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Completing a Coursera Specialization for Free

Coursera provides continuing education just like Udacity and offer the full learning experience that I am accustomed to, including lesson videos, reading materials, projects, discussion forums, and graded projects which are peer-reviewed. I recently completed the Full-stack Web Development in React specialization from Coursera, all for free. It’s called a specialization because it is made up of three courses below each with their own certifications and which takes 4-6 weeks each to complete: 1. Front-End Web UI Frameworks and Tools: Bootstrap 4 2. Front-End Web Development with React 3. Server-side Development with NodeJS, Express and MongoDB I started the program in December 2021 and finished it in June 2023 however. The intent of this post is to explain how I was able to fund the entire specialization for free. In December 2021, I read on social media that Coursera allowed for one free course per year if you were a student and had an email address from a partner school. I gave my stu
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Unable to get to computer BIOS because monitor goes to sleep at startup?

I just enrolled in a course that requires running virtual machines on my Windows 10 Pro computer using VirtualBox. I couldn't start the virtual machines because of this error "The native API dll was not found (C:\WINDOWS\system32\WinHvPlatform.dll)". After doing some troubleshooting, I found this to mean that the hardware acceleration settings required by the CPU to support virtualization are currently disabled in my computer BIOS. I had to enable virtualization on my CPU chipset (VT-x/AMD-V). 

Seems easy enough, right? I rebooted my computer and was expecting to see the memory counter and options to get into the BIOS. It must have been so quick that it took me straight to Windows 10 login prompt right away. I tried again and as usual I am immediately back to Windows 10 login. Each time I reboot, there is a box that says my monitor is going to sleep and does not wake again until presented with Windows 10 login prompt. I can hear the disk and fans spinning during startup, I just don't see any of the startup activities on screen. I have an HP Z220 Workstation SFF computer so the search gave me CTRL+I combination to get to my computer BIOS. I rebooted my computer again and get the message that my monitor is going to sleep so I immediately press CTRL+I combination hoping to wake the monitor and display the BIOS screen. No such luck. 

I tried the following things before landing on the solution:

1. Turn off fast startup.
By default fast startup is enabled. To turn if off, go to Settings | Power & Sleep | Additional Power Settings | Choose what the power button does | Change settings that are currently unavailable | uncheck Turn on fast startup (recommended)


2. Check your monitor settings for sleep settings. 
I have an HP L2245wg monitor and there were no settings that I could find on monitor controls that would help.



3. Update your video drivers and monitor drivers in Windows 10.
I have two video cards - unused add-on Nvidia Quadro and a built-in Intel HD Graphics 4000 adapter which is plugged into my HP L2245wg monitor.  This didn't fix the issue.
After updating the drivers, I played around with the Intel HD Graphics control panel to find out if there was an option to prevent the monitor from sleeping during startup. I couldn't find any such setting. 

4. Boot Windows 10 in safe mode.
Diagnostic mode will usually allow you to hit F8 at startup to test if monitor wakes up from sleep long enough to display some activity during startup. Go to Settings | Update & Security | Recovery | Advanced Startup | Restart Now. On the next screen, pick troubleshooting option and select change windows startup settings on the screen after that. No such luck however. The monitor still goes to sleep on startup and only wakes up when the Windows 10 login prompt comes up.

5. Unplug the disk drives and other peripherals from the motherboard.
As a last resort, attempt to cause an error condition by unplugging the disk drives to prevent booting to Windows 10. I have an SSD and IDE drive so I unplugged both cables from the motherboard, turned on the computer, and got the same blank screen at startup. There was no activity whatsoever, which rules out the OS as the issue. 
Next I unplugged all USB devices such as web cams, headphones, and external USB drives. I turned on the computer and also got the same blank screen at startup prior to displaying the Windows 10 login prompt, which rules out external peripherals.
Lastly, I removed the unused NVidia Quadro video card and rebooted. That did it! I was able to finally get the memory counter and CTRL+I prompt in order to get to the BIOS. 

If you ever run into a similar issue, just make sure you are using one video card in your computer. 

After getting to the BIOS, I was able to enable virtualization on my CPU chipset (VT-x/AMD-V) and continue on with my Vagrant and VirtualBox setup.






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Completing a Coursera Specialization for Free

Coursera provides continuing education just like Udacity and offer the full learning experience that I am accustomed to, including lesson videos, reading materials, projects, discussion forums, and graded projects which are peer-reviewed. I recently completed the Full-stack Web Development in React specialization from Coursera, all for free. It’s called a specialization because it is made up of three courses below each with their own certifications and which takes 4-6 weeks each to complete: 1. Front-End Web UI Frameworks and Tools: Bootstrap 4 2. Front-End Web Development with React 3. Server-side Development with NodeJS, Express and MongoDB I started the program in December 2021 and finished it in June 2023 however. The intent of this post is to explain how I was able to fund the entire specialization for free. In December 2021, I read on social media that Coursera allowed for one free course per year if you were a student and had an email address from a partner school. I gave my stu
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