Booting to black screen with only mouse pointer?

Before updating to Windows 10 I was running Windows 8.1 on my laptop. I have a policy of not constantly updating my Windows as new updates may come with bugs. So I update in bulk whenever I fell like I have time to rectify and restore my laptop in case of a failed update causing glitches.

The last huge update I did before upgrading to Windows 10 lead to a problem. My laptop would boot up to show a black screen on which only my mouse was visible and I could move it around, but no desktop. Something like this:

It suddenly struck me that this would be happening due to a certain application not starting. The laptop had booted up since I could move the mouse. From past experiences of using a method to solve certain problems, I recalled how I ended the task of 'explorer.exe' from task manager and manually restarted it.

So now I decided to give it a shot and try and start explorer.exe manually as I felt that Windows is not being able to automatically initiate that task. I was correct. I manually started explorer.exe for the next one week before another set of updates arrived which fixed the problem.

Here is how to do it:

Step 1: Ctrl + Alt + Del

• Just press the good old Ctrl + Alt + Del on the black screen and you will be taken to the following screen which is common for Windows 7/8/8.1/10.
• Start Task Manager.

Step 2: Run New Task

Step 3: Simply type 'explorer.exe' in the dialog box.

There you go. Your desktop and all the icons will now be visible!

Alternate solution:

Just in case this does not work out, here is the solution to restore your system to a previous state by using a 'recovery disk'(can also be a pendrive). You can make this disk using another PC/Laptop running Windows 8/8.1/10.

• For Windows 7
• For Windows 8/8.1/10

Review of Dell Inspiron 15R 7520 Special Edition Laptop(My Workhorse)

My specifications are: 
Core i7 3632QM, 8GB DDR3 RAM, AMD Radeon HD 7730 2GB graphics, 1 TB HDD.

Performance : 4.5/5
I bought this laptop as a future proof laptop that I could use for my Bachelor' as well as Master's Degree in Electronics engineering and let me say it has never disappointed me! Heavy softwares like MATLAB, AutoCAD, Xilinx, Quartus II, VMWare Workstation Pro, Sony Vegas Pro and anything and everything you threw at it! 

Sure there were problems with drives with it upgrading from Windows 8 to 8.1 but it was totally solvable unless you were a noob and eventually everything got fixed when Windows 10 happened!

The graphics are awesome and you can run games like Battlefield 3, L. A. Noire, Arkham City, GTA V etc. on moderate quality settings and not ultra. The graphics card is not as good as NVidia for heavy rendering and image processing applications in robotics projects which need speed. But they are good for the very high resolution movies and games.

You can even run Mac OS SMOOTHLY in VMWare Workstation! Yeah, shame on you Apple.

Build quality : 6/5
Trust me when I say this, but this is the most sturdy laptop I ever saw! Not just this, you pick up ant Dell Insprion from 2012-13 they are all tough as hell! I have seen Dells dropping and nothing happening to them at all! No parts inside would dislocate and nothing falls apart. Try dropping a Mac and see what happens! xD

Weight : 3/5
This laptop is a bit heavy with a solid 2.2Kg weight and you will feel it on your back after a few minutes of walking with it. But that is a compromise you will have to make for build quality and I was ready as I am strong and well built.

Speakers : 3/5
The speakers are SkullCandy and they will sound good. They are not as loud as you'd want them to be to turn up the groove and dance around the room. But they are fair enough to watch movies and all if you are sitting close in front of the laptop.

Screen : 4.5/5
The 1080p display is really worth it. You will have to compromise on a BluRay DVD drive if you want 1080p otherwise Dell gives 720p. But duh, who buys those overpriced BluRay discs anyway? ;)

Value for money : 8/5
I bought this laptop for 60K INR and the service it has given me is priceless! Half of my education would not have been possible without it and this was the best investment I ever made. It has almost the same specifications of a MacBook Pro which sells for over 1.5L. Yeah! Shame on you Apple.

Do not buy cheap card readers!

For all those who have a Micro-SD card, most of you must be having an SD adapter that comes with it which you can plug in to your laptop card reader. However not all have it that easy. You laptop may or may not have an SD card reader or you might have a PC making it essential for you to buy an All-In-One card reader.

For  users who have a laptop with a card reader and SD adapter(like me), you will need this if you have a Sony Camcorder which comes with a Memory Stick Pro Duo(I hate Sony for that).

So, coming to the point, which card reader to buy?

• Any card reader sold by Sony, Transcend, iBall, Enter, Kingston or QuantumZERO are good.
• Do not buy cheaper card readers sold by companies like QHMPL Quantum( knock-off of QuantumZERO), Digitek or COMBO.

All card readers with green tick support SD cards, all except Transcend USB 2.0 support Memory Stick and all except iBall support MicroSD.

Understand that the reason I am saying this is because data is precious. Especially in SD, Micro-SD and Memory Sticks where you store precious photos/videos from your camera/smart-phone.

From personal experience, I have owned two Quantum card readers and both did not last for over a year. The first one stopped working which made me buy the second one. But the second one stopped working when I was transferring my videos from my Sony camcorder Memory Stick and the data got corrupted! Not even professionals could recover it. I had lost more than 4GB of priceless memories.

So take care of your data and 'invest' in a good card reader, even if it costs you 10x than the cheaper ones. Your data is not worth a 1000 Rupees INR, its priceless.

Fix 'Wireless Module not found (701)' error on HP laptop.

My brother gave me a priceless gift...an opportunity to completely backup, format and reinstall OS and drivers on his HP Pavilion DV6 2165TX laptop.

Yes we managed to remove all the mess and garbage of data and increased speed by around 5x i'm sure! But a problem persisted...a 'Wireless Module not found (701)' error before booting up and it was showing only Bluetooth module in wireless devices in Device Manager.

So we went on the internet and found a HP support solution to reseat (unplug and plug in again) the wireless adapter to fix the problem.
I disassembled a part of laptop for the first time in my life and took considerable risk as the wireless device is located below Hard Disk.

Note: I did this only because laptop was out of warranty. Doing so may void your warranty if dealer comes to know. If you are confident...go ahead! :)

Step 1:
Download HP maintenance and service guide for particular model of your laptop. You will find it in manuals section of your product page on HP support website
Download and install the correct WLAN driver for your laptop model. In this case it was Broadcom Wireless LAN Driver for Microsoft Windows 7 

Step 2:
Go into 'Removal and replacement procedures'. Read instructions in the manual about placement and connections of the wireless module (the manual shows 3 connections..we have only 2 on this model)

Step 3:
Collect necessary tools
   a)Magnetic screw driver (those small screws should not fall in any crevice and be lost forever).
If you dont have one, then check out my previous tutorial on how to magnetize a normal one.
Link -  'How to magnetize screw driver'.
 
   b)Pair of tweezers if possible. (Nails will also do but be careful so as to not deform the connector).

Step 4:
Remove the Battery.

Step 5:
Unscrew the panel as shown in manual.

Step 6:
Remove the hard disk very slowly and strictly as directed by the manual. Be careful to not pull on the connecting wire and keep it flipped to the right as shown in the next step.

Step 7:
Unscrew and unplug the wireless device and plug and screw it in again as shown in colour coded figure below.

Step 8:
Seat the hard disk the same way you pulled it out and screw back in the panel.
Seat the battery.
Turn on your laptop.

     a) Case 1: The error message is gone.
                  Celebrate! You just fixed the error and your laptop now recognizes the device. Since you already installed the driver package the laptop will automatically recognize the device and reinstall the software after fully booting up if necessary and give 'Your device is installed and ready to use' pop-up. You can now connect to wireless networks.

     b) Case 2: The error still displays.
                   Can be a false alarm as you did not seat the module correctly while following procedure so check again.
                   If it still shows error you may have to get your wireless module replaced from a service center as it may have stopped working (not because you unscrewed and touched it but because it reached end of its lifetime).
         

Magnetize a screw driver.

Recently I posted a tutorial involving unscrewing panels and opening parts of a laptop. Small and easily misplace-able screws are involved there which my roll into crevices and corners becoming difficult to remove especially if it falls inside the laptop itself (big problem!!).

So I strictly instructed to use a magnetic screw driver to handle those screws easily.

But what if you dont want to spend on a costly magnetic screw driver and want to use the normal one you have? Then we can magnetize it!

Tools:
1) Bar magnet(preferably).
2) Screw driver to magnetize.

Procedure:
The procedure is a 10th grade Science lesson on how to give magnetic properties to non-magnetic metal objects using Magnetic Induction.

Step 1:
Run any pole of the magnet along the portion of screw driver you want to magnetize in single direction only.

Step 2:
To come back to the start point don't directly follow a horizontal path backwards. Take the magnet well above the screw driver and come back in a parabolic path.

Do this a few hundred times (200 gives pretty strong magnetization). Do more for a stronger magnetization.

It will not magnetize if you keep running the magnet back and forth.

How to choose a tripod.

I recently decided to buy a tripod. And thus came another big dilemma...How to choose one perfect for amateur photography. I found that some of the good tripod brands were Benro, Slik, Photron, and the cheapest being Simpex.

I was ready to properly invest in an amateur photography thing so I went for a Benro T880EX. They have four variants of beginner tripods ranging from 1500 upto 2000 INR. (All prices mentioned hereafter are in INR)

(Comparison of Benro T600EX, T660EX, T800EX, T880EX tripods)

Here is how I found out which tripod to buy
My research tells me there are 4 kinds of pods and 2 kinds of heads.

Heads:

1) The Pan-head

The pan-head will have 3 kinds of adjustments - Horizontal, Vertical and 90 degree rotation for portrait-landscape.
Pros: This is most helpful when you take more videos rather than photos. A smooth horizontal or vertical panning action can be achieved. The adjustment is stable even if one of the knobs is loose(this may not be guaranteed while using heavy cameras).
Cons: Takes a bit of patience to adjust for those precision shots. Experienced photographers switch to ball head to save this time and never come back to pan head

2) The ball-head

The ball-head means your camera is basically fixed to a ball that can rotate in any direction. Adjust the direction and fix the ball with a single lever.
Pros: This is most helpful when you take more photos rather than videos. It takes very less time to adjust and you will be done in a few seconds. If you can pan with a stable hand then there will be no jerks.
Cons: Once the ball is unlocked your cam will not stay stable and is under control of gravity. The panning actions are a trademark of the pan head and difficult with ball head.

Pods:

1) The Monopod

Cost: from 700 upto 10,000

2) Travel or light Tripods

These are the tripods which are bought for their light weight making them easy to carry around on vacations and hikes.

Cost - from 800 upto 4,000
Weight supported - upto 3kg

3) Entry-level tripods

These are the tripods you buy when you start out as an amateur and want to buy a budget tripod. They are light, compact and reliable if you are using a lighter camera and not into the heavy stuff. However the customization options available are a very few and these usually come with a pan-head. So if you want to go for a ball head only the head will cost more than the tripod!

Cost - from 800 upto 4,000
Weight supported - upto 3kg

4) Professional tripods

This trippd is used by professionals and is slightly heavy or so, as higher stability is reqiured for heavier cameras so weight matters. They are also available in carbon fibre legs.
You will easily recognize them by hooks provided at the centre for attaching more weight. These tripods are usually ball heads and I feel are meant more for photography

Cost: from 9,000 upto 40,000

5) Heavy tripods

These are meant for heavy filming cameras that can weigh more than 15kg or so and they are biggies in the business.

Cost: from 25,000 upto 50,000

6) Flexible or Octopus (Not quite!) tripods

These are flexible legged tripods whose ball sectioned legs will coil around any objects or hold on to bars or trees.

Cost: from 250 upto 500
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So bottom line is, choose what you need and not what others are saying is the best out there. I wanted and entry-level tripod which was cheap yet practical and I found it in the T880EX! I am now ready to upgrade to a better one if my needs demand, as I have also got better at photography and sometimes this one falls short for newer applications I found.

Comparison of Benro T600EX, T660EX, T800EX, T880EX tripods

Benro entry level tripods

T600EX - Height :1435 mm, Legs : 3 sections, Weight :1.2 Kg

T660EX - Height :1460 mm, Legs : 4 sections, Weight :1.2 Kg

T800EX - Height :1435 mm, Legs : 3 sections, Weight :1.5 Kg

T880EX - Height :1460 mm, Legs : 4 sections, Weight :1.5 Kg

Load capacity : 3 Kg for all.

As we can see from the specifications of all the 4 tripods: 

Height and leg sections - 

The T600 and T660 differ in the maximum height they can reach and in the number of leg joints. Both weigh the same so the choice matters at parametrs of height and leg joints. Same is the case for choosing between T800 and T880.

Weight - 

However the T8x0 have more weight than the T6x0. So they will offer more stability than the former. They will be less wobbly and more sturdy.

Hence the T6x0 are entry-level, compact and travel tripods.

And the T8x0 are entry-level compact tripods.

So if you travel and hike more I would say go for the T6x0 and if not then T8x0 if you are into amateur photography and family photos.