[Article] BSODs can corrupt your Windows installation and run System File Check to fix them

Most people who h e been using Windows operating system in their PCs have experienced at least one blue screen. Once that happened, you can do none other than press the reset button. Because of that, people started calling it Blue Screen of Death (a.k.a BSOD). In the early days, a blue screen could come up even by running software that acted erroneously. But nowadays, you hardly see them and almost always it is the 3rd party drivers that can give you a BSOD.

 

That, is only if you are not an overclocker.  BSOD is the most common way of identifying instability when you are overclocking your CPU. You might get a BSOD while booting Windows up, or idling on the desktop, light loads or when stress testing heavily. If you are getting BSODs while stress testing heavily, at least you can be happy that you are almost there. If you are getting BSODs while loading Windows, then you are a long way away from your stable settings.

 

BSODs can be a minor hassle. But it can corrupt Windows which might make is completely unbootable. Or, the BSODs that you get afterwards can be actually caused by the corruption. Fortunately, there is a way to check if the Windows system files are corrupted or not. Up to Windows 7, there was this small utility called System File Checker, which is launched from the command prompt (in admin mode.) But in Windows 8, there is another "better" way to do it. The System File Checker is still there, but people say that there are times that you might not be able to fix all issues with it.

 

I'll list them both for you.

 

System File Checker method.

 

Run the following command from command prompt that was launched as Admin.

sfc /SCANNOW

It will show you the following screen and run for few minutes. If it finds errors, it will try to auto repait them and it will tell you where the log is saved so that you can check what was wrong and if it was successfully fixed or not.

 

 

The new method.

 

Again, run the following command in a command prompt launched as Admin.

DISM /Online /Cleanup-image /Scanhealth

You will see the following screen and just like SFC, it will run for few minutes checking if there are any issues. It will automatically correct the files.

 

 

I suggest that you run these system file checks if you ever get any BSODs. I’d actually run both of them.

 

[Article] Asus’ misleading marketing about ROG Z87 boards and OC Tuner

Everyone on the Internet must already be knowing that I've upgraded to Haswell because I've written a ton of articles. When I was deciding on which motherboard to get, the capabilities of the AISuite software that comes bundled with the Asus motherboard played a big part. JJ of Asus marketing had posted a video showing the auto-overclocking features of the software some time back and I referred it before buying my Maximus VI Hero motherboard. Everything looked nice and functional. The auto-overclocking feature would test the maximum CPU clock speed you can achieve by running a stress test with every step of increase in multiplier. It would even try to overclock depending on the number of cores used. Please watch the video for all the details. It looks fascinating.

1-Click Overclock to 4.8Ghz - 4-Way Optimization on ASUS Z87

But after I bought the motherboard and decided to try it out, it wasn’t available in the AISuite III software that comes for this particular motherboard. It only had 3 predetermined overclocking profiles called CPU Level Up; not the intelligent auto-overclocking feature (OC Tuner) described in the above video. (This page explains the 3 CPU Level Up values).

When I asked around, the answer I got was that the target audience of ROG boards is different and ROG motherboards don’t support it. That’s total BS. I mean, ROG is their high-end motherboard series, but they would put a crippled software and charge more because the audience of the motherboard is more “geeky”? You are paying more to get less? Looks to me their target audience is “idiots”.

I’ve seen many people complain about this in the forums and the comments section of the above YouTube video. I hope Asus will release an updated AISuite/BIOS to bring that functionality to the ROG motherboards. If they don’t, I’m quite disappointed in Asus. It’s not that it is the end of the world. You have to use the BIOS anyways. Those auto-overclocking settings are almost always not stable when stressed out. But at least you get a starting point to build your overclock on top of. I paid for that feature; I want that feature. Besides, Asus doesn’t state anywhere that the ROG boards don’t come with that feature. JJ doesn’t say that in his video.

[Article] Windows 8.1 has RTMed but Microsoft isn’t releasing it till October

Another nonsense move by Microsoft. Windows 8.1 has reported been RTMed (heck, even a leaked RTM build is out there, if you know where to look) but Microsoft is waiting another month and a half till it is offered to the public. And if the rumors are true, the MSDN/TechNet subscribers won’t be getting it any earlier.

Why do they have to delay it? It’s just an update like a service pack. Just put it out the Windows Store already, for crying out loud. They released a preview and the hardware manufacturers should have got their stuff working by RTM, right? Why wait? Must be a shady deal with the OEM partners. Waiting is not going to help especially when Mac OSX Mavericks is right around the corner.

Anyways, on the other hand, you can get the leaked RTM version from the “internet” and activate using your own Windows 8 legit key. It works just fine. I’m not sure if this is illegal, because you’ve already paid for it and the update itself is free. However, the leaked copy is not just the update alone, but the fully updated Windows 8 installation. You can simply do a clean installation.

The build number of the RTM is 9600.