HELP STATION
Expert solutions for everday problems.
Thunderbolt 3 support
Hi TechLife. I’ve been working from home for about a year. My work laptop is connected to a dualmonitor 180W docking station via Thunderbolt. The dock and all peripherals are mine, but the laptop belongs to the company. I want to use the setup off-hours by unplugging the Thunderbolt from the laptop and into a yet-to-bebuilt PC rig. How would I do that? I don’t need the extra power from the Thunderbolt. Do I just need to make sure the motherboard I pick has USB-C?
John Otto
TechLife responds: While Thunderbolt 3 is backward compatible with USB-C, USB-C isn’t compatible in return. That means you need to source a motherboard with Thunderbolt 3 support, which typically means one of two things. First, some higher-end boards come with TB ports on the board – one example is Asrock’s X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3 Mini ITX TB3.
Others provide support for TB3 via an internal header that can be paired with a specific PCIe add-on card, usually from the same manufacturer and paired to specific chipsets – for example, Asus produces two separate cards. The ThunderboltEX 3 card works with older Intel chipsets, while the
ThunderboltEX 3-TR card is designed for the newer Z490/ B460/H4670/B550 series mobos that have the 14-1 pin header, including the TUF Gaming Z490-Plus.
Password problem
I was using my Asus laptop when it did a security update, something it’s done perhaps hundreds of times in the past. This time, when the small window for the PIN came up, I got the message, “Something happened and your PIN isn’t available. Choose another sign-in option.” The only two options it gives me is a password or PIN. I had never set up a password, so what do I do?
Bruce Noren
TechLife responds: Windows defaults to using your Microsoft Account credentials to log in, so unless you specifically set up a local user account (harder than it should be) when setting up Windows, you’re logging into that account, using your PIN as a shortcut. Try selecting “Password” and entering your Microsoft Account password, which should allow you to log in. If it fails, and you have recently changed your Microsoft Account password for any reason, try the older password instead.
If you don’t know what this is, and you don’t see an option about “I forgot my password,” which will help you try to reset it to gain access, visit https://account.live. com/password/reset in another browser to see if that works. If resetting it doesn’t gain you access, you may have to employ the services of a third-party tool that can bypass or reset Microsoft Account passwords in Windows 10. One of the cheapest is PCUnlocker
Standard ( www.top-password. com/reset-windows-password. html).
Moving user folders
Hi TechLife. My main drive is an SSD that’s getting too full. I installed a secondary HD to hold my music, pictures, videos, and documents. I followed a couple of articles that explained how to point the folders at the top of the “This PC” page (“Music,” “Pictures,” etc.) to the new drive, but it ended in disaster.
I followed the directions in one of the articles on my “Music” folder, and it successfully moved the folder to the new E drive. The problem is that it deleted all my music files. My big mistake was that I forgot to create a new backup first, so it took me two days to recover everything and get my C drive back to square one, although the association between some of the music files and the cover art was lost.
I don’t know if the instructions didn’t work because they were too old for all the Windows updates that came since, or if it was something I did wrong. Do you know of a simple, foolproof, way to migrate these folders without losing the links in “This PC”?
Steve Vanetti
TechLife responds: The standard procedure is the same now as it has been since Windows Vista was released, but to avoid the potential for data loss, we suggest you set up the folders on your new drive (for example, “E:\Steve\Documents,”
“E:\Steve\Pictures,” and so on), then copy across the content from your existing user folders to these folders. Once the files have been safely transferred, delete the originals.
Once done, open File Explorer to “This PC.” Right-click one of your user folders in the “Folders” list at the top and choose “Properties,” then switch to the “Location” tab. Click “Move,” browse to and select the target folder on your new drive (so “E:\Steve\Documents” for “Documents”), and click “Apply.” You’ll be prompted to move existing files to this new folder – this is necessary to ensure Windows understands where the folder resides – so click “Yes,” even though you’ve performed this step already.
Windows is now directed to use the new folder, and you can repeat for any other user folders you wish to move. Going forward, we recommend you put in place a real-time backup of files with versioning support, so you don’t encounter this again.
The simplest solution is to tie in these folders to a cloud backup account, but given the likely size of your music folder alone, this may be impractical if you don’t have a premium subscription, such as Microsoft 365, which comes with 1TB storage via OneDrive. If you have access to a suitable file server, the perfect tool for the job is NextCloud ( https://nextcloud. com). Install the server portion on your NAS and the client on your
PC, using it to back up all your key folders in real time. Alternately, go with Syncthing ( www.syncthing. net), but be sure to configure the “File Versioning” tab during setup with one of the file-versioning options to keep multiple versions backed up.
CPU fan direction
I was puzzled by your answer to Papa Homey’s question in February 2021’s issue about CPU temperature fluctuation. How did you determine that all his fans were drawing air into the case? I’ve run Open Hardware Monitor and I don’t see any way to tell which way my fans blow.
Al Kraybill
TechLife responds: If you reread the question, Al, you’ll see that Papa himself revealed that all his fans were blowing inward. This obviously isn’t something that software can tell you – you need to open the case and visually inspect the fans to see which way they’ve been positioned to determine if they’re pulling air out or drawing it in.
A couple of further points: One, make sure you leave enough space around your PC’s chassis to allow the air to circulate, and two, there’s no hard and fast rule about whether air should be drawn from back to front or vice versa. You may find colder air circulates more naturally at the front, in which case make sure your fans are configured so the air is drawn in from the front and expelled from the rear (don’t forget to leave space behind the case). The key thing is to ensure the fans pull colder air across the components to draw the heat from them before venting it.
Installed software list
My Win 10 install is a couple of years old, so a recent TechLife article was welcome. However, the Powershell commands didn’t work for me, at least not the second one to generate a text file in the root of drive C. I’m not clear about the character(s) following “FormatTable” and end up with a missing argument error.
William Barnard
TechLife responds: Apologies – there are a couple of errors with the way the command was formatted. It should be one long command, and there should be no space between “-” and “AutoSize.” The following is correct:
Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\ Software\Wow6432Node\ Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* | Select-Object DisplayName, DisplayVersion, Publisher, InstallDate | Format-Table –AutoSize > c:\software.txt
If you’d prefer a simpler way that will generate a more comprehensive list of the software on your PC, try NirSoft’s portable UninstallView tool, which you can download (choose the 64-bit version), extract, and run from www.nirsoft.net/utils/uninstall_ view.html – once opened, a complete list is shown. Choose “View > HTML Report – All Items” to create an HTML document you can refer back to post-installation.
Email not working
I can’t send or receive emails though Thunderbird anymore. When I check emails via my provider’s webmail ( https:// portal.tds.net), all is well. I’ve tried contacting TDS tech support by email, and it’s no help. All I get are canned responses that are on its site, and that it must be a problem with Thunderbird, as emails can be sent and received via webmail. Any suggestions?
Rich Taylor
TechLife responds: The problem will likely be with Thunderbird in the sense that TDS may have changed its mail server settings. We found conflicting advice from different TDS websites, but the latest information we could find would seem to point to the server recently having switched to a new system.
Click the “More” button and choose “Account Settings” in Thunderbird. Select “Server Settings” under your TDS mail account. Server Name should be set to mail.tds.net, and the port number will vary according to the Server Type: If it’s POP3, this should be set to 995; if it’s IMAP, set it to 993. Your username and password should remain unchanged.
Next, select “Outgoing Server (SMTP),” select your existing email settings, and click “Edit.” Make sure the Server Name is again set to mail.tds.net, set connection security to STARTTLS (or TLS if you’re running an older version of Thunderbird), and verify the port is set to 587. Click “OK” and hopefully you’ll be a ble to use Thunderbird for your email again.