Any computer wizz's here?

[willedoo]

30 minutes ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

You may well have been running a process that terminated on a restart (restartsd by default close the whole system down, empty queues and stacks and remove the temp memory snapshots on disk  - to speed up booting, switching off keeps a memory image on disk and reboots to this rather than a fresh system - by default).

So Jerry, are you saying that a restart starts fresh, whereas shutting down normally and starting again at a later time doesn't?

[Jerry_Atrick]

By default, yes... You can change the default behaviour. Would have to google how to set it to shut down completely on shut down - did it so long ago.

 

It does this tby taking a copy of what is in your memory and disk paging, and sotring it on disk. The next time you boot up, it loads that for faster loading than rebooting from scratch.

[old man emu]

All this talk about cleaning up hard drives, I'm beginning the think that I had better fire up my air compressor and give the insides of my computer a good blast of air to get rid of the dust and fluff that must have settled on the circuit boards and blades of the fan. Since it is forecast to be a hot summer, cleaning off the crap might help it run better.

[willedoo]

3 hours ago, old man emu said:

All this talk about cleaning up hard drives, I'm beginning the think that I had better fire up my air compressor and give the insides of my computer a good blast of air to get rid of the dust and fluff that must have settled on the circuit boards and blades of the fan. Since it is forecast to be a hot summer, cleaning off the crap might help it run better.

ome, I'm not sure if you're joking or not, but if not, just be careful of the static, it's a known component killer. I've only had a problem once when I fried a fax card I was about to install in a desk top computer. I wasn't wearing an anti static wrist strap and was handling the card on my desk when I heard a very audible crack. The card was stone dead after that. The other 99 out of 100 times you can get away with it.

 

 

[old man emu]

11 minutes ago, willedoo said:

I'm not sure if you're joking or not

I was fair dinkum. My place is quite dusty for obvious and other reasons, and the computer is oldish. The fan blades normally will accumulate muck on their leading edges, and that can throw them out of balance and wear the bearings. Also dust on the components would inhibit radiation and convection cooling, which could lead to failure.

 

I suppose if I limit the air blasts to the cooling fan, things might be OK. I wasn't going to handle any of the boards.

[willedoo]

With the mother board etc., it would be a lot safer to use lung power to blow the dust out. The air compressor on the electronic components would be a recipe for disaster.

 

I get a terrible amount of dust at my place which loves to accumulate in the computers. Unsealed driveway and a lot of natural dirt around the place is the culprit. I've never lined a lot the internal walls since building the place and the dust settles on the 4x2 wall noggins and plates. Next plan is to gyprock the walls; at least it will be easier to keep the dust out of the building.

[old man emu]

1 minute ago, willedoo said:

it would be a lot safer to use lung power to blow the dust out.

You suggest I take the wheezy way out?

[spacesailor]

OR 

That little brush that attaches to the vacuum- cleaner .

Just use the very tip of the brush to stroke over those bits that need it .

You can get a ' can ' of air to do your " blowing " , just don't put an " air-horn " on the cannister. 

spacesailor

[onetrack]

To clean computer innards, I use the vacuum cleaner with the soft brush nozzle and assist the vacuum cleaner with a small paint brush.

Make sure you clean out the power supply unit, too - I find they collect the most dust, and they're buggers to clean, you usually have to unscrew the PSU, take it out of the case, and take the cover off it, as well.

I've lost more PSU's than any other computer component and I reckon overheating has done most of them in.

[nomadpete]

Heat is the enemy of any electronic device.

[old man emu]

4 hours ago, nomadpete said:

Heat is the enemy of any electronic device.

Geez! I'm a robot!

[willedoo]

On 11/09/2023 at 5:18 PM, Jerry_Atrick said:

The .net framework has incremental process improvements with each release, but that alone wouldn't have fixed it by as much as you have said. You may well have been running a process that terminated on a restart

Jerry, I've thought about that and it must be what happened. The updates force a restart which was the likely cause of the correction. The update would probably have just been the coincidental participant in the process that caused the restart. Until the update, I'd just been shutting down normally and rebooting.

[old man emu]

The advice I've been given is to turn the computer off at the wall at least once a week so that when it is turned back on it has "forgotten" all the accumulated garbage it had picked up and it starts with a clean slate.

 

What's the computer equivalent of a "clean slate"?

[nomadpete]

18 minutes ago, old man emu said:

What's the computer equivalent of a "clean slate"?

A:- a missing boot sector

[old man emu]

7 minutes ago, nomadpete said:

A:- a missing boot sector

Like a hole in my shoe?

 

[spacesailor]

On the Samsung Galaxy,  there is No physical hard-drive. It is SSD of some sort 

SO cannot repair the drive . Or access it .

spacesailor

[willedoo]

Here's a tip for anyone who deals regularly with multiple folders and folders within folders. The standard Windows folders can be a bit difficult to navigate through if you have folders within folders within folders. Getting to where you want to be can be a bit like going down a rabbit hole.

 

I get around this by making custom folder icons with a highly recognisable image on the icon that is indicative of the contents. That way, when navigating, I can get through them fairly quickly by spotting the visual image and not having to rely on reading the folder name.

 

Step 1. is to make a generic folder image in an image editor (first photo below). You can use this as a blank for all or some of the folders and it can be any colour you like. I use the one colour and make it similar to the standard Windows folder icon colour.

 

Step 2. is to open the blank you created in an image editor and superimpose the desired image on it. (second photo below - this is a folder icon I use for an oxygen regulator folder). The blank can be cropped to fit the added image. The icon you have created can then be saved in a format accepted by online icon generators. This is usually .jpg, .png, or .bmp.

 

Step 3. is to use an online converter to convert your icon image to ICO format. There's plenty of choice but I usually use this one: https://icoconvert.com/  The converter is fairly intuitive. With this particular icon generator, click browse to browse to the location of your image, then click upload. Once your image uploads and appears on the screen, go to step 5 at the bottom of the page (convert and download).  Click convert ICO, then click 'download your icon'. Step 4 on the page, 'Select the icon format' is set to ICO by default.

 

Step 4. is to use your freshly minted ICO image to change your folder.

 - right click the folder - properties - customise - change icon - browse (browse to the location of your ICO file) - click ok - in the remaining box click apply then ok and it's done. This is for Windows 10 but probably fairly standard for other systems.

 

At first it sounds like a lot of work, but once you get the hang of it, it's fairly quick and the benefits of it are long lasting if you do a lot of folder navigation.

 

       

[nomadpete]

Computer Wizz's......

 

Anyone else see Mr Albanese's latest announcement?

As reported by ABC news this morning:

 

"Microsoft will help Australia build a "cyber shield" to fend off global online threats under a plan to sink billions of dollars into securing and expanding the national digital economy."

 

Whilst Microsoft imply they are paying for it:

 

"Microsoft says the project is part of its biggest investment in Australia in its 40-year history: a $5 billion plan to expand infrastructure and skills, with a focus on cloud technology and artificial intelligence."

 

And the PM says:

 

"People want to know that their privacy has been protected at the same time."

 

But our government mandates that the telcos all must store our every click for (I think) two yoears just in case they need to investigate our activities. Isn't that a bigger risk for data mining?

Microsoft seem to have pulled off the biggest open checkbook IT deal in the country.

 

And I thought the Turnbull NBN half cooked NBN was a budget busting mess.

 

Should put this in gripes threads, grumble grumble.

[onetrack]

Yep, hand over all our cyber-security to a Global Corporation whose primary aim is to ensure all customers are captive customers, and then bleed all those captive customers dry, for as long as they've got money left.

MS policy is the classic American, "nickel and dime them". Every single thing you want to do, that used to be free, or included in the deal, now comes at an extra cost.

[facthunter]

Microsoft have a reputation to protect and the resources. Nev

[nomadpete]

3 hours ago, facthunter said:

Microsoft have a reputation to protect and the resources. Nev

Yeah, just like Google.

 

[facthunter]

The job is yours. Who would you get to do it?   Nev

[nomadpete]

2 hours ago, facthunter said:

The job is yours. Who would you get to do it?   Nev

Fair point Nev. However, Microsoft has always maximised profit over quality. That is why their operating systems historically 'worked ok' but were always released full of vulnerabilities and flaws.

 

Based on that, I wouldn't trust them. But I don't know who to suggest.

Maybe Jerry is better placed to answer.

[Jerry_Atrick]

Unless I missed something, what is that that Microsoft protects, exactly? Windows defender is a relatively recent addition,a dn for years, MS has relied on third parties to come in and wreite all sorts of cybersecurity software and develop all sorts of cybersecurity softwarer to plug their holes. This has changed obviously, since MS entered the enterprise applications and operating systems markets, as corporations could handle their word docs being compromised, but server apps, which ran on terminals or virtual terminals, were generally safe until n-=tier architecture was rolled out to a critical mass.

 

In terms of the new agreement, I scoured the sites earleir this morning, and there isn't (or wasn't) much more than what was printed in the ABC website, which, to be honest, was pretty scant in detail. As far as I can tell, MS will invest 5bn in establishing 5 more data centres, setting up a technical eecosystem for cyber-security and employing locals to transition some of the knowledge to.

 

Notice they talk about the cloud, which is essentially their data centres running a platform call Microsoft Azure. If I were a bettting man, this cyber iron-dome they are talking about will only protect those that are on Azure.. My guess will be that corporations will have to subscribe to Azure to at least make use of it, if they don't have to port their on-premises or other cloud-based applications to Azure. And guess what, suddenly you have the lion's share of large corporates on your books and of course, you can offer htem a seamless transition to Azure as a result. Meaning their $5bn investment has returned very handsomely at the cost of competition.

 

Call my a COB (cynical ol' bar steward), but with the info at hand, I can't see it being anything else.

 

And why on earth woudl the signals directorate coutsource to a cloud provider national cybersecurity is beyond me. I am guessing that there will be a second eqivalent of a firewall behinf what Microsoft put up.

 

BTW, I was reading today that there are block hammers, which is malicious code that flips bits in certain areas of chips which is starting to cause some headaches as they don't operate like any other virus/malware. AI will bot foresee revolutionary new threats.

[nomadpete]

Thanks Jerry.

I was most confused by the seemingly contradiction between 5 billion investment by MS, and the 5 billion being invested by our trusty government.

 

Does it equate to ten billion total?

 

And my cynical self cannot see anybody 'investing' 5 billion dollars anywhere without having first made a pretty solid cost benefit analysis behind the decision. MS historically has not worked as a charity. So if they commit that sum, a business usually expects to recover at least twice that over a couple of years - and it has to all come from our pockets.