Tag Archives: windows 10

Fix performance problems with Virtualbox and Vmware on Windows 10

If Virtualbox & VmWare is causing massive problems with just getting a Virtual machine running in windows 10 its probably because you have Hyper-V enabled.  I learned the hard way that having Hyper-V enabled and running Virtualbox is a nightmare.  I kept getting the error;

MP-BIOS bug: 8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC

Disable Hyper-V if its enabled in windows 10 by going to “Turn windows features on or off” and un select “Hyper-V”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also make sure that its disabled in bcdedit by making sure that you run the command;

bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off

Reboot your System and Virtualbox and Vmware will now work much better.

refs;

The Ultimate Guide to Uninstalling or Disabling Hyper-V in Windows 10

Windows 10 send to menu Tweak

The send to menu is located below in windows explorer. Press Windows Key + R to get to the Run dialog Window and enter “shell:sendto”

You can add shortcuts to folders to this location by placing them inside this folder;

C:\Users\<your windows username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo

Removing the list of Drives from the sendto menu requires a Registry tweak;

This is one of the most annoying things aboutr the sendto menu as it will list the drives on your system which most of the time isnt needed.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]
"NoDrivesInSendToMenu"=dword:00000001

Credit to tenforums;

Windows 10 wont enter sleep mode – solved

Ever since i upgraded my PC last year, my Windows 10 pc will not go to sleep and neither will the monitor and that’s with a fresh Windows 10 installation. The first thing i did was to press the “Restore default settings for this plan”..didnt work.

I’m really finding it hard to figure out how this is a problem when with my old hardware it was never a problem. The only thing i cant think off is that its the motherboard and some setting in BIOS thats not quite right.

This problem has been happening since i installed the new hardware and for some reason i thought it was normal..but remembered how my old PC would behave it would just go to sleep when the windows 10 power settings told it too.

Hardware Specs:
MSI B 450-A PRO (latest BIOS)
AMD Ryzen 2600
Win 10 64 210h (latest)
32GB DDR 4 3000

Possible fixes:

  • Steam running
  • Nvidia Overlay
  • GeForce Experience
  • USB Controller/Joystick being plugged in.

Solution:
After reading about the same problem being caused by a controller being plugged in, I disconnected the Joystick from my PC and within one min the screen had gone off.

Logitech Extreme 3D pro is causing the the issue:

Logitech Extreme 3D pro
https://www.tenforums.com/performance-maintenance/27004-windows-10-will-not-auto-sleep.html

Sources:

Solution Found Here
https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/monitors-wont-go-to-sleep-why.244167/page-3

Call of duty Black ops 3 not starting in windows 10 solution

Even though Black Ops 3 is 6 years old i wanted to try it out again and ran into massive problems and it wouldn’t start and not even in safe mode!

After spending a few hours trying to search for a solution online which i tried them all, i found nothing that worked.

The first thing i tried was to add the games folder to my antivirus exceptions list.

Bitdefender:
After giving up on ever getting the game to start again i was messing about in Bitdefender thinking there must be some setting that’s causing the problem.

Advanced Threat Detection-Causes the game to not start:
Add an exception in Bitdefender and make sure that “Advanced Threat Detection” is on for the exclusion to “blackops3.exe” as below.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare – Shuts down my PC -[solved]

After almost 7 months of this problem and having tried everything i read about it, i decided to run a temperature monitoring program in the background while i played the game.

When i posted this problem on reddit every post i read said to check temps.  Now i never overclock any PC hardware so i thoughts thats not the problem, i was wrong.

BIOS Settings:
There was a setting in the BIOS of the motherboard i had that was called ‘AMD TURBO-CORE’ which would over clock the CPU and cause an increase the temperature of the CPU.

TLDR/Long story Short/i dont care:
The CPU i had was an AMD FX 8350 and normally it would be around 70C Max load.  However this bios setting made temps hit 82C+  and thats where the PC would shut down as a measure to protect it from damage.

Suggestions for various websites that havnt worked;

  • v-sync on in the graphics settings
  • set ‘custom frame limit’ in game to 60 fps see GFX settings
  • turned off the NVIDIA in game overlay
  • shutdown almost everything running in background;
    • steam, Ea Origin,Epic Launcher
  • disabled Hyper-V
  • disabled Windows 10 fast start up
  • Power settings CPU min state 0%
  • Set max Framerate of Graphics card in the NVIDIA Control Panel to 60fps.
  • Cleaned all Fans in the PC case.
  • changed default sound format to 44100 mhz
  • AA SMAA 1x
  • Texture Filter Anisotropic filtering: Normal
  • uninstall Realtek Audio & LAN drivers
  • Reinstall Windows 10

Resources & Links;

PC shuts down while playing from modernwarfare

Windows 10 1903 freezes PC – Fix Found

Microsoft did it again, released another f***king update for Windows 10 that broke things. This is the second or third time this has happened now.

This time the problem is similar again to one i had just solved a while ago where my PC would just freeze randomly.

Again this problem was caused by updating Windows 10 to 1809 which i only did a few months ago due to all the issues that update had.

This fucking update is a disaster and i have not been able to roll back to 1809 yet and i still down know whats causing the problem. All the evidence points to the Windows 1903 update.

The problem:
Only seems to occur when the PC is either idle or watching youtube or netflix.

Windows 10 Reliability:

Windows 10 Reliability after the Windows 10 1809 update

 

Windows 10 Reliability after the Windows 10 1903 update

 

So far ive;

Did Not work:

  • Reinstalled Video drivers
  • Reinstalled Bluetooth dongle drivers
  • uninstalled Realtek sound drivers
  • uninstalled Realtek ethernet drivers
  • Changing the ‘Default Sound Format’ from 48khz to 44khz
  • Reinstalling Realtek Lan Drivers
  • Reinstalled Realtek sound drivers
  • Uninstalled USB 3.0 Drivers
  • Ran the system file checker command ‘sfc /scannow
  • Reinstalling Asmedia USB 3.0 drivers
  • Disabled C1E power state in BIOS
  • Update Graphics card drivers (New Nvidia version)
  • Ran chkdsk on all drives-no errors reported
  • Reset Power saving settings
  • Reinstallion of Clean Windows 10 1903
    • The problem remained despite having a brand new clean install of Windows 10.
  • Turn Off Link State Power Management
  • Disable AppXsvc using Registry Editor
  • USB 3.0 – front side of PC disabled
  • Installed dot.net 3.5
  • Running Windows Memory Test
  • DPC Specfic fixes
    • disabled IPv6

The Fix in the BIOS:

  • Disable Core C6 state
  • Disabled C1 Support

Note:
This may be a BIOS or Motherboard compatability issue with Windows 10 1903. The motherboard in question here is an Asus m5a97 r2.0 with BIOS version 2501.

 

Windows 10 May 2019 Update Megathread from Windows10

Fixing DPC latency;

The below article which im still reading recommends a few things;

Fix High DPC Latency on Windows 10


Problem *seems* to be a compatability problem between windows and a Bluetooth Dongle.

I had old Bluetooth dongle from Motorola “BCM92035DGROM” which worked fine but i did have problems with it and the 1809 update.

The cause is still unknown the PC froze again for no known reason. The below article has some tips to stop it happenening;

Laptop freezes randomly after Install Windows 10 May 2019 update
https://windows101tricks.com/windows-10-freezes-randomly/

 


Articles about this problem;

https://howtofixwindows.com/windows-10-laptop-freeze-and-crash-issues/

https://wintechlab.com/windows-10-freezes-applications-not-responding/

Finding the cause of freezes;

https://www.digitalmastersmag.com/magazine/tip-of-the-day-how-to-find-crash-logs-on-windows-10/

How to rollback on the update;

https://howtofixwindows.com/rollback-windows-10-update/

Windows 10 April Update build 1803 Bluetooth Problems

Microsoft did it again, released a new update for Windows 10 that broke things.  Easy to do but this article sheds some light on the “BSOD” that the new update had and erm got me;

https://windowsreport.com/windows-10-april-update-bsod-error/

Since the new update came out yesterday my sound card and bluetooth and headset wouldnt work.  Even worse than i was getting the “BSOD” Blue screen of death every time i turned on and off the headset.

After a frustrating few hours i had given up and was about to reinstall Windows 10 again.

Then i remembered my old post and problem with bluetooth with Battlefield 1 and low and beyhold it worked.

Basically you want to disable the “Handsfree Telephony” option and you can find the post below here which shows you how;

Multiple issues with Windows 10 build 1803:
ghacks.net lists all the common problems with this new update and there are many;

https://www.ghacks.net/2018/05/01/all-the-issues-of-windows-10-version-1803-you-may-run-into/

Hardware:
This may work for you in my case i had old Bluetooth dongle from Motorola “BCM92035DGROM” and a Philips Bluetooth headset “SHB3165”.

Battlefield 4 & Battlefield 1 Bluetooth Headsets gives no sound

Windows 10 wiped all my hard drives without warning

With the recent news that the latest Windows 10 update build (1809) deleted users downloads;

Microsoft:
We have paused the rollout of the Windows 10 October 2018 Update (version 1809) for all users as we investigate isolated reports of users missing some files after updating.
(via engadget.com)

i thought id post this story which ive been too lazy to post about for months.  If anything it shows that Windows 10 is not all its cracked up to be.

Over the years ive installed every Microsoft Windows OS;

  • Win 95
  • Win 98
  • Win Vista
  • Win 7
  • Win 8
  • Win 10

Windows 10 is the only one of those Operation Systems that wiped four hard drives without even a confirmation prompt to say you were “going to wipe out 5 hard drives”.

So what did you do?
It was almost new years eve and well my Windows 10 install was getting more broken after each update and the October 2017 update gave constant blue screens when using bluetooth headphones.  So i thought dam im going to have to reinstall windows 10 and all the dam updates.   At this point i really didnt want to do this with college work and programming source code scattered all over the shop.

F*ck it!
I had made a point of always backing up my PC since a horrable incindet back in 2003 where i lost the source code to two applications i was working on (fucking Maxtor Hard drives).  So yes i had a back up which was on another physical drive other than the SSD drive that Win 10  was installed.

Fed up of blue screens and problems since the October 2017 update i decided i had to reinstall Windows 10.  So i seen in Windows 10 there was a “Reset this PC” feature;

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was hoping this was one of “Ronseal” moments where it does “exactly what it says on the tin”,  it didnt.

What could go wrong
I had a back up and was ready to go, so i pressed the “Get Started” button and thought great, it will all be fine.  Now this is the part that is kinda fuzzy ill admit, i cant remember what it said but i was sure that “nothing” would go wrong when i presses the enter button to “reset this PC” that as i pressed it i walked out of the room to get a cuppa Tea.

The horror:
I was away from the PC for a while and thought to myself “sure might as well let it do its thing” and ill watch some TV.

I had expected than when i would return to the PC that Windows 10 would be installed and ready to go.  An hour later i came back to the PC to see that it hadnt booted into any Windows 10/Any kinda interface, nothing.  Black screen and a DOS prompt saying the dreaded message;

“No system drive found”

Windows had mangled or rahter me the menu which Windows used to find the system drive to boot from. After using the BIOS to boot of the correct drive Windows 10 booted.

Not only had the the main Windows drive been wiped but all other internal hard drives were wiped with exception to the External USB 3.0 drive.

External USB Drive to the rescue:
For some reason Windows 10 didnt wipe this drive if it had it would have been an utter fucking nightmare.  I had my programming and college work from over the tears on this drive and somewhere in the “cloud” with Goggle Drive.

Theres hope:
I knew that when you delete a file its not really deleted rather the location where it was is marked as a place for new files to be written.  So i had not make sure that i didnt save or write anything to all the hard drives in question.

Recovery Software:
I had used recovery software before and i knew that

  • it can recovery a lot of files
  • it takes a very long time depeneding on the hard drive in question

So i needed to find the best recovery software available and hope that it would work.

Recommended software:
Figuring out which recovery software was the best was difficult but after a few days of trial and error i found that EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard was the best due to its simeple to use approach via a wizard which walks you through the steps of what drive to recover etc.

It was easy to use and recovery almost everything that was deleted.  Some files cannot be recovered but it managed to recover ALL of my Music collection which was nothing short of a miracle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes:

This is not a  Paid advert but just a personal opinion from a Windows 10 nightmare.

AMD Driver Issues – Update 24th feb

Update 24th feb:
Teh latest AMD drivers cause problems with Overwatch, they seem to cause FPS spikes and basically ruin the game so once again ive rolled back them, drivers to right where i was 16.11.5

I seen a post on the Blizzard forums which acknowledged the issue;

Micro freezes after the new AMD driver update?
https://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20753198965

[quote="207517502906"]Hey there everyone!

So I have seen this happen with AMD cards using the newer AMD drivers. In my experience reinstalling the standalone drivers that do not include Relive (Recording/Streaming) software (As well as disabling the Windows 10 Xbox Game DVR if you are on Windows 10) can solve this for you. Give the following a shot and see if it helps you all out.

Please disable the Windows 10 Game DVR via the XBoxlive app:
 1. From the start menu open the Xbox App.
 2. You will be asked to Sign in. Please do so, even if you have never used this app before. You may need to create a microsoft account if you do not already have one.
 3. On the options menu Click 'Game DVR'
 4. Switch off 'Record game clips and screenshots using Game DVR''

I would like you to perform a clean install of your drivers by completely removing the old drivers as follows:
 1) Let's remove the old drivers via a program called DDU ([url="http://www.wagnardsoft.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=5"]Display Driver Uninstaller[/url]) and choose the first link.
 2) Once that's installed, go ahead and run the program. It will say that you're not in safe mode and ask to run in safe mode. Go ahead and tell it yes to restart into safe mode.
 3) Once in Safe mode the program will pop back up. Simply select your video brand from the drop down and then click Clean and Restart.
 4) Once it restarts the PC you'll want to get your video drivers from [url="http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop?os=Windows+10+-+64"]here[/url]. (Please note this was for the video card series mentioned earlier, if your card is different you may need drivers specific to your card.)

Finally, let's reset the in game user options:
 1. Click the blue bnet icon on the bnet app.
 2. Choose settings, then game settings.
 3. Click the reset in game user options button under the correct game listing.
 4. Confirm the changes and close the window.[/quote]

So i seemed to have solved the problems with the AMD drivers, i installed the Windows 10 Anniversary Update and not only does windows feel faster the drivers that had problems before now work.’

However im using 17.1.1 at the moment and have not retried the drivers below that were crashing.

Also when you upgrade your drivers you should always reset your in game video settings usally a “restore to default” option exists.  This seems to have sorted all the problems i was having.

AMD have released new drivers 17.1.2

Ive had 4 crashes to desktop since i installed the newest AMD 16.12.2 with Battlefield 1 so ive rolled back to 16.11.5.  The problems and crashes also happen with other games.  Im running Windows 10 64 bit with an AMD R9 380 4 GB.

The errors i got in Battlefield 1 happened 4 times and i wasn’t using DirectX 12 mode either and it never occurred before with previous drivers.


 

 

 

 

And since rolling back the drivers I’ve had no problems, guess the lads at AMD need to sort out the driver.

After a quick Google it seems im not the only person with this problem.

https://community.amd.com/thread/208966

https://www.google.ie/search?q=amd+16.12.1+problems&oq=amd+16.12.1

Edit:
AMD have released new drivers 16.12.2 and i still have issues with them so back to the old drivers.  A clean install of windows 10 didn’t fix the issue either.

16.12.2 – New Error -wtf

Even the update a few days ago still hasn’t sorted the problems.