed SoftwareDistribution and CatRoot2) --- makes no difference

I have deleted the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Auto Update\RebootRequired  --- it keeps reappearing and forcing the restart prompt

I have run SFC /SCANNOW - there are errors but they are not related directly to windows and have been there for ages without issue (they relate to 3rd party drivers)

I have restarted about 20 times through all this day and spent most of the day swearing when I should be doing something more useful.

Apart from wiping Windows and reinstalling anyone got any suggestions?

Thanks

24

Living Room / Re: Hating on AVG antivirus/firewall (internet security)

« on: June 05, 2018, 01:05 PM »

Windows Defender / Firewall and Malwarebytes for me.

Don't know if you are aware but Avast now owns AVG - Avast was supposed to be a light AV but has gradually succumbed to bloatware. I always thought AVG was more bloated than Avast but they seem to be going the same way now.

25

Living Room / Re: Windows 10 April 2018 upgrade woes - anyone any ideas?

« on: June 03, 2018, 06:24 PM »

The show/hide utility from MS should allow you to delay installations indefinitely but you have to spot them before they ionstall them. The only way I can see it working is to disable the WU service - then regualrly enable it, run show hide, install what you want and then disable it again.