Category: fix

Windows wakes up soon after going to sleep

I think there are two main reasons why Windows would wake up “by itself” (without pressing a key on the keyboard or clicking the mouse).

  1. Scheduled tasks;
  2. Devices allowed to wake up the computer.

Scheduled tasks are fairly simple to look into and it was not the problem at the time of writing this post, so I’ll skip straight to the second point.

We can get a list of devices that are allowed to wake up the computer from sleep by typing at the command prompt:

powercfg -devicequery wake_armed

At the time, I had 3 allowed devices:

  • Intel(R) 82579V Gigabit Network Connection
  • HID-compliant mouse
  • Microsoft USB Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 (Mouse and Keyboard Center) (001)

I don’t need WOL or anything like that so I disallowed the network card to wake up the computer using Device manager:

Untitled

And voilà, my computer now stays asleep until I use the mouse or keyboard. I started having this problem after moving the computer to another network, so I suspect the new router or other network connected computers sent packets that waked it up.

Windows Server 2008 self-signed certificate expires

A self-signed certificate is issued for web services (IIS) and it has a default validity period of 2 years. After that time, users of web services will be prompted with a dialog box asking if they still want to access a service that uses an outdated certificate. Outlook users could also be prompted with this dialog box. This box will appear every time a new connection is made.

To prevent this, we need to reissue another certificate to replace the old one. Self-signed certificates cannot be renewed.

We can easily do this using the “Fix my network” wizard. On SBS 2008, it can be accessed under Network => Connectivity in the SBS console. I think we can use this same wizard to reissue a certificate up to a month before the old one expires.

sources:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd378790(WS.10).aspx
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc546020(v=ws.10).aspx

Computer games bugs and conflicts

Conflicts

  • Terraria and Mumble (creative sound card bug?)
  • Grand Theft Auto IV and Mumble (same as Terraria?)
  • Grand Theft Auto IV and Process Explorer (securom restriction)
  • Battlefield 3 and Process Explorer (punkbuster bug)

Bugs

  • Singularity has no sound on my Audigy 1. Tried installing OpenAL but didn’t help. Works with another sound card.
  • Screen in BattleField Bad Company 2 sometimes flashes black frames. Sometimes screen becomes black for several seconds. This is on my GTX 275. Tried several different NVidia drivers versions (even betas) with no success. Very annoying bug.
  • I couldn’t play Battlefield 3 CO-OP mode unless I forward port 3659 from the router to my computer. I can then host the game and invite another player. I didn’t have to make a rule in Windows Firewall. It probably already works if UPnP-style NAT traversal is enabled on your router, but I highly discourage its use due to potential security problems.