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The Ultimate Performance plan is a preset power scheme introduced in Windows 10 v1803 and higher. This power scheme is enabled by default for Windows for Workstations. But, it can be manually enabled in other Windows 10/11 editions — Home, Pro, etc.
But, what exactly does the Ultimate Performance power scheme do?Read more
Knowing the technical specifications of your motherboard is very important, especially if you’re planning to upgrade the processor or RAM. Once you find the make and model of your motherboard, you can get the user manual from the respective manufacturer’s site.
If you’ve got a computer from a friend and want to know the system specifications — including the motherboard make and model, information about the memory module, etc., you can do so without using any third-party tool.Read more
Of late, one of my Windows 10 computers has been running sluggishly, hangs frequently or shuts down abruptly. The malware scans turned out to be normal and there are no processes consuming huge CPU time or memory. The disk usage remained at 100% though, regardless of the app I open.
The System event log showed multiple disk error entries. Here is one such event:
Log Name: System Source: disk Date: 15-08-2019 17:37:49 Event ID: 7 Task Category: None Level: Error Keywords: Classic User: N/A Computer: DESKTOP-3V7LVDA Description: The device, \Device\Harddisk0\DR0, has a bad block.
After restarting Windows, the following event log entry gets added.
Log Name: System Source: Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Power Date: 15-08-2019 19:28:09 Event ID: 41 Task Category: (63) Level: Critical Keywords: (70368744177664),(2) User: SYSTEM Computer: DESKTOP-3V7LVDA Description: The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.
The same error occurred for my secondary hard drive (Disk 1), and the error message read The device, \Device\Harddisk1\DR1, has a bad block.
If you have multiple hard drives and want to know which hard drive has a bad block, note down the Disk # indicated in the event log. Open Disk Management to see the list of drives and the corresponding drive #.
A bad block is an area of the hard drive that is no longer reliable for storing and retrieving data. Bad block may indicate corruption or physical damage.
There are two types of bad blocks: A physical bad block comes from damage to the storage medium. A soft, or logical, bad block occurs when the operating system (OS) is unable to read data from a sector. Examples of a soft bad block include when the cyclic redundancy check (CRC), or error correction code (ECC), for a particular storage block does not match the data read by the disk. (TechTarget.com)
And, I couldn’t clone the drive using Macrium Reflect or EaseUS ToDo Backup. Macrium Reflect threw the error “clone failed” code 9, and EaseUS software stalled at 51% while cloning the disk.
In this article, I’ll tell you how I resolved the hard drive “bad block” error.Read more
Microsoft Office Picture Manager is a graphics viewer and editor introduced in Microsoft Office 2003 and included up to Office 2010. Many people prefer the good old Microsoft Office Picture Manager, perhaps for it’s UI or UX, and want to install it on Windows 10.
However, Microsoft has discontinued the Picture Manager with the release of Office 2013. The equivalent functionality is now provided in the Windows 10’s Photos app, which has the image crop, resize, red-eye removal, video trimming, and other features. Alternatively, you can also enable the classic Windows Photo Viewer using the registry, or install the Windows Live Photo Gallery (which is now unsupported by Microsoft).
If you desperately need the Office Picture Viewer, the good news is that you can still install it on Windows 10. The SharePoint Designer 2010 installer includes the Office Picture Manager as an optional component that can be installed as a standalone application.
This article tells you how to install Office Picture Manager on Windows 10 and earlier, regardless of the version of Office — e.g., Office 2013, Office 2016, Office 365 — installed on the computer. Office Picture Manager is super-fast (like the Windows Photo Viewer) especially if you’re going to use it as an image previewer.Read more
The built-in Photos app can be used to cut a portion of a video file. Sometimes, you may need to split a video or audio into multiple parts with a specific duration. It helps you share them on Twitter or any other social networking site which has a length limitation. For instance, Twitter allows you to upload videos of length not exceeding 140 seconds (2m 20s.)
To split a video into multiple equal parts, you may have to repeat the procedure multiple times if you’re using the Photos app. Instead, you may use a third-party tool to split a video (MP4, MKV, AVI, or MPG) or audio (MP3, WAV, etc.) into multiple equal parts automatically.
In this article, let’s see how to cut a selection of a video or audio and save the selection to a separate file. This article also describes how to split a video or audio into multiple equal parts.
Your Windows 10 computer may show the error 0x80070005 when installing a feature update. The exact error message verbatim is below:
There were problems installing some updates, but we’ll try again later. Feature update to Windows 10, version 1903 – Error 0x80070005
Windows 10 and 11 have multiple recovery options to revert or roll back to an old configuration. The built-in recovery options include System Restore, driver rollback, in-place upgrade (a.k.a repair install), Reset This PC, Recovery disk, and Go back to the previous version of Windows.
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BIOS is a firmware used to perform hardware initialization during the booting process. The BIOS firmware comes pre-installed on a computer’s motherboard (a.k.a. system board), and it is the first software to run when powered on. You can enable or disable onboard devices, set the boot device priority, CPU speed, etc., in the BIOS Setup page.
CPU vulnerabilities (e.g., Meltdown, Spectre) are fixed by installing the appropriate security Microcode update. Microcode updates are nothing but the firmware for CPUs which are usually delivered as BIOS or UEFI firmware update. So, updating the BIOS is essential to mitigate or fix security vulnerabilities in CPUs.
If Intel releases a Microcode update for a CPU or a set of CPU models, they work with OS vendors, and OEMs to develop platform firmware and software updates that can help protect systems.
This post tells you how to check your BIOS version and make sure if your BIOS is up to date.
You may sometimes want to to find the total execution time of a command or program you run. To optimize a script or program, it’s essential to know how long does it take for it to complete execution. This helps you compare the total run time of Program A vs. Program B and optimize your code, especially if you’re a professional software developer, analyst, or software tester.
Measuring the total execution time of a script or process is one of the most critical aspects of performance optimization. This article discusses various methods to find the total execution time of a program, script, or command in Windows.
Software developers compile separate executable files (.EXE or .DLL) for 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x64) systems. The 64-bit version of the program is usually denoted by suffixing 64 or x64 with the filename — e.g., sigcheck.exe vs. sigcheck64.exe. In some cases, the bitness notation may be missing, and you may be wondering if the executable is 32-bit or 64-bit.
This article discusses various methods to determine if a program or executable file is 32-bit or 64-bit in Windows.
Note that some vendors may combine the 32-bit and 64-bit executables into one 32-bit self-extractor file that would detect the platform, extract, and run the correct EXE for the current platform.Read more