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RetiredGeek wrote:

Did you by any chance use Process Explorer to determine what Process ID 4 was

I didn’t, but I’ve just run the test again together with Process Explorer, and it doesn’t really seem to give any extra useful information

As fas as I can tell (from its description in Resource Monitor) Process Id 4 is “NT Kernel & System”, so I’m guessing it’s one that shouldn’t be shut down…

Hi RG, thanks for the explicit instructions. Once I’d followed them I was able to get the task to work successfully

I’ve attached the results. I didn’t actually try selecting Yes, as “System” seemed a fairly non-specific application to terminate

If it’s any help, the steps I took to force the Rejection message were:

1. Attach one of my USB backup drives
2. Open and mount one of the files on it in TrueCrypt
3. Try and eject the device using “Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media”

I have the policy for the device set to “Quick Removal”, but I always use “Safely Remove…”  because I’m a cautious soul. If there’s any other info you’d like just let me now

I’ll try again tomorrow morning, because this is something that would be of interest to me. Unfortunately, although I’m able to make the “Unable to remove device” message appear on demand, I’ve not been able to get your utility to pop up anything meaningful as yet. Something happens, a brief blue box flashes up but it disappears immediately

I’ve tried the Program/Script and Add Arguments fields both with, and without, inverted commas, but to no avail

I expect I’ve done something dumb, so, as I said, I’ll try again tomorrow (Europe time)

I’ve never used this particular service, but it saddens me to hear about another site which tried to provide a real service to users having to shut down, and the reasons for it

And, yeah, I get it, nowadays most sites need advertising revenue to survive, and people like me spend a lot of time trying to make sure we don’t have to SEE those stoopid adverts, because they’re mostly trying to sell us crap that we don’t want or need

For me this is kinda symptomatic of how the internet has gone down the pan. In the beginning it used to be a wild place, with nothing in the way of rules and regulations. But nowadays, it’s run by, and for, soulless big business, interested not in blue or red, but only in green (in Murdoch’s immortal words)

It’s like places in the real world that used to be dilapidated but full of character, and then the yuppies moved in, and bought them all up, and gentrified them, and sucked all the life out of them, and made a bomb while doing it

Sites like ZippyShare, and even places like AskWoody and others that provide a real service to real people, have become the old-fashioned outliers, like small high street stores in a world of giant malls and online retail

Mwah, life moves on, there’s nothing any of us can do except feel a twinge of sadness and move on with it

2 users thanked author for this post.

Cybertooth, Alex5723

I stopped using WinZip many years ago when it turned into very aggressive nagware. I’d add my voice to the people recommending 7-zip. The interface isn’t the prettiest, but it’s free and it does the job (and then some)

1 user thanked author for this post.

Alex5723

The problem with the clickbait article at the top of this topic is a) its source is the Mirror, a red-top UK tabloid, and b) its use of the sensationalist term “Aliens”, rather than something more neutral

NASA clearly believes that there are other lifeforms out there, and is spending millions (if not billions) of dollars on the search for it. There’s a quick review from a NASA website here: The search for life elsewhere. And it’s not hard to find articles from reputable scientific sources reviewing the question (and also, why we have yet to find any hard evidence: The Fermi Paradox)

Nonsense about Area51, Alien Abductions, UFOs and the rest, does an interesting field of study absolutely no favors at all.

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Charlie

I used to be a user of both Corel Photopaint (which, from an artistic perspective I very much loved. I’ve never been able to find a “Watercolour” filter that is anywhere near the same delicate quality), and Paintshop Pro (which was… ok)

I uninstalled Photopaint a LONG while back, after Corel was outed for snooping, and I also stopped using Paintshop Pro when Corel took it over, and now use the Gimp exclusively. As has been mentioned the Gimp’s most recent incarnations are functionally quite sufficient for most hobbyists, and its current interface is not quite so aggressively anti-anything-Windows-like as it once was

TechTango wrote:

Does anyone use encrypted containers?

Although it’s no longer officially supported (or even officially available) I use TrueCrypt, because I’ve always used it, and it still works in Win 10. I’ve not investigated all the implications, but I’ll probably move over to VeraCrypt when I move to Win 11

For me it’s a simple and straightforward method for protecting sensitive data of all kinds

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TechTango

I cannot help you with this particular problem but I can highly recommend the VS Developer Community

I’ve been using VS for years without any issues, but I had an installation update go wonky a few months back, and posted a grumpy complaint about the vague error message I’d received, expecting nothing much in return

What I got instead was a member who took the problem, owned it, investigated it, and eventually helped solve it

It would certainly be worth posting your problem there if nobody here at AW can help

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wileecoyote128

Alex5723 wrote:

* There are free, install/portable, open source Office software like LibreOffice, OpenOffice,…

I can kinda understand corporate users going with MS for their Office applications, but unless an individual user has very specific or esoteric needs, the free open-source alternatives are just as good, and have just as much functionality. And, they’re free

And did I mention how little they cost?

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Alex5723

dg1261 wrote:

So I’m not sure what to make of this report. It would help to know if others have received this notice from PayPal. If it’s real, how widespread is this?

I have a PayPal account. I’ve received no email nor physical notification of any such breech (although, I’m currently in the middle of a change of country, so it’s possible that there’s a letter waiting at my old address)

Until I hear anything more concrete I’m filing this under “vaguely concerning, but nothing to panic about yet”

(I’ll change my password though)

It would have to be used after having already captured the image, but Gimp (which is free) has a cropping tool that can be configured to cut an image to an exact pixel width and height. See attached example, where I’ve asked it to crop the image to 500px x 400px

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geekdom, Microfix

sahalen wrote:

What would of happened if I clicked on the “Restart now” button before the installation was complete. With the risk of being wrong, could this have something to do with the issue around KB5021233?

Probably doesn’t have anything to do with this specific issue, but it IS something I’ve occasionally seen happen in the past with updates to my own machines, and I’ve always wondered about it. Obviously the only way to find out what would happen would be to actually click “Restart now” before the installation was complete, but equally obviously most people would refrain from doing that, as long as they’d noticed what was going on. Perhaps the unfinished installation would just pick up where it left off on restarting, but I personally wouldn’t bank on it…

Thanks for the link. Tried it briefly, but I’ll be sticking with DDG. Freespoke results seem just a bit too clickbaity for my personal preference

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wavy

KB5021233 installed without issue (including one obligatory restart, and one more for luck) on my Windows 10 Pro 22H2, with hidparse.sys existing only in my c:\windows\System32\drivers folder prior to the install. YMMV

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John, DrBonzo