A thread for boring computer questions.

i upgraded to windows 10 on my laptop about a month ago. everything worked fine, my old laptop felt quicker, i was quite happy with it. yesterday, it restarted after installing a new update. it took a while, with a few screens with one sentence messages that i couldn't skip and finally it started. but something's happened: it went back to what it was like a month ago. i still have windows 10 installed but when i launched chrome it launched the tabs that were open about a month ago, when i launch utorrent it doesn't show anything i've downloaded in the past month and only has the torrents from a month ago, my main desktop screen is the same as a month back, same background image and files and it looks like anything that's happened in the month since has disappeared. i had a cracked copy of office that didn't work after i installed windows 10, but now it does. i have absolutely no clue what the hell happened and it's impossible to google for help since all i can find are tutorials on how to go back to windows 7/8 if you're unhappy about windows 10.

so uh what the hell happened? any clue on sorting it out?

The only thing I can think of is that an old restore point was restored. It shouldn't just do that by itself though.

is there a way i can disable the "upgrade to windows 10" thing that wants to schedule an appointment for an upgrade?

Upgraded my laptop to Windows 10 last month but since then my wifi keeps disconnecting. Anyone else had this problem?

Similar thing definitely happened to the family PC. Windows 10 put itself on, seemed fine for a while, got much slower within a few months.

Yeah seems like that's what happened. I'm looking to restore to a previous point to see if it works. Thanks silverfish

i see at least 3 people at week who have upgraded to windows 10 and cannot stay connected to wifi. sometimes there's a driver update for the wireless adapter which tends to help.

I've tried Windows 10 on a couple of machines and there are no bloody drivers for anything so I just had to downgrade again. But it still bugs me to upgrade back again constantly. Grumble.

http://www.myce.com/news/how-to-uninstall-kb3035583-the-windows-10-downloader-for-windows-7-and-8-1-75681/

I've not once been hassled to update to Win10 on my 8.1 machine. I can only assume this is due to my strict rule of completely disabling auto updates and reminders when I get a new PC.

Can you use curl or python to retrieve emails?

from where/what?

retrieve body of email from email account (such as a mailman account) set up to receive the emails

there are imap and pop libraries for python if you can access the server like that.

offlineimap is an example. it's python2 only fwiw.

curl is for http requests which is not email (unless you are a sadomasochist and want to scrap gmail or whatever)

soooo what is the deal with power cords? i inherited an old desktop from work but it's just a tower (everything inside but HD) so i need a replacement cord. can i just get any old cheapo cord from amazon or does it have to align with the PSU/wattage? will it blow up? i can't even figure out what the PSU is but i'm pretty sure it's dell brand.

can i just get this? https://www.amazon.com/Power-Cable-Desktop-Computer-Warranty/dp/B004RIL2WQ

does work not have a spare power cord? if it's anything like here there's a rack of the things just lying there getting tangled up.

but, yes, tower pc cords are much of a muchness, they are all the same.

we have so many dozens and dozens extra lying around. your work might have spares! But yes, any old one will do; the only difference will be in the materials and the build quality.

thx i will ask at work !

Hello. I've had so many computer issues in the last year. I'm determined to try everything before shelling out on a new laptop.

It's a K53e Asus, not the newest machine but up until last year it ran pretty well. I moved house and shortly afterwards the HDD failed and it wouldn't boot up. I managed to transfer everything to a new SSD, expecting everything to be a lot better. There was no got the computer working again, but no noticeable difference in speed despite the better hard drive. In fact I noticed it operated a little slower.

Since then it's got worse and worse Memory/RAM was maxed out, as was CPU so I upgraded to 8GB RAM. Still just as slow. Still got noticeable audio dropouts when playing music and browsing through Google Chrome etc. Propellerhead Reason (a music package I use) was rendered basically useless and unable to handle much more than a couple of tracks before conking out. Memory is down, but CPU is still maxed simply using Chrome. Otherwise there are peaks that occur frequently but in no pattern.

I cleaned the fan (had to take the whole laptop to pieces cos the fan is located right inside the thing) last night, but no difference.

Thinking I'm gonna try reinstalling Windows once again. My only guess is that this is a virus and it's eating up my CPU.
If that doesn't work, I don't know what will. Any suggestions?

What cpu

as in what spec? I'm not technical enough to know. it's an i5 processor. https://www.asus.com/Notebooks/K53E/specifications/

What's using all the CPU? What does task manager say?

SVCHost and Google Chrome (when I boot it up)

you can try ProcessExplorer to figure out what is actually using all the CPU (SVCHost is basically just what is used to run windows services, a bunch of which are running that you probably don't need). I found what looks like a pretty good guide to tracking down what is causing SVCHost high CPU usage here: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/abnormally-high-cpu-usage-from-svchostexe-solved/eb38d25d-6bb2-47cd-80f2-5389c62337be?auth=1

As for chrome, there is a chrome task manager (just hit shift + escape, when in Chrome) that should tell is actually using all the CPU. It could be just some random extension that you installed, which is slowing everything down.

thanks silverfish

Does restoring my hard drive from my Time Machine drive in Disk Utility work the same as doing it from Recovery Mode?

Or am I just making an unbootable clone of my Time Machine disc?

Been tearing my hair out with a computer problem. It's a long shot, but I've looked everywhere and I wonder if ILX can help?
Basically I reloaded Windows 7 a few weeks back and I can't install updates. Windows Defender just starts and hangs and takes forever. Same as Windows Update, just keeps going and never gets anywhere. If I try to manually install an update, guess what? Windows Update Standalone Installer just goes round and round and round.

It's driving me nuts. Any clues? I've looked everywhere but nothing I read seems straightforward or knowledgeable of this particular issue.

Not a regular poster here but I've seen something like this before - sometimes that issue can happen if your hard drive is over 700gb. If that is the case then try updating the 'Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver', reboot and see if the problem persists. Not a guaranteed fix but worth a punt.

also possibly worth clearing out the update cache and trying again?

http://ccm.net/faq/2471-how-to-purge-the-windows-update-cache

WmC from what I know of Disk Utility Restore, it just creates a duplicate of the source drive -- so yeah, I'd think you'd end up with an unbootable clone. Is there some reason you can't do it from Recovery Mode?

Yeah, I got it so bollixed up that in Recovery Mode it wouldn't even recognize a hard disk. Took it in to the shop, they performed their magic and installed Sierra, then I restored from Time Machine.

I have a newish Dell laptop, good specs, running Windows 10, that has become, for all intents and purposed, unusable. Writing that sentence took 3 minutes and involved opening a different browser just to get it done. I run panda scans, malwarebytes scanse, and spybot scans, and nothing comes up. I check Task Manager and nothing suspicious, just says Firefox is consuming tons of resources as usual.

I am embarrissingly bad with computers, and simply do not know what to do. I guess I'd System Restore but have not consciously ever set a restore point, so I don't know if that's an option. I've disabled everything I can in the startup menu. Run Decrapifyers and Reg cleaners. Nothing works.

One thing I haven't done is quit Firefox and moved to Chrome, because I can't get my bookmark situation the way I want it in Chrome. Also, I suspect this would not be the cure anyway.

Can you reach a point where all is lost and it's time to buy a new machine, or reinstall your O/S (something I don't know how to do even though I did create the suggested backup something-or-other onto a 16GB thumb drive when I got the laptop).

I am amazed computers aren't any better at diagnosing and fixing themseleves, unless this is planned obsolescence staring me in the face.

try https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/refresh-firefox-reset-add-ons-and-settings

I am speechless. I refreshed per your link and I'm running smooth as silk. I can't believe it! I was shopping new computers. Well... thank you diamonddave85!

awesome!

Thread delivers.

What is the presumed subject and appropriate conjugation of a verb in a github commit message?

a commit should finish the sentence "if applied this commit will..."

tpope otm http://tbaggery.com/2008/04/19/a-note-about-git-commit-messages.html

github != git though. if you're developing in a group project that makes heavy use of github they may have coventions like "BUG"

also https://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/#imperative

Thanks! I meant git (but perhaps what is of consequence is what makes it to github that others can see). If you're working on a project and there are a couple of files that you have to configure locally, if you decide not to track them, they disappear from the repository. What is the best way to handle this?

configuration management is a huge topic and i'm not an expert. the general idea is configuration (i.e. machine specific paths and authentication secrets) doesn't go into vc or even into uncomitted source code. it's defined in the environment (i.e. environment variables if you're on unix, not sure what the equivalent is on windows, but i assume there is one). https://12factor.net/ is the preferred way to do it (see part III). the files that set up the environment that need to be shared (e.g. the secrets) get passed around the old fashioned way (or perhaps in a more sophisticated way if you're a big org).

i usually have a file .env in the repo (that is .gitignored) that does things like

export API_KEY=abc123
export DATA_PATH=/var/my/data

i source that (source .env) when i'm working on it.

then i add a file env-example that looks like my .env, but with dummy values, to the repo and make a note in the readme that you'll need to change it.

dependency injection, virtual machine variables pointing to the config location, environment specific config files (see .net’s web.config and the transforms), configuration servers with an override for debug

the idea with a deployable app is that build, deploy, and run are different situations and the config is managed differently, but how true that is really depends on framework and platform.

but yeah the simplest is to have some way of knowing if the app is running locally and just saying “look at this location instead” and in every other environment it’s in the default spot

main thing to avoid is having all of the configuration for the environments in one file and checking something at runtime to determine which to use – just too much margin for error that someone clones a server config or something dumb and points things at the wrong env

can anyone recommend a good free PDF writer for Mac and PC? I've used CutePDF in the past....

what do you want to do?

if it's just a regular document open in whatever program, edit it and choose print then save to a pdf rather than send to printer. if you want to add to an existing pdf then the basics are all in preview (click the suitcase in the menu bar). is it something more complicated?

hey caek,

would like to mostly utilize an existing PDF document on a PC and edit the text on it easily without purchasing an adobe license. Something third party and free

recently started running windows 10 on a lenovo ideapad 110s, a netbook w/ 32 gigs of emmc storage space instead of a hard disk. that wasn't enough; shoulda spent more on storage. so by default, the machine came with little on it and there does not seem to be much i can get rid of to free up space. but the windows updater is trying to make a major update (to move me to the creators update, i think) that it is unable to complete without some gigs of free storage; removable storage is not enough to placate it.

i've never been a windows person and this is the first time i've used windows anyway, really, in like > 15 years. any dumb advice? if this becomes a problem then eventually i might just think about shelling out for expanded emmc storage, i don't really appear to need more given my computing situation, but this machine does customarily lack for it, the above problem aside.