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Oldy but a goody. Speed up a printer install “device setup in progress” in Windows 10

When installing a new printer I have had issues with the new printer not appearing in Control Panel – “Devices and Printers”.

If the PC is behind a proxy server and does not have direct web access then it can take a few minutes or a reboot for the printer to appear.

I discovered Windows is trying to download the correct icon for the particular printer.

If you change a reg setting it will prevent doing an icon lookup and the printer will appear instantly.

If you know what I mean, give it a try and see.

You can edit the registry here:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Device Metadata

Key: PreventDeviceMetadataFromNetwork

Value: 1

 

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Hirens BootCD PE has been updated since 2012

Hiren’s BootCD PE was last updated in Nov 2012 and so it is now being developed by Hiren’s BootCD fans. It includes free tools to help you diagnose PC problems.

It will boot into a Win PE (Preinstallation Environment) and install drivers for graphics, sound and lan/wifi. It now requires 2 gb of ram as a minimum and supports UEFI booting.

This is a listing of all of the FREE tools: https://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/ 

Some of the handy tools that I use are:

  • CPU-Z
  • HDDScan v4.0
  • NT Password Edit
  • Malwarebytes Anti-Malware v2.2.1.1043
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Prevent server 2016 from rebooting after windows updates

Q: When installing an update on Server 2016 I get the message “Your device is scheduled to restart outside of active hours”. How do I stop the server from rebooting?

A:  If you look in Task Scheduler under UpdateOrchestrator you can rename/disable the reboot task. This will prevent windows from rebooting.

Let me know if this fix worked for you?

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XTree Gold Memories

If you are like me and grew up in the 80/90’s you will remember XTree Gold. What a life saver it was, especially for people who weren’t confident in DOS.

What is XTree Gold? It’s one of the first GUI file managers made which runs on MS-DOS.

It was released on April 1st 1985 and became very popular! Unfortunately, when Windows was released it was forgotten about. Windows Explorer took it’s place.

It is ALIVE TODAY and can be downloaded from http://www.ztree.com

This post was made to remember XTree Gold.

Please leave a comment about this great program and share your XTree Gold stories! 🙂

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Original Xiaomi Mi Home Smart WiFi Power Socket

 

I recently purchased a new Original Xiaomi Mi Home Smart WiFi Power Socket. Here is a quick review with some easy to read instructions for users in Australia. (The manual was completely in Chinese)

 

Setup instructions:

  1. Plug in the socket
  2. Open the MiHome app. The app is available for iPhone and Android. (See the search term in the screenshot below)
  3. Sign up to the MiHome App via mobile, Facebook or email. I clicked on the bottom right lock symbol. Here you can signup with your email address and create a login.
  4. Change the locale to mainland
  5. Click on the + symbol
  6. Select “Mi Smart Power Plug”
  7. Click Yellow light blinking and next
  8. Select Wi-Fi network and type in your SSID (Wireless name) and password. Click Next.
  9. Connect your phone to the WiFi network specified (This is the power socket) and return to Mi Home app
  10. It will say “Connecting” and then “Connected successfully”
  11. Select device location – Living room or other.
  12. Change device name to what you are plugging into this socket.
  13. Click OK
  14. Share the device with. someone else or “Let’s get started”
  15. Agree and continue
  16. Now enjoy controlling your power socket by your phone.

Feature List:

  • Mobile phone remote control
  • Overload protection
  • High temperature resistant (Up to 750 degrees fire resistant material. Safe to use)
  • LED indicator light
  • Time programming
  • Automation can be setup e.g If you leave home then the power socket will turn off automatically

My Usage:

I have plugged my PC into the socket. I changed my PC bios to always turn on the PC. This way I can vpn from anywhere into my home router and turn my PC on and off.

Extra Tips:

If you need to factory reset the socket, hold down on the button for 15 seconds.

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DC promo shows “Windows Server Technical Preview”

I was setting up a new test DC server with Server 2016. When going through the setup a domain controller wizard there was an option for the forest functional level “Windows Server Technical Preview”.

I thought to myself did I install Server with a preview build??

I checked this MS KB article which verified that I wasn’t going crazy and that it’s a bug.

Solution:

Install the latest CU update to fix this issue (Which as of 23/12 is KB4019472.)

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Word 2016 blank table bug

After you install update 4011039, you may encounter the following issues:

  • If you merge vertical cells in a table, the cell content disappears, and you can’t select the merged cell.
  • If you open an existing document that has a table with merged cells, the cells are displayed as blankAs a workaround, you can uninstall this update, and your tables will return to normal. MS anticipate releasing the fix for these issues in the next monthly update that’s tentatively scheduled for October 3, 2017.

Link

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Raspberry Pi HDMI Switching

I have connected a Raspberry Pi to my TV however it changes the TV input source when I don’t want it to change.

How can I fix this?

SSH into the Pi (Use putty)

nano /boot/config.txt

Add in: hdmi_ignore_cec_init=1

Save 🙂

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Pi-hole & Spotify

I recently setup Pi-hole on my old Raspberry Pi (Model B)

What’s Pi-hole you ask? 

It’s basically a DNS server that runs on your Raspberry Pi. You first need to install Rasbian O/S on your Pi.

Once this is done, with one command line you can download and install Pi-hole.

curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net | bash

Once Pi-hole is setup, you will need to login to your Router and make sure you point all client’s DNS server to the Pi-hole IP address. I also placed my Router IP as a secondary DNS just in case the Raspberry Pi is unplugged.

It has a few advantages such as:

  • Blocking over 100,000 domains (including ad’s)
  • Improved network performance
  • Web based admin interface and stats (Gotta love stats!)
  • Ability to white/black list domains.

After setting up Pi-hole, I noticed I couldn’t access Spotify (on our iphones) anymore.

The Fix: Remember to login to Pi-hole (e.g http://192.168.x.x/admin/index.php), find your client IP address. Here you can find all the domains being accessed by the client IP and white-list the spotify ones.

e.g

spclient.wg.spotify.com

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Battery report

Today I learnt you can use the following command to create a battery report.

powercfg /batteryreport

What’s included in the battery report?

  • It provides recent usage information e.g when the notebook was charged and the power states over the last 3 days. When your notebook started, when it was suspended and the battery capacity over time.
  • Battery details such as brand, design capacity, full charge capacity and cycle count.
  • Battery usage graph showing how the battery drained over time.
  • Battery life estimate stats.
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RSAT Win 10 1511 Issue

If you are like me and are using Win 10 1511 and have installed RSAT you will notice the tab’s inside ADUC are missing.

This is due to a bug with RSAT version v1.2 published 12/10/2016.

Solution: Upgrade to a higher build of Win 10 e.g 1607 Anniversary edition. You may be able to try and find an earlier version of RSAT, this may work also. If you find a link to the older version please let me know and I’ll post it here.