QUICK TIPS
APC and its readers can be one giant helpdesk. If you have a technical problem, chances are one of us can solve it.
We fix readers’ computing problems
APPLICATIONS VIRTUAL TECHNICIAN WON’T RUN
My Windows 10 upgrade has come unstuck after running like ‘oiled silk’. After safely installing McAfee Anti-Virus, I tried and failed to install the complementary Virtual Technician package. McAfee’s technicians point the blame firmly at Windows 10, with numerous errors in the Event logs pointing to ‘ Microsoft Jscript runtime error 800a01a08’. Can you suggest anything I can do to resolve this problem? John Ellinghouse McAfee’s technicians are being a bit disingenuous blaming Windows 10 — a search online revealed the error had been reported as far back as 2010, with the finger firmly pointed at the Virtual Technician program itself. We had no problems downloading and running the tool this end, and after a virtual chat with Microsoft, John returned to McAfee. This time, the problem was transferred up the ladder and after enabling the hidden administrator user account, Virtual Technician was installed successfully (and works correctly across all user accounts). John revealed that his user account is now seven years old, and originated back in Windows 7 — with this in mind, it’s not surprising that occasional glitches like this occur. Nick Peers
WINDOWS BITLOCKER DRIVE PROBLEM
When I plug in my encrypted USB flash drive and click on the padlock icon, I get an ‘Application not found’ error message. I would appreciate your assistance please! John Wallis John had encrypted the USB drive using BitLocker as part of a prior Windows 7 Ultimate installation. The problem occurred on a laptop running Windows 10 Pro. By opening the BitLocker Drive Encryption Control Panel — type “bitlocker” into the Search box — he was able to manually unlock the drive and access its contents through there. Thankfully, a permanent fix to the error message is also available, involving a trip into the Registry (type “regedit” into the Search box to locate Registry Editor). Visit support.microsoft.com/kb/2748266 for a detailed explanation of what causes the problem, but in the meantime, navigate to the following Registry key: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell\ unlock-bde. Double-click the (Default) value and change it to:
@%SystemRoot%\System32\ bdeunlock.exe,-100
Now expand the Command key on the left, double-click (Default) and change that to:
%SystemRoot%\System32\ bdeunlock.exe %1
Close Registry Editor and BitLocker should work correctly again. Matt Hanson
SECURITY WI-FI WORRIES
I heard a while ago about a Wi-Fi vulnerability called KRACK doing the rounds. What is it, and should I be concerned by it? Debbie Steadman
There’s a reasonable summary of the threat — dubbed KRACK (Key Reinstallation AttaCK) — at the TP-Link website ( www.tp-link.com/au/
faq-1970.html). Long story short, while the vulnerability is concerning, you need to remember that a potential hacker would have to be physically within your network’s Wi-Fi range to even begin to exploit it. There are several ways you can protect yourself, though: first, download the latest security patch or update for each of your wireless devices — not just your computer or phone, but other wireless devices like smart tech, too. Most if not all of your devices should have a patch that has addressed this threat by now. Routers in AP (Access Point) mode aren’t affected, but wireless repeaters almost certainly are, so make sure that these are updated, too. Second, add additional layers of encryption to your Internet connection: implement a VPN, for example, and all Internet traffic is subject to further encryption beyond the reach of a KRACK attack. These will protect you both at home and when out and about. One area where you should exercise additional caution is when using wireless technologies away from home — even paying for your coffee through a wireless Point-of-Sale machine could render you vulnerable, for example. Ask the shop whether their network connection is wired before handing over your credit card. Rob Mead-Green
WINDOWS RESTORE ACCESS TO CONTROL PANEL APPLETS
What happened to the old ‘Set Default Programs’ Control Panel applet? When I click the shortcut it now diverts me back to the rubbish Settings dialog! William Yearst The Windows 10 Fall Creators Update sent even more old Control Panel items to retirement in favour of the new Settings dialog. Luckily, the underlying features are still there — our step-bystep guide reveals how to access them.
Open your web browser and visit bit.ly/oldcpanel+ — this points towards the ‘Canonical Names of Control Panel Items’ page on the Microsoft MSDN website. All items — including those deprecated in recent versions of Windows 10 — are listed here. Scroll down and click the Control Panel item you’re looking for, then make a note of its canonical name plus the page name that you want to access.
Press ‘ Win-R’, then type the following and hit Enter, substituting your chosen canonical name and page name where appropriate: control /name Microsoft. DefaultPrograms /pagePageDefaultProgram
Click OK and you should now have access to the original Windows Control Panel item you were looking for. For permanent access, right-click the desktop and choose New > Shortcut, then input the string you entered in the previous step. Cat Ellis
LINUX MISSING BITS
Way back in the 1990s, I developed The Digital DJ Dance Manager, which ran on a PC with Windows XP Pro. While it was written using Visual Basic 6 I would like to clean it up and rewrite it to run on Linux. The unfortunate thing is that this program enables one to use seven simultaneous displays, which isn’t easily done with any of the Linux distros I’ve seen.
While the current release of DJ isn’t pretty, it does get around the irritations which the use of Tabs pose when using an iPad! One display with tabs is not conducive to programs like this, or for businesses such as stocktaking, banking, purchasing and particularly like multidisplay video gaming. When is Linux going to make it easier to add multiple displays to its otherwise powerful system? I’ve regularly had to use Windows when setting up multi-display systems for use by all of my business clients — they’re addicted to having more that two displays.
Another valuable product that seems to be Windows and Apple unique is called
“I heard a while ago about a Wi-Fi vulnerability called KRACK doing the rounds. What is it, and should I be concerned by it?”
a Wormhole! This enables one to easily connect two different systems together via the USB port and have them work as a single computer from just one of their keyboards and trackball. Sam Davis The classic Achilles’ heel of Linux is where the hardware and software worlds meet. Both the things you mention here really aren’t features, but products offered through hardware vendors. The Wormhole is the easiest to address, I’ve never come across this, but it looks similar to the USB Direct Cable Connection that Windows used to offer to migrate installs, made obsolete by a networked option. Really, you’re asking the company to support Linux with its proprietary cable solution. Much of what you’re after would be achieved using a remote desktop solution such as TightVNC, which enables live screen/mouse/keyboard capture, plus drag-and-drop sharing. As for multiple monitors, from what I can tell X11 has supported multiple GPUs with xrandr since v1.4 was released in early 2013, but this needs to go hand-in-hand with driver support, too. It’s not something we’ve tried but all the information does seem to imply Linux can power up to at least 10 displays (in all likelihood more), even across different GPU manufacturers, as long as you have the hardware to do so. Perhaps using proprietary drivers would make things easier? APC Team
OFFICE UNCOVER MORE CHART LABELLING OPTIONS
I’ve created a ‘Treemap’ chart using Microsoft PowerPoint’s Insert Chart tool, but annoyingly it doesn’t appear to give me an option to display the values assigned to each part of the Treemap. Is there a way to do this without having to manually add text boxes to the document? Hannah Stuart PowerPoint has a habit of burying settings such as these behind a bewildering maze of options. Select your chart and click the + button. It’ll appear like you only have a choice of three display options — title, data labels and legend — but if you roll the mouse over the Data Labels option, click the > button that appears and choose ‘More Data Label Options...’ you’ll reveal the Format Data Labels pane where you’ll see a Value option you can tick. Expand the Number section to change how the value appears — set it to Number, for example, and you can display a decimal point or two as required. Cat Ellis
HARDWARE SPLITTING DATA BETWEEN SSDS
I’m thinking of upgrading to a laptop with two drives, one of which will be a solidstate drive (SSD). What’s the best way to split Windows, applications and data between these two drives? Chris Balinski A lot will depend on the size of the SSD drive, Chris. If it’s 32GB you’ll have space for Windows 10 and a handful of apps only — but if you get a model with 64GB or even 128GB, you should have ample room to run all your apps alongside Windows, ensuring both load swiftly and run responsively. You would then use the secondary hard drive both to store your data on and as a backup for your SSD drive. One trick is to set up user folders — Documents, Pictures, Desktop and so on — on your data drive and then point Windows to them. Create the folders — we suggest inside a parent folder named after yourself (so D:\Chris\Documents and so on), then open File Explorer. Under ‘Folders’, right-click each folder in turn and choose Properties. Switch to the Location tab, click Move and point it to your newly created folder on your data drive. When prompted, move any existing files across and you’re done. Don’t forget to point applications such as OneDrive to your D drive, too. Matt Hanson
WINDOWS PROBLEM WITH WINDOWS DUAL-BOOT
I have a dual-boot system whereby Windows 10 Pro is installed on an m2 SSD drive and Windows 10 Home is installed on a SATA SSD. Whenever I update Windows 10 Home, I then find Windows 10 Pro won’t boot and the usual start-up repair fails to work too, forcing me to restore from a system image. Can you suggest a fix please? Brian Harding Ordinarily, dual-booting Windows shouldn’t be an issue because the existing version of Windows should be smart enough to detect the other version and create a proper dual-boot setup. Brian, however, appeared to have installed the second OS while the first hard drive was disconnected, then used EasyBCD to marry the two together.
After updating Windows 10 Home, Windows 10 Pro would start to load, but then fall over, with start-up repair unable to fix things. The boot files were stored on the Windows 10 Pro drive, and Brian had been experimenting with various settings — ‘hiding’ the Windows 10 Pro OS by removing its drive letter prior to updating Windows 10 Home, for example.
We pointed Brian to a couple of boot repair tools: the Dual-boot Repair tool ( bit.ly/2CUgUZR) revealed that thanks to the way EasyBCD had set up each partition, each partition thought it was the C drive after each boot, so only one copy of Windows was visible. Brian also uses Macrium Reflect ( www.macrium. com/reflectfree), so we pointed him towards its rescue disc, which includes a tool for fixing boot problems via Restore.
Ironically, Brian reported he had no problems with a subsequent update, so for now, it’s a watching brief. There’s a possibility the problems may come back, in which case we’ll reveal what we did in a future issue. Nick Peers