Letters from the Ed, Recent Activity, Software Reviews, Tips, Tricks and Tweaks, Windows OS Musings

Machine Crash Prompts Lots of Learning, Especially for Intel Rapid Start

March 7, 2014 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

OK, so I’m on the phone last Friday, and I’ve just installed Service Pack 1 for MS Office 2013. After the obligatory post-install reboot, I discover the system won’t boot because it can’t find a boot drive. A long bout of troubleshooting ensues, after which I reluctantly conclude my motherboard’s gone south. My immediate efforts concentrate on moving over to my back-up desktop system, and I put an order into Newegg for a new Z87 motherboard, with a i7 4770K processor.

By the time I got my standby system promoted to production status, and prepared my T520 notebook for backup status (which means it’s got all the apps I use installed, and is ready to play host to my Outlook PSTs and all my usual data files and stuff), the parts arrived from Newegg. Wednesday, I started putting pieces together, and managed to get all the way through the build process for my first shot at a new backup system. But that’s where my first lesson of this adventure came into play: I struggled mightily to get the Corsair CWCH cooler to mate properly with the MSI Z87-G45 mobo I’d selected (good price, with mSATA drive slot), but ended up having to switch for the stock Intel cooler because I had to keep fiddling with the CPU to get it to work.

Turns out my #10 Torx screwdriver came in really handy, because torqueing down the front screw to clamp down more tightly onto the processor was the only way to get things working. This necessitated three tries before I was able to boot into the BIOS. Getting the Corsair cooler in place ONCE was more than enough for me, so I’m using the stock cooler now, watching temps, and plan to drop in a Zalman CNPS95 (had good luck with these before in various earlier builds) if the stock cooler doesn’t cut it. At present, CPU temps mostly fall in the range from 40-50 degrees Celsius (about 10 degrees hotter than on the i7 930 CPU I just replaced, but I think that’s normal when scaling down from 45 to 22 nm technology). The Antec 902 case in which the build is housed is well ventilated, with four 120 mm fans, plus a 200mm venting warm air out the top.

My next big challenge came from a Windows licensing snafu. MS didn’t inform me until one day after the initial install that my key was a duplicate (why couldn’t they check that at initial validation, I wonder?). I wasn’t able to get tech support to issue me a new key (even though I’ve got an MSDN subscription and two unused Windows 8.1 keys, the activation utility would accept neither one of them). After trying every trick I know of, I elected to re-install, as much because I wanted to switch to RAID drivers and try out the Intel Rapid Start Technology, as because I got tired of trying to fix the licensing snafu I’d caught myself in.

The GUI doesn’t show much, but it takes several contortions to get it working.

That’s where my next big learning adventure began. I quickly learned that I needed an SSD “hibernation partition” in which to shadow memory contents to make Rapid Start work, and I chewed through several sets of instructions before I figured out how to make it work on my MSI-based system:

0. I number this step zero because it occurs when Windows isn’t running (yet): you must get into your system BIOS to enable Intel Rapid Start Technology (and set the hibernation value to “Immediate” if present) before you can get the Rapid Start installer to work properly. You’ll have to catch and set this at an opportune reboot before attempting to install the software.

1. I set up the Intel mSATA 80GB SSD (nominal size; 76.29 GB actual) with a 42 GB partition, to leave 34 GB for the hibernation partition that Rapid Start uses to snapshot or copy memory contents. I used Disk Manager to set up a 42 GB GPT partition, leaving 34 GB unformatted for the series of diskpart commands I figured out I would need. Any SSD will do for the snapshot, and you should leave slightly more space in the hibernation partition than you have memory installed on your PC (mine has 32 GB; hence, a 34 GB partition). Interestingly, while the hibernation partition is visible in Disk Management, it is invisible to Windows Explorer (aka “File Explorer” or explorer.exe in Windows 8.*).

2. Next, I fired up diskpart following the instructions in the Intel Rapid Start Technology Guide for UEFI Mode, with special emphasis on the section entitled “Create a Primary Store Partition on a non-OS drive SSD.”

3. I skipped the convert gpt step, because the format I created in diskmgmt.msc was already GPT-formatted (in Step 12). I followed the create partition step as shown, using 34816 as the size of the hibernation partition in megabytes (34 GB * 1024 (megabytes per gigabyte) = 34816).

4. I jumped over into Intel Rapid Storage Technology, clicked the Performance tab, and made sure the acceleration features were enabled (this turns out to be an essential step in the process, though not very well documented).

5. I cut-and-pasted the exact value for the set id command from the documentation, namely “D3BFE2DE-3DAF-11DF-BA40-E3A556D89593” as shown in the Intel User Guide, then exited diskpart as directed.

6. Before you can get the Intel Rapid Start installer to work, you need to reboot the PC. After that, provided your chipset (Intel 8-series chipsets or better, with spotty 7-series coverage) and setup are copascetic, the program should install nicely and do its thing. One more observation: I had to reboot my machine two more times after installing Rapid Start to start observing the effects that the software promises — that is, a more rapid start. Apparently, it takes two reboots before the hibernation file gets set up and starts working properly, so be patient, please!

My PC now boots to the login prompt in under 10 seconds, which is at least 10 seconds faster than it used to boot before installing the Rapid Start stuff. Is it worth it? The real answer is that it depends on how often you reboot your PC. I mess around with mine all the time, so I think it’s worth giving up 34 GB of SSD space for this purpose. If you don’t reboot often, or you don’t have the SSD space to spare, you may not feel the same way.

But now, at least, I’ve figured out how to install and use Rapid Start on a home-brew PC, and I’ve got a RAID-based disk setup going for this UEFI Windows 8.1 install. The machine currently clocks at 8.1 in the WinAero version of WEI (Windows Experience Index, with the Intel 530 SSD the slowest link in the collection of subsystems measured) so I can’t be too unhappy with the results. By a slim margin (8.10 to 8.05 for my other desktop’s SSD), it’s now the fastest system I’ve got.

Letters from the Ed, Recent Activity

Business Lease for PC Equipment Bundles Interesting Charges

Gallery February 19, 2014 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

More or less on a whim, I decided to try out the business lease option when purchasing a recent desktop/portable system through the Fujitsu online store last month. From this disclosure, you may guess that the remarks that follow pertain to my recently-acquired Fujitsu Stylistic Q704 Tablet PC, for whose purchase I cut my deal with a company named the Marlin Business Bank, a firm that apparently specializes in such deals. Today, I just got my first invoice in the 24-month installment plan that will pay off the machine, and for one extra dollar, make it all mine. I also set up my online account, and made an electronic payment from my checking account to the leaseholder, Marlin.

Is it too cynical of me too find something “fishy” about the institution’s name?

Surprise, Surprise: Hidden Charges Surface
When I purchased the unit, I was told that my monthly payments would be something on the order of $135 a month to pay off the PC. Imagine my surprise, when I discovered the following items in that first invoice:

a $95 “documentation fee”
a charge for $27.06 that appeared in the late payment charges column of my invoice, but which was explained to me on a phone call to Marlin based on the very reasonable question of “How can I be late when this is my very first payment, and it’s not due until early March?” as an “added charge” for which no pre-printed column was available on their invoice form. The very nice phone support person was never able to adequately explain exactly what that charge was for, but made it very clear that it must be paid! I decided to let that slide this month, but if it’s a recurring item, I will most assuredly raise a ruckus about this. I won’t know until next month’s invoice appears in my mailbox.
a monthly, recurring charge for insurance of $18.02 (which translates into $216.24 per year) on a total purchase of around $2,800 represents approximately 7.72 percent of that price to protect Marlin’s investment in my office equipment. I already pay $440 a year for up to $40,000 of computing gear on my homeowner’s policy and resent being forced to pay about half that amount for less than 10% of the same coverage (twice).

It’s Just Like Momma Warned Me: “Things Aren’t Always What They Seem”
I can’t say I’m devastated to now understand fully that what I thought would involve about $135 a month looks like it will be more like $150-something. When financing anything, it’s always the little things that sneak in after the deal is done that bump up the monthly charges. But dang! You’d think that credit disclosure laws would force such companies to spell out explicitly and directly what the monthly charges will be, and also to list out all the one-time charges as well. The bottom line is that what I thought would cost me $3K instead of $2.8K is going to be more like $3.5K (or more) by the time the lease is paid off.

Fortunately, I learned that the lease carries no pre-payment penalties, so I can get out of the monthly “extras” (but not the interest over the life of the lease) by paying it off early. I’m going to check the state of our various accounts and then discuss this with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who I’m sure will agree with me that paying this note off early is our best way out of a sticky situation. Live and learn, my friends — and please, check those lease terms carefully, and ask in advance about one-time and add-on charges!

EdFiles, Hardware Reviews, Recent Activity, Windows OS Musings

Interesting USB Access Issue on Fujitsu Q704 Worked Around

February 10, 2014 Ed Tittel 2 Comments

I’m still breaking in — or rather, getting to know in depth — my latest Windows 8.1 tablet. Somewhat annoyingly, the Fujitsu Q704 stops “seeing” a USB flash drive (UFD for short) plugged into the keyboard dock once the machine has been idle for half an hour or longer. Continue reading Interesting USB Access Issue on Fujitsu Q704 Worked Around →

EdFiles, Hardware Reviews, Recent Activity, Windows OS Musings

Interesting Adventures with New Fujitsu Q704 Tablet/Convertible

January 29, 2014 Ed Tittel 68 Comments

Having secured permission from the Chancellor of the Exchequer (aka, “The Boss” — namely, my wife Dina) I recently purchased a new Fujitsu Windows tablet convertible, model Stylistic Q704 Hybrid Tablet PC with the keyboard dock/extra battery option. The price came in at over $2K, which is kinda painful for a 12.5″ tablet, but when the Boss said I could go for it, go for it I did. Now I’m learning to live with it. Here’s a snazzy publicity still:

Continue reading Interesting Adventures with New Fujitsu Q704 Tablet/Convertible →

Letters from the Ed, Tips, Tricks and Tweaks, Windows OS Musings

Customization and Control: Does the OS Really Matter Anymore?

December 31, 2013 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

I’ve got 4 laptops, 1 all-in-one, and three desktop computers on the roster at home, and another couple of laptops, a mini-ITX desktop, and a Chromebook on my “school loan” program right now. At this point, all but one of those machines — the Chromebook — is running Windows 8.1. I have added either Classic Shell or Start8 to all of the Windows machines, to make using and working from the desktop easier and faster, but otherwise I haven’t really mucked with the OS itself all that much. Many of those machines boast a “perfect score” in DriverAgent (no drivers out of date, that is) with the “worst score” on any machine showing three drivers outdated (two of which are bogus in each case, the other sufficiently mysterious and apocryphal to resist my occasional efforts at update/repair).

Windows 8.1 shows a plain Windows 8 logo in the system info widget from control panel.

In short, everything is humming along nicely and all but one of the machines is rock-solid stable with a perfect 10 score in the Windows Reliability Monitor (and even the odd PC out — my production desktop, ironically enough — is sufficiently stable in day-to-day working practice that I don’t worry about losing work or productivity on that machine). All of this adds up to an interesting observation or realization on my part — namely, that the OS running on those machines doesn’t really matter all that much any more. By hook or by crook, I’m able to keep things working, and I’m not being stymied or feeling overly frustrated about maintaining my computers, and keeping them working properly over time.

Windows 7 was (and remains) great, but Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 have also done right by me, too. Does this mean I’ve been lucky? Perhaps so, as I read about and hear from others who’ve run into snags with Windows 8, or the 8.1 update/upgrade, or who are struggling with hardware and driver issues. But I’m also inclined to observe that both hardware and software seem exceptionally stable and troublefree of late, and to have experienced fewer Windows headaches in the past four years or so, starting with the release of Windows 7 in October 2009. I’m not even terribly inclined to knock on wood so as not to tempt fate overmuch with my words, though that thought immediately crossed my mind as soon as I wrote them!

Here’s hoping that 2014 will continue humming along, as 2013 did for me, to my great surprise and delight. May your experiences be the same, too, if not better than that!

EdFiles, Letters from the Ed, Recent Activity

Grrrrrr: I HATE Tagalong Software

November 22, 2013 Ed Tittel 3 Comments

In the past two weeks, I’ve set up half a dozen PCs, mostly in the wake of clean installing or upgrading them to Windows 8.1. Along the way, I’ve encountered numerous software elements that seek to get users to install additional software programs so they can get access to sometimes essential plug-ins, programs, and other stuff.

To be more specific, I’ve encountered the Ask toobar and search replacement items along with adding Java to those machines, as well as the AVG toolbar and search tab insertion into most Web browsers (which means Chrome, IE, and Firefox on my production PC, and also includes Safari and Opera on other machines as well) for Adobe Flash player (here’s a whole list of vendors who include the AVG Toolbar as part of their product installs).

Booting the Secure Search tab in Chrome proved to be quite an effort.

I got stuck in a particularly nasty uninstall problem with AVG Secure Search and Chrome, in fact. I used Revo Uninstaller to get rid of the installed elements, and then had to go into the Web browsers to root AVG Secure Search out of their defaults and settings, one at a time. My issue with Chrome persisted until I realized that the “On Startup” item in Settings provides the ability to add multiple tabs when the program starts up. That was where the remaining invocation of AVG Secure Search remained untouched and unstopped, until I figured out I had to manually delete that entry from that part of the browser configuration.

I understand that companies often partner up when offering free and popular or widely-used software to the public, and permit third parties with money to spend on purchasing installs who feel like they have something to gain by paying to come along for that ride. But what I don’t understand is why some of those third parties feel like they have to resist user attempts to avoid such maneuvers, sometimes to the point of making such installs feel more like drive-by malware than like legitimate commercial software.

I have long regarded AVG as among the best of the free malware protection makers, and their consistently high ratings from Virus Bulletin, PC Magazine, and so forth indicate that their malware suite is decent software. I am dismayed that they would use their knowledge of how software hides from users against the very users they so ardently seek to protect.

I feel the same way about any tagalong items that don’t clearly advertise their presence and provide clear, obvious, and usable opt-out mechanisms so users don’t end up installing software on their machines that they don’t really want. I don’t exactly love the idea of having to watch installers closely at all times on vigilant lookout for opt-out messages when they appear, either, but it definitely beats having to take the extra software as a consequence of the software you want, and then having to uninstall and clean up after the unwanted stuff manually after the initial install is ended.

Sigh.

EdFiles, Letters from the Ed, Windows OS Musings

Interesting Outlook 2013 and iCloud Adventures Happily Concluded

November 8, 2013 Ed Tittel 7 Comments

On October 22, I posted a blog here entitled “Interesting Adventures with iCloud and Outlook 2013” wherein I recounted some difficulties with making those two software components play nice with each other in the immediate aftermath of my upgrade from Windows 8.0 to 8.1 on my production machine. Having now waiting a little over two weeks for more collective wisdom to coalesce online, I’ve found my way to a solution of those difficulties.

Continue reading Interesting Outlook 2013 and iCloud Adventures Happily Concluded →

Letters from the Ed, Windows OS Musings

Interesting Adventures with iCloud and Outlook 2013

October 22, 2013 Ed Tittel 4 Comments

I’m now using the iCloud service, trying to get better synergy between my desktop and notebook PCs running Windows (8 or 8.1) and my iPhone and iPad (now both running iOS 7). By and large things are going reasonably well, but I noticed some glitches in the past few days after upgrading my production desktop to Windows 8.1 GA (from the September version of the 8.1 called RTM). I wasn’t expecting too much to change between RTM and GA, and mostly that’s been a sustainable supposition, but a few things have changed in surprising ways. And alas, some of those changes have not been for the better…

Case in point: I recently installed the iCloud Control Panel applet on my production desktop, when that system was running Windows 8.1 RTM. To my immense suprise, when I next went to visit My Contacts in Outlook 2013, the contents of the local My Contacts folder was empty. But because I could access the same information online through the iCloud folder instead, I thought to myself at the time “Good thing I’ve got a backup” and also “I can’t believe they decided to remove local data altogether instead of synching local and remote copies.”

That’s why I wasn’t completely bollixed when, in the wake of the 8.1 RTM-to-GA update, iCloud stopped working in Outlook 2013. Instead of accessing the cloud version of my contact data, when I click on iCloud in the Contacts view in Outlook, I get an error message window that reads: “This set of folders cannot be opened. The information store could not be opened.”

So what did I do? I went to my backup PST file and used the Import command to grab the Contacts folder from that file and bring it back into the local copy inside the resident PST file on my production desktop. I got my contacts back without too much fuss and bother, but I still can’t help wondering, yet again: Why did Apple decide to take the only copy of the data and put it in the cloud, so that if you lose access to the Internet (or in this case to the necessary “information store” on the Internet) you can’t access your contact data, either. Not at all.

I have trouble understanding how a software designer could cobble together a system that could so easily deprive a person of his or her contacts. For those of us who, like me and countless others, depend on that information for their livelihoods, that kind of catastrophic loss of access is simply not acceptable. In my case, I knew exactly how to work around it. But I know many others who would be crushed by this loss, and who might not have a backup PST file from which to pull the information. It’s still accessible, by the way, through a login to iCloud.com on my account there — it’s just no longer programmatically accessible to Outlook, for whatever arcane reason broke the Outlook to iCloud connection.

Sure hope Apple or MIcrosoft, or the two of them in tandem, get this fixed sometime soon! I’d also suggest that they give users the option of creating a local backup during the iCloud install process, with some instructions on how to restore that backup should it become necessary. It wouldn’t take much extra effort, though it could confer considerable increased peace of mind.

Letters from the Ed, Recent Activity, Tips, Tricks and Tweaks

Whoa! Strange (and I mean StR@NgE) contortions required to resolve Window device issue

September 18, 2013 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Here’s a list of instructions that I had to follow on my Lenovo X200 Tablet, to remove an issue with the WAN miniport (#2 and #3) drivers on that machine, whose failure to load up and register properly also rendered Bluetooth inoperable on that machine when running Windows 8 (or 8.1, as you might expect; this material is fully documented in KB article 2871372):

Who came up with this mysterious fix, and how they did figure this out? Wowie-zowie!

Open Device Manager.

Right-click the WAN miniport (Network monitor) device, and then click Update Driver Software.

Click Browse my computer for driver software.

Click Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer.

Clear the Show compatible hardware check box.

In the column on the left side, select Microsoft, and in the column on the right side, select Microsoft KM-TEST Loopback Adapter.

In the Update Driver Warning dialog box, click Yes to continue installing this driver.

After the driver is installed, right-click the device, and then click Uninstall.

After the device is uninstalled, right-click the computer name in Device Manager, and then click Scan for hardware changes.

On the View menu, click Show hidden devices.

The WAN Miniport (Network monitor) device should now be started and no longer have a yellow exclamation mark next to it.

For reasons that go way beyond my ken but that I find egregiously irritating, this bit of mumbo-jumbo actually worked! To me, it seems almost like turning widdershins thrice, hopping on one foot, while making an incantation, to try to make something happen. Arthur C. Clarke said that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” and I’m damned if I can really tell what’s up here, other than the bizarre reality that installing and then uninstalling a nugatory driver actually results in proper recognition of the underlying hardware, and automatic installation of the correct driver when the next hardware rescan occurs.

There is just a glimmer of a suggestion of what’s really going on here in the “Resolution” section of the related KB article. It says that MS Update 2822241 must be “integrated with” (which I believe means slipstreamed into) the installation image (WIM file, probably) used during setup of Windows 8 for target hardware to avoid these contortions. That tells me that the update rollup in that particular update file somehow fixes the issues discussed in 2871372, even though it’s not specifically called out in the “Issues that this update fixes” in its supporting documentation.

What galls me about this fix (which I’m very grateful to have found, and am now able to use Bluetooth devices on the X220 Tablet) is that it’s so very arcane and non-intuitive. I’m able to address most driver issues in Windows on my own, with a bit of elbow grease, and lots of odd and interesting techniques for extracting driver files from installers for software that won’t run on my systems. I’m OK with that, and have learned how to cope. But installing a loopback driver, and then removing it, to provoke a proper hardware scan for device recognition? The mind reels…

Letters from the Ed

Hmmm… Time to upgrade to Windows 8?

March 4, 2013 Ed Tittel Leave a comment

Drat! My production machine has started to act up lately. Yesterday was a pretty extreme example, as this trace from Event Viewer will show:

The system restarted four times yesterday, but because it was a Sunday, I couldn't observe what happened. — The system restarted four times yesterday, but because it was a Sunday, I couldn’t observe what happened.

The system has been getting increasingly, but not unbearably flaky over the past 3-4 months. My symptoms include: no records being written to my Reliability Monitor files (I’m pretty sure this is an unwanted side effect from Soluto), occasional issues with the Acronis Scheduler Service (which doesn’t always start up properly after a reboot), and lately, repeated sit-downs at the machine in the morning to a login prompt (I usually leave it running all the time to do backups and updates in the wee hours of the morning). This latter condition indicates some kind of BSOD may be occurring. I’ve disabled the MSI Afterburner, which overclocks the Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 in my system, because I just updated to the latest drivers, and noticed the video driver started acting up almost immediately thereafter. Since then, no trouble at all…

But anybody who’s messed with Windows for any length of time will know what I mean when I say that these systems’ stability tends to degrade over time if, like me, you’re always installing and playing with new software (sometimes beta, sometimes not), and then de-installing much of the experimental stuff later on because it’s not worth keeping. These days, I try to restrict that sort of fooling around to VMs instead of the base OS, but I still install (and later remove) a great deal more software than is typical for a typical end user installation. If history is any guide, that means it’s time to de-gunk my Windows machine. Ordinarily, that would mean wiping the boot/system drive, performing a clean install of Windows 7, and then reinstalling all of my applications.

But now, I have to consider whether or not I should simply upgrade to Windows 8 instead. I’ve been using that OS for over a year now, and am comfortable enough to use it for production work. It’s also got some very nice features I like a lot — better security, native mounting for ISOs, the ability to snapshot a current install for the “Refresh your PC” operation, and a bunch of other stuff I’d like to use better, and more often. Maybe that means it’s time to take the plunge? I’m starting to think so, but…

…that means I need to find a full day to dedicate to making the switch. My real problem is, I have so much work to do right now I don’t know when I can find the time to perform the cut-over. But with increasing instability, my experience teaches me I’ll be doing it sooner or later anyway, just because my production system is trembling on the threshold between tolerable instability and intolerable instability. For the time being, I guess I’ll just work as hard as I can to try to free up some time in my schedule. Maybe next week? I’ve got my fingers crossed!

[Note added 3/5/2013: As I continued to ponder the “Win8 vs. Win7” decision I came across a ZDnet post from long-time OS expert Steven J. Vaughan Nichols which graphed the uptake of Windows 8 versus Windows Vista, each over the first five months since their respective introductions. Here’s the graphic he produced to present a stark and scary comparison:

**Across the board, Win8 underperforms Vista!**
Graphic reproduced from Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols ZDnet Web post entitled “5 Reasons Why Windows 8 Has Failed” with the author’s permission. Please read the original article in its entirety for a sobering (re)view of the sad and sorry state of Windows 8.

Although sales of Windows 8 may be strong, Vaughan-Nichols’ chart makes it clear that sales haven’t yet translated into an equivalent number of Windows 8 users on the Internet. This has pretty much stopped me dead in my tracks, and I’m seriously considering flip-flopping my decision, and re-installing Windows 7 instead. That said, I did upgrade to Vista and found it to be a stable and dependable OS once the marketplace remedied the initial driver incompatibility issues that drove early adopters so crazy. I’m still thinking…]

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