The whole world upgrades to Windows 10 since the recent weeks. So what are the problems I had stumped into and how I have solved them? Not a lot issues I have to admit, any all of them found a solution 🙂

I have had 1 Intel tablet, 2 Laptops and 1 Desktop PC to upgrade.

I have started with the We Tab WiFi + 3G that was upgraded to 2 GB of RAM and a 120 GB mSATA SSD by KingFast.It had Windows 8.1 32bit installed.

Things were straight forward here, it upgraded and installed all drivers except graphics card, I simply went to the Device Manager and clicked “update driver” –> Search for better driver and it downloaded one and installed it. Really easy! In Windows 10, the device manager and Windows Update are your friends, really one of the few times, where a good and well working drivers was downloaded once triggered by the user. Well done!

Next, I have updated Windows 8.1 64 bit on my Sony Vaio VGN-FW46M next. There was no driver related issue, whatsoever! Smooth and simply worked 🙂 Just keep in mind, that a shutdown means it does a hibernate and unfortunately the wireless network gets stuck and doesn’t come up until I restart it.And since I have a SSD and since after about 10 startups it learns how to do it the fastest way (Windows 10, not the SSD:) ) it’s just a matter of seconds anyway. So I am simply disabling it

Next laptop is my HP Compaq 6910p laptop, I run 32bit Windows 8.1 on it, my mum Windows 7 64bit on the same laptop. I have done heavy modifications to both laptops, so installation is different compared to the stock model without modifications. Also, the drivers for the touchpad are reacting different, 64bit versions work fine, tbe 32bit version however generates ghost clicks every couple of seconds, which renders Windows unusable. I found no 64bit driver that works, so solution was here to disable hibernatet as well!

Last one was my desktop PC. It runs on a ASUS M5A78L/USB3 and there have been no driver conflicts with it since the beginning, unlike I had with Windows 8/8.1!

Meanwhile Windows update, updated the driver to version 10.0.10240.16461 of August, 17th, 2015!.

The only problem was, Creative Labs didn’t release the Windows 10 drivers for my Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer until the middle of August, I was without a working driver, until I found the SB X-Fi Series Support Pack 3.5 but the options “headphone settings are activated automatically” and “auto-mute speakers” had to be enabled in the sound settings of the headphones tab. Luckily, in the meantime, the official drivers are released which is cook because I needed to set those settings each time I restarted or booted up my PC! It’s actually surprising that new drivers are released for this wonderful PCI card, as back in 2010 they told me the product is EOF and there are no fixed or new driver releases planned.

I am so glad that they have changed their mind, thank you, Creative Labs 🙂

All in all, this was way more trouble free than I expected, thank you Microsoft 🙂

If you are into tech and geekeness like myself I would strongly suggest keeping an eye on my Scene World Project (Wikipedia link) it is a C64 dismag and a medial journalistic hobby project that I am running with some friends of the C64 scene since 2001.

Last Wednesday, we have had in our first show famous videogame composer Chris Huelsbeck (wikipedia link)

Thanks to olymptronica who invited us to the Film & Games – an Interplay event 🙂 Olympronica and Scene World Magazine hosts every last Wednesday between June 2015 and January 2016 a Live Twitch show as a part of the exhibition,
You can either watch it live for free at the Film Museum in Frankfurt or watch the live stream for free on Twitch at http://www.twitch.tv/sceneworld or the Twitch app for your mobile device. Please subscribe our twitch channel as well!

This month’s guest was famous Chris Huelsbeck!
Watch the the stream recording :

So, are you among those guys and gals who bought GTA 5 for your PC recently and it’s keeping crashing on the latest officially optimized nvidia drivers for GTA V.

Just a standard “a problem has occured and the program has to close”. Why people, why?

The driver before driver v. 350.12 work fine on the  GTX 750 but not on the Quadro NVS 290.
Why I need the Quadro NVS 290? Because of video editing I do for the Scene World project I need that much monitors connected to my PC for easier managing all the stuff going on at my computer.

The drivers from last year however are mostly too old to support the GTX 750 already it seems. (So other way round problem from the above).

Long story short, I have found that the following driver version works:

337.88

Why is having 2 graphics from nVidia running on Windows 8.1 X64 being an issue? Because for some reason Windows assigns the same driver to both graphics cards , when I had an ATI card as primary card, both had their separated drivers and no issues!

If you need any more help or have any questions feel free to email me and I will answer you! 🙂

Recently, AVM released the final of the newest firmware (FRITZ!OS 06.23) of the Fritzbox 7390 with some fixes I have requested a year ago.

If you cannot connect Chromecast under Windows 8.1 for some reason and the online help system refers you to turn-sharing-on-or-off, then you will be pleased to hear that there is a fix, even the Chromecast support will not tell you:
Press the Windows icon key on your keyboard.and X key.
Click on Command Prompt (Admin.)
Click on Yes if prompted by your firewall pop-up.
Type netsh winsock reset and press enter
Restart PC

This way I have fixed the issue on 2 Windows 8.1 laptops, one x86 and one x64!

And now I am using it successfully with netfix, (I have seen it at a friend this weekend, and in Peru last year (despite some people living in Peru saying it’s like like here and here), I have quite liked it. and I don’t seem to be the only one 🙂

However I have still managed to only get it to work on my desktop computer just ones so I decided to rather use it together with my iPhone5S instead. It also has the advantage of turning the iPhone into a Chromecast remote control when I am sitting in front of the computer 🙂

HG Sierra UMTS 3G HSPDA PCI-E MC8775 unlocked Card

I have had to exchange my iPhone5S for a new one at the Apple Store last Saturday, because the glass was bent for some reason and would pop out of its frame on one side. (known issue as described in the apple forums here). Fortunately they have swapped it right away as exchanging the glass would not be allowed because of touchID.

So no problem, back home restore the phone from iTiunes backup.

It worked but I noticed today that Push notifications stopped working.
Apple Support office was already closed, so I browsed the Apple Support Forums for all the odds of solution suggestions. However all of them didn’t help except one, which is – according to the feedback – the solution that works in the majority of all cases).

Uninstall and reinstall the “find my iphone” app!

(as described in the apple forums by Rooki here)

Have fun with your iPhone and iOS7!

Technorati Tags: push, iphone

It isn’t easy to face bluescreen issues in Windows 8.1, but sometimes it still happens if you happen to come across a bad driver/outdated driver and driver conflicts. So, after buying the Gear Shifter, I faced hourly bluescreens.

The trained eye may notice that the Thrustmaster Support Download Site for the TH8RS only mentions Windows XP-Windows 8, but not 8.1.

Since the bluescreen issues only appeared as soon as the Gear Shifter was connected and only since I got it installed, I guessed that a driver issue with this device maybe the reason for my bluescreens.

So, searching for evidence may not be as straightforward if you don’t know what tools to use. I have passed the “trial and error” phase since long, and also Windows Event Manager is not my tool of choice.

Step 0) Starting Windows 8.1 in Safe Mode with Network functionality.

Step 1) Finding out which kind of error you are receiving and which system files conflict with each other: Use

You can see that most times, it crashed because of “IRQ NOT LESS OR EQUAL”, wich means that some devices have an interrupt address conflict. You can see by the red marked files, that HIDCLASS.SYS (so Human Interface Device driver for USB devices) and the Windows NT OS Kernel” conflicted with each other.

Now we know what is happening but we don’t know yet about the “Why”. So:

Step 2) Checking out which HID and USB Controller Drivers are installed and whether they are the latest versions. We use DriverMax for that.

When we scanned for currently installed drivers and we hover over the “Date” line of the USBG Host Controller Driver, we can find the date of the installed driver vs the recent driver version, we see that the installed version is from 2006! That’s incredibly outdated, long before Windows 8.x and even Windows 7 was released. Also I see the generic USB hub driver is outdated (however I don’t think that’s the reason for the bluescreen, but since 2 is the maximum amount of driver downloads per 24h of the free version, why not? 😉 ).

Step 3) After restarting Windows 8.1 in normal mode , we may be facing a blue screen again this time because the ASMEDIA onboard USB3.0 drivers crash 🙁

Don’t mind the German in the error message, important is the last bit of information. You can see the reason again and you can see which driver is involved. In this case, the ASMedia USB3.0 driver for my on-board USB3.0 ports.

Since this happens right after loggin into my Windows 8.1 user account, I have no other choice but to reboot into Safe Mode with Network again.

May I kindly refer here to my previous post which discribes where to get a working driver from, here or if this one doesn’t work, use the previous one supplied by ASUS as described here. (WARNING: DO NOT use the most recent one supplied by DriverMax, because it will make your system instable!)

The problem just is, you cannot installed it in safe mode, and since it instantly crashes in normal mode, you are in a devil’s circle. To break the circle, simply go to the Device Manager in Control Panel and uninstall the driver .

After restarting into normal mode, you may notice that the Windows 8.1 stock driver has been installed and that the USB root hub mentiones “non functional”.

So, then we download and install the ASMEDIA driver as mentioned previously. Once we restarted Windows 8.1 the bluescreen and USB driver  IRQ conflicts  are gone!

Happy Gaming! 🙂

  Technorati Tags: TH8RS, USB3

In contrast to what ASUS Germany Suppport told me in an email before, (i.e. that the product is not certified and supported for Windows 8), it seems they changed mind now and put up a Windows 8.1 driver download page in December 2013 and also released a new BIOS.

The page can be found here on their support page for this model . Thanks ASUS! 🙂

And I tried it, the official Windows 8.1 USB 3 drivers of the ASMEDIA USB 3.0 ports offered on that page of the board really work now ! 🙂

Technorati Tags: USB3, Windows 8.1

I have written about the driver issue with 64bit Windows and the Epson Perfection 2480 Photo before and this time with Windows 8.1 it’s no exception, however that the old driver that worked in Windows XP X64, Windows Vista x64 and Windows 7 x64 no longer work in Windows 8.1 x64.

But there is a workaround. You can use the free DriverMax and search for drivers for devices that have the drivers missing. It will find a driver that will work. It even works with the USB Remote Control feature of the Fritzbox 7390 router.

  Technorati Tags: Epson Perfection 2480, Windows 8.1