• zsh – how to reload .zshrc

    After editing your .zshrc you may need to reload it so changes are applied. Its quite easy:

    jndm@Macbook ~ % source ~/.zshrc

    or shorter:

    jndm@Macbook ~ % . ~/.zshrc
  • How to list installed updates in Windows

    Time to time you might need to list or export installed updates and hotfixes. Unfortunatelly even if you are able to lkst them in instaleld programs, you are not able to copy that list. But there are solutions.

    In Windows 2003/XP you have to use 3rd party software like Windows Update List by NirSoft.

    In Windows 2008 and newer (works also for Windows 7 and probably Vista) it is much more easier, you can do it with:

    wmic qfe get /format:list >C:\installed_updates.txt

    Format can be:

    • LIST – tab delimited
    • CSV – csv file
    • HFORM/HTABLE – html
    • RAWXML – xml
  • How to fix “Cannot Connect to App Store” after upgrade to iOS7

    After upgrading my iPad 3 and iPhone 5 to iOS7 I noticed that I cannot install any app from App store. I was able to update existing apps, but when I trid to search for some not installed I got a message “Cannot Connect to App Store“.

    At first I thought it is because App store is overloaded, but after few days it was still the same. I have tried everything, sign out from App store, restart iPad/iPhone, but with no success. I was able to search App store from iTunes on my PC, so App store itself was working.

    As a Window user, where reboot is king:-) I tried hard reboot and it worked!

    So how to fix that “Cannot Connect to App Store” error? When iPad/iPhone is running press and hold both, Home and Power button untill it turned itself off. Device is then hard rebooted and App store is working. My iPhone rebooted automatically, iPad I had to turn with power button.

  • How to update Windows defender automatically

    Windows 8 brings not only Metro interface and strange Start menu but also Windows Defender instead of Microsoft Security Essentials. Windows Defender is missing some features MSSE has. One of those changes is that updates for virus and spyware definitions are installed by Windows Update.

    In case your setting are “notify but not install automatically” you are asked nearly every day for manual update. My guess is that Microsoft want to force people to use automatic updates.

    Fortunatelly Windows defender has also command line utility, so you can easily update definitions from command line:

    C:\"Program Files"\"Windows Defender"\MpCmdRun.exe

    will show you options and examples. For update from command line is important this one:

    C:\"Program Files"\"Windows Defender"\MpCmdRun.exe -SignatureUpdate

    Easiest way is to create scheduled task which will check for new defitions lets say once a day and number of requests to install updates will be lowered significantly.

  • How to fix “Windows Update cannot currently check for updates, because the service is not running”

    Sometimes you can get in situation that Windows Update is not working and you are receiving error

    “Windows Update cannot currently check for updates, because the service is not running. You may need to restart your computer”.

    It can be caused by corrupted data for Windows update. If this is your case fix could be easy.

    • go to services and stop Windows update service
    • locate C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\ folder and delete all its content
    • start Windows update service
    • check for updates
  • Tuning Firefox: cache

    If you have plenty of RAM and do no want Firefox to save temporary files to disk (for example because you have SSD and want to limit number of disk writes) you can move Firefox cache to RAM.

    There is no way how to do it in gui, so you need to use favorite about:config. Search for parameter browser.cache.disk.enable and set that to false. Now disk cache is disabled. Then search for browser.cache.memory.enable and set that as true – it will enable cache in RAM (it is set to true already sometimes).

    If you want to set how much RAM you will dedicate to cache, search for browser.cache.memory.capacity and as value set desired cache size in kilobytes.

    Moving cache to RAM is good idea only if you have quick internet connection as cache is wiped out on every restart and all pictures, scripts etc. are downloaded again after restart.

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