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* Posts by Jonathan Smythe

8 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Mar 2016

Busted Windows 8, 10 update blamed for breaking Brits' DHCP

Jonathan Smythe
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Re: Not just BT

"Are you saying shutdown is now just hibernating and not shutting down? I ask because I shutdown my PC before I turn the mains power off. I'd like to think my PC is being shut down properly before I power it off, and not left in a hibernation mode."

It's just a product of the phrasing I use to explain to my very-non-technical users - Both Hibernate and Shutdown (when fast startup is enabled) turn off the power - but fast-startup-shutdown actually hibernates some core Windows processes. Call it a semi-hibernate.

Personally, nowadays I never actually "shut down" my computer. My laptop is always on sleep on the docking station and when on the move, and my PC I hibernate. Starts up much faster and on my laptop saves reopening all my tabs/email/documents/pdfs/explorer windows... Windows update reboot-required frustrates me!

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Jonathan Smythe
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Facepalm

Re: Not just BT

Have you tried restarting your computer?

Yes

I mean, restarting. Not Shut down, restart.

Um...?

Look, here, next to shutdown, is restart.

Oh!

Yeah, fast boot has been the cause of a number of callouts for me, when something goes wrong/crashes (maybe a driver?) that doesn't get properly restarted during a "shutdown".

I end up thorougly confusing my users trying to explain that since Windows 8, "shutdown" doesn't actually shut down as much of the computer as "restart" does

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Jonathan Smythe
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Re: same problem

I've just dealt with three computers in the last couple of days. The first of which was a TalkTalk router; when I first looked I thought it might have been related to the mirai worm going around, but then I had a couple of others that were on BT hubs.

Edit: on two occasions I tried setting a fixed IP address in the Windows IPv4 configuration, re-enabling DCHP after then appeared to work.

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Remote hacker nabs Win10 logins in 'won't-fix' Safe Mode* attack

Jonathan Smythe
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Re: Bluetooth mouse on mac

Had something similar happen to me too: I was called in to someone's home who was having trouble with their mac bluetooth mouse, which wasn't working right. I can't remember the specifics, but plugging in a USB mouse seemed to work but not his apple wireless mouse - eventually I discovered that as far as I could tell, unless he had a hidden mouse somewhere, his mac had actually connected to his neighbour's mouse in the house next door!

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Jonathan Smythe
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Re: Ctrl-Alt-Del

Not everyone has this turned on as a requirement, especially if it's not connected to a domain, it's not turned on by default. And few people would think/know to try ctrl-alt-del if they don't normally have to. Or indeed, even if they normally do ctrl-alt-del they may not think to do it if it doesn't ask.

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Julian AssangeTM to meet investigators in London

Jonathan Smythe
Devil

Ejection opportunity?

Maybe they've decided the easiest way to deal with Assange(tm) is to have a "chat" with him on the balcony, and throw him off so he's no longer on diplomatic property and the police can then pick him up?

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Simply not credible: The extraordinary verdict against the body that hopes to run the internet

Jonathan Smythe

.gay not gay enough?

I seem to recall an issue with the .gay domain where el reg mentioned how an application was possibly either too gay or not gay enough? Reading the above, it looks like ICANN may well have decided they didn't want that group's application to be successful, and decided to massage the criteria to ensure it failed. It sounds like this could be happening with many other new TLDs.

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Ransomware now using disk-level encryption

Jonathan Smythe
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Re: Proper backups

Presumably as you don't mention Windows 7 as missing it, you are aware of the backup system that allows system images to be created on schedule etc.

You appear to have missed that your request has not been ignored - the backup system from Windows 7 (which existed in Windows 8, but was removed in 8.1 - though you could still manually create a system image) was in fact returned to Windows 10, funnily enough titled "Back Up And Restore (Windows 7)" as it was in Windows 8.

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