Windows 10 Update nightmare

Well another Windows update nightmare, on Monday I spent a total of 5 hours trying to figure out how to make my drive boot again - everything was fine but following Windows updates my PC had decided there was no operating system to boot. Now I have a Windows 7 and a Windows 10 boot option, Windows 7 doesn't work but it's there but I have managed to get the default to Windows 10 and 30 seconds in it will boot. Ever since my PC has not wanted to shutdown like it used to, it always says "getting windows ready" as it threatening to screw me over with another update and then shuts down. Today I logged in but the desktop hung - everything that was Windows worked as normal, Windows didnt want to play ball at all, no chance to restart the windows explorer process because windows was hung. I did manage to convince it to shutdown but it restarted the window state I had just left, then it logged me off and then rebooted again, a ghost in the machine, and every since I have no toolbar short cuts - I had toolbars configured but for the life of me I cannot find them again, it's taken me an hour to find where it stored them because inspite of the content just being links a windows search doesn't find them. Come on Microsoft this is just painful. Why a blog post and not reported to Microsoft? Have you tried reporting anything to Microsoft?

Evernote shoots itself in the foot.

Evernote has become never note,  just received an email telling me I am using too many devices and I have 30 days to stop using Evernote, or at least that is the way I read it as a key feature of the product is accessibility which is being removed.

Of course I could pay a premium fee, no wait, pay a premium fee for a Web based notepad. Sounds unlikely to me unless there are some spectacular features coming in a whole lot less than 30 days.

Monitoring the situation

One lesson learned from my struggles with Light room is that squinting at my monitor for long periods only serves to hurt my eyes and prove that I need a better monitor both in terms of size and quality.

So ordered something newer and bigger, a Benq GW2765ht, 27", 2560x1440.

Inspite of ticking the "deliver on Monday" box it turned up today.

This is a big screen. It has physical buttons on the side which is a blessed relief after the touch sensitive tat on my LG e2350.

It has taken some work to install,  with the supplied HDMI cable my Sapphire hd5770 vapr x cannot display that resolution but after a few abortive attempts at connecting the display port cable everything is working, including sound.

The built in speakers are excellent, for built in speakers.

Display is stunning and colour reproduction is beautiful.

The monitor rotates to portrait, although on the supplied stand even at the extent of its height adjustment it scrapes the base (so scratched with minutes of opening the box, clearly not tested very well), this does not appear to have any auto-sensing of orientation but it does work, although cable length may be an issue.

Really pleased so far.

YAMM, Media Browser and Media Center

After much trial and error I have finally become annoyed with the habit of Media Browser of updating my movie folders, literally one day I can have a folder showing one name and the next the content is presented differently. For instance, The Adventures of a Teenage Dragonslayer used to have a cover image saying just than then one day it changed to a French language version.

As I have Media Browser running via Media Centre on my main PC and the HTPC I don't even end up with a consistent view.

The final straw has come in that I also have XBMC installed in both locations and that updates too and has added a healthy does of random.

I'm trying to get used to XBMC because MediaCentre is on the way out - I believe it is a pay for option on Windows 8 and that will kill it off, the downside is that the other products are just too complicated - yes they can do a lot of things but I just want my media presented in a simple interface with not too much messing about but having spent an extended period with MediaPortal and a couple of other products XBMC strikes me as the only viable alternative out there (and I'll try it again on my Rasperry Pi eventually, I love the Party Mode in the music library).

Anyway, I'm a long term user of Yamm, Yet Another Media Manager, which works pretty well but it too can have a randomisation effect - clearly they all pick up standard files from common sources and it is those sources that are changing. I've now stopped Yamm monitoring my entire collection and today I have been through and removed all automated updating from Media Browser and Yamm on both machines and manually visited every movie and corrected the content; it seems the best way to do this is to individually add the movies folder to the Yamm config and then wait for it to update (I've frequently resorted to adding

[imdb=ttxxxxxxx]

to the end of the foldername (where ttxxxxxx is the id from the imdb.com site) to force Yamm to use the correct film information.

Now all of my Movies have the correct information and look great in Media Browser and XBMC.

Synology DS213Air update

I've now been living with the DS213Air for a few months and am pleased overall.

It turns out that the media server doesn't work when in Wireless Router mode - which I'd only changed to from the default Hotspot mode because of poor performance (like unconnectable between floors).

A bit of time spent with my Google Nexus and the free WiEye wi-fi scanner tool has revealed a massive overlap on a number of channels, it also shows just how much wifi on one channel spills into others. Having identified a pretty quiet channel the hotspot mode is now usable on the diskstation which means that media server is working perfectly now.

I've used the Download Station and have just started downloading RSS feeds to keep bandwidth out of chargeable hours which is a nice automation benefit.

I am also hosting all of my music and movies on the device which means less data stored on each PC in the house.

I have installed the DS Photo/ File/ Audio apps on the Google Nexus, they work fine locally but my ADSL router is to old to handle automated configuration for remote access (pretty sure it could be done manually if necessary), besides which DS Audio which is my main interest is too simplistic (missing Album Artist view for starters) to be of much use so I have been using Bubble upnp to connect to the Mediaserver product and that covers photos, audio and video, matched with MX Player on the Nexus and most of my films play pretty well.

I have Cloud Station installed on my PC and it works fine but is limited to 3 shares each (so no good for synchronising my home folder, music, videos and photos, 4 things), it also requires that the Disk station share is configured first which means copying everything to the Synology first and then synchronising it back to an empty folder on the PC, which was bad enough with 146Gb of music, 1.5 TB of movies is a non starter, it also plays havoc with genie backup as all of that data is a change so gets backed up a 2nd time. I'm now using it just for individual items I want to synchronise, eventually I'd like to do my entire Documents folder but a little more confidence is needed first, time will tell. The software is also clearly still in development as it has a basic error in that every time I login it tells me that 17 files have been updated, it's the same 17 everytime because they were the last to change.

Data replicator has been deleted as it's a back tool not a synchronisation tool so not much use for me at this point.

Nexus 7 update

As time progresses I am increasingly impressed with this device, it is not as plug and play as an iPad but the convenience (not having to boot a PC for small tasks) and flexibility is excellent.

I have purchased screen protectors and discovered that in five days of light use there are tiny scratches on the glass already so  durability is a concern.

I have also purchased a Poetic leather case which is a good looking, well made item with working sleep mode magnets (that don't cause problems when the cover is folded right back), £10 we'll spent there.

synology...lack of response

Three days and still no response from synology regards the failure of media share over wireless or indeed regards the disappointing wireless performance - the only reason I have not given up on it is the money spent.

Synology update

I am now the proud owner of a Google Nexus 7, 32gb. What a great device but wholly  dependent on wireless connectivity.

 My first few days with the nexus have been plagued with what seems like network lock ups or connectivity dropping but further investigation has revealed problems with the Synology DS13Air wireless capability.

 To be fair sitting at my desk the wireless connect ion is perfect and much faster than my old net gear wpn802, however, that is about 2 feet from the router. Moving downstairs results in less than 20mbps connections and frequent loss of connect ion.

My net gear wireless signal works fine downstairs - I have raised a support ticket with Synology and as a result have changed the connect ion type from hotspot to wireless router. Functionality remains seemingly unchanged but connectivity is not improved.

Worse, I have been experimenting with dlna / upnp functionality and am having problems in that the media server on the ds 213 disappears at random. Much experimentation has resulted in the discovery that when I connect wirelessly using the, flawed, synology wireless I lose access to the synology media server but it works fine on rge net gear. So another bug on which I am still awaiting a response from synology.

213Air update

Interestingly enough the transfer speed is probably not being reported correctly but I did get a response from Synology which amounted to try it with a cross over cable to rule out all other network components. Not tried that yet.

Audio Station is fully in place and working which is excellent news - the Mediaserver version is fast whilst the Audio Station library mode is unusable.

I have also now received my Google Nexus 7 (32gb) and discovered that my ancient Netgear Wimax wireless device has a much better signal that the DS213 Air and to make matters worse the DS213 seems to drop the wireless connection when the drives go to sleep - raised another support call as the wireless performance is actually unusable more than a few feet away even on high power mode.

DS Audio on the Nexus is passable but doesn't have either the views listed in the library or the views showed on the media server which is a shame as it makes any collection of music of any size unwieldly, however, several DLNA based apps in Google Play - BubbleUpnp seems to do the job nicely - has a good interface and is responsive. The only problem I've found is that it cannot play to two different destinations (the are products out there that will but the interfaces are unusable) - I'm awaiting a response from the developer to see if the pay for version corrects that issue.

Impressed with the Google Nexus 7, tinkering with configuring it just so will keep me quiet for a while - as expected it has many more options that the ipad offers and it's not entirely intuitive to the extent that I am reading the manual (well, I will read the manual).

Synology DS 213 Air

I've been installing the new device for a week or so now - impressed so far, the device is silent (really, I had to check it was still turned on about 4 feet from me) when the drives are spun down and virtually silent in active operation - I can hear the fans now and the the slight rattle of the drive while my music collection copies over. I had to pause to listen as my PC is much noisier and it's a fairly quiet PC.

I've been tinkering with Synology's Audio Station package - it looks remarkably like the offering from Sonos and probably a string of other packages. I suspect it is going to struggle with my 145Gb of MP3 files because the reindexing of 2 tracks was distressingly slow but we'll find out. The biggest disappointment is that I think we'll find out a lot later than I might have expected as the file transfer speeds are sitting around 15mb/s - the started at close to 30mb/s which would be ok (but only ok) but now the DS213's CPU has hit 100% and the transfer shas dropped horribly - I can transfer else where at higher speeds and the lan is not busy. Have raised a support form with Synology because they are promoting much higher transfer speeds and this is a worry for day to day use.

The other problem I have at the moment is that I've added a second user and I cannot figure out how to grant that user rights to their own home folder which is a pain, fine for me.

I suspect that these are just niggles as so far everything else is looking good and normal disk performance for the odd file looks great - it's possible that I'm overwhelming the cache on the drive and the caching capability of the device is non existent but that's still slow.

Synology DS213 Air

My most recent Genie Timeline issues appear to have come about following the demise of my backup disk drive - more often than not it is booting and displaying as a RAW device rather than NTFS. I've scanned the drive during one of its good periods with no problem displayed but it still randomly fails.

I've had numerous problems with the drive / the USB 3.0 caddy it sits on so digging out my old USB 2.0 caddy I soon found that the problem is the USB 3.0 device.

However, I've been considering a NAS unit and this is the final straw as I now want to separate out my data from the PC so making the potential for recovery higher and a new Synology  DS213 Air and a 3Gb Western Digital Green Power drive is now sitting waiting for configuation.

Configuration is going to take me a while as the Synology device has a lot of options and features - luckily the interface is extremely smooth and user friendly, unluckily the SHR file system which is the default recovery option for the device churned the disk for over 12 hours before it was usable.

Genie Timeline...fixed?

To be honest watching someone fix your PC is really boring and the Genie9 team seem to know what they are doing and I'm happy that they are trust worthy so this time I just let the guy get on with it while I had a lie it. I could get used to this (not that I want to get used to problems), I get up, look at the screen and have a message that everything is fixed again.

A short email later and I have a set of scripts that will clear down the Timeline queue for me so I can try to fix the problem myself - clearly that doesn't solve the problem but at least means I have working backups.


Happy again.

Genie Timeline

My problems have commenced again, it appears that the software is awaiting a file to be available to backup and getting stuck so I have a different Genie 9 person due to login and crack it this time....

Genie Timeline Update

As an update one the Genie Timeline situation I have since had a one of the programmers on my machine and he has cracked the problem. I'm not sure what the cause was but hopefully he was able to take something away to improve stability in a future version but for now I have a working system and am very impressed with the support offered by the Genie9 team. Thanks.

Genie Timeline 2012

I have been using Genie Timeline for a couple of years now. It is an impressive little package, set which files / folders you want to backup to an external drive and forget about it, each time a file changes a new backup is created so you can return to old versions.

It works well enough that I have 3 legitimate copies, 2 professional and 1 home, home is a little more simplistic in features but still does the job nicely whereas profession allows me to tinker with more features.

It is not a perfect product - biggest flaws for me are the lack of ability to remove something from the backup - the Geniesoft (or Genie 9 as they now calls themselves, not sure, perhaps too much Star Trek) helpdesk recommend just deleting things direct from the backup files (instantly trashing all their indexing information) and the limitation that backups are fixed to the size of a disk - once the disk is full you have to start a new backup on a new disk but it backs up all the same data again. I now have 1.2tb of backups so disks are still growing ahead of my backup size but for how much longer I cannot tell. There are features to limit the backups size but they do nothing on version 2.

Which brings me to version 3, or Genie Timeline 2012 as it is now called. A new look, mirroring the Windows 8 tiles approach but unlike Microsoft's offering with Genie it is well thought out and presents well. It is possible the features I am about to mention existed in the previous version but I had it configured as I wanted and didn't fiddle which as it turns out is a good thing.

First off I've rediscovered the feature to limit backup set size - this was supposed to delete oldest files to keep the backup set under a target size but as Genie (sorry Seven, Genie9) stated to me, it doesn't work on version 2, so I thought I would try it on version 3, not sure if it works or not yet as I haven't reached the set size and....

There is also a feature to delete backups older than 60 days. Interestingly arbitrary number there. For my accounts files 60 days if fine but for my photos where I might want to re-edit an old version of file (bad management on my part but it happens) or when a file corrupts and I want to retrieve an old version 60 days is just so wrong. It needs to be configurable - I reckon I could live with 180 days, around 6 months but 60 is of no use.

All good so far but then I found the disaster recovery option. Sounds like a good button to press, yes it will backup some more tens of gigabytes but those disks keep getting bigger. Box duly ticked. Lots and lots of thinking. I'm not twenty something % protected and , and...it stops.

Machine left overnight and still no change. So I've unticked the disaster recovery and...still no movement.

So having tried everything I can think of (even a reboot :-) I raise a ticket on the Genie9 (yes that joke got old) site - they have a good ticket system and actively respond which is a major plus (so all those sites doing a performance comparison of backups products take note - backups which go wrong are useless without some support, big plus here). I've now started 2 services (Microsoft Software Shadow Copy Provider and volume Shadow copy) that had not been used on version 2 and although set to manual (ie on demand) had not started with Genie 2012 (is that a bug in their software or are they actually unnecessary, who knows, least of my worries at this point). Still no change.

My worst fears are looming - that I'm going to have to start a new backup & hence purchase a new (one of those aforementioned big ones) drive to handle the failure of my backup software.

Lots of screenshots and logs later I get an offer to remote onto my machine and assist - now this is a surprise. I work in IT and most of the time getting support from vendors is the blood from stone scenario, A large verndor who shall remain nameless but has a naming starting with M and ending in icrosoft will come on site for some hideous price and give bad advice (it is remarkably difficult to explain to one's employers that the consultant from the vendor who you just paid tens of thousands of pounds  gave answers I had already procured from google or were just plain wrong) but beyond that it's google all the way.

So a few days later I have a Genie 9 employee rummaging around my machine - he's polite, helpful and doesn't keep saying "what's this drive for" as he looks at my complicated config. He is logged in via a product called Teamviewer which is a free (for personal use) web based support tool - works over port 80 so no firewall messing around, good tool. He tries for an hour or more and gets to the point where Timeline looks like it is doing something but clearly isn't progressing.

How does this story end. Well more screenshots and logs and instructions to leave the machine to let it work (10 hours, no movement at all), we will see next week what happens, do I have a pretty good piece of software backed up with active support to make a truly remarkable package for the domestic market or .........

Raspberry Pi

I now have a Raspberry Pi model B.

A fantastically small device with more power that a lot of the machines I've used over the years. currently I am tinkering with getting XBMC, or rather RaspBMC working on it and Samba with USB drives.

It's going to take a while not least because of random crashes which seem to affect a lot of owners.

Once I've got something stable working I'll be able to experiment with the python programming and maybe get a little MySQL server running.

More when I make some progress.

HTPC Update

Well, the box is still in there working nicely. I am still impressed with the performance of the E450, a little more welly would be nice but I can live with it as the SSD more than makes up for the absence of CPU.

I have noticed that the Blu-ray player is almost silent with playing DVDs but very noisy with blu-rays which is a bit distracting - requires blu-rays to be played at a slightly higher volume.

The only issue I am now seeing is that the Moneual 312B case has a problem, the flap for the front panels is changing colour to a chocolate brown which is also very distracting.

New HTPC : An update

The box has been in for a while now. Performance is brilliant considering the lack of processor power, the SSD with a decent processor would be quite spectacular I imagine.

I have also "resolved" the problem with the scratches on the remote control - turns out there is a protective plastic layer which I just could not spot until enough use has loosened it so the scratches have gone now.

Negativity & SQL Server

SQL Server 2012 licensing. Clearly an advert for MySQL. Enough said.

New HTPC Build : The Software

I've tried a number of software packages to run my media center kicking off with MediaPortal in the days of Windows XP when no suitable software was bundled but a huge amount of time and effort later Windows 7 with bundled Media Center came along and saved me.

Windows Media Center is not a perfect solution, too many forced adverts, too few rows of content with lots of empty space but it works out of the box. Luckily Media Center Studio helps and is tweaked nicely with Mikinho's Media Center Strips.

What I have found that since Windows 7 there are built in codecs for MP4 files from a Sanyo Xacti camera, quicktime for the Lumix TZ5 and laterlly support for AVHCD files from a Lumiz FZ100, all with no changes by me.

I have also been using MediaBrowser for Movie support and YAMM to pick up move details. Unfortunately, the music plugin crashes my machine which is a shame as WMC's Music library sometimes corrupts of its own accord so having a backup capability would be handy so Music Browser is on hand just in case. In fact I've just had another crack at the Music support on MediaBrowser but it just doesn't display my files reliably, I've checked all of the files to ensure I have tags in place on everything (and weeded out a few corrupt MP3s as a result too) but no luck still.

I also have in place MKV capability which makes life a lot easier for an movies, divx provides the basic codec capability and configuring MKV file extensions via MediaBrowser's External Players works nicely and combined with the integration of Cyberlink PowerDVD that game with the Samsung blu-ray drive for blu-ray disks everything works neatly now.

I did make a short foray into XBMC which looks great, miles better than WMC but configuration changes don't always seem to result in a working solution so blu-rays would play - WMC works so it lives on and the Neo theme in MediaBrowser looks fabulous so why tinker any further?