Chinese Characters are Displayed as Question Marks

Chinese Characters are Displayed as Question Marks


Cause: You have saved the Chinese text file in ANSI encoding.

Solution: Save the Chinese text file in Unicode encoding.

Hard disk active time 100% Windows 8.1

Windows 8.1 very slow. Hard disk active time 100%.

Solution: run -

chkdsk c: /f

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How to Check a Drive for Errors with "chkdsk" in Windows 8 and 8.1


 http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/6221-chkdsk-check-drive-errors-windows-8-a.html


CHKDSK - Check a Drive for Errors in Windows 8

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Published by

Brink Administrator Join Date: Jul 2009 Posts: 19,918

How to Check a Drive for Errors with "chkdsk" in Windows 8 and 8.1

   Information

In Windows 8, Microsoft changed the way to approach the health model of NTFS and changed the way we fix corruptions so as to minimize the downtime due to chkdsk. A new file system was also introduced for the future, ReFS, which does not require an offline chkdsk to repair corruptions.

This tutorial will show you how to manually check a drive for file system errors and bad sectors using chkdsk (Check Disk) in Windows 8, Windows RT, Windows 8.1, and Windows RT 8.1.

You must be signed in as an administrator to be able to do the steps in this tutorial.

   Note

Redesigning chkdsk and the new NTFS health model in Windows 8
Source: Redesigning chkdsk and the new NTFS health model - Building Windows 8 - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

File system health redone
The incredible growth in storage capacity and user data files has necessitated the redesign of the NTFS health model and chkdsk.

There were three important requirements for file system health that our customers made clear:

1. Downtime caused by file system corruptions must be zero in continuously available configurations and nearly zero in all other configurations.
2. A User or Administrator must be made aware of the file system health at all times.
3. A User or Administrator should be able to easily fix their file system when a corruption occurs in a scheduled manner.

Our design included changes both in the file system and the chkdsk utility to ensure the best availability. The new design splits the process into the following phases to ensure a coordinated, rapid, and transparent resolution to the corruption.

We developed a new method of communication that describes types of corruptions as “verbs” that act upon the key components and points of the design – the file system driver (NTFS), the self-healing module, the spot-verification service, and the chkdsk utility. All file system corruptions are classified as needing one of 18 different “verbs” that we’ve defined in Windows 8. We have also left room for possible new verb definitions that can help us diagnose issues even better in the future.


Key design changes to help improve availability:

1. Online self-healing: The NTFS self-healing feature was introduced in Windows Vista (and in Windows Server 2008) to reduce the need to run chkdsk. Self-healing is a feature built into NTFS that fixes certain classes of corruptions encountered during normal operation, and can make these fixes while still online. If all issues that are detected are self-healed online, there is no need for an offline repair. In Windows 8 we increased the number of issues that can be handled online and hence reduced any further need for chkdsk.
2. Online verification: Some corruptions are intermittent due to memory issues and may not be a result of an actual corruption on the disk; so we added a new service to Windows 8, called the spot verification service. It is triggered by the file system driver and it verifies that there is actual corruption on the disk before moving the file system along in the health model. This new service runs in the background and does not affect the normal functioning of the system; it does nothing unless the file system driver triggers it to verify a corruption.
3. Online identification and logging: When an issue is verified, this triggers an online scan of the file system, which runs as a maintenance task in the file system. In Windows 8, scheduled tasks that are for the maintenance of the computer run only when appropriate (during idle time, etc.). This scan can run as a background task while other programs continue to run in the foreground. As the file system is scanned, all issues that are found are logged for later correction.
4. Precise and rapid correction – At the user or administrator’s convenience, the volume can be taken offline, and the corruptions logged in the previous step can be fixed. The downtime from this operation, called “Spotfix,” takes only seconds, and on Windows Server 8 systems with cluster shared volumes, we’ve eliminated this downtime completely. With this new model, chkdsk offline run time is now directly proportional to the number of corruptions, rather than being proportional to the number of files as in the old model.
5. Better manageability – To enable better transparency into the new health model, Windows now exposes the state of the file system via the following interfaces:

• Action Center – The health of the drive is most visible in the Action Center as the “Drive Status” (see figure below), which tells you when you need to take an action to bring the volume to a healthy state.
• Explorer: The health state is also exposed in Explorer, under Drive properties.
• PowerShell: You can also invoke the chkdsk functionality using a new cmdlet in PowerShell, REPAIR-VOLUME, which can be helpful for remote management of file system health.
• Server Manager: In Windows Server, you can also manage the volume health states directly from the server manager utility.

The new file system health modelIn the new health model, the file system health status transitions through four states – some that are simply informational, and others that require you to act. The health states are:

1. Online and healthy – In this state there are no detected file system corruptions and there is no action required of you. The file system remains in this state most of the time.
2. Online spot verification needed– The file system stays in this transient state only for a brief instant after the file system finds a corruption that it cannot self-heal; it puts the volume in this state until the spot verification service verifies the corruption. Again, there is no user action required.
3. Online scan needed– When the spot-verification service confirms the corruption, it puts the file system in the “online scan needed” state. In the next maintenance window, an online scan is performed; there is no user action required. This state is reflected in the Action Center, so you can run the scan manually if you want to do that before the next maintenance window. The scan is run as a background operation, which means that you can continue using the computer while the scan is performed. During this online scan, all verified issues and fixes are logged for later repair. On Windows Server 8 systems, idle time is determined by monitoring the CPU and storage idle times.
4. Spot fix needed– The file system puts the volume in this state after the online scan is completed, if required, and this state is reflected in the Action Center. On client systems, you can restart the PC to fix all the file system issues logged in the previous step. The restart is quick (adding just a few additional seconds) and the PC is returned to a healthy state. For Windows Server 8 systems, a restart is unnecessary to fix corruptions on data volumes. Administrators can simply schedule a spot fix during the next maintenance window.

OPTION ONE

To Run "Check Disk" from Properties of Drive

1. Open the This PC window (Windows + E).

2. Right click the drive that you want to check for errors, and click/tap on Properties. (see screenshot below)

3. Click/tap on the Tools tab, and click on the Check button under Error checking. (see screenshot below)

4. Do either step 5 or 6 below for what you would like to do.

5. If No Errors are Found on Drive

A) You could click/tap on on Cancel to not run chkdsk on the drive.

OR

B) You could click/tap on Scan drive to run chkdsk on the drive anyways. Go to step 7 below. (see screenshot below)

6. If Errors are Found on Drive

A) Click/tap on Repair drive, and go to step 7 below. (see screenshot below)

7. When the scan or repair is complete, you can click/tap on Show Details to have Event Viewer open to view the chkdsk logs of these results. (see screenshot below)

OPTION TWO

To Run "chkdsk" in a Command Prompt

NOTE: The chkdsk command can be used on a FAT32 or NTFS formatted disk.


1. Open an elevated command prompt or a command prompt at startup.

2. In the command prompt, type in the following command below followed by one or more switches that you would like to use below with a space between each switch and press Enter.

chkdsk [drive letter]: [switches with space inbetween]

Switches that you can use in the command:
NOTE: The switches in red below are new to Windows 8.

• /F - Fixes errors on the disk. The disk must be locked. If chkdsk cannot lock the drive, a message appears that asks you if you want to check the drive the next time you restart the computer. For example, on the C: drive.
• /V - On FAT or FAT32 volumes, displays the name of each file in every directory as the disk is checked.
• /R - Locates bad sectors and recovers readable information. The disk must be locked. Includes the functionality of /f, with the additional analysis of physical disk errors.
• /L:[size in KB] - Can only be used with a NTFS disk. Changes the chkdsk log file size to the number size in KB you type. If you omit the size parameter, typing /L by itself will display the current chkdsk log file size. For example, to have the default 65536 KB log file for the C: drive, you would type: chkdsk C: /F /L:65536
• /X - Forces the volume to dismount first, if necessary. All open handles to the drive are invalidated. Includes the functionality of /f.
• /I - Can only be used with a NTFS disk. Performs a less vigorous check of index entries, which reduces the amount of time required to run chkdsk.
• /C - Can only be used with a NTFS disk. Does not check cycles within the folder structure, which reduces the amount of time required to run chkdsk.
• /B - Can only be used with a NTFS disk. Clears the list of bad clusters on the volume and rescans all allocated and free clusters for errors. Includes the functionality of /r. Use this parameter after imaging a volume to a new hard disk drive.
• /scan - Can only be used with a NTFS disk. Runs a online scan on the volume.
  
  • /forceofflinefix - Can only be used with a NTFS disk. Must be used with /scan switch. Bypass all online repair; all defects found are queued for offlne repair (ex: "chkdsk /spotfix").
  • /perf - Can only be used with a NTFS disk. Must be used with /scan switch. Uses more system resources to complete a scan as a fast as possible. This may have a negative performance impact on other tasks running on your system.
• /spotfix - Can only be used with a NTFS disk. Runs spot fixxing on the volume.
• sdccleanup - Can only be used with a NTFS disk. Garbage collect unneeded security desciptor data. Includes the functionality of /f.
• offlinescanandfix - Runs an offline scan and fix on the volume.

That's it,
Shawn

How to round corners of a photo?

Giving A Photo Rounded Corners In Photoshop

http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/rounded-corners/

Giving A Photo Rounded Corners In Photoshop

Written by Steve Patterson. In this Photoshop tutorial, we're going to look at how easy it is to create rounded photo corners. As with most things in Photoshop, there's about 17 different ways to create rounded corners, but we're going to make things interesting by looking at a way to do it using something in Photoshop that many people don't even know about - vector masks! What's a vector mask? Well, if you think layer masks are fun (you do think layer masks are fun, right?), you're going to love vector masks!

Download our tutorials as print-ready PDFs! Learning Photoshop has never been easier!

Any graphic designer knows that one of the ways to get people feeling a certain way when they look at a design is through the use of shapes. Different shapes have different effects on us. Some shapes appear warm, friendly and fun, while others seem cold, rigid, more serious. You don't need to be a design expert though to experience this for yourself. Just grab a pencil and a piece of paper, draw yourself a square, then a circle, and ask yourself which one seems more appealing to you. Chances are, unless you're the type of person who enjoys spending Saturday nights reorganizing your filing cabinet (not that there's anything wrong with that), you'll pick the circle. People love circles. They're the "warm, friendly and fun" shapes. In fact, it doesn't even have to be a complete circle. You can take a square or a rectangle with its harsh, right-angled corners, which normally doesn't seem very fun to us at all, give it rounded corners instead, and suddenly it will seem like the life of the party!
Okay, so that may be exaggerating things a bit, but rounded corners definitely look more appealing to us than sharp right angles. It's a bit unfortunate then that every time we take a photo, even if it's a photo of a kid's birthday party with balloons and party hats, the photo still ends up with sharp corners. That may be fine if we're simply getting the photos printed, but what if we want to use the photo in a design or a collage? How do we convert those sharp corners into round ones?
The answer? Very easily, especially when we use a vector mask! In fact, not only can we give the photo rounded corners, we have complete control over just how rounded they are!

Here's the image I'll be using for this Photoshop tutorial:

The original image.

Let's see how easy it is to round off those corners!

Step 1: Add A Layer Mask

I've opened a new blank Photoshop document, filled the Background layer with black to help make it easier for us to see what's happening, and then dragged my photo into the new document. We can see the document here, showing the photo in front of the black background:

The photo in front of a black background.

And if we look in the Layers palette, we can see the photo sitting on its own layer, "Layer 1", above the Background layer:

The Layers palette in Photoshop showing the photo on "Layer 1" above the Background layer, which is filled with black.

With "Layer 1", or whichever layer your photo happens to be on, selected, click on the Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers palette:

Add a layer mask to "Layer 1" by clicking on the "Layer Mask" icon.

Nothing will appear to have happened in your document, but if we look at the layer in the Layers palette, we can see that we now have a layer mask thumbnail to the right of the layer's preview thumbnail:

After clicking on the "Layer Mask" icon, a layer mask thumbnail appears on "Layer 1".

We won't be covering layer masks in this tutorial since we won't be using them, but if you want to learn more about layer masks, be sure to check out our full Understanding Layer Masks tutorial in our Photoshop Basics section.

Step 2: Add A Vector Mask

Okay, so if we're not going to be using the layer mask, why did we just add it? Well, we're about to do something that many people never do. We're going to see something that many people never see. Why? Because we're not "many people". We're different from them. Those people click on an icon once, see what it does, and then take a nap. It never occurs to them that maybe, just maybe, if they were to click on that exact same icon a second time, well, there's at least a slim chance that something else might happen! And it's too bad for them because in this case, something else will happen!

I know it sounds crazy, but now that we've added our layer mask, click once again on that exact same Layer Mask icon:

Click a second time on the "Layer Mask" icon at the bottom of the Layers palette.

If you have "Show Tool Tips" enabled in your Photoshop Preferences, you may already have noticed something a little different when you hovered your mouse over the icon. No longer does the tool tip say "Add layer mask" like it normally does. Instead, it now says "Add vector mask", and as soon as we click on the icon, if we look at the layer in the Layers palette, we get what appears to be a second layer mask thumbnail to the right of the first one. The difference is, it's not a second layer mask thumbnail. It's a vector mask thumbnail:

A "vector mask" thumbnail appears to the right of the layer mask thumbnail.

Both the layer mask thumbnail on the left and the vector mask thumbnail on the right look exactly the same, but there's a big difference between a layer mask and a vector mask. Both are used to show and hide different parts of the layer, but the way they go about it is completely different. With a layer mask, we paint on it, usually with the Brush Tool, to make different parts of the mask either white, black, or some shade of gray in between. White makes that part of the layer visible, black hides it, and gray makes that area partially visible depending on how light or dark the shade of gray is.
Vector masks, on the other hand, don't require any painting at all. In fact, you can't paint on them because Photoshop won't let you. Instead, we use shapes to control which parts of the layer are visible or hidden. In fact, we're going to use a shape right now to create our rounded corners!

Step 3: Select The Rounded Rectangle Tool

With our vector mask now added, go over to the Tools palette and select the Rounded Rectangle Tool. By default, it's nested in with the normal Rectangle Tool, so click on the Rectangle Tool and hold your mouse down for a second or two. You'll see a fly-out menu appear. Select the Rounded Rectangle Tool from the list:

Click and hold your mouse button down on the "Rectangle Tool" in the Tools palette, then select the "Rounded Rectangle Tool" from the fly-out menu that appears.

Don't confuse these tools with the Marquee Tools at the top of the Tools palette, like the Rectangular Marquee or the Elliptical Marquee Tool. Those are selection tools and they're used to drag out selections. The tools we're selecting here are Shape tools and they're used to draw shapes.

With the Rounded Rectangle Tool selected, go up to the Options Bar at the top of the screen. You'll see a group of three icons over on the left. These three icons determine how our Shape tool will work. We want to draw shapes with our Shape tool (sounds fairly obvious, doesn't it?), so click on the icon on the left, which is the Shape layers icon:

Click on the "Shape layers" icon in the Options Bar.

Then, if you move further towards the right, you'll come to the Radius option. This option determines how rounded our corners will be. The higher the number, the more rounded they'll be. Lower number, less rounded. Simple stuff. The problem is, you'll never really know for sure what number to enter in for the Radius value until you try one, start drawing the shape, look at how rounded the corners are, and then decide whether you're happy with the result or whether the corner needs to be more or less rounded. I usually start with a value of somewhere between 10-20 pixels, then drag out my shape and decide if I like the corners. Usually I won't, and you probably won't either on your first try, so just enter in a value to start with, drag out the shape, and if you're not happy with the roundness of the corners, simply press Ctrl+Z (Win) / Command+Z (Mac) to undo the shape, then enter a different value into the Radius option and try again.
I've already experimented with this a few times, and I know that a Radius value of about 30 pixels is going to give me the corners I want, so I'm going to enter "30 px" (the "px" stands for "pixels") into the Radius option:

Enter a value in the "Radius" option to determine how rounded the corners will be.

Step 4: Select The Vector Mask Thumbnail In The Layers Palette

We have our Rounded Rectangle Tool selected, we've selected the "Shape layers" option in the Layers palette, and we've entered in a "Radius" value that will determine how rounded our corners will be. We're ready to drag out our shape. First though, we need to make sure the vector mask is selected, so back in the Layers palette, click on the vector mask thumbnail to select it. You'll see a white highlight box appear around the thumbnail, which let's us know that the vector mask is selected:

Click on the vector mask thumbnail in the Layers palette to select it. A white highlight border will appear around the thumbnail.

Step 5: Drag Out The Shape

All we have to do now is drag out our shape. Even though it's going to look to us like we're drawing the shape on the image itself, what we're really doing is drawing it on the vector mask, and when we're done, the only part of our photo that will remain visible is the area inside the shape. Everything outside of the shape will be hidden. Go ahead and drag out your rounded rectangle shape. If you want to keep everything in the photo and simply round off the corners, start in the top left corner of the photo and drag your mouse down to the bottom right. If you'd rather use the shape to crop away part of the photo as well as give it rounded corners, simply drag your shape around the area you want to keep.
If you need to reposition your shape as you're dragging, hold down your spacebar, then drag the shape into its new location. Release the spacebar when you're done and continue dragging out the shape.
Here, I've dragged out my rounded rectangle just inside the edges of the photo. You can see the rounded corners of the shape, which will become the rounded corners of the photo itself in a moment:

Click and drag out the Rounded Rectangle shape inside the document. Any areas of the photo that fall outside of the shape will be hidden from view by the vector mask.

Release your mouse button when you're happy with your shape, and instantly, your photo is "masked" to the shape thanks to the vector mask, and the corners of the photo are now rounded:

The photo is now being masked by the Rounded Rectangle shape thanks to the vector mask, and the corners of the photo now appear rounded.

Let's finish things off by adding a border to our shape.

Step 6: Add A White Stroke To Create A Photo Border

Just because the corners of our photo are now rounded doesn't mean we can't still add a photo border to it. It just means the corners of the border will be rounded as well! To add a border, click on the Layer Styles icon at the bottom of the Layers palette:

Click on the "Layer Styles" icon at the bottom of the Layers palette.

Then select Stroke from the bottom of the list of layer styles that appears:

Select "Stroke" from the list of layer styles.

This will bring up Photoshop's Layer Style dialog box set to the "Stroke" options in the middle column. I'm going to increase my stroke Size to about 16 pixels. You may want to set yours to a different value depending on the size and resolution of your image. I'm going to leave the Position option set to Outside, which is going to place the stroke entirely on the outside of the shape edges. Finally, I'm going to click on the color swatch for the Color option at the bottom, which by default is set to red (because Adobe thinks everyone will naturally want red as their stroke color), and from the Color Picker that appears, I'm going to select white as my stroke color. Click OK to exit out of the Color Picker once you've chosen white:

Change the options circled in red above for the stroke.

When you're done, click OK to exit out of the Layer Style dialog box and apply the stroke!
Here' after applying my stroke to create my photo border, is my final result:

The final "rounded corners" result.

And there we have it! That's how incredibly easy it is to give a photo rounded corners in Photoshop using a vector mask and the Rounded Rectangle Tool!