Tag: Windows 10

Microsoft: Way to scare people

· 1 Comment ·

So this morning I was looking at my computer clock. Something was off – namely the time had set itself one hour ahead. “That’s odd” I thought. I know I had setup NTP or Network Time Protocol on my Windows 10 machine.

Couldn’t see the problem before I left for work. But I mentioned it to co-worker and said “I bet it’s because it’s using Microsoft’s NTP server.”

I was correct. Got home and change it to NIST time servers and presto change-o voila – the time is once again scarily accurate.

I further wonder – how many other people are running Windows 10 with NTP turned on and using Microsoft time servers and had the same problem?

I also wonder – could it be that the Microsoft IP I blocked a couple months back be their NTP server? Nah – it’s not.

Blocking Windows 10 from phoning home

· Leave a comment ·

So I’ve long known Windows 10 likes to phone home to Microsoft. Well last night I pulled a command prompt up and executed the command netstat -an

From that I looked up all the active addresses – most were legitimate though I’m really considering blocking Yahoo.com next.

But just for your consideration here’s a snippet of the firewall log in which I blocked a Microsoft address.

2016-02-07 12:12:11 RV110W kern.warning ACL-Deny-L2W:IN=VLAN1 OUT=WAN SRC=192.168.1.100 DST=65.52.108.210 LEN=157 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=127 ID=13934 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=49447 DPT=443 WINDOW=61 RES=0x00 ACK PSH URGP=0
2016-02-07 12:12:12 RV110W kern.warning ACL-Deny-L2W:IN=VLAN1 OUT=WAN SRC=192.168.1.100 DST=65.52.108.210 LEN=157 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=127 ID=13935 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=49447 DPT=443 WINDOW=61 RES=0x00 ACK PSH URGP=0
2016-02-07 12:12:12 RV110W kern.warning ACL-Deny-L2W:IN=VLAN1 OUT=WAN SRC=192.168.1.100 DST=65.52.108.210 LEN=157 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=127 ID=13936 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=49447 DPT=443 WINDOW=61 RES=0x00 ACK PSH URGP=0

So on average it tries to phone home every 30-60 seconds. To hell with Microsoft. If I blocked something important, like say a software authentication server or an update server I’ll see Windows bitch in the logs. But so far, nothing.

 

More on Windows 10

· 2 Comments ·

So the installer detects what was previously on that machine and installs the appropriate version. Hence when I looked at the properties it said Windows 10 Pro.

You can get to said properties bu clicking the start button and then right clicking on File Explorer and then clicking on Properties.

Win10-File-Explorer-Properties

And son of a bitch here it is, Windows 10 Pro: UntitledOne thing I notice about the windows in Windows 10 is that the minimize, maximize, close segment seems to be more separated. Makes for somewhat easier clicking. The style is interesting  as there’s no more gray border on windows. It’s just straight out white now.

Regards security – I don’t have permissions to save into my pictures folder. That’s due to the fact it’s copied over from an old XP machine. I’ll fix that eventually.

Not as painful as I’d imagined it would be. Granted some features that I’d just gotten used to in XP and Windows 7 – Microsoft did their usual and shuffled it up a bit.

But if you want to know – the key differences between Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro – the latter can connect to Active Directory servers and domains. Home can’t. That’s really the big difference.

So I bit the bullet

· 2 Comments ·

And upgraded my Windows 7 Professional machine to Windows 10. Not as bad as I would have thought it would be.

I’ve pretty much unpinned all the bullshit from the start menu – I don’t have an Xbox that would be compatible, also don’t care about Cortana, or get MS office. Sorry – that ship has sailed. I just have LibreOffice 4.4 on the machine.

Performance wise I note running Netlflix in Google Chrome is much smoother.

It’s running on a Dell E6420 I5 quad core system with 4GB or RAM. I plan to upgrade the RAM thought.

So no more dunning to upgrade to Windows 10. I’m running it now – and allegedly this is supported FOREVER. That’s interesting by itself.

Unbelievable lifespan for a computer

· 2 Comments ·

So one finally bit the dust tonight. Old Dell XPS M140’s. By reckoning those machines were 9 years old. But the conundrum – if it could be called that is when the last one failed this evening I have no way of getting data off the machine. Or so you might think.

Since they’re vintage computers they use ATA-100 drives. So I got an ATA-100 to USB converter. Just plug it in and turn it on. Ordered a refubished Dell Latitude E6420 to replace the old machine. Cost about $300 with tax. I’m picking it up tomorrow. I got it from MicroCenter.  A warning, their site doesn’t play well with Chrome or Firefox – you have to use Internet Exploder/Explorer.

But the reason the machines lasted so long is that yours truly did a hell of a lot of preventive maintenance. Just to give you an idea, at age 4 I replaced the hard drives on them. And I can’t count the number of keyboards I replaced on them. Or the screens I replaced. In fact the only thing original on the machines were the motherboards. Oh yeah, wifi cards got replaced too.

In essence I get my moneysworth out of computers. But this upgrade is sort of necessary as the ‘new’ machine is Windows 7 Professional which will upgrade to Windows 10 with no issues.