Fixing the Nexus 5 update error

My old Nexus 5 is with my father now. I did a factory reset before I passed it to him. After a few days, the phone received a security update, but when we tried to install it, it would fail mid way with an error screen as shown above. To exit the error screen, we had to press and hold the power button and the volume down button; then it would reboot the phone and everything would be back to normal. However, after a while, it would show that an update is available (it is the same one that failed), but it would result in the same thing. We tried several times with no success. The phone only had about half a dozen apps installed other than the stock apps, so it must have been a real mess up.

Next thing to do was to do a factory reset. It also did not fix the problem.

Then we decided to completely erase and manually install the latest official firmware for the phone. I had not done this in a while, so I had to look for a tutorial. Last time I followed this YouTube video but it was telling me to download Android Studio to get the ADB Bundle. Then I found this written guide, which suggested an alternative way to get the ADB bundle installed.

And it was a success. By that I mean that we are not getting that error anymore. But we have to give it a couple of months to see if it really got fixed, because since the phone is already running the latest build for the Nexus 5, there would not be any new updates for a while.

[Rant] Couldn't resist upgrading to iOS 7.1

Only days after I jail-broke my iPhone 5S, Apple came out with the much anticipated iOS 7.1. The update is supposed to solve two big issues - fixing the sudden crashes of the OS and brining some perceptual speed improvements. (I hope they are real speed improvements though.)

Even though I didn't mention this before, I've been having frequent crashes with my iPhone 5S. It would crash about twice a week. Apps also crash - Safari being the most frequent.

The speed improvements are always welcome. All of them cannot be fixed by a jailbreak tweak. With NoSlowAnimations, it would speed up the animation but sometimes take the same time for the app to refresh its view. In other words, there is a lag between the time the animation ends and the UI is usable. Not all the time, but it's pretty frequent.

[Article] Upgraded my desktop to Windows 8.1 Preview as well

I didn't have much to do on Sunday afternoon so I wanted to check out how Windows 8.1 performed on my desktop PC. There were some notable performance improvements on the tablet and I was wondering if it would extend to the desktop PC as well.

 

I thought it would be a quick update because the server issues won't be a problem anymore and the PC is 100 times faster that the tablet. But it wasn't the case. The download was so slow that it took more than a hour and a half to finish. And the installation wasn't fast either. Not good!

 

Nevertheless, the update succeeded in the first attempt and I didn't have any compatibility issues at install time. There was a newer NVidia driver installed, 325.71, I believe. Windows 8 still has the 320 series. And guess what just had to ruin my dinner? (We watch movies when we have dinner, by the way) Creative X-Fi driver! That darn thing gets hiccups even when the wind speed changes. Need to replace it soon!

 

 

So, the problem was tht there was no sound coming out of the speakers. The drivers were installed but no sound. I reinstalled the drivers. Installed the latest PAX drivers though. Reboot, and still no sound. I had the official drivers downloaded to the hard drive a while back and I tried them next. They worked! The next day when I woke up and turned the PC on, the sounds were gone. Infuriating! I had a feeling that the NVidia drivers - the HDMI audio driver - is the culprit. That had happened before and I always unchecked that option when updating the drivers. But the problem is, there aren't any drivers to update to. But when I searched the Internet, I found out that there were some newer drivers out (326.01) for 8.1, and even though they were supposed to show up in Windows Update, they didn't. Guru3D had posted the direct links to download them. I grabbed them but before installing the drivers, I ran driver sweeper to clean out all the NVidia drivers and settings. And that too got stuck in the middle of the cleaning process. I terminated it from Task Manager and straight away updated the drivers without reboot. I was afraid that whatever driver sweeper did would kill Windows. The last thing I needed was to reinstall everything from the scratch. So I installed the 326.01 drivers, only selecting the driver and PhysX option and telling it to do a clean install (i.e. all the settings will be reset to defaults). That seemed to fix the problem. Even without rebooting, the sounds started coming out of the speakers. I did a few reboots and so far the audio driver (this is the official driver) is holding its ground.

 

But now GeForce Experience doesn’t work. It says that there is a newer drivers available for my GPU, which is 320.49. But it is not newer. Without installing it, I cannot use GeForce Experience. Nuts! So I ended up updating to 320.49 drivers and got a BSOD within few minutes of Crysis 3. Stupid me, I disabled the Page File because I didn't think I will ever get a BSOD again as I have finally got my CPU stable. I came back to the desktop and tried to update to 326.01 by running the setup that I downloaded but the installation failed. I tried Driver Sweeper and it stopped working at the middle of the cleaning process. Still I couldn't install 326.01. The only option for me was to reinstall 320.49 via GeForce Experience. At least it worked and haven't got a BSOD since then. It seemed in Crysis 3 I was getting more FPS with 320.49 driver than the 326.01. Well, as long as 320.49 doesn't crap out on me, I'll be happy. By the way, I also managed to overclock the display to where I had before (69Hz) without much trouble.

Then I noticed that my custom mouse button assignments weren't working. Logitech Gaming Software is where I set them in since I have a Logitech G500 mouse. The settings were intact and the Gaming Software was running in the system tray, but it wasn't working. A simple Google search revealed that reinstalling the Logitech Gaming Software fixes it and it did. Phew! For a second I thought that I might have to go back to Windows 8, because custom mouse button assignments not working is a deal breaker for me. By the way, doing a Clean Install of GeForce drivers seems to ruin the Logitech Gaming Software. I had to reinstall them after installing 320.49 drivers as well.

 

I don't give a crap about Metro on desktop so I was only looking for enhancements in desktop environment. But I have to say, they have ruined the My Computer window. The libraries were nowhere to be found and there were some unneeded folders from the user profile. I was doing fine with Libraries. But a simple Google search again showed me how to get back the libraries. I wish I could move it to the top of the sidebar. Seems like you cannot do that.

 

 

I almost forgot. After the update, there was the dreaded Windows.old folder in the C drive. You cannot just delete it. You have to use disk cleanup.

 

 

But in Windows 8.1 Preview, disk cleanup doesn't show up under search results! Did they remove disk cleanup?? No, you just have to open Administrative Tools and launch Disk Cleanup from there. No idea why Microsoft is making these nonsense changes.

 

          

 

I already had the App Switcher & Charms bar disabled and auto booting to desktop enabled using SkipMetroSuite and it worked well. But now I'm using the inbuilt settings for that.  I also replaced the PowerShell with Command Prompt because that's what I'm used to.

Windows 8.1 Preview installation experience on my DELL Latitude 10 Essentials tablet (part 1: things going horribly wrong)

First thing I did after waking up today was checking if the Windows 8.1 Preview update was available to download. It sure was and I proceeded to install it on my tablet. The PC was doing a 24hr Prime95 stress test (increased it from 12 to 24) and I couldn't install it in the PC just yet. 

So I searched for the 8.1 update and it took me to this Microsoft website. From there I had to download a small setup program which was required to modify the Windows Store app so that the update shows up on it. When I ran that setup file, it installed few thing and restarted Windows. Before showing the welcome screen, it did some changes to Windows like what it does after Windows Update installs some updates. 

When I came back to the desktop, I was asked to go to the Windows Store to download the 8.1 Preview update. It was there and I continued with the update. It downloaded a rather large update file measuring 2GB, slowly over the Wi-Fi network and started to install it. 

The first thing it did was to check whether the system was compatible. (WTF! They check for compatibility after I've wasted about an hour downloading the update? Which idiot came up with that design?) It found one compatibility issue. It was the Dell Data Access Protection software. Bloatware, it must be. The setup couldn't continue before I uninstalled it and dealt with it. The setup minimized to the system tray until I finished removing that software. 

Yay! My iPhone 4S is snappy again.

When I bought my iPhone 4S almost 20 months ago, I straight away felt how fast it was compared to my old iPhone 3GS. But after a while it became slow. In fact, it got so slow that there have been times that I felt like throwing it out the window or dropping it on the floor and crushing it with my feet. I know, it would only make things worse, thus I controlled myself every time the thought occurred to me.

Things got worse with iOS 6 update. It would work well as soon as I restored or updated the OS, but eventually get slow.

When Evasi0n released the Jailbreak for iOS 6.1, I went ahead with the Jailbreak. I didn't feel that the phone got any slower, but the battery went down the hill. After a few months, I gave up the Jailbreak. But disappointingly, I didn't get better performance nor battery life. I only lost the Jailbreak tweaks that I really loved. At this point, I was using iOS 6.1.3, the latest as of this day.

Then WWDC2013 happened. iOS 7 was introduced and I managed to install the developer preview on my phone without paying for a developer account. (Click here to find out how to do it.) But it ran so horribly slow on my phone. Restarting fixed it for a certain degree, but it was slow - much slower than the slowness I talked about at the top of this post. People with iPhone 5's were not feeling the slowness. Sure, the iPhone 5 is twice as fast as mine, but if people didn't feel the slowness, that's either because it is not slow, or because people are numb. I wanted to believe it was the former. So what I did was, I cleared out all the junk from the phone.
・I had all 1000 pics from Photo streams and disconnected it from the phone.
・I removed all the photos there were in the camera roll.
That's all really. I had already removed the unnecessary apps and I only had the apps that I frequently used.

But it didn't get any faster. Not only that, it was crashing few of the apps that I really needed. One of them was the Pocasts app. Commuting without the Podcast app would be a nightmare. So I wanted to go back to iOS 6.

But I made a mistake this time. I could not restore the backup via iTunes, because the last backup was done from iOS 7 and it was incompatible with iOS 6's backup format. Yes, I believe the older backups were still there in the PC and I could have chosen one of them instead. I only remembered that the next day. But I do not regret what happened. I had to start over from the scratch, BUT for some reason, the phone is very snappy now. I think it was the junk that was in the backup that was causing the lag. I had all the SMS history and call history and the settings of apps that I don't use anymore all copied back to the phone. That junk must have been the cause of the slowness. I have been using the phone for 3 days and there isn't the slightest hint of it running slow. Sure, it is not iPhone 5, but I don't feel that it is laggy anymore. I'm pretty sure that it is not my mind playing tricks.

So what I am going to do from here onwards is, I'm going to keep my the call history clean, SMS history clean (only keep the ones that I want to keep, and delete the rest), sync only 50 emails, clean up the camera roll every day when I get back home and not connect to photo streams. Basically, I'm gonna keep the phone as clean as I can. I'm sure it will become an obsession eventually, but at least I will have a fast phone.

Intel Rapid Storage Technology 12.5 is faster than 11.7

Remember I recently upgraded the firmware on my Samsung 840 series 250GB SSD? Even though the release notes said that I would see some performance improvements with the DXT08B0Q firmware, I didn’t see any. Then I upgraded the Intel Rapid Storage Technology drivers to see if it yielded in any improvements.

I originally had version 11.7.0.1013 installed. This was what I had when I flashed the firmware. There was a newer version out when I checked it a few days ago. Version 12.5.0.1066 (download from here). I don’t know what happened to version 12 though. Maybe I didn’t check for a new driver in a while. I only got to know that there was a newer driver from OCN forums.

I first uninstalled the old driver and installed the new one, just to be sure. Updating drivers doesn’t go really well most of the times. Ironically, I always update the NVidia drivers, never uninstall the old one and install the new one. I do that because I haven’t had issues doing so in the past. Sorry, I digress.

BTW, I downloaded the floppy driver, not the Windows drivers. The floppy driver comes with… just the RST driver. But the Windows driver comes with their monitoring and management software as well. Since I don’t use Smart Response Technology or RAID in my PC, there is no need to install them. No need to add more junk to the PC. I want to keep it as clean as possible.

Here are the benchmarks, before and after the update. Both were done after I updated the firmware to DXT08B0Q. For the entire specs of the test rig, click here.

Before (11.7.0.1013)

After (12.5.0.1066)

So you see, there is nice speed bump after the driver update. I don’t think that is a noticeable difference. Heck, you cannot feel the difference between two SSDs to the naked eye, without running benchmarks anyways. I just got this SSD because it was the cheapest 250GB one available back in January. not because it is the fastest.

Samsung 840 series 250GB Firmware Update: DXT08B0Q Benchmarks

Samsung released a new firmware for the Samsung 840 series (Pro and non-Pro both) few days ago. I didn’t upgrade that instant, because I saw on OCN forums that few people were having issues with the new firmware. I don’t want to end up with a dead drive. I don’t have a spare SSD lying around. Wish I kept that old SSD with me just in case something went wrong with the new one. But I didn’t and there is no point regretting about it. Have to move on.

But today I gave in, and went ahead with the update. What made me confident that something bad might not happen is because Samsung hadn’t pulled the firmware. That means there is nothing wrong with it to begin with. The people who got bad outcomes must have done something stupid. Just to be safe, I killed all the apps running in the foreground as well as background before starting the firmware update process.

I had DXT07B0Q firmware before update. You have to use Samsung SSD Magician software to do the firmware update. Even without me checking for an update manually, it automatically detected that there was a newer firmware available and highlighted in the UI of the software. Nothing amazing. That’s the way everything should work these days anyways. Just wanted to say that it is working as if should.

Everything went smooth. It didn’t take long, and once done, the software told me that it needs to shutdown the PC to finish the update. What I didn’t know was that it would not automatically reboot. It was a clean shutdown, not a reboot. Some people might be confused by how it happened. With the previous drive, all that was required was a reboot. Anyways, now I know how it works in the future.

So did I see any gains with the new firmware? No! None at all. I recorded some benchmark scores on AS-SSD before and after the firmware update. Before running the test, I optimized the drive using the Magician software. Here are the results.

Note: Both tests were run with Intel Rapid Storage Technology ver. 11.7.0.1013 drivers.

Before update ( ver. DXT07B0Q )

After update ( ver. DXT08B0Q )

As you can see, the scores are identical. The difference would be attributed to measurement error. Well, at least the performance didn’t go down. That’s a relief.

What I want Microsoft to fix in Windows Blue

I believe you all know that there is something called Windows Blue coming out in a few months. I believe that the amount of changes in this upgrade will make it sit between a service pack and a completely new version of Windows.

Few days ago, a current build of Windows Blue leaked into the Internet. While Microsoft might show that they don't like the idea, in their hearts they know that it is free marketing for them. The Verge compiled a list of changes found in the leaked build in the form of a video.

Windows Blue: a video preview of what's next for Windows 8

So, it seems the changes are mostly, if not solely made for the Metro portion on the OS. Right now, that's what I really want them to do because I now have a tablet and some of deficiencies of Metro is killing the great tablet experience.

What else can Microsoft change/add in Windows Blue?

1. Ability to enable a more aggressive mode of auto-correcting, at lead when you are using the virtual keyboard. I don't understand why this should not be an option that the end user can choose for themselves in the first place. While the layout of the virtual keyboard, especially in the landscape view is great, the lackluster auto-correct functionality is not making me wanna use the keyboard too much. I'm not the only person having this problem. It is not as if Microsoft doesn't know how to implement proper auto-correct functionality because Windows Phone seems to do just fine in that area. Just like a dumb design goal it seems. (Edit: I've been writing a part of this blog post on my tablet and actually I'm not so mad about how autocorrect is working. But it seems that the contextual mistakes are not detected properly. For example, if I wanted to say "I'm not so mad..." but typed "I'm not domad...", I would expect it to correct it as "I'm not so mad..". But it doesn't fix it properly. It corrects the mistake as "I'm not do mad". Funny thing was that iOS fixed it as "I'm not Donald". Well, at least it came up with something that made sense. Not praising or blaming anyone, just saying.)