Ask DACS
June 2013

Moderated and reported by Jim Scheef

Ask DACS is a Question and Answer session before the main presentation at the monthly General Meeting. We solicit questions from the floor and then answers from other audience members. My role as moderator is to try to guide the discussion to a likely solution to the problem. The answers below include my own post-meeting research.

Q – When I use my computer at home I often get a message that Windows has detected a duplicate IP address. When this happens I can’t get on the network. If my husband’s computer is turned off, my computer works fine. How can we use both computers in marital bliss? (Paraphrased from the actual question.) Both computers are laptops using a wireless connection from a Comcast cable modem wireless router.
A – Distilling the responses at the meeting: When both computers are off and you first boot one of them, the computer will request the same IP address it had when last on the network. If the address is available, the router agrees and everyone is happy. When the second computer boots, it does the same thing. If this results in a duplicate address, the second computer is supposed to ask the router for a “new” address. The router should be happy to oblige, but somehow this process is not happening. Discussion then moved to how to correct the most likely configuration error. To correct this situation:

1. Check that your router is set to assign IP addresses. The technical term is DHCP (dynamic host configuration protocol) and this should be “on” which is the default. You check this by logging into the router’s configuration screens. Look on the router for how to do this.
2. Make sure both computers are set to get their IP address automatically. Again this is the default. This setting is in the TCP/IPv4 properties of the network adapter. How you get to that point depends on which Windows version is on your computer. Most Windows laptops will have two network adapters, wired and wireless.

Q – When I first turn on my computer, there is a message about a CMOS configuration error with a prompt to hit F1 to continue or F2 to enter the BIOS Setup. How can I make this stop?
A – This prompt is a result of a POST (power on self test) error and indicates that the computer’s BIOS (basic input output system) settings are not correct. When this occurs every time you turn on the computer, it indicates that the computer’s configuration backup battery is dead. This is the small 3-volt “silver cell” battery that powers the computer’s clock and a small memory that stores basic hardware settings like the amount of RAM installed and the type of hard drive. The battery is located on the main system board along with the processor and memory. Replacing this battery is straight forward in a desktop machine, but can be easy or very involved in a laptop depending on the mood of the gods when the machine was designed. There is no way to know what size battery to buy until you open the computer and find the old battery, but CR2032 and CR2325 are the most common. Once you have a good battery installed, turn on the computer and hit the appropriate key to enter the BIOS setup. Look for a menu item or F-key to load the system’s “optimal settings”, then set the system clock to the current date and time. Follow the menu to save the settings and exit. The system will reboot and should boot without the error message.

Q – When I run the Windows Check Disk (chkdsk.exe or the GUI equivalent) with the fix errors option on the C: drive (the system partition), it schedules the operation for the next time the system boots. This is normal, but when check disk runs, I get a message that “check disk cannot run due to errors”. The operating system is Win7.
A – A member suggested to boot from a “live CD” and run Check Disk from there. The reason the actual Check Disk operation is done on boot-up is to give the Check Disk program total control of the file system on the partition. Normally Windows is in control and “protects” the system partition from “harm” by other programs. As a first step, open a Command window as Administrator. Navigate the Start menu to the Accessories folder and right-click on the “Command Prompt” icon. Select “Run as Administrator” from the context menu. A command window will open. Type “chkdsk c:” and press enter. Check Disk will run in read-only mode and you will see any resulting messages. If this runs to completion, you may have a chance to fix the error after booting from a live CD. Some sources for such a bootable CD are:

1. BartPE (www.nu2.nu/pebuilder) which you must build from an XP installation CD. BartPE and PE Builder are free but you must build and then burn the CD yourself.
2. Active@ Data Studio (www.livecd.com) is based on Win7 and costs $80 for a personal license. The trial version may be sufficient in this case.
3. The official Microsoft tool is called WinPE and is available only to those who are “qualified”. There are versions of WinPE that correspond to each version of Windows since XP.
4. Hiren’s Boot CD was mentioned at the meeting. (www.hirensbootcd.org) There is a lot of information on this website.
5. Follow these instructions on eHow.com to make a Windows 7 “System Repair Disk” (tinyurl.com/lcy8ey7) This appears to be the easiest and least expensive option. I have not tested this to make sure it contains the chkdsk.exe program, but it will take only a few minutes to burn a CD and test it.
6. There are many Linux-based “recovery” CDs available, but in this situation, I think a Windows-based CD is the least risky.

The fact that Check Disk is aborting indicates serious errors in the file system of this partition, the tables and indices that track where files are stored on the disk and the permissions on those files. The corruption may be due to physical bad sectors on the disk or just bad data written to the worst files possible. Since NTFS (NT file system) was introduced in Windows NT 3.1 in 1993, it has had “journaling” features that should make such file system errors impossible. Unfortunately, computers will be computers.  As I said at the meeting, when you run check disk with the fix option from a live CD, that may be the last time to access anything on that partition. On the other hand, if you continue using the system without repairing the damage, eventually the corruption will grow and disk will become unusable anyway, so the end result is the same either way. The caveat is to back up any personal files on that partition before attempting the repair. Once you have the “live CD”, boot from it. BartPE displays a very simple GUI-based environment with a few very basic tools, including the command line chkdsk.exe. The Active@ CD would be preferred because it specifically supports Win7 (and Win8). One last caveat on these live CDs. The CD must include support for the disk controller used in your computer. This is not guaranteed. Bart PE Builder includes instructions on how to add new drivers for both disk controllers and network adapters when building the image file to burn to a CD. If all this fails, it will eventually be necessary to reinstall Windows. A normal backup of the partition that is NOT an image, may allow you to restore your system after reinstalling Windows. An image backup will include the file system corruption.

D – Richard Corzo shared his experience upgrading to AT&T Uverse: Overall the changeover went smoothly. On the appointed day, there was a service technician waiting outside my (Richard’s) garage. Substituting the new Uverse device for the old DSL modem was all that was required. My old wireless router is connected to the Uverse device and my various devices continue to connect to the Internet thru the wireless router. Since the installation, there have been a few outages, one lasting a few hours that required power cycling the Uverse device. Hopefully this will settle down and become more reliable.

Q – Has anyone tried the new Flickr service with 1T (terabyte) of free storage? Can you use the space for any type file? Does it resize pictures automatically?
A – The discussion ranged because no one had investigated this in depth. I have a Flickr Pro account that I opened many years ago to share vacation pictures. I need the ‘pro’ account to get extra space and so the account would not expire due to inactivity. This could be a future general meeting topic. It appears that the space is usable only for image and video files. They do say you can now share pictures at full resolution.

Q – I purchased a new television but I’m not sure I’m getting HD (hi-definition) pictures on my Charter cable. There is no place on the cable box to plug in an HDMI cable so I’m using the VGA connection.
A – You need a new cable box. Any HD cable box will have an HDMI output connection for the television. Using any other type of cable to connect to the television will give reduced picture quality.

Note: I did not have my regular recorder. Two members made recordings on their phones for which I am grateful, but these were not always clear. The discussion above is based on what I could hear on these two recordings.

Questions for the upcoming meeting can be emailed to askdacs@dacs.org.

Disclaimer: Ask DACS questions come from members by email or from the audience attending the general meeting. Answers are suggestions offered by meeting attendees and represent a consensus of those responding. DACS offers no warranty as to the correctness of the answers and anyone following these suggestions or answers does so at their own risk. In other words, we could be totally wrong!