Random observations by Max Qubit
I wanted to link my online ID with my Windows user account but I got the error ‘RPC server is unavailable‘. Something was wrong. But what? After some trial and error I found the solution
– (Although I already had my WindowsLiveID entry) I choose ‘Add an online ID provider’
– The program responded by downloading and installing Windows Live Essentials 2011 (Sign-in software sort off)
Apparently this was missing on my pc
– Restarted the pc
– And now I could link my WindowsLiveID
Problem solved:)
Recently I bought a 256GB SSD (Crucial M4) to be used in my PC with a 512GB HDD running Windows 7. I wanted to keep the Windows installation, I didn’t want to reinstall all my software (reinstall being the default advice given by many). The way to do this is by ‘cloning’. The catch is that cloning normally works only when you clone a smaller disk to a bigger disk. But as my specs indicate, my HDD was bigger than my SSD so a direct clone was not possible. Yes, you could ‘shrink’ your data, but I didn’t want to do that … all this tiresome moving of data and stuff … no, I wanted something more direct. In my case that was possible because I had partitioned the HDD in 2 partitions. The C drive contaning Windows 7 of 60GB, and a D drive containing data and stuff of 450GB. So I wanted to clone ONLY the C drive to the SSD. I used EASEUS Partition Master to do this. No problem but when swapping the HDD with the SSD the thing wouldn’t boot (because you loose information when you clone only a single partition like the MBR stuff. Btw, you don’t have this problem when you clone the whole disk). You have to make this cloned partition on the SSD bootable. And you can do this by ‘repairing’ the installation with your Windows 7 DVD. Just put the dvd in the pc, let it boot from this dvd and choose ‘repair’. The cloned partion becomes bootable and after reboot the sytem comes up just nicely.
So in short, if you want to clone your Windows 7 partition from HDD to SSD, do as follows:
– Clone the partition
– Then repair this cloned partition with the Windows 7 DVD
Note: A myriad of other settings like ‘Trim’ and ‘Alignment’ were ok in my case, but you should check those yourself if you go from HDD to SSD by cloning, just to be sure.
— Max
This evening I solved a problem which was bothering me for 6(!) months. What was the matter? The matter was that a site I used to visit suddenly became unreachable last december 2011. Chrome gave me:
“Error 101 (net::ERR_CONNECTION_RESET): The connection was reset.”
And Firefox and IE9 didn’t work either. The weird thing was, all other sites worked perfectly well, just this one site was unreachable. It became stranger when I discovered that the site worked fine if I went through a proxy. Also from another PC (behind the same router and switch) the site was working fine. So, what could it be?
It couldn’t be the router (see above, the other PC worked)
It couldn’t be some antivirus program (I don’t have any)
It couldn’t be a firewall (I don’t have any)
It couldn’t be the browser (as all browsers had the same trouble)
It had to be something buried deep inside my Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 setup
I googled, man did I google, and I followed myriad of tips, hints and tricks, to no avail. But I’m no guy to give up that easily so last few days I felt the urge to give the problem another try. I felt the solution was near. I stumbled on info on the netsh command, digging deeper, getting close.
And then I found a guy (jobeard) talking about the MTU here http://www.techspot.com/community/topics/error-101-if-anybody-could-help-it-would-be-much-appreciated. Good old MTU. I did know of this MTU from old times (the WIN98 times:) Could it be this MTU setting rearing it ugly head? Why not. So I followed his advice to try the following commands:
ping -f -l nnn domain.name
where nnn is the MTU to be tested. Keep reducing it by 32 until ping runs.
Use that MTU on the router or via Regedit on that system
And I discovered that MTU=1504 (my current setting) didn’t work and MTU=1472 did work!
So, he said to put that MTU setting … but where and how? Google is your friend and the following page was quickly found http://www.mydigitallife.info/how-to-set-and-change-mtu-in-windows-7-or-vista where it was explained that I should enter the following netsh command:
netsh interface ipv4 set subinterface “Local Area Connection” mtu=1472 store=persistent
And with that command my troubles were gone. The unreachable site was reachable again! Problem solved after 6(!) months. As always, when you find the solution it seems so simple. MTU … sure, what else? But to get there I did visit many a webpage with legions of people having the same kind of troubles and other legions handing out tips and tricks like there was no tomorrow. But sure, among those hordes there was this one guy who DID give the golden tip. Jobeard … Thx man:)
problem: Error 101 (net::ERR_CONNECTION_RESET): The connection was reset (Chrome, but other browsers as well)
platform: Windows 7
solution: Set the proper MTU value
link1: http://www.techspot.com/community/topics/error-101-if-anybody-could-help-it-would-be-much-appreciated
link2: http://www.mydigitallife.info/how-to-set-and-change-mtu-in-windows-7-or-vista
link3: http://www.richard-slater.co.uk/archives/2009/10/23/change-your-mtu-under-vista-or-windows-7/ (tip!)
— Max
I have a Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 1GB, with AMD Catalyst Software Suite Version 11.12 installed on my computer (windows 7, 64 bit). It contains the AMD VISION Engine Control Center with which you can control several settings. If I right-click on the desktop it shows as first choice this VECC. However, some days ago it stopped working. I could click the menu item but after some pause nothing happened. What the heck was the matter?
Googling led to several possible cures, but none did help. The uninstall/install thingy didn’t work. Even when the uninstall was very clean. However some google find pointed me at another direction. The event log. And sure enough there were messages to be found. But all unreadable techo babble. Nevertheless some guy talking about this event log said something about .Net files missing. And sure, the event log did indicate something like that (at least I could see some words with .Net reference in that list of cryptic logging). So, I decided to have a look at .Net stuff installed on my computer. In the end I found out my Microsoft .Net Framework 3.5.1 was uninstalled on my computer. After enabling it again the VECC returned to function. The menu option to dis/enable this is to be found in: Control Panel > All Control Panel Items > Programs and Features > Turn Windows features on or off > Microsoft .Net Framework 3.5.1
System: Windows 7 HP, 64 bit, SP1
Problem: AMD VISION Engine Control Center does not work
Solution: Enable Microsoft .Net Framework 3.5.1
— Max
I had some files on my system which I couldn’t delete. It gave an ‘Access denied on file’ error. I tried a lot of things, including installing several tools. To no avail.
In the end, and I had found some clues on the web, the solution was to obtain ‘ownership’ of the stubborn files. Probably these files had an owner who for whatever reason now didn’t exist anymore on my system. Taking ownership of the file goes as follows:
– Locate the file (or directory)
– Right mouse button, and select Properties
– Select Security tab
– Click Advanced button
– Select Owner tab
– Click Edit
– Select Administrators and click OK (Administrators is now the new owner)
– Click OK on all open windows
After you have obtained ownership and closed all property windows (with OK), start again because now the properties WILL show you the groups and users who hold permissions. And only now you CAN remove those because, well, now YOU are the owner:) Proceed as follows:
– Locate the (same) file (or directory)
– Right mouse button, and select Properties
– Select Security tab
– Click Edit
– Remove all groups and users
– Add user Administrators and give it Full Control
– Click OK on all open windows
You now CAN delete the file:)
Note: You can propagate ownership and permissions into subdirectories and stuff (if you need to remove a complete directory). Experiment with that. But remember, key is taking ownership!
Edit (april 7, 2014): In case you do not have the security tab of the file/folder, try to do the following (for XP) to get the security tab: Open an Explorer window. Click >Tools, >Folder Options…, >View TAB, and scroll to the bottom of the Advanced settings: window, UNCHECK the box for Use simple file sharing [Recommended], click Apply, and you’re golden. Credits to poster Freeman at http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=2120356
— Max
I’m using Lightroom version 3.4.1 on a Windows XP 32 bits system with 4GB Ram. And I’m getting this error during exporting (creating a jpg) a photo. Not always but after several exports. As if the memory is hogged or something. Now it is strange because on my old computer with only 2GB I never had this problem. Googling around I tried several things. Cache size, Cache on different drive, Windows paging files (Normally I have them turned off) … but nothing helped. Then I turned the Windows ‘system restore’ off (I also had this ‘off’ on my old pc), and this seems to do the trick. I haven’t seen the ‘Not enough memory’ error yet. Fingers crossed.
Edit: Nope the above trick did not solve it. The error came back. But I tried some other stuff. Having a quad core processor (AMD A8-3850) I did toy with the ‘Set Processor Affinity’ in the Windows Task Manager on the running Lightrooom.exe. Just putting 1 core active and I could export without error while on 4 cores it gave the error. So perhaps it is a multi-thread related issue. I dunno. But after finding this by accident I googled and found other ppl ‘solving’ this error in the same way. Read http://forums.adobe.com/thread/655942
Edit2: I still get the error from time to time. Now, I go out of ‘Development’ back into ‘Library’, I view a few photo’s and then back into ‘Development’. It sometimes seems to do the trick. Weird.
Edit3: Since my blogpost I have moved from XP 32 bit to Windows 7, HP 64 bit SP1 on that same AMD A8-3850 based computer and have no(!) problems anymore.
— Max
With my new system, a PC build around the AMD A8-3850 with Windows XP and 4GB ram I started to experience ‘scroll lag’, meaning that if I scrolled with the mouse, e.g. in a Word document, the scrolling lagged. Also the games FSX and Arma2 stopped working with errors like there was something wrong with my videocard, suggesting I should update the drivers. The videocard is embedded in the A8-3850. It is an 6550D. And I had loaded and reloaded the latest ATI drivers. But nothing worked, while I was sure it had been working 2 days ago. I could get rid of the scroll lag if I disabled the ‘hardware acceleration’ (in settings > advanced > troubleshooting), but ArmA2 and FSX wouldn’t work.
So what the heck was going on?
After hours of trying this and that, I stumbled on a switch in the boot.ini file I had added a day before. The /3GB switch. I thought it wouldn’t harm to try to use as much of my 4GB ram as possible, as XP in standard situations only uses 2GB. Hmmm, that switch I had added just the day before. Would that be the cause of all the ‘scroll lagging’ and the non-working games?
I removed the /3GB switch from boot.ini, rebooted, and voila, the pc performs as expected. The scroll lag is gone. And ArmA2 and FSX start up again.
link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/170756
— Max
IRQ, it was the bloody IRQ. I’m happy now, but I wasn’t happy the last 2 weeks. Well, I was happy but not regarding my new pc. I nearly threw that pile of s*** out of the window. But hey, it appeared not to be a pile of s*** in the end. It was just a configuration setting. An IRQ setting. What’s that? IRQ? That’s a thing from the past isn’t it? Yeah I would think so too, but what happened here …
… let me go back 2 weeks. Building my new ‘low cost’ pc using the AMD A8-3850. There was 1 thing that pc had to do besides the normal things (surfing, mailing, photoshop and a little bit of gaming). It had to run audiosoftware using my old and trusty PCI soundcard with MIDI, the M-Audio Audiophile 2496. That card worked flawless for 7 years in a XP Pentium 4 setup and now I wanted that same card in my new system (still using XP, I don’t need more). But I ran into big configuration troubles. The Audiophile 2496 didn’t perform. Latency all over the place, breaking up my sound and reporting idiotic CPU usage and stuff. WTF!!!! (download DPC Latency Checker)
This problem gave me a big headache and some mild irritations (I won’t shock you by posting what I really thought of new shiny pc’s:) I even managed to break a motherboard (MSI), but perhaps it was already broken because also the harddisk and usb didn’t do well. Anyway, I did catch up on some latency techno babble and thought that a new mobo (ASRock) would solve my problems, especially because this mobo has 2 PCI slots so 2 chances on success. I read that sometimes switching slots would ‘solve’ the problem.
But … when the new mobo arrived and I assembled the system once again, the freaking latency was back like there is no tomorrow. I was shocked, but I’m also a bastard who doesn’t give up that easily. Who’s stronger, me or some dumb pc? Let’s battle it out. So, Google is your friend they say. And, it is true, Google was indeed my friend. In the sea of internet, googling on ‘latency audiophile’ and stuff I stumbled on guys talking about IRQ’s. Other guys talking about ‘how to change the IRQ’. I understood that in the old days the IRQ’s were 16 or lower, but in modern days everything is done automatically and who cares about IRQ’s anymore? Well I did, I had to as my last resort on success. When looking up the IRQ of the PCI Audiophile 2496 card in my new system it appeared to be on 22, and no way to change it. Perhaps putting the IRQ on 16 or lower would solve the latency problem? But how? One guy posted how to be able to change the IRQ’s. You have to tell your computer it is just a ‘standard pc’, IRQ’s might change (or can be changed). You have to prey he said. I did … and it worked. The IRQ is now 10 (was 22) and the latency is gone. Pure magic:)
The google finds which did the trick were these quotes:
Q: I need to change the IRQ number of my sound card or video card because they are the same and causing me porblems with playing DVD’s. I have Windows XP, and I go to Device manager and go to the resources section of the sound card properties, but it won’t let me un-check the use automatic setting for the IRQ #, it’s greyed out, so I can’t change it. So how do I fix this?
A: With the ACPI Hardware abstraction layer, you CAN’T really change IRQs in the operating system. And its likely if you change settings in the BIOS, it will just ignore those as well. Moving the card MAY help to change the IRQ, I don’t know but again it might well not. ACPI pretty much gives the OS license to do what it wants with IRQs, and you will probably find loads of PCI devices lumped onto one IRQ and governed by ACPI. This is by design so that IRQ conflicts become a thing of the past. But as you have discovered, sometimes it becomes necessary.
Here is how you could overcome this.
* * * * *
You Do This At Your Own Risk.
* * * * *1)Right Click My Computer, Select Manage.
2)Opens Management Console.
3)Select Device Manager.
4)Click on the + next to Computer (Top Icon under computer name)
5)Reveals “Advanced Configuration and Power Interface PC”
6)Right click that, select properties.
7)Go into “Driver” tab
8)Click “Update Driver”
9)NEXT
10)Display a list of known drivers for the device
11)NEXT
12)Click “Show all hardware of this device class”
13)Under (Standard Computers), select “Standard PC”
14)NEXT, NEXT, etc…15)Reboot and pray.
Hopefully all will be well when you reboot. A number of things will be different. One will be that some advanced power management things DO NOT WORK. Particularly, its likely that if you select “shutdown” from the start menu, it will just shut the OS down, and you will be left with the old message “its now safe to turn your computer off” instead of the actual power going off, i.e. you will loose the ability to power down using software and will have to press the power off button on your case. You may also get IRQ conflicts because you will have lost advanced IRQ management and will instead have to rely on the BIOS trying to do the best it can to make everything work. Try to set “Plug and Play OS installed” to NO in your BIOS if you have such a setting. You might also want to run a “Reset ESCD Data” as well first time round.
Good luck. You might need it.
source: XP won’t let me change IRQ numbers!
— Max
Other important links:
– DPC Latency Checker
– KVR :: Computer Setup and System Configuration » Please HELP! Audiophile 2496 IRQ > 15
PS: oct 6, 2011
Well, above blog post is not the final word on this. Although the latency was completely gone when I changed to ‘Standard PC’ I ran into all other kinds of negative side effects. One side effect was that I now got a “It is Now Safe to Turn Off Your Computer” message when I shut down the PC. Not really a big problem but annoying nevertheless. Read more here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/810903.
I examined the world of HAL’s (Hardware Abstraction Layer), tried every HAL, ran into multiple problems, reboots, reinstalls etc. In the end I kind of gave up on ever solving this latency thing on my new computer (running Windows XP SP3) and decided to put the Audiophile 2496 soundcard back into my old PC and use that old PC for music prodcution and the new PC for the rest. This was an ok solution and I was not unhappy with it.
But than came the day I decided to buy Windows 7 (HP, SP1, 64bit, UK edition). I wanted this to unlock DX11 and to play/try the Battlefield 3 beta on PC. I know the AMD A8-3850 APU is not that great but the PC has got the minimum specs and I wanted to see the BF3 stuff on PC. So here comes Windows 7. Another day, another install, putting on software, trying BF3 beta. After a few days I thought about the latency problem. Because, well, you never know. Should I try again? Hardware was the same, but perhaps Windows 7 has some tricks on his sleeve, and perhaps the Windows 7 drivers for the Audiophile 2496 would be better? Only one way to find out. I disassambled the card from my old PC, and put it into the new PC. And what do you know, IT WORKS. No latency:) Finally I had it my way.
So, in short, in my case the latency problem was solved by changing from Windows XP SP3 32 bit to Windows 7 SP1 64 bit.
— Max
This free utility worked like a charm and saved me a lot of trouble.
On my old but trusty and very lean windows XP computer I wanted to upgrade the C: drive containing the Windows XP OS. It was a 80GB IDE Western Digital and I had a much newer 500GB SATA Seagate spare. So how do you replace the C: drive contaning the OS without the trouble of reinstalling everything? Well, I googled some and discovered that this process is called ‘Cloning’. A very good read was this Beginners Guides: Cloning WindowsXP article. The article explained the basics and pointed me to the HDClone tool.
HDClone was just what I needed. Although it didn’t work directly from XP (because of some locks) It worked when I burned the selfbooting version on a cd, just as the help text advised.
About 1,5 hours later the 80GB were transferred to the new 500GB drive. Disconnecting the 80GB IDE HDD and booting the computer saw XP starting from the new 500GB SATA drive. Yes, faster and more space, just what I wanted. Some software had to be re-registered because the system signature had changed, but I encountered no other ‘problems’. After 8 years of work, the old 80GB IDE HDD will be shelved, collecting dust and might even be binned. I mean 80GB, now c’mon:)
HDClone 4 gets a 10/10 (fantastic helpfull free utility)
— Max
Encounters with Reality 