The Cool Country Consulting Blog

If you’re running the old free Zara Radio software and you need the Time Temperature and Humidity files, I can solve 66.6% of your problem!

Thanks to Braidwood Radio for the initial upload, which I’ve mirrored here.

https://coolhelp.com.au/files/Zara_Time_Files/

This model will not POST with a Samsung SATA SSD (840 or 870) installed. You’ll need to use a Kingston or other brand.

The firmware updates will not help.

G’day 🙂

Now that you have to pay for Google Photos, you might find that you don’t want to back up Videos. (This also applies to Amazon Photos.)

Google Photos does not have an option to skip backing up videos, but there are a few ways. Here’s how I do it on Android.

1 – Install FolderSync

2 – Create a Videos folder that is not within the DCIM folder.

3 – Create a Sync profile that moves the MP4 videos into that video folder, and set it to Auto.

Now, when you take a video it is moved to the Videos folder, and thus doesn’t end up in Google Photos directly. You can still view it via the Library entry on the app.

If you want to back up your videos locally, an easy way is to use Resilio Sync paired with a desktop PC.

I don’t know if anyone will ever find these instructions given how Google indexes pages, but I hope it helps someone 🙂

Windows 7 is no longer supported error – possible workaround.

OK, so for some silly reason, Channel 10 decided they wanted less viewers, so they decided to block people who use Windows 7 from watching content on 10play.com.au

A quick experiment shows you can get around this, at this time, by getting your Chrome to pretend it’s on a Mac instead. Press F12 and change the user agent as shown below.

I don’t know how long this workaround will last – and testing tonight on an unmodified Firefox it might not actually be necessary right now – but leaving this here just in case it helps someone.

OK so there’s a slightly confusing step required to complete the process.

In Payroll Premier, after clicking Reports –> Single Touch Payroll –> Process STP Reports –> Financial Year 2020-2021, you will receive a JSON file looking a bit like STPEXPORT_20210706 1406 (EFY)

You upload this via the Reckon portal, using the second option “Upload a previously completed ATO Submission or Finalise Year”

Don’t let the “Previously Completed” line deter you – the grammar is a little unclear as it’s missing a comma.

My case seems unique.

The error was:

Faulting application name: Teams.exe, version: 1.4.0.8872, time stamp: 0x5e851aee
Faulting module name: LocationApi.dll, version: 6.3.9600.18302, time stamp: 0x57097bd9
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x000000000002fa35
Faulting process id: 0x1104
Faulting application start time: 0x01d73b25ca14950b
Faulting application path: C:\Users\michael\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Teams\current\Teams.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\System32\LocationApi.dll
Report Id: 10957e93-a719-11eb-80ee-54bef73d236c
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

So, the fault appears to be in relation to LocationApi.dll.

This is on a Windows 8.1 system.

My eventual solution was to take ownership of that file, and rename it. I’m not sure what it will break yet, but time will tell. Mine was 338kb from 11/8/2016

OK so I have to support a few XP and Windows 95/98 users even now in 2021.

One XP machine developed a fault where it would give a few days required to activate, but would then state it was already activated.

The usual oobe 30 day reset worked, but of course is only valid for up to 120 days.

All other suggestions seemed to fail. (Registry permissions, modifying wpa.dbl etc.)

Turns out someone has created a file called ‘antiwpa’ which patches the WPA system in memory to think it’s running in Safe mode. Tested this solution and it seems to work fine. (Discovered by a torrent site.)

You can probably find it by using qBittorrent and the search feature – of course you’re taking your chance that it might do something evil as well as patching winlogon in memory, but if it’s an offline system it probably presents minimal risk.

All the top Google results are locked due to their age – so I doubt anyone will ever find this post, but you never know.

The Armidale Times is a paper-only publication, and at time of writing they appear to intentionally have no web and social media presence. They do however publish an email address and phone contact, as listed below.

So, if you’ve bought a new phone recently, or reset your watch; and tried to pair it to your Moto 360 first generation, you’ll find that Google Maps and probably several other apps haven’t transferred to your watch.

The main reason for this is that, as their way, Google has abandoned Wear 1 devices. Not quite in the Google Graveyard yet, but not far from it.

This guide is from March 2021; but if you’re visiting later than that, it’s possible this won’t work for you. It’s what worked for me.

This is post is based somewhat on https://medium.com/@karthikb23/revive-your-moto-360-gen-1-2020-updates-659d92d9cafd – which I tried; but ended up crashing my watch. Maybe I was impatient, not sure.

The steps that I followed.

1 – Install an older version of Android Wear on your phone, that still has the USB debugging option. I used this one from late 2018: https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-inc/google-play-services-android-wear/google-play-services-android-wear-14-7-92-release/google-play-services-wear-os-14-7-92-050300-220882040-android-apk-download/

2 – On your Moto 360, become a developer (Settings – About – tap “Build Number about 8 times until it says “You’re now a developer.)

3 – Enable ADB Debugging, and Debugging over Bluetooth on the watch. (Settings – Developer Options.)

4 – You might need to enable Bluetooth Debugging your phone. (Become a developer by tapping build number several times if not already done, then go into Developer options and Enable USB Debugging.)

5 – Enable “Debugging over Bluetooth” on the Wear OS app.

6 – Install ADB on your computer if you haven’t already. See https://www.xda-developers.com/install-adb-windows-macos-linux/

7 – Download a newer version of Google Play Services – I used this one: https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-inc/google-play-services-android-wear/google-play-services-android-wear-14-7-92-release/google-play-services-wear-os-14-7-92-050300-220882040-android-apk-download/

(You could try a newer one than the above – this one was new enough to work.)

8 – Download a copy of Google Maps for Wear OS – I used this one: https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-inc/maps-navigation-transit-android-wear/maps-navigation-transit-android-wear-10-35-2-release/google-maps-navigate-explore-wear-os-10-35-2-android-apk-download/ – again a newer one might work as well.

9 – These are the things I needed to type in to update my watch:

adb forward tcp:4444 localabstract:/adb-hub
adb connect localhost:4444

After typing the second line, it said “Failed” and also my watch had a prompt to trust the computer. I chose always trust.

Next I updated the Play Services: (Notice the -r which tells it to replace the existing version.)

adb -s localhost:4444 install -r “C:\platform-tools\com.google
.android.gms_14.7.92_(050300-220882040)-14792061_minAPI23(armeabi-v7a)(nodpi)_apkmirror.com.apk”

This takes about ten minutes so don’t be too alarmed. Probably best to do it with the watch on the dock.

Next I installed the Google Maps.

adb -s localhost:4444 install “C:\platform-tools\com.google.an
droid.apps.maps_10.35.2-1035250000_minAPI23(nodpi)_apkmirror.com.apk”

After doing this, a couple of other apps turned up as well – Deezer and the Omega Watch Face I downloaded earlier from https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.brohkahn.omegawatchface&hl=en&gl=US

I don’t know how much longer this watch will be able to keep working as Android gets updated into the future; but for now it lives again 🙂

I’ll post a link in Reddit, but will also enable comments here as well since Reddit has a tendency to lock older posts, meaning they can’t be updated with new information.

So I managed to kill mine by following the steps at https://medium.com/@karthikb23/revive-your-moto-360-gen-1-2020-updates-659d92d9cafd while trying to get it to update some apps. It would boot to the “Starting Android App 1 of 1” and go no further.

The method was to place it on the charger, and hold down the power button until it turned off, then hold it down again to turn on into a recovery mode. From there a factory reset by pressing the button and swiping to select the relevant option.