I am so mad at daz3d

 Sitting in my chair I was reminded of all the 3D renders I made in Bryce 3d, back in the day. And I thought 'Wonder if Bryce 3d is still available? Lets google it' .

The results were less than encouraging, some pages offered that Bryce 5 could be had for free, but the download led to a dodgy 'free trial' version. Another page opined that Bryce 7 was bundled in daz 3d for free. Narrowing my search a little I found that Bryce 7 pro is available from Daz 3d for the princly sum of $19.95 . Great I thought, might take me a while to get to grips with it as I used to have Bryce 4, but I'll have it. 

Put it in the cart and checked out, using my paypal to fund the purchase and convert my currency. All paid for etc but no product download just a downloader for something called daz 3d studio. Nacht, so tried again, payment went through, same result , so I took the offered download, thinking 'it will be part of the distribution for daz3d then' alas no. Not a damn sign of it, 48 elements available for instal but bryce 3d is not one them. 

In desperation I logged into my daz 3d dashboard looking for a way to complain bitterly only to find bryce listed at the top of the list of my products. Click! And up pops a list of manual download links for bryce,. Phew ok I found it, downloaded and installed I ran the program only to hit a register screen. Serial Number? What bloody serial number, I've not been given any serial number. In desperation I input the transaction id, na da! Again in dedperation I googled 'bryce 7 serial'  and found a helpful page that intimated that daz3d hides its bryce serial number on the serials page from your dashboard menu. 

Way to fucking go! I thought as up poped serials for Bryce 3d, Daz 3d studio, and something called Hexagons. Checking I found that the latter were items foisted on me by the initial installer. Grabbed the bryce serial and checked that it worked, success!  Finally after gigabites of unwanted downloading I finally had what I had paid for! 

My conclusion is that Daz3d is foistware and the makers think so highly of it that they don't care if you got what you paid for just as long as you downloaded and installed daz3d. 

AVG appears to block Windows feature update 2004

I've been an AVG user for years, first their 'free' version which at the time was better than 'nothing' provided by Microsoft. After the free version I became a paid user, figuring that would be better than Microsoft's effort with Windows 10. However I became increasingly annoyed with AVG's nagging  and teasing to install more of their products. Consequently my tablet ended up having AVG removed, problem solved. However I kept AVG running on my PC

Recently my tablet decided it wanted to upgrade from Windows feature update 1903 to feature update 2004. The update worked fine, installed without problems and though there didn't seem to be much in it for the tablet user, it could all be used when the keyboard is attached. Some days later my PC wanted to incorporate the same update. No problem thought I and gave it the go ahead.

All was fine until a reboot was required, then Shock Horror and Blue Screen of Death! Which was followed by a waiting screen and the legend 'undoing changes to your computer'. The temptation to flip the power switch and hopefully cause a successful reboot was almost more than I could bare, but I held my ground and let the thing try to unravel its own mess. Eventually my machine booted and let me log in, followed by the usual feature update information/ new version spiel. Only the update had failed according to the update page in settings. PC was still working otherwise, so no major problem  except the nagging feeling of that BSOD waiting to bite my ass again.

I took advice from my go to guy, and subsequently found myself trawling through Device Manager manually checking every device and performing and automatic driver update. Right enough two devices took an update, the rest was a mind numbing tedium of already having 'the best driver for your device'. Why Windows can't automate the process I have no idea.

Then I thought to myself ,' I don't want to go through the install process again only to get the same problem, what if as I have heard AVG is to blame?' I did some research, well I googled, but that's what passes for research these days. Seem that there is a suggestion that third party Anti-virus software  is generically inimicable to Windows feature updates. So I removed AVG in its entirety.

Subsequent download, and install of feature update 2004 went off without a hitch. WTG me! And only a Whole day necessary to resolve the problem!