I’ve been trying to cancel (or change) an order on Microsoft.com – unfortunately, their tech support system is not cooperating. Navigating to Microsoft’s support I’m presented with two options… The “Get Help” application, or staying inside the browser. It looks like the in-browser option and the Get Help Windows 10 application are essentially the same thing.
“I’m sorry, but I’m having a technical problem. Please use the options shown below to get in touch with Microsoft Customer Support.”
and
“Some Microsoft services are currently experiencing issues”
A few minutes later, the message has changed back to “I’m the Microsoft Virtual Agent. I’d love to help you. Please briefly describe your issue below.”
There’s no status page for support. I’m not sure what the technical issues were.
If you go searching for an answer, I bet this blog post is going to be your only result 🙂
The PHP Selector in the Hostgator cPanel has been replaced with the MultiPHP Manager. I’m not sure when the change happened – functionally, MultiPHP Manager does what PHP Selector did – edits the Apache .htaccess configuration for you, allowing you to easily change the active PHP version.
I tried to use it when WordPress was complaining about an outdated PHP version, and it didn’t really work how I expected it to.
The MultiPHP Manager is available in the Hostgator cPanel.
Hostgator’s MultiPHP Manager replaced the PHP Selector
The tool shows you the default PHP version (PHP 5.4) and has a section for applying PHP versions to specific domains.
Hostgator’s supported PHP versions are 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3 – though PHP 7.4 is the current latest-and-greatest version.
Hostgator PHP versions in the new MultiPHP Manager
The “ea-” prefix is the cPanel EasyApache versions of PHP. AFAIK they are functionally identical to your “vanilla” PHP versions. Details about EasyApache be found here.
Hostgator is a very popular hosting provider for WordPress. If you haven’t manually updated your PHP version (by editing the .htaccess) or used one of the cPanel controls, the WordPress dashboard will complain…
WordPress needs the latest PHP version – 7.3 is the newest on Hostgator
I used the tool to update my domain’s PHP version to 7.3. It successfully “took” but I was now getting an error about the PHP MySQL extension and a path being invalid.
The trick to fixing this error was to remove any sections in the domain folder’s .htaccess file…
# Use PHP71 as default
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php71 .php
<IfModule mod_suphp.c>
suPHP_ConfigPath /opt/php71/lib
</IfModule>
I removed those sections, but WordPress still gave an error.
The trick is that there’s a .htaccess file in the root folder too, that seems to override any sub-folder below it – edit THAT file’s sections to not include old PHP handlers, and you’ll be up and running again.
I’ve just applied “2019-08 Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Version 1903 for x64-based Systems”, aka KB4512941 to my Microsoft Windows Surface Book 2 – after my last attempt at updating the SB2 I have become very cautious about large updates to this hardware, even avoiding updating the video drivers.
Per the release notes, I don’t see anything related to any of the issues I’ve been having (e.g. screen flickering, and the Nvidia GPU being used for 3D apps even when I set it to use that GPU in the Nvidia control panel)
There are other issues that don’t seem to be mentioned in the patch notes. I’ll update this post further if/when I get any tangible results.
I got an error that says “Please resolve before detaching” when I try to detach the screen on my Surface Book 2 using the detach button.
TLDR; When I originally posted this in 2019, the only fix was to reinstall Windows, resetting to version 10.0.18362 (Build 18362). This fixed this issue. For various reasons in January 2020 I reset the Surface again to 1909 (OS build 18363.657) and the error message about SurfaceDTX.exe is back!
Original post below…
I’m currently running Windows 10 Pro Insider Preview, version 10.0.18950 Build 18950 on my Surface Book 2. When I try to detach the tablet/screen portion from the keyboard base, I frequently encounter a series of messages that prevent the detachment to be successful.
The first error message comes up in the system tray…
Please resolve before detaching – The following may need to be closed in order to detach. Any unsaved changes will be lost – Additional User Sessions Active
I dismiss the error message by clicking the “Additional User Sessions Active”. Then, a dialog box will be displayed…
Surface DTX – Additional User Sessions Active – Someone else is still using this PC. If you continue, they could lose unsaved work.
After this, I’m prompted by User Access Control. Once I allow it, the screen will detach.
I’m going through the different logs in Event Viewer to diagnose the problem. Some quick Google searches reveal possible issues with the discreet GPU aka the “dGPU” – a thread on reddit from over ago is a dead end, too.
I’ve tried resetting the NVIDIA GPU’s settings to default, so the software will decide when and how to use the GPU.
Snappy Driver Installer still indicates that there’s a lot of potential drivers I could install, however I’m opting to only allow whatever Windows Update sends my way. SDI has been great on my desktop – it seems to cause nothing but problems with more specialized hardware like the Surface Book!
It seems that there’s an edge case with Windows 10, Google Chrome browser, and the built-in tab Chromecast functionality that causes debugging info to get displayed on the television you’re casting to. I found a thread on reddit from a few months ago where someone was having the same problem. It doesn’t seem to be wide spread, which sucks, because not even Google knew what to tell me.
The specific problem is that if you select a tab in Chrome to cast from, you will see a small print out of the frame rate, screen resolution, and a timer in the lower right hand corner of your TV, over the tab’s stream.
There’s no menu in Chrome to enable or disable this debug stream info from being displayed.
I noticed this a few days ago. As of this post I’m running Chrome version 75.0.3770.142 (Official Build) (64-bit), which isn’t special – surprisingly I got into a chat with Google Chromecast support very quickly. Unfortunately the tech I spoke with had NO clue how or why this was happening. After being told to talk to Vizio support (Google said it must be a Vizio firmware problem, not a Google problem…) we determined it’s neither.
I’m using Windows 10 Pro Insider Preview, version 10.0.18945 Build 18945. Something about the combination of Windows, Chrome, and television is causing this issue. Google had nothing useful to say after I told them Vizio said my television’s firmware hadn’t been updated since May, so it wasn’t them.
The issue only seems to happen in Windows. Casting a tab from Chrome running on my MacBook didn’t show the debug info.
It only seems to show up when you cast an entire tab – YouTube videos cast to the TV display as expected.
Anyway, I’ll update this post if anything about this annoying situation changes.
I wanted a simple home security camera system. Something brainless to set up and manage – enough to monitor the front gate of where I live, with some additional coverage for the back yard. After a lot of research I bought the Blink wireless, battery camera system – specifically the Blink XT Camera System, which are the cameras designed to be used outside.
I bought a pack of five cameras and two Blink sync modules.
Two sync modules were necessary because of the location of my wifi router and the distance between the cameras, the modules, and the router.
I won’t recap all the stats and specs, those are all on the Blink camera website, but in brief, I bought the system beacuse the Blink XT cameras are wireless, water and weather-proof, run on two lithium double batteries, and have a phone app with free video clip recording storage. It’s a simple approach to a home security system that should work for most use cases.
USB port on Blink Sync Module
The Blink sync module has a USB port on the side. Apparently it provides power out – the community portal has more discussion about it. The port is supposed to be for future, undefined capability. The sync module also has a microUSB port for the wall power charger. People have had success running the sync module off a battery or even a solar panel.
Anyway, I noticed that the Blink cameras also have a micro-USB port, and the documentation stated that the camera could be powered over USB. After some poking around, I got details on how this port can actually be used.
The USB port on the Blink XT camera conforms to the USB 2.0 specification. Specifically, the XT camera can run off 5 watts at 1 amp, up to 5 meters in USB cable length. Technically this is 16 feet and 5 inches maximum, but that might lead to power loss – and even though the XT camera is sealed up, using it with a cable outside negates the full weatherproofing because of the USB hole in the back cover has no rubber seal protecting it. Batteries are best unless you want to roll the dice with some diaelectric sealant.
Add USB Storage to the Blink Camera?
I’ve had some questions about using the Blink module’s USB port for extra storage. As far as I know, this is not possible. The USB port doesn’t let you pop a thumb or flash drive, or an external USB hard drive in to store video, unfortunately. So no, you can’t use the USB port in this way.
