Windows – Page 6 – Paul's Tech Talk

It’s hard getting a computer technician job

PaulAugust 27, 2021

Trying to get a job in 2021

Even I have been trying to get a job in the computer field the last few weeks because I want the experience but most of the time they require 2 or 3 years of experiences. This is ridiculous because most people don’t even have that for entry level jobs. Then You try to get jobs that looks good on the Indeed or other job posting sites and then you get into the interview and they are will to pay you less than you could be working at McDonalds or even Target. They are willing to pay you 12$ or 14$ dollars an hour. My Goodness why did I get the education if I could go back doing what I did last year.

People want to work

There is a fallacy going around saying “People don’t want to work“, I say yes they do but you aren’t wanting to pay them for their talents or their expertise. Here’s the way I see it, if you are going to tell me I have to get a pay cut just to get the experience that I know I already have than what’s the point in accepting a job that will keep me poor? These are the types of jobs in the job market. I have tried to know my worth and know that when I finally get hired onto a job, I will have the pay I deserve for my hard work going to college to get those technical certifications. This is where recruiters will realize that the people who will fill those jobs are going to not want to work or do as a good as a job as those who are being paid for their talents.

People aren’t motivated or lazy

It has been said many times that if you want a job, they are out there and you just don’t want to work but I say comment is wrong in so many ways. People went through a year lockdowns and social distancing and the fear of Covid19 for so long. People have rethought about what actually has meaning and what they are willing to accept and not accept. I can understand people who don’t want to work in the fast food industry. You get those really mean customers who will call you names or even spit in your face just because you made mistake. I get that part, that is one place where it will always be difficult to fill those positions. Workers now know what makes them feel like they have meaning or a connection in life. Please just stop saying comments like this because it doesn’t help the situation out with people getting a job.

Hire ME!

I throw this out to anyone who might want to say people are lazy and unmotivated. If you really have a job that I can do in the computer technology area. Please send me an email and let me know, I’ve been applying to everything that looks good on Indeed, Monster, and Zip recruiter so I haven’t had any luck yet. I challenge you to prove me wrong. I am looking just like every other computer technician for local jobs but If I have to do a remote, I will be more than willing to do that also. I will say I can only work part time, 28 ish hours is the max, until January but after that I can and will work full time.

How to use Oracles VirtualBox on Windows 10 (Step by Step Guide)

PaulAugust 21, 2021

What is VirtualBox?

That is the first question you should be asking your if you are wanting to use it. VirtualBox is a way for anyone to play around with other operating systems like Windows 11, and yet I didn’t like it enough to even think about playing around with it on a Virtual machine. You can also install different Linux operating systems to get yourself used to the Linux OS. Either way, the long term’s of using VirtualBox is vastly better than you can imagine. You can try new Operating system and see how they will do with what you might be interested in. This will be a how to on Windows 10 because that’s what I am using but I have already talked about doing it on Linux and installing Windows 10 on it. If you’re curious about doing it the other way around that would be a good start.

After Installing VirtualBox in Windows 10

What’s the first Step in installing an operating system. You either need the USB version or If you have a DVD of the operating system you want to install that will also be good. Each way is not to hard to do while using VirtualBox. First part of this is to initialize the Virtual System.

You’ll want to click the NEW button and you’ll be lead to this screen. Give it any name you would but most will say something like MacOS, Linux, Or Windows (xp, 7, 10, 11) because you would basically like to keep track of that when you start using the Virtual machine.

VirtualBox is pretty intuitive when it comes to which operating you will be installing so when you name it the right Operating system. You should see the version and type change down below to reflect the type of operating system parameters you’ll need to use the Virtual machine.

Dedicating the memory

You’ll want to dedicate a certain amount of memory to be use with VirtualBox so you can have enough to run the virtual operating system and not be sluggish. If you have 16 gb or more of memory than you can easily divide it by 2 if you are just going to do one virtual machine at a time. The Minimum I would recommend to use with a Virtual Machine is 4 gb but that is just a personal opinion.

Create a Virtual Hard drive

This is simply the easiest part of the creating the virtual machine. You can have use as much as you like or as little as you like depending on your situation. I usually give mine at least 10 gb or more depending on which operating I will be installing. The more space you give the less you will have to use on your local hard drive so if you have another drive you want to use so as to not fill up your C: drive that would be preferable.

You’ll want to create a VHD or a VMDK but I rather like just useing the Virtual Hard Drive selection because it makes it so much easier for me.

This is where you should say Fixed size, so it doesn’t use up so much space that it will create a problem for you later on.

If you’re unsure of how much to use just keep it where it is. Most of time when you are just checking out a operating system you will not need to much space to test it out. All you have to do now is Create the Virtual Hard drive and you’ll all setup for the next part.

Installing the Operating system

The next step is to tell tell VirtualBox which ISO you will be using to install into the virtual machine. You’ll want make sure the new machine you just created is turned blue by click on it and then hitting the settings key on VirtualBox dashboard.

Finally you’ll want to hit the little disk drive at the top right and add a new ISO you are wanting to use for the virtual environment.

Simply hit the ADD button and navigate to where you downloaded that ISO and use that then click choose. Once done then you are all set on this part of the setup.

Don’t forget about how the cores

This is not a big issue but sometimes might help with running the Virtual Machine by checking to see how many cores you might want to use with the new operating system. This is however just something I’ve found to speed up the virtual machine. If you have 2 cores you can obviously only use 1 but if you have more than 2 cores it can be nice to use a few more cores to make the system a little bit more responsive.

You are all set

This part is obviously the hard part is to just hit the start or double clicking on the virtual machine you want to make it execute. Either way sit back and play around with what you can do with the new operating system and install it on to the virtual hard drive and you’ll be good to go. Once you install, you can go back to the storage selecting in the settings and remove the ISO to prevent it from loading again. In some cases it will so just go back and remove the ISO from the drive and you can just enjoy playing around with whatever system you want to explore.

What is Virtualization and why Do you need to know it?

PaulAugust 19, 2021

Virtualization

Virtualization, what does it really mean? Let’s walk through what the word means and then we can talk about it some more. Virtual is like you are attending a class remotely because there is no real materials or even books that you can use to feel or see. Let’s talk about realization, This is the part that people sometimes do not understand when they hear the word virtualization that the system that is doing this will need to also realize that the system. It’ll need to create a motherboard, CPU, memory, display, ports, and USB ports, and even hard drives and peripherals. It however isn’t really anything that can be touch or even seen by us the user. It is all inside a computer being made by the computer to fool the operating system that is being created by the virtual machine.

Cloud computing

What is that word and what does that have to do with virtualization? I am sure everyone has asked that at one point or time and they might want to know about it even more. Cloud computing is basically a lone server or it could even be a service for companies to use somewhere around the world to create an operating system for the business to use such as Windows 365 which lets you create a Windows desktop virtually on a server to be able to do everything you can do on physical system as if you had one there right now. Play games, edit documents, write emails, and so on are what it is called to be cloud computing. Just think of it as being a computer on the internet and you will start to realize that it is not a real computer.

Do we need virtualization?

In all we do now, virtualization is going to be more and more used in now than in the old days. It allows corporation to manage desktops around the world and not have them physically there. The cost of having a desktop will not be overhead and they can have a server have several people on it and cutting the cost of have having to buy the computer parts or even the computer for the employees. They can then buy really cheap computers that don’t take up as much space and these cheap computers will most likely be underpowered. In the process, they can use that to do what might need to be done on the virtual machine. It can seem like a lot but in the end the computer they bought isn’t as expensive as buying a system that can do what a cloud computer and is far more manageable to the IT staff. They can keep it running and if something happens they can call the company and get someone there to fix the problem that they can’t do.

Benefits Vs Cost

Here’s where it get even better, because if you really think about this as being a virtualization as service, you’ll see that the benefits verses the cost of using one is probably going to be less than you think. Let’s break it down in further for you and explain why in so many ways. Virtualization is basically meaning several computers can be on a really beefy server. It can be a beast and can be used to utilize the CPU processing when it is need to do something like graphics or even just programs that might need the processing power. It could in theory also be used to mine bitcoins or even Ethereum but I really don’t know if it is actually be done like that on a server because you’d only want one system on the server to maximize the chance to mine a bitcoin or an Ethereum coin as they say. Because the more people on that server the more processing power will be divided to the the people equally so that’s one thing to consider. We could look at cost of buying a server or even renting a server but in reality what we need to look at is the idea that the server can host several employees or people on the server to do tasks that remotely or even at the office that will far out way the cost of buying a bulky computer and having the employee’s be in the office all the time.

This is all the definition of what a computer is in the cloud, we just have to think of it as a way to illustrate what it is and why we need it. Do you agree or disagree, do you think I did a good job describing it? Why not leave a comment and tell me what you thoughts or if you think I could of talked about something more. I’d love to hear you thoughts on this matter and others.

Why I uninstalled Microsoft Windows 11 Preview build?

PaulAugust 17, 2021

I reinstalled Windows 10 and Deleted Windows 11!

I don’t know about everyone else but after my week long expedition into Windows 11, I just couldn’t handle the speed issues of the Windows 11 and the encryption. I know it isn’t worth my time after all that to down grade to Windows 10 but I I felt it wasn’t going to get any smoother than that. I also would of had to have deleted the partition anyways since it was locked to secure boot and UEFI. I really didn’t want to try to convert it back to MBR. I got my trust Windows 10 DVD and started it up and found the partitions I wanted to delete and then I reinstall Windows 10. I will say that after wiping the hard drive and reinstalling Windows 10, and turning off all the Encryption crap and just booting into Windows has seen my load times go back to normal.

Windows 11 Problems

First off the main problem I had with Windows was the need to encrypt the Hard drive and I was using a NVME which should of been way faster than a standard SSD or Hard drive to boot up. That wasn’t the case, I’d see the swirling load screen on my system for several seconds and then it would finally boot. Due to the encryption that Microsoft says is required to run Windows 11, it just doesn’t cut it for me. Even playing games like Minecraft was screwy and that isn’t even taking up that much memory at the most 2 GB or if you know how to do it 4 GB. I’d play with Minecraft and the system would take forever to load up the next part of the map or even play Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and It wouldn’t be sluggish there also.

The Start Menu

This was something that was just annoying, I think Microsoft wanted to look like an Apple device and bring the apple guys over because of the look. I can’t understand why you would prevent people from reverting back to the old Windows 10 setup. I can only wonder what people will do to find out what they are running and if it will actually be a good idea to keep the start menu in the middle of the screen. Some people have these really long screens and it might help them. I personally would like to move the taskbar anywhere on the outside of the screen, top or maybe right or left of the screen. You wouldn’t be able to do that either. Which will make people really mad.

I can’t see this being all about security

It just can’t be about viruses and malware or even the recent months of ransomware attacks that have been happening in the past year, due to the Covid19 situation around the world. I have talked about how Windows will ultimately fail and we will see virus writers come up with some good viruses and malwares to compromise the Secure boot and even the TPM that is trying to be forced to be used by Windows. I am sure it isn’t over, and if Microsoft isn’t going to change, we’ll see people leaving left and right to go to operating system that are much less restrictive and more open such as Linux. In the end, I went back to Windows 10 because of the speed and performance, and I am not even thinking about Windows 11 until I find out what they will require when the system is finally released. This will be a big deal to some but me, I am not interested in the so called security features of Windows 11.

Gigabyte Hit with RansomEXX attack and could be big problems for the Motherboard manufacturer

PaulAugust 12, 2021

Bleeping Computer

It seems bleeping computer is the one who is first reporting but as you can see if you go to the Gigabyte homepage. You’ll find that there homepage has been changed a little with the about us graphic being changed to this little blame the broker gif. It is a reference to the BlackMatter that was recently been reborn from REvil and Darkmatter. So this is definitely a sign that they have been hacked and attacked. According to Bleleping Computers the attack was done by the RansomEXX gang but I have my own thoughts on this that it was also part of the BlackMatter group who also helped out in this hack.

Gigabyte Support

According to all sources I could find, the esupport website is currently down. There have been reports that RansomEXX will release 112gb of data to the public that involves customers and business relationships such as Intel, AMD, and even American Megatrends. I’ve not seen to much other than that right. I can only imagine that all this data is NDA. Gigabyte even confirmed this in the Chinese media outlet to have been attacked by hackers.

Customer Data

I don’t know what data the hackers actually have or what they intend to do about it. I’ve not even heard what type of data the hackers have. We just know that they have some serious data that is about the relationships between Gigabyte and other manufacturers that is startling to say the least and we don’t even know everything that is behind this attack. We just know that it will be interesting to see what will happen in the coming weeks. I’ve still seen people on twitter and other places complaining they can’t get to the esuppport websites on twitter. Hopefully someone will talk about this in the coming weeks. I know I want to find out what actually happened.