APC experts solve computing problems
The APC team tackle problems across the spectrum of devices and software. Learn a new trick or fix you can use.
PC won’t stay off
I’ve built around 30 PCs over the past 20 years but have never seen this before. I recently built a new PC with Windows 10 Pro and all updates installed. My build: Gigabyte x570 PRO WIFI, Ryzen 5 5600X, 32GB RAM, 2TB MP600 NVMe SSD, RTX 3070 graphics, and EVGA BR600W PSU.
If I click “Start > Power > Shut down,” the computer simply restarts. I’ve searched online, tried everything in Windows, including turning Fast Boot off, but nothing works. The only way to switch off my PC is to hold the power button for a few seconds for a forced shutdown. Obviously, I’d really like to resolve this problem and be able to do a Windows shutdown the normal way.
Any help would be great.
JOEL BRIERE
APC responds: Joel had already anticipated our first suggestion – making sure the automatic restart option is disabled when Windows blue-screens – so we next asked him to check Event Viewer for any potential clues. To open it, type “event” into the Search bar and click “Event Viewer.” After a short pause, you’ll get a summary of events by type, including Critical, Error, and Warning. Again, Joel reported no errors relating to reboots could be found.
At this point, we decided to run with the idea that Windows might not be the problem, but that the hardware was somehow involved. We widened our search to see if other X570 boards were exhibiting similar symptoms, and discovered a combination of Windows and UEFI settings that fixed Joel’s problem. Simply put, by reenabling Fast Boot in Windows, but disabling Fast Boot and Wake on LAN in the UEFI, Joel was able to get his PC to shut down properly at last.
CPU not supported
Recently, program updates have failed with the error “CPU is not supported.” Ten years ago, I cobbled together a DIY system based on a quad-core Intel Core i7-875K (2.93GHz) on an Asus P7P55 LX motherboard. 8GB RAM and an AMD Radeon HD 5800 series graphics card rounded it out, and over the years a 500GB SSD, 5TB hard drive, and a replacement fan or two have maintained the system performance through clean installs of Windows 7, 8, and 10 Pro.
Now the CPU support issue is preventing updates to VMware, some Zoom add-ins, and my go-to movie creation/editing application. The question is, can I get by with just a CPU update, or is a new mobo needed?
ALAN KEYWORTH
APC responds: It looks as if your CPU has come to the end of the road, and likely the rest of your system too – at least for these specific apps. You might be able to “trick” VMware into bypassing the CPU check during the upgrade process using an “allowLegacyCPU =true” flag (see https://bit. ly/3y0ENv6 for full details and why it’s not a long-term solution).
The age of your system means a simple CPU upgrade won’t cut it – it’s time to bite the bullet and look for a new system, basically a motherboard, CPU, and RAM. You can, of course, source these separately, but in 2021 even a budget system will outperform your formerly state-of-the-art rig. The Core i7-875K scores 3,127 on
Passmark’s CPU benchmark – the mid-range Core i5-10400 has six cores (12 threads) and scores 12,436 in comparison. If you can afford better, use Google to perform some comparative benchmark searches along the lines of “i5-10400 versus i7-875K” to see what’s out there based on your budget.
Black screen in Zoom
As a music teacher, I spend a lot of time on Zoom and sometimes I need to share my screen. Problem is it doesn’t always work. When it doesn’t, the students I’m working with see a black screen that only displays my cursor, which they can see move. Also, if I open menus while sharing, that can be seen too as a change in texture. One day I got a black screen when trying to share my AOL desktop, but it worked fine when I switched to sharing Sibelius. My specs are: AMD FX 9590 CPU, Gigabyte 90FXA-UD3 mobo, 16GB of DDR3 RAM, and an AMD Radeon R9 200 with a Sept 22, 2020 driver running Windows 10. My version of Zoom is up to date. Any help would be appreciated.
ALAN FRANCIS
APC responds: We jumped through various hoops trying to help Alan fix his problem. There are many potential causes – for example, if your desktop resolution is greater than regular HD (1920x1080), trying to share the desktop can result in a black screen with a cursor, a problem that appears to be hit and miss depending on the application you’re planning to share. The only solution currently on offer is to reduce the size of your desktop to 1920x1080 for sharing purposes.
Some users have reported similar problems when running Chrome in the background during Zoom meetings – switching to Edge resolved the problem in their case, so it’s worth trying that, too.
Another cause of black screens while sharing is if you have both integrated graphics and a graphics
“The only way to switch off my PC is to hold the power button for a few seconds for a forced shutdown. Obviously, I’d really like to resolve this problem and be able to do a Windows shutdown the normal way.”
card set up with automatic switching between the two – in this rare case, you need to configure Zoom to default to the integrated graphics chip to eliminate the problem. For example, Nvidia users should visit “Manage 3D Settings,” switch to the “Program Settings” tab, then click “Add” to add Cpthost.exe from C:\Users\ YOURUSERNAME\AppData\ Roaming\Zoom\bin). Once added, set “Preferred Graphics Processor” to “Integrated graphics,” and click “Apply” to hopefully fix it.
Unfortunately, none of these solutions helped Alan, but we subsequently discovered that his broadband Internet connection has a maximum upload speed of just 2Mb/s, which puts him on the borderline when it comes to video conferencing. The screen-sharing demands themselves aren’t too onerous – no more than 150kb/s with video thumbnail, but once you start adding in additional demands (1080p video requires 3.8Mb/s, for example), it’s possible that issues with the line, a weak Wi-Fi signal, or bandwidth being shared with other internetconnected devices in his household could cause the intermittent problems he’s suffering.
NAS RAID query
In the April 2021 edition, I tried to follow the instructions to set up the Ubuntu NAS server. I got stuck on “Set Up Folder Sharing.” When I tried to create the folder using the command “mkdir ~/ media/bay1/shared” I got an error: “Cannot create directory shared: Permission denied.” I did some searching and found that for a new ext4 filesystem, you need to change the permissions so your user can access it and read/write to it:
$ sudo chown -R $USER:$USER ~/media/bay1
(Where “~/media/bay1” is the path to where the drive is mounted.) This solved my problem. What steps were left out in the instructions that were in APC? Also, would it be possible to give the steps necessary to configure a RAID 5 array?
LEON GARFIELD
APC responds: Thanks for sharing the tip, Leon. It seems you may have discovered something we skipped over in the original article
– namely that the mount point inherits the permissions of the device it’s attached to, which are set to root by default. Your fix will be welcome to those who suffered the same fate as you when trying to use any newly mounted drives, and we apologise for the omission. Blasted Linux permissions.
You can configure RAID 5 drives directly from Cockpit, but remember the drives you plan to use must be empty (i.e., unpartitioned). Navigate to the “Storage” section, click the blue button next to “Devices” in the top right-hand corner (or scroll down if it’s not visible), and choose “Create RAID Device.”
You’ll see “RAID 5 (Distributed Parity)” is selected by default, and that all your drives are listed. You should be able to identify each by their size and their device address (dev/sda, dev/sdb, and so on). Simply select those drives you wish to include in your array, give them a suitably descriptive name, and click “Create.” If you come across any error messages, you may have selected the wrong drives, or you may need to check the drives haven’t been previously initialised before trying again.
Once the RAID array has been set up, administer it directly from the” Devices” menu, where you’ll be able to create a partition table before partitioning and formatting it in the usual manner. Remember the size of the partition will be restricted to the size of the smallest drive you’ve added to the RAID array.
Time to reinstall
I have a four-year-old Dell desktop running Windows 10 Pro version 20H2, build 19042.685. I’ve been experiencing a variety of minor problems but lately things have gotten to point where I feel a full, clean install of Windows is warranted. I’m unable to download updates (error 0x800f984) because I’m supposedly missing several key files. The computer will boot to Windows, but randomly shuts down from time to time. No single event triggers this – it’s a hard reboot.
I’ve run the Windows Update Troubleshooter. It claims to find problems and fix them, but it doesn’t. I’ve tried running SFC and DISM from the command prompt – no fix. I’m out of ideas. Can you help?
RW SCOLARI
APC responds: We sympathise, but you’ve answered your own question. Time for a complete clear-out and restart from scratch. First, take the usual full set of backups, including a complete drive image of your current setup. Why? Because if the reinstall doesn’t fix anything, you can quickly roll back. Once done, perform a full reinstall. Avoid the reset or recovery options and use the Media Creation Tool (www. microsoft.com/softwaredownload/windows10) to create bootable media you can boot from, formatting your boot drive to ensure it’s a completely clean install.
If the problems reappear, then it’s probable that an underlying hardware problem could be to blame.