Our Next Meeting

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Our Last Meeting : Wednesday 19th March 2014 "Computer Surgery" -All

Most of the queries came from Peter and Duncan with Michael suggesting possible solutions.

1. Peter began by mentioning Reimage, a programme to give support for Windows XP after Microsoft stop support on 8 April; it is sold by Paretologic. Price unknown. It is able to repair and reinstall corrupted files and keep a PC optimised; they claim. Peter asked Michael if he knew anything about it; but Michael said he did not and was sceptical about it. Peter said he would try and find out more about it as he needed to make some decisions about his systems for the future.
2. Peter also had a problem with his Android tablet which would not run one of his favourite programmes, Flightradar24. He had installed what was described as a version "for Android"; but when he tried to run it it gave a message "stopped" with a report feature including machine configuration. He had reported it several times, but never had any reply from the developers.
3. Peter said he could not upgrade his PC to Win 8 as it did not have suitable processor hardware for the modern security features in Win8. Michael said maybe he could install Win7 instead and there was a checker available, "Windows 7 upgrade adviser ". Since the meeting Peter has downloaded this and checked his PC. It does seem a possibility, with more space needed on his C drive (16GB) the rest of the hardware passed O.K.. It could not check if suitable drivers existed for his Epson Stylus Photo 700 or Epson Perfection 1600 scanner. No report was made on the Coolscan film scanner, which is a SCSI device, but as the PCI SCSI card appears to be supported it is presumably O.K.. The VueScan software should still work.
4. Microsoft will not continue support for XP, as it becomes uneconomic and developers won't keep supporting older machines, printers etc. either.
5. Peter also asked about tethering his Android to his iPhone but Michael found that Apple won't allow tethering on Peter's iPhone because he was running on giffgaff and Apple don't consider giffgaff to be a valid service provider. Michael also showed Peter how to remove on screen applications by dragging them to a "dustbin" which appeared at the top of the screen.
6. Michael wanted to use BTopenzone with his phone but was supposed to have access to BT even though he was not a BT customer.
7. Duncan then began asking about battery life on his digital camera. He had obtained a battery from ASDA for £15 which charged his camera about 6 times but has not tried this yet, however if your added device like his camera does not draw enough current the battery will turn off. It was fitted with 2 USB connectors one for power-in and one for power-out.
8. Duncan had also found a broken wire in his underfloor home ethernet cabling (RG45) but could not find where it was broken, however he had a workround. The cables are connected with six wires but only 4 were really necessary the other 2 being used to increase speed of the transmission so he found he could reuse those 2 wires to produce 2 special custom patches to bypass the broken section.
9. Duncan also had a problem with an old barely used Samsung laser printer which clogs up on the black toner. It has 4 trays of toner (CYMK) and he found a video showing him how to fix it. It involves removing the main photosensitive drum and removing carefully each toner tray. The edge of the tray has a metal strip on which the old toner crusts up. The advice is to take a small piece of wood and scrape off the encrusting. Most toner is quite toxic and the advice is that if you get toner on your hands then wash them in cold water to avoid melting the toner particles. Peter thought that using gloves and facemask was a good idea.
10. Duncan had a RISCOS Sunfish to connect to his NAS system with 3 shares Public, Multimedia and one with his name on it. RISCOS connects straight away as it knows nothing about permissions. Windows however it won't login to it. "Cannot connect as network drive" if he connects to his named disk it will connect straight in. If and then can connect the other shares. If he tries the other drives first he can't get in on the basis that he is using a different password. He could not logout either and just had to disconnect. Michael thought he should investigate a start-up script as part of a policy document.
    Synology is another make of drive for these RAID type systems.
    
    Duncan's main problem is under Linux set up network name remote location mounted locally. Mount on an empty folder to mount the remote drive into. e.g. a drive to /Public onto which you mount the remote Public drive; however only root is allowed to mount it. He did not know how to become root. There was a forum which he could approach for advice.
    
    
    (Ed. I don't really understand much of this so it might need some clarification later perhaps in our new programme; 18th June meeting)
11. Michael spoke about Crashplan3 which is free and allows backup on your own computers. It will automatically backup in the background. The backup data is encrypted so can backup friends' data. It needs a static IP address locally. Michael was able to connect his phone during the meeting to his computer at home. There is a log file giving information on time taken etc. Crashplan must be running on all the networked machines.
    
    Peter felt this was a bit like dropbox, except with added scheduling and ability to use other computers you don't own. This prompts a few more questions on permissions, security etc.
12. Peter asked if it would be possible to recover data as in Gareth's case of a failed SSD. It seems to depend on whether the controller has failed or not. Michael thought Crashplan would have given better protection and you would only lose a day's work at the most.
13. Duncan had tried to used the NAS to back up a RISC PC but it would usually fail at some point and was very slow. If you connect to the NAS but don't use it for 30 minutes it shuts down again.
14. Duncan asked about synchronised bookmarks. It depends on the browser and whether there is a standard bookmark format. You could do it manually, but not automatically between platforms. Peter uses a compact flash card (FAT) to transfer files between RISC PC, Windows PC and Mac and they can all read and write to it. It does need a USB port on the RISC PC ,which he has, and also the file names get corrupted if they are too long. In principle all machines should be able to see each other, however the RISC PC can see the Windows drive, but the Windows machine can't see the RISC PC.
15. HP Micro server 25W with dual core processor in Michael's NAS.
    
    
    Michael also spoke about his Original Surface Pro the basic unit comes without a keyboard. (£110 extra for a Type keyboard) and the base model has battery life 4-5hrs. The keyboard also has a battery so increasing the battery life to 7-8hrs. It comes with Windows 8, Core i-5 dual core processor and 4GB ram, it has a 10.6" touch screen full HD and list price for 64GB SSD is £535 or £585 for the 128GB SSD so they are quite expensive.
    
    Quite a packed evening for just 3 of us but quite interesting.