Experts solve your computing problems
APC and its readers can be one giant helpdesk. If you have a technical problem, chances are one of us can solve it.
WINDOWS WHAT ARE THESE REGISTRY ENTRIES?
I was following the information in ‘ Hack the Windows 10 Registry’ from issue 429, but on progressing to the HKEY_ CURRENT_USER folder, I stopped as there appears to be some strange entries. Can you help me identify them and whether they’re safe to delete, please? Eddie Rothwell Eddie sent us an image revealing three Registry keys with Chinese characters, and three further entries with various symbols, indicating another language. These are often mistakenly entered by a program during installation, and deleting them (having taken a Systemt Restore point or other form of Registry backup fi rst) should be the end of the matter — reboot to verify they’ve gone, as Eddie did, and you can carry on with no further issues. If the entries come back after a reboot, then you’ll need to explore the keys and see if there are any Registry values or subkeys that can help you identify where they’ve come from. If you’re still stumped, then it’s likely a start-up program is the culprit — focus your search here for a possible offender, or use a tool such as SysTracer ( www.blueproject.
ro/systracer) to see if you can glean more detail. Nick Odantzis
HARDWARE CAN’T COMPLETE DISK CHECK
After three power cuts, my PC can no longer complete the disk check it initiates on startup. Can you help please? David Lee The disk check was failing at the same point each time, stating an “unexpected error” occurred at about 50 per cent of the way through stage 2 (verifying indexes) of the process. David could no longer complete a Windows Backup either, with a ‘Catastrophic failure ox8000FFFF’ error message. Both problems were linked to the fact there were bad sectors on the drive as a result of the power cuts. We asked David to confirm the drive’s physical health by installing CrystalDisk Info ( http:// bit. ly/crystaldisk), which it did. Next we instructed David to reboot in Safe mode (see step one of the walkthrough starting at the bottom of the opposite page). Once there, right-click the Start button and choose ‘Command Prompt (Admin)’ from the Quick Access menu, clicking Yes when prompted. Now type chkdsk /r/x and press Enter followed by Y – this instructs the Disk Checking utility to also search for and mark any bad sectors; doing so enables the utility to complete its check successfully the next time you reboot. To best prevent this happening again, we suggest David invests in an uninterruptible power supply (UPS). While it’s tempting to pay under $100 for an entry level model, it pays to spend a bit more for a model like CyberPower’s BR650ELCD model. This costs under $130 and supplies your PC and a monitor with 650VA/390W of battery power, enough to keep your PC running for up to nine minutes during a power cut, allowing you to shut it down safely. Mayank Sharma
WINDOWS CRITICAL START MENU ERROR
For no apparent reason, every time I try to open the Start menu or use Cortana, Windows 10 throws up a ‘Critical error’ dialogue. I dutifully click the button to log out and log back in, but it has no effect. Is there a way to resolve this error without a repair install? Dev Price We managed to trace the source of this particular error to Dropbox —once Dev uninstalled it and rebooted a couple of times, the Start menu started to work
properly again. In fact, Dev was even able to reinstall Dropbox without the error returning; however, other users have subsequently reported the error returning after a short delay. Although it’s tempting to put the blame squarely on Dropbox’s shoulders, as this isn’t the fi rst time a third-party app has appeared to break the Start menu in this way — it’s also been linked to some security programs including Avast!, for example. The actual issue is more likely to be an underlying weakness with the Windows Shell that allows programs to make changes that subsequently break part of it on certain set-ups — we can but hope Microsoft is working on a fi x. Graham Barlow
WINDOWS REINSTALLING MICROSOFT EDGE
For no apparent reason Microsoft Edge has vanished from my Windows 10 PC. How can I get it back? Alan Orrell The simplest, but most timeconsuming, fi x is to perform an in-place upgrade of Windows 10 using the Media Creation Tool – the equivalent of a repair install. This fixed Alan’s problem, although it took six hours. Alternatively, try to delete and reinstall Edge as follows:
1. Reboot in Safe mode by opening ‘Settings > Update & Security > Recovery’ and click ‘Restart now’ under ‘Advanced startup’. Select ‘Troubleshoot > Advanced options > Start-up Settings > Restart’ and press 5 to enable Safe mode with Networking.
2. Once logged into Safe mode, press Windows-R to open the Run dialogue box, type %localappdata%\Packages and click ‘OK’. Locate the Microsoft. MicrosoftEdge folder in the list, then right-click it and choose ‘Delete’. Reboot into Windows.
3. Type powershell into the Search box, then right-click it and choose ‘Run as administrator’. Type
Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers -Name Microsoft. MicrosoftEdge | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_. InstallLocation)\ AppXManifest.xml” -Verbose}
and press Enter. When ‘Operation completed’ appears, Edge should hopefully be back. Cat Ellis
IMAGING WHAT IS THE BEST NEGATIVE SCANNER?
I am looking to create digital copies from a lot of negatives and slides taken 50 or so years ago. Is there a good value-for-money scanner available to do this job. If so, what would you recommend? David J Rosser
Epson’s Perfection V370 scanner has been around a number of years, but is particularly renowned for its quality when scanning negatives and slides — including those made from glass. It comes with a specialist slide holder that can hold four slides at once, and is also capable of scanning in large bulky objects such as books without adversely affecting the quality of the image thanks to its CCD image sensor, which has a greater depth of field than cheaper CIS-based scanners. It’s also perfect for general A4 scanning too. Expect to pay around $200 online. Nick Odantzis
HARDWARE CHEAP CHIPS AND COMPATIBILITY
A long time ago, there were programs that didn’t work correctly on AMD processors. Is this the case in today’s world? I only tried AMD one time and ran into issues. But I am tired of paying through the nose for Intel processors. I’m wondering because AMD’s CPUs are less expensive. Michael Filyaw
Intel and AMD host processors share a common instruction set, so you should see no difference in application support between them. The issues you refer to might have been related to platform drivers. We do remember various times when third-party chipsets from AMD, Nvidia, SiS, and VIA caused headaches. But Intel wasn’t immune to problematic hardware either.
The short of it is this: modern CPUs from both manufacturers enjoy broad compatibility. And you’re right in that AMD’s portfolio is predominantly less expensive. However, the FX CPUs and A-series APUs don’t do as much work per clock cycle as their Intel counterparts. In other words, at any given frequency and core count, expect them to be slower. Enthusiasts looking to get the most from an AMD processor should pick a model with more cores than Intel’s equivalent at the same price. There’s a good chance you’ll see better performance in threaded apps and heavy multitasking. APC team