Windows 10 Users

The other shoe has finally dropped with Microsoft Windows 10. Microsoft has decided that it is a stupid idea for the user to decide if and when to have updates for your computer. The update menu has been removed from the control panel, and now Microsoft decides for you. You might not think that this is not a problem, but having several computers with Windows 10, we can assure you it can cause havoc.

If you haven't added any new hardware items from what was initially installed on your computer, you should be fine. If you have added scanners, printers, display cards, or external hard disks, then you will have a problem. Some of these devices have their own hardware drivers to enable the device works properly. When Microsoft has an update for printers, they replace your manufacturer's driver with the Microsoft version. In many cases all the settings you have made are gone, and the device may no longer work. We installed new graphics display cards in two of our computers, and they required drivers from the manufacturers. A recent Microsoft update removed all those drivers, and replaced them with Microsoft's own version. Now neither graphics card works. Microsoft now does updates every day. Often these are done so quickly, that they have bugs. They may even have a second update in order to fix the update from previous day.

If you go to settings on your computer, you can type in "Windows Update" and a very small menu. This menu will give you the option of keeping it fully automatic (Giving all the control to Microsoft) or delay the update. They now longer have the option for turning the updates off. We have looked on the internet, and found there is a command buried deep in the Computer Management functions that allows you to manually turn off the Updates. The problem is that if you do this, you lose all your virus updates in the process. We will continue to look into this problem and will let you know when we have a solution that will give you control over your own computer. Stay tuned.

 

Solving difficult problems with software and hardware

Most underwater photographers use manuals, and help from friends to solve problems that crop up with photo editing software, operating system errors, or underwater camera systems. As a last resort they opt for technical support calls as many on-line technical help systems are poorly organized or just don't address the your specific problem. Once you finally reach a live body, their advice is usually far from satisfactory or sends you in another direction that makes the problem even worse.

Over the past few years we have abandoned all the help functions and tech support and now work with internet search engines to solve all of our problems. The key is that there is always someone out there who has already reported the problem and found a solution. Just type in the problem in your favorite search engine and you will be amazed at all the answers that pop up. Don't go with the first solution you find, instead read at least three that seem to make sense before proceeding. Backup your computer beforehand if the solution requires changes to operating systems. Type in a full description of the problem or the error message that appears and press the search button. If you don't get good results then simplify the question and try again. Below are some screen shots of some of the problems we have run into and how we handled them.

Our topside point and shoot camera worked fine for the first year we had it, but the lens froze when we turned it on. We typed in the search engine with "Lumix dmczs19 system error with focus" and the following web page came up with a solution that worked.

 

 

One of our older computers that we use for printing has CS2 Photoshop installed. One day the system stopped with the following error "CS2 hangs on reading global resources." We typed the error into the search engine and the following solution appeared which fixed the problem.

 

Next problem was with Dreamweaver CS5. Upon startup it froze on the splash page. We typed in "Dreamweaver hangs on startup," and the following solution appeared. We tried it and the problem was solved.

Finally a recent problem with CS6 Premiere Pro was driving us crazy. One day everything worked fine and the next all the wmv. files loaded into the project bin with the top half of the video missing. We type in "Upper half of video file is missing." The following solution appeared and solved the problem. In this case a Microsoft update was the problem. It would have taken hours on the phone with tech support to fix this one, but the solution we used took three minutes.