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How to FIX Windows update error 8050800C about Windows Defender Definition Update

Did you receive the 8050800C error from Windows update while trying to get the Windows Defender updates? I did with my Windows 7 Pro 64.  Lots of sites tell a lot of stupid things to try, things that are only there to make the site catch more Google hits to serve more ads. Nobody seems to test their stuff anymore. I did. And I have a working, tested solution.

Executive summary of fix:

  1. Download the the Windows Defender update file manually (mpas-fe.exe, available from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/wdsi/definitions )
  2. Start Windows in safe mode
  3. Run the downloaded exe in safe mode and reboot (or optionally run the exe with Windows Update Service disabled)
  4. It’s fixed!

For more details and illustrated guide, read more below.

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Reverse-Engineering The Samsung SCX-3205 Scan To -Button Protocol

USB packet analysis in USBlyzer

In the year 2014, I tried to be smart with my old Samsung SCX-3205 printer/scanner device. I wanted to get the physical Scan to -button to work. I went with Windows first. It failed eventually, and as a result, I had to reverse-engineer the Samsung USB protocol to get things to work in Linux. Continue reading “Reverse-Engineering The Samsung SCX-3205 Scan To -Button Protocol”

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Reviewing Lanner NCA-1010B fanless gateway box with Intel NICs

Quest for gateway machine with dual Intel NICs

I, as well as my fellow Linux networking enthusiasts have grown to dislike any network hardware which has Realtek network interface cards (NICs). I had a personal problem with those; my Windows 7 installation refused updates when the gateway machine was running Realtek NICs with stock settings. Since then I had been searching for small form-factor computer with dual Intel NICs to serve as my home gateway machine.

Lanner Inc. NCA-1010B gateway box

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[UPDATED] Getting the Samsung SCX-3205 physical “Scan to”-button to “work”

The handy Scan to -button. Handy when it works.

Update 2015-09-06

Terrible news. It seems that the windows scanning solutions leaks handles. I have seen it consume tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of handles. After enough handles are used, Windows crashes 🙁 Rest of the text is kept for posterity.

 

Recently my father gave me his old multifunction printer. It is a Samsung SCX-3205. It does not have Ethernet port for easy wired connectivity, so I decided to add it as a networked printer via my virtual Windows 7 installation running on my ESXi host. Everything worked fine after installation of the drivers, with one exception, the physical “Scan to”-button. It just didn’t do anything.

After I realized the Scan To button did nothing, I thought that the virtual environment was to blame. I tried to fidlle around in ESXi settings but the button remained mute. Then I hooked up the printer to my desktop machine and started investigating.

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Window update error 80072EE2 or: How I Learned to Stop Firewalling and Love the IRC

This was the error code I was getting with Windows update.

Recently I switched from Fiber Internet connection to VSDL. As a geek I of course have my own Linux gateway machine (I’m using Fit-PC2i from CompuLab). I had everything working fine before the switchover. I foolishly thought I would be fine by just disconnecting the cable from ISP Ethernet socket and plugging it in to VDSL modem in bridged mode. Things didn’t quite go that way.

I noticed soon that almost everything worked. Except few things. Some webcams were not showing anything, speedtest.net was barfing out, as were some web-based TV channel videos via flash delivery. Most notably, however, Windows Update was giving the less widely known 80072EE2 error. I’m running Windows 7 on my PC and Debian Stable on the gateway machine. I’m naturally not using any Microsoft WSUS technologies in the middle or anything.

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A short study on audio compression

Back in the days I made a small study on audio compression. It’s far from scientific quality, but I nonetheless want to post it, so here we go. (I have edited out some of the blatant errors I have found.)

Spectral representation of compressed sound.

Introduction

Motivation

Sound is usually compressed in order to save space. Audio space conservation is an important issue in transmission and storage. We may for example want to store audio in such vast amounts that without compression it would take way too much storage space. We might also want to transmit audio data over transmission path having only limited capacity, for example receive a MP3 file through slow modem connection. There are also other constraints regarding compression, much of which is discussed later.

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Introducing Alan Wake

(This piece was originally written in 2011 as a Facebook note)

About one and a half months back I was browsing the games shelf in a local department store. I happened to come upon a copy of Alan Wake. The price had been considerably lowered. I think the original cost was 50+ EUR, but now it was only 19,95 EUR. Needless to say I bought it.

Alan Wake PC.

I remember that the game received high scores on the gaming press, however, I was not sure about the sales. Definitively not the figures of, say Modern Warfare 2, but not a disaster either. Alan Wake was “No. 1 video game of 2010” on Time Magazine. And I can fully understand, why.

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TV series Pasadena deserves to be put on DVD

Now this thing is an oddball. The TV series Pasadena from 2001. Many times a year I go to check whether it is available as DVD. It is not. But it really should be.

Pasadena was a TV series by Columbia TriStar Television/Sony Pictures Television. It was shown on FOX in 2001 in USA until it was cancelled. It was shown in Finland in 2002. 12 years ago. Actually, Finland was one of the lucky nations where it was possible to watch the whole series on national TV. Lets get one thing straight. Pasadena was an excellent show. It was also critically acclaimed according to Wikipedia. I personally liked the dark atmosphere and suspense of the show. I think there was a bit of a love story involved also, but my memory has faded on that point. It has been, after all, 12 years without a reunion of any kind.

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Installing VMware ESXi 5.5.0 into Zotac Zbox ID90

ESXi 5.5.0 running on Zotac Zbox ID90

Recently I discovered I was running out of resources on my old VMware ESXi host, a Lenovo Thinkpad X201. Because of some security concerns I don’t keep swap enabled. Therefore I need lots of real RAM on the host machine. I also prefer small form factor (as the earlier laptop is).

After a while googling around I came across Zotac Zbox ID90. It’s one of those small form factor PC’s. Relevant specs are: CPU: Intel Core i7 3770T; Chipset: Intel H61 Express; Maximum memory: 16GB. Looks sufficient, I thought. There were, however 2 concerns. I had no idea whether the on-board LAN chips were compatible with ESXi 5.5.0. One would think that if the chipset was from Intel, it would include Intel LAN chips, right? Right? Another issue was support for Intel VT-d technology. There was no way to determine this from the specs provided. I tried asking Zotac support, but they were unable to assist. I don’t blame them, since the only real-world way to determine setup support is to actually install ESXi and see if DirectPath I/O is supported. I decided to take my chances and order Zbox ID90.

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Chair-bombing at work

About a month back or so I got to the office in the morning as usual. I sat down on my office chair. For a while things were as any other morning. Then I started to hear eerie music with a weird male voice-over. I had difficulties locating the source first. I checked under the laptop, behind it, under the table. Then I noticed that the sound came from bottom of my chair.

Trigger mechanism for the office chair.

I took a look and.. just whoa! You cannot make this up. My workmates had rigged my office chair. Ingenious! They had used some USB powered promotional video board to play the weird video file. Then they had removed the power cords, soldered them to a micro switch and attached it to the base of my chair with electrical tape. They told me they had used quite a while in fine-tuning this installation. Good work, it actually worked very nice.

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