Recent Posts

776

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 29, 2015, 01:07 PM »

I got tired of waiting and downloaded the ISOs from the MSDN. so I'm posting from Windows 10 tablet while I wait for workstation to finish.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 29, 2015, 08:47 AM »

Hm... So I can either 'manually' download Windows 10, and have it now ... Or, I can wait for the reservation to take forever to get on with it.

Iiii'm gonna call that one a fail.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 28, 2015, 10:03 PM »

Back to thumb-twiddling mode.

-4wd (July 28, 2015, 09:59 PM)

I'm GMT -5 so it's 11:00pm here and still no joy... So it'll have to be a morning project for me now.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 28, 2015, 07:59 PM »

How much free space do you have available? I think it's looking for ~20GB.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 28, 2015, 04:39 PM »

I don't think it's weird they began upgrading several hours before midnight; they are serving quite a lot of machines.

-Curt (July 28, 2015, 03:49 PM)

Okay, so you are in a part of the world where it's tomorrow already then ... Yes?

How many hours before midnight are we talking here???

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General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 28, 2015, 12:49 PM »

Maybe KB2952664 was the reason why Win 10 failed to install on my machine?

-Curt (July 28, 2015, 11:25 AM)

How did you get an upgrade prompt already?? Is it tomorrow in you part of the world?

KB2952664 installed perfectly fine for me the first time I tried. It didn't give me any trouble.

-Deozaan (July 28, 2015, 11:40 AM)

As did mine appear to. Then it added itself to the list again, and again... If I have time I'll post a screen shot when I get home...the damn thing is quite literally listed in history as having been successfully installed five times (in a row).

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General Software Discussion / Re: Can Casper really create bootable clone of my Windows disk?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 28, 2015, 11:17 AM »

I've successfully cloned my active partition "Windows 7 OS"

-kyrathaba (July 26, 2015, 04:42 PM)

That's not the 'Active' partition, it's the boot partition. The active partition is/would/should be the 100MB System partition. So if all you did was copy the OS partition...it's not supposed to be bootable (all by itself)..

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General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 28, 2015, 07:25 AM »

So on the topic of Windows 10 upgrade prep updates. Has anyone else seen KB2952664 bouncing in and out? To clarify, I spent several hours trying to make peace with this patch, because it kept insisting it needed to be installed...even though it was already listed as having been installed, no less than 4 friggin times.

I'm thinking maybe it has something to do with running the force the system to show the reservation prompt...(on a domain member machine)...but that's really only based on a blind guess.

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Official Announcements / Re: DonationCoder Major Upgrades - Progress Report Thread

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 27, 2015, 11:18 AM »

And not the "UNREAD POSTS" button on the button bar, right (as that one is not "since last visit")?

-mouser (July 26, 2015, 09:47 PM)

There's a button bar??

I've got the 'Show unread posts' link pinned to the Windows taskbar also. I never impose the since last visit limitation because I switch machines frequently (home/work/phone/X??) so I'd rather not risk missing something based on where and what the 'Last Visit' is defined by.

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General Software Discussion / Re: AV testing: Is your antivirus app doing its job?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 27, 2015, 06:58 AM »

It's a bit long to quote, so I'll just +1 App103's sentiments here.

Because regardless of the efficiency of the security software used, it invariably comes down to the user being presented with a dialog that basically says: "Would you like to blow your own ass off? Yes/No" ... and that in the majority of cases is where the real problem lies. This is why the drop in support incidents before and after Admin rights are stripped from users numbers are always very high..

786

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 23, 2015, 07:24 AM »

On the 32-bit system, IE 11 doesn't show YouTube videos here. Is this a Flash thing, a Windows thing, or an IE 11 thing?

-Arizona Hot (July 22, 2015, 07:30 PM)

Unknown, I just checked IE11 on one of my 32-bit Win10 VMs. The first time I checked Add-ons it wasn't there, so  I went to YouTube.com to see what would happen...and IE froze on me (I guess the "transparent" install is a bit clumsy..). Second try the page loaded and the video played ... And the MS/Shockwave Flash Player Object now appeared in the Currently loaded add-ons list.

In retrospect...perhaps the 'Currently loaded' bit was/is key..

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Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 22, 2015, 06:28 AM »

Looks like it's part of the MS Flash offering:

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Living Room / Re: Show us a photo of your mutt or other creatures..

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 19, 2015, 01:29 PM »

Okay, given the name, and the breed, I have to ask ... Does this have anything to do with (Jerry Reed) Snowman's dog in Smokey and the Bandit? To this day - Hang on to your ass Fred... - is one of my all-time favorite movie lines.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 18, 2015, 10:33 AM »

Curiouser still, the Windows Insider Preview .iso download page is now disabled.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 17, 2015, 11:54 AM »

The 101240 OOBE has a whole new feel (and EULA Acceptance) to it.

...I haven't made it to the desktop yet.

791

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 16, 2015, 11:46 AM »

Am I the only one for whom jump-list (both pinned and frequent) items on the File Explorer taskbar icon do not work? I "pin" all sorts of things and none of them—except "This PC"—open File Explorer or do anything. The same items in the "Quick Access" sidebar work fine, though. This has been the case for the last half-dozen builds or so… not quite sure when it started.

It's the sort of really frustrating bug that I'd think would have been commented on (and fixed) if it were common.

-ayryq (July 12, 2015, 06:20 AM)

Let me rephrase. Can anyone confirm (or deny) that File Explorer jump lists work in their copy of Windows 10, any build?

-ayryq (July 16, 2015, 07:20 AM)

I've got 5 Win10 VMs running currently and they all work fine (both pinned and frequent).

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General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 16, 2015, 06:46 AM »

Damn if I can remember where I read it, but I got the impression that the Insider Program was not per se ending. Supposedly due to the - new and ominous - subscription based nature of Windows the brave few idiots were going to be able to test the new update wave(s) as they came about for the rest of the folks what use Winders..

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Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 14, 2015, 10:14 AM »

This was interesting: Is Bitcoin going mainstream - Infographic.

Apparently it has passed Western Union as the - most popular - fastest way to send money.

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Living Room / Re: Patch your Flash! Version 18.0.0.203 (July 08, 2015)

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 12, 2015, 12:40 PM »

I'm in IE11 on 7pro x64 ... And after literally years -(like since 2007)- it just decided to up and pull the Green Screen crap on me. VCard is an ATI Radeon HD 4850 Driver v8.920.0.0 dated 11/9/2011 - Was running fine since the beginning...and just went locked up green on Flash Players.


*Shrug* Maybe I'm overdue on a new box..

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Living Room / Re: Patch your Flash! Version 18.0.0.203 (July 08, 2015)

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 12, 2015, 11:40 AM »

I wish they would patch using 28% CPU just to show video.  Granted my GPU probably doesn't qualify for hw accel. but still.  I have been trying to use Pepper Flash, and other alternatives but I can't get any of them to work on Windows except on Youtube.  ESPN3 forget it.  I'll be glad when Flash is cut out altogether.

-MilesAhead (July 11, 2015, 04:20 PM)

Amen to that! Mine decided to just up and start doing the Green Screen lockups last week. Apparently it linked to the hardware acceleration setting...which was never a problem before. There are a bunch of people looking for the registry method of disabling hardware acceleration, but the only "help" from Adobe is a snarky note about the information not being stored in the registry.

The point of the exercise is that it is impossible to get to the right click settings option, because the (any...) page keeps locking up the browser. Unfortunately their "support staff" is to obtuse to grasp that people need the alternative file system level version of the how to disable hardware acceleration ... So they just keep regurgitating the - at this point idiotic - settings panel option.

As an aside: WTF did they do to flash that suddenly turned it into a seizure prone nightmare??

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General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 12, 2015, 11:17 AM »

Build 10166 now available on the Fast Ring.

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Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 12, 2015, 07:17 AM »

J.K. Rowling shuts down Serena Williams critic

-Arizona Hot (July 11, 2015, 05:16 PM)

ROFL

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Living Room / Re: Partitioning or Not w. single HDD?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 08, 2015, 11:24 AM »

But a good partition scheme can make a difference in safety and recoverability from disaster.

-xtabber (July 08, 2015, 10:07 AM)

I fail to see how. In all the years I've been doing this stuff, I've seen machines eaten up with all sorts of failures and maladies. But I've never once ran into a situation where extra partitions would have made a difference. Either the drive is still spinning, or there are valid backups available ... Or the drive stopped dead, the backups don't exist, and the party in question is quite royally screwed.

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Living Room / Re: Partitioning or Not w. single HDD?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 08, 2015, 07:18 AM »

While I've long been an advocate of the multiple partition scheme (OS/Working/Storage). As of late I'm starting to think that a single partition may be a better way to go. Because the intention behind the 3 partitions was to make reinstalling the OS easier in the event of a disaster of some kind.

However, I currently strongly suspect that I may be trying to solve the wrong problem...because I haven't had to reinstall the OS since 2007 when I first built the machine. So...

Since I have had numerous occasions where space became an issue...I'm starting to think a One-And-Done approach could very well save me some aggravation in the future. Also since I'm still firmly entrenched in Spinner Land. This will eliminate pushing my workspace into a slower part of the drive in attempt to leave sufficient room for expansion for the OS. And also gives me only one constantly moving point on the drive where write activity is concentrated...instead of 3 somewhat stationary points..

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General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 06, 2015, 07:32 AM »

**Minor caveat when running the Sysinternals SDelete.exe tool, is that in the process of "Zeroing Out the Free Space" it will cause a Dynamically Expanding .vhdx to expand to its full configured size. So if you're overlapping the physical drive space by double-booking it ... This will byte you in the ass.

-Stoic Joker (July 05, 2015, 08:43 AM)

Would using cipher /W <drive> be any better?

-4wd (July 05, 2015, 10:10 PM)

Unknown. It's really not a encryption/decryption issue I'm trying to address. It's an issue with compacting a .vhd/.vhdx drive (that has dynamically expanded due to the build update) to reclaim the unused free space. The SDelete -c run was supposed to assist with that according to a TechNet article about how to compact an uncooperative .vhd. And while it did do just that, it also shutdown the lab by overflowing the Host drive ... Which is a - perhaps in retrospect obvious - behavior that was not mentioned in the article.

No additional software was ever added to the install, so it is only Windows 10 playing games with ~5GB of space. Where is it storing what and why?? The clean install has been running for 24hrs, and is still sitting at it's original ~7GB so I'm assuming it isn't the indexing service(s) using up the space. And trying to get a birds eye view with SpaceSniffer didn't yield anything useful in the way of what was using the space either.

-Stoic Joker (July 05, 2015, 08:43 AM)

My guess is that it keeps separate "images" (snapshots) so it can revert to a known working system if an upgrade goes bad.

-Deozaan (July 06, 2015, 12:57 AM)

I thought of that, but there is nothing I can see. cleanmgr.exe took care of Windows.old and $Windows.~BT, and I checked for shadow copies and file system Previous Versions ... Nothing, nothing, and nothing.

Right now I've got 2 clean loaded 10162 VMs, one pro, one home. Both are sitting at just over the 7GB mark. I'm going to keep a weary eye on them to see if/when one of them starts to bloat, to see if I can figure out why.