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Whatacrock
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KB3038314 Bug Cause Found, Windows Team Working on Fix

Post by Whatacrock »

KB3038314 Bug Cause Found, Windows Team Working on Fix
The issue might only be experienced on clean installs

The KB3038314 saga continues with more information, this time offered by a Microsoft employee directly who got himself stuck with an installation error when trying to deploy this patch.

For starters, KB3038314 is one of the updates that Microsoft released on this month’s Patch Tuesday rollout, but on a number of computers it failed to install, thus causing additional trouble for those who cannot work on PCs with updates pending.

The issue has already been confirmed by an increasing number of users, which makes us believe that this is a widespread error, but a fix is not yet ready.

David Goe, a company employee who doesn’t work for the Windows team, but whose computer got affected by the same issue, said in a post on the Microsoft Community forums that Redmond engineers have managed to reproduce the problem and understand the cause of the bug, so a fix is being developed as we speak.
Only on clean installs?

What’s also interesting is the nature of the Windows installs that are affected by the problem. Goe says in a statement that clean installs might be the ones hit by KB3038314 issues, so in case you installed Windows 7 after April 14, you could indeed experience the same unexpected behavior of the path.

“They are working on a plan to fix this without risking regression or disruption to those who installed the KB successfully, i.e. those with existing fully patched systems who updated April 14th (Patch Tuesday). That is, of course, the majority of Win7 systems out there. I got caught, like you, trying to clean install from media after April 14th,” Goe said in a post.

In the meantime, there’s absolutely no official fix for those who want to get KB3038314 up and running on a specific computer, but we do have a possible workaround, so give it a shot and let us know if it works, so more users could try it.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/KB303831 ... 9162.shtml
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Visual Studio 2015 RC page goes live, announcement likely co

Post by parkd1 »

For the past few months, Microsoft has been releasing technical previews of Visual Studio 2015, but it looks like next week will bring the first release candidate announcement for the platform. This means the platform will soon be released for sale and that the code is now believed to be in a steady state.

As of right now, you cannot download the new release, but if you check out the page here, you can see what is new with the platform; Microsoft previously released six technical previews of the platform.

For Microsoft, Visual Studio, besides being a source of revenue, is the company's play into the developer platforms market; Visual Studio 2015 makes it possible to code for all types of devices including Android and iOS from within one application. And to further expand the tool's capabilities, the company recently announced integration points with the top three game engines too.

Seeing as BUILD takes place next week and the Visual Studio is built for this audience, it makes sense that they will talk about the platform and release the RC version of the tool.

We will be attending BUILD next week and will cover all of the announcements as they occur. If you are heading to SF for the event too, make sure to say hi as we will be on the show floor.

http://www.neowin.net/news/visual-studi ... -next-week

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/librar ... 40%29.aspx
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Re: KB3038314 Bug Cause Found, Windows Team Working on Fix

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KB3038314 Issues Possible Workaround Found
User finds fix for those experiencing issues with the patch

As we’ve reported to you earlier this week, one of the updates that Microsoft shipped as part of the Patch Tuesday rollout is causing issues on a number of Windows 7 computers because it fails to install, so those who can’t work on a PC with pending updates are obviously trying all sorts of workarounds.

Such a solution was proposed by Microsoft user AH_2015 in a discussion thread on the Community forums, suggesting that removing and reinstalling Internet Explorer could indeed fix all the problems you might be experiencing with KB3038314.

For starters, KB3038314 is an Internet Explorer 11 patch that fails to install on Windows 7 and judging by the number of complaints posted online, it turns out that this is one widespread problem. Microsoft, on the other hand, has remained completely tight-lipped on this issue, so user workarounds are the only ones we have right now.
How to fix KB3038314 issues

The Microsoft Community forums user claimed that installing all updates without KB3038314 and then removing and reinstalling Internet Explorer could fix installation issues with this particular patch. Several other users have already confirmed that this works, but for the moment, it’s hard to tell if it’s indeed effective on all computers or only on some.

Here are all steps that AH_2015 suggested:

- Installed all updates with only KB3038314 left to install.

- Installed IE10 + reboot (which has KB3038314 installed via the update process in the setup)

- Uninstalled IE10 + reboot (left me with IE8 RTM)

- Installed IE11 through the offline installer with switch /update-no so that no updates are installed during setup.

- After restart IE11 RTM is installed and 3 updates are available, KB3038314, KB3021952, KB2961851. They install without trouble.

If this doesn’t work for you, then it’s worth mentioning that Microsoft is already aware of the KB3038314 issues and is now working on a fix, but information as to when this could be released is yet to be provided.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/KB303831 ... 9143.shtml
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Re: KB3038314 Bug Cause Found, Windows Team Working on Fix

Post by Whatacrock »

Windows Update KB3038314 Error 80092004 Might Be Fixed with Manual Downloads

In the last few days, we’ve been reporting an issue with one of the updates that Microsoft released as part of the April 2015 Patch Tuesday cycle and which is still left without a fix on affected systems.

KB3038314 is a botched update that fails to install on Windows 7 and in most of the cases returns an error whose code 80092004 tells almost nothing to users.

While the Windows development team is now working on a fix, which might or might not arrive before the next Patch Tuesday taking place on May 12, users are turning to all kinds of workarounds that could help them address at least part of the issue.

One of the users whose computers were impacted by the issue posted in a Microsoft Community thread, now spanning on 27 pages, that in some cases manually downloading the patch could actually work and successfully complete installation.
Manually downloading KB3038314

If you do want to manually download KB3038314 and try to see if it installs successfully, go to this page and hit the “Download” button in any browser you want.

The patch has a little over 40 MB in size, so it shouldn’t take long before download is complete. Make sure you save your work before starting installation because a reboot is recommended afterwards.

Also, note that Microsoft is offering several versions of the patch for the supported Windows builds on the market, so check twice to make sure your get the correct one.

Some users say that manually downloading the patch makes no difference, in which case they are recommended to give a try to another workaround which we detailed here.

Microsoft is said to be working on a full fix already, so in case nothing solves your problem, it shouldn’t take any much longer until the company actually delivers its solution for computers impacted by this issue.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Windows- ... 9406.shtml
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Re: KB3038314 Bug Cause Found, Windows Team Working on Fix

Post by Whatacrock »

Microsoft Finally Fixes KB3038314 Windows Update Issues

The company has quietly rolled out a revised update
Issues were only reported on Windows 7
KB3038314 is one of the botched Windows updates that Microsoft released as part of the April 2014 Patch Tuesday and although it appears to be causing issues to quite a big number of users, it seems that the company seems no rush in fixing it.

KB3038314 is one of the botched Windows updates that Microsoft released as part of the April 2014 Patch Tuesday and although it appears to be causing issues to quite a big number of users, it seems that the company seems no rush in fixing it.

A 33-page thread on Microsoft Community forums confirms that this is a widespread problem and despite all reports, the software giant remained completely tight-lipped on what exactly causes the issue and why users cannot install the update.

But the company has silently rolled out an updated version of the patch to Windows users, so in case you're still experiencing problems when trying to deploy KB3038314, make sure you have a look in Windows Update and install all available updates.
Quietly rolled out on April 22

What's very interesting is that the revised patch was rolled out on April 22, at least that's what the official page of KB3038314 says.

“Updated bulletin to inform customers running Internet Explorer on Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 that the 3038314 update on the Microsoft Download Center was updated on April 22, 2015. Microsoft recommends that customers who installed the 3038314 update prior to April 22 should reinstall the update to be fully protected from the vulnerabilities discussed in this bulletin,” an update posted on April 30 reads.

But users are still experiencing the very same problem, according to their posts in the aforementioned thread and many haven't even received the new update.

Obviously, this is becoming a much more serious problem that Microsoft can handle on such a short notice, so a updated version of the patch could be released on May 11 when the company ships this month's Patch Tuesday bulletins.

In the meantime, there are two available solutions for those still having trouble with this bulletin: check Windows Update for new patches or hide KB3038314 the next Patch Tuesday when another version could ship.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Microsof ... 9956.shtml
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Microsoft Silently Kills Windows Media Center

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Microsoft Silently Kills Windows Media Center

Microsoft has decided to launch Windows 10 without a Media Center edition and thus discontinue the version that was first introduced in 2002 with Windows XP in order to give users more control over their multimedia content.

Microsoft executives reportedly confirmed at BUILD 2015 that Windows Media Center is no longer part of company plans, so the version the software giant launched in 2009 for Windows 7 users was pretty much the last one we got.

Windows Media Center was launched 13 years ago for Windows XP and offered remote control of media playback on a Windows XP computer. It was then updated as part of the next Windows releases, with Microsoft rolling out the latest full version in 2009 for Windows 7 users.

The team that worked on Windows Media Center split after the 2009 release, so for Windows 8, Microsoft only released an add-on providing the same features as in Windows 7. There were no new features, no improved UI, and no performance enhancements, with Microsoft clearly stating at that time that Windows Media Center wasn't part of its future plans.

And with Windows 10, the company is finally killing this piece of software, most likely because the new operating already includes advanced features and tools that can provide similar functionality.
Very low usage

According to Microsoft, only few people continue to use Windows Media Center on their computers, and company executives previously stated that it made less sense to continue development of the software because only few users are actually getting it.

Steven Sinofsky, the man in charge with Windows 8 who stepped down just after the launch of the new OS in late 2012, also revealed that launching a Media Center edition for Windows 8 was canceled because of the decreasing interest in such a version.

With Windows 10, Microsoft won't offer dedicated features to replace Media Center, but instead encourage users to purchase Xbox gaming consoles that offer similar functionality and offer both live and on-demand content in the living room.

Xbox One, which will be based on Windows 10 software, is becoming Microsoft's main device not only for gaming, but also for video and TV shows content, and comes with Blu-ray playback, OneGuide to combine live TV with apps running on the console, and motion control with the help of Kinect, so it could become the main living room device for anyone moving to to the new OS version.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Microsof ... 9952.shtml
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AMD to Refocus on Performance

Post by ChrisJ »

AMD admits it can’t be “the cheaper solution,” will refocus on performance
AMD bets on Zen CPU architecture and HBM-equipped GPUs to see it through.

Image

It's no secret that AMD has had a tough time over the last few years. While the company managed to post a profit at the start of 2014—largely thanks to its chips being used in the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One—more often than not its reliance on a declining PC market has seen its profits plunge and turn into losses since the Athlon 64 glory days. Millions (if not billions) of dollars of losses were common throughout the 2000s. $61 million was lost in 2001, followed by $1.3 billion in 2002, $274 million in 2003, and an astonishing $3.3 billion in 2007.

As Ars noted in its look at the rise and subsequent fall of the company, poor management decisions, including the building of costly fabrication facilities (which were subsequently spun off as GlobalFoundries in 2009), a difficult merger with ATI, and flawed chip designs that fail to match rival Intel on performance all contributed to the company's poor financial results over the years. A stream of CEOs, each with drastically different takes on how to run the company, certainly hasn't helped either.

In recent years, AMD has been largely known as the budget chip company, the "value for money" choice when you can't stretch to an Intel i5 or i7. Even with GPUs, an area where the company has produced some excellent Nvidia-beating products over the years, AMD has recently had to compete on price rather than performance because of a rapidly ageing line-up.

Yesterday, at the AMD Financial Analyst Day event, the company finally decided that enough was enough: AMD will no longer be competing in a race to the bottom. "It's extraordinarily important to ensure that we have competitive, high-performance cores," said CEO Lisa Su. "We have reduced our low-end PC exposure. When you look at AMD's historical business, we were very, very heavily concentrated in consumer, low end PCs, that was actually our speciality. However, when you look at that market, there has been so much volatility, especially at the intersection between tablets and PCs and differentiation hasn't been there... very clearly, we are an x86 company. We have tremendous x86 heritage, and opportunity to lead in that area. We are absolutely going to invest in high-performance x86."

Image

Given Intel's dominance from laptops to servers and Nvidia's recent string of high-performance, low-power GPUs, this is a tall order. Intel will always have an advantage thanks to owning its own fabs, while Nvidia has far more cash on hand to put behind R&D, not to mention an estimated 76 percent share of the GPU market. AMD doesn't expect things to change overnight, but it is hoping that a string of new product releases starting this year and moving into 2016 will set it on the right path. While the company hopes to reduce its reliance on its computing and graphics revenue (which currently accounts for around 60 percent of its revenue) and continue to build on its enterprise, embedded, and semi-custom products (which include things like the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One), that path still very much involves CPUs and GPUs, and it's there the company is aiming very high indeed.

Everything Zen

First and foremost, AMD is tackling those pesky CPU cores. It's safe to say that AMD went down the wrong path with Bulldozer by aiming for a many-core approach with clustered multithreading (CMT). The result was an unusual arrangement of multiple integer cores sharing a single FPU, which (combined with other questionable design decisions) resulted in extremely poor single-threaded performance. AMD has been fighting an uphill battle since to get its CPU line in shape. Bulldozer and its subsequent revisions will be going the way of the dodo in 2016. The upcoming Excavator-based Carrizo APUs due later this quarter will hopefully be one of the last to use the microarchitecture. AMD's core for the future is Zen, which AMD finally confirmed would be ditching CMT and embracing simultaneous multithreading (SMT), much like Intel's Core series of CPUs. Zen will be AMD's sole CPU microarchitecture, with the company ditching the dual-architecture it currently employs across mobile and desktop.

Image

Enthusiasts will be pleased to hear that Zen is launching at the high end first in the form of a new series of FX chips, before trickling down to other segments. In terms of performance, AMD is promising an ambitious 40 percent increase in instructions per clock (IPC). Some of that will come from switching to a new, as-yet-unspecified process node. So far, all we know is that it will be produced using a FinFET process, which—if the company sticks with the Common Platform alliance for production, and there's little indication it won't—will likely make it a 14nm chip made at either Samsung or GlobalFoundries.

With a new chip comes a new platform, this time called AM4. All of AMD's desktop CPUs will use this socket, including any Zen-based APUs it produces down the line. AM4 will introduce support for faster DDR4 memory, but other implementations of the chipset will continue to use DDR3.

The use of AM4 also puts an end to Project Skybridge, which was AMD's plan to use the same socket for its x86 and ARM-based processors. The company cited a lack of interest from partners for the move, which isn't surprising given that few were clamoring for such a platform in the first place. Speaking of ARM, AMD will finally be shipping its ARM Cortex-A57-based Opteron A1100 server chips, almost a year behind schedule. But the company seems keen to move on A1100, and onto K12, its next-generation ARM architecture. With Zen now the priority, K12 has been pushed from 2016 to 2017, but it will implement many of the technologies incorporated into Zen. As of yet, there's little indication that there's a demand for high-density ARM-based servers—don't forget, AMD just recently ditched SeaMicro, its x86-based high-density server business—so it will be interesting to see how well A1100 does in the market and if the company later reconsiders its K12 plans. Servers as a whole will be a focus for AMD, though, with the company hoping to claw back marketshare from Intel, which currently dominates the market.

Image

GPUs and High Bandwidth Memory

As for the GPU side of the business, AMD finally confirmed that it will be launching a new flagship card later this quarter. The company was tight-lipped on specifics, but it did confirm that the card would be the first to ship with the much-hyped High Bandwidth Memory (HMB). In development for over seven years, HMB is a form of stacked memory, connected via a 2.5D-IC silicon interposer, which means that there will be two separate chips on the same silicon interposer and package substrate. There are rumors floating around that this will limit the card to just 4GB of memory, but this is so far unconfirmed.

Regardless, AMD is hoping that its work with HBM pays off with reduced power consumption, much higher performance in high-resolution tasks like 4K gaming, and the ability to scale the architecture to new form factors. What those form factors might be remains to be seen, but Nvidia—which is planning to implement HBM with its 2016 Pascal architecture—recently released images of a smaller GPU design made possible by HBM.

As for the rest of the desktop lineup, AMD kept quiet, but it did sneak out specifications for new OEM GPUs, which bear the 300-series moniker. These might not reflect the specifications of the retail range of 300-series cards—OEMs often demand new GPUs before the launch of a new architecture for the launch of their own new products—so take these specs with a pinch of salt.

The OEM 300-series is essentially just a rebrand of existing parts with a few tweaks: the R9 380 OEM is a variant of the R9 285, the R9 370 OEM is a variant of the R7 265, and the R9 360 OEM is a variant of the R9 260. That's not exactly the most compelling lineup, particularly with the now-ancient Pitcairn architecture making another appearance, so here's hoping we'll see something more exciting on the retail side. AMD took a similar approach with the mobile 300-series, which is essentially just a set of rebranded 200-series parts. They do feature much higher clock speeds, which should result in a boost to performance, but memory bandwidth is down across the board.

Still, these OEM GPUs and mobile GPUs are but a small blip in AMD's otherwise ambitious plans to retake the high-performance market across desktops, GPUs, and servers. AMD has promised a great many things in the past and has unfortunately failed to deliver. The company seems to have a renewed vigor, however, and a keen self-awareness that it let its technology slip. Ultimately, it's in every consumer's interest to see AMD succeed; Intel and Nvidia need competition to drive innovation.

"It can't just be that we're the cheaper solution," AMD said yesterday. Thank heavens it has finally realised that.


Source: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/05/ ... rformance/
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Re: AMD to Refocus on Performance

Post by ChrisJ »

Ultimately, it's in every consumer's interest to see AMD succeed; Intel and Nvidia need competition to drive innovation.
I hope everyone takes the time to read the article! If you read it at ars technica there's numerous embedded links for more information on AMD's financial situation, future plans, and products. I was astonished at the actual dollar amount AMD has lost over the years - they cannot survive like this going forward, no way.

I've been a long-time supporter of AMD, their products have always performed well for anything I ever needed to do with a computer. I hope they succeed, they need to otherwise we'll have virtually no choice but higher prices all the way around - what's new. AMD must be innovative again, more power with less heat in a smaller package at a price both they and the consumer can be happy with.

Intel is a fantastic company, very innovative, and successful, but they have mostly been a bit too pricey for me. It's interesting that both Apple and Intel are very popular in education, I've seen Microsoft and Linux in schools, but mostly Apple or Intel based Dells or some variation. So much for diversity.
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Microsoft Silently Tries to Fix Windows Update KB3024777 Installation Issues

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Microsoft Silently Tries to Fix Windows Update KB3024777 Installation Issues

Some of the updates that Microsoft rolled out in the last five months or so were causing plenty of issues on Windows computers, and several fail to install successfully, thus leading to even more trouble on these machines.

Windows 7 users might be familiar with KB3024777, an update that was released by Microsoft to remove another faulty update causing problems on Windows 7 PCs, namely KB3004394.

Since last December, KB3024777 has been the ugly duckling of Windows updates because no one wants to install it anymore, at least not after reading the complains posted online by those who actually tried to do so.

Posts on Microsoft’s Community forums and dated December 2014 indicate that KB3024777 fails to install, and even if you remove KB3004394 manually, it still tries to install and it still fails. What’s more, some are complaining that the update cannot be hid in Windows Update, so there’s no way to get rid of the prompts to install it.
“Error Code 1”

In some cases, installing the update fails with “Error Code 1,” an error message that says absolutely nothing to those having a hard time with this update.

Now here’s the interesting part. The official page of KB3024777 shows that the last revision to this update was made on April 23 and we’ve indeed received reports from users saying that they were offered this update once again. Some, however, refused to install it because it was the original update released in the past and causing problems on Windows 7 machines.

Microsoft hasn’t said anything official about this update, but a Microsoft Community thread where users detail their struggle installing KB3024777 now has nearly 8,000 views. Plenty of similar discussions can be found all over the web, so it’s still a mystery for everyone whether Microsoft indeed fixed this update or you can still keep it hidden for the time being.

While you’re not usually recommended to hide updates, doing it in KB3024777’s case shouldn’t harm your computer because it’s just supposed to remove an older patch. If KB3004394 is no longer installed fine on your PC, there’s no point in deploying KB3024777 too.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Microsof ... 1172.shtml
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Microsoft Moves On: Windows Media Center Alternative

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Microsoft Moves On: Windows Media Center Alternative

With all functionality of the TV and radio implemented in the capabilities of a computer, all you need now is a solid Internet connection and a multimedia application to enjoy shows, movies, and music.

Microsoft developed such a utility that lets you record and watch TV, as well as other media files. The utility is called Windows Media Center, but not long ago, it was announced that the project had reached its end.

Luckily, there are others of its kind and are packed with more than enough features to be a suitable replacement. If you’re ready to say goodbye to Windows Media Center, then you might want to try this on for size.
Windows Media Center alternative

First of all, download and install MediaPortal. Prepare for the first launch, because it runs in fullscreen by default, but this can be changed.

Launch MediaPortal Configuration in order to set up database folders for the application to grab multimedia files. Default Windows special directories are used, but you can remove them and add your own.

Music lets you easily select database directories and plays them with shuffle and repeat options. You can edit and create playlists, and even run an AutoDJ to take care of the audio background.

Videos puts as many options at your disposal. It makes it suitable to leave shows running, even repeating episodes or shuffling through them.

Pictures can be viewed in a custom slideshow. There are options to set transition effects, rotation settings, speed, and whether or not to play videos in the slideshow.

Plugins let you relax, or stay up to date with the latest news. Custom RSS feeds can be added, while playing Tetris or Sudoku in the meantime.

http://www.softpedia.com/blog/Microsoft ... 0936.shtml

MediaPortal homepage: http://www.team-mediaportal.com/

http://www.team-mediaportal.com/mediapo ... quirements
Last edited by Whatacrock on Fri May 15, 2015 4:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
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