On Windows 10 with a Solid State Drive (SSD) I started to notice issues with my computer locking up for seconds (possibly minutes) and then freeing up. So when it would lock up you would click around and nothing would happen and when it unlocks or frees up, all the actions would finally catch up on the machine. Of course this drove me nuts.

Eventually I narrowed the issue down to Google Chrome and this message in the status bar “Waiting for Cache” message. To confirm, I basically lived on Firefox for a few days and this helped me narrow down the fact that something was up in Chrome (I had uninstalled Chrome completely).

I gave Chrome another try by re-installing it. I noticed the same issues reoccurring. I tinkered with many settings in Google Chrome (v52 if you are interested) and was able to increase Google Chrome’s performance by removing the Hardware Acceleration setting and the Continue running background apps..(Advanved Settings, System section). I also cleared cache ( removing everything and using the Since the Beginning of time option ). Since I have made these changes my system is running better.

Hope this helps.

I love the Firefox Add on DownThemAll. I’ve been using it for years. I have version 2.0.19 of DownThemAll on Windows 10 (FF v 48) and all of a sudden started getting File Access Errors anytime I tried to download anything. I tried many different suggestions I found on the internet but nothing worked (changing filenames, changing directory paths, etc.). I guess I have been lucky to not have experienced this error before as I see many posts on this topic out there.

This morning I tried something different. I created a shortcut for Firefox on my desktop – just dragged the Firefox shortcut from my start menu to the desktop and then I right clicked on the shortcut and selected ‘Run as Administrator’. DownThemAll works again. I know this is not the optimal thing to do but I am in a pinch as I need to download some large Linux iso files so now I’m happy once again.

To run as administrator all the time, view the shortcut properties, select Advanced and select Run as Administrator and click ok (or apply) to save that so Firefox always will run as administrator.

Hope this helps someone out there.

I didn’t know what this was until earlier this week when a friend called and asked if I could come and take a look at his machine ( he mentioned something about ransomeware but little ). I’ve been hearing more of ransomeware in the news attacking hospitals and the like but I personally have not had direct contact with one of these so figured I’d jump in with 2 feet and see what it was all about.

Basically I came in and looked at the machine and saw a bunch of files renamed to hex with the extension of .locky. These are files that are encrypted and contained his important information. There was also a text file that directed me to a web site asking us to pay money and we were given a key to input into the web site. See this web site for WAY more info then you might want but, great info nonetheless.

https://www.pcrisk.com/removal-guides/9807-locky-ransomware

In short, to recover, I performed a system restore to a date before the attack occurred and I used shadow explorer to locate files that had been impacted and luckily they were still present so using shadow explorer I exported them to a new directory and we were good . We went to each of the directories that contained locky files and exported the saved files out ( I had him validate that the files contents was unaltered and he said they looked fine). He was thankful and I was happy for him because he looked pretty stressed as you can imagine. BitDefeneder and Hitman Pro were on the machine but did nothing to protect it from this variant. I used avast and mcafee stinger to try and detect anything else wrong with the system but they came back clean. I would have thought that maybe the av products might give some sort of warning when they saw the .locky files (ex: locky files have been detected on your system — its possible you are impacted with ransomeware, insert suggestions here). Instead they were silent and passed their scans. I was happy to see them pass and that his machine was not further impacted but kind of surprised, in a way.

I sure hope none of you are hit by this (or any) ransomeware. These things are downright nasty.

Recently, CERT released this warning on ransomware

https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA16-091A

Chuck

I hate it when my android phone starts madly updating apps when I turn on my wifi – so much so that the best way to do anything else on the phone is to turn off wifi. I checked into my google play store settings and they were set to not perform any updates (I like to do them manually) but for some reason the phone was ignoring my setting. Why? Hmm… so I experimented a few more times – turned off wifi and no more updates. Ok, confirmed its a setting but where. After trying a few things, the winning combo was to clear cache and disable the google play store in my application settings. Bingo. I turned on wifi and no more updates. Ah! I feel much better. I’ll update the apps at my pace and now enjoy wifi and not getting sprayed on the screen with all sorts of non-sense (I know you can turn those notifications off too but had i not left those on i probably would have been troubleshooting a slow wifi connection on my phone and spent lots of time on it, glad i didn’t and glad that this is over). On to the next problem…

Oh by the way, Happy Easter!

Today I also had the need to extract 12,000 plus zip files. I was using zipware for another project but when each zip file contained a similar file (ex file.txt) zipware would prompt me for what to do with the file (overwite, yes or no or replace). I did not want to supply this information 12,000 plus times. I think it might be a bug because they did give me the option of yes(all), no(all), etc. which I selected but it didn’t make a difference. But I think since each individual zip is considered a different job (within zipware) it wanted me to make the choice across all the jobs – which is more then 12,000 times. I don’t think so – not for me anyway. Would be nice if the program (zipware) had a preference – overwrite file across multiple jobs (y/n). That option would probably save me but I did not see that option.

So… I researched and found that 7z, while it also prompts me to overwrite (just as zipware did) – it only does it once and allowed me to choose to overwrite that file each time (and no prompt me anymore). It appears to organize its work differently then zipware. 7z also has a nice console window (similar to zipware) that keeps me informed of progress and presents me with errors along the way (ex: cannot open file). I like that too.

Link:

http://www.7-zip.org/