KB890830 windows malicious software removal tool

KB890830 windows software malicious removal tool appears to hang or freeze at 0% for a very long time, or seems to take a long time to install.

Relax do something else. it is scanning the system and windows can't be arsed to tell you this.

How to disable seatbelt chime in subaru cars

First why am I doing this. simple I can and I will. Also I am not responsible for you or someone you know doing this and then getting injured because you/they drove with no seat belt. driving without a seat belt is retarded. This method only works for some Subaru cars.

Second I always wear my seat belt but hate the chime. I am not a child that needs to be scolded in to doing something.

Third do not worry your silly little head about if I sell it, it can be re-enabled easily. just repeat the sequence or disconnect the battery for 1 minute. Reconnect the sensor.

OK how to do it:

1. Buy a seat belt extender. good luck with that. I have not been able to find one that works for my 2015 Subaru Forester. you will want the shortest one you can get. If the extender male tab does not look like the pic below it probably won't work. the measurements of the tab are 1 inch wide by about 1.25 inches long. plugging in an extender satisfies the sensor but allows you to unplug the seat at your whim without being scolded.

 

2. The 20 clicks method. 

Get in your car.
Close the door.
turn off your AC (it doesn't matter if you do this).
hold the tab in your left hand.
insert the key in the ignition, turn it 2 clicks to ON, but do not start the car.
within 30 seconds insert the tab in the buckle and remove it 20 times.
each insert, remove = 1 click.
do this with the cadence of:
click mississippi
click mississippi
when you remove the tab the last time turn the car back to ACC then start the car.
The seat belt light should come on and the chime will activate once (each time the car is started with seat belt off).
Now with the seat belt off drive the car up to 20 mph. the seat belt light should come on once but no chime.
If the chime comes on you did something wrong or your car requires a slightly different method.

3. Go to a dealer and have them disable it.

4. Unplug the sensor connection under the seat. I will not explain how to do this, as this is the most difficult method.

 If your car has push button start read the manual on how to put the car on without starting it. I cannot help with push button start cars. actually I won't help do this at all.

How to setup POP3 to Outlook for YAHOO mail

Cox internet has stopped supporting email and transferred all accounts to yahoo. They provide instructions for setting up POP3 but those instructions suck ass.

Here is what you need to do to connect outlook and possibly other apps to your new yahoo servers. These instructions assume you are on a computer not a phone. I cannot help for problems on phones.

First thing is make sure that if you have folders in your cox webmail that those emails are moved to one of the standard folders, any personal folders seem to not be transferred (why? because fuck you).

next click the link in the email from yahoo (to login) which will probably not work especially if you have other yahoo accounts. fear not, just go to https://mail.yahoo.com/ and login with your cox credentials:

full email address

current password on your cox email account.

answer the questions about how you want the webmail to look.

it will prompt you to enter a new password. do that.

once logged in verify that you have emails. there should be some about unexpected login (that would be you).

now go to: https://login.yahoo.com/account/security

scroll down till you see:

How you sign in to Yahoo and look for "Generate and manage app passwords, click on that and type in the apps name (does not have to be exact). click generate password. it will give you a 16 character password click on copy to get it to the clipboard.

I will not provide detailed instruction on how to get in to outlooks settings or any other app.

now go in to outlook or whatever app you have and change the following:

your username is now your full email address

the password is the 16 character generated password.

Incoming Mail (POP) Server
Server - pop.mail.yahoo.com
Port - 995
Requires SSL - Yes

Secure password authentication enabled.

Outgoing Mail (SMTP) Server
Server - smtp.mail.yahoo.com
Port - 465 or 587 (465 worked for me)
Requires SSL - Yes
Requires TLS - Yes (if available) or just select ssl/tls
Requires authentication - Yes

if your app has an option to test the settings do that. if it worked it should say the test completed. if it failed you did something wrong.

how to get charities to stop sending you mail

Are you receiving tons of mail from charities? was it because you gave to some charity? or did you have a family member die that was giving to charities and you need them to stop?

Here is what you need to do.

create an excel spreadsheet or a list in notepad or even word.

Every time mail comes in open it and look for an email address or website. go to that website and look for the organization contact us, or about us link. usually at the bottom of the page.

Sometimes they have a contact form. Select opt out, or general inquiry. if neither of those exists pick the one closest to just contacting them.

Sometimes they will have email addresses. look for one for general inquiry or marketing or even donations. If you can find a list of actual people pick one or more of them.

Use this format for the email:

Subject: Opt out, remove from mailing lists

body: To whom it may concern
Please remove (name as it is on the envelope you received) from your list and any affiliated lists and do not share his/her information. Do not call him/her. he/She is dead (obviously do not include both he/she)
please do not send anything to:
the address on the envelope

We will not donate to you or anyone.
You have been notified and by law you must remove him/her from your list.
we are inundated with donation requests and are fed up with it.

Keep track of who you have contacted. note how many times it takes for each organization. it can take several months for the mail to stop from just one organization. You may have to send multiple request. you may have to find a different contact, or send a letter, or even call. Most charities will respond if you give them a return email address. I would recommend that you put wording in the emails to NOT add your email to any charity lists, or create an email account just for opting out.

My mother-in-law passed away in 2020, it took 3 years to get the mail to stop. some of it got forwarded to our new house when we moved even though we gave no forwarding address.

Be persistent. we had to send emails and fill out forms for 112 different charities before they got the hint. also NEVER donate to any charity by mail or website you will be put on mailing lists and charities will contact you that you do not care about.

Liftmaster Garage door range issue

My garage door opener (Chamberlain Liftmaster pro 3280/3280-267) has been working fine up until I had my house and garage door painted (yeah I know that sounds odd).

Before the house was painted I could open the door from about 60 feet away with the 373LM remote, and about 100 feet with my Subaru homelink.

Now I have trouble getting the homelink to work at all, and the 373LM will sometimes work about 40 to 50 feet, and sometimes I have to get about 25 feet from the opener.

What I have tried:
new batteries in remotes.
running coax to an antenna outside the garage.
checking the openers circuit board for cold solder joints. re-soldering some even though they looked fine.
extending the antenna on the unit to a full wave length. removing the outside antenna I had installed earlier.
checked for interference on 315mhz (there is none) I have an SDR radio so I can look at a large chunk of the spectrum. nothing transmits within 1mhz of 315mhz (or really at all near me).

Replaced my LED bulbs with incandescent.
re-calibrating my remote. it was off frequency by 500khz. same for my wife's (hers is having similar issues).
purchased a Chamberlain 953EV-P2 which is supposed to work up to 1500 feet (it seems to work no better than the old remote). it is off frequency by 10khz (which is within spec).

I do not want to use a phone app to control the door as that is clunky.

One morning I had an appointment and took my portable SDR with me. I seem to be chasing multiple issues. while monitoring the SDR when I pulled out of the garage I tried to close the door with my subaru homelink which would not work I found that the homelink signal was very strong, distorted, and wandering all over the spectrum.

my old 373LM remote seemed to be dead (no signal on SDR).

the new remote worked fine to close the door.

After that I decided to do more checking for interference on 315mhz.

I didn't really see anything until I turned the gain and amplification all the way up on my SDR. the background noise level (per my sdr with all amplification off) is -85dbfs.

You can just make out a slight "throbbing" of about 1hz in the background noise that turns in to a hump from 308mhz to 327mhz when amplification is turned all the way up. I highly doubt this is causing a problem as it isn't even measurable normally. though I am intrigued as to what it might be. there is a military base 12 miles away, though I can't really pickup any radio activity from my house from there.

on another day I left the house to visit someone and had trouble closing the door and had to resort to using my alarm app. when I came home 7 hours later I was able to open the door from a reasonable distance with the newest remote.

I reprogrammed my homelink and had a lot of trouble getting it to accept the signal.

Drove home one day and could not get the door to open with any of the remotes at all. had to open with my app. I do not like using the apps because it way more involved than just pressing a button.

I found that what I thought was as dead battery in my 373LM was a cold solder joint on the main chip on the circuit board. The signal on the 373lm is all over the place but mostly within spec though sometimes will wander off by as much as 500khz. just to see if it would help I replaced the 4.7uf electrolytic with a new on which made no difference.

Pulled the main board in the opener this morning, found 3 electrolytic capacitors with high ESR. several that tested fine but I replaced anyways. there was one loose trace to one of the capacitors, don't know if I broke it or it was always like that.

Checked the cap on the power supply, it had a low ESR (which is good) I left it in since I did not have a replacement of that voltage. Resoldered anything that look suspicious under my video microscope.

I removed the original antenna and added a short coax lead going to a BNC connector so I can easily experiment with different antennas. yes there is strain relief. Antenna is half wave.

tested range and there seems to be a slight increase but I will have to test from the car at a later date.

Here are some things I found while working on this:

The older remotes use a tuning capacitor to align the signal. not 100% sure about this but it appears that they may tune the wide button at 315.5mhz instead of right on 315mhz as the Chamberlain FCC paperwork indicated. The FCC papers say that it is supposed to be 315mhz +/- .1% or 315khz FCC tolerance is .25%. if you want to find the paperwork google the FCC id and fcc the ID is on the back of the remotes. it's a somewhat technical read.

so the 3 buttons seem to be on slightly different frequencies. at least that is what it looks like on the spectrum from my SDR. If the wide button is on 315mhz then the other 2 will be at a slightly lower frequency separated by 100 or 200khz. This is true for the 953EV-P2, though this unit seems to be self tuning as there is no adjustments. all the remotes I tried have a signal that wanders, though the opener does not seem to care.

on my board there was a space on the circuit board for attaching a coax connector. I did not have one that was of the design but it is nice to know.

I have had a chance to test the remotes since working on the main board in the opener.

I was still having problems with the handheld remotes but my homelink in my car was back to normal after the opener re-learned it. it could open the door from about 50 feet away (which is about what it did before. Sometimes (before all this) it would work from 75 to 100 feet away in certain instances.

however mine and my wife's 373LM and my 953EV-P2 would still not work unless they were less than 20 feet from the opener (with the door closed).

I re-learned all the handheld remotes (before going somewhere) and coming back to the house my 373LM worked from about 50 feet away. I had not tested the other ones yet.

I suspect that with the failing capacitors and maybe something else I am not aware of it is possible that the memory on the opener got corrupted.

upon testing all the remote everything seems to be back to normal. so it appears it was multiple issues:
bad capacitors on opener PCB.
possibly corrupt memory in opener.
possible cold solder joints in 1 or more remotes and PCB of opener.

 Don't try to calibrate the remotes. without proper equipment you can put them way off frequency or they will not transmit at all. a tiny microscopic movement of the adjustment will put the signal WAY off. Do not make any adjustments to the tuning slug on the opener PCB (metal can with hole in the top). 

I was still not getting the range I wanted so I added an antenna connected by coax to the opener, the antenna was 36" long and put between the 2 garage doors. now I can open the door with my car homelink from the neighbors house in front of their garage.

Dealing with solicitors of any kind

Are you tired of solar companies, exterminators, lawn services, religious organizations, or any other companies/organizations leaving flyers on your door, throwing bags of rocks/gravel in your driveway with flyers attached, knocking on your door, or in anyway soliciting you on your property?

good news, here is how to stop or reduce it:

check you local city ordinance and see if there is one regarding soliciting. If there is have a sign made with large bold letters that says NO SOLICITING followed by the ordinance in question. Post this where it is clearly visible. You can have these signs made on Amazon for not a lot of money.

When companies/organizations violate this you can try to report it, OR if you can identify the company leave a one star review explaining what they did, and quoting the ordinance in question. IF there is no ordinance just leave a 1 star review explaining what they did. You can try calling them but in most cases it will not do any good. they need a permanent reminder where everyone can see what they did.

This applies to churches soliciting is soliciting unless religious organizations are specifically exempted they cannot solicit you to come to their church if a sign is posted. Also put up a sign that says No Canvassers to stop political jerks from bugging you.

Configure a computer to go to sleep and wake up again automatically

Recently I needed to put a computer to sleep and wake it up in the morning at a specific time, while keeping it logged in. Simple right? WRONG! The computer also had to be logged in.

First these instructions will not be detailed step by step (google it) and are not in the order I tried them, they are in the order that should work.

You will need:
scheduled tasks that run with highest privileges, one of which wakes the computer to run.
To configure Autologon if needed (google it).
A modernish computer that supports wake timers (in the bios) from a cmd line type:
powercfg /a
look for:
The following sleep states are available on this system:
    Standby (S3)
there might be others listed.
sysinternals psshutdown64.exe or psshutdown.exe
nircmd.exe... what's that? you've never heard of it? it's a wonderful command line program that does hundreds of very useful things. https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html
A batch file (we will discuss later).
Put all these files in a single non system folder.

Lets start:

disable any screensavers.
disable putting the computer to sleep automatically.
disable hibernate "powercfg -h off"

Stop Windows 10 from asking for password from sleep mode
In Settings, click on Accounts.
On the left side of the "Accounts" Settings window, click on Sign-in options.
Under Sign-in options, locate the drop down menu for Require sign-in.
select never

in regedit.exe under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power
add a Reg_Dword PlatformAoAcOverride set it to 0
this will disable "modern standby" S0. Because Microsoft hates you.

In an administrator cmd window issue this command:
powercfg -attributes SUB_SLEEP 7bc4a2f9-d8fc-4469-b07b-33eb785aaca0 -ATTRIB_HIDE
this will make a very important option visible. why is it not visible? because Microsoft hates you.

In control panel\power options enable wake timers, set "turn off display after" to never, and set "system unattended sleep timeout" (which you can now see) to a number of minutes that you want the computer to stay awake without keyboard or mouse movement (after a wake up) in my case 960.

Why? because microsoft decided that if you wake the computer and no one uses it in 2 minutes, it goes back to sleep. because Microsoft hates you.

To put the computer to sleep I created a task scheduler event and used sysinternals psshutdown64.exe file with the command "psshutdown64.exe -d -t 0".

Now the following solved the difficult part of getting the computer AND monitor to turn on.

create a bat or cmd file and add the following lines:

timeout /t 90
nircmd monitor on

if that does not work try:
nircmd async_monitor on
or
nircmd sendmouse move 1000 100

Create a task scheduler event that runs ONLY if the user is logged in (this is important), and wakes the computer to run. also in triggers set "stop task if it runs longer than" to 30 minutes. task scheduler may report the task running from the previous day. You may need to schedule a task that just runs this command 5 minutes before the wake up monitor command:

cmd /c "exit"

The scheduled event should run the batch file you just created.

now for the rant:
I needed a computer to:
autologon (if fully shutdown and then turned on).
keep the monitor on at all times.
keep the computer logged in at all times.
at a specified time put the computer to sleep in a state that it could wake up from and continue where it left off without having to login or restart programs.
wake up at a specific time.

the problems begin with the computer waking up but I had to manually login. Once that was solved the next problem was that the computer was not going to sleep in a wakeable state, it was going in to "modern sleep" (S0) which did not wake up properly. I needed the mode (S3) that shows a blinking power light. The computer cannot hibernate because hibernation requires a power button press to wake up. I could not use wake on lan because I did not want this to be reliant on another computer.

Microsoft does not want you leaving a computer running, and logged in because "muh security".

Microsoft put a hidden option so that if you commanded a computer to wake up and no one used it in 2 minutes it would go back to sleep (muh security). so I was getting the computer to wake up but it would go right back to sleep again.

If you don't enable wake timers then task scheduler cannot wake the computer to run a task.

I had to use sysinternals psshutdown because the more common (RUNDLL32.EXE powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState 0,1,0) command apparently does not work right and has never worked right.

The next major issue was that the computer would wake up but not the monitor. I tried using some simple VBS script (to issue key presses) I found on line but that did not work. there were some ridiculously complicated powershell scripts to move the mouse that I did not want to use either.

That's when I stumbled on nircmd. I powerful little stand alone program that does many many things. however it's command to move the mouse cursor did not work, nor did it's command to change display resolutions. I ran in to a problem where the nircmd monitor on would turn the monitor on and it would go right back off. I tried async_on and it did the same thing.The command that worked was a simple one: sendmouse move 1000 100. Sendmouse is different from the movecursor command.

the next step was to add a program that starts automatically after the computer is turned on or logged out and back in again.

however because this is an app from the microsoft store it is not intuitive.

the more common instructions:
select Start , then select Settings > Apps > Startup. Make sure any app you want to run at startup is turned On.

If you don’t see the Startup option in Settings, right-click (or select and hold) Start , select Task Manager, then select the Startup tab. (If you don’t see the Startup tab, select More details.) Right-click (or select and hold) the app you want to change, then select Enable to run it at startup or Disable so it doesn’t run.
didn't work because it did not show up there.

I finally found this set of instructions (works in 10 or 11):
https://www.elevenforum.com/t/add-app-to-run-automatically-at-startup-in-windows-11.6079/

1 Open File Explorer (Win+E).

2 Copy and paste shell:startup into the address bar of File Explorer, and press Enter to open your account's Startup folder.

3 Add or create a shortcut of any app, folder, drive, file, script, etc... you want to run at startup for your account into this Startup folder. Drag an APP from the start menu into that folder

There might have been other things I did, but I did not keep notes on everything, so if all this does not work for you I cannot help with that.

Fuck you microsoft and fuck you edge

I got updates to windows 10 on 11-14-2023 kb5032189, kb5032005, and servicing stack 10.0.19041.3684. not trusting microsoft I opened edge and checked that certain webpages for local equipment I have that MUST use internet explorer were not messed with. found that of the 5 of them, 4 were removed from internet explorer mode and had to be added back. fuck you microsoft, I'm not some newb who doesn't know better. If I have sites that open in internet explorer mode then those sites only work right in internet explorer mode because they rely on active-x apps and there is no updates for them. I will continue to use them until the devices fail. mind your own business microsoft.

I suspect servicing stack 10.0.19041.3684 is the culprit, as every time I get one of these something gets  fucked up, or changed to serve heir microsoft.

Accessing Q-see QR474-1 4 channel DVR remotely

If you have a Q-See QR474-1 DVR or some other Qsee DVR from before they went out of business, and you want to access it remotely from your phone.

You can do it using the Onvier APP. These are not detailed instructions.

add a new device manually. select generic RTSP stream.

name the device.

add the URL in this format:

rtsp://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:554/ch1/0

the X's represent the IP the camera is on.

Channel 1 is ch1, 2 is ch2, 3 is ch3, 4 is ch4.

the zero on the end is the stream, 0 for master 1 for the lower quality sub stream

put in the username and password and hit test. if it works it should tell you it succeeded. 

you will have to do this for each camera channel. Same for accessing it externally once you open the 554 port on your router/firewall and point it to the DVR.

also if your Q-see HD DVR does not record motion even though it's turned on and scheduled, it appears that 1 or both send email and ftp upload have to be enabled for the camera. Email and FTP do not need to be configured but for some weird reason it won't record if they are disabled.

if you click save and the screen does not look like this with the channel number highlighted in green it will not record that channel. if you set everything like in this image and it still does not record motion then go in to maintenance, load default, and select alarm, and then click save.

Uniden Bearcat BC296D LIPO/lithium ion battery mod

For many years I have been trying to find a solution to the atrocious BC296D Uniden battery pack (BP120 / BP150 / BP180 / BP250). Other battery packs that held normal AA batteries would not fit. The garbage nicad/nimh battery tech made replacing the rechargeable batteries with something better (like Lithium ion) difficult. single cell lion bats put out a voltage of only 4.2v max, lower than the low battery voltage of a nicad battery pack.

most lion/lipo battery chargers only charged the battery and did not have an output voltage connection AND also would not fit inside the battery compartment. They would also require some kind of boost converter (taking up more space). The boost converter would increase the output voltage of the battery to at least 6vdc

Recently my intermittent (but relentless) searching finally found a combination of components that would fit in the compartment WITH a battery that was the same mah or higher than the nicad packs AND would have a service life longer than nicad/nimh.

for this mod you will need:
1 - J5019 combination 1S single battery charger/boost converter with built in BMS.

1 - LIPO battery pack measuring 10mm X 40mm X 50mm (thickness x length x width) or some type of lithium ion battery that will fit in the compartment with the other components and be of sufficient mah. the lipo or 18650 must have a protection circuit. most lipos do, 18650s usually do not.

1 - DC barrel connector socket that will fit in the narrow confines of the side of the case.

1 - 5v-8v DC power supply.

The resolve to alter your scanner.

I found a DC socket that just fit, carefully measured everything and found a LIPO battery that was 2400mah that also just fit. The boost converter/battery charger fit perfectly as well.

I used 3M 100mph double sided tape to hold the battery in. the BMS has 2 LED's on it a red one for charging and a green one for charged. it has a tiny POT to adjust the output voltage. I set mine to 5.99 volts because it was finicky. I reused the old battery packs connector.

the board is held in with hot glue. the BMS can charge at up to 1 amp. You can run the scanner while it is charging. I have not noted any interference from the boost converter (yet).

You cannot use the original power plug with this mod.

Dell UPS 500W Charger Fault or battery disconnected

Dell UPS 500W reports a Charger Fault/failure or battery disconnected.

Pull the batteries out, take the plastic case off, disconnect the batteries from each other and check voltages. if any battery are 1 volt or more different from the others:

One battery reads between 12.5 to 13.1 volts and the other reads 11 volts or lower the lower reading battery may be bad. Try charging it on a 12 volt battery charger for an hour or 2 if it goes back to the original reading or quickly goes below 12 volts it is bad.

Replace both batteries batteries.

On the UPS clear the error if it does not clear itself. Press and hold the left arrow button, then go through the menu until you find the option to clear the error log and reset error condition.

QT428 System Initializing boots to nothing

I have a Q-see Qt428 it belongs to my brother. he reported that after a power surge it would not start up properly.

unit is 12 years old. I did some checking and found that every single capacitor on the board is bad. So I replaced them. same results won't fully start up.

tried a different power supply. same results. replaced HD no dice. after about 6 to 8 hours of searching the internet I stumbled on an ebay review that states the devices can be recovered by putting firmware on a USB stick and turning the unit on, the device would supposedly load the firmware. Problem is I don't have any firmware.

contacted the reviewer and had to play 20 questions, he pointed me at a supposed firmware file which when put on usb stick and placed in the unit, got accessed but did nothing more. I contacted "q-see" and have not yet heard back from them.

this device gave my googlefu a massive work out. I went on a wild goose chase for firmware (which ended up NOT being the problem).

Every single electrolytic capacitor in this device was bad, very high ESR to not even being seen by my capacitor testers. how it was working at all I do not know.

Before 

                                                                                   After

Replacing the capacitors did not change anything.

So in my searching I found little tidbits of information here, and there like:

this unit is the same as a TVT TD-2308SE which led me to TVT's site where I found GARBAGE instructions on how to access the linux OS on the unit through ye olde fashioned RS232 com port. the purpose of which was to upload firmware which their site had none of.

Now of course all my new computers don't have a COM ports so I had to dust off an old DELL laptop I keep for such instances. BUT the unit has a TTL com port and cannot directly interface with RS232. luckily I had a TTL to RS232 converter I got for another project.

of course there are no pinouts on the main board of this unit as to what is what. but I determined where +5v and ground were. 

 said a hail Mary and plugged it in. 

just friction fit and did not push it through all the way.

next I consulted the worthless TVT doc which had zero information on the what settings to use. It ended up being 115200bps n,8,1, software handshake.

as soon as I put that in to putty and connected I saw a prompt and something constantly repeating about there being no more space. I spent a good hour trying to follow the instructions to update the firmware with the supposed firmware that the ebay reviewer directed me to. It never worked.

after a crash course in linux commands (I'm a Windows and DOS guy) I went to plan B trying to fix the file system since it appeared the flash memory was full. I finally located a TMP folder and noticed a 490k file with a name (similar to) zxzycxwv or something like that (probably a random name). I deleted it, and the error message about no more space disappeared. I restarted the device and BOOM it started up normal and the only information lost was the time and date (dead CR2032) battery. 

Adobe Bridge CS5.1 not running correctly

Adobe Bridge CS5.1 opens runs for a bit says not responding and closes, or opens and closes immediately. application logs may have an Exception code: 0xc0000005.

Press Ctrl key when launching Bridge CS5.1. Once Reset Settings dialog appears select Reset Preferences and Purge Thumbnail Cache, then press OK button. I recommend disabling startup scripts in preferences when bridge runs.

Editing or removing security from a printable PDF

If you have a (secured) PDF and you want to copy text from it, perform OCR, or for whatever reason remove security, AND it can be printed. do the following:
Print the PDF with the Microsoft XPS Document Printer.
Open the .oxps document with XPS viewer.
Print the document as a PDF (if you have that capability).
document now unsecured. OCR or whatever.

There may be weird issues if there are watermarks.

microsoft edge hassles and problems

It appears that my microsoft edge was never upgrading since I got my computer. the problem appears to have  been that a zero length file named "temp" (with no security) in the folder C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge was causing the problem. added myself to the security (full control) and deleted it. ran the edge install and BAM I could update it. Edge installers and updaters were to retarded to tell me the exact folder name.

Then microsoft edge decided I needed to see ads and garbage on new tabs. I installed the add on/ extension Custom new Tab which edge immediately disabled. I then enabled it and set it to what I wanted. Then Edge decided that ALL attempts to open internet explorer would be redirected to edge I don't want that. the following fixed that issue.

You can stop Internet Explorer to Edge redirect by disabling the IEToEdge Browser Helper Object (BHO) from the registry editor. Here’s how.

1. Open the registry editor.
2. Paste the below path in the address bar and press Enter.
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Ext\CLSID
3. On the right panel, double-click on the “{1FD49718-1D00-4B19-AF5F-070AF6D5D54C}” value.
4. Change the Value Data from “1” to “0”.
5. Click on the “Ok” button.
6. Close the registry editor.

 all this for a browser I won't be using.

error messages I received when trying to update or install:

An error occurred while checking for updates: Check whether you have free disk space and permission to install software. We couldn't create a temporary directory. (error code 7: 0x80040902: 11 -- system level).

Check whether you have free disk space and permission to install software. We couldn't create a temporary directory.

Rsrteng DM-SCD405I5AP-V04-E IP PTZ camera RTSP stream not working with VLC

Rsrteng cameras are rebranded Huisun cameras. do not select english on the website, open in chrome and have it translate. If you select english you get a different website. Either way there are no useful downloads for this camera.
the rtsp stream URL for VLC is:
rtsp://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:554/PSIA/streaming/channels/101 

use your IP in place of the xxx's.

Issues with the cameras:

Will show your password sometimes when logging in from a browser (reboot camera to fix).

Unable to get NFS to work, unknown why no errors generated.

Be very careful handling the unit, very difficult to remove and install screws in cover over SD card. Can easily rotate and possibly mess up gears.

Iif you leave the video open in a tab and then go to another tab the video will stop and you have to click on something else and then back to live. click on sub then click back on live

slow network transfer rates copying or moving small files QNAP Synology

Do you have a QNAP NAS?

can you copy or move very large files with gigabit speeds like around 100+MBps? (megabytes per second).
but when you copy small files the transfer rate drops to 10, 5, 1, or even 0kbps (kilobits per second).
sometimes sitting at zero for minutes?
If you use the app CX file explorer on your phone and the transfer rates are way higher than on your computer them the problem is on the computer.
have forums been telling you that this is normal? WELL IT'S NOT! they just don't know what to tell you.
I'd like to be able to give you an exact reason why this is happening, but it may have multiple causes.

Here's what I suggest:
check all cables and devices support the speed you are trying for.
check your MTU, is it the same on all devices?
drivers, updates, lan card settings, yadda, yadda, yadda!
check SMB versions on all devices.
disable encryption.
disable any compression.
check share permissions.
disable server signing.
if joined to a domain is the device still joined (this was an issue for me).
disable anti-virus scanning the NAS drives by letter and UNC (also an Issue).
If .jpg transfers are slow are thumbs.db accessible and changeable?

I read somewhere that creating a new profile can fix some NAS issues. in my case I logged in to my computer as a user that had never logged in before and mapped a drive. then logged out and back in as me and suddenly the speed issue is gone.

I did all of the above to get my QNAP transfer rates to what they should be.
My synology was having issues but not as bad. disabling virus scanning fixed the issue for it.

Windows 10 Strange problems recently appear caused by microsoft ransomeware protection

 recently I had some strange issues crop up that made no sense, and if they generated errors at all they also did not make sense.

First was this one: https://robert.guildig.org/2023/03/nero-burning-rom-does-not-see-blank-or.html

the next one happened this morning. I was making a backup to blu-ray (which worked fine).
I (being a bit old school) went to a command prompt and attempted to issue this command in a folder the path of which is c:\users\username\documents\backup

command was as such dir /s d: > backup24.txt
simple right?
no! it comes back with file not found (I don't remember the exact wording).
What the heck! file not found?! it should just create the file.
now I think I'm losing my mind because I've been working on computers since dos 2.11 I've done this MILLIONS of times. after confirming I haven't suddenly developed dementia (by googling the command), I try creating the file in the GUI (which works) and run the command again.
the results:
not enough space on the disk
there's 759 gigs free!

Remembering what happened yesterday I go in to ransomware protection and sure enough CMD.EXE is blocked from accessing that folder and a bunch of other folders (most of which I never use).

I unblock it and the command works perfectly.

If the command had come back with "access denied" I would have dealt with it differently, but the unconventional errors that did not match the actions being prevented was not helpful.

I don't know when Ransomware protection was installed. my googlefu says possibly sometime in 2019, but that it was not activated by microsoft until recently (because I didn't activate it or even know about it). All this worked in september 2022.

Nero burning ROM does not see blank or any disks in burner

nero 10
problem started sometime after 9-23-2022 (last time I burned disks).
same Blu-ray/DVD/CD burner.
same media I have always used.
Reads all media just fine.
windows shows disk changes.
windows shows when disks are blank.
connect an external burner and same issue.

nero 10 suddenly stopped seeing the drives at all.
uninstalled nero 10.
purchased and installed latest version of nero 2023 25.0.1.4.
Nero now sees the drives.
place empty disk in drive nero does not see disk, but windows does.
updated firmware on drive. rebooted, nothing changed.
uninstalled drivers for drive, rebooted, nothing changed.

tried burning with windows (never did that before always used nero) takes forever and doesn't complete because it says I need 816 PB and disk is only 4.7GB or 25GB. data is 4.3GB.

contacted Nero and they were no help. found this article but not by searching for the symptoms. 

windows 10 ransomware detection was the problem.
you have to go in and allow blocked nero apps.

there was no warning or popup that a block had happened it just suddenly stopped reading or seeing disks.

very frustrating.

Magix Vegas not responding when splitting or deleting video while it plays

I have vegas 18.0 build 527 every time I split while I am playing a video or hit delete while a video is playing vegas would freeze or be not responding.

what worked for me to make this go away was to go in to Options/preferences/file I/O and put a check mark on Enable Legacy AVC decoding. now I can split while playing or hit del without lock up.