As you know, Windows 10 is equipped with a Mobile Hotspot feature that allows users to share the existing internet connections to other devices over Wi-Fi. However, one of the downsides to this feature is that it does not stay on if there are no devices connected to it for over five minutes. In other words, if there are no devices connected to the mobile hotspot for five minutes, it will turn off automatically. Thus, if you want the mobile hotspot to stay turned on, then you’ve come to the right place as this post will walk you through how to stop the Mobile Hotspot from turning off in Windows 10.
There are two scenarios tackled in this post wherein the Mobile Hotspot feature turns off automatically and where the hotspot disables when there is no internet connection. To remedy these scenarios, you can try turning off the power saving feature or use a PowerShell command to change the “PeerlessTimeoutEnabled” settings or increase the Mobile Hotspot idle timeout settings. You could also increase the timeout period when a cellular connection is not available or disable the Wi-Fi and network adapter power management options. For detailed instructions, refer to each one of the given options below.
Option 1 – Try turning off the power saving feature
The first solution you can check out is to turn off the power-saving feature. To do so, follow these steps:
Open the Settings app and go to Network & Internet and from there, click on the Mobile Hotspot option.
Next, toggle the “Share my Internet connection with other devices” option.
After that, toggle the “When no devices are connected, automatically turn off mobile hotspot” option.
Option 2 – Execute a command in PowerShell
The next option you can try to keep the mobile hotspot turned on is through a command in PowerShell. To get started, follow these steps:
Tap the Win + X keys and select the “Windows PowerShell (Admin)” option.
Next, execute the following command to make sure that the Mobile Hotspot stays on even when no devices are connected to it:
After the command is executed, here is what the script is doing in the background:
It stops the Mobile Hotspot service (icssvc).
It navigates to this registry path (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesicssvcSettings) and creates a DWORD key named “PeerlessTimeoutEnabled” which has a value of 0.
It then restarts the Mobile Hotspot Service (icssvc).
Option 3 – Try increasing the Mobile Hotspot idle timeout settings
Another option you can try is to increase the idle timeout settings of the mobile hotspot. In case you don’t know, the default timeout when there’s no active connection is about five minutes. So if you don’t want to keep it on always but want to keep it on longer than five minutes, then this option is for you. All you have to do is change the same key (PeerlessTimeout) as mentioned above, at a different location. In fact, you can change it to a maximum of 120 minutes. To give this a try, follow these steps:
Tap the Win + R keys to open the Run dialog box and type “Regedit” in the field and then tap Enter to open the Registry Editor.
Next, navigate to this registry path: HKLMSystemControlSet001ServicesICSSVCSettingsPeerlessTimeout
From there, change its value to anywhere between 1 up to 120.
Once done, exit the Registry Editor and restart your computer.
Option 4 – Try increasing the timeout period when a cellular connection is not available
There are many times when you want to connect devices so it becomes part of the network. And as pointed out, the Mobile Hotspot turns off automatically when there is no internet or mobile data but when you use a registry setting, you can change any value between 1 and 60 inclusive.
Tap the Win + R keys to open the Run dialog box and type “Regedit” in the field and then tap Enter to open the Registry Editor.
Next, navigate to this registry path: HKLMSystemControlSet001ServicesICSSVCSettingsPublicConnectionTimeout
From there, set the value of the “Timeout” key between 1 and 60.
After that, close the Registry Editor and restart your PC.
Option 5 – Try to disable the Wi-Fi and Network adapter in Power Management options
As you know, the Wi-Fi adapter and the network devices have properties that will turn off when on battery and when it’s not used for a long time so you can try to disable these options.
Tap the Win + X + M keys to open the Device Manager.
Next, expand the list of Network devices and select the Wi-Fi adapter.
After that, go to the Power Management tab and make sure that anything related to power saving should be turned off. This will ensure that none of the network devices will turn off the Mobile Hotspot or trigger anything that will do that.
If you are trying to upgrade your computer but encounter the Windows Update Error 0x800F081F – 0x20003 instead, then read on as this post will guide you in fixing this Windows Update error. This kind of error is commonly encountered when upgrading your copy of Windows 10 and is caused by errors with various developer-related settings that are being enabled in the system.
When you encounter Windows Update Error 0x800F081F – 0x20003, you will see either of these error messages:
“We couldn’t install Windows 10. The installation failed in the SAFE_OS phase with an error during INSTALL_UPDATES operation: Error 0x800F081F”“The installation failed in the Safe_OS phase with an error during apply_image operation: Error: 0x800f081f – 0x20003”
To fix this kind of Windows Update error, you need not use external programs but you can try to disable the Developer Mode, run the Windows Update troubleshooter or restart all the Windows Update-related services and components. For more details, refer to the options provided below.
Option 1 – Try to disable Developer Mode
You might have to disable Developer Mode to fix the Windows Update Error 0x800F081F – 0x20003. How? Refer to these steps:
Tap the Win + I keys on your keyboard to open the Settings app.
Next, go to Update & Security > For Developers.
From there, select the toggle for Sideload apps or Microsoft Store apps located on the right-side panel.
If you get any prompt, just click on Yes.
After that, navigate to Apps > Apps & features and then click on Optional features on the right-side panel.
Then scroll down to locate the Windows Developer Mode entry and select it and click on Uninstall.
Once you’re done uninstalling the Windows Developer Mode component, close the Settings app and restart your computer to apply the changes made.
Option 2 – Try to run the Windows Update Troubleshooter
You should also try to run the built-in Windows Update troubleshooter as it could help you resolve the Windows Update Error 0x800F081F – 0x20003. To run it, go to Settings and then select Troubleshoot from the options. From there, click on Windows Update and then click the “Run the troubleshooter” button. After that, follow the next on-screen instructions and you should be good to go.
Option 3 – Try restarting various Windows Update-related services and components
Tap the Win + X key combination and select Command Prompt (Admin) to open Command Prompt with admin privileges.
After opening Command Prompt, copy and paste each one of the commands listed below one by one and tap Enter right after you enter each command.
Once you’ve entered all the commands given above, they will stop all the Windows Update services that are running on your computer as well as clear the SoftwareDistribution folder, and reset the Catroot2 folder. Now you have to start all these Windows Update services you’ve just stopped by executing the following commands:
net start wuauserv
net start bits
net start appidsvc
net start cryptsvc
After that, restart your computer and try to run the setup again, and see if the error is now fixed.
Mapi32.dll is a Windows Messaging Application Programming Interface that enables Windows to perform various email functions and launch messaging programs like Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Office. The inability of the interface to execute email functions properly results in the Mapi32.dll Outlook Error.
This error occurs mostly when you are attempting to upgrade the operating system to a new version.
Solution
Error Causes
The common causes of the Mapi32.dll Outlook Error during the OS upgrade are:
Damaged or Corrupt Outlook user profile
The software is overwritten by some other program
Outlook PST file corruption
The Mapi32.dll Outlook Error message is displayed in either of the following forms:
Mapi32.dll is missing
Cannot start Microsoft Office Outlook. Mapi32.dll is corrupt or the wrong version.
Mapi32.dll was not found
Mail is not installed
Further Information and Manual Repair
So, what if you experience this issue and how do you fix it? Well, first there is no need to panic as Microsoft has recognized this issue and provided adequate solutions to fix this problem in no time.
However, to ensure the Mapi32.dll Outlook error is a quick fix, you must first understand the cause of the issue and the message displayed on the screen.
Let’s say the errors occur because your Outlook profile is corrupt. In this scenario, the best solution is to create a new Outlook profile. Regardless of whether you have Windows Vista or XP, to create your new Outlook profile, first, you will have to click on the Control Panel, then User Account, and then Mail. Once you click on the Mail tab, the mail set up dialog box will open. In this dialog box there will be a ‘Show Profiles’ tab, click and then click the Add tab that appears next. Now type the name for your new Outlook profile and then click ‘OK’. After that, add an email account to go with the profile.
If Mapi32.dll is missing or corrupt, you will have to run ‘Fixmapi.exe’ to resolve the problem. It is located in the System32 folder inside the Windows directory in Windows Explorer.
Therefore, first start Windows Explorer and then locate the following folder on your computer: C: /Program Files/Common Files/System/Msmapi1033
Now find Fixmapi.exe and double click it
After that locate the Mapi32.dll file and rename it to MSmapi32.old and press enter.
Restart your computer when finished.
A word of advice for computer users is to scan for viruses with an antivirus program or a registry cleaner regularly to prevent the Mapi32.dll Outlook error from occurring in the first place. Viruses often latch onto .dll files and corrupt them.
It’s always best to have a forward-looking approach.
Stable Diffusion is a machine learning model developed by Stability AI to generate digital images from natural language descriptions. The model can be used for different tasks like generating image-to-image translations guided by text prompts and upscaling images.
Unlike competing models like DALL-E, Stable Diffusion is open source and does not artificially limit the images it produces. Stable diffusion was trained on a subset of the LAION-Aesthetics V2 data set. It can run on most consumer hardware equipped with a modest GPU and was hailed by PC World as "the next killer app for your PC".
Since Stable Diffusion is run locally and not in the cloud, as mentioned there is no limit to the number of images that you can produce but in order to use it you will have to get down a little dirty with setting your PC environment for it since it is not really an application, it is a command line text based descriptor that will use python to generate your images, so there is no install nor GUI.
In this guide, we will show you how to both install and run Stable Diffusion on your local PC so you can start producing some cool images all by yourself.
Hardware and software requirements
Make no mistake, Stable Diffusion will not run on a potato PC, in order to harvest the power of AI-generated imagery this is what you will need:
A GPU with at least 4GB of VRAM
10GB of hard disk space
Python and libraries (Miniconda3 installer will install everything you need)
The Stable Diffusion files
Git
Any OS (Windows, Linux, macOS)
Installing components
For this tutorial, we are covering the installation and running of Stable Diffusion on Windows PC. The steps presented here are presented in a way that installation can be performed on any operating system but precise instructions will be for Windows OS.
GIT
The first thing to do is to install GIT. It is a tool that will let you easily maintain and install repos from the internet. to install it go to: https://git-scm.com/ and click on download. Follow the instructions for your version of the operating system. If you are a developer you are familiar with GIT and if you already have it installed you can skip this step.
One thing that is important when installing GIT locally is to select to use it via the command line (the second option that says "Git from the command line and also from 3rd-party software").
Miniconda3
Now when we have GIT installed, next thing is to use Miniconda3 to install python and all required libraries that are needed. Get the installer at: https://docs.conda.io/en/latest/miniconda.html
Miniconda3 is basically an easy installer so you do not have to install tons of stuff manually from different websites and sources, it is nicely packaged in the installer that will take care of everything.
Stable Diffusion
After the previous two steps, we are ready now to actually install Stable Diffusion. Go to https://huggingface.co/CompVis/stable-diffusion#model-access and install the latest library (as of the writing of this article currently it is stable-diffusion-v1-4-original, the last one on the right), the library is almost 5GB in size so be prepared for big download.
Once downloaded click on the Windows start button and type in Miniconda3 and click on open. Create a folder and name it how you want on a drive of your choice. For this example, we will install it all in disk C under folder AI_art, follow the instructions below but use your own names and destination instead. Do not close Minicoda3 after typing commands!!!
cd c:/
mkdir AI_art
cd AI_art
Extract GitHub files that you have downloaded into your new folder and get back to Minicoda3 and type the next commands:
Let the whole process finish, some files are large and it might take a while. After the whole process is finished and completed, copy the checkpoint file that you have downloaded into: C:\AI_art\stable-diffusion-main\models\ldm\stable-diffusion-v1
After the file is copied rename it to model.ckpt and you are finished.
Running Stable Diffusion
The created environment is needed in order to actually use Stable Diffusion to create images. Each time you want to use it you will have to run it, so go into Miniconda3, and inside it type:
conda activate ldm
cd C:\AI_art\stable-diffusion-main
after we are inside the folder call the script with the parameters:
python scripts/txt2img.py --prompt "TXT DESCRIPTION OF IMAGE THAT YOU WANT TO CREATE" --plms --n_iter 5 --n_samples 1
and that's it, your image is created and it is located in C:\AI_art\stable-diffusion-main\outputs\txt2img-samples\samples
Many of us are taking the google search engine for granted and it is no true that it has crawled in almost every spore of our digital lives but if we wanted a little more privacy? Do we have options or we are destined to use google and send our information to this company. What if we really wanted that our searches are well safe, secure, and private? We could try other search engines like BING but since BING belongs to Microsoft we would exchange only one company for another without making any progress in the privacy battle. Enter DuckDuckGo.
DuckDuckGo is a privacy-focused search engine that’s been online since 2008. Find websites, maps, videos, news, and more without tracking your searches and serving you targetted ads. It took DUckDuckGo as you can tell sometimes to gain ground and to be recognized but finally, it got the attention it deserves. Its big breakthrough happened in September of 2014 when Apple offered it as a default search engine in Safari and since it has gained more and more ground. It seems people care about their privacy after all.
Since then DuckDuckGo has been gaining ground and all the major browsers have integrated it as an option for a default search engine.
In this article, we will show you how to switch to DuckDuckGo and set it as your preferred search engine in all major browsers.
Google Chrome
Launch Chrome and click on the three dots in the upper right.
Choose settings.
Choose Search engine in the list on the left of the screen.
Click on the drop-down box next to Search engine used in the address bar and choose DuckDuckGo.
Mozilla Firefox
Launch Firefox, click on the three lines hamburger menu icon in the top-right corner of the window.
Click on Preferences.
Click on Search in the menu to the left of the screen.
Under Default Search Engine, click the drop-down box and choose DuckDuckGo.
Microsoft Edge
Click on the three dots menu button in the top-right corner of the window
Then select Settings.
Click on Privacy, Search and Services in the menu that appears on the left
Scroll down to the Services menu and choose Address bar and search.
Click the dropdown menu next to Search engine used in the address bar and choose DuckDuckGo.
Apple Safari
Click Safari in the menu bar at the top of the screen
Then click Preferences.
You can also use the Command+, shortcut to quickly bring up Safari’s Preferences.
Click on the Search tab, then choose DuckDuckGo under the Search engine drop-down box.
Opera
Click on the Settings cog button in the sidebar on the left of the screen.
Under Basic settings scroll down until you see Search engine and a drop-down box.
Select DuckDuckGo from the list.
System image backup error 0x807800A1 & 0x800423F3 appears when you are trying to create a system image backup and the operation fails to do so.
If you’re faced with any of these error codes, try our recommended solutions in the order presented below and resolve the issue.
To restart the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) on Windows 10, do the following:
Press ⊞ Windows + X to bring up the Windows menu.
Click on command prompt (admin)
In the command prompt window, type the commands below and hit Enter after each line:
net stop vssnet start vss
Once the commands execute successfully, try the system image backup again. The operation should complete successfully.
You need to also check if the Software Protection Service is disabled. If it is, then Start it and ensure that it is set to default which is Automatic (Delayed Started).
Create System Image using PowerShell
Command lines are less prone to errors provided the syntax is correct, unlike GUIs that can suffer a glitch every now and then.
To create a system image with PowerShell do the following:
Open the Windows PowerShell as administrator. To create a System Image in Windows 10 using PowerShell, you will have to run the Wbadmin command.
Inside the Powershell window type, then press Enter: wbadmin start backup-backup target: E:-include: C:-quiet-allCriticalE: is the target drive where you’re going to save the system image, and C: is the system root drive where Windows is currently installed
To extract the created system image, starting over from Windows 10 USB installation media, select advanced startup or open run and type: C: \ Windows \ System32 \ Shutdown.exe / r / o
Use third-party imaging software
If the previous two solutions have not managed to solve the issue there is always an option to use a third-party imaging solution. There are free open source and buying options offering various advantages each. Find out which one works best for you and use it.
If you suddenly encountered an error saying, “The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000005)” when you are using an application on your Windows 10 computer, read on as this post will provide you some potential fixes that could help you fix the error.
You can encounter the “The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000005)” error on many applications such as VLC, Chrome, Word, and any other executable files and even the operating system files. When you get this kind of error, you will see the following error message:
“The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000005). Click on OK to close the application.”
This kind of application error can occur due to several reasons which include damaged installation of the application or system files may have gotten corrupted or damaged. It could also be caused by a malware infection. There are a couple of suggestions provided in this post to help you resolve the error. You can try to run both a System File Checker scan and the DISM tool or reinstall the problematic application or repair-install Windows 10 as well as run a malware scan. Note that the options provided below do not have to be followed in sequence.
Option 1 – Try to run a System File Checker scan
As mentioned, the error could be due to corrupted or damaged system files and one of the ways you can fix that is by running a System File Checker or SFC scan on your computer. To do so, follow these steps:
In the Windows Start Search, type “command prompt” and right-click on Command Prompt from the search results, and then select the “Run as administrator” option.
After opening Command Prompt with admin privileges, type the “sfc /scannow” and tap Enter to execute it.
Once the scan is finished, restart your computer and see if the “The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000005)” error is fixed or not.
Option 2 – Run the DISM tool
You can try running the Deployment Imaging and Servicing Management or DISM tool to fix the application error. Using this built-in tool, you have various options such as the “/ScanHealth”, “/CheckHealth”, and “/RestoreHealth”.
Open the Command Prompt with admin privileges.
Then type in the following commands and make sure to hit Enter right after you type each one of them:
Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth
Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth
exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth
Do not close the window if the process takes a while as it will probably take a few minutes to finish.
Option 3 – Try reinstalling the application
You might also want to uninstall the application and download its latest working version and then install it back again. Note that when you do this, you will lose all your app data.
Option 4 – Try to repair install Windows 10
First, you have to click this link and then click the Download Tool Now button.
Next, click the “Use the tool to create installation media (USB flash drive, DVD, or ISO file)…” option and follow the next given instructions on the screen.
Now select the ISO file option in step 5.
After that, you should now have an ISO file.
Next, go to the location where you’ve downloaded the ISO file.
Then right-click on the Windows 10 ISO file and select the Open with option and then select File Explorer.
Now click on “setup.exe” and follow the next instructions that appear on the screen. When asked, you have to select either Nothing (clean install) or Keep personal files only option. Take note that you must not select the “Keep personal files, apps, and Windows settings”.
Option 5 – Try scanning your computer using Windows Defender
It is possible that your computer is infected with malware which could be why you’re getting the “The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000005)” error. Thus, you need to scan your computer using Windows Defender.
Tap the Win + I keys to open Update & Security.
Then click on the Windows Security option and open Windows Defender Security Center.
Next, click on Virus & threat protection > Run a new advanced scan.
Now make sure that Full Scan is selected from the menu and then click the Scan Now button to get started.
Why combining hard drives with storage spaces? Ok, I will admit it, I am a modern digital hamster when it comes to digital goods. I like to collect stuff and more than anything else I like to have all of that at the tip of my fingers. And how digital goods grow in size themselves (movies on Blu-ray are like 50GB each) and the collection grows in size single hard drive is starting to be completely obsolete when it comes to storage.
Sometimes we will need large storage for these kinds of personal collections, sometimes we will need it for work reasons. Whatever your reason might be Windows 10 is offering us a solution via Storage spaces.
Storage spaces is an integral part of Windows and it is meant as a tool to provide you with a RAID environment without a RAID controller. Of course, combining multiple hard drives via storage paces instead of RAID will not be so fast or stable but for home use of storing a large quantity of data is perfectly enough.
With Storage Spaces you will also have an option to reduce some space for increased security of data loss if by any chance one of your HDD fails.
How to Create a Storage Space
To create storage space in Windows, press ⊞ WINDOWS + R to open the run dialog.
In the run box type in Control Panel and press ENTERIn Control Panel find Storage Spaces and left-click on it.
Once storage spaces open, left-click on Create a new pool and storage spaceOnce you click on create new, you will be greeted with a list of hard drives you can use for this operation.
Please note that all hard drives you choose will be completely erased and formatted and then assign a single drive letter. Click on Create pool.
You will find yourself in new storage options where you can assign a drive letter, give storage space a name, etc.
Storage spaces types
One thing I would like to focus on here is resiliency type, when you expand the resiliency type drop-down menu you will see 4 options inside. Simple, Two-way mirror, Three-way mirrors, and Parity.
Simple: If you choose Simple as an option, you will have maximum hard drive space but no resiliency at all, meaning that if by any chance any of your hard drives malfunction, you are losing your data from that drive completely.
Two-way mirror: This option will save your data if one of your drives fails but you need at least 2 drives and storage space will be limited since some of it will be a safe backup option for the case of a drive failure. However if one of your drives fails, you can replace it in a second and keep on working as nothing happened.
Three-way mirror: This option similar to the previous one will offer you safe data-keeping from a hard drive failure. this option will save your data even if 2 hard drives malfunction but it will require having 5 of them connected in order to be able to choose this option.
Parity: Maybe the most popular option among people who want to have 2 or 3 drives merged but do not want to lose too much space of the two-way mirror option. It offers some protection and it does not take so much space as two-way does, let us say it is a kind of win-win situation.
Conclusion
I personally go for simple and have an important backup on optical drives but only for reason I could use more space, know that this way is requiring from me to always have a backup in optical media and that I will need to restore all of it back if even one HDD fails which could take time. But if this way is ok with you, go for it, you will have more space to use.
Facebook has an algorithm inside it that can recognize your face in pictures and videos which is meant to help people tag friends when they upload media into Facebook. It is a neat feature meant to help all Facebook users but what if we do not want to be detected in pictures and videos? What if we do not want to be tagged?
If you are one of the Facebook users that do not wish to be detected and recognized by Facebook in media keep on reading to find out how you can disable this option.
Open the Facebook website and log into your account.
Click on the arrow visible in the top menu bar.
Select the Settings & privacy option.
Click on the Settings option.
Switch to the Face recognition tab on the left-hand side.
Click the Edit button.
Select No from the drop-down list.
And you are done, you do not need to log out or restart facebook in order for changes to have an effect. Now you are free from face recognition and detection.
A new update to popular Microsoft PowerToys has brought a few new features that are aimed at speeding up the workflow.
The first new feature that was slid in is Always on top utility. With this cool utility, you can keep the window as the name suggests, always on top of other windows. To enable this cool feature all you have to do is press the key combination of ⊞ WINDOWS + CTRL + T and an active window will be now always on top of all other windows. To reverse and unlock this window from being always on top just press key combination again.
A second new feature is a really great one and my favorite thing to happen in power toys. Often we are making the search in our browsers to find stuff, things, maybe some explanations, information, etc. The newest update in power toys brings this to a whole new dimension. While you are on PC you just simply need to type ?? followed by questions like: ?? When doctor strange 2 is coming out and that will launch your default browser with your chosen search engine and provide you with the answer.
Third and final thing is G-code support in the file explorer preview pane and thumbnails, meaning that if you work with CNC equipment you can now have a thumbnail preview of the code itself inside File Explorer.
And that’s it for now, thank you for coming and reading, Take care and I hope to see you next time.
In the run box type in Control Panel and press ENTER
In Control Panel find Storage Spaces and left-click on it.
Once storage spaces open, left-click on Create a new pool and storage space
Once you click on create new, you will be greeted with a list of hard drives you can use for this operation.
Please note that all hard drives you choose will be completely erased and formatted and then assign a single drive letter. Click on Create pool.
You will find yourself in new storage options where you can assign a drive letter, give storage space a name, etc.
The first new feature that was slid in is Always on top utility. With this cool utility, you can keep the window as the name suggests, always on top of other windows. To enable this cool feature all you have to do is press the key combination of ⊞ WINDOWS + CTRL + T and an active window will be now always on top of all other windows. To reverse and unlock this window from being always on top just press key combination again.
A second new feature is a really great one and my favorite thing to happen in power toys. Often we are making the search in our browsers to find stuff, things, maybe some explanations, information, etc. The newest update in power toys brings this to a whole new dimension. While you are on PC you just simply need to type ?? followed by questions like: ?? When doctor strange 2 is coming out and that will launch your default browser with your chosen search engine and provide you with the answer.
Third and final thing is G-code support in the file explorer preview pane and thumbnails, meaning that if you work with CNC equipment you can now have a thumbnail preview of the code itself inside File Explorer.
And that’s it for now, thank you for coming and reading, Take care and I hope to see you next time. 