I can't let Microsoft off so easily from the fiasco (see post 787) re Windows Update processes. I really wanted a new PC and started to review the top brands once again (Lenovo, ASUS, DELL, HP, ACER) only to many, many users of all brands have run into the Overheating and loud fan problem. Particularly troubling is the mentioning of LOUD fan noise in the context of ALMOST CONTINUOUSLY. Only a few of the users though recognized that Windows Update had a play in why the fans were running at their max speed and so long. Most simply commented on the brand's processor review that the noticed the disturbing fan noise and a good portion returned/replaced the unit. The replacements also had the same noise, and it points out clearly that the brand's manufacturer had no clue either. Well, many problems are apparent looking at this fiasco:
1. The PC manufacturer's technical support is clueless of the root cause of the fan even running!
2. In my case with Dell, they weren't interested in going down the road with me to discover the root cause. Simpler for them is to tell you to send it the DEPOT to have it looked up, totally ignorant of the work and inconvenience this solution causes. I would imagine I would have gotten a replacement set up at ground zero, meaning, I would have had to rebuild and customize it from scratch again!
3. The LOUDNESS is a concern itself. A lap top, particularly one that is used in an executive boadr room or an office with other people cannot be so noisy it causes distractions to others! So, the brand manufacturers need either address this noise OR go after the root cause of the issue (MICROSOFT).
4. The over heating caused by over clocking for example, or for some other reason can damage processors and other computer parts. All fans will fail some time, but not usually in the life time of your PC which will become out-dated and replaced usually. However, a fan that runs at high speed for HOURS WILL likely fail within your PC lifetime! Thus, the over heating root cause needs to be found (MICROSOFT in this case) and eliminated or your PC architecture must understand the load processes and be designed to accommodate them.
5. An application, Windows Updates in my case, need to be controlled and not crazily jeopardize it's host (MY PC). But, what if this is the plan by Microsoft? Why don't their machines over heat? Or do they? Or did they and now don't because they perform the Window Update differently on their machines? Hmmmm, I mean grrrrr.
Let's contemplate #5 above. A company certainly wants to compete with others. BUT fairly as President Trump keeps reminding us re Trade. If you were running Lenovo, HP, Dell, ASUS, Acer, etc.) and your PCs were being hammered by Windows Update over heating what would you do? Put millions or billions in developing new technology to handle the heat or simply go after the abuser?
Going after the abuser primer: Assume you were an application developer and for some reason one of your programmers found a slick way to run many tasks at the same time. Clever. Now you can get 100 things done in the same time it took 1 before. This is multi-programming and rather old. The concept is to utilize whatever resources are available in the machine to fulfill your purpose. Hence, If there are 4 or 8 or 18 processors, run something on all of them at the same time, while have hundreds queued up to run on them when a particular task hesitates for I/O. theoretically, you can keep every core processor busy close to 100% of the time, and burn up your PC doing it! This, the rub. You CAN'T use the resources full out. There must be limits to your madness. So, you determine that 25% use of every process at the same time would be a 100x improvement over your competitor's applications. If you don't blow up the machine you make a fortune selling your application!
But, suppose you are writing an application that will make money DIRECTLY. How can you take advantage of your poor competitors? How about blow up their machines but while safely running on your machines? Hence, a new conspiracy theory has been born. I need to simply design MY machine so it can tolerate 25% CPU per installed processor and let the other figure out why their machines are having issues. Hey, why not additionally team up with manufacturer's of cooling systems and say, look, I want to invest in you and get in cheap knowing that you can cause a reason for the consumer to worry and buy addition cooling systems. Clever!
Hello Microsoft Windows Update! You're own your way to make this happen! Just like you pushed Windows Update to monopolize consumer systems on old O/S to force them to to newer one, you have now found another way to force consumers to buy cooling systems or your processors.
What COULD MICROSOFT do instead? Be a friendly neighbor? Yes. There is no reason to dispatch hundreds of updating actions that over-utilize the processors in a machine to the point of cause so much heat that the fans run constantly and loudly! I DON'T need my updates done instantly! Nor do I need them packaged so large that they take days to install! I realize Windows 10 has a monumental number of software issues. The PC architecture was never designed to handle the attacks and complexities we see today. It IS time for a new architecture. Unfortunately, we'll never see it in our life time. It is a CASH COW for Microsoft. Apple, come to our rescue with less expensive machines! So, the resolution becomes:
1. Package smaller updates and send them off more frequently
2. No package should ever exceed x number of update tasks at a time, keeping the queues reasonable and the processors under, say, 10% running in the background without interfering with consumer use.
3. For large packages, assuming unavoidable, keep # 2 in force, and schedule the updates overnight. Do NOT cause overheating then when the consumer won't see it!!!
4. STOP the forced Automation of maintenance! You must allow the consumer to at least Schedule updates when appropriate. BUT you must still comply with 1,2 and 3 above.
Okay. Now lifting my leg and cooling down the soapbox. I feel better now knowing what is happening, at least in my mind. Unfortunately, my desire to buy a new PC has disappeared since all brands have this problem and all are susceptible to damage from the problem. Over clocking by Intel Turbo Boost adds to thr heat, but at least they were smart enough to step out of the picture by turning it off once over heating occurs. Unfortunately though, when you really need the boost (Windows Update), you can't take advantage of it! Maybe the answer is better cooling systems. Water cooled systems work! The personal computer, particularly all computer built around Intel and Microsoft are nothing bu repeats of mainframes by IBM and lookalikes. Even the operating systems follow the same path: a few tasks (DOS), multi tasking (SVS, MVS), multiple virtual machine (VM), distributed (CLOUD and Networking), etc. The key engineering challenge was always how to keep the machine cool when components are becoming denser and smaller. The big difference is the greed of the multiple brands to just SELL things rather than to innovate. I'm not an Apple person (yet), but their new system out in December is electrifying. Adequate cooling is a MUST. Hello PC manufacturers. Spend some research money. I really don't see any of the companies stepping up to this task other than Microsoft and Apple. All the others are simply producing cute bells and whistle stuff to attract consumers.
Didn't I say the soapbox was going away. Oh gee, even the floor is wet and starting to stink. Have a nice day.
Saturday, November 18, 2017
788. "Save AS" or Print not working
Two separate processes failed for me the other day and had my head and tail shaking with frustration. One time I tried to Print from my brokerage account. Hitting PRINT on its website under Chrome gave me A print dialog. I emphasize "A" since I think it was the standard default print dialog put out by Chrome since it had an option at the bottom to use the Sys Print dialog instead. Anyway, that is not really important for cause of problem is same as in "Save As" and various other actions. The bottom line for Print is that it went through its actions and looked like it completed normally, but NO print. The document never even made it to the PC's printer queue. Scratch, scratch? So, I go over to IE 11 and perform the function and it works. Aha, a Chrome problem! Yes in a way, but not really.
Meanwhile, I thought I'd look at a credit card statement. Did what I normally do, i.e., hit the download in the CC application, and view it with the default viewer, in this case Microsoft Edge. Voile, I see it. Now I want to save it into my appropriate financial folder so I select download within Edge to specify the file folder and name. Whoa. Error. Can't find file blah.blah.blah.blah. Well, blah.blah.blah.blah folder path was changed the other day. As a matter of fact it was deleted and all my financial files put under a different directory, and thus path. Scratch, scratch!
Other actions may or may not have occurred independent from these two example, I can't recall. My old dog mind went foggy after the 1st issue. But, after a doggy treat the sparks went off. TEMPORARY file names were being used from the other day, rather than the new names! YES. As it turns out, the print dialog and "Save As" dialog attempt to utilize the LAST file name (full path of course) to simplify your life, assuming you probably want to perform your action there. WRONG in this case. Both dialogs looked for a path that was deleted, instead of a default the new default set up to the new path. The print dialog gave no indication that it failed. The "Save As" dialog at least gave me the old path name that led set off the fireworks. Why did IE11 work? Because I never use it to do these actions and there wasn't a temporary name used!
So, here's the warning and solution: If you run into something like this any where after making a change to a file path recently, assume you still have temporary file names lying around that will be used by system functions. So, go to your cleanup program, CCleaner in my case, and clean up the trash. After the CCleaner run that deleted all temporary crap, every thing went back to normal. My new defaults primed the pumps, after which the dialogs mentioned here used again, but now new, last used file names.
Good boy. Here's another treat.
Meanwhile, I thought I'd look at a credit card statement. Did what I normally do, i.e., hit the download in the CC application, and view it with the default viewer, in this case Microsoft Edge. Voile, I see it. Now I want to save it into my appropriate financial folder so I select download within Edge to specify the file folder and name. Whoa. Error. Can't find file blah.blah.blah.blah. Well, blah.blah.blah.blah folder path was changed the other day. As a matter of fact it was deleted and all my financial files put under a different directory, and thus path. Scratch, scratch!
Other actions may or may not have occurred independent from these two example, I can't recall. My old dog mind went foggy after the 1st issue. But, after a doggy treat the sparks went off. TEMPORARY file names were being used from the other day, rather than the new names! YES. As it turns out, the print dialog and "Save As" dialog attempt to utilize the LAST file name (full path of course) to simplify your life, assuming you probably want to perform your action there. WRONG in this case. Both dialogs looked for a path that was deleted, instead of a default the new default set up to the new path. The print dialog gave no indication that it failed. The "Save As" dialog at least gave me the old path name that led set off the fireworks. Why did IE11 work? Because I never use it to do these actions and there wasn't a temporary name used!
So, here's the warning and solution: If you run into something like this any where after making a change to a file path recently, assume you still have temporary file names lying around that will be used by system functions. So, go to your cleanup program, CCleaner in my case, and clean up the trash. After the CCleaner run that deleted all temporary crap, every thing went back to normal. My new defaults primed the pumps, after which the dialogs mentioned here used again, but now new, last used file names.
Good boy. Here's another treat.
Friday, November 17, 2017
787. Dell Adventure + Windows Update + Loud Fan + Heat
From the title you can tell this post will cover a few things. Let's start by saying until today I was working on new Dell 15-5000. Here was the issue:
For very long periods of time, like 4+hours for over 2 days with periods of only 1-2 minutes to rest, the Dell PC Fan was running at high speed and noisier than the sound of a happy Geiger counter that found nuclear material. Can you hear the loud static? That's the sound of the Dell fan running!
Why was it running. Well, of course, the machine was too hot. How hot? According to SPECCY, each of the i7 Core Processors was running between 90C-99C. Normally, they were at 42 C except for 1-2 second spurts when some heavy processor requirement spiked it up.
This processor had i& 8th generation Turbo Boost processors in it. Thus, they would run above the base speed of 1.8 GHZ to something like 3.8 GHz -- called Over Clocking. Nothing wrong with that. As a matter of fact the processors were running as expected. The speed varied based on processor load. As you increase the speed though, more heat is added to the fire. For a second or two to get your application loaded, all is find. The boost certainly did help. But when Windows Update -- either the Windows Update process or the Wondows Modules Installer process -- was running, it demanded high processor use. Even though it drove the processors only to maybe 29-39%, the heat went to 90C - 99 C. When that happens, the thermal sensors catch it and STOP the boost and your right back to 1.8 GHz! So, what's the point of demanding high processor use?!
Now, here's the Dell running away -- who knows, could have been melting away -- and Dell support team has NO interest what so ever about it and wants me to send my PC to Dell Depot. Well, this is 2nd PC; first was defective having problem inside PC affecting the installed optical drive (went through 3 of those before they finally fessed up and agreed that the problem was with the PC, not any optical drive ... about a 2 weeks wasted with them over that matter before they exchanged it with this new one experiencing the heat problem). Well, the fifrst PC ALSO had the loud fan problem, but I didn't pursue it then and didn't record the temperatures. I can only assume similar; why else would it be running at high speed for long periods? To make a long, but really unbelievable support service issue, short, I finally had enough of their poor support staffed with 1st line technical (Ha) morons, all the way up to 2 levels of management. I was now on my 29th day of initial Dell order (first PC) and the exchange did NOT change the 30-day window I had to return for a refund. The clowns at Dell didn't care much about that either and offered to have advanced tech support call in 24-48 hours (not an option), send to depot and lose my windows (not an option), so reluctantly, I canceled the order and am getting a refund. The critter is in a box already on its way back via UPS.
Dell did not one thing to help determine the root cause of the overheating and loud fan. Just send it back yet again! My debugging immediately indicated that the Windows Update process was the culprit after I killed the process running. Instant silence -- oh what a relief it is. This lasted maybe for about 2-3 hours before Microsoft once again did it Updates Check, recognized that the update failed, and kicked off Windows Modules Installer to get it resolved. Warum, there goes the heat and fan again! The root cause is undoubted ly Microsoft Windows 10 Creators Version Windows Update! So, even before I sent the Dell back, I observed a large number of instances across all major computer brands running Windows 10 with identical problem. So, even though the Dell wasn't alone, the support sucked so much I sent it back.
Now, the end conclusion is that Microsoft obviously, like they did in past to get you off XP, then Windows ME, then Windows 7 forced multi-processing tasks to its maximum. I can see in the mist that for a large update, and the one a few days ago was one that created a "Windows.Old" copy of system files like it did when Windows 7 was upgraded to Windows 10, and later when that base version went to Fall Update and Anniversary Update. In other words, when hundreds, or even thousands, of modules must change, dispatching heards of them at once to execute independently will keep all the core processors you have busy forever, or at least until the entire update is done. Hence, overheat your PC. Now, here's a thought. Will a Microsoft processor, like the Pro or Book overheat on a Windows Update? Didn't see any! Well, how about that? Microsoft KNEW what Windows Update would do and is doing and designed their machines to handle the issue. The other brands have yet to figure this out and continue to slowly melt away or run their fan to death. Clever? I hate to sound like a conspiracy idiot, but man what a plan to kill the PC hardware business! Stay tuned for the future!
Guess by now, you are asking what can be done. Well there is one thing I did that I didn't get to test before sending the machine back. There is a setting under windows Update that allows (by default) your PC to act as the initial download hub for distributing downloaded updates to all other machines on your local network! Can you believe this? Anyway, TURN IT OFF! Why should your machine do the processing to determine other distributions and prepare the packages to send? Wish I had the machine to test this. I would have backed off the 11/15/17 monstrous update and reapplied it. But, thanks Dell, you made my day and saved me the time. I am back on my 2010 Dell Inspiron on Windows 10 Anniversary and have NO fan running!
I don't want to bad-mouth the Dell 15-5000 which was a superb machine so far with its 128 GB SDD for the system and the 1TB HDD for my data. It's processor BASE speed was less than this old 1440, but the Turbo Boost with the SDD configuration made it fly in comparison when starting, loading programs, etc. Once you were on the Internet, it really didn't help much though. But, I loved the fact that I could uniquely separate my data from the system. After the optical Drive fiasco was resolved with a PC exchange, I though I would have it for the next 10 years! I started looking at other brands -- Lenovo, ASUS, HP -- and all of them have the same Windows Update overheating issue and all them have a disturbingly loud fan that runs. So, there isn't any solution to Microsoft's "plan". Like in the past where they ran the uniprocessor to 80-95% doing Windows Update processing, they now do the same, but run EACH of the 4 core processors 25%!
Anything else you can do? Since they forced automatic updates, you could look around for hacks to turn that off! One clever way I found was to go to you network and change to METERED network connection mode even though yo probably don't have an ISP that meters your traffic. According to that suggester, that will essentially turn OFF windows updates from downloading, But, some day you are going to want to allow updates. Then you will burn in H.... until they are downloaded and installed. We need to demand that Microsoft LIMIT their processing, say less than 10% CPU per core processor to NOT cause overheating situations. I know that will never happen. Meanwhile the manufactures of cooling additions/extensions will benefit.
One question I have that is not answered is to Intel: What is the operating temperature range of the Kaby Lake processors? What can they tolerate and for how long before damaging them, let along other components of the machine? Still so many unkowns and questions well above my expertise. I'm an old dog now and don't want to do any more tricks! Where are the mindless millennials who are suppose to "save" us? Sounds like their mindlessly writing code to do to tend the trees while told to so by a few rich guys who own the forest.
Ok, I'm done with this. The youngsters will be crying to eat their cake in the future that they already stuck in the cabinet to mold (hello youth...there are freezers). Good luck if you are experiencing Overheating and loud fan noise.
For very long periods of time, like 4+hours for over 2 days with periods of only 1-2 minutes to rest, the Dell PC Fan was running at high speed and noisier than the sound of a happy Geiger counter that found nuclear material. Can you hear the loud static? That's the sound of the Dell fan running!
Why was it running. Well, of course, the machine was too hot. How hot? According to SPECCY, each of the i7 Core Processors was running between 90C-99C. Normally, they were at 42 C except for 1-2 second spurts when some heavy processor requirement spiked it up.
This processor had i& 8th generation Turbo Boost processors in it. Thus, they would run above the base speed of 1.8 GHZ to something like 3.8 GHz -- called Over Clocking. Nothing wrong with that. As a matter of fact the processors were running as expected. The speed varied based on processor load. As you increase the speed though, more heat is added to the fire. For a second or two to get your application loaded, all is find. The boost certainly did help. But when Windows Update -- either the Windows Update process or the Wondows Modules Installer process -- was running, it demanded high processor use. Even though it drove the processors only to maybe 29-39%, the heat went to 90C - 99 C. When that happens, the thermal sensors catch it and STOP the boost and your right back to 1.8 GHz! So, what's the point of demanding high processor use?!
Now, here's the Dell running away -- who knows, could have been melting away -- and Dell support team has NO interest what so ever about it and wants me to send my PC to Dell Depot. Well, this is 2nd PC; first was defective having problem inside PC affecting the installed optical drive (went through 3 of those before they finally fessed up and agreed that the problem was with the PC, not any optical drive ... about a 2 weeks wasted with them over that matter before they exchanged it with this new one experiencing the heat problem). Well, the fifrst PC ALSO had the loud fan problem, but I didn't pursue it then and didn't record the temperatures. I can only assume similar; why else would it be running at high speed for long periods? To make a long, but really unbelievable support service issue, short, I finally had enough of their poor support staffed with 1st line technical (Ha) morons, all the way up to 2 levels of management. I was now on my 29th day of initial Dell order (first PC) and the exchange did NOT change the 30-day window I had to return for a refund. The clowns at Dell didn't care much about that either and offered to have advanced tech support call in 24-48 hours (not an option), send to depot and lose my windows (not an option), so reluctantly, I canceled the order and am getting a refund. The critter is in a box already on its way back via UPS.
Dell did not one thing to help determine the root cause of the overheating and loud fan. Just send it back yet again! My debugging immediately indicated that the Windows Update process was the culprit after I killed the process running. Instant silence -- oh what a relief it is. This lasted maybe for about 2-3 hours before Microsoft once again did it Updates Check, recognized that the update failed, and kicked off Windows Modules Installer to get it resolved. Warum, there goes the heat and fan again! The root cause is undoubted ly Microsoft Windows 10 Creators Version Windows Update! So, even before I sent the Dell back, I observed a large number of instances across all major computer brands running Windows 10 with identical problem. So, even though the Dell wasn't alone, the support sucked so much I sent it back.
Now, the end conclusion is that Microsoft obviously, like they did in past to get you off XP, then Windows ME, then Windows 7 forced multi-processing tasks to its maximum. I can see in the mist that for a large update, and the one a few days ago was one that created a "Windows.Old" copy of system files like it did when Windows 7 was upgraded to Windows 10, and later when that base version went to Fall Update and Anniversary Update. In other words, when hundreds, or even thousands, of modules must change, dispatching heards of them at once to execute independently will keep all the core processors you have busy forever, or at least until the entire update is done. Hence, overheat your PC. Now, here's a thought. Will a Microsoft processor, like the Pro or Book overheat on a Windows Update? Didn't see any! Well, how about that? Microsoft KNEW what Windows Update would do and is doing and designed their machines to handle the issue. The other brands have yet to figure this out and continue to slowly melt away or run their fan to death. Clever? I hate to sound like a conspiracy idiot, but man what a plan to kill the PC hardware business! Stay tuned for the future!
Guess by now, you are asking what can be done. Well there is one thing I did that I didn't get to test before sending the machine back. There is a setting under windows Update that allows (by default) your PC to act as the initial download hub for distributing downloaded updates to all other machines on your local network! Can you believe this? Anyway, TURN IT OFF! Why should your machine do the processing to determine other distributions and prepare the packages to send? Wish I had the machine to test this. I would have backed off the 11/15/17 monstrous update and reapplied it. But, thanks Dell, you made my day and saved me the time. I am back on my 2010 Dell Inspiron on Windows 10 Anniversary and have NO fan running!
I don't want to bad-mouth the Dell 15-5000 which was a superb machine so far with its 128 GB SDD for the system and the 1TB HDD for my data. It's processor BASE speed was less than this old 1440, but the Turbo Boost with the SDD configuration made it fly in comparison when starting, loading programs, etc. Once you were on the Internet, it really didn't help much though. But, I loved the fact that I could uniquely separate my data from the system. After the optical Drive fiasco was resolved with a PC exchange, I though I would have it for the next 10 years! I started looking at other brands -- Lenovo, ASUS, HP -- and all of them have the same Windows Update overheating issue and all them have a disturbingly loud fan that runs. So, there isn't any solution to Microsoft's "plan". Like in the past where they ran the uniprocessor to 80-95% doing Windows Update processing, they now do the same, but run EACH of the 4 core processors 25%!
Anything else you can do? Since they forced automatic updates, you could look around for hacks to turn that off! One clever way I found was to go to you network and change to METERED network connection mode even though yo probably don't have an ISP that meters your traffic. According to that suggester, that will essentially turn OFF windows updates from downloading, But, some day you are going to want to allow updates. Then you will burn in H.... until they are downloaded and installed. We need to demand that Microsoft LIMIT their processing, say less than 10% CPU per core processor to NOT cause overheating situations. I know that will never happen. Meanwhile the manufactures of cooling additions/extensions will benefit.
One question I have that is not answered is to Intel: What is the operating temperature range of the Kaby Lake processors? What can they tolerate and for how long before damaging them, let along other components of the machine? Still so many unkowns and questions well above my expertise. I'm an old dog now and don't want to do any more tricks! Where are the mindless millennials who are suppose to "save" us? Sounds like their mindlessly writing code to do to tend the trees while told to so by a few rich guys who own the forest.
Ok, I'm done with this. The youngsters will be crying to eat their cake in the future that they already stuck in the cabinet to mold (hello youth...there are freezers). Good luck if you are experiencing Overheating and loud fan noise.
Thursday, November 2, 2017
786. Accuweather (AIR) application Installer Damaged Message
A week ago I build my first 15-5000 machine and successfully installed the Accuweather Stratus 1.1 Gadget without problems. Today, it wouldn't install on my replacement 15-5000 machine! The following tip I found in some 2015 queue to get around the error and allow the product to install:
Set your clock back a year when the install worked ok (I just set my date to 2016). Now, install Accuweather. It will be successful. Set clock back to today (automatic).
Well, what caused the stupid message that the installation failed because the installer was damaged? According to expert back in 2015 (different application), the problem is because they let the Signed Certification expire! Setting machine back before the time it expired allows installation of it (fakes it out).
Set your clock back a year when the install worked ok (I just set my date to 2016). Now, install Accuweather. It will be successful. Set clock back to today (automatic).
Well, what caused the stupid message that the installation failed because the installer was damaged? According to expert back in 2015 (different application), the problem is because they let the Signed Certification expire! Setting machine back before the time it expired allows installation of it (fakes it out).
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