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Well, That Didn’t Work — Why Now?
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Well, That Didn’t Work

OK, so I uninstalled ESET, my anti-virus software, removed all of the software that was loaded at boot, clicked “try again” and learned that those clowns don’t store the update on the hard drive, you have to download it every time.

My next plan is to attempt to get the M$ media creator to burn an ISO DVD of this update so I can disconnect from the ‘Net while I’m doing this. I’ll let you know how it works out. If it is successful, it may be the best way of upgrading, and it will give you a recovery disk.

17 comments

1 Kryten42 { 03.12.16 at 6:18 am }

Hi m8. Regarding offline updates, I’ve been using this for years. It allows you to d/l all the available updates for various versions of windows & stores them locally so you can update at any time. Handy if you run more than 1 version of windows. 🙂

WSUS Offline Update

Maybe it will help. 🙂

As soon as I have internet, it will be the first app I use! 😀 I have it on a 2 TB portable drive with a whole lot of other s/w & data that I need on the road. 🙂

On that note… I have a working phone line! Yayyy! Took the new ISP 3 days to get it done! And with Optus, the bastards that screwed me around for 3 months and then tried extortion! I sent them a letter from a legal-aid lawyer with all the facts of the matter and a reminder of relavent laws & statutes. 🙂 They claimed there was no line to my property, I had a qualified electrician check the MDF and all 6 ports were connected (there are 6 units), and only 1 unit has a landline phone, the others use mobiles. I got them to sign a statement. So at worst, they might have had to switch a line. Turns out, they didn’t. Just enabled at the exchange.

So, should have internet sometime this week. Wonders never cease to amaze! 😀

It’s a good deal too. The ISP waived the setup fee, and since I moved phone/mobile/internet to them, I got great discounts. Unlimited ADSL2+ for $55/mth. And all no contracts. 🙂 Only issue is no static IP. Only 2 ISP’s provide one free, most charge $10/IP/mth! Forget that! Only need one for my VPN, but I’ll use one of the online services to take care of that. 🙂 Since this ISP didn’t screw me around, they get the biz. 🙂 Only other downside (which would be true for any provider) is that because of my distance to exchange, I’ll get something like 16-18 Mbps dn & probably only 800Kbps up! But we’ll see, I might get lucky! Depends on the line quality of course. *shrug* When I move, have to make sure I’m less than 400 meters from an exchange! LOL Though, since I’ll move to an area that has NBN fiber, it will be irrelevant. 🙂

2 Kryten42 { 03.12.16 at 6:25 am }

Oh, that updater allows you to do things M$ say you can’t do. Such as installing older versions of DOTnet & other runtimes that some older software need to work. 🙂

3 Kryten42 { 03.12.16 at 11:28 am }

Here Bryan. Maybe this will make you smile. Made me laugh! lol

You may have seen it. It’s from 2013. 🙂

ONE FOR THE BOOKS – POLICE OFFICERS SHARP RESPONSE PUTS A LAWYER IN HIS PLACE

4 Badtux { 03.12.16 at 2:37 pm }

Bet you’re pleased to have Internet again! Over here, I finished my reorganization of my computing infrastructure by replacing an old Apple Airport Express with a less-old Asus RT-AC66U. The first time I tried to do that, the Asus firmware did not support IPv6 correctly (I use IPv6 native passthru to be able to get into my main server at home from my bastion host in the cloud). But there’s been numerous firmware updates since, and the latest firmware with the Merlin patches supports everything I need perfectly. It’s even sending syslogs to my syslog host so I can view what’s going on in real time :). I might install Graylog on my syslog host to be able to more easily see my logs. The Graylog Collector can even fetch Windows event logs, which have lots of cool data in them that’s ridiculously hard to search in the Windows logging GUI. At that point I’ll have to rearrange my logging infrastructure a bit, I suspect (I’m currently using syslog-ng to sort all the logs into per-host directories).

Added a SAS expander to my collection now that I’ve mounted the two servers on mounting rails in the rack. The expander is on a shelf immediately below them with about 1″ between the expander and the servers. That will make testing my new SES program with an expander much easier, heh!

The final thing I’m doing is cleaning up all my bins and tubs and boxes of computer gear. I sorted their contents into piles in the living room. This pile is drives, that pile is network cables, that pile is video cables and video adaptors, that pile is random circuit boards, that pile over there is to give away because it’s redundant to my needs, that pile over there is e-waste to be recycled, and so forth. Oddly enough, the final result still appears to need as many boxes and tubs despite much of the contents being given away or sent to e-waste, LOL. Now I have a pile of USB drives sitting in the middle of the living room to be sorted into “keep” and “recycle” piles based on their size. If I can chop that pile down by half, at least I won’t need *more* boxes / tubs in the end, heh. I will thoroughly wipe them before giving them away or sending them to be recycled of course. Duh!

Well, time to take a shower now that I’ve drank my coffee and eaten my cheese and crackers for lunch…

5 Bryan { 03.12.16 at 7:21 pm }

I’m paying $58 US for not more than 15Mbps download and not more than 1.5Mbps upload in a a country with a $7+US/hour minimum wage but you are pay $55 AUS for equivalent service in a country with a $17+Aus/hour minimum wage. I would note that my rate is low because I supply the modem and router, rather than leasing one of the Chinese-backdoored models supplied by the vendor for an obscene rate.

I will be interested in what I get charged for the upcoming move, as they already have my modem serial number on file, and I’m the only one doing any work. I feel bad about leaving the cats without any Internet, but they can find free WiFi if they need some cat videos.

I don’t doubt that Optus customer support didn’t actually know how to check to see if the line physically existed, all they could do is test for it with their computer which wouldn’t show it in the active data base. My office was next to the PBX switch when I was in Rochester, and I would occasionally do some input on the system if there was a problem with the phones of the upper floor in administration. You type the number of the circuit into a data base of active circuits and the phone is connected. All they needed do was to enter the circuit numbers into the system and they would have found out if the wire was good. Lazy and/or ignorance wins every time.

It’s nice to know that someone else has magically increasing bins of parts and accessories that hide until you stop looking and buy another one. It would be nice if there was a local e-waste recycling center, and some place to take Li Ion batteries. Since Radio Shack passed there is no one to take its place.

6 Badtux { 03.13.16 at 12:11 am }

And one of the things I have discovered is that Seagate 1 terabyte drives *sucked*. There was the Cheetah generation with the bad firmware that would just vaporize, and the Constellations aren’t much better, a lot of them have a high grown errors rate that does not bode well for their future. To get sufficient 1 terabyte drives to fill my two cabinets, I started with four cabinets worth of drives. Sheesh!

I’m still attempting to replicate my grandmother’s Battle Biscuit recipe. Still not there yet, but I am pleased to report that my latest attempt is more than edible. It’s downright yummy. It should be, it’s got butter *and* shredded cheese in it, nothing with butter and shredded cheese in it can be inedible without a lot of work :).

7 Kryten42 { 03.13.16 at 8:43 am }

Well, I don’t actually have internet yet, just a working phone line. 🙂 Internet is stage 2. And tomorrow (Monday) is a holiday – Labor Day. Errr, today now. 🙂

I like ASUS routers. 🙂 One of the only router makers that supports DD-WRT, which I had on my old router. I replaced my 5 yo one with a new DSL-AC68U. It’s the only one I found that has a multimode xDSL modem built in (ADSL/SDSL/VDSL). So, when I get on the NBN, I won’t need new hardware. And it has a deicated WAN port if I do need to upgrade in future. 🙂

I used to have a ton of parts in boxes. With all the moving, I had to get rid of a lot. I did keep a small box of old parts that are rare. 🙂 I did keep a box of cables & adapters. Good thing too. I needed a couple for my new ‘build from hell’ lol A couple DVD burners (even a Mac Superdrive from a G5), a couple 3.5″ & a 5.25″ FDD, bunch of old IDE drives that had some data I’ll pull off them one day. lol And some spare parts for my PowerBook G4 17″ Rev F with the works Apple gave us for Xmas 2005. It was basically a pre production prototype that they decided not to produce since they suddenly decided to discontinue the G4 PowerBooks a year earlier than scheduled. I haven’t taken it out of its box since 2010 I think. Battery will probably be dead at least. 🙂

Funny, I’ve always had problems with WD HDD’s. Though I did stay away from those Cheetah drives, & the IBM deathstars! I had sucess with Samsung HDD’s until Seagate took them over. Then they were crap! I have a couple old 1TB Barracuda’s that are in RAID 1 on my linux box. I check their SMART log now and then & they are still in good health. I had a couple WD Black 2TB HDD’s, but they cook themselves to death! Need a well cooled case for those. Ironicaly, WD used them in a higher performance version of their Elements desktop series, which was a plastic box with no ventillation! They died in less than a year. Given the Black HDD’s had a 3 year warranty, it was a problem for WD!

Just got an email for this, but it’s USA only, so useless for me. But you might be interested. Have to be quick though! Expires very soon:

Free 3 Year Subscription to Innovation & Tech Today Magazine ($120 Value)

8 Bryan { 03.13.16 at 11:25 am }

Last century I used nothing but Seagates [20/40/80MB IDE] and they were rock solid 5¼-inch drives, but the 3½s turned to crap. The Western Digital drives didn’t impress me before, but the Black 1TBs in my big box have been solid. The drives have plenty of room and airflow, thanks in no small part to SATA cables rather than ribbons, but I’m still looking for an external drive enclosure. All of the ones I’ve looked at suck as far as ventilation is concerned and even with air conditioning, one window with the sun in a certain position can up the equipment temperature to dangerous levels. Airflow and heat are important factors in my environment – hell, I have heat sinks on the Raspberry Pi.

Real biscuits need buttermilk and bacon grease 😉 I won’t dispute that butter and cheese have coated over a multitude of culinary sins in my kitchen 🙂

I have been looking at ASUS routers. I have two retired Belkins, and am using a TP-Link because of its extended range. The TP provides a much stronger signal in my Mother’s house, which will soon be irrelevant as I’m moving the modem.

The pleasures of property management-

Angry Tenant at 8AM: I’ve been listening to rap music since 7:30.

Response: Change the station…

If you don’t want a smartassed response, don’t call me before Noon on Sunday.

9 JuanitaM { 03.13.16 at 4:57 pm }

Real biscuits need buttermilk and bacon grease

Oh, lawdy! Ain’t that the truth. That’s the way my grandma made them slathered with her home made apple or grape jelly. Then she would send all the kids out on the porch to eat it. Apparently, biscuits and jelly were messy in the hands of a five year old.

Still, butter and cheese sounds most appealing. They go a long way in my kitchen as well.

10 Bryan { 03.13.16 at 7:19 pm }

The butter and cheese are great over noodles or rice with some broccoli or asparagus. You could throw in some left over cubed poultry or meat to keep it from spoiling. Actually butter and grated/shredded cheese are great over just about anything.

11 Kryten42 { 03.13.16 at 9:54 pm }

I agree about the he biscuits. 🙂

Well, I said the shoe would drop, it did.

Your order has been placed on hold as there are no available ADSL2+ ports at your local exchange.

We can continue in attempts to connect a service for you but due to the unpredictable nature of port availability we cannot guarantee a timeframe for connection.

Nothing much I can do about that, except move. Which unfortunately isn’t that simple. Oh well.

12 Bryan { 03.13.16 at 10:29 pm }

They won’t build the infrastructure to support new customers because they aren’t seeing any growth in new customers that would justify new infrastructure …….

They don’t want to build, but they don’t want anyone else to build, like a local government. They have been blocking the NBN fiber because it will replace all of the copper they haven’t been maintaining or upgrading. I don’t know what it is, but it damn sure isn’t capitalism or most of these companies would be in receivership.

13 Badtux { 03.14.16 at 12:32 am }

Heat is not a big problem in my environment, the Supermicro cases that I’m using move a *ton* of air through the drives, there are six (6) fans moving air from the drive box past the CPU’s to exit out the back, and each power supply also has a fan that sucks air from the drive box and blows it out the back. At least until the slits in the front of the case clog up with cat hair, LOL. (Which is less of a problem now that Mencken is no longer around, because TMF is a very short haired and sleek kitty who doesn’t shed much, but… sigh).

At least your phone company isn’t blowing up neighborhoods like my gas company. Nobody wants to maintain infrastructure anymore. It’s as if they forgot that they’re in the business to provide services to customers — and the government regulators have gotten so cozy with the companies that they’re supposedly regulating that they don’t make the utilities do what they’re supposed to do. SIGH.

14 Bryan { 03.14.16 at 1:52 pm }

About your gas company, Badtux – have they found all of the money that customers were paying specifically to maintain and upgrade the pipelines? They didn’t do the work, so where’s the money?

The regulators don’t want to ask tough questions and the utilities don’t have any competition. Anymore the utilities have out-sourced all of the real infrastructure and exist as a small billing company – out-sourcing the actual printing and mailing of the bills, of course.

15 Kryten42 { 03.14.16 at 11:21 pm }

Here Telstra is being fined yet again by the ACCC for price gouging & anti competitive behavior. It’s become an annual thing. Proves that Telstra doesn’t care & the $million fines are nothing. They are the most expensive Telco in Aus & most of the World. If it wasn’t for them, the Aus Gov would have a much bigger deficit as the Gov still owns 40% of Telstra. So of course, the gouging will continue.

I found one new Wireless broadband provider here that has an unlimited 4G WiFi plan for $75/mth with no annual plan (mth by mth) & a solid service guarantee! That’s unheard of! The catch is they currently only supply the capital cities. They are moving into large regional centers like mine, but coverage is very limited. Ther are a couple spots here, but not in my area of course. I have no idea how thay can do that. Telstra charge $105/mth for 16.5 GB on a 24 mth Plan!

Performance of 4G here is surprising. A recent speed test of over 10k users had avg speeds of 14Mbps.

I don’t know what to do. I am exhausted. Going to take the rest of the week off and play with my new Venue Pro 11″ tablet. I just bought an LG ultra slim portable USB3 DVD-RW writer on special for $45! It includes the full CyberLink s/w suite. I tested it earlier, &Win 10 Pro on the tablet saw it straight away. 🙂

My ‘build from hell’ is very well cooled. Since it has 4x 4TB HDD’s, 2x 1TB SSD’s, 1 512GB M.2 NVMe SSD (which does get hot, especially as it’s sitting under the big Radeon R9 390X OC video card).

I have 3 intake + 3 exhaust fans (2 on the WC radiator)

Each group has:
1x Corsair SP140L 140mm PWM fan – 2100 RPM, 133 CFM, 3.99 mm-H2O (came with the water cooler. I replaced them with the Noctua’s),
2x Noctua NF-A14 IndustrialPPC-3000 PWM 140mm fans – 3000 RPM, (159 CFM), 10.52 mm-H2O

The gfx card has it’s own 2 fans & heat pipes, & the 4x Dominator Platinum RAM kit cam with 2x 50cm PWM fans that do a surprisingly decent job.

One of the gotchas with this MoBo (and all bar the elite boards over $500) is that whilst they have several 4 pin fan headers & claim PWM control, only ONE actually is! So I had to buy a PWM fan controller. It also has 4 temperature sensors which I put on 2 HDD’s, the M.2 SSD & the gfx card over the power regulators.

I better not get started on the stupidity of manufacturers & the many ridiculous problems I encountered! It would be a very long comment! Bah!

16 Kryten42 { 03.15.16 at 3:37 am }

LOL 50cm fans on the RAM! 50mm of course! 😉

I love this tablet! It’s more powerful than I expected!

If you can call something with 8GB RAM & a 256 GB SSD a tablet! It does have all the tablet type features though. 🙂 No wonder it retailed for $1,800! It really is near new also. Build date is Oct. 2015. The owner sent a copy of the invoice for warranty. He got it near the end of Jan.

I wish I hadn’t got it in a way. Used up my 3 good luck things. Might have gotten internet . *sigh* Well, I’ve had 2 of my 3 bad things. One to go.

And you all can laugh! But it’ s true. No idea why. Must be the Irish in me. *shrug*

17 Bryan { 03.15.16 at 9:33 am }

They should up the fines to Telstra and use the income to build out the NBN. The problem is that Left of Center builds ‘nice things’ and then the Right gives it to the 1%.

One of the reasons I get so paranoid about heat is that I used a piece of equipment that was vital to my mission. I never saw one fail in Alaska, but you couldn’t keep one running in Southeast Asia. These were built with discrete components as there were a minimum of ICs at the time. Having equipment fail during the ‘exciting times’ is a ‘learning experience’.

Russians have a thing about three, which is why they have three horses pulling a sled, the Troika, instead of two or four. The Christian Trinity was a major selling point when Vladimir I was looking for a new religion in the tenth century.