Messages posted by: TechGuy

A common question that comes up after installing a Debian OS is how to keep it patched. Here we show you how sysadmins do it from the command line.

1. Add the debian-security to the sources.list file

For the Debian Buster release, add the following line. For other releases, replace buster with the correct release name.

2. Resynchronize the package index files from their sources

3. Install the newest versions of all packages currently installed on the system

4. Reboot

After the first time setting this up, periodic upgrades can be done by starting at step 2.

Here is another solution if you have a Dual-boot Windows/Android tablet and see this problem.

The problem occurs when:
1. You are in Windows 10 mode and you have access to the microSD card.
2. You boot into Android from Windows.
3. You boot back into Windows from Android mode. Windows will no longer see a microSD card even though it is there.

Here's the solution:
1. Power off the tablet and remove the microSD card.
2. Power up into Windows 10 mode. It will recognize that there is no microSD now.
3. Power off and put the microSD card back in.
4. Power up into Windows 10 mode and it will see the microSD card.

Hope this helps.

We recently picked up an Amazon Echo Dot and have placed a video of it on our Youtube page. It is a great voice assistant, and we have had much fun playing with it.

Our favorite questions to Alexa:
Alexa, what is the time?
Alexa, set an alarm for 3pm.
Alexa, play the news from CNN.
Alexa, what is today's weather?
Alexa, play tunein radio.

Note: You'll need to enable the Alexa skill for CNN to hear the CNN news read to you.

Youtube video - Amazon Echo Dot 2nd Generation -- Unboxing and Test

Windows 10 is supposed to be the latest and greatest OS from Microsoft, but the new version has added imperfections that have irked many users. Some of the biggest complaints to the latest version of Windows should get aired out so everyone knows what pains your users and why so many people continue to move over to the Mac or even Linux as a desktop OS. Many issues are new, but some are not. Please roll out a fix for your users.

Here are my top 5 Windows 10 gripes.

#5 - Windows 10 makes you wait
When you power up the computer, you usually need to get something done. For example, power up the computer to send a quick email or look up something quickly on the Internet. You don't have time to play around and wait for the computer to spin cycles doing updates. Older versions of Windows has had this problem, and the new version continues to do this. Why doesn't Microsoft think about the user? This is the key reason why people love tablets especially the Android or iOS ones. You power up and quickly do your needed tasks. There are no updates to block you from completing your work.

#4 - Windows 10 restricts your freedom
Unlike previous versions of Windows, Windows 10 will reboot on either its own schedule or force a schedule upon a user. What if you are not ready to reboot and you need more time? There's no option to stop it from rebooting. It is like a countdown timer ticking away and you can't stop it.

#3 - Windows 10 wastes electricity
Unlike older versions of Windows that stay in sleep or hibernate mode, Windows 10 has a mind of its own and will power up when it chooses and stayed powered up just because it is trying to schedule a restart or perform a reboot. There is no option to disable this. Plug your computer on a Kill-A-Watt meter and measure the amount of money lost from keeping your computer powered on and you'll know what I mean.

#2 - Windows 10 makes you lose data
Windows 10 will automatically reboot even with applications open. Think about customer experience. Why force users to lose their data and reboot without consent? Save and close all your applications in time or risk losing your data. The flip side is if you open Excel and type some gibberish in the cells, it will not reboot. What about other applications?

#1 - Windows 10 wakes you up at night
Yes, truly many people have a computer in the bedroom. It is just annoying to have a computer wake up the kids in the middle of the night because it is doing updates or wants to reboot. If you are not a deep sleeper, the fan sound from a computer is all it takes to wake you up and get you to run over to the computer to turn it back off. The "non-technical" solution is to unplug or turn off the power strip. But really, Microsoft needs to fix this so its millions of users can get a good night's sleep.

IO Game sites... In case you don't know what these are, they are gaming sites that play on the web browser. No installation is required. I haven't checked through all these, but let me know what doesn't work, and I'll get it removed.

driftin.io
dogargame.io
shipz.io
geoarena.online
limax.io
massacre.io
cursors.me
vertix.io
terr.io
splix.io
timaleon.com
braains.io
wilds.io
lazerdrive.io
tankwars.io
sl4sh.io
tagpro.gg
basher.io
bomberarena.com
geoarena.io
piranh.io
kartwars.io
overmind.io
frickinzombies.io
pirac.io
diep.io
superorbit.io
massivematch.io
vanar.io
wings.io
bacterio.io
myfrog.io
tanx.io
voidark.io
entro.space.io
warin.space
slay.one
slither.io
bellum.io
acyd.io
treasurearena.com
spheroids.xyz
tankar.io
meduzzza.io
supersnake.io
narwhale.io
gunr.io
tron.io
xgun.io
curvefever.io
agar.io
biome3d.com
hordes.io
gameofbombs.com
globule.io
mope.io
wormax.io
zlap.io
battlestick.net

1. Download the non-open source edition of VirtualBox from www.virtualbox.org

2. Download the extension pack from the same site

3. Install Virtualbox from the command line
For example,
dkg -i virtualbox-5.1_5.1.4-110228-Ubuntu-trustry_amd64.deb

4. Using the file manager, find and double click to install the extension pack

5. Add the user you use to start VirtualBox to the vboxusers group
sudo adduser my_user_name vboxusers
For example, if you start VirtualBox as user name "fred", then add fred to the vboxusers group
sudo adduser fred vboxusers

6. Log out and log back into Ubuntu desktop

7. Create a VM if needed.

8. Open up VM settings, choose USB, and click the USB+ icon on the right. It should now show your USB devices and you can select the ones you want visible in your VM.

We had a Slingbox Pro-HD go bad over time. It would lose network connectivity (2 red LEDs only show 1 lit). The solution was to replace the power adapter after hearing much on this topic on the Slingbox forums. While Slingbox does sell replacement power adapters, it is expensive and sometimes they don't have it in stock.

We picked up a 5V 3A power adapter from eBay for under $4, and it works great. With the new power adapter, the Slingbox boots up faster and holds the network connection well.

The item we bought was US Standard Plug AC 100-240V to DC 5V 3A Power Supply Charger Adapter 5.5mm. Always check your existing adapter voltage and current printed on it before ordering a replacement. Other Slingbox models may require different power adapters.

Hope this helps.

Full details on how to do the update are here.

http://www.shoppersnet.com/discussions/posts/list/25.page

This tutorial is designed for those users who have tough upgrades that won't work using the traditional Windows Update approach. We have upgraded a number of devices ranging from computers to tablets including dual-OS tablets (Android and Windows 8.1 with Bing) and have learned many lessons on the way. For example, we have run into cases where the upgrade always fails at 33% and shows the "Something Happened" installation error. We have worked around those problems here. Hopefully, these lessons will be helpful for those of you who want to do this quickly.

** WARNING - Perform these changes at your own risk! I take no responsibility for any changes or issues with your tablet. **

Requirements
- Computer or Tablet with Windows 7 or 8.1
- Windows 8 users need to first upgrade your OS to Windows 8.1 through the Windows App Store before proceeding

Materials
- "Windows 10 USB" - a blank USB Stick 8GB or larger (16GB is recommended)
- "Windows 8/8.1 USB" - a blank USB stick (8GB or larger) stick to save the recovery drive
- "Clonezilla USB" - a blank 512MB or larger USB stick
- "Backup USB" - a blank USB Stick 32GB is recommended for backing up tablet (e.g., 32GB for 32GB tablet)
- 4 Port Micro USB OTG Charge Hub
- Measey RC11 Keyboard Air Mouse or similar (Bluetooth keyboards and mice will not work)

Step 1 - Download the Media Creation Tool for Windows 10 and run it
- Download from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10
- Select image for both x86 and x64 and write it to a USB drives. Tablets may have insufficient power to boot from external DVD drives via USB. This USB image created by Microsoft's tool is bootable.

Step 2 - Download backup tools and build the USB image
- Download Tuxboot - https://sourceforge.net/projects/tuxboot/files/latest/download?source=files
- Tuxboot is used to create the USB image for Clonezilla

- Download Clonezilla - http://clonezilla.org/liveusb.php
- Clonezilla enables you to make a full backup of your tablet

- Use Tuxboot to create a USB image for Clonezilla

Step 3 - Prepare the 4 Port Micro USB OTG Charge Hub
Note that the hub has a Charge <-> OTG switch. In Charge mode, the hub will not boot from USB but will allow all USB devices to be visible. In OTG mode, it will not charge the tablet but will boot a bootable USB stick (e.g., Clonezilla, Windows 10 upgrade).
- Charge up your tablet completely.
- Plug in the RC11 2.4GHz receiver, Clonezilla USB stick, the Backup USB Stick, and flip the Hub switch to OTG.

Step 4 - Power on tablet and enter BIOS screen
- On some tablets to enter BIOS screen, press Esc on the RC11 when you first power up the screen
- Choose "Boot from File" and look for file EFI->boot->bootx64.efi or bootia32.efi depending on whether your hardware is 64 or 32-bit

Step 5 - Backup the tablet before starting
Create a full image backup by using Clonezilla and writing to the Backup USB drive. You can get back all your data if you accidentally wiped or corrupted your tablet. For example, if your Android partitions were wiped, you can reimage to get it back.
- You need to specify the Backup USB drive to store the image.
- mmcblk0 is usually the drive on the tablet to read from.
- You can probably ignore any TF or MicroSD cards which would show up as mmcblk1 or similar.

Step 6 - Create USB Recovery drive
- Boot back into Windows and create a copy of the Recovery Drive onto USB.
NOTE: If you have important data, also create a backup of your computer or tablet using Create a system disc or copy the data to another networked machine. We will be doing a destructive wipe of the original Windows installation, so a full backup is a MUST-HAVE.

Step 7 - Reset the PC
- For Windows 8.1, reset the PC. This is needed if you tried doing updates and they always fail at a specific percentage (e.g., 33%). We believe Windows Update causes the failure so resetting it original version fixes the problem for us. Doing this step will wipe all your data and may even wipe your Android partitions so that's why we created the Clonezilla image. See "Optional Notes" below to recover.

- Reboot into Windows 8.1 and turn off Wifi.

- Start the upgrade using the Windows 10 upgrade USB. It should complete with no problems.

Step 8 - Windows 10 drivers
- Install any required Windows 10 drivers and make sure the device has Internet access.
- Check to make sure that Control Panel->System says that the device is Activated.

Step 9 - Get your Windows 10 product key
- From Howtogeek, get the new product key by running the VBS script
http://www.howtogeek.com/206329/how-to-find-your-lost-windows-or-office-product-keys/

Step 10 - Check and adjust partitions if needed
- Visit Settings->(Search for Control Panel)->Administrative Tools->Computer Management->Disk Management

- If all partitions (RAW and Windows 10) are there, then you are almost done.
- If you have a Dual-OS tablet, install the dual-boot software. Additional driver updates may be needed.

--

OPTIONAL NOTES: (ONLY DO THIS if you need to recover Android partitions)
Note: If you already have Windows 10 installed and just need to recover your Android partitions, you may want to resize the Windows partitions and move them toward the end of the disk with PartionWizard. Partition Wizard is available from https://www.partitionwizard.com/ and use Clonezilla and another USB drive to save a copy. With this you may be able to build a surgically modified Clonezilla image without reinstalling Windows 10 again.

- Boot with Clonezilla USB as in Step 4 but this time restore the image you created. You will be back to the original operating systems before you did the update.
- Replace the Clonezilla USB with the Windows 10 Upgrade USB and boot from it using Advanced mode. You should not be asked to enter a product key, but if you do, use the one you saved.
- Delete only the Windows partitions and click on the Free Drive Space for next.
- Your Windows 10 install will complete and you will have both Windows 10 and Android on your tablet.

References
Many thanks to Techtablets for coming up with the idea of using the 4 port USB OTG adapter. This was a critical component to completing the Windows 10 update.
http://techtablets.com/forum/topic/how-to-update-to-windows-10-on-chuwi-vi8/

We were able to successfully install Windows 10 Home on the Chuwi Vi8 Dual OS tablet. Some of the ideas here may also work for other tablets. The stock OS is Windows 8.1 with Bing.

The following approaches to update were not successful. It ends badly with with the "Something happened error" at around 33%.

Failed Approaches
- Windows Update from within Windows
- Installing via a USB image created with the Media Creation Tool also ends with the same reason.

How to successfully install the free Windows 10 upgrade
1. Backup your tablet with Clonezilla to a USB stick before you start the upgrade.
2. Make a USB Recovery Drive
3. Reset the PC using the Recovery Drive (When we did this we lost the Android partitions)
4. Enable Wifi access, but don't do any Windows updates. We believe Windows updates is somehow related to the failure at 33%.
5. Mount the Windows 10 Home USB Stick with image created by the Media Creation Tool and start the install and choose option to not save anything

Windows 10 will install to completion and the Windows 8.1 with Bing recovery partition will disappear. You actually get more space given that the recovery partition is removed.

The Product Key appears to have changed after the update. It is good to save a copy of it and use it for a subsequent full reinstall given that once the upgrade is done you have the full entitlement to the Windows 10 Home OS.

We will create a full tutorial in a subsequent post.

Yes, it seems that the default Windows update will not upgrade from Windows 8.1 with Bing to Windows 10. Using the image from the Media Creation Tool also has a similar error.

We will look into this issue soon and see if we can come up with a solution.

This tutorial covers Windows 10, but older versions of Windows are similar.

One solution to fixing it is to synchronize time more often. The default is every 7 days which may not be accurate enough for you. Note that using network time requires a connection to the Internet.

If you have your own NTP (network time protocol server), you can avoid bombarding a public time server with too much traffic. In this example, we use a local NTP server and set it to 1 hour to update time. If you use a shorter interval, the time will be more accurate but cause more network traffic. It is generally good practice to avoid sending too many requests to a public NTP server.

Steps to update Windows time more frequently
1. Open a DOS prompt and type regedit
2. Navigate to registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\TimeProviders\NtpClient
3. Change value to desired interval to synchronize time in seconds.
-- For example, use 3600 for every hour. The default is 604800 which is 7 days. The value is in seconds.
-- Right mouse click SpecialPollInterval
-- Click Decimal for Base
-- Enter 3600 for Value data and click OK

4. (Optional) Point to a local NTP server
-- Open Control Panel and navigate to Control Panel\Clock, Language, and Region[/list]
-- Click Set the time and date
-- Choose the tab Internet Time
-- Choose Change Settings
-- Enter a server name for a network time protocol server (NTP).
-- Check the box "Synchronize with an Internet time server"
-- Click Update now
-- Click OK

We have put up a video for the Targus AKB33US Bluetooth keyboard.

The AKB33US keyboard has good compatibility with all the devices we tested which includes the Apple iPad, Samsung Galaxy S3, and various Android tablets and TV sticks. There were no issues pairing or connecting. The keyboard has a "last" bluetooth pairing in memory so the next time you power on it will remember the device and connect automatically.

The keys are generally comfortable to the touch. Unlike typical Android TV box remotes, the keys are nicely-spaced to accomodate even adult-sized fingers. The keys resemble what you would get on a typical laptop keyboard. We would have preferred swapping the locations of the backspace and delete keys though.

Check out the video - Targus AKB33US Review

Gameloft has fixed this issue. The recent download is now properly writing data to the internal SD card storage.

One additional note... There is a weather widget that seems to also never show up in the UI but have a running process.
/system/app/MtkWeatherWidget.apk

It uses the following permissions.
android.permission.ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION
android.permission.VIBRATE
android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE
android.permission.INTERNET

If you are paranoid about privacy, you can also disable that one too. We have some suspicions, but at this time do not consider it malicious.

Run the following command to disable.