Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Finally Got My Windows 7 PC Back Up and Running Stable

GROAN.....what a PITA.

After doing a restore to the last previously known "good" configuration, it seemed to be running OK, but with a ton of almost continuous  hard-disk activity, and requiring numerous "updates", and reboots.

It was so sluggish that I was about to rip out what's left of my hair, and start on my beard....

Finally, after letting it run for about 12 hours total, it's settled down, and is operating more-or-less normally.

At least all the installed software on it works without blowing up, and I can use my Flex Radio Systems 5000A again. I haven't tried any of the digital programs, like FLdigi, or the slow-scan/wefax/RTTY programs yet, so I might have to reconfigure the program that runs the virtual serial ports.

And this time, rather than going through and removing all the Windows Updates by hand, I went ahead and took several people's advice and installed the GWX Control Panel, which makes rooting out and killing the Windows 10 "upgrade" notifications and included spyware as easy as a few mouse clicks.

I even sent to guy $10 and thanked him!

The User Guide is located here, and I highly recommend getting this fine utility if you're running Windows 7, 8, or 8.1.

Back to checking if *all* my Amateur Radio software is working......

9 comments:

  1. I use windows 8. Every time I boot up, I get this huge window popping up, plugging windows 10. I was never very tempted but after your experiences I am vehement in not doing any upgrade to Windows 10.

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  2. Thanks! I've been trying to figure out how to disable that piece of crap...

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  3. Harry, just get the GWX Control Panel application, install it, and disable the Win 10 stuff forever.

    The last option has a warning, so I didn't use it.

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  4. Thanks for the tip on the GWX Control Panel. Installed and working.
    What program do you use for SSTV/wefax/RTTY? I use MMSSTV for slow scan and fldigi for wefax and RTTY.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I use FLDigi for most, MMSSTV and MMRTTY, and WxtoImg for weather satellites.

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  6. Now you have done it. I hadn't even thought about Wx satellites. Looks like my new rig covers the 137 band but the selectivity might be a bit narrow. Worth a try though. It is a Yaesu FT-857D that I got mainly for 144 & 432 SSB.
    And I note there is a .deb pkg for Ubuntu so maybe even I can install it. :) Will use the Win 7 machine to start with.

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  7. Yeah, that rig will be way too narrow.

    This is one of the only times I'll recommend one of the $20 USB dongles, but be careful how far up you run the RF gain on it. Most of them suffer from nearby strong signal desense and breakthrough.

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  8. The Yaesu sort of worked even with an ancient Cushcraft 2 m halo for an antenna at the end of 100' of old 8214. I could see the east coast of Florida, Lake Okeechobee, Cuba and Andros Is. in the Bahamas. And clouds and lots of noise. The max elevation for this pass of NOAA-19 was 27 deg.
    The program was easy to install and use. Next to try the R820T dongle and maybe build an antenna for 137 MHz.

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  9. There's a ton of wxsat antenna designs on the web, from simple turnstyles through Quadrafilar Helix Antennas.

    I'm using an M2 2 Meter "Eggbeater" with an SSB Electronic 2 Meter preamp, all stuff I had "left over" from my portable Oscar station.

    Using a dongle, I can get solid pix from around 5* elevation, depending on pass direction.

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