July 2015

More Troubles for Nvidia

It has not been a good week for Nvidia NVDA 164,95 +4,32 +2,69%. Last weekend Windows 10 users with Nvidia video cards using dual displays were having issues with Nvidia’s management software and Windows Update fighting each other claiming they had an updated driver. The Nvidia update would work, but Windows Updated detected that driver as outdated and would install a driver that didn’t work correctly with Windows 10. Now comes news they are recalling their 8-inch Shield Tablets in the US due to fears the device overheats and the battery may catch fire. Nvidia Corp said it was recalling some…

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Windows 10 CAN Retain Your Default Apps.

Note: I have yet to try this, so not sure where and when in the setup process this is presented. Still trying to get Windows 10 installed on one of my two test machines. Yesterday, one of them started acting up (BSOD) while I was researching how to do a forced upgrade to Windows 10. While BSOD use to be common with this system, they seemed to have disappeared when I did a clean install of Windows 7 about a year ago. The timing of that BSOD though makes me wonder if that machine was possessed by HAL 9000. So over the…

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Understanding the Windows 10 FREE Upgrade Offer

Windows 10 is finally here and yes there is a mad rush of people getting the FREE upgrade. Here are some details you need to understand about this FREE Upgrade Offer: You have until July 28th, 2016 to take advantage of the offer if you meet the requirements (explained below). If you wait too long and miss this deadline you have some options: Buy a new computer with Windows 10 already installed Pay for the Windows 10 Upgrade ($119 for Home and $199 for Pro) Become a guinea pig and be part of the Windows Insider program In order to qualify for…

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Ready or Not Here Comes Windows 10!

For those people who reserved an upgrade from Windows 7 or 8.1 to Windows 10, it could already be downloading. What, you were expecting Microsoft to ask you if it was okay to eat up your bandwidth with a nearly 6 GB download? Nope, just like the Windows 10 Updates, Windows 10 upgrade is going to be automatically downloaded. To see if your computer is secretly downloading Windows 10 check Windows Explorer for a folder called C:\$windows.~BT note: this is hidden folder so you may need to go into File Explorer and go to: Organize > Folder Options > View > Show hidden files, folders, and…

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How to block Canvas fingerprinting

“Pale Moon 25.6 ships with anti-fingerprinting option“We talked about a fingerprinting technique using Canvas before and explained how companies make use of the feature supported by all modern web browsers to track users across the Internet.“We also told you how to block Canvas fingerprinting in Firefox and Chrome. … “ Source: gHacks Tech News  Pale Moon 25.6 ships with anti-fingerprinting option

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Windows 10: Fact or Fiction

InfoWorld has put together a very good Fact of Fiction about Windows 10. A couple good ones to point out: Fact: Windows 10 has a 10-year support cycle Like Windows Vista, Win7, and Win8 before it, Windows 10 has a 10-year support cycle. In fact, we’re getting a few extra months for free: According to the Windows Lifecycle fact sheet, mainstream support ends Oct. 13, 2020. Fiction: Microsoft pulled Windows Media Player from Windows 10 One word here seems to be tripping up folks. What Microsoft has pulled is Windows Media Center, which is a horse of a completely different…

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In light of this weekend’s Nvidia driver as well as today’s automatic updates causing Windows Explorer to crash, Microsoft has pushed out the “Show or hide updates” troubleshooter tool aka KB3073930. KB3073930 is a standalone (not available from Windows Update) patch for the Windows 10 Insider Preview. From the support document on Microsoft’s site: In Windows 10 Insider Preview, your device is always kept up to date with the latest features and fixes. Updates are installed automatically, with no need to select which updates are needed or not needed. In rare cases, a specific driver or update might temporarily cause issues with…

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Yet Another Windows 10 Automatic Update Fiasco

As if the Nvidia driver update issue (still unresolved on Microsoft’s part) weren’t bad enough another and much more serious forced automatic update issue came to light today. Following the Nvidia debacle, over the weekend Windows 10 pushed ‘KB3074681’ to Windows Insiders running Windows 10 Build 10240. This is presumed to be the same build as the final release consumers and businesses will receive on Wednesday. KB3074681 had no detailed information about what it contained but as it was classified as a ‘security’ patch it installed immediately and without warning to all versions of Windows 10 (Home, Pro and Enterprise)…

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Windows 10 Forced Updates Already Causing Issues

Windows 10 hasn’t even been released to the general public yet and there is already a major problem. The cause of this problem was Windows 10 insisting that EVERY update is mandatory, including device drivers (which were optional in Windows 7 and Windows 8). In this case it users of dual monitors with certain Nvidia graphic cards. The flaw revolves around Nvidia graphics cards with users taking to Nvidia’s forums to report Windows Update is automatically installing new drivers which break multimonitor setups, SLI (dual card) configurations and can even stop PCs booting entirely which pushes Windows 10 into its emergency…

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I reported last week that Windows 10 has changed the way you setup your Default Apps. The biggest change is this has to be done within Windows System Settings, not from within the application. If you attempt to have the application to tell Windows it wants to be the default application you will get this annoying and unhelpful message: For Firefox, Mozilla has implemented a change coming with Firefox 40 that will open the Default Apps setting in Windows 10 when the user tries to make Firefox the default browser within Firefox. This is needed because it appears when a user…

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