Windows - 2

Hands down KB3200970 is the worst update I've seen for Windows 10!

In general I hate Windows 10 TiWorker-process. It sucks CPU like there is no tomorrow. I cannot comprehend how difficult it is to determine if an update is needed or not. If you compare to any Linux .deb or .rpm packaging, a simple update check in Windows 10 is way too heavy. I find this kind weird. When Microsoft announced simplifying servicing models for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, the reasons were to reduce scan times and finding right patches easier. It certainly doesn't feel like it to me.

So, there is Cumulative update for Windows 10 Version 1607 and Windows Server 2016, released November 8, 2016. This is also known as KB3200970 and boy, do people have trouble installing it!

This is what happened to me:

For about 8 hours it was stuck there in the preparing phase. While doing absolutely nothing, this was my CPU-load:

Well done idiots!

Net is full of stories like mine: How to fix Windows Update in Windows 10 if it becomes stuck, Windows 10 KB3200970 issues: install fails, high CPU usage, battery drain and more and Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Version 1607 for x64-based Systems(KB3200970).

The Reddit-article had a link to KB971058, How do I reset Windows Update components? which helped some. I gave it a try and it did help.

First some services needed stopping. This is what you would run as an administrator cmd.exe:

net stop bits
net stop wuauserv
net stop appidsvc
net stop cryptsvc

In my case the wuauserv didn't stop, I had to find the process id for it and kill it manually. After all that, I attempted renaming:

Ren %systemroot%\SoftwareDistribution SoftwareDistribution.bak
Ren %systemroot%\system32\catroot2 catroot2.bak

First one failed, so I don't know what the impact was. Then I ran the entire list:

cd /d %windir%\system32

regsvr32.exe atl.dll
regsvr32.exe urlmon.dll
regsvr32.exe mshtml.dll
regsvr32.exe shdocvw.dll
regsvr32.exe browseui.dll
regsvr32.exe jscript.dll
regsvr32.exe vbscript.dll
regsvr32.exe scrrun.dll
regsvr32.exe msxml.dll
regsvr32.exe msxml3.dll
regsvr32.exe msxml6.dll
regsvr32.exe actxprxy.dll
regsvr32.exe softpub.dll
regsvr32.exe wintrust.dll
regsvr32.exe dssenh.dll
regsvr32.exe rsaenh.dll
regsvr32.exe gpkcsp.dll
regsvr32.exe sccbase.dll
regsvr32.exe slbcsp.dll
regsvr32.exe cryptdlg.dll
regsvr32.exe oleaut32.dll
regsvr32.exe ole32.dll
regsvr32.exe shell32.dll
regsvr32.exe initpki.dll
regsvr32.exe wuapi.dll
regsvr32.exe wuaueng.dll
regsvr32.exe wuaueng1.dll
regsvr32.exe wucltui.dll
regsvr32.exe wups.dll
regsvr32.exe wups2.dll
regsvr32.exe wuweb.dll
regsvr32.exe qmgr.dll
regsvr32.exe qmgrprxy.dll
regsvr32.exe wucltux.dll
regsvr32.exe muweb.dll
regsvr32.exe wuwebv.dll

Lot of them failed, but that's what the KB971058 told to do. Then starting the services:

net start bits
net start wuauserv
net start appidsvc
net start cryptsvc

Still this update tested my patience. It ran couple hours preparing after it announced, it's ready to go install. The installation took yet another couple hours. After the installation was completed and the obligatory reboot was done, Windows still reported that a reboot is required. This update really sucks ass!

Ultimately my laptop spent more than 50 hours to install all this. There were number of retrys and times than I didn't care to look to closely what's going on, so the machine had to wait for user interaction. Still the process was paintakingly long.

I wrote couple of posts about Windows 10 upgrades, but there are no more free upgrades. See:

From now on, you'll just have to pay for it.

There are couple of issues I bumped into while upgrading about dozen PCs last month alone and I'll be blogging about those later. There is no rush, as the free upgrade window closed (pun intended).

Before release of Windows 10 build 10565 in October 2015, it was pretty much impossible to do a clean install for upgrading Windows 7 or 8 without first running the upgrade on the target machine. The announcement said:

Device activation improvements: Microsoft has received a lot of feedback from Insiders on making it easier to activate Windows 10 on devices that take advantage of the free upgrade offer to genuine Windows by using existing Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 product keys. If you install this build of the Windows 10 Insider Preview on a PC and it doesn’t automatically activate, you can enter the product key from a qualifying Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 used to activate the prior Windows version on the same device to activate Windows 10 by going to Settings > Update & security > Activation and selecting Change Product Key.

In short: You can whip up your install USB and do a clean install on a machine. If its not an OEM-machine, just enter your Windows 7 or Windows 8 key at install, and the thing should activate. Nice an easy.

And to clarify the exact build number situation your box is running, go to Settings, System, About. It should have something like this:

As suggested by Ilpo in a comment he left in my blog, there is an alternative method described by article How to Directly Clean Install Windows 10 without having to Upgrade First. Of course I had to try that! And thanks Ilpo, for the suggestion.

What you need is a Windows 10 install USB-stick. Go create one with your favorite method, and if you don't have a favorite, just go for Media creation tool, it can download an install image and store it to your USB-stick for later booting.

When your install-stick is ready, go find <your USB-stick drive>:\support\gatherosstate.exe into the target machine to be upgraded. Do NOT run in at the USB-stick, COPY it. I just dragged the file into my desktop. When ran, the application will create a XML-file containing a fingerprint from the machine ran. That fingerprint can be used to active the upgraded Windows 10 installation later. Needless to say, this type of activation will work only for valid upgrade paths. You cannot upgrade Windows 8.1 with Bing into Windows 10 Pro (I tried).

Second important thing: Run the gatherosstate.exe as an Administrator. I tried to validate the run-as-Admin -requirement after the upgrade was done, but it was too late. The file generated will differ. My thinking is, that it is not necessary to run as Admin, but that's what the original instructions said.

Take a copy of the generated GenuineTicket.xml-file. You will need that later. At this point you're good to go with a clean install. Replace hard drives or just re-partition the original one, whatever your install plan is. I'm guessing you wouldn't be doing the upgrade this way if it wasn't absolutely necessary.

During Windows 10 installation do NOT enter a license key. It is possible to "skip this" and "do this later" and ultimately when the install ends run a perfectly good non-activated Windows 10.

Now its time to go activate the newly installed Windows 10. You need to locate your saved GenuineTicket.xml-file and copy it to directory %ProgramData%\Microsoft\Windows\ClipSVC\GenuineTicket. Like this:

Now the activation is only a reboot away. Go ahead and boot the thing, and confirm:

Done! Simple as pie.

I'd like to be clear on this: I did not figure this one out myself, I just bumped into Philip Yip's page about this. All the credit should go to him, I just tested this and confirmed it to be working.

One of the upgrades I did earlier this month was for a Windows Vista. Computer geeks point out two things immediately: 1) Vista! Really? Who would use that voluntarily? 2) well, it cannot be upgraded into Windows 10. Both very true. It just so happened, that there was an OEM Vista running on a computer. Vista will cease to have security upgrades on 10th April 2017, so I suggested to upgrade the thing into a 10 while I did some other work on the thing. Obviously the person owning the poor computer didn't want to pay for the upgrade, so I chose to go with Mr. Yip's method on it.

Prerequisites

For this to happen you will need:

• An USB-stick, minimum size 4 GiB
  • This will be used to host the Windows 10 installation image
  • I went to a supermarket and got a brand new 16 GiB USB3 stick for the speed improvements
• Ability to boot the target computer from the above USB-stick
  • Most computers I've worked with can do this
• Windows 10 ISO, build 10130
  • Ok, this one is harder one to come by, but it is generally available in the Big Net. I'm talking about software piracy here.
  • You will need this specific build. Older or newer ones won't do the trick.
• A piece of software to write this ISO-file into the above USB-stick and make it bootable.
  • My favorite thing for doing that is Rufus. It is a solid piece of software to write images into USB-sticks.
• Windows 10 media creation tool
  • You can get one from Microsoft's website
• Possibility to disable internet connection from the target machine and enable it when needed
• Finally: Possiblity to change the BIOS/UEFI date on the target computer.
  • This trick solely relies on the fact, that you can pretend the date to be in the history.

Also please note, that there is NO UPGRADE possibility here. This is effectively a fresh install. If you choose to re-install on top of your existing Vista installation, please take care no to lose any precious data. I installed a bigger hard drive to the computer, so I made sure that the old drive was intact during this process.

Steps

This is how the entire process goes:

1. Use Rufus to create Windows 10 build 10130 USB-stick
   
2. Boot into BIOS/UEFI setup, set date to anything around September 2015. I just bumped back the year and did my installation in "July 2015".
3. Make sure, there is no Internet connection during the installation. THIS IS IMPORTANT!
4. Boot from Windows 10 build 10130 USB. Make sure there is no Internet connectivity on the machine, so that it is impossible for it to update date via NTP or talk to Microsoft.
   1. Run Windows 10 install (for the first time)
   2. During installation, don't bother installing any security upgrades, you will re-install entire Windows 10 after this one completes.
      
   3. Wait couple of hours. This depends on your hardware speed.
   4. Remove the USB
5. Create a recent Windows 10 install USB
   • I had my own computer for media creation and didn't have to use the target computer for this. This can be a parallel process.
   • When asked about the edition, choose Win 10 Pro
6. Turn off internet time when install done. I found that one to be little tricky, but the setting is there.
   
7. Set a specific license key. For this you'll need to open CMD.exe as Administrator. If you attempt this as a regular user, ie. not right clicking the cmd.exe and selecting "run as administrator", you'll notice that soon. The command to execute is:
   slmgr /ipk 6P99N-YF42M-TPGBG-9VMJP-YKHCF
   
8. Connect to internet. THIS is the first time the install machine is allowed to get there. If your box did connect to The Net before this, you have failed.
9. Activate Windows (remember: Admin prompt):
   slmgr /ato
   
10. Now you have an activated Windows 10 running. You can go to My Computer and Properties to confirm.
    
    However, it's an old edition and you don't want to keep that. The important thing is, that now your computer's fingerprint has been stored into Microsoft's server and any subsequent Windows 10 installations will proceed without entering any license key.
11. Just insert the USB install stick with the newer Windows 10 installer (the one you created on step 5) and run setup.exe on that. There is no need for reboot or anything, just run the installer.
12. Install it again! This is your second installation.
    • I choose to keep nothing. This just makes sure, that all the old garbage will be gone after you're done.
    • Please note, that when asked for license key, don't enter any. Always select "Do this later" or "Skip". This is not needed and your newly installed Windows 10 will be activated at the end.
    • Wait 15 minutes
13. You're done! Your Windows is ready to be used.
14. Remove the first installation stored into C:\Windows.old, you don't need to keep any of that. However, the files are protected by operating system and deleting the entire directory prooved to be little tricky. I ended up booting from the USB-installation stick into rescue-mode and chose the cmd.exe from that. On prompt I entered two commands:
    del /S /F /Q c:\Windows.old
rd /S /Q c:\Windows.old

Finally

This process worked for me on 5th July 2016. I don't think this has anything to do with July 29 free upgrade -limitation.

Also I'm sure guys at Microsoft keep track of their installations. They'll know exactly how many licenses they gave out using this method. My thinking is, that they simply don't care. Pretty much all of the competition is giving out operating systems for free and they cannot for some strange reason. Anybody choosing this method needs to be aware, that in an unfortunate scenario they would deactivate all licenses distributed this way.

Happy installing! I know I created one ex-Vista user very happy with this.

Recently I've been doing a lot of Windows 10 upgrades. The free upgrade offer is about to end in less than 15 days:

There is a counter in Windows.com.

My own adoption to Win10 is pretty high, only one box left to upgrade. I'll have to resort to virtual machines for things, that I really, really need Windows 7 for.

The real-time Windows 10 adoption gauge @ gosquared.com shows one third:

That's pretty good, but not the number Microsoft guys are aiming for.

I regularily follow Mr. Gordon Kelly, a writer who publishes @ forbes.com. In December 2015 he wrote a piece with a title 'Free' Windows 10 Has An Expensive Secret. There he pretty much speculates, that Microsoft really wants to get to one billion (1.000.000.000) Windows 10 installations as fast as possible. Not giving away free upgrades to pretty much everybody wouldn't help in that. However, his post after Microsoft's May 2016 press release (Three Reasons Microsoft Stopped Free Windows 10 Upgrades) indicates, that even he gave up hope on prolonged free upgrades being available. I guess, they didn't want to get to one billion that bad. That's something Mr. Richard Hay @ winsupersite.com predicted last December.

It seems that it is possible to prolong your free upgrade offer by enabled assistive technologies. See Microsoft's blog post about that. But unless you do that, it's time to act on it or do some trickery after July 29th.

For my Windows 10 weeks, I'll be posting couple of articles what I did earlier this month with my various upgrades.

Microsoft's policy to annoy every Windows 7 and 8.1 user to the point every single one of them will be crazy is something I've addressed earlier. My previous posts are here and here.

Couple days ago I decided to go and upgrade one of my existing Windows 7 boxes. It's roughtly 2 months time left for me to get my free upgrade, also I had been staring enough the re-releases of Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB3035583), which every single time I see the upgrade being offered makes me laugh out loud. As you can see:

It reads:

Recommended update

Install this update to resolve issues in Windows. For a complete listing of the issues that are included in this update, see the associated Microsoft KnowledgeBase article for more information. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.

Ok. I chose to "resolve issues" in my Windows. In reality that's just crap that forces me to look at Windows 10 being forced down my throat. That one causes more issues than it resolves. That's a complete lie!

I carefully made sure I have backups and all necessary information and decided that I'm good to go for upgrade. But quite soon I realized, that ... there is no easy way for me to upgrade. As I wrote in my previous blog posts, I've taken drastic measures to deflect any/every possible Microsoft attempt to inject anything related to the upgrade, upgrade widgets, upgrade tools or upgrade pre-loaded files.

So, I decided to go google "windows 10 upgrade", landed at page https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-10-upgrade which very helpfully offers to download a tool called GetWindows10-Web_Default_Attr.exe. Downloading and runnin that does absolutely nothing! I took a peek what it does and it simply runs GWX.exe. Which of course, as a result of my deflector shields again does absolutely nothing. It just fails quietly and exits.

A new plan was needed.

Then I landed on another Microsoft page: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10. That one prooved to be much more useful. On that page, there is a download for Windows10Upgrade9252.exe which actually could upgrade my Windows.

The upgrade went fine, I didn't lose too many applications and my user profile survived the upgrade well too. The only thing I had to do was to disable IPv6 privacy randomization. This is my recipe which I run on every one of my Windowses:

netsh interface ipv6 set privacy state=disabled store=active
netsh interface ipv6 set privacy state=disabled store=persistent
netsh interface ipv6 set global randomizeidentifiers=disabled store=active
netsh interface ipv6 set global randomizeidentifiers=disabled store=persistent

Other than that I didn't do much else. And as a result I get to see forced advertisements for Office365. Crap!

Those pushhy bastards at Microsoft really, really want to upgrade every Windows 7, 8 and 9 into a 10. (Yes, Windows 9 doesn't exist.) They even re-released KB3035583 to make sure that any previous blocking since March 2015 wouldn't be affected anymore. This is what my Windows 7 started doing:

This wasn't supposed to be happening. See details of Part 1. I downloaded latest version of GWX Control Panel, I think it is 1.7.3, but it showed nothing special:

There were some deleted Windows 10 files and a single process running, but I re-zapped them with GWX CP. That didn't make the KB3035583 disappear from the updates list.

A solution to make it gone was simpler than I originally thought:

Just selecting Hide update will make it stay gone. I guess MS-guys will be re-re-releasing it eventually, but for the time being, I'm happy with the result.

The problem

Ok. Microsoft has amped up their "upgrade now" campaign to a ridiculous level.

First Microsoft Marketing chief Chris Capossela "warned" about Windows 7 being insecure. Warned in quotes because my initial reaction was: "Oh really!? Is it really possible, that a Windows can not be secure operating system."

While this machine is eligble for a free Win 10 upg, I just don't want to do that yet. I will upgrade eventually, but at the time I choose, not some ignorant corporate chose for me. So, Mr. Capossela explained that users who choose Windows 7 do so “at your own risk, at your own peril” and he revealed Microsoft has concerns about its future software and hardware compatibility, security and more.

Now the latest development is, that Windows 10 upg is a recommended update as they're now aggressively pushing Windows 10 upgrades. Meaning, that have to actively dodge it every time I'll upgrade this box of mine.

Further details about KB2952664 a Compatibility update for upgrading Windows 7 patch @ Softpedia article.

The information

The annoyance looks like this:

In the process list of the victim machine, there is a GWXUX.exe producing that. Actually there are other GWX-prefixed processes capturing your machine, but for the sake of this blog post I'm ignoring that crap.

Ages ago Microsoft release KB article ID 3080351, How to manage Windows 10 notification and upgrade options. It contains all kinds of useless information about modifying registry entries like HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\OSUpgrade value ReservationsAllowed.

What the article doesn't mention is, that it also hijacks your disk space at C:\$Windows.~BT and C:\$Windows.~WS. I got a tip from an article and found 5 GiB of crap already loaded to my computer. I ran cmd.exe (with administrator credentials) to free up my SSD-space:

C:\Windows\system32>attrib -h "C:\$Windows.~BT"
C:\Windows\system32>attrib -h "C:\$Windows.~WS"

C:\Windows\system32>cd "C:\$Windows.~BT"
C:\$Windows.~BT>takeown /f . /R /D Y
C:\$Windows.~BT>icacls . /grant Administrators:(OI)(CI)F /T

C:\Windows\system32>cd "C:\$Windows.~WS"
C:\$Windows.~WS>takeown /f . /R /D Y
C:\$Windows.~WS>icacls . /grant Administrators:(OI)(CI)F /T

After doing all that, reading all the information, changing all the registry values and removing pre-loaded waste...   It didn't work. What the article doesn't mention, that one of the GWX-processes runs in background and snoops those registry values and changes them back! Yes. You read it right. The fuckers go to your computer and make better choices for your registery. Their flawed reasoning is, that you obviously have to be some sort of moron not to go for their ultimate product right now, or preferably yesterday. And as you (the moron), the owner of your computer running a lesser "insecure" OS, need Microsoft's help to make better decisions.

OH, COME ON! Not cool.

I'm NOT upgrading to Windows 10 yet, because I (as in me) am in control here. Not Microsoft (as in them).

The solution

After spending countless hours and experiencing a number of setbacks, when the timers kicked on I stumbled into somebody having exactly the same problem as I do. He also had a solution for it. Here is the article Using GWX Control Panel to Permanently Remove the 'Get Windows 10' Icon.

GWX Control Panel looks like this:

With this application, no need to game of Whack-a-Mole anymore. The not wanted and not needed crap will just fly out with a click of a button. Example of getting rid of pre-loaded Windows 10 installation files:

Ultimately the cleaned up machine will report:

List of goodies include:

• Is 'Get Windows 10' icon app running? App not found
• Is 'Get Windows 10' icon app enabled? App not found
• Windows 10 Download folders found? No

Oh yes!

The application has an option to stay as a background process to keep monitoring, that evil Microsoft processes stay gone. I didn't test that, as just kicking all the crap out of my computer did the trick. Now I was back on the drivers' seat. Now I can decide when to do the upgrade.

In my hugely popular article about Transferring Windows 7 OEM license to a new hard drive, I kept insisting, that you absolutely positively need to know your SLP-key before processing. Couple days ago I was working on a recovery of a failed hard drive and realized, that it's not completely true.

As the troubled drive had already been replaced with a brand new SSD, I had the HDD in an USB-dock for investigation purposes:

The new Windows 7 OEM had already been installed, but not activated. As I didn't know the SLP-key I was planning to do the phone activation with COA-key. At that point I realized, that it was possible to use the Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder from another drive:

It wasn't much simpler than that! A simple copy/paste -operation to get the key in and Windows activated.

The requirement seems to be to point to a %windir% and system32\config\ is assumed on top of that.

Windows 10 Technical Preview has been out for two months now on Windows Insider Program. I installed it pretty much when it was released into a virtual machine and has been running a number of different software, that I'd use anyway on it.

The install process is pretty much the same than it has been since Windows 7. I created a virtual 20 GiB drive (which later turned out to be not enough) and chose to install on the non-initialized drive. No surprises there. This is what runs as out-of-box-experience:

It looks very much like Windows 8.1. Notice how the window border is quite thin. This is something Microsoft hasn't done in their operating systems ever before. Internet Explorer is still version 11 as in Windows 8.1 and the reported user-agent string is: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.4; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko.

It sees the virtual CPU incorrectly as a Xeon, however the physical CPU is of Sandy Bridge microarchitecture:

Finally the start menu is something, that I would like to use. Microsoft had a decent start menu on Windows 7, they dropped it for Windows 8 and restored a crappy version for Windows 8.1. This time it works and the stupid full-screen-apps -mode is gone. The start menu will contain both the classic and tile-based apps at the same time:

This is what computer properties and disc management look like. Pretty much the same than in Windows 7:

Also control panel is unchanged:

The version is displayed as Windows NT 6.4, but apparently it is going to change and the version number will be 10. Also IPv6 works as expected:

I don't know what the idea with forcing automatic updates on, but luckily there is a way to change that. The GUI won't let you touch it, but a direct registry hack to change it: How to disable Automatic Updates in windows 10 Tech Preview. I changed the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Auto Update value AUOptions into 3 (Automatically download and notify of installation). This is a change for previous Windowses, which are using a different registry key. See Article ID 328010 - How to configure automatic updates by using Group Policy or registry settings about it. Anyway, this is how it looks like:

One other thing I also changed, was to speed up the preview image process. As a default, new installations are on a slow track, but I wanted to get the new versions a bit faster. This is a bit funny thing, the only way to change it is to go for a new-style full-screen settings (luckily this runs in a window). There doesn't seem to be a control panel -setting for this. For details see: How to Stay Up to Date and Get the Latest Windows 10 Technical Preview Builds. This is how I changed the setting:

To upgrade into a newer build (9860 in this case) it goes something like this. I found the process quite amusing:

When the slow process completes, the bottom right corner will state the new version:

During the testing I haven't had many issues, but here is one:

For some reason system interrupts started hogging lot of CPU-resources. That is something I've never seen on any Windows. After a nice reboot, the problem disappeared. That's what you get from running beta operating system. 

Also, my original 20 GiB of disc space ran out after couple of new build upgrades. This is what happened:

There wasn't much else to do, except to shut down the Windows 10 instance. Go to virtualization host (Linux) and add 10 GiB of space into the virtual drive:
qemu-img resize Windows\ 10.qcow2 +10G

As no Windows version is capable of actually expanding the partition and file system on a grown drive, I mounted an ISO-image of GParted and booted the virtual machine from that. It could expand the system partition in a couple of seconds (it is a really good partition manager software). After having 30 GiB of space, the latest build upgraded without problems.

My thanks goes to F-Secure. I've been running their new FS Protection (still on beta) on my Windows 10 and it works really well. 

During a regular day I run a number of different computers. One day I wanted to take a copy of my Wall-E DVD and transfer it to iPad for later viewing. Since I sync that iPad to a particular Mac, I had to transfer the H.264 file of the movie there. As this was a one time thing and I happened to have a suitable USB-stick at my desk, I chose to go the old fashioned way. Copy the file to the stick and walk with the stick to the other machine. Except ... I couldn't copy the file to the USB stick. The stick was initialized with Mac OS X and contained a GUID partition table (or GPT). It completely refused to work with my Windows 7. What! Really?

The official word from Windows and GPT FAQ is:
Q: Can Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2008 read, write, and boot from GPT disks?
A: Yes, all versions can use GPT partitioned disks for data. Booting is only supported for 64-bit editions on UEFI-based systems.

Sorry, but I beg to differ. There seems to be some level of support, but ... not to the full extent. We're talking about Linux or OS X -level support here.

The stick looks like this during entire process:

# parted /dev/sde print
Model: JetFlash Transcend 8GB (scsi)
Disk /dev/sde: 8032MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:

Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name                  Flags
 1      20.5kB  210MB   210MB   fat32        EFI System Partition  boot
 2      210MB   8031MB  7821MB  fat32        Video

And this is how my Mac saw the situation:

$ mount
/dev/disk2s2 on /Volumes/VIDEO (msdos, local, nodev, nosuid, noowners)

This is what the Disk Manager of my Windows 7 said:

All looks good, except the OS failed to automatically assign a drive letter to the partition. No biggie, I can manually add one:

... except, I couldn't:

The error message of The system cannot find the file specified gave me an impression, that things aren't rolling my way.

At this point it wasn't about copying the file, but finding out what was going on. I had a Windows 8.1 right next to my Windows 7, so I plugged the USB into that one. This is what it saw:

But wait! There was something fishy about it. The drive capacity didn't match. To test it, I copied a file to the drive:

This is a part 2 of my Lenovo on Windows 8 series. See the part about energy management.

After installing Windows 8 there was a mobile broadband device, but funnily enough it was locked to Verizon Wireless. What Verizon? I live in Finland! There is no Verizon to the next 8000 km. On status the Verizon displays as unnamed. However, on my Windows 7 it did use it with a pre-paid SIM-card and it did work properly. See:

To fix this I went to check ThinkVantage Technologies downloads @ Lenovo, but for Windows 8 there is no Access Connections, or anything even remotely usable. Next I checked Windows 8 instructions Use mobile broadband to connect to the Internet @ Microsoft, but this information is relevant or usable only if the broadband modem is not locked to the goddam Verizon.

The exact modem make and model can be found out:

In Thinkpad L512 it is a Qualcomm Gobi 2000. Searching for information revealed Qualcomm Gobi 2000 page @ thinkwiki, a page dedicated to documenting Thinkpads running Linux. It has information in it about various firmwares for that modem. Searching for the firmware information turned out to be very successful, there is lot of good information at Gobi 2000 on Windows 8 (Thinkpad) and Gobi 2000 WAN Unlock Solution - tested & works new Z win7 64bit Pro.

The key to success is a Sony Vaio utility called OneClick Internet.

Update Feb 2021:
Given deprecation of Vaio models and Windows 7 and 8, the tool is not available anymore. I think https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/support/downloads/Z0003894 might be it, but as I don't own suitable hardware anymore, I cannot verify.

Obsoleted setup instructions:
Download one from this link. Before running the Installer.exe, please change the config.ini as instructed. Out of the box the setting is:

[WebToGo-Project]
InstallSilent=1

Better:

InstallSilent=0

Now run the Installer.exe and install the app. Run it, and:

Click settings at the bottom, then:

Hey presto! A drop-list of all firmwares available. Just select the one you want. My choice is obviously UMTS, which translates into the regular 2G/3G. What's even better is that this application has a SMS-utility in it. You can actually send and receive text messages with it. Something that is completely missing from Windows 8.1.

As a result, the Networks (click on the Internet connection on system tray to open the display to the right side of the screen) will look like this:

Nice! Exactly what I was looking for.
The bad thing about this is, that Thinkpad L512 has a really bad antenna. Any USB-stick will have a better one. The obvious good thing is, that Windows 8.1 gains one piece of much required functionality Lenovo chose to drop.

Lenovo, like all PC manufacturers, have a short life span for their hardware. I'm running a Thinkpad L512 for my Windows 8.1 purposes. No matter what people think about Windows 8, me as a professional must know what it does and how it behaves. Eventually there will be a Windows 9 and it will be based on 8. Ok, enough rant, let's get on with it.

So, the story is that there is a perfectly good Windows 7 laptop. Supported by manufacturer and all. But if you want to go the other path, they simply throw you the classic "not supported" -phrase. At the same time the thing is, that they publish drivers and software for Windows 8, but they simply don't put your model to the list of "supported" ones. All this while your perfectly good hardware "not supported" has the same components then the next one, which is "supported".

My Thinkpad decided to just shut itself down randomly. I installed Open Hardware Monitor and Real Temp to see what's exactly going on in my machine. With these software I tried to find a rule or threshold to trigger the shutdown cycle, but couldn't. It didn't require too complex thought process to realize, that there was no proper power management software installed.

Googling the issue found me a discussion forum topic "Lenovo U410 shuts down randomly". There Mr. NINE posted a link to Lenovo Energy Management for Microsoft Windows 8. The list of supported Systems for Windows 8 is:

• Lenovo G480 (2688, 20156), G580 (2689, 20157)
• Lenovo G485, G585
• IdeaPad N580, N581, N585, N586
• IdeaPad P580, P585
• IdeaPad S206, S300, S400, S400 Touch, S400u, S405
• IdeaPad U310, U310 Touch, U410, U410 Touch
• IdeaPad Y480, Y580
• IdeaPad Z380, Z480, Z485, Z580, Z585

There aren't any Thinkpads in the list. But if you download the em8.0.2.3.exe, it will work! In my case the sporadic shutdowns were gone too!

I've been really busy with a new job and haven't had much time to blog. Now things are settling down a bit, so here goes ...

Windows 8.1 is my favorite subject. I'm an user and it does have a lot of issues. This time I'm discussing my attempts to install The Windows 8.1 Update. Ok. Is that the stupidest name in the whole world, or can somebody come up with something that could be more confusing, lame and non-descriptive at the same time. Don't answer, somebody at Microsoft eventually will.

The thing with this "update" is that you need to have it installed, or else <insert a threat here>. One of the ideas of this weirdly named update (aka. "update") is that it is kinda service pack, but it is not. It seems to pack all the updates in an "update". Nice and warm thought. The problem is, that it won't install. No matter what I do. Really. It WON'T INSTALL!

What I initially got is a "Windows Update error 0x80073712". The fix has been discussied in The Windows Club article Fix: Windows Update error 0x800F081F in Windows 8.1 and a help article your Windows 8.1 will give if clicking "more information" at the Windows Update failure dialog. It will say: "If you receive Windows Update error 0x80073712 or 80073712, it means that a file needed by Windows Update is damaged or missing." Everybody pretty much instructs you to run following as an admin:

DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Scanhealth

Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool
Version: 6.3.9600.16384

Image Version: 6.3.9600.16384

[==========================100.0%==========================]
The component store is repairable.
The operation completed successfully.

Notice how this scanner found a problem and says "is repairable". If there is nothing to do the message would be "No component store corruption detected". The actual fix run goes as follows:

DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth

Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool
Version: 6.3.9600.16384

Image Version: 6.3.9600.16384

[==========================100.0%==========================]
The restore operation completed successfully. The component store corruption was repaired.
The operation completed successfully.

I did that. 7 times. Rebooted the computer a couple of times between runs. No avail.

The second thing to do is to get a Windows Update troubleshooter. It will chew your computer a while and spit out something like this:

It basically does the same thing than the previous commands, but only has a nice GUI. No avail.

Then I thought that I'll download the update manually, it is available as KB2919355. There is a specific track to be followed when installing this, for example there are prerequisite updates that must exist on the machine for the "update" update to install. I did all that, but failed on the first prerequisite install. I tried a couple of times, but eventually gave up. No avail.

Since I had been attempting the install since April 2014 Microsoft updates came out. I was quite demotivated on this particular subject. My luck turned when June 2014 updates came out. There weren't many of those available, since the update I need called "update" wasn't updating. The total number of available updates on my computer was 3. My attempt of installing all of them at the same batch wasn't successful. Yet another 0x800blah error. Then I tried installing them individually. Same story. My luck turned when I did them in pairs. I got one of them to install! Amazing! Something wonderful happened and after a reboot the "update" was installed.

A reboot later my updated Windows 8.1 could see 22 new updates available. It worked!

Morale of the story:
Sometimes, even the stubborn idiot finds the kernel of corn. To this day I cannot comprehend what exactly happened and my Windows refused to do the good thing.

My message to Microsoft's Windows division is: Aow come on! Test these things once in a while. I'm pretty darn sure you know what the problem was, why not release a proper information how to get the darn update installed.

This is a follow-up post on my previous post about Replacing Compaq 615 hard drive with a SSD.

It is obvious, that when you remove the old hard drive from your PC and replace it with a new one, all your stuff won't be on the new drive. "All your stuff" includes Windows operating system, your user profile information, settings, background picture of your desktop, all your precious photos, ... the list goes on. So to succesfully replace the hard drive, some preliminary steps are needed. Even in the best case, where you're prepared to lose all of your files and information, the only thing that you need to transfer is your Windows 7 license. In Microsoft lingo it is called The Activation. This literally means, that your Windows will emulate E.T. and "call home" to verify, that you are allowed to run the installation.

In this particular case following circumstances exist:

• The laptop in question is manufactured by HP/Compaq
• HP/Compaq is a Microsoft OEM partner and they get their Windows 7 licenses with special pricing
• The hardware must has a suitable identification for the OEM partner in its BIOS called SLIC
• Actual Windows 7 license (activation) will be stored on the hard drive, the OEM product key of this installation is not known
• It is impossible to transfer the activation from old hard drive to the new one. It is possible to re-activate on the new drive when the existing OEM product key has been extracted from the old Windows 7 installation.
• There is nothing illegal in this procedure. You bought the hardware, you own the hardware. With hardware you paid for the Windows 7 license. This is NOT software piracy of any kind.

Abandoned options

There are three good possibilities of transferring an existing Windows installation to the new drive. I chose not to use either of those.

It is possible to create a recovery disc from existing installation. This has been covered in articles How do I create recovery discs on a Compaq 615 and Creating Recovery Discs or Saving a Recovery Image to a USB Flash Drive (Windows 7). There was a glitch, though. The HP Backup & Recovery manager was not installed to this Compaq laptop. I found an article Download hp backup & recovery manager which points to softpaq sp45602.exe containing the installer.

Another way would be to use the Windows 7 built-in backup. There is an option to create the system recovery image. Apparently HP/Compaq chooses to go with this on consumer models.

Other possibilities would include Clonezilla, Acronis True Image, or similar to transfer the entire drive with all the partitions.

The reason why I abandoned all of those was that I definitely wanted a fresh start without any old payload. The HP Backup & Recovery would provide the cleanest start, but still there are a number of weird software being installed, which nobody actually needs or wants. Another thing is that Windows 7 fresh install on SSD takes care of setting the TRIM-flag to the partition and aligns the partitions properly on 4096 byte boundaries. Both of those settings differ when installing to a hard drive. These are pretty much the only differences when installing to SSD instead of HD, but I definitely wanted to get all of my performance settings right from the beginning.

Prerequisites for license transfer

When talking about OEM Windows 7 licenses, following license types exist OEM Channel SLP, NONSLP and COA License Product Keys. The difference of those is explained in detail in this article. To put it briefly, in every OEM machine there must be a sticker somewhere. The sticker has the Certificate of Authentication (COA) key. This OEM COA key can be used to activate a Windows 7 installation only via phone. It is a possibility, but not my first choice as there are other options available.

Every OEM Windows 7 also has an OEM System Locked Pre-installation key. The key is not available anywhere. It is hidden intentionally, for the reason that nobody would ever try anything I'm about to describe in this post. To dig out the SLP-key, you will need a special piece of software. My choice is The Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder. There is a free edition available for download and it just magically tells you your Windows installation key. The smart thing to do is to use the export-option to an USB stick. You can copy/paste your license key from a file later when it is needed.

If you are interested in your settings and data, backup your user profile(s) with Windows Easy Transfer (migwiz.exe). I chose to save the profile data onto an USB hard drive to be restored later.

You must have OEM certificates for this the license activation to work. Download a the certificate bundle from https://docs.google.com/open?id=0Bxj5NEo7I3z9dWx3VndfenZBWVE. Your hardware manufacturer should be in the archive, if it is not, you cannot proceed.

Optional prerequisite is SLIC ToolKit V3.2. You can download one from https://docs.google.com/open?id=0Bxj5NEo7I3z9WE1NS2dVVjc4VEE. Using this tool really helps you in the process, because you can actually see if it would work and you can verify the steps.

Warning!
If you don't know your SLP-key DO NOT remove the old hard drive.

Installing Windows 7 to the new drive

Warning!
If you don't know your SLP-key DO NOT start installing to the new drive. Put the old drive back and use a keyfinder to get your key.

Update 2nd Jan 2016: My recent findings about possibility of recovering the key with USB-dock. With suitable hardware it is possible to read the key from already removed hard drive.

Update 13th Mar 2015: Microsoft took down their Windows 7 downloads from Digital River. They are not available anymore!
All the Windows 7 SP1 installation images are generally available for download. See Official Windows 7 SP1 ISO from Digital River about details. Again: This is not software piracy! You own the license for your Windows 7, you are entitled to own the installation media for it.

Download the exact version of your installation image. Language may be different, but not all OEM licenses are allowed for both 32-bit and 64-bit installations. If you are changing x86 to x64 there will be also issues with Windows Easy Transfer, it documented that the transfer wizard works only on same arcitecture. To see if your OEM license works both on 32-bit and 64-bit you simply have to test it.

If you need the language files see Windows 7 SP1 Language Packs Direct Download Links and the utility needed to install them Vistalizator. The language packs are different for 32-bit and 64-bit installations, so choose carefully. Windows 7 Ultimate can change languages from control panel, no special tweaks are needed for it.

During installation, choose not to enter a license key. You will end up having a non-activated Windows installation. The technical term is that your activation is on a "grace period". This is what we want to do. Activate later.

Re-activating the license on the new drive

Third warning: You will need your SLP-key for the re-activation to work.

In your Computer properties, there is an option to "Change Product Key". None of your OEM-keys will work there, no matter how much you try. Any activation attempts will yield something like this:

Activation Error code: 0XC004E003 (Product key already in use). There is a lengthy discussion of Clean OEM Windows 7 install returns 0xc004e003 @ Microsoft.

What you need to do is follow instructions from activating windows 7 OEM way. Open a Command Prompt (cmd.exe) and run it as Administrator.

First we confirm that the BIOS has required information in it. It definitely should as the machine had a working Windows 7 in it, but still ... run the SLIC tool to confirm:

It should say "Dump OK!". On the Advanced-tab you can confirm, that there are issues with the activation:

The SLIC status is on green and is valid, but private key and certificate have issues and display a red cert. error.

To fix this, my sequence differs a bit from the article. The first thing to do is to set your SLP-key, say something like this into your command prompt (no, that is not really my SLP-key):

slmgr.vbs -ipk J7JHT-BC3HD-73CQT-WMFJ-XXXXX

It should respond after a delay:

Next install your manufacaturer certificate, this will take a while:

slmgr.vbs -ilc HP-COMPAQ.xrm-ms

It should respond after a lengthy delay with something like this:

The last thing to do is to rebuild the certificate store, to start using all these changes:

slmgr.vbs -rilc

That should respond with a simple "Ok". Now you can confirm your activation status with a:

slmgr.vbs -dli

The response should be something like:

If you failed in this process, the response will look more like:

Upon success, the SLIC tool will also display the status as:

Slmgr.vbs is volume activation tool installed into all Windowses. See more details about it from Slmgr.vbs Options for Volume Activation @ Technet.

The successful activation can be confirmed also from Computer properties. At no part of this activation any network traffic to Microsoft or any other party is required.

Both Microsoft and your PC's manufacturer would like for you not to know anything about this. Both of their businesses rely on the fact, that hardware vendors and their partners will do all the maintenance for your PC while making money at it. Since hacking is about learning how computer stuff works, this is a prime example of hacking. With this information you can hack your own laptop.

Any comments are welcome!