Category: Tech

Windows 7 Getting Me Angry

I’m not sure how it’s still possible in 2014, but, between yesterday and today I changed nothing on my computer and now it is blue-screening every time I log in or shortly after I log in. No hardware changes were made. The only thing I changed (but which seemed to work fine) was to activate Hibernation, by setting a multi-gigabyte hiberfil.sys file, and disabling the “Hybrid sleep” function on Windows 7.

So I went ahead and uninstalled a bunch of things I’d been meaning to clean up (but which didn’t seem to be the source of the crash, since it’s still crashing). I really don’t know what could have changed overnight, but it’s already a huge time suck.

Even after I ran the various uninstallers, a bunch of leftover executables and other garbage are still running on my system, and which I am currently attempting to root out, with the help of AutoRuns, a tool from the Sysinternals gurus. AutoRuns shows all of the various places where a executable (or shell extension DLL, or etc) code is invoked by Windows.

So far, the code that is autostarting that I don’t want to run at all anymore looks like this:

SPIRunE                        SPIRun Endpoints Dynamic Link Library                                            Creative Technology Ltd.        c:\windows\syswow64\spirune.dll             5/9/2007 3:07 AM
AMD External Events Utility    AMD External Events Service Module                                               AMD                             c:\windows\system32\atiesrxx.exe            4/20/2011 4:04 AM
amdkmdag                       ATI Radeon Kernel Mode Driver                                                    ATI Technologies Inc.           c:\windows\system32\drivers\atikmdag.sys    4/20/2011 3:53 AM
amdkmdap                       AMD multi-vendor Miniport Driver                                                 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.    c:\windows\system32\drivers\atikmpag.sys    4/20/2011 3:22 AM
amdsata                        AHCI 1.2 Device Driver                                                           Advanced Micro Devices	        c:\windows\system32\drivers\amdsata.sys     3/19/2010 2:45 AM
amdsbs                         AMD Technology AHCI Compatible Controller Driver for Windows - AMD64 platform    AMD Technologies Inc.           c:\windows\system32\drivers\amdsbs.sys      3/20/2009 8:36 PM
amdxata                        Storage Filter Driver                                                            Advanced Micro Devices          c:\windows\system32\drivers\amdxata.sys     3/19/2010 6:18 PM
AODDriver4.2.0                 File not found: C:\Program Files\ATI Technologies\ATI.ACE\Fuel\amd64\AODDriver2.sys

These are all old support drivers and executables from AMD/ATI and Creative Labs. I did once have a Radeon video card in the system, which I replaced with a much more powerful Nvidia card. Frankly, if AMD can’t get their driver development, updating, and cleanup code in order, they should stop making graphics cards. There’s so much extra crap they install (Catalyst Control Center anyone?) but don’t maintain, that it’s very frustrating being left with this crap on my system when I clearly want it gone. Same goes for Creative Labs, talk about a company that makes it a pain in the ass to get new drivers. It’s been like that as long a I can remember.

I probably should not have swapped video cards between manufacturers like that, but come on. Again, it’s 2014, and this is disappointing if this stuff is getting through the Windows hardware certifications. Nvidia’s software also has plenty of bloat which can be cleaned up (which I also just did), but at least they have a fairly regular update schedule and solid support for their older graphics cards too.

Basically, I’m disabling all the drivers except what I think is actually in the system.

Here’s what the AutoRuns Drivers tab looks like after I finished disabling things. These are all drivers that the Windows bootloader will attempt to load when Windows is starting up. You’ve probably seen this list of files when starting Windows in Safe Mode. The thing is, most of this hardware either doesn’t exist anymore, or never existed in widespread use on desktop PCs. So why is Windows checking for it, anymore? Some of those devices are for high-end server systems, with Fibre Channel or SAS connections, but seriously, this code runs on all of the desktops in the world, so who knows how many million seconds are wasted because of these checks? If someone wants to run server-grade hardware on their home computer, let them, but make sure it doesn’t slow everyone else’s boot process down.

autoruns

Turns out after I disabled all those extra drivers, the system both a) boots faster and b) seems to run more smoothly. No more crashes, no more extra crap getting started in the background. So I’m happy.

But one other thing I noticed, before I go: Why the hell isn’t the Microsoft Windows Defender DLL “mpsvc.dll” a signed binary?

Quickly Transcoding Video on OS X

I still have an old digital camera that records video in MPEG format (pretty inefficient), 10 seconds of video takes up 11 megabytes of disk space. Not something that you want to send to a friend via email (I know, I’m not on Vine, but who cares?)

I needed a way to quickly convert this video to a more efficient format and OS X has one built in: avconvert. It’s a command line tool, and it’s pretty easy to use.

Here’s what the command line help says about it:

$ avconvert --help
avconvert -p  -s  -o  []

avconvert is a command line application that will transcode a source or group of 
sources to create a destination file output based on a specified preset and with 
a collection of specified settings modifications.

The following flags are required by avconvert:
	-p 
	-s 
	-o 

avconvert will do the best it can to meet all the settings that are specified. 
It will prioritize the settings and the settings actually used in the export 
will be shown and those that could not match the specification settings clearly
noted.

So all you have to do is open a Terminal, change to the directory where your video is stored, and run something like:

$ avconvert -p PresetAppleM4ViPod -s video.mpg -o video.mov
Audio Settings:
	Audio Channel Count = 1
	Audio Channel Layout = Mono
	Audio Converter Quality = 127
	Audio Data Rate = 96000
	Audio Data Rate Control Mode = 2
	Audio Duration = {1001160/90000 = 11.124}
	Audio Format = aac 
	Audio Sample Rate = 32000
	Audio Stream Basic Description =  1 ch,  32000 Hz, 'aac ' (0x00000000) 0 bits/channel, 0 bytes/packet, 1024 frames/packet, 0 bytes/frame

Video Settings:
	Frame Reordering = NO
	Image Height = 480
	Image Width = 640
	Track Height = 480
	Track Width = 640
	Video Average Data Rate = 1500
	Video Codec = avc1
	Video Codec Profile Level = H264_Baseline_3_0
	Video Codec Usage Mode = 6
	Video Color Depth = 24
	Video Color Primaries = SMPTE_C
	Video Duration = {999000/90000 = 11.100}
	Video Frame Rate = 0
	Video Key Frame Frequency = 30
	Video Maximum Frame Rate = 30
	Video Scaling Mode = CropSourceToCleanAperture
	Video Transfer Function = ITU_R_709_2
	Video YCbCr Matrix = ITU_R_601_4

=========================================
avconvert completed with error:0.

When the command finishes, your video is transcoded.

There are a number of different presets that you can use to set the size and quality of the video transcoding, which should be mostly self explanatory:

$ avconvert --listPresets
Presets available for use with avconvert:
     PresetAppleM4VCellular
     PresetAppleM4ViPod
     PresetAppleM4VWiFi
     PresetAppleM4VAppleTV
     PresetAppleM4V480pSD
     PresetAppleM4V720pHD
     PresetAppleM4V1080pHD
     PresetAppleM4A
     Preset640x480
     Preset1280x720
     Preset1920x1080
     PresetAppleProRes422LPCM

The actual bitrate and resolution settings for some of these presets are not clear to me, and I’m not sure where Apple has documented them, if at all. (Seems like there’s a Japanese guy who figured it out, though!)

Atlassian JIRA and Limited User Accounts on Windows 7

I’m doing a bit of mucking around with Atlassian JIRA on a local system, using a 30-day trial license. One thing I noticed on Windows systems is that the general assumption that you’re running as an Administrator all of the time is still being followed. It’s kind of a pain.

For instance, when you go about installing the Atlassian Plugin SDK, it will set all of the necessary environment variables on the installing user’s account only, but the installer requires you to elevate privileges via the User Account Control before it runs. It even attempts to install the files in the Administrator user’s home folder, meaning no one else would even be able to get close to these files.

I created a neutral folder under C:\Atlassian and installed there instead.

Here are the environment variables it sets on the Administrator account only, which you need to add to your usual Limited User Account, so that the rest of their command-line examples will work properly:

ATLAS_HOME
C:\Atlassian\atlassian-plugin-sdk

JAVA_HOME
C:/Program Files/Java/jdk1.7.0_51

M2_REPO
C:\Users\Admin\.m2\repository

Path (spelled oddly, it should be PATH, but cmd.exe doesn't seem to mind)
%JAVA_HOME%\bin;C:\Atlassian\atlassian-plugin-sdk\bin

The M2_REPO environment variable is pretty important because it defines where all your Maven dependencies will be cached.

Once the environment variables are set via the Control Panel, running atlas-version should work fine:

C:\Users\Limited>atlas-version

ATLAS Version:    4.2.20
ATLAS Home:       C:\Atlassian\atlassian-plugin-sdk
ATLAS Scripts:    C:\Atlassian\atlassian-plugin-sdk\bin
ATLAS Maven Home: C:\Atlassian\atlassian-plugin-sdk\apache-maven
--------
Executing: "C:\Atlassian\atlassian-plugin-sdk\apache-maven\bin\mvn.bat" --version -gs C:\Atlassian\atlassian-plugin-sdk\apache-maven/conf/settings.xml

Apache Maven 2.1.0 (r755702; 2009-03-18 20:10:27+0100)
Java version: 1.7.0_51
Java home: C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_51\jre
Default locale: en_US, platform encoding: Cp1252
OS name: "windows 7" version: "6.1" arch: "amd64" Family: "windows"

Sadly, it’s not a typo, a four year-old version of Maven is really being used here.

This Day In Ridiculousness

It’s 2014, and eBay doesn’t have 2-factor authentication. I just changed my password, though, and their password reset page just offered to send a new password to a burner phone I haven’t used since I last visited the United States. Oh wait, and when I go searching for a way to change that number… I can’t find one in eBay’s own settings pages.

Way to make us feel safe, and good to know that PayPal is under the same roof.