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Windows 10 April Update build 1803 Bluetooth Problems

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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

microsoft, Operating Systems, Rant, tech, Windows 10

Windows 10 wiped all my hard drives without warning

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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.

Games, tech

Retro gaming: Amiga Memories-[draft1]

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My first Computer was an Amiga 600 and it was one hell of a machine for its time.  This was around the time of consoles like the SNES and SEGA megadrive which my friends had.

The specs: 7Mhz!
The Amiga 600, also known as the A600, is a home computer that was introduced at the CeBIT show in March 1992. The A600 is Commodore International’s final model based on the Motorola 68000 CPU and the ECS chipset. Wikipedia

Release date: March 1992; 25 years ago
Memory: 1 MB (80 ns access time); (6 MB Maximum, more with unofficial expansions)
Date introduced: March 1992
Manufacturer: Commodore International
Successor: Amiga 1200
CPU: Motorola 68000 @ 7.16 MHz 7.09 MHz (PAL)
Predecessors: Amiga 500, Amiga 500 Plus

 

Emulators:
An emulator is the software you need to run to create a virtual Amiga on your PC/MAC/Linux etc.  You need this software, its free and the most popular two ive found are below;
Games! Shows me the games!
Ive found a few sites where downloading Amiga Games or “Roms” below;
Games, tech

AMD Driver Issues – Update 24th feb

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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.

 

 

Games, tech

Rainbow Six Seige Connection Problems Error 8-0x00000052

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If your getting this error and you cant connect to the Rainbow Six Seige Servers its most likely a NAT issues.   If you check the options menu when the game starts up it probably will say “NAT type Strict”.

You will need to port forward to fix this issues;

https://support.ubi.com/en-gb/Faqs/000023138/Connectivity-issues-in-Rainbow-6-Siege

2. Ports
If following the steps above to update and configure your firewall does not resolve the issue, it will be necessary to forward ports. You will need to forward these ports to your computer’s IP address for the best possible connection:

Uplay PC:
TCP: 80, 443, 14000, 14008.

Game Ports:
UDP: 6015

You will need to forward the port 6015

Steam forum;
https://steamcommunity.com/app/359550/discussions/0/458604254457758832/

Games, tech

Battlefield 4 & Battlefield 1 Bluetooth Headsets gives no sound

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Edit1:
Seems this is a problem with bluetooth in general.  I found the following article from the steam forums about bluetooth headset problems in GTA V.  It might be worth a read to shed light on any problems your having.

Edit 2:
If you start Battlefield 4 on windows 10 and havnt disabled “handsfree telephony as below” all your sound will cut out.
17-sep-2019

https://www.howtogeek.com/354321/why-bluetooth-headsets-are-terrible-on-windows-pcs/

There’s a problem with Battlefield 4 and Battlefield 1 where you get no sound if your playing with a bluetooth headset.  After a bit of googling and research i found the solution;

1. Goto; control panel->Hardware and Sound->Devices and Printers

2016-09-18-9

2. Select Properties on your Bluetooth headset and go to the services section.

3. Uncheck “Handsfree Telephony”.

2016-09-18-8

Note this works on Windows 10 cant say if it work on Windows 7 or 8.

Games, tech

No Mans Skys PC Possable Stutter/Hitching Fixes

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Found this fix for the game on reddit which seems to fix the terrible stutter problems that people are having;

https://www.reddit.com/r/NoMansSkyTheGame/comments/4xgw82/pc_users_incredible_fps_fix/

The Fix:
Is to create a shortcut to the games executable file “NMS.exe”.  Then in the target window paste the following;

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start “Process Monitor” /High “E:\GOG Games\No Man’s Sky\Binaries\NMS.exe”

Note:
Replace “E:\GOG Games\No Man’s Sky\Binaries\NMS.exe”with the path to game on your system.

EDIT:
This fix doesn’t work for me and in fact seems to make the game perform even worse, its best to update to the “BETA / Experimental” Patches available on Steam and GOG.