Search Results for 'Setting up Windows 10 for the First Time'

Since when did nVidia support, nVidia forums, and GeForce Experience begin requiring access to “google.com” be allowed?

I updated my nVidia driver tonight on Windows 10 1809 in preparation for upgrade to 1903 soon. Even though GeForce Experience was telling me there was a new driver available, I could not use it to update my nVidia driver like I have done in the past. I kept getting a “cannot connect to google.com” error in GeForce Experience. Well, of course! I have blocked access to anything Google.com since about 2003. Google is blocked for its addresses in my Host file.

I’ve not had problems using GeForce Experience or accessing nVidia forums, etc with Google blocked in the past. I had not updated the driver though in about a year and I did that update easily through GeForce Experience. Then about a week ago, I tried updating the nVidia driver using GeForce Experience and I didn’t have a problem with Google being blocked in my Hosts file but the driver update failed, to my surprise, and was automatically rolled back to the earlier driver. I now wonder if the failure had something to do with my blocking google.com.

So, when I tried using geForce Experience tonight to update the driver FOR THE FIRST TIME I saw “failure to connect” error messages and it appears one is no longer able to block google garbage and still use geForce Experience to update the nVidia driver! So, I went to nVidia’s Advanced Drivers download page and downloaded it from there and installed it with no problems. However, I still get errors about “failure to connect” when I try to use geForce Experience.

So, I tried to access nVidia forums (to ask about this) with various browsers and cannot do so. I think this is because I am blocking google in its various iterations in my hosts file but I used to be able to access nVidia forums with google blocked in my hosts file. So, I assume that nVidia has changed something ….probably is now using evil Google reCaptcha and I can’t see that on any browser (so I can’t type in the captcha or pick out all the buses). I also tried to access nVidia help/support and cannot on any browser. I can access my nVidia account which nVidia said was not finished in setting it up. To fully set it up, I had to fill in ALL fields not just “required” ones! EXTREMELY INVASIVE of my privacy so I fibbed my home address and some other fields and finally got my account fully set up. But that doesn’t help me get into their forums or have any ability to contact their support!

I’m disgusted. I have always bought nVidia cards since my second computer in 2003 and never had any problems with access to forums or use of geForce Experience, nvidia.com login, etc until now. I’m not a gamer but still I would like access to their forums, etc. Any help for a workaround (as I am NOT going to allow “google.com” direct connection in order to login to nvidia.com!) would be greatly appreciated. Plus, I also block Facebook and other login options for nVidia.com (all highly invasive of one’s privacy).

Comments to “Setting up a new PC: The first steps” in 2020-05-25 AskWoody

My name is Ulrich Noelpp, I’m born in 1939, so actually I have 80 years. My mother language is German, so please excuse my bad English! I studied experimental nuclear physics, finished with a PhD. During my studies I came to learn programming on a Zuse Z22 – the second computer installed in Switzerland, later I worked on IBM 1620 and IBM 360/370, also UNIVAC 1108, mostly with FORTRAN. For measuring I learned working  with DEC PDP8. In 1973 I started a job at Insel Hospital in Berne, where I installed the first PDP11, built the first network of PDP11’s, later VAXen. The most important decision for me was the installation of the first IBM-PC’s, at the end a had some 40 PC’s, 4 Mac’s, about 10 Suns under different UNIX-Versions and still 2 VAXen under VMS, all working in one WLAN sharing medical images …

During that time I did almost all installations, all PC’s running under Windows-XP. Since I retired in 2004 I look after some 20 friends and colleagues, again doing their installations and being their first aid. I got a lot of inspiration and help from Windows Secrets and I am happy to receive now “AskWoody FREE Newsletter”.

Thank you Susan for your article “Setting up a new PC: The first steps” in 2020-05-25 AskWoody. The work I do follows almost 100% your schedule. As I do not gain money with this work and as my “customers” do not work on their computer professionally I tend to install only freeware.

Step 1:  Cleaning
I normally start from the preinstalled W10, trying to purchase W10pro together with the PC, working with a local account too. I delete everything non Microsoft. Same as you.

Step 2: Tweaks
I do it exactly as you describe, enable File name extensions and Hidden items.
I change all “special folders”(pictures, downloads, documents, music)  to be on D: drive, there I can backup them much more easily.

Step 3: Desktop
I install on the desktop application icons for all programs which my “customer” needs – we don’t work with tiles.
And we don’t need menues

Step 4: MS Office
For a very long time I have installed Office2003. I don’t like the implications of MS365, so actually I’m switching over to Libre Office. Very old-fashioned: No software nor data in the cloud, everything locally! One-drive is uninstalled! We don’t want to have US services read our data. Unfortunately those providers offering cloud services with server farms in former Swiss army fortresses deep in our mountains are far to expensive for private users…

Step 6: Drive encryption
too complicated for me and my friends, I don’t do it

Step 7: Backup
I use a cheap program “Easy2Sync” Thomas Holz http://www.itsth.de . This program produces backups with normal file systems accessible by Windows explorer. I only run backups on the data disk(s), I never keep valuable data on my System disk. In case I produce a system crash, I reinstall Windows and all programs – resulting a fresh and faster system again!

Step 10: Programs
As mentioned before, I install a lot of freeware:
Mozilla Firefox                 Browser
Mozilla Thunderbird      e-mail client (here I put the “local” data files on drive D:
VLC                                        Video player for all formats
Irfan View                           Image Viewer for all formats, allows some simple manipulations and all changes of formats
Acrobat Reader
PDF24                                   simple PDF manipulations
GIMP                                    Image Manipulator
calibre                                  e-book management
audiograbber                    CD-ripper, using LAME for mp3-encryption
audacity                              sound file manipulator (also with LAME)
…

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buttonupboots

[alQamar]

” I began to purchase LSTC license – solid product for 10 years of support”

That is a bad decision for several practical reasons:

1. It is not supported for Office workers
2. OEMs and vendors regularly stop supporting LTSC way earlier with drivers and firmware (Dell etc.), some even decline support at all.
3. LTSC except 1809 is far from being useful. 1507, 1607 have a lot of issues that #wontfix, by design, as LTSC does not encourage any bugfixes as long not being “critical” whatever that means for Microsoft so in the first place only security update.
   If an update is not compatible with your drivers or you cannot print anymore > bad luck. See Patching speed in Server 2016 / Windows 10 LTSC.We had all of this before. 1507 had a known issue with loading printers in control panel eternally, it had not yet printers in settings feature complete > result users cannot control their (default) printers.
   Microsoft to us as Microsoft partners:
   ticket closed, it is a bug but nothing they will fix as
   even though we brought a lot of evidence from other customers on the net this is not a local issue. Reason, see #1.
4. LTSC only supports the hardware that is out for the time of release. If you have a hardware cycle you end up you cannot install the LTSC on newer CPUs.
5. The 10 year support is a pity thing, support is no root cause analysis and no guarantee to a fix. See #3
6. no backports, ever. MS has improved a lot of things, esp. update handling over time. Some of the changes have been successfully backported till 1703 (supported or not).
   This also applies to things like MSIX, Winget (in future), etc.
7. Many drivers are now DCH drivers means they faciliate a modern driver model + fetching apps via Microsoft store (finally something to manage via Intune etc),
   The drivers include security related fixes, too. LTSC has no support for Microsoft Store, so you will have issues. Some Lenovo drivers do not work correctly when the Store app is not installed. The only way is to use outdated and more insecure drivers.
   Examples: Intel, Nvidia, Dell, Lenovo

LTSC is designed for things like: shopping display, computers with long term software like machines, non office use (medical, ATMs, power plants etc).

I can only advocate to not use LTSC for other things as declarated by Microsoft Docs.
It is not a joke. for me LTSC is just hindering. It does also apply to Server LTSC, but there we have no other chance, as SAC again is not recommended for most purposes I would install Server Core naturally.

reference:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/whats-new/ltsc/
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Windows-IT-Pro-Blog/LTSC-What-is-it-and-when-should-it-be-used/ba-p/293181

• This reply was modified 5 years ago by alQamar.

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doriel

[bratkinson]

Perhaps the biggest difficulty in buying a new Win 10 computer to replace a Win 7 is getting the programs (apps) and their related files over to the new machine.

For me, it’s largely retrieve all the installation CDs & DVDs and load them all from scratch.  I have maybe 20-25 of those.  Then there’s another 25-30 downloaded and paid for products that I keep in a separate folder on my long term bulk storage drive.  Many of those, however, have updated versions that I downloaded and installed if the new version was free.  I’m sure I’m an oddball in that I keep all software installation CDs/DVDs together on a shelf at arms reach and all downloaded programs in a separate folder on my long-term storage hard drive.  Even 2 of my fellow computer geek friends don’t do that.  And none of the half dozen or so friends computers I’ve upgraded had a clue where any of the installation CDs were.

Installing a freshly downloaded Mozilla Thunderbird (email) was problematic account my multiple address books, some of which are subsets of others.  I’ll leave it at that.

These days, when I consult with a friend that wants to upgrade, I tell them what to look for….quad processor, 2.2ghz or better, 8 gb RAM and at least 250 gb hard drive.  None of my friends has ever had more than maybe 40-50 gb used on their old computer, including Windows!  And these days, absolutely do NOT buy one with the ‘S’ version of Windows (Windows 10 S) as it will not allow software to be downloaded from anywhere other than the Microsoft Store.  I wonder how many suckers Microsoft has lured in with THAT trick!

Fortunately for my not-so-computer-savvy friends, pretty much all I have to do is move their documents and other files and install the same handful of software products, hopefully from their CD/DVDs.  Installing Adobe PDF Reader and Flash Player and IfranView (fast photo viewer) is standard.  Setting default programs for whatever browser and email they use, etc is next.  I then disable or delete some of the useless ‘bloatware’ in Win 10 including Xbox and others to make startup faster.

For one friend that had the Office 2010 DVD for his computer, I first UNINSTALLED it on the old computer to ‘open up’ the serial number for reuse (I figured the uninstall would notify Microsoft), THEN installed it on the new computer with the same serial number.  No problem from Microsoft with that.

Then there’s older software that fails to install in Win 10.  When Windows 10 was first announced, they had a ‘check your computer for compatibility’ product that not only analyzed my hardware but software as well.  It flagged Office 2010 and maybe 7-8 other products on my computer as incompatible.  (Upgrading from Win 98 to XP and later XP to Win 7 cost me $400-500 each time to upgrade and replace no longer compatible software – I still have an XP box as some vendors went out of business). Fortunately, they’ve improved Win 10 enough that all but one installed OK when I made the switch 6 months ago.  And one of the two that didn’t, ‘compatibility mode’ did the trick.  The setup program on the other (in compatibility mode) ‘fires off’ a separate task to actually install the product and I have to ‘catch’ that and initiate it in compatibility mode.  I have to figure its subparameters first, though.

• This reply was modified 5 years ago by bratkinson.

I used regedit to stop driver updates as directed in the following link late in 2019:

http://www.windowscentral.com/how-disable-automatic-driver-updates-windows-10

checked in settings and see that realtek has installed drivers in both march(4) and April (4) patch tuesday updates and Intel punched in 1 or 2 since Jan. I believe the above link outlines the same procedure – yes? So 10 driver updates have been installed since I upgraded to 1909 in Jan-curious thing, except for mouse driver, (logitek wireless)they all have failed at 1st attempt and successful on 2nd.Not only drivers fail on 1st attempt but I’m wondering why the drivers installed at all. This machine does have realtek and Intel components of various kinds, some clearly defined some not (ie in device Mgr-Realtek software- quite definitive huh?) Anyway, is this indicative of msft doing what they want when they want? The above regedit a waste of time?

(of 15 Quality Updates attempts, all but 4 failed on first attempt) and feature update also had to attempt twice) I have made changes w/ 3rd party software ie disable bing serach,disable hibernate, disable cortana etc etc) which may be at fault? IDK.

Aspire 5 A515-54G-73WC

Win10 Home ver 1909 bld 18363.778

curious

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DriftyDonN

Just remembered that  HP has instructions for Setting Up Windows 10 for the First Time at   https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c04941742

However, I am still open to any tips and/or suggestions for getting the thing up and running for the first time.

I’ve done a little research on this. Networking isn’t my strong suit, so I’m not sure how much of this I really understand, but here goes.

First, on the problem machine, if you open Settings -> Network and Internet -> Sharing options, are both the “Turn on network discovery” and “Turn on file and printer sharing” options selected. I’m certain the network discovery option must be turned on, but not sure on the file and printer sharing. When I’ve clicked on “Network” in File Explorer, I sometimes get a warning that the machine won’t be discoverable if file sharing is disabled. This happens if the “file and printer sharing” option is off. If both of those options are on, then read on.

Even in Windows 10, for work group (not domain) networking, there stills exists a Master Browser, a machine that maintains the list of the other peers of the work group on the network segment. There is some arcane election process that happens whereby the machines on the network segment determine which one is going to be the Master Browser. This is all still based on the old, old, old NetBIOS protocol.

I’ve read that Windows 10 doesn’t play nicely with this. In fact, if a Windows 10 machine becomes the Master Browser, more likely than not, it won’t show up in the “Network” section of File Explorer on any machine. I suspect your misbehaving machine has become the Master Browser.

To test this, run the nbtstat command on one of your machines. I don’t think it matters which one. Run nbtstat -A XXX.XXX.XXX.XXXwhere XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX is the IP address of the problem machine. In the output that comes back, if one of the entries has “__MSBROWSE__” in it, then that machine is the Master Browser. Note: there are some special characters I don’t know how to produce here that are part of the “__MSBROWSE__” string.

I don’t tend to have this problem because I have a NAS server on my LAN and it wins all the browser elections. If you have a server or a non Windows 10 machine that you can force to become the Master Browser, great. There are ways to try and influence this process, but I’d have to try and find them again. It’s been a long time since I had to do that. If you don’t have such a machine available, I don’t know if I can help you.

Hope this helps.

[Kirsty]

Paul T said it: Deleting old, dud registry entries will in almost all cases, even when Windows has been installed for years and had many programs installed and uninstalled, do nothing. We’re talking tiny, tiny fractions of a second for any registry read/write. Given those speeds, Windows (or other programs accessing the registry, both Microsoft and third party), are certainly not reading the registry serially. All large databases afaik, except those designed by programmers with almost no knowledge of file structure and little common-sense, use indexed-sequential files. That means that binary chops are used initially to find an entry… the same way you used to open a phone book in the middle, then ‘cut’ to halfway through the first or second half, as applicable, and so on…. a helluva lot faster than looking for e.g. Mr Smith by flicking through all pages one by one from the beginning of the book!

And in almost all cases, the old, dud registry entries aren’t accessed at all – they used to be accessed by the program that created them, but the program has since been uninstalled, with an improperly tested or lazily coded uninstaller that left remnants.

In occasional cases, which many users will never encounter, a remnant has a bad effect on the system, in a variety of possible ways. One I’ve seen is where files of specific types (say, .doc, .rtf or .mp3, for example’s sake) are opened by more than one program. A poorly written uninstaller might bollix the file associations, making the file unopenable by your other program(s) that you want opening them.

A registry cleaner just might, and in some cases, does fix this and other problems… but it can also make things worse, adding one problem on top of another. This is because no registry cleaner is aware of the almost infinite number of possible way keys and values can be written to the registry, e.g. unexpected concatenation types, extremely lengthy strings. So, entries that were actually OK and necessary are ‘cleaned’ by the registry cleaner. Oops! CCleaner got a few items like this wrong last time I ran it, so I just added those registry items to the ignore list. The better registry cleaners, like CCleaner, always give you the delete/keep option for each entry listed. Never run any sort of ‘clean everything’ or ‘fix everything’ option (CCleaner has at least one).

I’m a card-carrying Windows geek, and in fact coined the saying, “Real Windows geeks never reimage… they edit registries.” So, I do run CCleaner every now and then, with confidence. I only use it, not one of the many dodgy registry cleaners that scam users by massively exaggerating the number of items to be cleaned (“1,546 bad registry items! YOUR SYSTEM IS SLOW!), or in the worst cases, installing malware. (Hint for noobs: If you saw a program touted in a forwarded email or via an ad on a webpage, never download it!!!)

Yeah CCleaner free version can be an increasing, royal pain with all the ‘Upgrade!’ popups and ads for other software. There are ‘ways’ to decrease the annoyance (not by cracks which contain who knows what), but they require some time overhead and this isn’t the place to discuss them. I eventually bit the bullet and bought CCleaner recently after years of free version use, it was a package deal with other programs and IMO not excessively expensive, and I was swayed by an AskWoody newsletter item that mentioned many a good software vendor has gone bust, so it’s good to subscribe to support them so updates are ensured. Albeit rather reluctantly in my case since like many I don’t appreciate the software manufacturer’s ‘social engineering’.

You can update CCleaner’s Custom Clean applications list using SingularLabs’ CCEnhancer. CCleaner’s life can be extended this way alone for years, for no cost, making CCleaner ‘keep up’ with changes in new program versions, and with popular programs. Without having to worry about what new nags might be in each new CCleaner version (you get some even with the pay version!). CCleaner with CCEnhancer assist even handles cleaning dozens of less popular programs, e.g. Firefox variants like Waterfox. (Waterfox btw is a must browser IMO if you want to always be able to run old webpages (and archived webpages) containing critical Flash, Java etc. and use old Firefox extensions, all still available, many of which are far more powerful than the current ones since Mozilla dumbed down Firefox.)

I never delete everything in the CCleaner list, and rarely immediately. For almost all registry items listed, I work out what program installed that item, sometimes by using Nirsoft’s free RegScanner and Agent Ransack to find out what other registry items / folders / files were created at the same time, sometimes using Nirsoft’s UserAssistView to work out what program was run about installation time. And using other tools. (Bless Nirsoft!!)

I ran CCleaner yesterday, did the above, and deleted maybe 30 of 200 items. The rest of the items, I’m guesstimating, look like they will never cause any trouble. Some I will never delete, e.g. any item created by Windows itself. For instance, what if it’s a feature that I might want to reinstall using Windows’ Programs and Features one day, but, say, reinstalling the feature doesn’t install the registry items because they exist after a default Windows 10 installation, so why bother (a programmer of the feature installer might have thought… some sadly do think/work as badly as that, and not just at Microsoft, blame slave driving bosses in some cases).

So yeah, for noobs (sorry, non-deep-geeks), the common wisdom to not clean the registry at all is good advice. And if you must, check each item and become very familiar with the categories (e.g. ‘Unused File Types’ can generally be deleted with impunity). And if you do all but the most careful clean (whereby hopefully you’ll learn a few things about the registry), expect something to maybe break in a way a second registry clean won’t fix. So do a full partition backup no more than a few hours before registry cleaning. (You don’t know if your backup is of the full partition variety or not? You’ve never tested it actually worked, so that you can access your files from it? Go learn/test, and don’t registry clean for maybe a year or five!) Setting a System Restore Point is also vital too, be glad you didn’t hear the language when I forgot to do that this week and spent like 5 hours manually registry editing to fix the mess I’d made (which was actually from too enthusiastic manual registry editing/cleaning in this case).

If a registry clean happens to screw up your system badly, and you don’t have a geek friend you can butter up/pay/bribe to fix it, maybe you’ll have to pay a pro to fix it… maybe you should have paid them first… it’s not for me to judge, and I take no responsibility for any of the suggestions here causing problems… most registry cleaning/editing is not for the noob or faint of heart.

I tend to get into far more trouble with lengthy manual registry editing than CCleaner, and do hose some part of my system about one in every thirty multi-hour cleaning sessions, but hey I’m a perfectionist and as I said almost always do the proper backups first so it’s recoverable… and I learn from my mistakes. I also so pre-clean registry backups with Tweaking.com’s Registry Backup, which like all the programs I mention here is free (some have pay/free versions). I also use the free version of Registrar Registry Manager extensively for registry searches and editing (in no way is it for the novice… and geeks beware, everything before the current version hoses multivalues, I don’t know about the current version, not prepared to use a ‘.0 version of anything… always use Regedit for multivalues and even then watch out for the PendingFileRenameOperations value!!! [Go Google to find out why or ask me]).

OK I’ve just about written a flamin’ article here, so I won’t talk about registry compacting freeware, of which I know two programs by reputable manufacturers. I haven’t been game to try a registry compacter since XP days, though I ran one on Win10 and it told me how much I could compress the registry if I ran it… like a mere 5% even though I’ve done plenty of program installations, uninstallations, and upgrades over the years… so I haven’t bothered. Registry compacters, if they’re properly coded and run according to instructions, don’t delete any registry keys, they compact by other methods I won’t go into here. If anyone wants to know more about them, let me know here, and preferably also send me a heads-up message, and I’ll post details here, maybe as a new thread.

Asus N53SM & N53SN 64-bit laptops (Win7 Pro & Win10 Pro 64-bit multiboots), venerable HP Pavilion t760 32-bit desktop (XP & Win7 Pro multiboot), Oracle VirtualBox VM's: XP & Win7 32-bit, XP Mode, aged Samsung Galaxy S4, Samsung Galaxy Tab A 2019s (8" & 10.1"), Blu-ray burners, digital cameras, ext. HDDs (latest 5TB!), AnyDVD, Easeus ToDo Backup Home, Waterfox, more. Me: Aussie card-carrying Windows geek.

• This reply was modified 5 years ago by Kirsty.
• This reply was modified 5 years ago by woody. Reason: Re-posted text, as emailed to me

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TechTango

If you use Windows 10, here’s something that might come along and bite you in the future. Forewarned is forearmed, so here we go:
No doubt you know about Safe mode – sometimes you need to boot into it to roll back some software install that has stopped your computer from working properly, or to carry out some other procedure. Time was, you booted into it by holding F10 while restarting. Not any more – You now need to hold down the Shift key while clicking on Restart, then choose Troubleshooting, then choose Start up Settings, then Restart. So far so good, you will then get a menu, pressing 4 or F4 gets you into Safe mode. If it lets you in, no problem, you can ignore the rest of this.
However, it may ask for a password before granting access, and this is the potential problem. Firstly, you may use a pin number to sign in with – but that doesn’t work here. You may then try your Microsoft account password – but that doesn’t work either!
The problem is this – Windows now has 2 passwords – your Microsoft account password, and a local password. Standard windows installation and setup procedure stupidly only requires you to use the Microsoft account password, but Safe mode login requires the local account password, which you may have never set up.
You can easily sort this out – go into Settings, choose Accounts, then ‘Sign in with a local account instead’. Enter your pin to gain access, then set up your new local password – maybe make it the same as your Microsoft account password – (or you can leave it blank, in which case your computer won’t need a pin or password to gain entry, so probably not a good idea). Anyhow, you should now be able to access safe mode as required.
Please share this as it doesn’t seem to be widely known!
Peace.

As a fellow sufferer of chronically slow internet…

I was able to use Windows Media Creation Tool to download an ISO of 1909. I did that as a single first step, checking off “Create installation media for another PC”… and not using my internet connection for anything else until it completed. The first two times failed, but eventually I did get an ISO…

I don’t know about your area, but here, there are times of the day where the internet is worse than others. From about 11PM to 7AM WiFi gets the least use in the neighborhood around here, I started my download of 1909 just before I went to bed. Wind of any kind seems to make small breaks in internet connection that will impact a download of that size… so check the weather report. When all else fails I turn to friends with good internet connections (this isn’t a problem solely with 1909, but any large download) to download to a USB drive for me. For those of you with good, fast internet connections this may seem ridiculous… but the digital divide is real… and those of us with chronically poor connections are better off than those with no chance of connecting at all.

Now, you still have to mount the ISO, or otherwise create an installation disk or thumb drive… this is not the easiest, fastest way to upgrade… just what finally worked for me, to get a copy of 1909 (and I was longing for the days of buying a disk, and upgrading from there). I used the instructions at the link above to create ‘installation media’ on a thumb drive, but you could use a program to ‘mount’ the ISO, or burn DVDs.

I backed up my data, and made a system image (just in case). I turned off my internet, so that its slow speed couldn’t possibly be the reason for update failure (W10 will phone home during the update process, otherwise, and since I’ve had failures when connected, I didn’t take a chance). I inserted the thumb drive, and followed the instructions from there. It worked… I did get a black desktop… sigh… but it wasn’t a BSOD (counting my blessings, right?)… went through the settings, and made adjustments for privacy… turned on the internet… and… no internet.

Apparently, Microsoft has decided that older router protocols should not be supported any longer. So this time it wasn’t the computer… it was the computer’s ability to access the internet on the only router I have access to that was squashed… the rest of 1909 that I had the patience to experiment with seemed to be working okay… rolling back, to restore internet access worked just fine, too.

At least, with Microsoft granting an extended end of service date for 1809, I have until November 10th to figure it out! May you have better luck!

This post is solely focused on the poor internet being the problem. If you get an ISO, and you still have difficulty upgrading while disconnected from the internet, then it is time to explore the hardware issue.

Non-techy Win 10 Pro and Linux Mint experimenter

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Coldheart9020, WSjudson

I have used the built-in Windows Defender in its various incarnations since it was first released and have continued with Windows 10. My system has never been compromised. Monthly I have Defender perform a full scan. I also use the free version of Malwarebytes approximately monthly as a second opinion. Then at least every other month I pick one of the major aid third party security vendors who offer a free online scan. I feel that gives me adequate real-time protection plus full scans as I deem necessary. I do not feel any need to pay a third party.

Any other system settings I pretty much leave alone. What you do will depend on how you use your system, what your online activity is, and if visit any risky websites.

NOTE: a good, tested system image backup regimen is a MUST as far as I’m concerned.

--Joe

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Oldtimer35, bbearren

From KP (who had trouble posting this):

Windows 10 1809 Upgrade succeeded. It was a GWX registry setting. Thank @PKCano.
From a Woody article, I checked the following:

If you are an IT professional, you can set the following registry keys to disable notifications:
Registry location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Gwx
DWORD name: DisableGwx
Value data: 1
Registry location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate
DWORD name: DisableOSUpgrade
Value data: 1

This was the case on one PC. The PC that I decided to upgrade, has
Registry location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate
DWORD name: AllowOSUpgrade
Value data: 0

so I changed it to one and re-tried the upgrade, this time success. The upgrade was run offline until I installed the Monthly Cumulative Updates that downloaded before hand.

Once I got pass the First Boot Phase, I was pass my problem.

One Windows 7 PC was semi-functioning with crashes and corrupt dll’s (me, experimenting with Registry Cleaners) so I decide to upgrade it although the lap screen is near EoL (works attach to external monitor, though).

It took a good 5 minutes to start while running the Windows 10 setup program, before you realize it is running so it give some time.

Although it says there are issues with the Display Graphics Adapter and Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE), the upgrade works around them. It installed a generic basic graphics driver (even though a compatible driver exists on the Microsoft Update Catalog) and the upgrade uninstalled MSE. The great thing about the in-place upgrade, is it left a lot of programs in-place and did not uninstalled them, Super!

For completeness, I checked older articles (1, 2) and

Registry location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\OSUpgrade
DWORD name: ReservationsAllowed
Value data: 0 or 1

This key has been removed, probably with a Microsoft patch post-July-2016.

I don’t remember all the things I had to do in 2016, to do the Windows 10 upgrades so YMMV. My guess is I uninstalled GWX Control Panel and thought the Windows Update patch would reset the Registry keys.

I tried to post this a few times this week, hence the post upgrade comment.
Post Upgrade: It is working well, seems slow on the startup which is why I think people want an SSD Drive.

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KP

One of my laptops started shutting completely off on its own unexpectedly after months of having no issues. Event log showed Kernal Power 41 issue.

My wife’s laptop is the same exact model and so I swapped power cords, battery, and RAM and still had same issue. After about 20min computer just shuts off. Tested thermals with HW montior and other tools and did ram test with memcheck86 so it wasn’t a RAM issue.

Disconnected speakers, DVD drive, and wireless card – still same issue.

Dug out the barely used HDD and installed fresh Windows 10, updated drivers and bios. Computer worked fine without any issues and stayed powered on for 9 hours.

Re-installed SSD, Backed it up, wiped it, and did clean Windows 10 install, updated drivers (bios already updated from last time). There was not much on the drive since I only use this laptop for basic things (my office PC is a custom build).

After doing all of this, I still got the same issue (wondering at this point how I was able to even get windows installed).

I checked the power options and disabled all the sleep and turning screen off settings.

Now, here’s the kicker….   on a whim I installed the SSD in my wife’s computer (She’s a good sport), and it had the exact same problem.

I can only reproduce this issue on a computer where I use this SSD as the OS drive.

At this point would I be reasonable to assume the SSD has some kind of issue?
I have reached out to Crucial who, in the past several days (excluding the weekend of course) has had me do all kinds of things and asked for screenshots, etc…   I think they are as confused about this as I am.

The SSD drive is 2 years old and only has had about 5 terabytes written to it (it came out of my previous laptop -but I purchased the SSD through Amazon). Always use wrist strap to prevent any ESD and always use caution about that kind of stuff.

Has anyone else ever ran into any issue like this before? If so, is there a solution or is the drive pretty much a dud at this point?

Would some failure in the SSD power connection cause the entire computer to just completely power down suddenly without any input from the user?

Appreciate anyone’s feedback about this.

I have been using Crucial SSD drives for years now and this is honestly the first problem I have had in a long time with them (not since Windows 7 – and I stopped using that about 5 years ago).

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WSJCitizen, Fred

You may have read about Folding@Home here on AskWoody.com or elsewhere, but if not, I’ll give a quick description.

Folding@home, or FAH, is a distributed computing model for research related to the folding of proteins. This has many applications in medicine, including many of them that relate to COVID-19 and the fight to find antiviral drugs and to create a vaccine.  Running these simulations takes tremendous amounts of computing power, and scientists often don’t have the funding to rent time on supercomputer(s) that would be powerful enough to get results.  Meanwhile, there are millions of PCs in the world that have computing power that is not in use most of the time.  The goal of FAH is to provide a way for those PC owners to donate the CPU and GPU power of their computers for research purposes.  Your computer, if you wish to join, becomes part of a worldwide network of PCs (and even mobile devices) that, combined, form a magnificently powerful supercomputer.

If you choose to do this, you can start anytime and stop anytime.  You don’t need to commit to letting FAH use your PC all day or even for the next 15 minutes.  If you need the PC for something, you can pause the FAH work and use your PC as much as you wish, for as long as you wish, and return to folding whenever you want.  You don’t have to sign up or give any personal info either, though you may choose to if you want to take part in friendly competitions or be recognized for the contribution.

For Ubuntu-based Linux, native .deb installers are provided.  That includes all of the official flavors of Ubuntu, as well as Mint, Neon, and many others.

To start, visit this page and download the software.  It will detect your user agent string and direct you to the matching version of the software, so if your user agent says “Linux,” it will take you to the Linux page.  If you want to download the software on another OS, like Windows, but run it in Linux, you can use the link at the bottom for alternative downloads.  If you want to run it completely in Windows… you can do that, but I have no experience with the Windows version.

The software has three parts.  The client is the main bit of software, and it can function by itself without the other two bits.  It has no graphical UI, though, so you’ll probably want the control module also.  Note that as of this writing, the control module does not yet work in Ubuntu 20.04 (or, I believe, 19.x).  The control module relies on old, deprecated Python libraries that are no longer part of any Ubuntu release newer than 18.04.  Linux Mint 19.x will work with it, though, since Mint 19.x is based on Ubuntu 18.04, and the same is true for other Ubuntu derivatives that are based on 18.04.

The third part of the software is optional, and is only needed to see a visual representation of the work being done.  It’s not necessary in order to help the research, but you may find it interesting.

The files we are interested in here are the three .deb files listed under the Ubuntu section.  Download them to the location of your choosing, and from there, it should only be necessary to give each one a double click to start the installation.  It’s probably best to start with the client, though I am not sure if that matters or not.

Once the client is installed, it will be set to automatically connect to the server at boot time and start folding by itself.  The control program, FAHControl, can be used to change the settings, whether or not the client is busy folding at the moment.  To run that, it should only be necessary to bring up your application menu (in Windows it would be the start menu) and type ‘fah’, and FAHControl should appear in the list.  Run that, and you’ll see the various options available.  If it is working on a project, you will see a progress bar and a link to a description for the project, and some other info.  The credit stuff is about the competition… you can join a team and try to beat other teams if you wish.  If you don’t sign in, it will just do it anonymously.  That’s what I’ve done thus far.

If your computer has a discrete GPU, it should be recognized and shown under “Folding Slots.”  If it is not shown, you may need to install an additional library or two, and perhaps change some settings.  In Neon, I had to install ocl-icd-opencl-dev, and I already had the nVidia proprietary driver installed. It still didn’t recognize my nVidia GPU, so I tried reinstalling the client .deb.  Still no!

I found the answer inside the control program.  In the Configure menu (button to open it is upper left), under the Expert tab, I changed the option that was something like use-gpu from false to true.  I also had to go into the Slots tab and create a new slot for my GPU, since it only listed the CPU.  In my case, the options needed (in the Edit menu for the GPU slot) were to click the radio button under GPU (it’s way down by GPU Core Indices, but it’s the button for the whole section GPU), change GPU index to 1, and change opencl-index and cuda-index (near the bottom) to 0.

All three of those options were at -1 by default, which is supposed to mean “auto,” but it didn’t work for me.  If you have only one GPU active on the system, the first option (GPU Index) will probably be a 0.  Since I am talking about my Dell G3 gaming laptop, though, it has two GPUs… the Intel integrated that is part of the CPU, and the nVidia discrete GPU.  Computers usually start counting at 0, so the first GPU, the Intel, is 0, and the nVidia is 1.

I don’t know how often this extra stuff will be necessary.  It is best to try one thing at a time, and see if that works before proceeding to change more stuff.  If the GPU is listed in the Slots field of the main screen, it probably means you’re set up correctly.  Until I did the above stuff, it only showed my Intel integrated GPU.

A GPU is far more powerful than a CPU for this kind of work.  I have a 6-core, 12-thread i7-8750H CPU in my Dell, which is a pretty decent one, but the nVidia 1050ti outperforms it (in estimated points per day) by a factor of between 4 and 18 to 1.  You can use both at the same time for different workloads… it will do that by default if you have them both available.

Once it starts, all you have to do is wait and let it do its thing.  If you want to use the PC for something else, just hit pause, or perhaps you will find that you can just do whatever it is even while it is running without pausing.  Sometimes this works better than others, so if it’s super slow and laggy, just pause it until you’re ready to let it work again.  The idea is to donate your unused computer resources, not to make you have to wait to use your own PC!

If you installed the viewer module, you can press the viewer button in the upper right to see a visual representation of the protein being folded.  If it looks like a big rotating cylindrical blob of dots, you might want to go to Preferences (second button from the left) and change the render mode.  I’m using “Cartoon ball and stick” at present.  After you change the render mode, close and re-launch the viewer to see it with the new setting.

You can use the Folding Power slider at the top to adjust how much of your CPU or GPU power you want the program to use.  It will push your GPU or CPU (or both) pretty hard, especially in “Full” folding power mode, so if your PC has any cooling or stability issues, this could make them show up.  My laptop is running quite toasty with the settings I am using (full folding power), but the Intel Thermald service (part of the Ubuntu installation) and the system firmware keep it from overheating by throttling.  Laptops can be expected to throttle under workloads like these… their small coolers are just not capable of moving enough heat to prevent it.  My desktop,  by comparison, with its large GPU and CPU coolers, can run all day at full throttle on the CPU and GPU and not get that hot.  It also uses way more electricity, and I don’t want to run my bill way up, so that is why I am using my more power efficient laptop.

You can pick the kind of disease or research you want your computer to be used for, but I haven’t had to use the setting to get it to do COVID stuff.  Every project it has received has been for COVID!

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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satrow, Lars220, Elly

I recently acquired a refurbished Dell Latitude E6440 laptop running Windows 7 Pro so that I can dual-boot with Linux Mint. I had the refurbisher set the SATA setting to AHCI before installing Windows 7 so that I could install Mint. My plan is to transfer my old Windows 7 documents and pictures from an hp laptop, use Windows 7 offline for editing photos and certain documents, and use Linux Mint Cinnamon online.

I’ve been using Mint for several months on an old desktop with limited space, on two other laptops dual-booting with Windows, and in full installs on USB drives, but I can’t install Linux on the hp where my documents are. Even a full install on an external USB drive didn’t work well on that hp. I’m finding it inconvenient to access my documents on a separate computer and use a USB flash drive to transfer documents when needed (I keep Windows 7 offline most of the time), so that’s why I want to put everything on the “new” Dell.

The documents and photos currently take up about 200 GB, and the photos especially will continue to expand. It seems like a good idea to set up a separate data partition that both Windows and Linux can use, making it easier to re-install Linux or restore either OS if something goes wrong. Using Macrium Reflect I cloned the small SSD that came with the Dell to a 1TB SSD and put in the larger SSD. I left Windows at its original size, around 120 GB for the 2 partitions (System Reserved and C:). Using Windows I have now created a 3rd NTFS primary partition with 725 GB of space, leaving about 100 GB for Linux Mint. The disk is MBR and the laptop boots Legacy.

I plan to make sure things are working in Windows first and then install Linux. So now I’m ready to use Properties – Move – to change the location of the Windows User folders for Documents, Pictures, etc. (I know not to move App Data or the entire User folder.) I have read and viewed a lot of information to prepare for setting this up, both in Windows and Linux, but I have a lot of questions.

1. To keep things simple, I plan to have just one set of user folders in the data partition instead of separate subfolders for the standard user and the administrative user. (I’m the only one using the laptop). Right now there aren’t many data files on the “new” Dell, and they are all under the standard user account. The old data is currently separated out into 2 users, but I plan to combine those folders when I transfer them to the new partition. Going forward, whatever user files are on the admin account on the Dell can just stay on the C: drive (rather than on the data partition), since there would be very few of them. Is this a workable plan?

2a. When I use the “move” function in Windows, should I name the new folders in the data partition the same as they are in C:? For example, the new documents folder should be called My Documents rather than just Documents, since I can’t actually move what’s called “Documents” in Windows Explorer (I guess it’s just a symbolic link?). Is this correct?

2b. If those new folders are called e.g. “My Documents” etc., will there be any problem when setting this up for Linux to use them, or will the symlinks in Linux take care of that? In other words, do the folders need to have the same names in Windows and Linux?

The Linux part is still really unclear to me, since I’ve read several different suggested procedures for different setups, but I figure I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it; I just don’t want to mess something up from the start.

3. After I install Linux, I know that I could just mount the Windows partition to give Linux access to those folders. Given my relative inexperience, would that be a better plan for me than setting up the partition for Linux to mount it at startup and use symlinks to use those folders as the Linux “home” folders? What is the advantage to setting it up as a “shared” data partition? Part of me thinks that it might even be a little more secure to only mount the partition when I want to use it.

4. I’ve read that Linux might have problems with the NTFS file system on the data partition, and that it’s common for that NTFS file system to get corrupted and need repair from the Windows side. Is this a frequent occurrence? I’m not ready to put all my data in a Linux ext4 partition, since I prefer to use Windows 7 for editing, but is this NTFS issue a big cause for concern?

Thanks for any guidance you can give me.

Linux Mint Cinnamon 21.1
Group A:
Win 10 Pro x64 v22H2 Ivy Bridge, dual boot with Linux
Win l0 Pro x64 v22H2 Haswell, dual boot with Linux
Win7 Pro x64 SP1 Haswell, 0patch Pro, dual boot with Linux,offline
Win7 Home Premium x64 SP1 Ivy Bridge, 0patch Pro,offline