All → Software → Windows

As rare as Windows (10) re-installations are these days, a fresh installation being immediately broken has happened at least twice now.

Some applications can't save their settings and Google Chrome now won't open most Google services due to NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID and HSTS errors.

I'm supposed to be doing some major FileSieve work over the next few days!

Edit: More information on the Chrome issue.

But first, system information: Windows 10 x64 (Creator's Update), GeForce GTX 770, Skylake i7 6700K CPU, 32GB RAM; all updated drivers

The cert problem in Chrome is something I've seen a bit too often over the years; with no change in the OS environment, Chrome will start giving the NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID error, along with a message that the site can't be seen at all due to it using HSTS. But this is new in that its specifically the Google services, and Gmail's missing icons.

Microsoft Edge works without issues. For the first time - ever.

This is happening for YouTube, the Chrome Store; not sure if it's affecting non-Google sites as I haven't browsed many today. One difference, though, is Gmail works but its web-fonts(?) are blank. Uh, how do I show a screenshot in Markdown...

The vertical lines denote where I snipped the image to reduce its width.

The screenshot shows that various within-button icons are entirely missing, including the images displayed within each tab.

Additionally, the Hangouts Chrome extension won't sign-in.

Edit 2: Argh, re-installed Windows and everything works fine - except Chrome. It's now complaining with the same error above (seems it's when I restart Windows?), but thankfully I'm able to fix it via the following:

Fully exit Chrome via the systray icon
Open a command prompt in Windows
Type `ipconfig /flushdns`, and hit Enter
Open Chrome and it works correctly

All → Software → Windows

Alright, this messed-up Windows install is annoying me too much to continue. Time to re-install Windows 10 again to see if it'll actually work properly this time...

Edit: I couldn't find this info anywhere, although it tells you after you click the Delete everything option.

Does the Reset PC -> Remove everything option also wipe/format any other installed drives and partitions?

The answer is: it's up to you.

Windows will tell you that there's more than one drive installed and will ask you if you want to just format the drive Windows is installed on or format all drives.

Now you know.

Edit 2: Damn Windows installs fast. 6-8 minutes, maybe?

All → Software → Windows

Alright, Windows itself installed extremely quickly but installing stuff like Visual Studio took forever. It's now all finally done.

There are various issues in FileSieve that need to be fixed before I can release 4.20, so I'll continue work on it tomorrow (a Monday) rather than jumping into it mid-day on a Sunday. The Method/Modifier settings not being loaded at the right time is extremely confusing so will need a huge amount of thought and debugging.

All → Software → Windows

This problem is extremely annoying: sometimes, the Start menu in Windows 10 will outright stop working. It won't appear when the Start button is clicked or the Windows Key is pressed. In addition, various Windows 10-style windows (such as the system's volume control that appears in the top-left of the screen when the volume is changed) will also not appear. Right-clicking on the Start button will then cause any 10-style windows to then draw... it's all very weird.

After many months, it seems I may have stumbled upon a fix for the issue. Every time I tried restarting or shutting down the system, Windows always complained about there being a task that wouldn't exit. The string given is:

Microsoft\windows\plug and play\device install reboot required

Microsoft introduced a "feature" that allows Windows to finish installing device drivers after an update or restart. Awesomely - it doesn't work. This broken feature has been the cause of months of (random) frustration and re-installations.

Anyway - whatever, onto the fix. Hopefully it's the fix; I haven't ran into the Start issue since.

1. Go into the Settings window in Windows.

To do this using the Start menu (eg. you're performing this as a preventative measure), just type Settings into the Start menu and open the item that appears.

If you have a broken Start menu, you can either click on this link right here or press Windows Key+R to open the Run window and then type the following, followed by pressing the Enter key.

ms-settings:

Include the trailing colon character otherwise you'll get an error.

2. In the Settings window that appears, click on Accounts (the little round guy; second row in the second column in my particular version).

3. On the left, click on Sign-in Options.

4. Scroll down in the view on the right and under the Privacy heading, uncheck the Use my sign-in info to automatically finish setting up my device after an update or restart.

That should be it.

All → Software → Windows

This blog seems to be turning into a problem-solving database thingy. Still, it's better than it getting no updates at all, right?

This particular post is about trying to install horrible Java on horrible Windows XP. Namely - you can't. Or, at least, I couldn't.

Double-clicking on the Java installer (either the online or offline versions; doesn't matter) results in a flurry of disk activity and then a whole lotta nothing. Looking in the system's %TEMP% location shows a directory, and a log file named jusched.log. Digging through the file shows that there was an exception - a crash - during the initialisation of the installer.

ERROR: Exception with message 'Resources.cpp(65) at Resource::getPtr(): cannot find resource (name='#1605', type='#6'). System error [1813] the specified resource cannot be found in the image file

According to some of the stuff I read, the version of the installer those Oracle/Sun idiots use doesn't run on Windows XP despite them telling you it, uh, does. The Java runtime might, but the installer used to install it... doesn't. It doesn't surprise me that Java is as cack as it is.

Grab an earlier version of the Java runtime and install that, instead. Here's the one I used (note the installer is still signed by Oracle - important!):

View Page: Java Runtime Environment 8.0 build 152

Why not use an older one directly from Oracle themselves? Because those morons want you to create an account to just download it! Hahaha-ha-ha... ha. No.

When running the older installer, ignore the warning that says it may not work in Windows XP - it's just saying that because even Oracle knows Windows XP is a huge, outdated crock of plop.

I'm running Windows XP in a virtual machine to run a Java JAR file, otherwise, I have no use for Windows XP nor Java.

I'm glad Java is practically dead.

And Windows XP.