Create a Password Protected PDF

I've been having a huge number of issues with sending secure files. Some institutions only accept protected PDFs.

This link show that it is actually really simple to do this in Microsoft Word 2013 or later. This really saved me since I don't have Adobe Acrobat and I could not find any docs on if it could be done in foxit reader

Remove Chrome AutoComplete

Quick note about removing Chrome Auto Complete Suggestions

This is needed for a few reasons

• Accidentally put in password for user name
• Incorrect information input
• Just find it annoying

Highlight it and then do a Shift+Delete

Original Source: Link

Must Have Accessories for Razer Edge Pro

Making a quick note of good accessories to grab if you missed all the actual accessories:

• Amazon Basics Tablet Stand 
• Logitech K810 Keyboard
• Razer Orochi Mouse 
• Intel 7260AC Wireless Card

WMI Provider Host CPU Usage High with Windows 10 Installation

I just upgraded a computer to Windows 10 and I get WMI Provider Host running between 15-25% CPU Utilization.

I fixed this issue by following this thread

The bottom line is:

1. Open Event Viewer from "Windows + X"
2. Applications and Service Logs > Microsoft > Windows > WMI Activity
3. Look for ClientProcessID in the Error Report
4. Find the process with the matching process ID under Task Manager > Services
5. Remove it

In my case it was "HP Wireless Support Assistant" and "HP Software Framework Service"

Planahead 14.7: Abnormal program termination (EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION)

May this be a lesson to future engineers working on critical applications. Always document your work especially right after crunch time. I ran into a problem with Xilinx Tools over a full year ago and managed to solve the issue. Skip forward to present day, I forgot I had solved the issue and then had to go through a huge painful process to re-solve it.

Problem: When I open a specific project ISE14.7 Crashes immediately only leaving the following message in the cmd window:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Abnormal program termination (EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION)
Please check 'C:/Users/user1/AppData/Roaming/Xilinx/PlanAhead/hs_err_pid7568.l
og' for details
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When I check the log I see this:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#
# An unexpected error has occurred (EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION)
#
Stack:
no stack trace available, please use hs_err_<pid>.dmp instead.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Turns out, that the solution is to roll back to a different version of the tools, for me, synthesizing in 14.7 and implementing in 14.2 worked out fine.

Create a Desktop Icon to Rotate the Screen

So Windows 10 kind of breaks the Razer Edge's Drivers for auto-rotation sadly. I still want to use my tablet like a tablet, and I won't always have my keyboard to do ctrl+alt+arrow key. I made a desktop shortcut to do it.

For the shortcut (errrr .bat file) you need this program.

http://noeld.com/programs.asp#Display

Steps:

1. Open Notepad
2. Extract Display to C:\ or change the address in the script
3. Put this in notepad:

start C:\display.exe -device 1 -rotate 90 /toggle
exit

1. Save it as "anythingyouwant.bat"
2. Put that .bat on your desktop and click when desired
3. Rejoice! 

Grabbed the ideas from this link and just made it a batch script (http://superuser.com/questions/447155/how-do-i-set-up-a-hotkey-or-shortcut-to-rotate-my-screen-in-windows) if you are having issues, try running it in the cmd window first to see what it says

Windows 10 Upgrade for Razer Edge Pro

I'll just say this. I was tired of Windows 8, I really missed my start menu. Windows 10 brought it back!

I did a fresh install of Windows 8.1 on my Razer Edge Pro, and upgraded flawlessly to Windows 10 using their migration button in the task menu. As noted in the Razer Insider forum posts, the Auto-rotation feature will be disabled because Windows 10 won't be able to find the drivers for the sensors sadly.

One issue I encountered was with the Windows 10 installation itself I got error "Windows Update Installation Failure 80240020"

This was solved for me using this thread: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-windows_install/windows-update-installation-failure-80240020/d695e827-9774-4e10-8972-df8d51a7bb51?auth=1

The summary is:

1. Locate the registry key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\OSUpgrade]
2. It should exist, but if not, create it.
3. Create a new DWORD (32-bit) Value with Name = "AllowOSUpgrade” (without the quotes), and set the Value = 0x00000001.

I also needed to load the cmd prompt and do the auwuclt.exe/updatenow trick.

uMod Could Not Send to Game, Could not find hash, maybe file is not named as *_HASH.dds

So I actually ran into this when changing some textures in Diablo III using uMod. All the textures I had previously worked, so as you can imagine I was surprised to get the error. I think it should have been much simpler to find the solution, basically, if you are getting this error....it is likely the texture you are trying to replace is not present. In the case of Diablo III the textures were renamed. I ended up hunting down the textures manually.

Skyrim Crashes to Desktop (CTD) when looting chests or opening bodies

This actually happened to me when I was trying to click on the body (Gunjar's body) in the tutorial. I ended loading another save file and discovered it occurred when even trying to open chests. I read a bunch of posts and many suggested it could be one of the following:

• Mod Load Order 
• Conflicts with Animation Skeleton (X32 Max Skeleton)
• Corrupt Save
• Verifying Configuration for missing files with Steam
• Defrag Machine
• Video Quality Settings 
• SkyUI 
• Heavily Scripted Mods, FNIS etc...

Here is a good reference post: http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/2076864-ctd-when-entering-helgen-keep/

Post #3 more or less had my issue

Turned out there was actually only one issue in that huge list above, the culprit was SkyUI. I had the really old SkyUI and when I updated to the newer SkyUI I didn't fully uninstall the older version and it was having conflicts since some files were moved to the .esp of the new SkyUI where they were folders before. I deleted the old SkyUI stuff and I haven't had a problem since!

PTC Windchill Predictions FTA Copy Over Entire Tree Model

Quick note,

If you need to make a copy of the entire tree:

View > Project Properties
Click on the project you want to make a copy of under the "System" category of the model
>Copy Files
>Paste Files

And you will see another version of your project with the (1) next to it.

PTC Windchill Solutions won't start with Error "Could not connect to net.tcp://:/Relex.Security/IAccessManager"

Problem: Message "Could not connect to net.tcp://<host-name>:<port>/Relex.Security/IAccessManager" appears when launching PTC 

Solution: The PTC Forums describe the issue at Document CS192106, however, the issue for me turned out to be that not all the PTC Windchill Services were running. 

To check: Click the windows button and type "services.msc" in the services window go down to the main PTC serices: Alert Services, Long Running Task Service, Object Broker Services, Search Indexer Service, and make sure they are all started

Sync Windoiws Phone Asana Calendars with Gmail Account

This is to first sync Asana with Google Calendars, and then sync that with the windows phone

1. Sync Asana with Google Calendars: https://asana.com/guide/help/projects/calendar
2. Change google sync settings to allow the new calendar to sync: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/how-to/wp8/email-and-calendar/sync-my-calendars 
3. The specific link is here: https://www.google.com/calendar/syncselect 

Hardware Platform does not update in Xilinx SDK after Export to SDK is selected

Been having an issue where I export to SDK but the bitstream and the hardware platform is not updating correctly. Xilinx has an AR record for this, but they don't have a solution to update the platform, they just tell you a work around, see below:

AR# 36390
12.1 EDK - Export to SDK does not update the bit file in the workspace if hardware XML is not updated


Description
When only the UCF file is modified in the EDK project, the "Export to SDK" function updates the new bit file in the "SDK\SDK_Export" directory. However, the bit file in "SDK\SDK_Workspace_35\hw_platform_0" is not updated. Since "SDK\SDK_Workspace_35\hw_platform_0" is the default directory that "Program FPGA" takes, the FPGA function did not change if you program FPGA within SDK after the export.
Solution
To work around this issue, you can perform either of these steps manually:
Point the "Program FPGA" to the bit file in the EDK project implementation directory, or the SDK\SDK_Export directory.
Copy the bit file from SDK\SDK_Export toSDK\SDK_Workspace_35.

Dane-Elec Corp. / Gigastone Customer Support

I thought I would share my experience with Dane-Elec Corp customer support.

Background:
I got a P2S-90S "Universal Mobile Charger" for Christmas this year as a gift. Unfortunately for me, the charging USB micro port on the unit snapped off and fell inside the device. Even more unlucky, I didn't have a receipt or even know where it was purchased. I initially sent out an email to service@gigastone.com since I did some research and according to the website for the product, there was a 1-year warranty (http://www.gigastone.com.tw/EN/product/c/4/n2/100). I sent them an email with pictures of the damaged unit and received no response for several days. I wasn't optimistic at that point since I figured they would be one of those companies that ignored small requests like this (thankfully I would be wrong!). Anyway 20 days later I resent the email, but without the pictures, and they must have a web filter rule for blocking emails with attachments, because this time they responded the very next day. The instructions were basically to ship it back to them and package the unit. Unfortunately, they didn't cover shipping, but hey, you can't get everything. I shipped it off to them, and about two weeks later I did get a brand new replacement unit!


Take Away:
Dane-Elec Corp / Gigastone has some pretty great customer service, and they totally do take care of smaller issues like mine. Just make sure when you contact them, don't include attachments. It is great companies like this one still care about customer support.

DIFF_TERM does not show up on .pad report

I was trying to add internal device differential termination to my design over pre-existing differential pairs.

I was following the 7 Series SelectIO Resource Guide which said:

"The DIFF_TERM attribute can be specified in the UCF constraints file or by setting the appropriate value in the generic map (VHDL) or in-line parameter (Verilog) of the instantiated IBUFDS, IBUFGDS, IBUFDS_DIFF_OUT, or IOBUFDS_DIFF_OUT primitives."

I tried adding the DIFF_TERM as an INST in the Constraints file but I didn't see anything happen in the .pad report. Turns out that this is a bug and you can actually set DIFF term in the UCF, the .pad report won't ever report it. I found:

http://forums.xilinx.com/t5/7-Series-FPGAs/How-do-I-know-if-DIFF-TERM-is-set-to-be-TRUE-correctly-in-Vivado/td-p/454472

and another link, which both suggested to check the pad's properties to see if it was checked.

I also confirmed that for the pins I did NOT add DIFF_TERM, they did not have the box checked.


Lastly, when I added the DIFF_TERM I made a new entry with INST replacing net for the same name:

http://forums.xilinx.com/t5/Timing-Analysis/NET-vs-INST/td-p/218287

Renew PTC Windchill Product License File

Quick Mental Note:

I have Windchill Quality Solutions 10.2

When you get a new license, what can happen is the License Management Representative will typically send you a license file. Depending on your email provider these are sometimes parsed out as .eml files.

Email the representative that contacted you and ask for *.txt version files

Navigate to this Directory once you have the txt files:

C:\Program Files (x86)\PTC\PTC Windchill Quality Solutions 10.2\PTC License Server Setup

After a quick UAC prompt it should look like this. Click on  PTC License Server



Click on the folder to browse and then go to the .txt file



Click install. and you should be good to go.