To boldly go where no man has gone before! You’ve probably heard that saying before but I grew up with Star Wars, and And Star Trek. I even Grew up with Buck Rogers or even The Million dollar man. I love the fact that there were new technology and new ways to deal with problems. I would go to cons in my area whenever there was one and I still might when they start doing it again. I can remember the days that I would watch every single episodes of the original Star Trek and want to meet some of these people myself. I can’t imagine I am no the only one. This is why I listen to all these audio books because I just keep imagining meeting different aliens and knowing what the world will be like or how different it will become.
Technology
It’s all in how you see the world. Yes it so much more better seeing the world when I know that there are possibilities that we have never imagined. I see companies that are trying to innovate and then I see companies who just like to keep the things the same. Without innovation we would not become even better. I could talk about technology until the day I am out of breath but I wouldn’t stop just for myself. I even like to know what they will do in the future and I imagine them to be so much better than before. After everything we’ve seen, can it not get even more better than we could possibly imagine?
Games
The cake is a lie! Lately I have been playing old games that can easily be played on my newer systems because the games reminds me where I came from and why I did what I did. It’s all in how you approach the problem and figure out the problem. I simply love to problem solve and see what I can do with the games. I guess that’s why I love puzzle games like Portal, Subnautica, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, Half Life Series and Terratech or anything that lets me build or problem solve. I can’t imagine I am the only one who likes these types of games because it is just fun to be able to do things and try new ways to play a game or solve a puzzle in the game. I hope the game developers get even more creative in the way they will allow the player to solve the game or let the player figure a problem out in several ways.
These are just a few things I can talk about and still do whenever I see Something that I want to talk about on my blog. These are only a few topics that I enjoy to write about and even might even make more topics as I see more things that I need to write about. What are some things you like to talk about and why? Let me know what you like and don’t and we can discuss them in the comments below.
So you have a client who has some computer problems, and you don’t know what to do? I am here to help you with that problem. It can’t be easy for some to know exactly what you might need for those uncertain times. There are multitude of problems that you’ll see in your computer technician job that will need to be resolved. Here is a little bit of a list of apps that I use on a daily or weekly process to repair and upgrade systems. Some of these will help me fix problems or even problem solve the answer.
This bag of applications brought to you by Microsoft is the cream of the crop. If you haven’t downloaded the who suite of tools from sysinternals. You really should do it now. I really like the process monitor and process monitoring tools to help me see what might be wrong with a system. It’s got a whole lot of apps to use when you need to either kill an app. I could go on and on about this pack of apps from Microsoft but it is definitely a grab bag for me. This is something that I have on my USB for when I might need it.
Another great app that you can load on your USB and use it when you need to copy partitions or even whole drives from one drive to another. It is a free utility that you can use on any system. You’ll just need to create a bootable USB. I use the app call YUMI to create a multiboot usb and put all my favorite and important ISO on the USB for when I need them.
This is another one that I put on my USB just to be cautious and know that I don’t have to use anything on a system that I might not trust. They’ve got a slew of apps that you can use for everything that you might need. What I like about portable apps is they even have antivirus and password generators. They have a lot of what I will use from time to time because they just make it easy to scan an infected system from my usb without having to load the antivirus before boot. They have some great tools all around and You should check them out.
This is great utility to remove all the crap that any system that you buy from a store or even from Amazon will be removed without much effort from you. You can run this off a USB or even install it and remove all the stuff that gets loaded on from the Acer, Dell, or other OEMS. It helps me out really well because I have seen clients systems speed up by removing all the annoying programs that aren’t even being used.
Let’s face it, if your client hasn’t updated their system for quite some time or the system in question doesn’t have a way to update because of no internet this is the best solution for you. Download the updates and put it on a USB. Most of the time, it will be a good around 20gb or 30gb depending on which windows updates you get from Windows 7 to Windows 10, you will have each one being like 3gb or 4gb a piece. It actually helps me when it comes to updating a client’s computer without having to wait for it to download the updates. I can just update and reboot. This has been a great time saver for me when it comes to being a computer technician.
What’s your favorite portable app or even just an app that you use on a regular basis. I’d like to hear what yours is and why. Why not leave a comment and tell others and help others who might not know of a good app to use.
According to reports from what I’m seeing, Amazon’s New World MMO is bricking people Graphics cards. I haven’t even tried this game on my system nor will I because I have other important things going on. JayzTwocents on twitter said:
I’ve now had the following GPU owners express they have had shut downs and failures with New World…
RX590
6800
6800XT
6900XT
3080Ti
3090
So once again, the issue definitely is with SOMETHING in the way the game New World is rendering. This ISNT a 3090’exclusive issue! PERIOD!!
Just cap your Frames Per Second to 60 or 70 at the most. It seems most are saying that is how to prevent the extra power draw from to your Nvidia 3060 or High GPU’s and stopping them from become bricks. Although it’s not just Nvidia but also AMD that seems to be having the problems. There are a few older cards that are also having problems with this but not to that extreme of bricking it. You should however be careful with this game and others and watching your heat and power draw using the MSI AfterBurner utility. Please don’t overclock your GPU while playing this game. Keep it at it’s defaults, that way you will less likely have issues.
Breaking: For people playing New World please cap your FPS.
This will help prevent any issues that people have been having with their GPU’s being fried.
Go to Settings > Visuals > Max fps > Set this to 60, this will bring the utilization back down. pic.twitter.com/mXGcyixFgi
My 3090 GIGABYTE gpu lasted 20mins before my fans went to 100% power and my monitor black screened. Turned my PC off and back on and my card wasn’t broke, thankfully. Granted I had the default settings on, max FPS. Apparently that may cause this issue. Still scared to go back.
Im running a inno3d ichill frostbite 3090. Game makes it pull 350w, highest i have seen otherwise is 335w. No spikes in voltage, 61c gpu temp, 81c memory temp. Other than a slightly larger powerdraw, i have had no issues. Consuming 50% of my 5900x is weird though.
I’m a PC gamer and this is not it. On boot up New World is causing death for GPUs… They don’t regulate power draw to the GPU causing 400+w spikes instantly… It isn’t the end users fault when they decide to start a game without VSync and their GPU explodes… Like… What? https://t.co/ZhWUtNYAhM
It’s time to put that on the burner. I won’t say I haven’t thought about trying this game when I first heard about it but I have been rather busy the last few weeks with school and about to move into my new place. I thought I would wait and maybe try it out later this year. In any case, I am a little bit worried that if I did, my 1660 super would be fried. So I am going to wait and see what Amazon does when it finally does fix this bug if it is one or fix this issue. Happy Gaming all!
It’s complicated is what I’ve heard from people all around the world. The idea that We have to figure how to turn our Windows 10 into a secure boot, can seem difficult at best. Just like Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) isn’t always labeled right in the bios and that can be hard to find. It seems that all the motherboard manufacturers wanted to make it extremely difficult for anyone who might want to enable or disable UEFI to be able to do it. Then add on to the fact that the Motherboard manufacturers also made it hard to figure out how to turn on TPM in the bios also. Can seem quite maddening to most because each manufacturer didn’t just call it TPM or UEFI. Some of them Call it PTT (The intel Platform Trusted Technology) or even the AMD which is called fTPM(Firmware Trusted Platform Module). Although the AMD version is a whole lot easier to understand since it does say TPM. Intel on the other hand can be hard to find or even know what PTT stands for unless you google it.
Checking your system
The first step you should always do is make sure you can do this in the first place. If you haven’t read my other post about this, I’d go over there and check to make sure you can do this in the first place. As of currently Microsoft has stated that the requirements are the same for the previous few weeks. So I don’t know if they will change when the final release comes out but it could very well change.
Have backups
Before I talk about the upgrading or updating your boot system to allow you to boot into Windows 10 Secure boot. I’ll make this statement, please consider backing up all your important files that you might want to keep to a USB Flash Drive or even portable HDD or a HD that you can unplug from the bios to keep your important files safe while the upgrading of Windows 10 is being done. What you do after this is on yourself and no one else.
can you upgrade to secure boot?
If you have checked the previous post and turned on what you can besides secure boot, but you know you have it. You’re pretty much set to upgrade Windows 10 from Master Boot Record (MBR) to GPT(GUID Partition Table). The process for converting your Master Boot record is relatively simple but will require you to boot into a Windows 10 on a USB! Once you have done that you will then want to get to the command prompt the easiest way is to hit Windows+S and type in cmd then right click run as administrator. Now you’re at the command problem. Now is where the fun starts.
Type in : mbr2gpt.exe /allowFullOS /convert
Let it do it’s conversion and once done you’ll need to reboot but before you try to log into Windows again, you’ll need to go into the bios and enable secure boot. Depending on how much Windows 10 needs to go through a new startup process will depend on the way GPT was converted. It may take a few minutes even on the fastest system for Windows 10 to fully boot or it could be just as quick as before. Once Windows 10 is booted, I suggest verify all your files are there and that everything is working correctly. You might need to update software but that shouldn’t be to much a problem. After That if you are on the Windows Insider Program than go check for updates and Windows 11 should be able to install. If it still says you can’t upgrade I’d go back and check Whynotwin11 and Find out if you haven’t enabled TPM or what version of the TPM it is. Other than that you should be set to go.
“Microsoft claims that their telemetry shows that they have seen up to a 60% reduction in malware when TPM-enabled features like Windows Hello and BitLocker encryption are used on supported devices — it’s unclear why that would be at all true, unless it’s correlation and not causation” Steve Gibson (Security Now #825 Podcast)
I dare say it’s a terrible idea. I have been doing some major research into secure boot and TPM and everything I’m seeing is a little bit worrying to say the least. Even listening to others talk about what Windows 11 can do or can’t do seems quite obvious. Afterall, I’ve even had my son get information on how to get around the security requirements for Windows 11 and install Windows a boot logged copy of it onto a USB just to play around with it. I am quite concerned with this also because it seems Microsoft trying to force users onto a proprietary system. Microsoft is only doing the complete opposite of what they claim.
Scrutinizing the Boot Process
The goal of a hardware root of trust is to verify that the software installed in every component of the hardware is the software that was intended. — Jessie Frazelle
The problem with trust is that we should never trust anything and always question it. How can a system trust that the software wasn’t installed as intended? These are the basic problems with the premise of a TPM and even the Secure Boot process.
The goal of attestation is to prove to a third party that your operating system and application software are intact and trustworthy. — Jessie Frazelle
The problem with this is even more obvious to the security of a system. Attestation can’t always witness or even prove a program doesn’t have the right to be run or used in boot up. Unless Attestations can be programmed to boot Windows a certain everytime in hardware, we will always have the virus developers skirting around the boot process.
Some members of the technology industry have raised the concern that the well-documented, modern, high-level language interface provided by UEFI makes it easier to compromise a platform [12]; that the ability to add modules
and applications to the boot process could compromise security.
I wouldn’t call some being a small amount of people but a large amount. I’ve heard time and time again this idea and it seems to be a growing concern with UEFI and how virus writers / developers will overcome UEFI and be able to install viruses / Malware around the the Windows system to be able to do what they have always been able to do.
Security through Obscurity
Microsoft seems to have take this approach as their next step through the security door and it’s seems quite evident that they’ve not learned their lesson from others. I say that with the understanding that Apple tried this with their systems and they still have virus writers who can compromise their system. It’s not like the security community doesn’t want all operating system to be secure, in fact most would want it so badly because we wouldn’t have to worry as much about the viruses or malware to being on peoples systems. Let’s not forget we still have users who will do dumb things and that much will always be true. There is always going to be need to teach the company users, how to be secure while using the company’s computer(s) or laptop(s).
Return-Oriented Programming
Return-Oriented Programming is a security exploit technique used by attackers to execute code on their target system. By obtaining control of the call stack, the attacker can control the flow of existing trusted software running on the computer and manipulate it to their own ends. — Secureteam UK
The ROP(return-oriented programming) has been a constant problem for several years now and will probably grow even more. I say that not lightly because the Virus writers / Developers will have to start to use it more and more often and even find other exploits techniques to get around the Secure boot and UEFI protocols. This is often called the Blindside attack and is most often used with IOT(Internet of Things) devices but can be used with Windows operating systems and will become more and more useful to them in the future, I suspect.
Not unlike the previous tutorial we will be crafting [ROP] the parameters to Windows API calls on the stack and then executing them. — FuzzySecurity
As you can see, there is already programming that people can do with Windows 7 API and that’s been out for quite a while. I am unsure when someone did this little experient and talked about the vulnerability. This vulnerability is available on Windows 7. It could very well be used on Windows 10 or even Windows 11, I suspect.
Mitigation
I will say there has been talk about mitigating this and other attacks but it requires a constant updating of the operating system and CPU (Secureteam UK). As you know CPU manufacturers will take years to update a problem just because people will not want to go buy a new cpu or even a new computer until the old computer isn’t able to run or something actually breaks in the system. I know Virus writers / developers will always be having to be a head of Windows updates and that might be what they are already doing. Looking for vulnerabilities in the UEFI and Secure boot area. I suspect they are already doing that now. I can’t say if they’ll succeed but I know the virus writers make so much money on ransomware and getting those companies systems compromised. So who really wins? I would hazard a guess no one in the end, the security that Microsoft is trying to force will still fail miserably and I will be there saying “I told you so!”
