QUICK TIPS
We fix readers’ computing problems
WINDOWS REMOVE MICROSOFT ACCOUNT FROM PC
I have a simple problem — how do I remove my account from one PC which I am giving away, without removing my Microsoft Account all together? I have other PCs that use my account. Ian Brighton Removing a Microsoft Account from your PC has no effect on your Microsoft Account in general, other than to remove the association between it and your PC. In theory, it should work in the same way as removing a regular user account.
First, we asked Ian who he was passing the PC on to — if you’re selling it or giving it to charity, it’s a good idea to revert it to factory settings first using your PC’s recovery partition or disc, and if there’s sensitive data on the drive, use a free program like CCleaner ( www.piriform.com) to securely wipe the free space so all traces of documents and other data are removed.
Ian was passing the PC on to his grandson, so this isn’t necessary. What you need to do in this instance is first click ‘Start > Settings > Accounts’. Choose ‘Family & other users’. While it’s tempting to use the option to add a family member, if you’re no longer using the PC the best thing to do is click ‘Add someone else to this PC’. You can then link this to an existing Microsoft account or click ‘I don’t have this person’s sign-in information’ followed by ‘Add a user without a Microsoft account’ to create a local user account. Once created, click the user’s new entry and choose ‘Change account type’ to switch them to administrator. Click ‘OK’. When you’re ready to remove your own account, log off and then log on as the new user. Return to the ‘Settings > Accounts’ screen where you’ll be able to select your own account and remove it (with its files) from your PC, ready to hand over. Graham Barlow
HARDWARE SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT
I plan to build myself a new PC, but before I do, please could you clarify M.2 support, as found in my Asus X99-E WS/USB 3.1 user manual? “This motherboard features the M.2 slot, which shares bandwidth with PCI Express 3.0 x4 slot to speed up data transfer up to 32Gbps. This helps enhance the performance of your SSD… that is dedicated only to the operating system.” My questions are:
* Is M.2 only useful when the operating system is installed on to one dedicated SSD?
* Is there any benefit to utilizing M.2 when the OS is installed on a RAID 10 array (across four 256GB Samsung 950 Pro SSDs)?
* I read online that enthusiasts install their OS (with a lot of hassle) directly on to the M.2-based drive. Does this offer the best performance compared to my alternative method?
Thank you very much for any help you can give. Jerry Franco, Jr. The maximum throughput of a modern SATA port is 6Gbps, whereas a four-lane M.2 slot is theoretically capable of up to 32Gbps. The fastest SATA-attached
drives can push sequential transfers just over 500MB/s. Meanwhile, Samsung rates its 256GB and 512GB NVMe SSDs (like the M.2 950 Pros) in excess of 2GB/s.
To answer your first question: no, M.2 attached to the PCIe bus isn’t only useful when it’s hosting the operating system. However, many of your OS’s operations are small and random in nature. That’s exactly where a drive such as Samsung’s 950 Pro excels. The NVMe interface is optimised for low latency, which translates to increased system responsiveness. The best M.2 drives are faster than a striped set of mirrored SATA SSDs. What you lose, of course, is the redundancy of those mirrors. If this were our new PC, we’d drop a 256GB drive into the M.2 slot for Windows and our most performance-sensitive apps. Then we’d re-use those other three 950 Pros, perhaps leaving them in RAID 10 to store user data requiring some degree of protection. There’s even room for a third tier of mechanical disks, should you need additional capacity. APC team
HARDWARE BATTLING BAD BEHAVIOUR
I recently updated my Windows 8.1 system to Windows 10. It ran for a couple of weeks, but then started to exhibit display corruption, slow browser refreshes, desktop color craziness (all text and backgrounds turn clear so you cannot read any of the menus), and eventually I have to reboot. It’s good for another few minutes after that. Most of my issues manifest while I’m browsing the web, but can crop up at any time. The system board is an Asus P7P55D-E with a Core i7-860, and 12GB of RAM; I have a Radeon HD 5700-series video card plugged in, too. AMD does not have any drivers newer than the ones I’m running (15.201.1151.0).
Do you think that, due to the relative age of the video card (it’s around three years old now), it’s time to buy a newer one that might coexist better with Windows 10? I didn’t have any issues with Windows 7 or Windows 8.1. If you recommend a new board, what would be a reasonable choice? I don’t do much gaming, but do appreciate a peppy system. I have tried uninstalling the current video drivers, rebooting and letting Windows discover the card on its own. That works for a little while, after which I’m battling the same issues. David Knapp The troubleshooting process is fraught with frustration and hard-fought victories. In this case, the fact that you can recover stability and then quickly lose it once again suggests you could have a component that might be cooling down and then overheating. Have you popped the side off your chassis to check that all is well with the Radeon’s cooling fan? How about using GPU-Z to monitor the temperature of AMD’s Juniper processor? If everything checks out on the hardware side, try starting over with a fresh driver install. Use DDU ( www.wagnardmobile.com/DDU) to clean out any remnants of older Catalyst versions, and then grab the 15.11.1 Beta ( amd.com/beta), which is a little newer than what you were using before.
At the end of the day, though, that graphics card is getting old, and AMD hasn’t supported it with any recent driver updates (the latest Radeon Software Crimson Edition build only goes as far back as Radeon HD 7700+ support) — so you might want to start thinking about an upgrade. APC team
HARDWARE PSU COMPATIBILITY
A while back, I bought a PSU for my sister’s desktop. The stock unit died and I didn’t pay enough attention when I picked out the replacement; it turned out to be an SFX form factor-based supply, rather than ATX. Do I simply need an adapter bracket, or is this specific PSU useless in her machine? Blake Many SFX-based power supplies include adapter brackets for applications just like this one. If yours didn’t, then yes, that should be all you need to get the PSU installed. Check with the manufacturer to see if it offers a bracket. They’re fairly widely available on eBay as well. APC team
NETWORKING EATING UP BANDWIDTH
I am currently working overseas in an area that shares its Internet connection with a large number of people. They restrict access in order to prevent the connection from becoming severely bogged down. We’re allowed unlimited web browsing and email, and time-limited video chat. Being away from my family is bad enough, but no online gaming is just cruel. I like to play Battlefield
4, Star Wars Battlefront and WoW. From what I hear, though, online gaming consumes minimal bandwidth compared to other online activities. Is there a good reference for making such a comparison? Brian Eyestone We don’t have any benchmark data of own to share, but we do know that games utilise your internet connection in different ways, and every title will chew up a different quantity of data per hour. If you were to believe Cable One’s web usage calculator ( www.cableone.net/ Docs/datacalculator.html), though, streaming music is more than twice as intensive as heavy gaming, and video streaming uses more than 50 times as much bandwidth. Most folks probably overestimate the bandwidth requirements of online gaming.
Almost certainly, downloading the games themselves and keeping them up to date through patches would tax the connection more than a few hours of play time. APC team