Rename Bluetooth devices in Windows 11 22H2

Starting with 22H2 edition of Windows 11 it seems impossible to rename Bluetooth devices. Folks at Microsoft was cleaver enough to figure out that you don’t need such functionality. Nice.

Pity that I really need it, because I have two exactly the same headphones (one at home and one at office) that does not support auto-connect and must be manually connected. I never know which one I am connecting, because both are named “Edifier W600BT” in my system.

The only solution that I figured out is to use tiny software called BtDeviceRenamer (here is a direct link to downloadable .exe file). Please, be aware that since it directly interface with devices, it can (and probably will be) detected by Windows or your anti-virus software as a possible threat.

EDIT: Nope, even this one fails. Windows 11 enforces its own name upon next login or after just a couple of minutes. Thank you, Microsoft, for knowing better what we need or want.

Fix for up-side down duplex scanning in WIA

When scanning using WIA (Windows Image Acquisition) through certain apps (NAPS2 — Not Another PDF Scanner 2 in my case) and on certain scanners (Canon MX920 in my case), you may run into situation where all odd pages are scanned up-side down. Even though they’re all fed correctly to the ADF:

This is certainly not your software problem and most likely not WIA’s one, but probably comes from the fact how your scanner driver “talks” through WIA to your scanning software.

Fortunately, fix is very simple.

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Fix small HDD surface errors using low-level format

Anyone out there still using a non-SSD disks or hard disks at all? :) While I do believe in cloud data storage, I am an old dinosaur that wishes to have some off-line copy of my most important data. For this reason, I am using (for past 12+ years) a NAS and a number of 4-5 TB disks (I have a lot of important data).

Two days ago one of my disks started to get wako with me being unable to copy certain files. My diagnosis was quick and only confirmed by designated software — surface error, years ago known as “bac blocks”.

Since the disk was one month after five years long warranty, I had to try to fix it myself. For this reason I used two free pieces of software — HDD Low Level Format Tool 4.40 and HD Tune 2.55 Free to confirm.

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3.5 inch GPIO display and RPi

There are a lot of displays for Raspberry Pi. We can list them by image technology:

And by connection method:

There are a lot of arguments and parameters to consider when picking one that is best for you:

  • DSI is the most expensive, but leaves both HDMI and GPIO port free
  • HDMI is cheaper, but occupies one USB port (powering) and of course HDMI port
  • GPIO is the cheapest solution, but occupies GPIO port which is not acceptable in most scenarios

I have decided to buy the last one because it was purely for testing purposes.

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Factory reset Kindle with semi-frozen screen

The steps for performing factory reset of a Kindle are quite easy:

  1. From the home screen, select Menu.
  2. Select Settings.
  3. Select Menu again then select Reset Device.

The problem appears when your screen is frozen and you don’t see anything or almost anything.

I had this situation that only tiny part of my screen was still responsive. I wasn’t able to see most of the menu and settings sections, but at least I managed to see:

  • When my Kindle is awaken
  • When its menu is or isn’t opened up (I didn’t see many menu items though)
  • Which page of Settings I am currently at

This allowed me to figure-out a key combination needed to blind-reset my Kindle.

If your Kindle has a completely dead screen and you don’t see anything of above then sorry, this article won’t help you.

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Turn off Bluetooth discoverability on Android devices

Some folks responsible for design and development of different Android versions or different UIs for this system must have some problems with their mental sanity, because they think that it is very funny to have your device discoverable to all surrounding devices whenever you only enable Bluetooth.

I don’t find it funny. Even more, I find it weird, bad and evil.

I had an issue with Xiaomi Redmi 6 phone, having MIUI 11 launcher installed. I find the regular way of turning off Bluetooth discoverability on this phone impossible and ended up with the need for installing some app.

This is a generic solution that may work in your case, even if you have some other Android gear, so I decided to share my experience here.

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System interrupts kills PC / eats up to 100% of CPU

If your computer is suddenly slowing down noticeable and you have just:

  • installed a new driver or added new piece of hardware,
  • installed or started using some new hardware-related service (i.e. Internet phone, conference software)

then check Task Manager to see, if System interrupts isn’t consuming most of / all of CPU power of your PC.

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Blaupunkt VCH601 for the seniors

I had to pick a handheld-hoover for my oldies. Due to their age, the actual weight of the device was an absolute priority. I decided to get Blaupunkt VCH601 — which seems to be unbeatable in this category (only 2.2 kilograms) — even though it turned out that it surprised me in some other areas.

If you think that a handheld-hoover description is far from IT and shouldn’t be published here then you may be wrong. Even IT geeks must clean up their rooms from time to time, sorry! :>

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QNAP TS-210: Support, reset and configuration

One of my disk in two-disk stripping array of my ol’ good QNAP TS-210 has failed. I had to do some reasearch to update my knowledge and decided to share it here, to have it handy and hopefully help others.

Here you’ll find some quick details on resetting and configuring your QNAP TS-210 (may also apply to some other models?) and on getting some support, if all else fails.

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Correct steps order for getting rid of unfinished print jobs

If you have some documents hanging in your printer’s jobs list that I cannot get rid off, then remember about correct order of steps that you must undertake in order to resolve this issue.

These are:

  • reset printer’s spooler:
    • open Start Menu and type Services,
    • hit Enter to confirm running this app,
    • scroll down list to find Print Spooler item,
    • right-click it and select Restart from its context menu.
  • and clear the queue:
    • open Start Menu and type Printers,
    • hit Enter to confirm running this app,
    • find your printer and click Open queue,
    • use Printer > Cancel All Documents menu item.

That’s all folks!

HP LaserJet Pro M426fdn and printing A4 document on A5 paper

I have ended up with a huge pile of A5-sized pieces of paper and wanted to print some of my largest A4 documents using this paper size. Solving the problem was quite easy (after some serious digging) and narrowed to one of three options:

  • use native printer’s driver functionality, if it supports it,
  • convert document to A4 and print it to A5 paper in any PDF viewer,
  • change paper size to A5 directly in Word and do all the adjustments manually.

Even though I could use first and second option (nearly fully automatic) which saved me a lot of time using third option (nearly fully manual), but I still had a problem with my HP LaserJet Pro M426fdn breaking print on A5 in about 75% and reporting an error.

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Dell Latitude 7290 keyboard backlight

Dell Latitude 7290’s keyboard’s backlight has a terribly short “on” period. It is set to 10 seconds only by default. Even on AC power. While industry standard is somewhere around 30 seconds or so.

This article shows how to resolve this issue in Dell Latitude 7290, but most other laptops and notebooks will most likely have a very similar solution — find in somewhere in BIOS.

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Disable Bluetooth discovery in Windows 10

By default, when you enable Bluetooth in Settings app in Windows 10, your PC will become discoverable by all the nearby devices. But there’s a small (old good) Control Panel checkbox to control / disable this behavior. It is reported to be working in Windows 10 as well.

If you are 100% sure (see details in the following parts of this article) that your PC with Windows 10 is discoverable via Bluetooth even though you have turned such possibility off, then truly disabling Bluetooth discovery will require you to:

  • Tweak in Windows Registry or
  • Mess up with Windows API (through PowerShell console) or
  • Use some designated 3rd party Windows app that will do the trick for you

But, first let’s make ourselves sure that you really need to do anything.

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Remove phone from “Your Phone” in Windows 10

I just wanted to get rid of my current phone in “Your Phone” app in Windows 10. But, since this is Microsoft and 25+ years of experience in making users lives as hard as possible, you cannot expect a simple “Remove” button. And there is no easy way to do this.

I’ve went through two different guides of removing phone from “My Phone”. None of them worked. I’ve ended up uninstalling “Your Phone” app (which itself wasn’t too easy task).

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Allow WiFi access without revealing the password

Ever wanted to share your WiFi’s SSID and password among friends, neighbourhood or family members without revealing the password? Now, it is possible with a standardised QR code for that purpose.

It may look like this:

To get QR code like that, all that you have to do is to visit a service (or run a program) like for example Pure JS WiFi QR Code Generator (qifi.org — probably the most recognisable one), provide essential data (SSID, encryption mode, key, whether SSID is hidden) and hit the Generate button.

Free of charge and we love you, Evgeni Golov, for that! :>

At the bottom of the main page for qifi.org you’ll find the list of mobile phones’ cameras supporting WiFi QR codes. To update this information — starting with Android with Android 7.0, default photo camera (at least on stock Android in Motorolas) offers native support for such QR codes.

Error 777 and other problems using D-Link DWM-157 GPRS modem

If you’re getting Error 777 when trying to login your D-Link DWM-157 modem to a mobile network of your choice then the quickest solution is to disable automatic logon through 26006 (HSPA) mobile connection, It is added (and enabled) by default and apparently by mistake when installing drivers for this GPRS modem. If this doesn’t help or if you have different problems with this modem then you may also find help in this article.

This blog post focuses on D-Link DWM-157, but it may turn out to be useful for other D-Link mobile modems or for other GPRS modems at all, because it discusses the most popular issues when connecting to the Internet through GPRS USB modem.

Please, note that there is a certain amount of magic in this article. As you play with D-Link DWM-157 (or other D-Link modems), it quickly turns out that many things aren’t that certain as they were supposed to be.

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Your Phone app: You can control a mobile device from Windows 10. Really?

Newest edition of Windows 10 (tested on 1903 edition) comes with Your Phone application that should — at least by its designers’ mean — ease your day-to-day management mobile device.

Unfortunately, it is still quite new, meaning — buggy. And the list of functionality is not quite long. In fact, you may have problems finding it usable at all or counting scenarios in which using this app is plausible.

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The very introduction to Raspberry Pi

After a nearly five years of struggling with hardware and software for feeding data to Flightradar24, I have finally decided to give it a try with Raspberry Pi. On contrary to what some of you may think, this is not a guide on how to achieve it. The original text is very good and quite self-explanatory. No need to copy it here.

In addition to feeding data to Flightradar 24 there are hundreds of ideas how can you use your Raspberry Pi. With this article I wanted to show you (and remind to myself) just of a few IMHO most interesting ones.

If you’re just unpacking your first Raspberry Pi then better read these two articles:

before even continuing with this article.

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Finding TP-Link router in your local network

Most TP-Link routers is accessible using admin/admin credentials under one of these URLs:

Of course, you must try to access these URLs from the computer or mobile that is connected (via cable or Wi-Fi) to the same local network, your TP-Link router is connected to.

If above fails and you don’t know current router’s IP address, you may try accessing:

URLs from the same local network, your TP-Link router is connected to.

Most TP-Link routers registers a virtual URL (like above) and you can access their control panel even without knowing their actual IP address.

Photos made with Galaxy J5 seems not rotated in IrfanView

There’s a known (yet very strange) bug in IrfanView, which causes photos made with Samsung Galaxy J5 (2016) to stay in original rotation. Since this occurs only:

  • in IrfanView (images are actually rotated and appears correctly in all other media browsers) and
  • only for photos made by Samsung Galaxy J5 (images made by other phones are unaffected)

this issue may simply be ignored by most of the users. However, I decided to write it here, as this seems to be an interesting (yet weird) IT issue.

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