Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable Mega Pack (MVCRP) released!

I have released a Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable Mega Pack (MVCRP) for the convenience of quickly installing all the Visual C++ Redistributable Runtime libraries in one go without silly downloading of each package and then installing one by one. MVCRP delivers ALL current Visual C++ Runtime libraries in a single package that gets installed in a sequence one by one. I’ve decided to still let users click things in them opposed to running them in Silent mode, but it’s still WAY faster than doing everything manually.

Original post with all the extra info and downloads:

https://rejzor.wordpress.com/2015/05/15/microsoft-visual-c-runtime-redistributable-downloads/

Devastating performance hit from KB4338825 update on AMD A9-9420 APU

For weeks I couldn’t figure out why my AMD A9-9420 based laptop bought in January 2018 became so horrifyingly slow just half a year later I can’t even use it anymore. Sure, it’s an entry level dual core laptop, but it clocks ridiculously high to 3.6 GHz and with single thread optimizations replacing multicore “Bulldozer” microarchitecture it was super responsive. It also has 4GB of RAM which is alright, but it also comes with a 256GB Samsung SSD. It’s not one of those crappy DRAM-less SSD’s, this is basically an OEM version of mid end Samsung Evo drives. Something between 750 Evo and 850 Evo. A well rounded package for not very demanding usage of music, videos, browsing and Youtube.

Except it became so slow opening Start menu takes 1-2 seconds and it opens in laggy way, opening simple JPG image takes up to 10 seconds, opening Opera browser takes like half a minute, playing 480p video on Youtube was lagging and 1080p30 was so slow it literally stalled the whole laptop and even moving mouse across the screen feels like it’s lagging and stuttering. All this at CPU usage of 0-5%. But feels like you’re having a 100% load on CPU by something.

I thought AMD drivers were the problem, but no matter what I tried, nothing changed. So I downgraded Windows 10 April Update (1803) back to Fall Creators Update (1709). And it was fine. Until it updated itself. So, after 5 total OS reinstalls, I managed to pinpoint the problem. This motherfucking KB4338825 update. As soon as it gets installed, laptop becomes the slowest thing in this world. I had to rollback from 1803 to 1709, but there is no way to selectively uninstall and disable fucking KB4338825 update, not even with the tool for this. And if I install April Update (1803), this garbage gets carried over automatically.

So, now I’m literally at a point where I can’t uncheck this update, uninstall this update and block this update from installing and fucking up my laptop. As soon as I’m on build 1709, this fucking update gets installed and fucks everything up.

If Windows Update worked like it did in Windows 7, I could reinstall OS, uncheck this update and I’d be using the laptop normally until I annoy Microsoft enough for them to finally fix this shit. But that’s just wishful thinking. God knows what else is screwing up my main rig because it often feels like it’s performing worse than i did months and years ago down to as simple things as moving mouse which just feels laggy. Sounds oddly familiar to this situation with my laptop, but since PC is so fast, it’s not as dramatic. But I can sense something is off.

So, here it is, if your PC or laptop feels like it’s entirely useless because it’s so slow (despite clean Windows 10 install), it’s because of this shitty update. I’ve left the report on Microsoft’s Feedback Hub, but I’m not expecting much because they won’t give a shit about a single user. Which just shows a sad state of PC industry. Linux is still garbage despite years of everyone saying it’ll overtake Windows and Microsoft just plain doesn’t seem to give a shit about the state of Windows or what its users want, because they know Linux is shit and we have to use their OS whether we like it or not. Which absolutely stinks as hell. And I run 3 systems, 1x Windows 10 Home and 2x Windows 10 Professional, all genuine licensed versions. Absolute fucking disgrace Microsoft.

What’s even worse, I used to have AMD E-450 APU, 8GB RAM and 128GB SSD laptop and it became exactly like this at one point. Which is why I bought this newer, much faster one. Which yet again turned garbage slow with exact same symptoms. Do you know how annoying it feels that I bought a new laptop because some other update fucked up performance of that one for no logical reason and I thought it just got slow somehow? Unless Microsoft is doing this intentionally to screw AMD and subtly force people to buy new laptops and migrate to Intel because everything AMD gets slow as turd “eventually” thanks to these magical updates. After seeing this on 2 laptops with like 4-6 years of age apart, something is going on. And it stinks.

Windows Defender Anti-Ransomware Fall Creators Update feature issues

With release of Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, Windows Defender gained new Anti-Ransomware feature named “Controlled folder access”.

What it does is block access to folders for all the apps that aren’t allowed, preventing unauthorized apps from modifying or encrypting your files (it even prevents them from reading files too!). The problem is, it doesn’t seem to work correctly and has annoying limitations that make it rather useless.

Folder control issues

It automatically protects all the usual data folders like Pictures, Music, Documents etc. The problem here is, it also includes Desktop. This by itself is alright since we tend to keep stuff on desktop and we don’t want it encrypted by ransomware. However, at least I prefer to use Desktop as transitional storage for downloads and stuff I save from web. And Windows Defender’s Controlled Folder Access doesn’t like that, throwing warnings at me all the time for each thing I try to do and it interacts with Desktop. To make things worse, you cannot remove or edit default locations. They are hardcoded and cannot be changed, forcing you to either have ALL enabled or be forced to disable the feature entirely because it just doesn’t work because it becomes so damn annoying you can’t even use it.

Whitelisting doesn’t seem to work

Supposedly, this Controlled Folder Access feature is suppose to access some sort of whitelist to automatically allow known safe apps from accessing protected folders. The problem is, it just doesn’t work. It didn’t recognize Paint.NET, it didn’t recognize Opera browser, it even complained over its own Explorer.exe! Which brings us to  third issue…

Allowing apps is rather useless sometimes

For example, Opera is not recognized by the whitelist. However, you can add apps and programs to the allowed list yourself. Only problem there is that paths are absolute and in Opera’s case, that means your allowed path to opera.exe includes a version number, like so: “C:\Program Files\Opera\48.0.2685.39\opera.exe” which means the allowed rule will only work till Opera gets updated. And then it’ll complain again because the allowed path won’t connect anymore to the actual new version after update…

Verdict

I like the idea. This is what I’ve recommended to avast! team like half a year ago and they did it properly. It’s fully configurable and uses their powerful whitelist which makes the use of their Anti-Ransomware protection really convenient as you hardly ever even get a popup for clean apps. Microsoft on the other hand, it’s not configurable enough, it lacks important settings, it’s too locked down and it has a non-functional whitelist system. It has a potential, but in a current form, it’s just not useful. In fact it’s just outright annoying. I kept on manually adding programs to the allowed list and Windows Defender kept on finding new ways to annoy me till I just disabled it again. And seeing how Microsoft only changes such big things between these milestone updates, it’ll take another 4 months to maybe see this fixed. Not cool… So much potential wasted because of stupid design decisions…

Microsoft, stop fucking switching languages!

I’m so fucking pissed right now. I live in Slovenia, but I want my operating system to be entirely in English. Ok then, so I get my Windows 10 installed, set interface language to English and keyboard to Slovene in order to support our special characters not found in English alphabet (and have keyboard layout set right). All fine except fucking stupid OS with mind of its own insists on switching keyboard layout from SL to ENG for no fucking reason. I have it set to ENG/SL, but when I start CS:GO game, it decides to use ENG/US for no fucking logical reason. Stop doing this motherfucking shit Microsoft. I always notice it when I have to type something in the chat (meaning I’m in the game and can’t go out and switch) and it makes my “Y” and “Z” keys reversed as well as replacing “‘” with “-“. It’s fucking infuriating bullshit that makes no sense. Stop changing shit! Stupid garbage broken OS. Never had this problem till Windows 10 and even this looks like it happened now and not few months back.

Get your shit together Microsoft and stop breaking shit that worked fine for years.

Windows 10 is a pile of horse shit

TRIGGER WARNING: UNMEASURABLE AMOUNT OF SWEARING AHEAD

Ok, this fucking does it. Windows 10 is the motherfucking worst Windows OS I’ve ever used. No, Vista was a fucking gem compared to this pile of absolute concentrated excrement.

Lets write down why…

I happen to own a slightly older Compaq laptop. Nothing fancy, it’s powered by an AMD E-450 APU and I’ve bought extra 4GB of RAM to make 8GB in total and replaced the crappy HDD with 128GB Crucial M4 SSD. It’s still kinda weak, but for web, music and movies, perfectly capable device. Has served me well with Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. Popup came along to update to Windows 10 and so I did it. And that’s where thing went downhill. 90° slope…

There is this wonderful thing with AMD E-450 APU where latest Catalyst 15.7 drivers, the very same that also get delivered to Windows 10 through Windows Update, these drivers don’t fucking work at all. Youtube at 480p lags and stutters like I’m trying to run 4K on a fucking Commodore C-128. It’s absolutely unusable.

Gone through Display Driver Uninstaller, manually disabled automatic driver updating and installed old Catalyst 14.12 Omega, the ones that worked fine and where I could playback 1080p Youtube smoothly. All was well and then I stopped using laptop for a while because I didn’t need it.

Like an hour ago, I’ve fired it up and checked for updates since it passed quite a lot of days. And guess what Windows Update automatically without asking me a single thing. Yup, you guessed it. It installed motherfucking Catalyst 15.7 WHQL drivers on its own that don’t fucking work with HD6320 GPU found on AMD E-450 APU.

If this was the scenario with Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, I could simply uncheck the driver in the Windows Update panel where you decide what driver updates to install and what to ignore. Problem would be solved in 5 seconds and I’d have no need to write this rant. But nope in Windows 10. No such thing. Microsoft just forcibly stuffs ALL MOTHERFUCKING DRIVERS down your throat whether they work or they don’t (and most of the time they don’t work, say hello to all the broken wireless drivers from the past). And this is exactly what I’ve been warning about when “new” Windows Update was revealed. Bad shit will happen when Microsoft decides to forcibly install all drivers. And it’s already happening.

I’d blame AMD for not providing functional drivers, but it’s not AMD that is forcing broken drivers onto my system, it’s fucking Microsoft.

How can a multi-billion company like Microsoft fuck it up so badly is beyond any level of comprehension. It’s so terrifyingly bad it’s almost surreal. Fucking hell. And I’ve actually gone and bought a GTX 980 so I’ll have a DirectX 12 capable GPU to properly utilize graphics on a new OS. Which turned out to be this piece of crap (the OS, GTX 980 is fine). And I’ll eventually be forced to use Windows 10 because DirectX 12 will not be available on Windows 8.1 (which works like a charm). I always install all system updates in Windows 8.1 but skip most driver updates per my selection. It’s brilliant, keeps system up to date and under my full control because I know how to handle computers you fucks at Redmond. And then there is Windows 10 with its pathetic forced auto updating of motherfucking everything.

Microsoft, fuck you and fuck your Windows 10. This is by FAR the worst Windows I’ve ever used. It’s so fucking bad it makes Windows 8, Windows Vista and Windows Millennium look like fucking perfection. At least it was under MY control and it fucking worked. Windows 10 is apparently entirely under Microsoft’s control and it’s fucking non functional pile of shit.

Microsoft, STOP breaking shit and forcing it on us. You CAN’T possibly know what drivers we want so stop doing this shit. Fuck. Just fucking stop it! Aaaaaargh!!!!

O&O ShutUp10 – Windows 10 Privacy Tool

We all know how weird Windows 10 behaves with its data mining. But since we’ll have to eventually switch over, here is a solution. O&O’s ShutUp10 tool that gives you easy way of disabling all the (or at least majority of) data mining or otherwise privacy related crap in Windows 10.

I currently don’t have Windows 10 installed anymore, but the tool is made by a well known German software studio “O&O Software”, better known for their O&O Defrag tool. O&O ShutUp10 requires no installation so you can easily run it without any crap left behind by the tool itself. And it’s free!

LINK:
http://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

There is also another tool with similar functionality. Check it out here:
https://rejzor.wordpress.com/2016/02/13/disable-windows-10-tracking/

Disable automatic driver updating in Windows 10

Are you tired of stupid Windows 10 automatically updating drivers with versions that are broken or clearly inferior to the one you want to use (I’ve had such horrible experience few days ago with AMD E-450 APU and latest Catalyst 15.7 WHQL drivers that just don’t work good at all)? Since Microsoft doesn’t want to leave us the fuck alone, we have to yet again tweak this shit on our own. Which is annoying, but necessary if you want to use Windows 10 at the moment without losing all your hair. Or turning it grey…

Right-click on Start button and select System. Click Advanced system settings and select Hardware tab and then Device Installation Settings…

Set it as shown on the image above. This will force Windows 10 to stop automatically updating and installing drivers.

I don’t get it what was wrong with the Windows 8.x driver updating!? It automatically updated any missing device drivers on first bootup after installation, but ANYTHING else detected later on Windows Update was just presented to the user who was then able to simply disable notification for that particular driver and never see it again. But you were also able to accept the offer and update it. I loved that system, because it worked like charm and wasn’t invasive. But now, Microsoft just stuffs it down your throat whether you like it or not. Idiotic to the max.

Win10 forced driver updating is retarded

Ok, Microsoft, can you stop behaving like total morons? Like I’ve predicted, Windows Update in Windows 10 is absolute pile of junk.

I don’t know what retard thought it would be smart forcing driver updates down the users throats. I generally didn’t have problems with drivers and I always used latest versions. Until few days ago when I updated my AMD E-450 powered laptop to Windows 10. All went well, Windows 10 installed without problems, Windows Update does its updating and then I found out drivers installed from Windows Update provide ZERO video hardware acceleration. When Youtube can’t be played smoothly at 480p in year 2015 on hardware that used to even run 4K somewhat ok, you know someone fucked shit up badly.

Had to install older Catalyst 14.12 WHQL in order to make it functional again and guess what, when I was using it, screen starts flashing. And then I find out retarded Windows Update again installed the non-functional driver on its own, just because it’s a newer version. Stop fucking doing that you dumb OS. I’ve installed older version because the latest one is crap.

But noooo, you must use dem latest drivers because some dork at Microsoft feels like he or she knows it better than users.

Fucking hell this shit is pissing me off. Force install security updates for all I care, but for the love of all that’s holy, leave drivers the fuck out of it. They are not critical for security and they just fuck shit up.

Can’t share folders on new OneDrive

Ok, I love the new changes for Microsoft’s OneDrive, but I found one absolutely RETARDED problem. You can’t share entire folders anymore. Meaning if someone walks into my OneDrive account root folder, he cannot see newly shared folders. Others have to STRICTLY access folders through links that I authorize.

A month ago and more I was able to create a folder and decide if it’s a private one, openly shared with EVERYONE or shared only to select people who get the link.

So, this mess is all I can do with folders. I can only send strict “view only with link” or “keep it private”. Giving users ability to browse all my public folders on my OneDrive is not possible anymore. What the hell Microsoft, are you crazy!? Now I can’t create publicly shared folders anymore, preventing me from sharing files publicly without authorization links. I have to strictly provide a link to a file or folder that I want to share. That’s just outright moronic. WHY!? Why the hell menu on the picture above doesn’t provide 3 easily selectable options!?

– Private

– Public

– Only access with link

How freaking hard is it to deliver this!? It’s so dumb I’m thinking of migrating all my data to Google Drive which has this sorted better, but it would be too much freaking work to move all the files and then fix all the broken links in my articles. It’s crazy. Fix this crap Microsoft.

.NET Framework 3.5 error 0x80071A90 during installaton

You’ve probably come here because you were trying to install Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 on Windows 8.1 and it kept on failing with this silly error, right?

There are some resources on this one online from uninstalling certain updates that aren’t actual anymore to other hacks, but the one that worked for me and is worth giving it a try is just temporarily pausing the antivirus, installing the .NET Framework and resuming it again. In my case it was avast! Antivirus Free, but considering the number of these errors found online, it probably isn’t limited to avast! only.

Because you are disabling antivirus, make sure you only use .NET Framework installer from a trusted source that is digitally signed by Microsoft Corporation. Like the one on link below (goes to official Microsoft webpage).

DOWNLOAD:
.NET Framework 3.5 installer from Microsoft webpage