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29 Sep 2019 - Podcast #662 - (22:18)
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If you've listened to my frequent yammering about the need for backup, you have probably already created a backup for your computer. What happens, though, when you need the backup?
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Most backup applications have a utility that creates rescue media, either an optical disc or a thumb drive, that can be used to boot the computer and begin the recovery process when disaster strikes. The process of creating rescue media takes just a few minutes but it's an easy process to skip initially and plan to take care of later. It's something that shouldn't be postponed and it's also something that should be repeated whenever your backup system is updated to a new version.
Data can be backed up to cloud-based systems such as CrashPlan, Carbonite, or Acronis True Image (if you choose the higher-priced on-line option in addition to local backups). Backing up the operating system or making a disk image requires an application that's intended for those kinds of backups. On-line backup systems such as CrashPlan or Carbonite can't create a disk image.
Because I don't trust single backups, I keep two copies of a boot drive image (updated Wednesday and Sunday) on two different disk drives. These drives are stored in the same building as the boot drive, which means they're not really backups. I say that because anything that destroys the computer will probably also destroy both drives with images. The boot drive is the least important location for backup, though.
Yes, replacing the drive and reinstalling both the operating system and all applications, and then updating all the settings, would be a nuisance. But there's nothing on the boot drive that can't easily be replaced. The data drives are a different story so they're backed up to CrashPlan. CrashPlan stopped working just before Memorial Day, though, and it wasn't working again for 9 days. More than 100 new digital images came off the camera in that week and a half and literally hundreds of other files were updated during the period. Although losing CrashPlan was an annoyance, I wasn't overly concerned because of other backup components: Files that didn't go to CrashPlan were at least backed up every few hours to a local network drive and to my weekly Wednesday data drive backups.
But the main question here is What happens when something goes entirely off the rails and you can't boot the computer? That's when you need rescue media.
Because most computers no longer have optical drives, creating a bootable thumb drive is usually the best option. Many backup applications have a built-in utility that makes creation easy. I'll demonstrate with Acronis True Image 2019 (last year's version) but you'll find similar functions in other applications. You'll need to start with an empty thumb drive or with one that contains files you don't need. The drive will need to be formatted as FAT16 or FAT32 and it doesn't need to be large. Literally the smallest device you can buy will be sufficient unless you want to add other utility programs to the thumb drive after the emergency boot files have been written to it. A 16GB thumb drive should be more than adequate even if you want to load a lot of utilities on the drive.
The emergency media will be based on either WinPE (pre-installation environment) or WinRE (recovery environment),. The primary difference is that WinPE loads network drivers and offers a more Windows-like command-line environment, while WinRE offers more and better boot-management, disk-management, and recovery tools. Acronis explains that True Image 2019 just uses files from the user's system to create WinRE-based media. WinRE-based media can be used only on the computer where it was created or on a computer with the same operating system.
Creating emergency media is important and it takes only a few minutes. Start by selecting the option that will probably be on the application's tools menu to create emergency or rescue media. You'll probably be offered standard and advanced options (or terms similar to those). The basic/default/automatic/simple option is the right choice for most people.
Then plug in the thumb drive you plan to use and confirm its name and drive letter. In my example here, the thumb drive has been mounted as drive K.
Make sure that the thumb drive is ready for use by formatting it as either FAT16 or FAT32 and giving it a name that identifies it as a rescue drive.
The backup application will ask you to identify the disk you want to use. Be careful when you select the drive.
Selecting the wrong drive here could result in a substantial amount of data loss, which is the exact opposite of your objective. Double or even triple checking this setting is a good safety measure. Many years ago I formatted the wrong drive during routine maintenance. Fortunately, I had a backup.
The process should end with some sort of "success" message, but then what? Then you should test it and unfortunately this is a step that's often omitted. Before starting the process, be aware that a cordless keyboard and mouse may not work when you boot to the recovery media. If you have older devices with cords, keep them nearby.
If your computer isn't set up to look first for the media type you've used for the recovery files, you'll need to edit the system's BIOS settings. The computer may display information about how to open the BIOS settings during the boot process. If not, see the documentation that came with the computer or visit the manufacturer's website. Then set the boot order so that your recovery media will be checked first and the hard drive will be checked second. There is no need to change this setting back to the original configuration following the test. If media is present when the computer boots, it will use the recovery media; if not, it will boot to the hard drive.
The recovery media should display an interface with various options. These vary but may include some system utilities in addition to the backup application's restore process. At this point you'll know that the recovery media can boot the computer. Testing an image backup would require an additional hard drive that contains no important information so that it can serve as the target for the image. Testing a files-and-folders backup is much easier: Just select a few files to restore and then write them to a new location. When the files have been restored, compare them to the original files. If there are no differences, the process is complete.
A new version of Acronis True Image was released recently and we'll take a look at it in mid October.
Windows computers can slow down over time but sometimes a computer that's working fine one day will appear to be full of solidified tar balls the next. A friend in California told me about a serious system slowdown that rendered the system nearly unusable and, even though he provided the answer in his question, it took several days for me to figure out what the problem was.
Jim (I'll call him "Jim" because that's his name) reported that his machine started to slow on Friday and the condition worsened over the weekend. By Tuesday the computer's lock screen was slow to open the password dialog box. He said that the computer seemed slowest when responding to commands that required hard disk access. The display tended to freeze even when he was just typing an email. "Malwarebytes," he said, "says I am free of naughtyware."
So I went online with him and checked the usual suspects: Disk space was limited but not so much that it would create a performance problem. The disk manager reported that all disks were healthy, but the Resource Monitor suggested excessive disk access with process ID 4 (System). Unfortunately PID 4 (System) is used by a vast number of other processes. Knowing that PID 4 consuming a lot of disk resources is like trying to identify an individual water molecule by examining a glass full of water. PID 4 was busy. Of course it was! It's always busy and it's almost always the primary user of disk resources. (The screen shot is from my computer.)
I tried a couple of command-line processes run as Administrator:
The system's performance improved enough that we both thought the problem had been resolved. Nothing is ever that easy, though.
The next day the log-in process was slow, programs were sluggish, and File Explorer opened slowly. In other words, the problem had not been solved. We made arrangements for another online session the following day, but in the meantime I had some suggestions:
I also made a list of tasks for the next online session:
Then I needed to use my tablet computer for something. Even though the Surface Pro 4 has an Intel i7 processor and 16GB of RAM, sometimes it is unusably slow. Such was the case then and that was the second clue. You may remember that I said Jim had provided the answer to the problem in his question, but I needed this clue to make sense of it. My primary computer is also slow sometimes, but not unusably slow. Is there something, I wondered, that these three computers all have in common?
In fact, there is: Malwarebytes. In December 2016, version 3 was released and since that time there have been complaints about computers being slow when Malwarebytes is running. The problem has a strange ebb and flow. In January 2018 a defective update caused a problem for most users. The solution to that problem was to turn off the web protection feature. Since then other problems have required that certain other features be disabled from time to time.
Because I use the tablet only occasionally, it was a candidate for a potential solution. I uninstalled Malwarebytes and installed the free version of AVG Antivirus. The tablet once again booted quickly and no longer had serious usability issues. I reported this to Jim and asked him to replicate on his computer what I had done on the tablet. In the meantime, I removed Malwarebytes from my primary computer and installed AVG Free. The difference in performance was less dramatic but still noticeable. Jim reported that his computer was once again running normally and we didn't have to try any of the tasks on my follow-up list.
So — if you have a computer that's running slow and the computer has Malwarebytes 3 installed, it might be worth turning the application off to see if that resolves the problem. I've been a user of Malwarebytes for many years and removing it makes me sad, but a protective application that renders the computer unusable isn't really doing me any favors.
There's a good chance that you use Linux every day even if you don't know it. Most computers that run the internet run Linux. The TechByter website's host computer is a Linux device. There's a Linux computer on my desk, too, even though I rarely use it.
There's no good reason for most people to avoid Linux other than intertia. Linux reminds me of Esperanto, a language was created in the late 1800s by L. L. Zamenhof. His objective was to create an easy, flexible language that could be used as a second language worldwide. Several hundred thousand people speak Esperanto today, but it hasn't exactly seen widespread success. So it is with Linux.
Linux has a lot of advantages. It's inexpensive (free), hundreds of applications for common computer tasks run on Linux, and it updates itself and all of its applications automatically. But it also has an unfounded reputation for being hard to use, doesn't always work properly with hardware designed for Windows or the MacOS, and it's available in hundreds of variants.
That third item might be the killer. Windows is Windows. MacOS is MacOS. But if you decide that you want to try Linux, you have to figure out which one. Debian is one of the main distros but there are lots of variants. Another primary distro is Fedora and many variants have been derived from it. Slackware and RedHat distros each have dozens of variants. The Wikipedia image shows just part of the Debian family tree. How do you decide? (If you want to see the family trees for all the distros, it's here and you'll quickly realize that there are hundreds of options.) The current guess is around 285, but the list is shrinking.
Let me wander out onto a limb here: If you want to give Linux a try, start with Linux Mint. That limits your choice to just three options: Cinnamon, MATE, and Xfce. If you want to cut that to just one, try the most popular of the three: Cinnamon.
Linux is Linux, but Linux alone is useless because it's just the operating system kernel. To be a functional operating system, Linux needs additional components that are provided by the many distros. I've used Ubuntu on several computers over the years, but switched to Mint's Cinnamon variant. Mint and Ubuntu, another very popular distro, are based on Debian. More accurately, Mint is based on Ubuntu which is based on Debian.
Mint is considered to be the primary competitor for Ubuntu and it's a good option for new users because it was deigned to be easy for new users to set up. But don't expect to run Microsoft's Office Suite or any other Windows-only or MacOS-only applications.
That's the other issue that can be a sticking point. I use a lot of applications that don't have Linux versions. Most people can get along without Microsoft Office, but that's not the case for those of us who depend on Adobe applications and other programs that "can't" be used on a Linux system.
In fact, most Windows applications can run on a Linux system under WINE. Back in the day, WINE was an acronym for "Wine Is Not an Emulator" (Linux developers really like to do things recursively). It is a compatibility layer that can run Windows applications on several POSIX-compliant operating systems. POSIX is an acronym for Portable Operating System Interface and is an IEEE standard designed to allow cross-system portability.
WINE translates Windows application program interface (API) calls into POSIX calls on-the-fly so that the application thinks it's running on a Windows system. The trouble with WINE from my perspective is that it's just one more thing to go wrong. I have enough trouble getting Windows applications to run on Windows and adding another layer of complexity doesn't seem prudent.
But what about people who don't need Windows-only or Mac-only applications? In that case Linux is a great choice. The three primary applications most people need are email, office programs, and web browsers.
You'll find Linux analogs for nearly every Windows or MacOS application. While there's nothing that matches the scope of Adobe applications on Linux, there's no shortage of applications that can be used to edit various kinds of media — from GIMP for photographs, Audacity for audio files, several video editors, and some typesetting/publishing applications — more than enough for home and small office users.
Recently I mentioned that Alien Skin had changed its name to Exposure Software and that they were working on Exposure X5. The new application was released this week. It operates in standalone mode or as a plug-in for Lightroom or Photoshop. I'll have a full review in about two weeks.
For now, you might want to know that if you purchased Exposure X4 on or after August 1, 2019 will receive a free upgrade to Exposure X5. It's also available in the Exposure X5 Bundle that includes Blow Up and Snap Art. Exposure is priced at $119 and updated from earlier versions cost $89. The bundle costs $149 and owners of any of the current apps can upgrade for $99.
The company says that Exposure X5 introduces a 3D color masking tool that enables photographers to precisely control where an image adjustment is applied. Rendering can be limited to areas defined by specific color characteristics, including hue, saturation, and luminance. Lens correction techniques are said to be better and photographers can assign custom camera profiles, enabling them to control the interpretation of color from raw data for a particular camera. This makes it possible to render colors more accurately.
There's a free 30-day trial that can be downloaded from the Exposure website. Versions are available for Windows and MacOS. Windows users need to be running a 64-bit version of the operating system, Windows 7 or later. MacOS users Need Yosemite (version 10.10) or later. Both platforms need at least 8GB or RAM and 16GB is recommended.
Rock-Ola Around the ClockIf you have a spare $10,000 or so lying around and you've always wanted to own a Rock-Ola jukebox, get out your checkbook.
Rock-Ola makes jukeboxes that play CDs, but now they're resurrecting the old-school 45 RPM Vinyl Bubbler model with tubes instead of integrated circuits. Prices range from about $9,000 to $12,000. The company has been making jukeboxes since the late 1920s and perhaps you thought (as I did) that the name had something to do with the music. Wrong. The company was founded by David Cullen Rockola. He added the hyphen because people had trouble pronouncing it. Wikipedia has some interesting background information, including the founder's links to organized crime in Chicago.
The jukebox holds 100 records for a total of 200 selections (A&B sides) and can stream via Bluetooth so you can combine authentic analog sound and digital music. It's capable of connecting with integrated music systems like Sonos or Control 4 and is powered by a tube pre-amplifier and a 425-watt digital amplifier, with dual zones so that external speakers can be added if required.
Currently vinyl records outsell CDs, but few people buy physical media for their music these days and just finding 45s might be a problem unless you have a stack sitting around the house. A 45 RPM version of "Time Out" by the Dave Brubeck Trio, for example, is priced at $55.
Rock-Ola is currently taking pre-orders for the Vinyl 45 RPM Jukeboxes, with plans to ship its first releases before the end of the year. You'll find all the information on the Rock-Ola website.
In 1999, the two most commonly used search engines were Yahoo and AltaVista. Yahoo added sites manually and the process was slow. AltaVista had pioneered the process of crawling the web and searching sites. Search Engine Colossus (which still exists) listed nearly 1000 search engines, but then (as now) the vast majority of searches were handled by just a few.
The advantage of starting with Search Engine Colossus, I wrote, is that it lists search engines by country of origin. If you’re looking for information in Italy (and you can read Italian) using one of the Italian search engines makes sense. In 1999, I also wrote "I may have mentioned Google previously. It’s a new entry that examines links to sites instead of depending on the site’s meta words. This is an interesting approach. Google has the simplest interface of any search engine."