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Posts Tagged Windows 7

Screen flickering and horizontal lines when coming out of standby on Windows 8

Posted by MB in Uncategorized on January 26, 2013

I upgraded my Dell Latitude E6510 with an Nvidia NVS 3100M  to Windows 8 a short time ago, and noticed something fairly quickly: Whenever my display came back on after being powered off from power saving mode, or the laptop came out of sleep mode, the screen had a very noticeable flickering and some distinct horizontal lines. The best way to explain it was to say that there was something very wrong with the display refresh rate.

The effect would gradually diminish with time, but wouldn’t completely go away. I updated the graphics drivers from the built-in Windows 8 drivers to the latest ODE graphics driver for Windows 8 64-bit (310.90) — that didn’t fix it. I also noticed that putting the display in 40hz mode and then back in 60hz mode didn’t fix it either. I even would have the problem if I shut down completely and powered the laptop back on a few moments later.

I later found this blog post from someone having the exact same issue. He even indicated that he’s had hardware replaced on his notebook, and that didn’t fix the issue. He did, however, find a fix: Dell’s A08 drivers for the NVS 3100M graphics chipset. He posted links to a Dell search for A08 drivers and two drivers that specifically worked:

nVidia Quadro FX 880M – Win7/Vista 32-bit Graphics Driver

nVidia NVS 3100M – Win7/Vista 64-bit Graphics Driver (this is the one I used)

So I uninstalled my existing Nvidia drivers and installed the 64-bit driver linked to above. You know what? It worked. The flickering went away immediately, and it continues to work correctly resuming from standby.

I also recall speaking to someone who had a similar issue, albeit on Windows 7. I’m guessing it was probably related to the drivers as well.

UPDATE: After doing some more testing, I found this: I took a clean install of Windows 8 where the screen flickering was there, reformatted and reinstalled Windows 7 64-bit. After booting into Windows 7, the screen flickering was still there! It would seem that the driver is manipulating the graphics controller to produce this flicker. Installing Dell’s recommended NVS3100M driver for Windows 7 did fix the flickering issue.

Further reading:

Anyone else having the same issue? Have the drivers above worked for you? Please feel free to share your experience in the comments below. 

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Performing a clean install from a Windows 8 upgrade media

Posted by MB in Uncategorized on January 26, 2013

If you purchased the Windows 8 upgrade from Windows 7, but would rather do a clean install, here’s a method that I’ve found that has been reported to work.

First, obviously, delete all partitions during the Windows install, supplying your key when requested.

After Windows 8 installs, and if Windows won’t activate, do the following:

Run regedit, and set:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup\OOBE\MediaBootInstall to 0 (zero)

Open an administrator-level command prompt, and run the following:

slmgr /rearm

Then reboot and run activation again.

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Windows 8 error code 0x807800C5 during Windows 7 File Recovery backup

Posted by MB in Uncategorized on January 24, 2013

The following error appears if you try to include a system image in your backup using the Windows 7 File Recovery backup tool.

0x807800c5

There was a failure in preparing the backup image of one of the volumes in the backup set.

Details: The mounted backup volume is inaccessible. Please retry the operation.

Error code: 0x807800C5

According to this forum…

For Win 8 only: The Win 7 back up program included with win 8 does not support backing up a image file to any kind of NAS device (UNIX, Linux) . Internally the program gives an error that the NAS device has an incompatible sector mapping type. You can backup to a hard drive that is attached to a different windows machine and then back up that file to your NAS. Convoluted, but it works.

So, backing up a system image to a Samba share is out of the question. To work around this, disable the creation of a system image in your backup.

I haven’t tried backing up to an NTFS-formatted iSCSI LUN, which might work. If anyone has tried that, I’d be interested to know the results.

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Installing and configuring a PPP null-modem connection on Windows 7

Posted by MB in Uncategorized on August 30, 2012

Part 1: Install the modem device

  1. Start > Control Panel > Phone and Modem
  2. Modems tab, click Add
  3. Check Don’t detect my modem, I will select it from a list and click Next
  4. Under Manufacturer, select (Standard Modem Types)
  5. Under Models, select Communications cable between two computers
  6. Click Next
  7. Click Selected Ports radio button and select the serial port that you will be connecting the cable to (default: COM1)
  8. Click Next
  9. Windows sets up the modem
  10. Click Finish
  11. Click Ok to close the Phone and Modems dialog box

Part 2: Setting up the connection

  1. Start > Control Panel > Network and Sharing Center
  2. Set up a new connection or network
  3. Select Set up a dial-up connection
  4. Select Communications cable between two computers
  5. For dial-up phone number, enter any dummy number.
  6. Enter a meaningful connection name
  7. Click Connect, then click Skip on the screen that appears
  8. Windows states that the connection is ready for use
  9. Click Close

Part 3: Configuring the connection

  1. Start > Control Panel > Network and Sharing Center > Change adapter settings
  2. Right-click on the connection you created from step 2 and click Properties
  3. Under Connect Using, be sure Communication cable between two computers is checked.
  4. Click Configure
  5. For Maximum Speed, select 115200 from the drop-down
  6. Ensure Enable hardware flow control is checked
  7. Uncheck Enable modem speaker
  8. Click Ok
  9. Click the Options tab
  10. Click PPP Settings
  11. Ensure Enable LCP Extensions and Enable software compression are checked
  12. Click Ok
  13. Click Networking tab
  14. Highlight TCP/IP (or TCP/IPv4, or applicable variant)
  15. Click Properties
  16. Ensure Obtain IP address automatically and Obtain DNS server addresses automatically are selected
  17. Click Advanced
  18. Uncheck Use default gateway on remote network
  19. Click Ok three times

Comments are welcome.

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