We x readers’ 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.
HARDWARE BONDING AND GROUNDED
I’m trying to build a simple rover out of Lego and scavenged electronics, as a father-son project, but I have a few questions. If I use an Arduino Leonardo as the controller, it only has three ground pins and I need four because each wheel has its own motor. Is there a way to multiplex these pins in software somehow? Tarrant Morten Ground is ground across the entire circuit. The point of the ground connection is to provide a reference point for all the signal and power lines. For that to work, all the ground connections are shared. The Arduino provides multiple ground pins as a convenience, and so you don’t need to sink all your current through a single pin, which could lead to overheating.
However, you can’t just connect one lead of a DC motor to a ground pin and the other lead to a digital IO pin. The IO pins are rated for a maximum of 40mA and a typical small DC motor might draw 250mA. A single motor will blow the IO pin; four motors would exceed the total power that the Arduino can supply. You need to power the motors separately with their own batteries and use the Arduino to control their speed using a pulse-width modulation (PWM) circuit. There’s actually a tutorial for this at tinyurl.com/ apc429-qanda. Luis Villazon
INTERNET PROXY ISSUES PERSIST AFTER UPGRADE
I’ve upgraded my PC to Windows 10, but continue to be plagued by a particular problem. Every time I start my PC followed by my browser, I discover both ‘ Use Proxy server for your LAN’ and ‘Bypass proxy server for local addresses’ are ticked under ‘Internet Options’. Most of the time, these settings don’t particularly matter, but there are times when they do (and it’s annoying) — can you help me pinpoint the problem? Michael Cooper These settings should be unticked by default, which indicated a third-party program or setting was responsible. Michael then remembered he’d invested in OnSpeed so that he could obtain a IP address from the UK while travelling abroad, and removing this resolved the issue. If you can’t identify the culprit, and scans with both your antivirus software and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free ( www. malwarebytes.org) come up clean, try examining what programs and services are launching with Windows using a tool such as HijackThis ( sourceforge.net/projects/hjt) to help locate the trouble. Graham Barlow
WINDOWS WINDOWS 10 UPGRADE DEAD-END
I’ve wasted a lot of time trying to upgrade my older PC from Windows 7 to Windows 10 with no success. I’m getting a C1900101-
40017 error. Can you help? Gerry Potter
Unfortunately, Gerry is one of a growing number of people with older PCs that have learned the hard way that, despite being told otherwise by the Windows 10 Update tool, their computer doesn’t support an update to Windows 10.
In the vast majority of cases, this is down to outdated drivers, and this is where the main issue arises. If the computer manufacturer (Acer, which now owns the Packard Bell name, in this instance) doesn’t want to maintain updated drivers for a computer, then its chances of supporting Windows 10 reduces significantly. In Gerry’s case, his PC model is conspicuous by its absence on the Packard Bell website for models listed as being supported for the Windows 10 upgrade. He tried sourcing later drivers from other sources using the IOBit Driver Booster tool ( www.iobit.com/en/driverbooster.php) and even reinstalled Windows 7 from scratch, but the update still stubbornly refused to install, throwing up a C1900101-40017 message each time.
Because the issue is driver-related, Gerry may be able to identify the specific problem blocking his upgrade by examining the setupapi log files, which he’ll find at ‘C:\Windows\Inf\’. If he’s able to pinpoint the problematic driver, he may be able to take steps to rectify it and install Windows 10. Nick Peers
BOOTING IDE TO AHCI
My PC has a 256GB SSD as its primary drive. Back when I installed it, I neglected to tell the BIOS to boot up in AHCI mode. There aren’t a lot of clear guides on how to properly make this switch without reinstalling Windows, unfortunately. I know it involves a registry tweak and booting into safe mode to get the ACHI drivers loaded. But is this even recommended? Alternatively, when I make the jump to Windows 10, will I be able to finally tell my motherboard to boot in ACHI mode after a fresh installation? Kevin Bunkley
To answer your first question: yes, enabling the AHCI driver through your registry is a perfectly viable approach. In fact, Microsoft has a support page addressing this exact question at support.microsoft.com/en-us/
kb/922976. There, you’ll find a ‘Fix this problem’ link able to make the tweak without your intervention. If you’d rather step through the process manually, start by opening regedit. Navigate to either ‘HKEY_LOCAL_ MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\ Services\Msahci’ or ‘HKEY_LOCAL_ MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\ Services\IastorV’, depending on the software you currently have installed. On the right-hand side of the window, under the column called ‘Name’, you should see an entry titled ‘Start’. Right-click it and choose the default option, ‘Modify’. Make sure the Value data field is populated with a ‘0’ and click ‘OK’. Close regedit and restart. AHCI enabled, turn it on in your firmware.
When you make the jump to Windows 10, there’s a good chance you’ll be upgrading. As far as we know, that process won’t touch your BIOS. So make the switch to AHCI first, then install Windows 10. APC team
PROGRAMMING SECRET CODE
I’m trying to create an installation routine for an application. It’s nothing too complicated and, at the moment it’s handled using a BAT file but I’d like to convert this to an EXE. Is there a utility that can truly ‘compile’ BAT files? I’ve tried ‘Advanced BAT to EXE Converter’ but the free version doesn’t allow me to distribute the resulting files. Adam Whitney These converter apps don’t actually compile the batch file — they just perform some simple encryption to obfuscate the original batch file code and then parcel it up with an executable header. You can actually use Windows Process Explorer to watch as the embedded batch file is extracted to a temporary folder and then executed normally.
We wouldn’t worry about this being a bother to end users; the process is
transparent and the batch file is deleted after it has run. But it does mean there’s no point paying the US$49.95 for the Pro version of Advanced BAT to EXE Converter. You can just use IExpress, which has been bundled with Windows since XP. Luis Villazon
SECURITY SECRETS TO THE GRAVE
I’ve been emailing an old friend for several years. The only thing is that we aren’t actually sending emails between addresses. We share a single account (using Yahoo) and simply save our messages in the drafts folder. The problem is I would like to migrate from Yahoo to Gmail, which I believe is more secure. Before I can do this, I need some way of migrating all the Yahoo messages from the drafts folder to the new Gmail address. Which would be fine, except that there are just under 5,000 messages to move! Yahoo doesn’t let me just select them all and hit forward — I can only view 50 at a time on the screen. Is there a quicker way to save these messages for posterity? I’m using Windows 7. Peter Mantel If you really can’t bring yourself to delete (or simply abandon) these old messages, you can use Mozilla Thunderbird ( www.mozilla.org/ thunderbird) to connect to your Yahoo webmail and this will let you select all the messages in any given folder or mailbox. If you’re really concerned about security, though, instead of forwarding them to another address you should consider saving them in a big text file on your PC. Then rightclick the file and choose ‘Properties > General > Advanced > Encrypt contents to secure data’. Luis Villazon
WINDOWS LOST SPACE ON DRIVE
When Windows 8.1 was installed on my laptop, I had 870GB free space, but having upgraded to Windows 10 (and subsequently reinstalling it twice) my free space has dropped down to 828GB, even after deleting the Windows.old folder. This baffles me as I thought it would remain fairly static. Is there something I’m missing? Joff Hopkins
The upgrade to Windows 10 (plus subsequent reinstallations) don’t format the drive, so files are being left behind by each outdated installation. We instructed Joff to download SpaceSniffer from www.uderzo.it and run it as an administrator, then examine the results. He sent us a screenshot that revealed the System Volume Information folder was more than 40GB in size. This folder is where System Restore points are stored, and the easiest way to remove these files is to shrink the size of your System Restore cache. To do this, right-click the Start button and choose ‘System’. Click ‘System Protection’ in the left-hand pane. When the dialogue box opens, select drive ‘C:’ under ‘Protection Settings’ and click ‘Configure’. You’ll see a slider — if it’s set to 10% as is likely, it means Windows is reserving up to 100GB drive space for System Restore points.
This is overkill, so use the slider to reduce the space reserved — all the way down to 2% (20GB should be ample for most people’s needs). There’s also a Delete button here — click this to purge all existing Restore points, then click ‘OK’ followed by ‘Create’ to create a new Restore point to use going forward. You’ll find the missing 40GB has now been restored. Matt Hanson
WINDOWS WHAT’S DEFRAGGING MY DRIVE?
I tried to defrag my C: drive yesterday, but Windows 7 told me that the Disk Defragmenter is currently using customised settings created by another program. It’s told me if I’d like to modify the schedule, I’ll have to remove those settings — it gives me the option of doing so, but can you clarify what this means? Will it do any damage if I remove the settings? Bernard Donohoe There’s no need to manually defrag your drive in Windows 7 or later, Bernard — normally, Windows takes control of the situation, although it’s also possible for third-party tools to manage the defragmentation process, too. It sounds like your PC’s drive is being defragged so unless you have reason to want to intervene yourself, it’s best left alone. Nick Odantzis
INTERNET THE NEWS ON EDGE
I’ve been using the Maxthon browser for years and have some questions about Microsoft Edge, which I plan to switch to when I get a Surface Book. First, can I
display favourites at the top of the browser rather than on the right, like I can in Maxthon? Second, can I automatically open links in a new tab without having to right-click them? And finally, how do I rearrange the home page to show news feeds? Richard Jones
Richard was referring to Maxthon’s bookmarks toolbar with his initial question, and the good news is that Edge has this feature, too: place your bookmarks in the Favourites Bar folder, then enable the toolbar via the switch you’ll find by opening Edge’s Settings and clicking ‘ View favourites settings’. We’re not aware of any setting you can apply to make Edge open links in new tabs by default, but hold Ctrl-Shift as you click a link and it’ll have the same effect, or set up your mouse’s central button to do this, if you use one. Finally, open a new blank tab and click ‘Customise’ above ‘Top Sites’ From here, you can choose to show the news feed, plus select up to six topics to prioritise what news stories are shown. Cat Ellis
STORAGE PREVENTING BOTTLENECKS
I’m running a Core i7-4771 (Haswell) on an MSI Z97S SLI Plus motherboard with 16GB of memory, an Intel SSD 750 400GB drive, and a GeForce GTX 770 graphics card. I understand that the two PCIe slots are capable of supporting one device in x16 mode or two in x8. Am I limiting my Intel SSD or Nvidia GPU in any way? Second, does the LGA 2011 interface offer more lanes to the PCIe slots? I’ve read that they come with 40 lanes, but want to confirm the specifications. Robert Harris
That SSD 750 isn’t limited in any way. It employs a four-lane interface, so a x8 link is more than enough. In theory, your GeForce card is getting less PCI Express bandwidth than it supports, but today’s GPUs are not bottlenecked by PCIe throughput. Stick with one GTX 770 and you’ll be fine. Where you’ll run into trouble is if you find yourself short on graphics processing power in the future. Although MSI’s Z97S SLI Plus has three PCIe x16 slots, populating them all divides the CPU’s PCI Express into one x8 and two x4 links. Nvidia doesn’t allow SLI across four-lane connections, so you’re forced to replace that GTX 770. Enter the LGA 2011-v3 interface. Intel currently sells three different Haswell-E chips: Core i7-5960X, -5930K, and -5280K. Two sport 40-lane PCIe 3.0 controllers, while the last gives you 28 lanes. Dependin g on the motherboard, the highest-end models would let you run a pair of graphics cards in SLI using x16 links. The entry-level version gives you a pair of cards at x8 with the SSD 750 at x4 and lanes left over. Right now, though, there’s no reason to fret. APC team