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How to disable Vivaldi’s disk cache

I recently changed computer, and in the process I manually migrated some stuff, notably my browsers’ data folders (if you’re looking for them, they’re usually located in C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local or C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming). To speed up the transfer as those USB keys can be quite slow when dealing with many files, I packed them each in a 7-zip archive. And I noticed Vivaldi’s folder was huge. Like, 1+GB huge 😮

It turned out Vivaldi inherits from a behavior inherent to Chrome and forks, which is to stuff its cache in the same main folder as your profile. Or more specifically in:
C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Vivaldi\User Data\Default\Application Cache and
C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Vivaldi\User Data\Default\Cache

Of course, I didn’t really want to transfer those. So I looked for a way to disable disk cache (I’ve got RAM for fuck sake, use it you stupid damned browsers), then emptied those folders and transfer the profile without the cache.

Sadly, Vivaldi doesn’t provide an easy option to turn off disk cache (comparatively, in Firefox and forks you just need to go to about:config and set browser.cache.disk.enable to false). You need to launch it with the --disk-cache-size=0 command like option. So basically, edit Vivaldi’s shortcut so that the target becomes something like "C:\Program Files\Vivaldi\Application\vivaldi.exe" --disk-cache-size=0. Source is here.

Note that this actually doesn’t totally prevent that annoying browser from junking said cache folders: I usually have about 350 MB of stuff in those folders. Hopefully some day it will be cleaner…

Posted in Chrome/Chromium/Vivaldi, Firefox.

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By patheticcockroach – 2016-11-25

How to get rid of Intel(R) System Usage Report

This executable, who also apparently goes by the nickname of “Energy Server Service WILLAMETTE” or SystemUsageReportSvc_WILLAMETTE (located, by default, in C:\Program Files\Intel\SUR\WILLAMETTE\ESRV), is installed along with the Intel(R) Driver Update Utility. And it appears that you cannot prevent its installation when you install that update utility.
The problem is, it will keep running in the background, and try to send mysterious data to God knows who (Intel, I guess). That’s actually how I caught it: it popped up a firewall alert. Some people also reported CPU usage issues, with the executable (esrv_svc.exe) eating up a whole CPU core.
You can try to disable it in your Services configuration, however in my case it still kept running after I disabled its service! So the only option left for me was to uninstall the Intel(R) Driver Update Utility, which isn’t much useful once you’ve figured out precisely which drivers you need anyway.

Posted in Intel.

rev="post-4291" 9 comments

By patheticcockroach – 2016-11-24

Windows special folders short names (%something%)

I always forget some of those ones, so let’s have a recap of short names for Windows folders, and the full path they point to (in Windows 7, although 8 or 10 shouldn’t be much different, or probably exactly the same). Note that all those short names are NOT case-sensitive. Also, apparently the official name of those %ShortNames% is “Windows Environment Commands”.

  • %HomeDrive% => C:\ (NB: all the full paths I give here assume Windows is installed on C:\)
  • %AllUsersProfile% => C:\ProgramData
  • %AppData% => C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming
  • %HomeDrive% => C:\Users\[username] (NB: accessing this folder by using the short name will actually NOT show you the full path)
  • %Temp% => C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Temp (NB: can be different if you moved the temporary folder, obviously – but who does that?)
  • %SystemRoot% => C:\Windows

%AppData% is supposed to be the folder where most programs put their user data. For instance, that’s where you can hope to find your saved games (also some are located in “%userprofile%\Documents\My Games), or your browser settings. However, it seems that as many or more programs use the C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local folder instead. Some, rarer, use the C:\Users\[username]\AppData\LocalLow folder. All in all, just go to C:\Users\[username]\AppData and then try the various subfolders there.
Some programs store stuff both in Local and Roaming, notably Firefox and its forks: Roaming contains the settings, Local contains the disk cache.

See also: a list of run commands / common program names

If you know more of those pretty convenient shortcuts, please post them in the comments and I’ll add them!

Posted in Windows.

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By patheticcockroach – 2016-11-19

Some Windows 10 post-installation customizations

How to install gadgets

I was quite surprised to see Microsoft removed gadgets after making such a fuss about them in Windows 7. Although I didn’t like many of them, CPU meter turned out to be a must have and I really missed it. Gladly, a third-party software, 8GadgetPack, will let you install most gadgets. And it even bundles quite many of them, including the CPU meter one.

How to disable Windows Update

Sounds too good to be true, so time will tell how well it works, but apparently all you need to do is to go to Services and disable the Windows Updates service. Source.
Also, you can set “Configure Automatic Updates” to disabled in group policies in Computer Configuration → Administrative Templates → Windows Components → Windows Update

Edit: it seems that it doesn’t work in Home or Pro versions, only in the Enterprise version :/
Edit 2: this page contains a bunch of alternative techniques, maybe you’ll have more luck with those

How to disable Telemetry

First, there are a bunch of options that pop up during the initial set up. Then you should also have a look in the system settings (apparently that’s not called control panel anymore?). All in all, you should already have seen a bunch of options to drastically reduce the amount of collected data.
And finally, the last touches:
– using the registry editor ([windows key] + R, then “regedit”), go to key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\DataCollection, create a 32-bit DWORD value named AllowTelemetry and set it to 0
– go to Services and disable the Connected User Experiences and Telemetry service (NB: it used to be named Diagnostics Tracking Service before the 1511 update) and the dmwappushsvc service
Source: http://winaero.com/blog/how-to-disable-telemetry-and-data-collection-in-windows-10/
There might be more, as I believe I remember from previous readings that there are quite many things to edit for a complete removal… I’ll edit this post when I find more.

How to disable Windows Defender

That annoying thing can only be disabled temporarily. The settings reads “if it’s disabled for too long, it will re-enable automatically”, but it turns out that “too long” barely means “until the next restart” :s
Anyway:
– run ([windows key] + R) gpedit.msc
– select Computer Configuration
– go to Administrative Templates → Windows Components → Windows Defender
– double click the Turn off Windows Defender policy and enable it
You should immediately notice that the Windows Defender icon in the task bar shows and alert indicating it’s disabled, and that you can’t open Windows Defender anymore.
Source: Microsoft Community – How to disable Windows Defender in Windows 10

Edit: despite the “if disabled for too long” notice I mentioned above, it seems that Windows Defender will remain turned off permanently when you do this.

How to disable Cortana

Not only that piece of **** has a questionable privacy behavior, it can also make your start menu lag like hell. Two ways to disable it:
1) via regedit: create dword value HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search\AllowCortana and set it to 0.
2) via group policies (Win 10 Pro or Enterprise only): run gpedit.msc, then go to Computer Configuration → Administrative Templates → Windows Components → Search, and disable the Allow Cortana setting

How to disable Search on the web

By default, when you search for something in the start menu, it also fires a web search (hurray for privacy again). This behavior can be disabled via group policies: go to Computer Configuration → Administrative Templates → Windows Components → Search, and enable Don’t search the web or display web results in Search

How to disable fast startup

Fast startup allows to start up the computer a bit faster. But this isn’t that noticeable on a fast SSD, and it comes at a cost: the computer writes an image of its current running state when you shut it down, so it wears out the SSD (and shutdown is a bit longer). Not worth it IMO (more reasons to hate it there). You can disable it via the power options (see there for a detailed guide), or simply via regedit:
go to key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Power, create a DWORD value named HiberbootEnabled, and set it to 0.

How to add stuff to the Start menu

Similarly to Windows 7, you can copy/paste shortcuts into %appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu (for the current user, it’s the short name for C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu) or C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu (for all users).
However, unlike in Windows 7, you’ll probably run into permission issues if you try to right-click-and-drop and executable in order to directly create a shortcut to it in the Start menu. To bypass this, just create the shortcut somewhere else first, then cut/paste it into the Start Menu folder.

Once you placed your shortcut there, you can right-click it in the Start Menu to Pin it, etc. Cf here for many ways to customize the Windows 10 Start Menu: those tiles are pretty handy IMO, and I find they make a decent replacement to the long-gone Quick Launch that I used to miss so much in Win 7. That is, once you’ve removed all the default junk that’s there.

How to remove the delay before typing your login password

The retarded default settings makes you wait a long time when exiting the lock screen before you’re finally able to type your password. To remove this delay, the only way is to remove the lock screen (don’t worry, when you lock it your session will still require a password to unlock). In the Local Group Policy Editor, go to Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Control Panel\Personalization and Enable “Do not display the lock screen”. Source, with more details and alternative ways to do it.

How to disable Aero Shake

This one drove me nuts for ages. Somehow I never thought about trying to kill it off until now. Windows has a stupid feature that if you grab a window by the title bar and shake it the right way (I find it to be really quite random, sometimes all it takes is a gentle shake, sometimes even if I shake the window wildly I fail to do it), it will minimize ALL other windows. As I usually have at the very least a dozen windows opened, it’s a pain in the butt. It can be disabled by setting the registry value HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\DisallowShaking (DWORD 32 bits) to 1.

Miscellaneous other things

Update list (can be used to download update packages manually)
Update: Actually now I find this list more convenient

Various safe-to-block crap

Those Windows components will try at some point to access Internet and I found the simplest way to deal with them is just to block them at the firewall level:

  • BackgroundTransferHost.exe (might be related to Windows Update, or just App Updates in general?)
  • InstallAgentUserBroker.exe
  • slui.exe
  • SpeechModelDownload.exe

You can also disable those services:

How to disable Quick access

In File Explorer, go to File → Change folder and search options. Then in the General tab, choose “open file explorer to: this PC”. You can also disable showing recently used files and folders at the bottom of this tab.

How to disable Bing Search in the Start Menu

In regedit, go to key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search,create a DWORD 32 bits value named BingSearchEnabled, and set it to 0.

Posted in Windows 10.

rev="post-4284" 3 comments

By patheticcockroach – 2016-11-16

How to install Serverless locally

Serverless recommends to install itself globally. This is notably required to make commands such as “serverless” or the shortcut “sls” available in the command line.

However, projects created to Serverless 0.5 cannot be deployed using Serverless 1.x. So, with the official instructions, if you have one project in Serverless 0.5 and the other in Serverless 1.x, you’re basically screwed.

Gladly, it’s actually fairly easy to use a non-global installation of Serverless.
Basically, you just need to install Serverless locally (and while you’re at it, mark it as a development dependency):
npm install serverless@0.5.5 --save-dev
You might want to have a look in your package.json file and lock down the version completely, if that you want (I believe that by default, minor revisions are allow, ie 0.5.5 may get upgraded to 0.5.6).

Then, you need to recreate the “serverless” or “sls” command (or whatever alias you want). For this, simply create a bash file (Windows .bat, Linux/Mac .sh), in your project’s root folder, with the following content:
– on Windows:
node node_modules\serverless\bin\serverless %*
– on Linux or Mac:
node node_modules\serverless\bin\serverless $*

Finally, to run serverless dash deploy, for instance, if you named your bash file slslocal.bat, just run instead:
slslocal dash deploy

Posted in JavaScript / TypeScript / Node.js.

rev="post-4281" No comments

By patheticcockroach – 2016-11-08

My Cinebench R15 bench results

For some reason I’m always a bit wary of the benchmark results I find here and there on Internet, so I thought I’d make sure I store mine in an easy to find place. I.e., as usual, here ^^
Usual reminder: benchmarks are a way to very quickly compare various hardware in a standardized fashion, however they are not as relevant as real-life applications. Just to give an example, between the 3rd and 4th generation, Intel CPUs got a new instruction set (AVX2), which brings large improvement speed to some algorithms, such as x265 encoding. This isn’t reflected in this benchmark.

Intel i7-6700K (quad core, 4.0 GHz) + GeForce GTX 1060 (mobile). Factory voltage and clock for both.

  • CPU (multithread): 873
  • CPU (single core): 177
  • OpenGL: 145.19 FPS

Intel i5-6500 (quad core, 3.2 GHz). Factory clock, no discrete GPU. 130 mV undervolt, but it shouldn’t impact performance.

  • CPU (multithread): 542
  • CPU (single core): 140
  • OpenGL: 36.49 FPS

Intel i7-3632QM (quad core, 2.2 GHz) + AMD Radeon HD 7970M. Factory voltage and clock for both, except that I ran the OpenGL benchmark both in “performance” mode (= normal clock) and energy-saving mode (= the clock is about half slower). The computer is a Schenker XMG P702.

  • CPU (multithread): 508
  • CPU (single core): 102
  • OpenGL: 57.94 FPS
  • OpenGL (“maximize battery life” setting in Catalyst): ~43 FPS

On a side note, the reference benchmarks (bundled in Cinebench) for CPU single core indicate 101 for the i7-3840QM (which is 2.8 GHz) and 122 for the i7-3720QM (which is 2.6 GHz). Doesn’t sound very logical and supports my mistrust in published benchmarks.

AMD A6-3500 (tri core, 2.1 GHz). Factory voltage and clock, no discrete GPU.

  • CPU (multithread): 166
  • CPU (single core): 61
  • OpenGL: 19.65 FPS

AMD Phenom II N930 (quad core, 2.0 GHz) + AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5650. Factory voltage and clock.

  • CPU (multithread): 188
  • CPU (single core): 49
  • OpenGL: 14.15 FPS

Posted in hardware, Schenker XMG P702.

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By patheticcockroach – 2016-11-05

Watch out, Android Studio leaves tons of junk files behind on the system partition

As I was just looking for the folder holding Fallout Shelter save files, I noticed my user folder (%USERPROFILE%) contained a few folders named .AndroidStudio[insert number here]. More specifically, .AndroidStudio1.5, .AndroidStudio2.0, .AndroidStudio2.1 and .AndroidStudio2.2.
It’s sadly very common for uninstalled application to leave such folders behind, however they often empty it, and in almost all other cases at least such folders contain barely a few small files. However, in this case, those folders contained each 400MB to almost 3GB of data, for a total of around 4.5GB in 6000 files!!

So, next time you upgrade Android Studio to a new version, you know what to do: remove their previous data folder once you’re done migrating the old one.

Posted in Android.

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By patheticcockroach – 2016-10-22

Manually reassigning bad blocks on Linux

This is just a note I found on my computer while doing some clean up, and I thought I’d put it here rather than just delete it.
Basically, it’s just some commands + links I found while desperately trying to eliminate a bad block on a hard drive by forcing it to be reassigned. As far as I remember, this didn’t work quite well, and I ended up just requesting the disk to be changed (this happened on a rented dedicated server that I had just ordered).

root@81-7-14-247:~# sg_verify --lba=1909768496 /dev/sda

root@81-7-14-247:~# sg_verify --lba=1909768503 /dev/sda
verify (10): Descriptor format, current; Sense key: Medium Error
Additional sense: Unrecovered read error - auto reallocate failed
Descriptor type: Information
0x0000000071d4c137
medium or hardware error, reported lba=0x71d4c137

root@81-7-14-247:~# sg_reassign --address=0x71d4c130 -v /dev/sda
reassign blocks cdb: 07 00 00 00 00 00
reassign blocks: Fixed format, current; Sense key: Illegal Request
Additional sense: Invalid command operation code
REASSIGN BLOCKS not supported

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-905082-start-0.html

http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/badblockhowto.html

http://sg.danny.cz/sg/sg3_utils.html

http://linux.die.net/man/8/sg_verify
http://linux.die.net/man/8/sg_reassign
http://linux.die.net/man/8/sg_write_long

https://superuser.com/questions/384095/how-to-force-a-remap-of-sectors-reported-in-s-m-a-r-t-c5-current-pending-sector

Posted in Linux, servers.

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By patheticcockroach – 2016-10-21

aToad #21: ConEmu

Free and open-source console replacement for Windows

Well it’s not exactly a console replacement as it uses the native console, however it’s a huge GUI improvement. I switched to it mainly for the comfortable copy/pasting of console content (which is near to impossible in the native console as it’s totally impractical), but it features other nice stuff such as tabs, improved colors, and many other things I don’t use (yet).
The name is ConEmu, and it’s still actively being developed (created in 2006, latest update at time of writing just a week ago).

Posted in A Tool A Day, Windows.

rev="post-4274" 4 comments

By patheticcockroach – 2016-10-18

Fixing some Serverless issues on Windows

Today I finally got to run serverless dash deploy myself (not that I was that eager to deploy) (and yes, I know this is a pretty outdated version as dash deploy doesn’t even exist anymore, we’ll have to update it some time – hopefully sooner than later). And as everyone else in the company uses Mac OS, I had to face my own issues on Windows.

Error #1: “Cant find AWS credentials”

Even though I did run aws configure to fill in my aws_access_key_id and my aws_secret_access_key, serverless (0.5.5, by the way) was’t able to use them. I did check the %UserProfile%/.aws/credential file, they were their indeed. I even added aws_live_profile = default, as was suggested somewhere, it didn’t help.
It turned out that in Serverless version <1, those aws_access_key_id and aws_secret_access_key need to be added as environment variables (if you don’t know how to do that, or even if you do, I suggest you have a look at Rapid Environment Editor, which is freeware). That did the trick indeed.
Oh, and here is the Github ticket that says this was fixed in Serverless 1.

Error #2: “Error: EMFILE: too many open files”

After fixing the credential bullshit, I got that one. That was quite frustrating because all the “solutions” I found were directed towards MacOS or Linux, and were based on running some kind of ulimit -n 10480 command, which doesn’t exist one Windows and seemed to be able to cause some trouble anyway.
After trying turning it off and on again, I thought: let’s try another obvious thing: update Node.js. I was running a fairly recently updated Node.js 6.7.0, new version was 6.8.1, and… it worked!
So yeah, basically: just update Node.js and hopefully you should be good. Even with a pretty outdated Windows (running Win 7 with many, many missing updates here)

Posted in programming, Windows.

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By patheticcockroach – 2016-10-17