Tag Archives: Windows 7

Microsoft’s Windows 10 nagware goes FULL SCREEN in final push • The Register

4 Jul 2016 By in Technology Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

I am actually not that surprised with Microsoft’s behaviour on this. Forcing an upgrade onto people without consent. In fact, it was using malware-like tactics to make you (or persuade you) to upgrade.

Some other references:

 

Meet the new BSoD – the Blue Screen of Despair

Source: Microsoft’s Windows 10 nagware goes FULL SCREEN in final push • The Register

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Tinkering

13 May 2016 By in Linux, Technology, Video Games Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Looks like my weekend is going to be filled with tinkering again. ^_^;

I need to reinstall windows on my laptop as I think there must be some graphics conflict somewhere and it’s lagging when it gets taxed (didn’t normally). Most commonly, it happens when I’m playing Final Fantasy XIV, but has lagged a bit on Alice: Madness Returns and Hyperdimension Neptunia U: Action Unleashed. I figured it might be my connection, since FFXIV is an MMORPG, so I switched from my WiFi to my 4G connection via tethering and it still lags. I then switched from DirectX 9 to DirectX 11, amd still nothing. I even downgraded my Nvidia driver to a REALLY old version (since Nvidia ran into a huge bug with one of their drivers, if you recall), so I’m planning to run my Clonezilla backup tonight (which should take a few hours since I’m also backing up my Ubuntu install), and then run my Windows install then then boot-repair to get grub back (凸(>皿<)凸 Microsoft)

And then, I have to go through the process of installing drivers and updating Windows, though I will probably skip updating Windows since I only use it as a gaming environment. And downloading my Steam games again. Including the Heavensward expansion, Final Fantasy XIV is probably about 20-30GB. With the spikes and dips in download speed on my 4G, it’s going to take about 3 hours.

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Snippet: NTP Syncing (Windows/Linux)

4 Jun 2014 By in Linux, Technology Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Tux, the Linux penguin

English: M in blue square (similar to seen on )

A quick snippet for syncing your date and time via NTP. I have noticed that Windows and Linux do not follow the same convention by standard, and are always an hour out from each other, even though both claim to follow the same time zone. So, what I am having to do is sync via NTP each time I dual boot.

In Linux, this can be done using cron jobs or using the NTP daemon, but that does not do it frequently enough for my liking. So here is a bash snippet for it:

sudo service ntp stop
sudo ntpdate 0.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org 1.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org 2.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org 3.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org 0.uk.pool.ntp.org 1.uk.pool.ntp.org 2.uk.pool.ntp.org 3.uk.pool.ntp.org ntp.ubuntu.com
sudo service ntp start

The first line stops the NTP daemon, since the ntpdate command does not like it when it is running (port in use). The second command uses a server in the selected list to sync with. The final line restarts the NTP daemon.

The Windows (Windows 7) equivalent is very similar. Like with linux, it has an in-built sync facility, but it again does not sync often enough for my liking. Like with the bash script, the commands must be run with elevated rights, so you must “Run as Administrator“, or run from an elevated rights command prompt, which you do as follows:

  1. Click Start, type “cmd” into the command window (do NOT use Windows+R)
  2. Hold down CTRL+SHIFT, then press ENTER
  3. You will be prompted (if you have UAC active), OK it and you will get a command prompt with “Administrator” in the title.

net stop "Windows Time"
net start "Windows Time"
w32tm /config /manualpeerlist:"0.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org 1.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org 2.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org 3.ubuntu.pool.ntp.org 0.uk.pool.ntp.org 1.uk.pool.ntp.org 2.uk.pool.ntp.org 3.uk.pool.ntp.org ntp.ubuntu.com" /syncfromflags:ALL /update
w32tm /resync

This code starts/restarts the Windows Time service then configures it with a pool of NTP servers, before asking the service to update itself and then resync. The resync action is what adjusts the time.

Linux & Windows Dual Booting Guide

13 May 2014 By in Linux Tags: , , , , , ,
Linux & Windows Dual Booting Guide

I’ve just finished work on a dual-boot setup guide with Linux and Windows 7. It covers setting up Dual Boot with Windows installed first or second, and with Linux installed first and second, and covers Linux distros that default to using LVM, such as Fedora, and those which don’t default to using LVM, such as Debian.

Link here:

http://wp.me/P3jVlp-Dz

Memory

1 Dec 2013 By in Linux, Technology Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Had a very eventful weekend, and my entire Sunday was taking up trying to figure out a weird symptom on my linux installation.

In the weeks leading up to today, I used to get strange behaviour from my Fedora box. The behaviour resulting in an error being detected by the ABRT tool, regarding a null reference. Sunday, my laptop conked out and refused to startup. I tried reinstalling Fedora, Debian, Mint, openSUSE, and even OpenMandriva — none of them could complete the installation. They either failed with error part way through, or hung completely.

I decided to try installing Windows XP over everything. That failed with an IRQ LESS THAN OR EQUAL TO blue screen. Then I tried Windows 7. That installation succeeded, and I started running updates. Then it blue screened me again. This time MEMORY_MANAGEMENT was the message. Hmmm. So, could it be that one of my memory chips was dodgy? That would account for why it was intermittent. I have 2x 2GB chips in my laptop, so I took both out and rebooted. No splash screen. Good. That’s expected.

Put in one of the chips. Booted, BIOS showed 2GB. Good, that’s OK.

Took it out and put in the other 2GB. No splash screen. Looks like that’s the dodgy one. I dug out my 1GB from when I got my laptop originally, and put that back into the other slot, so I get a 3GB installation. Checked boot. Splash screen displayed. Good. So I then ran a BIOS memory check, and all 3GB passed.

So then I decided, maybe I should try doing a restore, in case the dodgy memory was the cause of my failure to restore previously. It worked fine, so now I’m back up with my previous setup. :D

Cause: Faulty 2GB memory

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