Digger's Blog

CARTOON ANIMATOR 4 AND AFFINITY DESIGNER 1.10.5 - PSD SYNC

2022-03-15T23:43:00.002+01:00

I was playing with Cartoon Animator4 , it allow you to lauch an external image editor to create or import or modify image (PSD image).

As I use (and like) Affinity Designer, I tried to use it with CA4 but I noticed that when you finish to edit the image and try to go back to CA4, the image is not transferred to CA. In other words, the sync between the 2 application doesn't work.

The solution (in Affinity Designer) is this:

1. go to menu "Edit" - "Preferences" - "General"
2. find and select the option "Enable 'Save' over imported PSD files"
3. close settings window

Now it should work.

The reason is that when you start AD from CA, it opens a temporary .PSD file , but AD is not able to save over a .psd file by default, it asks you to save the file as .afdesign , and in a different folder, not the temporary one used by CA.

Changing the program settings allow AD to save the same temporary .PSD file used by CA, making the Sync feature working.

DaVinci Resolve no audio problem - fix

2020-01-01T14:59:00.003+01:00

In my case I'm using DaVinci Resolve version 16 on a Windows 7 computer.

For some reason I hear no audio no matter what I do in the application.

In the end the fix in my case was to change device audio properties in Windows, like this:

- close DaVinci and all other applications that could have the audio in use
- From Windows control panel or from the audio icon in the taskbar open the audio control panel.
- Find the icon for the device you are using to hear sound (i.e. internal card, usb headphones and so on)
- click "properties
- tab "advanced"
- in the predefined format box I had "16bit, 44100Hz (CD Quality)" , I changed it to "16bit, 48000 Hz (DVD Quality)
- click "OK" and "OK" again to close all windows
- reopen DaVinci and test, in my case it was now working

bye

VMWare VSPhere - RENAME VIRTUAL MACHINE and it's files (rename multiple file using PowerCLI )

2019-12-30T10:21:00.001+01:00

WARNING: play with VM files could damage the virtual machine itself and make it unusable, do it at your own risk and only if you know what you are doing! (better if you have a backup!)

If you want to rename a virtual machine, you can simply do it from the web interface.
The problem with this is that you'll obtain the new name in the vcenter web console but then the folder on the disk will remain with the old name and also the files inside will remain with old names and this could be confusing and lead to errors, we need a way to maintain consistency.

The safest and best way is to do a cold vmotion to a different datastore. During the migration vsphere will fix folder name and files name to match the new name.
But there are times when you cannot or don't want to use this approach.
For example if you have a really big vm that would require a lot of time to move and you cannot keep it powered down too much time. Or maybe you don't have another datastore where to move the machine, or you don't have enough space on another datastore and so on.

Another way to fix the name mismatch is to manually edit folder name, files name and their content to match the new name.
This approach is RISKY! if you make some mistake you'll break down your machine and make it unusable!
I suggest you to first try these steps on a small test machine to better understand how it works, what you can and cannot do and to get confortable with the steps and their results.

Some notes:
1. the vm must be turned off during these steps
2. the vm must be removed from the vcenter inventory
3. it's better to NOT HAVE any snapshot in place, snapshot files make your life harder and more prone to errors and issues, so please delete every snapshot from the vm before proceed if you can

Here the general idea to rename virtual machine and it's files:
1. turn off VM
2. delete all the snapshots (if you can do it )
3. check from the config where the vm is located on the datastore (the path)
4. remove the vm from the vcenter inventory
5. rename the vm folder
6. rename all the files to reflect the new vm name
7. edit the .vmx and all the (small) .vmdk files in order to replace the old name with the new one
(do the same for the .vmsd file if you didn't delete all the snapshots), don't try to edit .vmsn files or other file extensions, they are binary and not editable
8. from the vcenter web interface browse the datastore, right click on the .vmx file and "register vm" with the new name
9. power on the vm to check if everything is fine

In case you didnt' removed the snapshot before the rename task, you could have surprises now, especially if you now revert to one of the snapshot. We didn't edit the binary snapshot files, so reverting to them will put the old name again in production somewhere, so in this case is better after the revert to check again all the files content and rename the old machine name with the new one where this applies.

RENAMING MULTIPLE FILES BY COMMAND

WARNING: manually touching vm files could corrupt the VM and make it unusable!

Instead of renaming the files one by one you could do it using a command.

There was a time when in VSPhere it was possible to rename multiple files from the shell using the command "RENAME" . It was a Perl command.

Now I'm using VSPhere 6.5 and it seems this command is not available anymore.

I didn't want to find a way to use Perl again, my idea was to find a new way, already available to do the same job.
So I find a simple way is using PowerCLI

Get the installation package from vmware download page and install it on your PC.

Here the idea :

FIRST TURN OFF THE VIRTUAL MACHINE (else the files will be locked as in use)

1. run powercli
2. connect to vcenter
3. go to vmstore disk
4. change working folder to the VM one (where the files to be renamed are located )
5. run the powershell command to rename the files

Now the detailed tasks with commands:

1. run powercli
2. Connect-VIServer (asks vcenter IP and credentials)
3. cd vmstore:
4. cd .\datacentername\datastorename\machinename

type ls to list the folder content

Now, let's say the machine is called SERVER01 , then the folder content would be something like this:

Name Type Id
---- ---- --
SERVER01.nvram DatastoreFile
SERVER01.vmx DatastoreFile
SERVER01-aux.xml DatastoreFile
SERVER01.vmxf DatastoreFile
SERVER01-flat.vmdk DatastoreFile
SERVER01.vmsd DatastoreFile
SERVER01.vmdk DatastoreFile
vmware-3.log DatastoreFile
vmware-2.log DatastoreFile
vmware-1.log DatastoreFile
vmware.log DatastoreFile

Now, we want to rename all those SERVER01* files into SERVER02* , type the command:

5. ls SERVER01* | rename-item -newname {$_.name -replace 'SERVER01','SERVER02'}

The "ls SERVER01*" is used to get the list of files to be renamed, we are interested just in files starting with SERVER01

the rename-item is the powercli command to rename a file

then we need to pass the new filename to the -newname parameter

to create the new name we use the actual name ( $_.name ) where we replace the string SERVER01 with the string SERVER02

This command will iterate between all the files returned by the ls command and one by one rename the file.

Please remember that if you rename the VM files like this, you need also to edit .vmx file and all of the small .vmdk files in order to fix the filenames inside, to not broke the references.
See below what I mean in detail

good luck

Windows 10 - UEFI - USB Bootable Key - install.wim too big for FAT32 (>4GB)

2019-08-30T12:13:00.000+02:00

Hi,
I was trying to prepare a Windows 10 USB bootable setup Key today.
It was for a uefi system, so I formatted the key FAT32 and copied all the files from the DVD but it stopped with an error about install.wim too big for the support (it was >4GB in size).

I found this nice article explaining how to bypass the issue:
https://win10.guru/usb-install-media-with-larger-than-4gb-wim-file/

To make it short:
- delete all partitions from your usb key
- create a 1GB FAT32 partition
- create another partition with the rest of the space and format it NTFS
- copy all the files and folders EXCEPT "sources" folder, from the DVD to the FAT32 partition
- on the FAT32 partition create a "sources" folder and copy the \sources\boot.wim" file in it from dvd
- copy ALL the files and folders from the DVD to the NTFS partition

this key should be able to boot , the windows setup should appear and you should be able to install windows succesfully, at least it worked in my case

obviously, when I write "DVD" it could be also an ISO files mounted on the PC as source of the files

good luck
and thanks to Kari Finn and Martin aka Cereberus

Permanently set and save process Priority

2019-04-02T11:26:00.001+02:00

Usually we set the process priority using task manager, the problem is that once the process get restarted you loose the priority set.

You can play with the registry to solve this.

Let's say the process you want to start in LOW priority is "notepad.exe"

this is the registry location to look for (if you don't find the folder names, you need to create them) :

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\notepad.exe\PerfOptions]

And then you need to create these 2 DWORD keys:

"CpuPriorityClass"=dword:00000001

"IoPriority"=dword:00000000

where the values 1 and 0 come from this table:

CpuPriorityClass Value Priority

1 Idle2 Normal3 High5 Below Normal6 Above Normal

IoPriority Value Priority

0 Very Low1 Low2 Normal

thanks to Alois Kraus
source: http://geekswithblogs.net/akraus1/archive/2013/08/14/153728.aspx

W10 - HIGH DPI SCALING FIX BLURRY APPS

2019-03-04T11:58:00.000+01:00

On W10 due to high resolution screens, often the user set the screen scaling to better read the texts and icons, for example to 150%

After that, it happens that some app's text appears to be blurry, out of focus.

You can fix this in 3 places:
1. control panel, apply to the system
2. single app
3. registry

1- Using Control Panel, apply to the System
start menu, settings, system, display, here you have "Scale and layout " set for example to "150%",
click the link "Advanced Scaling Settings" and activate the option "Let Windows try to fix apps so they're not blurry"

2-single app
navigate to the executable file of the app (just as an example: c:\program file\blurryapp\blurry.exe" )
right click on the .exe file
"compatibility" tab
"change settings for all users" (if this is what you want)
"change high DPI settings"
select "Override high DPI scaling behavior." option
and then select "Application" in Scaling performed by

3. registry (this is useful for control panel apps , dll run by RUNDLL32.exe and similar)
When the blurry app does not have an executable (like the apps in the control panel for example) you can use the registry.
An example is Microsoft System Configuration Manager. It's window is blurry when scaling is activated.
Proceed like this:

regedit
create this key:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers]

then create a STRING value, where the name is the executable path and the value is "HIGHDPIAWARE"

in the RUNDLL32.exe case it's like this (you can copy and paste this into a .reg file, double click it to insert in the registry)

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers]
"C:\\Windows\\System32\\rundll32.exe"="HIGHDPIAWARE"

Once the setting is in the registry, simply close and reopen the app and it will be ok, no reboot is needed.

I used HKLM because is the simplest one, it applies to all user profiles of the machine, already existing and new one when they will be created

Windows change keyboard layout in remote desktop always revert to default (eng)

2019-01-21T12:53:00.000+01:00

Hi,
if you are experiencing Windows (2016 server in my case) in remote desktop to automatically change the Keyboard Layout to the default (ENG) one, whatever you set , you are in the right place.

In the last days I fought against my Windows 2016 server. I set the keyboard layout to ITA but without apparent reason it automatically revert to ENG anytime .

I tried in many way to fix it, but it always reverted to ENG, also if in the control panel I deleted any keyboard layout and left just the one I wanted.

Solution:

open regedit, navigate here (be careful! Layout - NOT Layouts )

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout

create this :

IgnoreRemoteKeyboardLayout DWORD 1

logout/login (or reboot the machine), the keyboard layout should be now the one selected from you, if the layout is not set to the correct one, set it , then it should not change anymore.

VmWare player / workstation bridged nic does not get IP Address and Virtualbox error : VERR_INTNET_FLT_IF_NOT_FOUND

2019-01-15T15:50:00.000+01:00

On a pc where I was able to run virtualbox and vmware player using a bridged NIC , from one point in time on I was not able anymore to make them work.

I tried many of the solutions found in internet but noone was helping me.

In the end what did the job was to uninstall the nic drivers and install the windows default version like this:

1- windows device manager
2- find the NIC you are trying to use with virtualbox
3- check the driver version, maybe you need this in a later step
4- be sure to have somewhere this or other drivers version for this nic in case windows does not have any driver for it and you want to revert to the actual situation
5- uninstall it (and flag the "delete the driver software for this device" also)
6- run "scan for hardware changes"

If you are lucky, windows will detect the nic and install the windows default drivers for it, and in my case this solved the issue, probably the updated drivers I was using (from the vendor) was not compatible with virtualbox.

If you are not lucky, the nic will be detected but drivers not installed, in this case you should try to install a driver different from the one find in the point 3, maybe something older or something newer.
If you don't have any different version, in the worst case, you'll reinstall the same drivers in point 3 but probably you'll not solve your issue, but at least you'll be able to use your network like before, not from the virtual machine, sorry.

I want to know the PATH of an EXE

2018-10-19T11:50:00.002+02:00

Never happened that you run an exe from command prompt and you are not sure from what path it's run? sometimes this make the difference. Maybe you have multiple version of an exe, in multiple path or something like that, it's not working like expected and you want to be sure the correct one is run.

If the executable is gui application this is not really an issue, you can obtain the info from the task manager adding for example the "cmd" column, but if the executable is a command line one, that start and end in milliseconds, than you are in trouble.

One clue come from the command "where.exe":

where executablename

will give you all the path where that executable can be find.
But this will not tell you from which path it is run when you digit:

executablename

from a random folder from command prompt

As I'm not aware of any other way to know the path where it is run from , I wrote a very small console application in C# that simply run the process and print the process filename:

si = new ProcessStartInfo(args);
using (Process pr = Process.Start(si))
{
Console.WriteLine("*****************************************************");
Console.WriteLine(pr.MainModule.FileName);
Console.WriteLine("*****************************************************");
}

this does exactly what I need.

For example running my app from a random folder against "dism.exe" I see this:

C:\it>exepath dism

*****************************************************

C:\Windows\System32\Dism.exe

*****************************************************

Vsphere VCENTER Server virtual appliance installation Stuck at 80% (and/or RPM installation failed)

2018-09-07T10:19:00.000+02:00

I tried to install an old ISO image of the Vcenter virtual appliance from the 2017 and I discovered it was not installable anymore.

The installation progress stuck at 80% and in the end it failed with RPM installation failed.

Reading around it seems a bug in the image itself, the setup process cannot change the root password and so cannot continue and it fails.

Solution (in my case) :

Simply download the latest VCSA .ISO from VmWare site
(I just installed this succesfully: VMware-VCSA-all-6.5.0-7119157.iso )

NOTE: also this version seems to stuck at 80%, it will take a long time to move from 80% but in the end it will be able to pass it and finish the installation

Digger

Vsphere 6.5 setup from USB Key - "Not a COM32R image" error

2018-09-07T10:11:00.002+02:00

To install VSphere 6.5 Hypervisor from a bootable USB key let's proceed like this:

1. from VmWare download the ISO file
2. download RUFUS
3. start it
4. open the ISO file form poin 1
5. be sure to set RUFUS with:

- MBR for BIOS or UEFI computers
- FAT32
- cluster size 4096 (default)
- quick format (default)
- create bootable disk using iso (default)
- create extended label and icon (default)

6. insert the USB key in the server and start it , set it to boot from USB or press the boot menu key
7. if you get the error message "Not a COM32R image" then press TAB key, you will see a suggestion like "install hddboot", well...
8. digit the command suggested install hddboot and press Return

The installation begin

START SCHEDULED TASK (ALMOST) HIDDEN

2018-05-15T16:06:00.000+02:00

I was working o a server with a lot of applications and script continuously run from task scheduler and interacting with the desktop with their windows and console windows.
The server admin want them to be visible for checking reason.

But this way it was very annoying to work on that server because continuously interrupted by application or script started that took the focus and stay ahead of my job.

The best (not perfect) way I found to mitigate this is to use powershell to run the applications or script minimized and without taking focus.

In addition, as powershell itself open his console I had to find a workaround for this

Here my solution:

- create personal powershell module with function Start-ProcessNoFocus
- create folder c:\psmodules for my personal powershell modules
- changed environment variable to add c:\psmodules
- put my powershell module in c:\psmodules
- created scheduled task that run simply "powershell"
- run the scheduled task , a powershell window appeared, in properties, layout, window position I set the Y position of the window to be 800, on my monitor this moved the windows near out of the botton margin of the screen
- closed powershell window
- changed task scheduler to run my application like this:

program: powershell
add argument: -windowstyle hidden Start-ProcessNoFocus c:\test\MyApplication.exe

The result is :
- a powershell window appears and disappears very quickly
- it starts the process "MyApplication.exe" minimized and without taking focus

it's not perfect but now I'm able to work on the server without being continuously interrupted by all those annoying scheduled tasks.

This it the Start-ProcessNoFocus function that I put in a Start-ProcessNoFocus module :

(credits: # http://www.daveamenta.com/2013-08/powershell-start-process-without-taking-focus/)

function Start-ProcessNoFocus($FilePath, $Arguments) {

Add-Type -TypeDefinition @"

using System;

using System.Diagnostics;

using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)]

public struct PROCESS_INFORMATION {

public IntPtr hProcess;

public IntPtr hThread;

public uint dwProcessId;

public uint dwThreadId;

}

[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential, CharSet = CharSet.Unicode)]

public struct STARTUPINFO {

public uint cb;

public string lpReserved;

public string lpDesktop;

public string lpTitle;

public uint dwX;

public uint dwY;

public uint dwXSize;

public uint dwYSize;

public uint dwXCountChars;

public uint dwYCountChars;

public uint dwFillAttribute;

public STARTF dwFlags;

public ShowWindow wShowWindow;

public short cbReserved2;

public IntPtr lpReserved2;

public IntPtr hStdInput;

public IntPtr hStdOutput;

public IntPtr hStdError;

}

[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)]

public struct SECURITY_ATTRIBUTES {

public int length;

public IntPtr lpSecurityDescriptor;

public bool bInheritHandle;

}

[Flags]

public enum CreationFlags : int {

NONE = 0,

DEBUG_PROCESS = 0x00000001,

DEBUG_ONLY_THIS_PROCESS = 0x00000002,

CREATE_SUSPENDED = 0x00000004,

DETACHED_PROCESS = 0x00000008,

CREATE_NEW_CONSOLE = 0x00000010,

CREATE_NEW_PROCESS_GROUP = 0x00000200,

CREATE_UNICODE_ENVIRONMENT = 0x00000400,

CREATE_SEPARATE_WOW_VDM = 0x00000800,

CREATE_SHARED_WOW_VDM = 0x00001000,

CREATE_PROTECTED_PROCESS = 0x00040000,

EXTENDED_STARTUPINFO_PRESENT = 0x00080000,

CREATE_BREAKAWAY_FROM_JOB = 0x01000000,

CREATE_PRESERVE_CODE_AUTHZ_LEVEL = 0x02000000,

CREATE_DEFAULT_ERROR_MODE = 0x04000000,

CREATE_NO_WINDOW = 0x08000000,

}

[Flags]

public enum STARTF : uint {

STARTF_USESHOWWINDOW = 0x00000001,

STARTF_USESIZE = 0x00000002,

STARTF_USEPOSITION = 0x00000004,

STARTF_USECOUNTCHARS = 0x00000008,

STARTF_USEFILLATTRIBUTE = 0x00000010,

STARTF_RUNFULLSCREEN = 0x00000020, // ignored for non-x86 platforms

STARTF_FORCEONFEEDBACK = 0x00000040,

STARTF_FORCEOFFFEEDBACK = 0x00000080,

STARTF_USESTDHANDLES = 0x00000100,

}

public enum ShowWindow : short {

SW_HIDE = 0,

SW_SHOWNORMAL = 1,

SW_NORMAL = 1,

SW_SHOWMINIMIZED = 2,

SW_SHOWMAXIMIZED = 3,

SW_MAXIMIZE = 3,

SW_SHOWNOACTIVATE = 4,

SW_SHOW = 5,

SW_MINIMIZE = 6,

SW_SHOWMINNOACTIVE = 7,

SW_SHOWNA = 8,

SW_RESTORE = 9,

SW_SHOWDEFAULT = 10,

SW_FORCEMINIMIZE = 11,

SW_MAX = 11

}

public static class Kernel32 {

[DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError=true)]

public static extern bool CreateProcess(

string lpApplicationName,

string lpCommandLine,

ref SECURITY_ATTRIBUTES lpProcessAttributes,

ref SECURITY_ATTRIBUTES lpThreadAttributes,

bool bInheritHandles,

CreationFlags dwCreationFlags,

IntPtr lpEnvironment,

string lpCurrentDirectory,

ref STARTUPINFO lpStartupInfo,

out PROCESS_INFORMATION lpProcessInformation);

}

"@

$si = New-Object STARTUPINFO

$pi = New-Object PROCESS_INFORMATION

$si.cb = [System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::SizeOf($si)

# $si.wShowWindow = [ShowWindow]::SW_SHOWNOACTIVATE

# mia versione 4+2 ovvero non prendere il focus e starta in minimized

$si.wShowWindow = 6

$si.dwFlags = [STARTF]::STARTF_USESHOWWINDOW

$pSec = New-Object SECURITY_ATTRIBUTES

$tSec = New-Object SECURITY_ATTRIBUTES

$pSec.Length = [System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::SizeOf($pSec)

$tSec.Length = [System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::SizeOf($tSec)

[Kernel32]::CreateProcess($FilePath, $Arguments, [ref] $pSec, [ref] $tSec, $false, [CreationFlags]::CREATE_NEW_CONSOLE, [IntPtr]::Zero, (pwd | select -exp Path), [ref] $si, [ref] $pi)

#[System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::GetLastWin32Error()

}

Unavailable disk letter in disk manager or mapping network disk

2018-03-23T18:30:00.001+01:00

It happened today to me,
I had to map and UNC path to local drive E: but I was not able, like it was already taken and in use.
In detail, I didn't have the letter as available when from explorer (the windows gui) I was trying to map the unc path to a letter.
But then I tried to go to disk manager changing one drive's letter just to see, and the E: letter was not available...

So there was something using it but...
It was not used by some other network disk,
it was not used by a physical device in disk manager
it was not stored in the registry under Mapped Devices (some usb device disconnected maybe...)

in the end the only place where I found a reference to it was like this:

mountvol e: /L

something like this appeared (this is just an example from the command help) :

\\?\Volume{e49c2b64-99e4-11e6-a7c2-806e6f6e6963}\

to check what it was I tried to lauch "execute" from windows (W key + R ), pasted that string (\\?\Volume{e49c2b64-99e4-11e6-a7c2-806e6f6e6963}\) and confirmed...

I got an error, so I think that device , whatever it was , was not anymore connected to my pc.
So I run this other command:

(I take no responsability if you are going to delete mapping to some device needed by your system to work correctly! )

mountvol e: /D

just to check the result of my operation I did this one again:

mountvol e: /L

I got an error, this means the device is not anymore mapped.

I then restarted the pc (maybe a logout was enough?) and voilà, the E: letter was again available! 😄

bye
Digger

Deploy Windows 8 WIM image

2016-01-05T16:22:00.002+01:00

Disclaimer: I'm not responsible for any damage that could happen to your devices following this guide. It' under your own responsability!

Here a brief description of the steps needed to deploy a W8 WIM image to a BIOS computer:

1. put the WIM image on some sort of USB device (i.e. install.wim)
2. boot the computer with some sort of bootable media that contain DISM (i.e. AIK cd or the W8 installation dvd or AOEMI Backupper or anything else)
3. once booted, from the prompt enter:

select disk 0
clean <--- be careful! this will erase the content of the disk!!
create partition primary size=350
format quick fs=ntfs label=System
assign letter=S
active
create partition primary
format quick fs=ntfs label=Windows
assign letter=W
exit

Let's say install.wim in in the H: drive in a "win8" folder:

dism /apply-image /imagefile:h\win8\install.wim /index:1 /applydir:w:\

now you have the windows file in the W: disk, we need to make it bootable

bcdboot w:\windows /l it-it /s s: /ALL

reboot the pc it should load now the Windows 8 OS just installed

uTORRENT freezes after startup

2015-10-12T22:36:00.000+02:00

I got crazy for a day because my uTorrent client (version 3.4.5) that worked well in all my old life, on the new pc freezes seconds after I run it.

Interesting to notice that the 2 areas for the advertisements remain blank as if something is not working with the embedded internet explorer component that shows the advertisements.

By the way, I noticed also that running the PC in safe mode solved the issue,

So it seems there is something running usually that is conflicting with uTorrent.

I did a lot of testing but the good idea came in my mind just the day after:
to check the dll loaded into the uTorrent memory space.

Doing this I found there was all legittimate dlls but I noticed there was 3 NVidia dll injected into uTorrent:

detoured.dll
Nvd3d9wrap.dll
nvdxgiwrap.dll

so why not try to denied NVidia to inject those dll and see the result?

I tried,

the path to the dlls:

C:\Program Files (x86)\NVIDIA Corporation\coprocmanager\

I renamed the 3 dll so thay they are not found anymore,
restarted uTorrent and taaadaa!! it works now!

ok I would investigate if there is some option in the NVidia control panel to disable this thing but honestly I don't have time to waste in this and I don't care about graphics on this pc, so for me is enough.

if anybody knows how to say nvidia to not inject those dll a comment is welcome :)

bye
Digger

Windows NTOP clear all data

2015-09-16T19:13:00.000+02:00

If you installed NTOP on Windows machine and want to clear all data to start again from scratch do like this:

1. stop 'ntopng' service
2. stop 'Redis Server' service
3. explore to
c:\program files\Redis\data

4. rename or delete the existing dump.rdb file
5. start 'Redis Server' service

6. start 'ntopng' service

You should now have a clean situation in the web interface

bye
Digger

Cisco 6509 find the IP of a device connected to a known port

2015-08-26T12:26:00.000+02:00

I know CISCO 6509 is an old device, but as it happened to me to work on it today and I found no useful information in internet to solve my issue, maybe this post could help someone else

I connected a network device to a 6509 , port 4/8 and but then how to connect to it without the IP address? (ok I solved looking into the dhcp server, but then I found the cisco way)

1. show the MAC address connected to the port

sh cam dynamic | include 4/8

this was the result:

1 00-0a-b6-55-56-10 4/8 [ALL]

2. go to the Multilayer module (in my case is the module 15, use: sh module to check it)

session 15

3. display arp table filtering by the mac found at point 1 (pay attention, the format is different!)

sh arp | include 000e.b678.5620

the result:

Protocol Address Age Hardware address Type Interface

Internet 10.0.0.55 45 000a.b655.5610 ARPA Vlan1

we just found the IP address of our device -> 10.0.0.55

Windows 2012 You don't currently have permission to access this folder click continue to permanently get access to this folder

2015-08-13T14:44:00.002+02:00

Hi guys,
do you like me installed a W2012 server and put in place a file server to then discover that as machine administrator you don't have the rights to open the folders on your local disk (the folders containing the user file of the file server) ?

The message that appears is:

You don't currently have permission to access this folder click continue to permanently get access to this folder

the interesting point is that if you check the folder security settings you'll find that Administrators group have rights on it, and your user IS IN THAT GROUP, so why can't you open the folder?

Yes you can click continue and gain access... unfortunately this will change the security settings of that folder and every subfolder (inheritance) inserting explicitly your user with access right, this is not very nice as behavior, also if your folder has thousand of subfolders and files it will take a long time to apply the new settings everywhere

I googled alot, many topics talks about this and many are talking about disabling UAC and so on, but the only setting I saw working fine (and it was not so simple to find around) is this one:

Run regedit
go to here
HKLM\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENT VERSION\POLICIES\SYSTEM

if not already existing, create this
EnableLUA REG_DWORD 0

and set/change it to 0 (disabling LUA)
LUA stay for Limited User Account, and set it to 0 will disable it

this will require a reboot of the server to apply the setting
Once the server is rebooted it will not display that request anymore

bye
Digger

VmWare Player disable beep

2014-12-10T23:39:00.003+01:00

Did you try to install something like CentOS onto VmWare player and noticed that every time you are pressing a key in the wrong time you got a really annoying "beep" ? For example you start writing a file name and press TAB key to autocomplete it, but if no file is found you get a beep. I often work during the night on my pc and I really don't want to disturb everybody with all these beeps, so I want to disable it! Luckly I found this is very simple to obtain, you just need to: 1. turn off every VmWare Player virtual machine already running 2. go to "%programdata%\VMware\VMware Player" folder , on Windows7 %programdata% is "C:\ProgramData" so the full path is C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware Player"" 3. edit (notepad) the file "config.ini" 4. find and change, or add, the line: mks.noBeep = "TRUE" 5. save the file and start the VmWare Player virtual machine, it should be silent now bye Digger

Windows 8.1 update doesn't appear in the store

2014-10-04T10:08:00.001+02:00

I lost a lot of time trying to understand why on some windows 8 installation the 8.1 updtate didn't appear. There are multiple reasons why this could happen. But I find I nice and automatic way to detect what the issue is, there a tool from microsoft called "Windows 8.1 Update troubleshooter" that analyze the pc and tell you why it is not appearing. Here the link : http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=395014 Download it and run it, then follow the instructions, at the end it should say you WHY you don't see the update. Digger

ASUS Memo Pad 8 USB Drivers (Android development , ADB)

2014-07-03T03:04:00.000+02:00

Hi all,
if you are trying to develop using a Windows pc connected to a ASUS Memo Pad 8 and like me have problems because ADB doesn't see the device (adb devices return empty list), try to go to device manager and check how many devices you see related to the tablet.
I had 2 :

1.KOOL (microsoft drivers)
2.Another one (I don't remember the name, could be KOOL again) with an exclamation point

The first (kool) it seems it doesn't matter, I had the driver running but ADB was not working.
The problem is the second one.

After many tries I discovered that the correct drivers are (incredibly) automatically loaded by windows online !
Exactly, right click, update software driver, search online and you are done.

I lost a lot of time because it was not working, simply because my Windows update service was disabled :(
Once enabled I solved the issue.

In case the online update is not working for you, I copied the driver folder downloaded by windows for you, please take note it's for windows 7 64bits (maybe it also works for other 64bit W version, Vista and 8 but I dind't tested so at your own risk)

Uncompress it somewhere, then go in device manager, right click on the device with the exclamation point, update drivers, search the driver in the computer, browse to the folder where you uncompressed the file and you should be ok

http://webcoding.altervista.org/files/AsusMemoPad8_W764.zip

Windows 2012 CORE add minimal GUI (management interface)

2014-05-10T18:09:00.000+02:00

Hi all,
Windows 2012 permits us to switch between GUI and CORE version of the operating system.
Core is good due to lower resource usage, GUI is good because you don't need to remember a lot of powershell commands to administer the server.

There is also another configuration in the middle, the minimal graphical interface, I mean , server manager for example, but without "explorer" and Internet Explorer...

So in this post we will se how to start from a W2012 CORE installation and add the minimal GUI.

1. insert the W2012 installation CD, let's say in the D: drive
2. check wich index to use from the install.wim file from the cdrom:

dism /get-wiminfo /wimfile:d:\sources\install.wim

this will return a list of w2012 images version available in the wim file, ordered by "index".
We need to find the gui versions (the one without the core label) :

In this case for example I can use the index=2, server standard

3. we need to mount the image from index 2 just found to local disk, let's say to a new folder called c:\mount

md c:\mount
dism /mount-wim /wimfile:d:\source\install.wim /index:2 /mountdir:c:\mount /readonly

4. now we have in c:\mount the windows 2012 installation files available, we can go on adding the gui

powershell
Install-WindowsFeature Server-Gui-Mgmt-Infra –Source c:\mountdir\windows\winsxs

in the end you'll be required to reboot the machine (you could add -restart to the command above if you are ok with an automatic restart )

After the reboot and the login what you'll find will be a command prompt and server manager automatically opened and ready to be used:

Windows 7 8 hotspot

2014-04-09T12:06:00.001+02:00

Hi,
if you want to create on your Windows 7/8 an hotspot for your mobile device read below:

1. check wifi
check that the pc wireless is running (did you switched on the wireless switch?, did you move to "on" the software switch in windows?)

2. check the drivers
open a CMD prompt AS ADMINISTRATOR, run this command to verify the wifi driver support hotspot :

netsh wlan show drivers

you'll see a lot of information, but you are interested in this line:

Hosted network supported : Yes

if you have a "no" maybe you are using microsoft drivers from the OS, or an old driver from the manufacturer, so try to download the latest driver you can find for your wifi network card, install it, reboot and then check again if it turned to "yes". If you still see "no" maybe your network card simply DOESN'T SUPPORT creating hotspost, sorry, job finished.

3.create the hotspost network:
netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=forandroid key=12345678

if you go in control panel , device manager, from menu view show hidden device, under network adapters section you should see something like

Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport Adapter
or
Microsoft Hosted Network Virtual Adapter

4. start it:
netsh wlan start hostednetwork

and if you open the "Control Panel\Network and Internet\Network Connections" from the control panel you should see the new virtual network card created, rename it something like "HotSpot" to better identify it

5. share the connection
now edit the properties for the network card that is connecting to internet on your pc (maybe the ethernet card, or a internet key etc), go to the sharing tab and select the "Allow other network users to connect through this computer internet connection"
from the dropdown menu select the hostednetwork adapter created before (the one renamed in point 4)

from now on you would be able to connect to the "forandroid" network using password "12345678".

From the next reboot the network should be still there, you would just need to start it with the last command

note:
in case in step 4 you see someting like
"The hosted network couldn't be started.."
double check the initial steps in this guide, probably you don't have the wifi turned on, or the driver is not supporting the hostednetwork

in internet there are other cases/soultion about this type of error, about power saving and other, give it a try

bye
Digger

VB.NET ESC button to close Form

2014-04-07T17:53:00.001+02:00

It happened today that I was trying to close a form in a VB.NET application using the ESC key.
Usually if you have a Cancel button on the form or similar you can simply set the CancelButton property of the form to that button, but in my case I didn't have that button on the form nor I want to add one.

I tried using the KeyDown event, but, strange, pressing ESC or every other key didn't fire the event routine.

As I didn't have time to investigate and find out why it happened I preferred to search in internet for some easy and fast solution, I find one post from Adam Butler that worked,
it was in C# so I had to simply translate in VB.NET

here's the code to put in your form code to be closed:

Protected Overrides Function ProcessCmdKey(ByRef msg As Message, ByVal keyData As Keys) As Boolean

If (keyData = Keys.Escape) Then

Me.Close()

Return True

End If

Return MyBase.ProcessCmdKey(msg, keyData)

End Function

BCDBOOT failure when attempting to copy boot files (and an operating system wasn't found

2014-04-03T15:43:00.000+02:00

If you, like me, tried to deploy Windows8 (maybe for 7 is the same) using a wim image and then used the command

bcdboot c:\windows

and you got the message "failure when attempting to copy boot files" probably you are in the situation I was.
I tried to solve using this command:

bcdboot c:\windows /s s:

(where S: is the small system partition) and apparently with success, but after rebooting the machine you got:

An operating system wasn't found. Try disconnecting any drives that don't contain any operating system.

after many unsuccesful test and many investigation, I arrived to the conclusion the issue is related to the UEFI support of the machine (also if when starting, it appears to be a normal BIOS)

so I solved the issue with the command :

bcdboot c:\windows /s s: /f ALL

that ALL means copy both the BIOS and UEFI files to the disk

Remember S is the system partition, not the partition containing windows files