TweakHound

Computer stuff...

Eric (a.k.a. TweakHound)

Tuesday Random Stuff…

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It’s Patch Tuesday so look for another post this afternoon.

Win10 Ads
Everyone is pissed off that Microsoft is putting ads in Windows. IMHO it is just the latest fiasco surrounding Win10.

CCleaner Monthly Update
Version 5.28 released.
Download
Version History

Finally
Verizon managed to finally push out Android Nougat to my Galaxy S7.
The update also put in the most recent security updates (Feb. 1) which is all I really cared about.
The update broke LED notifications and I had to do a full reset to get them to work.

New Bike
Last year I had mentioned I was looking for a hybrid bike. Several of you emailed some good suggestions.
I recently bought a Cannondale Quick 3 Disc on sale for $749 at a local bike shop.
I put a phone holder, two water bottle cages, and a rear bike rack on it.  I have 2 CamelBak Podium Big Chill Insulated Water Bottles. I also got a 529 Garage Bicycle Registration Kit to help recover the bike if it is stolen.
I look forward to putting some serious miles on it once the weather breaks.

Tuesday Random Stuff…

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Installing Windows 7 From Scratch
Woody Leonhard has a chuckle at Microsoft’s “convoluted technique for installing Windows 7 from scratch“.
Best to follow his advice.

Firefox 52 Released
Download 32-bit(en-US)
Download 64-bit (en-US)
All Downloads
Release Notes

O&O ShutUp10 Updated
Version 1.4.1387 – released on 07.03.2017
Following settings were changed:
– Setting “Do not display last users on lock screen” was removed as some users had problems accessing their system
Following errors were fixed:
– Dialogue boxes were defective in high contrast mode
– Crash when clicking links where Google Chrome is set as the standard browser
– Problems detecting some Windows 10 OEM versions
– Notifications that some settings are managed by the organisation did not disappear after applying factory settings
– Factory settings revised
Available in English, German, French, Italian and Russian

Linux Swap Partition
Red Hat Blog – Do we really need swap on modern systems?
“How much swap is recommended nowadays?
This depends on the desired behaviour of the system, but configuring an amount of 20% of the RAM as swap is usually a good idea. More details are in this solution document.
Can I run without swap? Is further tuning possible?
Systems without swap can make sense and are supported by Red Hat – just be sure the behaviour of such a system under memory pressure is what you want. In most environments, a bit of swap makes sense.”

AMD Ryzen

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AMD Ryzen
AMD’s newest CPU platform was this week. It didn’t seem to live up to the hype, things never do in the tech world. Still, it seems to be a solid product. Consensus seems to be it rocks for everything but gaming.
User radosuaf let me know that despite earlier reports, there is Windows 7 support!
There also seems to be some good results under Linux.

Here are some reviews and snipets:

[H]ardOCP – AMD Ryzen 1700X CPU Review
“First and foremost, for most HardOCP readers, you are going to find that Ryzen simply has a huge clock deficit to overcome compared to Intel. If you are looking to build a system for desktop gaming alone, there is simply no way to suggest that Ryzen is your CPU as the Intel 7600K and 7700K still hold a great advantage especially if you are overclocking…Once you get past desktop gaming, the AMD Ryzen starts to look a lot more promising. In fact, when you look at video encoding, decoding, and content creation, the AMD Ryzen is an extremely impressive CPU showing that it can even best the $1000 Intel 6900K in some workloads. Even where the Ryzen does not “win,” it still remains extremely competitive. All of its 8 cores do work, and do work very well. If you are building a machine with these applications in mind, there is no way I can suggest you build with Intel. It has been a long long time since we have made a statement like that.”

Phoronix – AMD Ryzen 7 1700 Linux Benchmarks: Great Multi-Core Performance For $329
“The same operating system as used throughout testing was the Ubuntu 17.04 x86_64 development snapshot with the Linux 4.10 kernel and GCC 6.3.0. …The Ryzen 7 1700 has a damn nice showing when it comes to the heavily threaded benchmarks like C-Ray, Smallpt, and code compilation. Ryzen does great for these multi-core tests but lets down the user in many of the single-threaded tests, in which case for $350 you can get the Core i7 7700K Kabylake from Intel. But if you are routinely compiling code on your system or engaging in other highly parallel tasks, the Ryzen 7 1700 performs rather well and in those cases can outperform the $400+ Core i7 6800K.”

PCWorld – AMD’s CEO says patches will boost Ryzen gaming performance: It ‘will only get better’
“We hear people on wanting to see improved 1080p performance and we fully expect that Ryzen performance in 1080p will only get better as developers get more time with ‘Zen”

Random Friday Stuff…

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Flash Updates In Windows Update
MS17-005: Security update for Adobe Flash Player: February 21, 2017
Thanks to Ed and radosuaf!

Updated Software
Acronis True Image 2017 Update 2
MediaMonkey 4.1.15.1828

Planet Stuff
NASA found some interesting and possibly habitable planets. It’s cool and all but there are a lot of unanswered questions.
See here for some cool posters.

“Back in my day we had NINE planets”
Bring back Pluto!

Weekend Random Stuff…

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Sysinternals Freeware Updates
Several programs updated including; Autoruns, Process Explorer, and Process Monitor.

Mp3tag 2.81
Several new features and fixes. Download

GeForce Hotfix Driver 378.72
This is GeForce Hot Fix driver version 378.72 that addresses the following:
– Fixed hardware encoding in Steam (In-Home Streaming).
– Resolved PhysX being forced to CPU when “Optimize for Compute Performance” setting is OFF.
Download

Patch Tuesday Called Off

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Microsoft has called off Patch Tuesday
“Our top priority is to provide the best possible experience for customers in maintaining and protecting their systems. This month, we discovered a last minute issue that could impact some customers and was not resolved in time for our planned updates today.
After considering all options, we made the decision to delay this month’s updates. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by this change to the existing plan.”

Despite the fact that this news spread around the web like wildfire I held off on posting this until I could run Windows Update after Patch Tuesday updates are released (1300hrs EST).
I’ve checked Windows 7 and Win10 on 4 machines. No updates.

Adobe Flash
APSB17-04 Security updates available for Adobe Flash Player
Download

Nvidia
Nvidia GeForce Game Ready Driver 378.66 WHQL
“Provides the optimal gaming experience for Sniper Elite 4, For Honor, and Halo Wars 2 ”

Patch Tuesday Random Stuff…

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Happy Valentines Day!
It’s patch Tuesday. I’ll post all that jazz once all of it is released this afternoon. Until then…

AMD Drivers
AMD Radeon Crimson ReLive Edition 17.2.1 drivers are out. Several fixes for games, multi-gpu setups, and others.
Download

Windows Vista Broke PC Audio
So says a dude from Creative in this Podcast. Start at about the 13 minute mark to avoid the babble.
So how about you guys from Creative work on Linux drivers? There is no support for your newer cards.

CCleaner 5.27
“Improved…Updated…improvements…bugfixes”
Download

Cleaning Up The Script

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In my post Blocking Windows 7 Telemetry I provided a script to remove Windows 7 telemetry updates. This was done in haste from an older script and I have now cleaned it up.
One poster in the AskWoody lounge stated certain updates were no longer there. I asked him to provide some documentation so I could verify his statement and he did not.
So, I had to dig in and find the answer myself. I checked a few of the KB articles for the updates and there weren’t any notices about updates being removed or superseded. That is par for the course for Microsoft.
[Read more…] about Cleaning Up The Script