Discussions

3 hours ago, JoshRoss wrote

Push-Button Reset.

I haven't year of push-button reset, so thank you for pointing me to that. I've checked out the website, but it looks to me as though it's only for WindowsRT, not Windows 8. Am I wrong about that?

6 hours ago, cheong wrote

Kaspersky has a historical record of not doing clean uninstall. The Sony support guys probably know that too, but since the support calls are recorded, that won't tell you about that in phone calls. This is due to the fact that most antivirus are not updated by Windows Installer, so if a major update is happening in between, the code for current application components and the uninstaller won't match. And this is especially bad for Kaspersky because many of their components rooted deep in system level.

My advice for these kind of "preloaded trial antivirus" software is that, either you decide to run through the trial period and upgrade it to paid version, or just uninstall it on the first time you turn the PC on so the uninstall can happen before any major update is applied. This will save you a lot of pain later.

If you've not done full system recovery yet, you may try your luck to contact them (need to try your luck because you're using trial version, not a paid one.).

Anyway I always (note that not "almost always", just "always") wipe the drive clean and reinstall Windows from scratch whenever I need to buy branded PC. Others here also do that not for no reason.

Really? That's very interesting, about Kaspersky having a poor uninstall record. I suppose that Sony puts Kaspersky onto their new systems and most users just stay with whatever came with the system.

On December 1st I purchased my first Windows 8 device, a Sony Vaio laptop. I was going to VS Live! in Orlando this month, and I needed something so that I could get remote access to computers and servers at work, if the need arose. It would have been nice to have gotten a Microsoft Surface Pro, but since they're not due until January, and I needed something in December, I decided to go with the Sony Vaio. Besides, I'd seen Sony Vaio's being used by people on MSDN's Channel 9, so I thought that would be a great choice. So, that's what I went with. It worked well for me in Orlando, so it seemed to be a good choice.
 
One of the pre-loaded applications that came with it was Kaspersky's 2013 Anti-virus suite. Naturally, it was a trial version, and the trial was about to run out. This evening I uninstalled it. After I uninstalled it, Windows Defender wanted to go on, but my PC rebooted; I figured I could make certain it went on after it rebooted. Besides that, I have Bitdefender, which I was going to install. However, the first thing I noticed when it rebooted is the mouse wasn't working at all. Next I noticed that the keyboard wasn't working at all. And the keypad wasn't working. Because the Sony Vaio is a touch enabled device I was able to use the on-screen keyboard, but as all of you know that's OK, if you don't really have a lot of typing to do, but of course I do.
 
So I got online to go into a chat session with Sony's technical support. They had me download and install the touchpad device driver. I did so, but apparently Sony's website doesn't work too well with IE10 Metro, because once I got onto the website to download the touchpad driver, it hung up with my session with Sony tech support. Anyway, I downloaded and installed it, which required a reboot. I did that, and got back onto Sony's tech support to chat with someone else. With the second Sony technician I found that the touchpad wasn't working, even after installing the driver. He had to do a system restore to the last good checkpoint, which was done on December 26. Naturally the restore requires a reboot, which I did.
 
Once my laptop came back up, I tried it again, but found that mouse, keyboard and track pad weren't working, so at this point I decided to call Sony technical support. Once I got them on the phone, and they had me go to desktop mode it was then I noticed an alert box from the restore telling me that the restore had failed. That my C: drive may, in fact, be corrupt. This is a brand new PC, less than a month old! I have a bad hard drive already? What's that say about the quality of Sony products? The tech support guy had me get into a Vaio Care utility, which I did, and see what was happening there. Interestingly enough the arrow keys did work here, as well as the return key, because I was able to select different things and press the enter key. But no matter what else happened, once I logged into Windows the mouse, keyboard and mouse pad/touchpad didn't work at all. What the Sony tech support guy then told me sunk my heart. He said that the only thing I could do, at this point, was to do a complete system recovery; loose everything that I had and all programs I've installed. At this point I have personal things on there and photos, but I also have Visual Studio 2010 and 2012 installed, as well as Telerik controls and other development software. And I've installed MS Office. This represents a great deal of work and time, on my part. I do not look forward to doing this and starting all over again.
 
Of course I asked what could have caused this. The tech guy speculates that once I uninstalled Kaspersky, some virus that it was holding back, suddenly became active and was preventing any and all access to mouse, keyboard and touchpad. I suppose that's possible; sort of makes sense, but why wouldn't Kaspersky have quarantined any viruses it came across? Or when I uninstalled Kaspersky and it was "holding a virus back" why didn't it ask me what I wanted it to do with things that it had quarantined? Before I got Bitdefender I had GFI's VIPRE software, and when I uninstalled VIPRE, it asked me what I wanted it to do with all of the items it had found and quarantined. Honestly, that's what I would expect from any anti-virus software that one is uninstalling; that it ask the user if they want to delete it, leave it quarantined or something else. To just allow any and all viruses to run free, after being uninstalled, is not at all in the public's interest, to say the least.
 
I don't know if there was a virus on my Sony Vaio or not, but this whole experience has really turned me off of Sony Vaio's and Kaspersky. I believe it is still under the 30 day warranty with Best Buy (where I purchased it), and so tomorrow I'm very interested in considering something else. I want a touch enabled device, running Windows 8, and this Vaio I have is an i7 with a 1 TB HD. It cost me about $1000. Given those specs, what else would you suggest that's similar, please? (And I hope it doesn't come with Kaspersky.)
 

I had to reset my HTC Trophy phone. After activating it again with Verizon I tried to download an app. It failed with error 805a0193. I tried another app and got the same error.

How do I fix this and get my phone working again?

@BitFlipper: Thank you, that is exactly what I want!

My HTC Trophy is giving me problems (again), and so I'm going to have to reset it (again).

Is there any way I can list all of the apps I have on my phone, so that I can go this process again?

I'm just about ready to do this.  I've got a couple more questions I need answered.  First, I've got Quicken 2012. When I ran the Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant it didn't mention anything at all about Quicken. Does anyone know if it will work or not? (I'm going to go to Windows 8 Pro.)

Second question concerns my anti-virus. I'm using Bitdefender Internet Security 2013. I'm assuming that any AV will interfer with an attempt to upgrade to Windows 8, so what steps do I take to prevent that?

I'm trying to get better at using PowerShell, and I've seen that you can get a nice GUI interface using PowerShell ISE.  On my Windows 7 machine, when I click the Start menu and then start typing "PowerShell ISE" (without the double quotes) I see there's a 32-bit version and a 64-bit version.  Cool, and all that, but which "should" I use?

@Doctor Who: I finally got the update to install by going to Microsoft's FixIt site, looking up the error and having it install a patch.

I got a message on my Windows Phone today, saying that there was an update for it.  I connected it to my PC, the Zune software fired up and I tried to update it.  It failed with an error of 8018119C.  I tried twice, same failure.  Something about not being able to access BITS.  Here's a screen capture of the error:

http://imgur.com/pX923