Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Recent Windows updates rendered the brightness softkeys on my HP laptop useless. I thought I knew some stuff and tried just about everything. Then I found this entry on the HP website, which very quickly solved it for me. How was this not one of the things I tried? Meh. Good luck.

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Re: Brightness adjustment doesn't work in windows 10 latest build 1703


@ako89kurdish
Thank you for posting on HP Forums,
Riddle_Decipher is at your service.

As I Understand the brightness adjustment doesn't work in Windows 10 latest build 1703,
No worries, as I'll be glad to help you, that said, I'll need a few more details to dissect your concern & provide an accurate solution:
Have you attempted to enable the generic PnP monitor after the update was installed?

If you haven't, here's what you need to do:

1) Search for Device Manager in Start Menu
2) Expand the Monitors section
3) Right click on Generic PnP Monitor and
4) Click on Enable and you are good!

Let me know how that pans out
I hope you have a good day ahead,
And Feel free to ask any other queries as  well,
Considering, this forum has some of the best people in the world available and ready to help.
View solution in context

Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Behringer iAXE 393 and Guitar Combos from Native Instruments on Windows 8 64 bit.

[Updated April 18, 2017 with new links to driver files. Also works with Windows 10.] I did the work on this so you hopefully won't have to. Several years ago my great-gift-giving wife surprised me with one of those gifts I didn't even know I wanted until she got it for me, the Behringer iAXE 393 electric guitar. It's really a regular electric guitar, similar in style to a Gibson SG, but oh yeah . . . for a fraction of the price. So as you'd expect it has a pick-up where you can attach it to any standard guitar amp. But this guitar also has a USB port and a headphone jack that lets you connect it to your PC, and it includes a license for software from Native Instruments that you can use to experiment with different presets on a higher end amplifier. So the concept is brilliantly simple: USB cable between the guitar and computer, headphones plugged into the guitar, amp software running, click on the preset you want, start playing. No amp needed, no complaining neighbors or spouses, and no one gets to hear how bad you sound while you're working out the 3 or 4 licks you'll play over and over to make people think you actually know what you're doing and are really good.

Of course, if you found this blog post, you probably already know all that. You just want to know, now that you've moved on from Windows XP can you still use the iAXE? So, yes, you can. But there are 3 very important points you'll have to attend to.

First, I had the serial number from when I originally registered the Guitar Combos software. You'll need that--and it doesn't appear that there's any way to register the software now, but I guess you could call Native Instruments. Let's assume though, that you have the serial number and the Guitar Combos CD. Point 2 is that the driver install file on the CD that came with the iAXE won't work for later versions (I tried it on Vista and it wouldn't even work on that--much less Windows 7 or 8.) You can download a new version of the driver software from the Behringer web site. And point 3 is that there's a specific order that you'll want to do things in to make it all work. I did install and register Guitar Combo 2 first--and it was a bit of an ordeal, but only because I was trying to use the serial number I got for GC 2 to register GC 1.

So if you remember which one you were using you can save yourself a lot of angst. The point is that Guitar Combos can be installed first and it doesn't seem to matter. And for the record, I was installing Guitar Combo 2 and the iAXE drivers on Windows 8 64 bit. If you're on 32 bit and an earlier version of Windows these steps should still work fine. One other note about the serial number. It's a 25 digit number and you should enter dashes between each set of 5 numbers--at least, that worked for me. Once you've correctly entered the serial number, the "Try" button will change to an "Activate" button. So, here's what you'll need to do.

1. Go to the Behringer web site and get the new installer file. Now you'll want to download the USB Driver, either 32 bit or 64 bit depending on your system. (Mac users, yours probably already works, but if not there is a list of MAC software for download.) So download BEHRINGER_2902_WIN32_2.8.40.zip or BEHRINGER_2902_X64_2.8.40.zip. Once that's downloaded unzip it, but don't run the setup.exe file yet.

 2. Plug your iAXE into your PC using the USB cable. The Windows OS will install drivers for it. Once that's done (Windows will tell you that your device is ready to use, but that's wrong) unplug your guitar from the PC.

 3. Now run the setup.exe file that you downloaded from Behringer. This is going to install the Asio driver for your iAXE. When the installer program tells you to, plug the iAXE back into the PC and when it finishes, go to step 4.

4. Launch your Guitar Combo software and in the setup screen that pops up, make sure it is set to Asio, 44100, and Behringer USB Audio as shown in the picture. Click ok, and as long as your headphones are plugged in to the headphone jack on the guitar (not the audio out on the PC or the pickup jack on the guitar) you should hear music (or at least really loud noise) and you should be able to select from the Guitar Combos presets, use the built in recording device, etc.

If you've lost your user manual from Behringer, you can probably find one online, but the link to the Behringer version is broken. Good luck and let's make some noise.

Friday, October 07, 2016

Restored 1929 Old Town Sponson Canoe


This is a vintage Old Town canoe that my father-in-law restored. Built in 1929, it was damaged in a tornado in April of 2011. It has been repaired and restored to original specs using historically accurate hardware and trim. And it's for sale.

All wood repairs were completed with carefully hand-crafted replacement pieces, and using hardware tacks and screws as specified by Old Town. The seats were restored by hand by a caning craftsman in Ohio. All woodwork was done by the current owner. The boat was repaired, re-canvassed with new canvas, sealed to Old Town specifications, and professionally painted to match the original color. New and replaced wood parts include the gunwales of spruce, sponson gunwales and keel of white oak, and decks of cherry. New bang irons, canvas, filler, and decals are supplied by the Fall River Canoe Company. 99% of the hardware screws are original hardware.

Sunday, November 30, 2014

Nexus 7 Tablet Performance Issues Solved

I think I have finally solved the performance problems I have been having with my ASUS Nexus 7 tablet. It's easy to find reports of problems with first generation Nexus tablets. A google search quickly reveals that lots of people have been having problems with these tablets for months. Upgrades to new versions of the Android OS don't solve the problem, in fact, they often seem to make the problem worse. That's certainly been my experience.

I got my tablet about 2 years ago. It worked beautifully at first, but over time got slower and slower. A few months ago I was hopeful that an upgrade to Android 4 would help. When it didn't really solve my problems, I was able to manage the problem using an app called "The Cleaner." By running this app frequently to free up storage and memory, I was able to use the tablet to read email, news, and stream Netflix to my Chromecast. But I would often have the same problems that others report--long delays when launching apps, frequent pop-ups reporting non-responsive apps, and slow, sometimes unusable performance from apps.

Then a few days ago the upgrade to Android 5.0 came and again I was hopeful that it would solve my problems. It only made them worse. Once I upgraded to 5.0, the tablet was essentially useless: very long delays in launching apps; the screen would go blank and the tablet would be unresponsive for several minutes. But after cleaning up a few things on the tablet, it seems to be working now, almost as good as new. Here's what I'd recommend you try to get going again with your Nexus 7.

If you can get the tablet running (be patient with it and just wait) you should launch the settings app. When you select the the "Apps" section of the settings, you'll eventually be able to see a list of all the downloaded and running apps. Switch to the list of "running" apps. Now you should see (I'm assuming you have upgraded to 5.0) an apps screen like the one shown here. By adding the amounts listed for System, Apps, and Free memory you can see that the device has 1 GB of memory. And you can see how much memory the currently running apps are using. In my case, the running apps were using too much memory. You can see from the list how much each app is using. There were several apps running and using memory that I really don't use. So I deleted those from the tablet. Once I got the memory in use down below 384 MB my tablet performance improve dramatically. Then when I deleted a couple more apps and got the memory in use down to 234 the performance was back to what I had when the tablet was new.