Windows 10 high CPU usage problems

In the past a few weeks, my 4-year old Thinkpad X1 started to have very high CPU use with the cooling fan running very nosise. I have been keeping it on or in sleep mode. Restarting it does fixed the problem for a short period of time but it will go back to the same problem. The Task manager shows that two process: Cisco WebEx took 50+% of the CPU usage and WMI Host service took up about 25% constantly. First, I manually stopped the WebEx but it came back in a few hours. I have been using WebEx for years as the main video conference service up till early 2020 when Teams and Zoom took over. We even stopped renew its license this year. Guess Cisco really dropped the ball this time. I only used it less than a handful of times this year, considering having 10+ video meetings every work day. Anyway, decided to uninstalled it for now. Can always reinstall hwen needed. That took care of the 50% of the CPU usage. The WMI Host Service or Windows Management Instruments Service is an essential service for Windows. Even stopping it would be a problem. Based on the advice here: https://appuals.com/wmi-provider-host-wmiprvse-exe-high-cpu-usage-on-windows-10/ the problem can be solved by manually restarted from Services. I did and it was gone. Not bad. Maybe can still use the laptop for some time before considering a new one.

Microsoft Exchange Server Logon problem

This is a problem happened before.  After over two weeks of back and forth with IT, it was resolved by deleting the Outlook client profile and start setting up the mail account again.

It came up again two weeks ago.  I removed the profile on two computers and it fixed the problem right away.  However, it came back occasionally. 

Symptom:
Outlook client log on error and asking for password again even though the originally saved password is correct.  Entering the correct password again won't work. 

This only happened on one computer while other computers with Outlook or other e-mail clients (e.g. iOS) worked fine.  However, this problem will eventually cycle through other devices as well.  In most times, it will go away after cancel the logon box. 

Solution:
It seems that the authentication encryption may be the cause:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/help/3032395/outlook-connection-issues-with-exchange-mailboxes-because-of-the-rpc-e

In my case, the encryption was already enabled.  I just changed the "logon network security option" from  "negotiate authentication" to "password authentication (NTLM)". 

Then it worked.  After checking the setting again, it went back to "negotiate authentication".  It seems that the change in this setting reset a faulty state. 

WiFi problem

Since switched to a new ISP, I purchased a new DSL modem + WiFi router from TP-Link.  One reason to go with this route is that the UPS has one fewer device to support during a power outage hence would last longer.

The TD-W8961ND router looks quite nice and straight forward to set up.  However, it started to give problems at the very beginning.  There are a few devices in the house would connect then lost the connection randomly, mostly wouldn't be able to get an IP assigned.  Even with DHCP reservation table.  The only fix is assign a fixed IP from the client side.  This is not a convenient solution, as one of these devices is my main laptop.  When I go to other places, I can't use the fixed IP, so had to change it all the time.

Eventually, I fed up and called TP-Link.  It seems that after suggesting update firmware (done that, didn't work), the tech quickly decided it's a hardware problem.  In an hour or so I received the RMA.  What's annoying is that even under warranty, TP-Link would need the customers to mail the defective device back to them at the customers' expense.  Then a new (or refurbished) device would be sent back to the customer.  Besides the shipping cost, the time required to complete the process may be easily two weeks. For most users, they'd get a new router for the two weeks.

Luckily for me, TP-Link has a an office that is within 50 miles that I bite the bullet drove there and did a "manual" swap.  Although the tech support and RMA (including the swap) process was smooth, and everybody are pretty nice, in the future, I'd seriously think twice to buy anything critical from them.

So far, the new router/modem seems to be working flawless in the first a few hours. The hardware version of the old defective one is v3.1 and the new one is v3.2.  So they are not exactly the same.  The firmware is also different, while on their support website, they only differentiate v3 to v2 and v4.

Windows Remote Desktop blackscreen issue

Remote desktop became a necessity in my daily work and it not only allows me working at home but also access a lot of information while on the road (e.g. for country specific resources).

Today when I really need to log in to my office PC, it showed a black screen AFTER logged in.  After some connect/disconnect/reconnect, I finally turned to Google.  Here's the solution:
Using Ctrl+Alt+Home to bring up the "lock screen" menu of the remote computer (in Win 7 that's lock screen, log off, task manager, etc.) Then choose "task manager".

Wow, the desktop is back. 

I'm not sure whether this is related to I locked the screen when left office.  Will give it a try tomorrow.

BTW, Ctrl+Alt+Del will bring up the local PC's lock screen menu.

Cisco VPN Anytime Connect DLL problem

Over the past week, my Cisco Anytime Connect client started to behave funny.  Mostly it won't connect to the server at start up.  I had to click "quite" twice to close it, then started it again, when it usually would work.

Then it happened on Monday that it just wouldn't connect to the server.  Just hang during trying. 

I decided to uninstall it and reinstall it. 

What a bad idea. 

After uninstall it from the Control Panel, it won't install again either using an old installation file or new installation files just downloaded from our IT site. The error message is:

 "There is a problem with this Windows Installer package. A DLL required for this install to complete could not be run. Contact your support personnel or package vendor."

Search online didn't give me any good results.  Our IT guy said that this may because I had Java 7 installed.  Although I don't believe him, tried it anyway.  After downgrade to Java 6, same error message.

Damn.

Then our IT guy suggested that I reinstall Windows. What a Bxxxxxxx.

I decided to try it on my own.  First, create a new administrator account.  Then use this account to install. 

It worked! 

When log back to my own account, Cisco AnyConnect is already there and working!

iPad Mini update

A week of use so far and it's doing pretty well.  It light and the battery lasts over a few days of moderate use.

Seems to be a very good decision. Although rumor said that the mini-2 would come out with a retina display, that will be the earliest October.  I also didn't see too much of a difference between retina display and regular on the Macbook Pro in the Apple Store.

iPad mini

After a long hiatus, now I'm back.  After all, I've been on leave since Dec. 2011 and will go back to office after September 2013.  I have been writing during the leave but turned to Live Journal for a private dairy. 

While walking in the mall on a Saturday morning, tried the new iPad mini for the first time in the Apple Store, and decided to buy one.  Based on my iPad 2 experiences, aka buy the most expensive model on the 1st day of sale, I chose the cheapest 16GB WiFi version for $329 plus tax.  Then while restoring it with the iPad backup in iTunes, I found out that 16GB is not enough.  It actually hung both iTunes and the new iPad. Despite these problems fresh out of the box, I was really convinced that it's worth to get comparing to others. 

There are three factors led to this decision: First, the iPad Mini is slightly larger than the rest of the 7" mini-pads.  It is surprisingly a comfortable size to read news and watching Youtube videos. I never thought that 0.9" (7.9" vs 7") made such a huge difference.  Secondly, it's also super light.  The iPad is not really a device that I can hold for hours to read. Last but certainly not the least, even when it hung, I was able to see how easy it is to transfer almost all settings on the iPad.  Not like the Android on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, which I had to manually change quite a few things when switching users.

So, I bite the bullet to go back to the Apple store to exchange for a 32GB version for $100 more.  It's not the most expensive 16GB storage I've ever paid for, but it's getting there. 

After 2hr of restoring and updating, the 32GB device works flawlessly and I don't really need to change anything except to enter most of the passwords, which is probably a good time.

Home networks change

Since I had such a bad time with the TrendNet WiFi router, I decided to change to an older LinkSys WRT54G router till there's a suitable (price, features, form factor, etc.) new one. 

First, let's count the devices. 

There are four Gigabit LAN devices (Desktop, 2 HD media players + NAS), three 100MBps LAN devices (VOIP router, TV, and Wii), and 10+ WiFi devices (3 laptops, netbook, printer, iPad, iPhone, another two cell phones, another media player, and an Network Radio).  In addition, both HD media players and Wii has WiFi as well. In the 10 WiFi devices, only 6 of them supports 802.11n while the rest are 802.11g. Since it's rare that I would need high bandwidth on the wireless devices (the 2 HD media player will be using wired LAN), 802.11g would be sufficient for now. 

I would like to have a Gigabit LAN connection to use the extra bandwidth when transferring large amount of data (e.g. playing HD content from NAS). Luckily (up to debate), I have two 8-port Planet Gigabit switches from an auction five years ago.  Although they are not worth as much they were in 2006, they are still useful. After checking with two friends in IT, the plan is to use the Linksys WRT54G router as the WiFi access point as well as the DCHP server. Most of the LAN devices (especially all the Gigabit LAN devices) will connect to the switch.  This will also allow all devices within a single network so files on the NAS can be read and everybody can print to the printer over the network.

After an extra trip to get CAT-6 network cables and a 12-port power strips, I set up the fully system from scratch.  This includes using a new 12-port power bar.  Given so many devices with their own AC/DC power supplies, it doesn't make sense to have power outlets spaced so tightly.  Even for the 12 outlets, commercial grade power bar, at least three of the outlets are now blocked. If I were to design a power bar, I'd at least put most of them sideways and space them out to accommodate most of the AC/DC adapters.

Anyway, after 2 hour, the network is functioning again.  So far, the WRT54G router works fine.  There's little to complain about this set up.  At the same time, I still need an utility to test large data transfer performance. 

WiFi router issue

Spending quite some time in the morning trying to get the internet working in the Condo. The TrendNet TWE652BRP WiFi router has been misbehaving for quite some time. The main symptom is dropping wireless connections quite frequently (as bad as every 5 minutes) while the signal showing on the devices was still strong when it happened and the wired connections are unaffected. Some times, it also crushed, but this was not often. For most of the devices, it will automatically reconnect after 1-2 minutes. However, this is very annoying as my HD media player is wireless. Every time the connection was dropped, it will either just stop playing whatever online content I'm watching or drop the connection to my NAS drive where most of the HD content are saved.

I've tried updated it to the latest firmware, and tried to change various settings. Some times it gets better and most times it's not affected. I'm not even sure whether it's the setting change or just the number of time it's rebooted that helped a little. To just temporarily curtail the problem, I had an old CompUSA OEM 802.11g router connected for most of the devices that do not need access to the NAS drive.

Originally, the CompUSA router was connected to the TrendNet one through one of its LAN ports, while the TrendNet router was connected to the DSL modem. I had suspected that the load of the TrendNET router may be a contributing factor so it was changed to not running the PPPoE but just taking the connection from the modem. However, it crushed last night and I decided to switch the hierarchy of the two routers: the CompUSA connects to the modem while the TrendNET follows. This seemed to be an easy change but somehow the CompUSA router refused to run acquire neither an IP from the modem nor will a fixed IP run (the TrendNet worked fine under either, only to crush).

After an hour of changing back and forth, I gave up. I just need to get a new router. In the mean time, I just hanging there try to score a better deal on Boxing day (the Canadian Black Friday). My ideal choice would be a simultaneous dual band Wireless ABGN router with 5 Gigabit LAN ports (plus a WAN port).

Failed solid state drive: episode 2-the looks

After my first SSD failed, it turns out that I did have some important data not backed up. My friend Peter at work tried to recover it and didn't get anywhere. We called a few data recovery companies (using Google, what else?), and was told that they would all take a "look" for $5k.

Five grand to just take a look? No, thank you. Guess my data isn't that important to me.

I happened to be on a business trip to China where I thought I might had a chance for a cheaper "look". Before going, I found a company called "飞客" or "Fix"(as its web site is www.fix.com.cn) which seems legit. I called them and they said that they would "take a look, but no guarantees." There will be no charge if they can't recover the data. So, at least this is a free "look". What made me trust them is that I did talk to an engineer instead of someone who only know how to work the phone and get $5k for a "look".

Four weeks late, I was in Shanghai. After sneaking out a lunch break, I went to their Shanghai branch office with the SSD. An engineer talked to me and took the drive while asked me to wait outside.

After half an hour (whole lot more than I expected), he came back telling me the bad news: the drive is beyond their capability to restore.

Wait,

here's a slim hope: he called the headquarter in Beijing where they have better facilities and more experienced engineers. They said that I can get another "look" there. Since my last stop is Beijing after three days, I opted to bring the drive there myself instead of shipping it from the Shanghai office (for free, they said and no recovered data, no pay).

A slim hope is still hope.

First day in Beijing, I went to the headquarter near the university district. After talking to a girl at the reception, an engineer came out for another "look". I'm sure this would be the end of the "looks" for this SSD. It would straight go to the trash bin if this "look" doesn't work.

After half an hour later, he called me who's wondering around downstairs and let me know it's recoverable (while not sure how much can be recovered). I can take a look at the recovered data before deciding to pay for it.

And the cost is 1500 yuan or $220.

This sound promising! They would keep the drive for a few days and call me when it's done. Before leaving, they asked me to signed a contract as well as a confidentiality agreement which stated that they would not keep the data afterward. So far, very professional. I just hope "a few" days would not exceed my stay there.

The next day, I got a call from them and "almost all data are recovered"!

I went there in a hurry. It's right at lunch hour and the reception girl was already dressed and ready to leave for lunch with a friend. She saw me and stopped at the door. Then she went back for the engineer who then showed me the data on their computer. They wanted to make sure that I'm happy with the recovered data. Once I said yes, he went back with my portable hard drive to copy the data, while the reception girl decided to ask her friend to bring back a take out.

The copy took pretty long: more than one and half hour (the recovered data is about 40GB, may be they need a USB 2.0 port on their computers).

Anyway, after paying 1500 yuan as promised, I got my data back. All lost data (less than 0.1%) were in the Windows directory so nothing with value was lost.

It's a happy ending.

Peter said that all failed hard drives from work will be shipped to China from now on.

New iPhone 4

My T-Mobile/HTC Wing is dying and I eventually bite the bullet got a new iPhone 4 with a 1.5Gb data plan. It turns out one of the best phones I've got. It almost replaced my laptop for many occasions.

While playing with it, I'm also trying to get on the bandwagon of i-age. I'll be reporting some of the tips I learned on the way.

Today's topic is how to get your own ring tones in the iPhone. This is the part I really don't like Apple. It's just too much of a control freak here. Anyway, I found a very useful web site here. Basically, you need to load the ring tones (likely in mp3) in iTunes then convert them into Apple's AAC/.m4a format. Then manually change the extension to .m4r in Explorer. Then load them again in iTunes, which automatically recognized them as ring tones and save them into the ring tone folder. Of course you need to connect to the iPhone to upload it.

Solid State drive failure

The solid state drive (Intel X25-M 80G G1) in my Thinkpad X61t failed yesterday. I should have seen it coming. The computer was very slow Sunday night and I had to turn it off. It never waked up, at least not completely, from that. On Monday morning, it managed to get to the log on screen and after entering Windows password, it just hang. After restarting a few times, the laptop won't recognize it any more.

Luckily, I still kept the old 100GB drive with Vista Enterprise on it. Replacing the hard drive took about 2 minutes and it booted up slowly but without incident. Of course it immediately asked for updates but it's not a problem.

Peter, a co-worker, is trying to revive it but I won't hold my breath. When connected to his eSATA connector as an external drive

I actually ordered a new Thinkpad X201 to replace it and it's on the way over. I was going to backup all the files over the weekend but got distracted. Although almost everything work related has been backed up, I do have two folders that are not. One of them has my temporary work files and the other contains all pictures I took this year.

This is a 14 months old drive purchased in August 2009, when the original 100GB 7200rpm drive in the X61 started to have problems. I've done quite some research on the SSD technology and decided to give it a try so I can boost the lifetime of the then 3-yr old X61 for another year or two. The decision to go for the more expensive Intel X-25M, one of the more expensive SSD at the time, is mostly based on this review of SSD technology by AnandTech.

Combined with Windows 7, the X25-M did seem faster than the old 7200rpm drive but I'm not sure this is because of the SSD or the performance improvement by Windows 7 over Vista. When installing the SSD, it doesn't seem to be much lighter than the 7200rpm drive but definitely quieter. It's cooler, at least initially.

Over the course of next a few months, the X61 became more and more hot at the center of the laptop. Now when I look back, it probably have issues there since although the drive was cool, but the driver circuit was hot and the motherboard was working very hard.

Now that the drive is dead, it turns out that recovering data from a failed solid state drives are much more difficult than a conventional magnetic disk drive. There are not much options and I'm not willing to shell off 3 grands to use a data recovery service. The next step would be downloading some Intel utilities for drive management but I am not sure it will work. I also found some data recovery software online but none of them specifically say that it will work for SSD, which use a much different data mapping algorithm. I may have to format the drive just to have it recognizable by Windows before trying the software. Will wait for a few days before bite the bullet to do that. Besides, the external network at work was down after 1pm. It hasn't recovered as yet (7am the next day). Guess this is really not my day!

I do have other laptops to get by and I have a new laptop coming on Wednesday. Hopefully this would hold on a bit longer. My first X30 worked flawlessly (on XP Pro) for 4 years before I passed it on to my Dad, who's still using it (7 years now). This one had a hard drive failure in the 3rd year and another failure in the 4th year.

It's time to say good bye.

Computer trouble #1: change Windows Server 2003 Volume License Key

Recently, many of the computers I'm using/taking care of had problems. For starters, I'm using a Compaq Proliant server at work so I can log to it remotely doing things involving huge data transfer between a separtate data server. It's running Windows Server 2003 with a volume license. Starting early this year, the volume license provided along with the server by an outside vendor stopped working and I can't get microsoft update any more. The vendor provided another license but they told me to reinstall everything in order to update the license key.

After some searching, I found out that you do not have to reinstall Windows to change the license key. Here's an Microsoft support article:

Briefly, I need to modify the registry so the windows to deactivate Windows. Once deactivated, Windows will automatically remind you to activate windows through the Internet or phone a MS customer service representative to get a new license key.

So I pretended that I called Microsoft and get the new license key. Once entering the new key, and reactivate Windows registry, everything works.

One problem the MS support article didn't mention is that there's an activation code field which is the default of the activation process. I assume that this is the code the MS call center gives out. In my case, since I have a new volume license key, I had to specifically choose entering CD-key.

Now one problem is out of the way, I can come back to deal with the failed hard drive on my X61 tablet. The annonying part is that the new Intel X-25M 80G SSD I ordered from NewEgg failed also. I had to mail it back for replacement. Will update that later.

Initial impression of Lenovo T60 widescreen laptop

This one came in much faster than the X61 tablet, which I will be using in the office or travel. The T60 should be a good one for home office use for its large 15.4" LCD. Of course, both needs to be connected to an external monitor for serious use.



The T60 is much bigger and heavier than I expected, just like with the X61. Most likely due to the impression I got from a co-worker's 14" T60 and my old X31. Well, since now I have two to use in office and at home, there is no need to move back and forth. Guess my back won't hurt too much for the extra weight.

Due to the larger and wider 15.4" screen, there are significant extra space on the side of the keyboard, which is a full size one just like the X61. May be Lenovo/IBM should think of a better way to use the real estate than just left it there with nothing on it.

Vista started up more or less okay. A bit slower due to the 1GB RAM (need get more next week). However, I probably spent more than three hours trying to set up the wireless next work. Initially I thought it's my fault playing with the security settings of the router. In the end, it turned out it's the driver came with the Thinkpad 11a/b/g/n. Eventually had to download a newer version of the ThinkVantage Access Connection driver as well as the a/b/g/n card driver to fix it. Didn't have a problem with the X61, which came with the Intel a/b/g/n card. Now I understand why it's $11 more on the web site. Guess Lenovo/IBM intentionally did this to remind me why I shouldn't be a cheap bastard next time.

Both machine came with pre-installed trial version of MS Office 2007 Pro. The user may be able to purchase a license key online to use it beyond the 25 or so times. Theoretically, one can leave all office applications, i.e. Word/Excel/PowerPoint/etc on for ever to get around it, but Windows will crush from time to time so take care of the loophole. My problem is that my own legit license won't work on the version in the computer. So I ended up uninstalling the Office and installing my own from scratch all over again.

There's a lot of other programs to install anyway, so will take a while for everything back on track. In the end, I felt a bit disappointed on the two computers, partially due to my high expectations of today's technology. May be I should stretch my old boxes one more year.

First impression with the X61 Tablet

Finally it's in my hands. Spent a few hours to set it up, not as I have dreaded. In the past, I have do a fresh installation of windows from scratch for every single one of the computer I got. This time, I want to give them a chance to "prove" themselves after so many years: they can make a computer that do not needs much TLC. Now it's more or less okay to run with the exception of a few minor incompatibility issues with Vista that I need to find a solution later. Here are some initial impressions:

Size:
The build is solid, may be too much. It's much heavier thank the old X31. Part of the reason is the large hard drive and cooling for the core duo CPU. Being a tablet, a lot of functionalities have been integrated into the LCD package, e.g. power, scrolling, screen orientation switching, etc. Hence, the edge of the screen is significantly wider than X31 and X41.

Another thing is that the battery sticks out in the back (as seen in the top of the figure) like some extended life batteries in other notebooks.


Tablet:
The rotation of the LCD is steady, functioning as expected. Handwritten recognition works exceptionally well for regular words, but not so much for intentionally miss spelled words or anything not in its vocabulary.

Temperature:
It is COOOOOOL. All three of the Dell Latitude series laptops I used before are very hot including the fairly recent D420. Even comparing to the X31, it is considerablely cooler. Nice feature when using it in hot weather on my lap with just shorts. There is heat coming from the bottom, but more distributed than the Dells that concentrated in a very small area. This should mostly attribute to the excellent design by Lenovo/IBM engineers and Intel for their new generation of low voltage dual core Centrino processors.

Program/Vista:
Again, Lenovo/IBM packed a lot of utilities in the pre-installed Vista Ultimate. Some are very useful such as the Diskeeper, Power Management, Access Connections, etc. It also contains a lot of programs I have no idea of preloaded when windows starting up. I have no prior hands-on experiences with Vista, may be need to wait for a few weeks before commenting too much on it.

A new Lenovo/IBM X61 Tablet

My old X31 served me well for the past three years. Unfortunately two months after its warranty expired, its case started a small crack. At the same time, it runs slower and slower even with the added 1GB or RAM (1.5GB total now). So, with some recent deals going at Lenovo, I decided to take a look. Well, let's just say I can't resist the temptation and picked an X61 tablet, which I had an eye on for awhile. Here's the specs:

7764CTO
12.1" MultiView + MultiTouch WVA XGA TFT
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo L7500 LV (1.6GHz, 4MB L2, 800MHz FSB),
2x3 UltraConnecII antenna
2x1 GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz SODIMM Memory
Intel Turbo Memory 1GB
100GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm
DVD ROM 8Max, Ultrabay Slim
Intel Wireless Wi-Fi Link 4965AGN (supporting Centrino Pro)
ThinkPad X6 TableUltraBase,
ThinkPad X60 Table8 Cell Li-Ion Battery
Bluetooth w/ antenna

All these for about 1.5 grand, $300 more than what I paid for the X31 on Ebay, but still seems a good deal. The down side is that it needs more than two weeks to deliver.

Just waiting...

In the mean time, here is a list of reviews:
TabletPCReview
TabletPC2
Gottabemobile