Toshiba AuthenTec duplicate fingerprints

If you have a Toshiba with AuthenTec biometric device and you forgot to clear the fingerprints before formatting your windows 8.1 installation, you will face the issue of not being able to register the same fingers in your newly created Microsoft Account. The issue steams from the buggy implementation of the Toshiba Fingerprint Utility that doesn't handle domain accounts that well. Moreover, the fingerprint biometric data are stored inside the hardware, so no matter what file you delete, you won't be able to fix this. Some people on the net report that a simple export and import of the data (using the utility as administrator) worked for them. All the reports were mentioning windows 7 so I guess they were all facing an issue with local accounts and not domain ones.

Luckily, Toshiba discovered the issue and offers a command line tool to delete all fingerprint data from the hardware. The name of this tool is TFPU WBF Delete Fingerprint Tool (a.k.a. tc30636900b.exe) and this made the trick for me.

Change unidentified networks to private

Working with Hyper-V in windows 8 you might need to change the private network location to private in order to access the host's web server from a client virtual machine (e.g. testing a site in older browsers). By default, the private network doesn't contain any domain controller or dns server and you might have static ips on your vms and the host. This means that by default the connection's location is public as the network is unidentified. To change the location of your unidentified networks to private, I found a powershell script.

Lenovo w530 auto brightness fix

I had a weird issue with my new Lenovo w530 laptop and windows 8.1. The screen would auto dim when I was in dark websites or when my background was gray. I tried the default solutions (power options etc) but the issue would remain. I even installed Lenovo's power manager (in compatibility mode, but seriously, don't do it!).

The solution came with a registry hack offered by Lenovo for a different laptop. You can download it from Lenovo's support, here.

Hope this saves you some hours of searching...

Atheros L1 Gigabit Ethernet on windows 8 disconnects

I have a P5KC Asus motherboard which comes with a Gigabit adapter onboard. The problem is that Asus has stopped support of the MoBo since Vista and my machine is perfectly fit to run win 8 (actually I just got 8.1 and I remembered to do this post). Windows 8 detects vendor id 1969 and device id 1048 as Atheros L1 Gigabit Ethernet 10/100/1000Base-T Controller, but I had the problem of the network being disconnected after a few file transfers or video streams.