Month: August 2017

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Woot! I’ll Get Android Oreo

At the beginning of April I switched to Google Fi from Virgin Mobile because VM canceled the low cost plan I used for the past couple years. The replacement plan from VM was more expensive than Google Fi for the amount of voice, text, and data I need.

The big catch was that my small LG Pulse <$100 smartphone would not work because Google Fi only works with the official Google phones. I chose the Nexus 5X because it was only $250 after the Google Fi discount.

Fast forward to a few months ago when Google published an official update and upgrade life cycle for its phones. I was bummed out that they said there are no guarantees of Android version updates for the Nexus 5X after September this year because I thought new versions came out later than that. This is one case where I’m very glad I was wrong, Android Oreo has been released, I’ll be getting the upgrade and the new features look great!

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Spring Creators Update Problem

Although it’s close to releasing the fall creator’s update some PCs are just now getting the spring release. My Windows 10 Home test PC has been trying to install the update the past couple days and it almost got through it. On reboot Windows failed to start and showed this error, Error 0xc0000017: There isn’t enough memory available to create a ramdisk device.

I used the solution on this page How to fix error 0xc0000017 when installing Windows 10 to clear out the memory that was marked as bad (after running diagnostics that showed the memory is OK). My Win10 Home PC is a testing only device with nothing important on windows and has a dual boot Ubuntu setup that I no longer use, I’ve opted to do a complete reinstall.

Update 1:

Turns out a complete re-install does not remove the dual boot like I think it did in some previous Windows versions. Bravo Microsoft that is the right thing to do even though it made my task a little harder. How-To Geek has the instructions I used to get rid of the no longer needed dual boot setup. How to Uninstall a Linux Dual-Boot System From Your Computer

Update 2:

Decided I should also remove the Windows Vista recovery partition. Can’t do it in Disk Manager you need to use the CLI diskpart program.
Ref: How to Delete a Windows Recovery Partition

 

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Courier New Font Broken

The Windows 10 Creator’s Update messed up the appearance of the trusty old Courier New font. Most users don’t use that font but for decades it has been a favorite in terminal windows and code editors for programmers and system admins. This Microsoft Community thread, Creator’s Update – Courier New, details the issue and proposes a couple solutions. I didn’t like either solution so I simply switched to the modern Consolas font that is included in modern versions of Windows.