Lumia 640XL Upgraded to Windows 10

Hey…

Finally I upgraded my Lumia 640 XL OS to Windows 10 and I am loving it. Somehow I hate Android for many reason. That apart, I was eagerly waiting for this update/upgrade.

I read that it needed Update Adviser app on Lumia, hence I installed it. it checked for space and other prerequisites and started downloading update. I removed some apps, deleted maps and I was quickly ready for update.

Update went very smooth than expected. new experience is really very nice. Overall user interface, MS Apps and many more are new and exciting. I got many things which I wished for. Flashlight was one of them. Now I plan explore and write it here.

Waiting for Lumia 640 XL OS Upgrade

I am not eagerly waiting for updating my Lumia 640 XL to Windows 10. As per various reference on internet. Windows 10 Mobile is expected in December 2015. I have not tried Windows Insider options as it may hamper my day to day use. But I am very much excited to see my Phone getting updated to Windows 10.

I am already loving Cortana and some other features which Updated Windows 10 offers on desktop. My laptop upgrade was smooth and hence expecting same with my Lumia.

 

-Ashish

Upgraded to Windows 10

I was planning to upgrade my Lenovo Netbook to Dell Laptop in recent future. It had Windows 7. My needs were browsing, emails, MS Office and little bit of my experiments with various applications. There was no urgent need to move away from netbook.

Mean while, I bought Lumia 520 in 2013 and recently upgraded to Lumia 640 XL. I realized that I am on right path and very soon need devices which sync with each other to reduce data duplication. Windows OS was perfect solution and hence I decided to wait for Windows 10.

On 29th July evening, I started downloading Windows 10 Upgrade as I reserved it earlier. I could not download it overnight due to lower download speed at my home. Hence continued it on 31st. Finally, it downloaded everything and started upgrade process.

The upgrade process was very smooth and did not need technical knowledge at all. It got upgraded overnight and I logged in to my netbook early morning. I am loving the new experience. Now, I am waiting for my Lumia to get upgraded to Windows 10.

I hope, I will not change my devices now unless any hardware fails.

-Ashish

Microsoft and Others

Some time back I was one of the computer users who used to hate Microsoft Applications and including operating systems. Windows Vista was the main reason. But these days I am liking Microsoft applications.

I liked two products of Microsoft. One is licensed and other is like open source. I am one of the lovers of Content Management Systems (CMS). In open source products, I like Drupal the most. I still love it for its features. But I like Microsoft SharePoint as well. Though I am a end user or just a portal administrator but still I liked it a lot. It is always debated that can it fight with PLM? Answer is NO. But still it can replace many features of PLM like Document Management, Workflows or any typical information management feature. I liked Custom Lists feature a lot. One does not need programming experience at all. Just some added commonsense is enough to create very useful custom list which can reduce your lot of data management efforts. As I always say, we need to integrate PLM and SharePoint with some social networking features. In this area, I do not see Google anywhere. I know they have many things for corporates but you need internet connectivity. I think in organizations where internet is still under control, SharePoint is the best option to have company intranet.

Another Product I like is Microsoft WebMatrix. I am still a novice in WebMatrix but it is a good tool who want to experiment with web applications. Basically Microsoft has given us a tool to experiment without much programming knowledge or a monopoly feel. Earlier I used XAMPP for this purpose but it needs some amount of basic knowledge of how web applications work. WebMatrix is just wonderful. It does all background work and one does not need to worry about Database Server, WebServer and so on. It just simple helps you to download some of the templates based tools and configures it for you on your localhost. Then you can publish your site with world using WebMatrix or just keep on experimenting locally. Here too, I see Google not much ahead. Google gives some good site development features but everything is static. Yes, Google Apps is there but again you need programming knowledge.

I liked these two products. May be sometime in future I will write more about features in these Products. I wish Microsoft keeps doing this good work.

thanks and regards
Ashish Kulkarni

Network Mapping on command line on Windows

Mapping a network drive on windows is very easy using UI tools. It goes this way…

1. Open Windows explorer
2. Go to Tools – Map Network Drive
3. On new window select a letter as Mapped Network Drive (e.g. P: )
4.  Select a network folder by browsing or just paste network path (e.g. \\hostname\FolderName) and click on Finish

Now you can see a new Drive in your explorer. But what if you want map a drive through a batch script? Yeah, you need to know a command to map network drive from command line. It goes this way.

To map a network drive from command line you need 2 inputs same as above.

1. Drive Name (e.g. P: )
2. Network Path (e.g. \\hostname\FolderName)

Now follow the steps below

1. Go to run and type cmd
2. On command line enter the following command

• subst \\hostname\FolderName P:

This will map your network drive. Now to make sure that you have mapped it correctly, type drive name and hit enter. E.g. P: hit enter. Now user dir command to list all directories and files. You can also go to explorer and check that new drive is available.

– Ashish Kulkarni

How to Use the Traceroute Command

Today, we were sitting in canteen and discussing about having basic knowledge about Networking. Everyone should have basic knowledge of networking. But that knowledge ends with how to know your IP Address or getting to know MAC Address.

In today’s world we live on internet and its nothing but a web of computers which is nothing but computer network. Some time back I knew hot to reach to a computer to which actually I am pointing to. But I could not recollect it today. So I used Google :).

When we connect to a computer using some address like www.hostname.com, we actually go through a series of routers and computers and finally reach to that host. Now how to find the route through which I get to this host? So here is a simple command on Windows – "tracert" followed by address. as give below

tracert www.google.com

This command will give me number of hopping points through which I will finally reach the computer on which this website is hosted. So this is what I revised ( as I knew it earlier 🙂 ) today. So this post is to not to forget this command again.

Here is the output of command

tracert http://www.indiagetonline.in

Tracing route to ghs.l.google.com [209.85.175.121]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     1 ms     1 ms     1 ms  192.168.1.1
  2    25 ms    23 ms    23 ms  117.195.64.1
  3    24 ms    22 ms    23 ms  218.248.164.74
  4    60 ms    60 ms    59 ms  218.248.255.82
  5    63 ms    55 ms    55 ms  59.163.206.161.static.chennai.vsnl.net.in [59.163.206.161]
  6    57 ms    56 ms    56 ms  172.31.35.198
  7     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  8    56 ms    56 ms    56 ms  59.163.25.46.static.vsnl.net.in [59.163.25.46]
  9    56 ms    55 ms    55 ms  180.87.36.53
10    60 ms    56 ms    56 ms  if-7-2.tcore1.MLV-Mumbai.as6453.net [180.87.36.33]
11    56 ms    58 ms    57 ms  if-2-2.tcore2.MLV-Mumbai.as6453.net [180.87.38.2]
12    57 ms    55 ms    56 ms  216.6.13.14
13    61 ms    56 ms    55 ms  209.85.241.52
14    84 ms    82 ms    72 ms  209.85.251.95
15   201 ms   202 ms   204 ms  66.249.94.38
16   127 ms   202 ms   203 ms  209.85.241.173
17   140 ms   200 ms   205 ms  66.249.94.126
18   142 ms   202 ms   202 ms  nx-in-f121.1e100.net [209.85.175.121]

Trace complete.

Happy tracing. :)​

Secured Sites and Issues with Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows Operating Systems, may of us love for user experience and many of us like me hate it. But still we use it. I am using Windows Vista on my HP Pavilion DV9731TX. I faced many hardware related issues. But all were fixed by HP under warranty.

Few days before, I discovered that I cannot access my office webmail. Initially I thought that there was some issue with office network or mail server. I called helpdesk. They said, we will look into it. After some time I check with my friends in office and they could access the site. So now, it was clear that problem was at my end. May be some issue with IE8. So I opened firefox, but I discovered that same thing is happening with other browsers too. So I started playing with browser setting, I restored original setting. But still same issue.

Then I decided to give a try with other https sites. At this point I discovered that I cannot access any secured site. i.e. https sites. I was frustrated. I called some friends, one of them said there might be some issue with your broadband connection. Other one was very sure that it is related to some virus stuff and update virus definitions. At the same time, how can I forget my best internet friend Google? So I started searching. I found many references on MS support site that IE8 has some issues with https, they gave 7 methods, I  almost tried each of them. Last one was to restore best setting for OS, So I tried a restore point dated a week back when I could access sites. But It did not work. So I started virus scan and it could not run properly, It was stopping when it was scanning windows systems files. So a new problem. System hangs frequently. By this time I got frustrated.

Now tried some other way, I used Ubuntu 11.04 Live CD. Still no success. So Finally I called HP Support. After completing all formalities, we started discussing real issue. Guy was very cooperative initially. But we could not solve issue. So he started insisting me that you restore operating system and it will solve your issue. I argued with him that why should I do that and lose my application setup? He did not agree and said this is the only option. So I thanked him and ended the call.

I thought if I have to restore factory setting then why not to give a try on my own? So I restarted system, pressed F11, and started checking system. It asked for partition and hence I gave C drive as system partition. It started checking and after 17% completion, I gave message that there were some issue in sector related to file irprops.clp. I recollected that Virus Scan was hanging when this file scan started. In few minutes it said, it replaced this file and moved ahead. It took a long time to finish complete check. Then I simply restarted system, and clicked on my office webmail shortcut. Yahooooo. It worked.  I verified with other secured sites and everything was fine as it was. So there was No Virus issue, No system restore and no use of customer support centre. it simply running check disc utility.  

I hope if you face any such problem, this article may help you to resolve issue. If you need any help, get in touch with me. So happy secured site surfing.