Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Windows 8 Bit Me Again

After a smooth factory recovery of Windows 8, I installed the few apps I use and as usual DISABLE Windows updates and things were smooth sailing.

Then a couple hours later I made adjustments to a secondary Admin login and restarted the PC and suddenly Windows 8 is downloading updates and installing them. After the update and another restart, this 3.4GHz i5 turned into quicksand and had serious right.click context menu wait times and hangups! There was no escape other than to sign.out of the account, but even my Admin account desktop was trashed in the same manner.

So, I absurdly chose to try a System Restore. I chose the Restore point which would put the machine back to where it was at PRIOR to the Windows update. I CAN READ. Windows clearly displayed that to be the case.

The System Restore took 1 hour 5 minutes to complete for 60GB of 2TB HDD. Worse yet, System Restore did NOT reinstate my PC's status prior to the updates. It returned the machine to a new Windows 8 install. None of the software applications I installed, nor Stardock's Start8 or Fences was present. Further, NONE OF MY SETTINGS were saved as System Restore said they would be.

I performed a new Factory Recovery from DVD and was back to square one in LESS time than the System Restore screw up consumed! What a joke. Mac.OSX would never behave like this, nor HAS it ever behaved like this with regards to moving forward or reverse in time with the operating system.

So, for this install of Windows 8, I disabled Windows Update appropriately AND made registry edits to ENSURE that Windows CANNOT turn the damn updates on again!

And all I did was get on the PC to format two SD cards with SDFormatter. Sheesh.


HHNET

Monday, October 13, 2014

Learning Takes Time

One thing that surely has not been overlooked by me, is the sheer fact that it has taken me over four years to learn how to use the audio equipment that I purchased in order to record music.

Today, getting involved with recording music can cost less than the price of an iPad and about $500 dollars of gear. In fact, you can get started using the iPad's built-in mic. Of course, depending on the acoustics in the room or place you are recording can and will make a difference in the quality of what you are recording. However, there are a myriad of virtual synths that you can play and record directly on the iPad and will deliver stellar audio quality. So, if you're not singing, your music can sound highly polished and most of the iOS apps can share with services such as Soundcloud, YouTube; and of course you can share those to Facebook and other social services if you like. Additionally, it is easy to create your own website and publish your tunes there. I have somewhat lagged in this department for good reason. Soon, I will have a dedicated site just for my artist name of HappyHarryNET and NASAV_studios.


Wearing all the hats [one man job] takes lots of time and "learning".


HHNET