Category: Tech

Technology

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Disable Serial Mouse Detection

Microsoft Windows’ backwards compatibility with ancient hardware is usually nice to have but sometimes it detects other serial devices as a serial mouse. This happens whether the device is connected to a real TIA-232 port or a Universal Serial Bus (USB) to TIA-232 adapter. Some USB connected devices, e.g. GPS receivers, have USB to TIA-232 convertors built right into the device.

  1. Tap the Windows key to begin a start menu search
  2. Start typing regedit and when the menu entry for Registry Editor App appears
  3. Right click the menu entry and choose Run as administrator
  4. When the, Do you want this app to make changes to your device?, prompt appears choose the Yes button
  5. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\sermouse
  6. Since Windows 10 updates will sometimes change this value back to the default, bookmark this entry so you can get back to it easily in the future.
  7. Change the value of the Start key from 3 to 4
  8. Close Registry Editor and reboot the PC

I learned which registry key to change and its setting options from here and here.

If you want to retain the capability of using a serial mouse and just disable it for on one port see here.

 

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Microsoft Needs to to stop their Vice Presidents from Spreading Misinformation.

This morning I read an update of a How-To Geek article on the Windows 1903 update. It said that Microsoft’s Mike Ybarra posted that everyone can get 1903 now. Clicking the link I saw that three days ago the VP of Gaming @ Microsoft posted this:

Mike Ybarra (Verified account)
@XboxQwik
If you want Windows 10’s latest update, 1903, as of today all users can go to Windows Update and get it. Variable refresh rate and exciting news at e3 – you’ll want to have this! #XboxE3

Since Mike is Corporate Vice President – Gaming for Microsoft I thought this must be true. I checked the two Win10 PC’s in my home office (one Win10 Pro and the other Win10 Home) and the update is NOT yet available. Microsoft really needs to prevent it’s VP’s of other divisions from spreading misinformation about Windows 10 updates. It is not helpful and perpetuates the impression that Microsoft can’t be relied on for accurate information.

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Your browser is managed by your organization

Noticed this message in Chrome today and it made no sense since the PC I’m on is not managed by my organization. Google search found me this recent article, Chrome Saying It’s Managed by Your Organization May Indicate Malware.

Looking around it was clear the only managing being done is disabled password saving in Chrome. That’s something I always turn on anyway since I’ve been using LastPass Premium for many years now. In fact it seems like a nice registry setting so that I, or a Chrome update, can’t turn password saving back on without an extra step.

In my initial search there was result from the LastPass forum about somebody having problems because they had both Chrome and LastPass trying to handle passwords. That’s when I realized that the registry keys where probably set by LastPass to prevent any conflict when I installed the binary version this morning.

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Why I Don’t Trust Politicians on IT/Tech Issues

It’s because they are not competent in even the simplest of technical issues, here’s a prime example.

U.S. Senator Mark R. Warner and staff introduce an IoT bill and where do they post the text,  a walled garden pay service that requires registration to get a copy. Thankfully the bill will eventually put on the official US government sites including congess.gov where citizens can get a copy without paying¹ a commercial service. When senators and their staff can’t even do the simplests of tasks, posting a document for citizens for free, how can anyone trust they are competent in any tech area. I suppose I should at least give them credit for not being even worse, they could have posted it to Facebook or some other extreme privacy violating money grubbing corporate site.

Source: Bipartisan Legislation to Improve Cybersecurity of Internet-of-Things Devices Introduced in Senate & House – Press Releases – Mark R. Warner

¹ Forced sign up, even without direct cash payment, is still paying with your private personal data.

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Windows 10 Bug Fix

On my personally owned home office workstation I saw this message in red on the Windows Update screen, “Some Settings Are Managed By Your Organization”. For quite a while I didn’t think much about it since I log in to the corporate Office 365 site on this PC. Today it suddenly dawned on me that since this PC’s Win 10 login is to my personal outlook.com ID it seemed unlikely my workstation was being managed by my employer.

A quick Google search and I found that the message is likely caused by what appears to be a rare bug in Windows 10. TekRevue has the details and a simple fix that worked for me.

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OneDrive for Business Sync Problems

I had sync problems between my home office PC and the PC in the main office. It turned out that the problem was from making huge changes in the files synced with OneDrive and SharePoint via the OneDrive for Business program. To avoid this problem I found you should have both PC’s logged in while making large changes.

Sadly the only way to get things back in sync was to perform a reset of OneDrive and then let it download all 20G again. Glad I discovered this problem before my usage got into the multi-hundred Gigabyte range.

To perform the reset and restart run this command.

%localappdata%\Microsoft\OneDrive\onedrive.exe /reset

If OneDrive does not restart on its own in a copule minutes then run this command.

%localappdata%\Microsoft\OneDrive\onedrive.exe

From this Microsoft OneDrive community forum post.

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TWiT Network Ridiculous Whining

Ian and Leo on TWiT, and others on other shows this week, were whining because US newspaper companies don’t want to spend a bunch of money so that they can continue to give free stuff to Europeans without fear of legal financial penalties.

Leo has even admitted it cost his tiny company 40 hours of labor some if it lawyer time. Obviously Leo feels his company will at least break even on the expense so of course he should make the effort. I am confident the newspapers calculated that it will result in only a net loss so it would violate their fiduciary responsibility to waste money complying with GDPR.

Update: just watched Mac Break Weekly and Alex brought up how GDPR is a no profit, only losses, situation for businesses who don’t have EU customers. I should have expected this bit of sanity since Alex is a very smart business person (as well as one of the most amazing media production experts around).