Sharing difficulties between Windows PCs

1641

Zarking hell, so much is going wrong.

I'll start with the positives: I've repurposed the Lenovo “IBM” ThinkPad T60 as a comic book reader. It was previously used exclusively for MemoryMap, but a second offline use for it seems sensible, mainly because I want to (attempt to…)  repurpose the HP Stream as a file server being as how the Bush tablet refuses to stay connected to the network. The HP is currently running Windows 8(!) so I'll try installing Windows 10 IoT.

The old desktop is up & running but being weird about network sharing. It seemed to work (I think) but then I changed the computer name to something that wasn’t immemorable gobbledygook and another computer on the network can't see shares from it. Name-change-related? Who knows.

Then I tried sharing from the HP to the desktop: nothing.

From desktop to Dell laptop: nothing.

From Dell laptop to desktop and HP: nothing.

Either the computers don't appear, or Windows claims usernames or passwords are incorrect, when I know they're not.

I think I'm a little tired of it all; it's especially draining because when I tried it on the Bush tablet, all the sharing worked straight away (I could even access the shares on my phone) so for it not to work on all these very capable computers is quite disheartening.

Turned them all off for today; maybe I'll look at it again when I have more energy.

Only have ONE HDD plugged in when installing Windows!!!1!

0021

Gah! Windows needs to be installed on Disk 0 (i.e. the SSD should be in sata position 0) or else the Windows install puts a random tiny partition on the disk in position 0.

Swap motherboards? Check number of SATA ports.

1355

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/windows-installed-recovery-partition-on-second/01dde377-a8bb-4b3f-8aeb-8d37bff5898e

A quote from this page seems pertinent:

“It is never a good idea to have more than one drive attached when installing Windows.”

Wise words.

1454

First tried diskpart cleaning the disk with the extra boot segment on; wouldn't let me.

Then plugged boot SSD into Disk 0 (IMPORTANT: marked SATA6G_1 on motherboard). This wouldn't allow booting as it must have confused the whole system.

Looks like we're reïnstalling Windows. Again.

Unplugged the three storage drives and made sure boot SSD was plugged into the ‘first’ SATA position.

1948

Windows 10 IoT installed with all partitions on the boot drive. Now copying backup stuff onto the three storage drives.

RAID operations...

1948

There's a certain order of operations needed to get a drive unraided, and it's all a bit weird, but basically I need the SATA ports to be AHCI rather than RAID.

I half-did the job using the F11 EZ config tool in the Asus BIOS, but that was a mistake! It half-made a RAID using two of the three drives, but then no drives would show up in boot. Turns out I should just use the ‘proper’ (i.e. not EZ) Intel RAID tool.

I've just used it to make a whole new RAID of all three drives (because two drives were ‘trapped’ in that old weird RAID) and will now delete that RAID which should hopefully ‘free’ all the drives…

…and it didn't work: two drives are still trapped, weirldy still with the old name I gave the three-drive RAID (RotLA, obvs). More research needed.

AND I can't install windows on the SSD; probably still something to do with SATA being RAID configured…

Ok, changing back to AHCI allowed Windows to say it can be installed, but that two-drive RAID is still there…

Trying another three-drive RAID, but making it RAID1 (mirror) instead of the RAID0 (stripe; basically just butted up to each other). This might help by giving the drives a proper ‘nudge’ into a totally different mode…

Correction: trying RAID5. RAID1 is only to mirror two drives max.

Back in the Windows installation, it won't let me install on any drive because RAID not AHCI.

TIP: in Asus BIOS, turning Intel Rapid Storage Technology RST on & off is done in EZ Mode (note: this not the same EZ as mentioned earlier!) but actually configuring anything is done in “Advanced” mode.

Weird: simply turning off RST gives the same old drive config showing up at install.

(Zarking hell, this is a lot of pissing about. If this gets sorted, I don't think I'll bother with RAID ever again; just make more back-up.)

Yikes, still not showing three separate drives. Time to start physically unplugging them…

(Yikes, case has evidence of previous spider nesting inside: lots of tiny moulted exoskeletons.)

Just leaving the SSD in didn't help: Windows still refuses to install on it.

Next plan (after a looooong diversion to fix a power button issue) is to plug the drives into a another computer one by one via USB thingie and see what we can do.

Interesting! One of the drives from the old RAID plugged in on its own is recognised by Windows as belonging to a pool and even shows that there were originally three in the pool and the old RotLA name. It even gives me the option to “Delete pool”. Ha ha, guess I'll deffo be trying that, having run out of other options!

https://aidanfinn.com/?p=16571

…But the FriendlyName is NOT RotLA for some reason!

Used Get-StoragePool to list pools and find the name is actually just “Storage pool” (roll eyes emoji…)

Failed on the first go, but seemed to work on the second try…

(NB: Letter Case Matters For PowerShell Commands!)

2319

All done! By plugging all four drives (three storage + SSD system disk that EZ RST nonsense wiped) in individually via USB to another computer and using PowerShell & CaFHDP to wipe and format, they're all rescued and Windows 10 IoT is installing.

Old desktop renew

1530

Project Old Desktop Renew begins!

Power usage numbers:

Seems to be using about 32W at idle.

Seen a peak of 59W.

Copying data from ext HDD onto PC: 37W.

Concurrently copying from USB to SSD: 42W.

Wireless keyboard & mouse is NOT playing nicely with this computer: cursor jerks around and keyboard inputs lag. Weird. Wired mouse works fine.

Wait… problem is with REAR USB ports; wired mouse only works in front ports, and wireless set is fine in front. Even weirder.

Then it started working. No idea what's going on.

Then it stopped working, even in the front ports. Fuck’s’ake.

Anyway, moving on…

First step is check downloads on this old desktop box to see if I need to back stuff up (yup!)

(Just dumped it all to ext HDD for now; I will probably regret not sorting it…)

Win10 IoT installed!

All updates & programmes installed.

Unraiding: the intel option doesn't appear at boot… It used to pop up “press ctrl + I to RAID” (or similar).

Did some googling and F11 in BIOS seems to access similar functionality. I removed the current raid, made another raid, removed that… I think. Anyway, eventually I was just left with the computer only being able to network boot… very weird. My fiddling didn't touch the boot SSD, and the computer won't boot from USB. More investigation needed.

Other tablet tribulations

1746

It's the moment of truth: I have an OTG cable and have just booted up the other old tablet…

First OTG cable (from pack of three, obviously…) - does not charge through it, but works to connect USB device to tablet. Not good.

Second cable - same again.

Third cable - same shit.

Weird. I would have thought it would allow a USB device to connect OR charge, but to not charge AT ALL through the OTG cable is an unexpected behaviour.

That tablet can consider itself binned-off.

BushNAS issues; tablet instability

2127

BushNAS seemed ok, and works well for the most part… but I should have known it was too good to be true. After some time, and for no apparent reason, it just completely forgets the WiFi network. This means no sharing, and no remote desktop. I have to manually go to the tablet and restart it for the network to appear again. This is exactly as much use as a computer I need to turn on everytime I want to do any backing-up. This functionality has always been available and doesn't achieve the main purpose I set out to achieve at the start of this document.

Arse.

I have another tablet, also running Windows 10, which could serve the same purpose. Its limitation is USB: it only had a single microUSB socket for charging OR OTG connection. I've ordered a splitter cable, similar to one I used years ago for this purpose on a mobile phone, but I'm not holding out much hope as old forum posts I've found suggest these tablets can't charge & connect to other USB devices at the same time. It seems it is indeed charging OR OTG. 

We'll see what happens when the cable arrives.

To do:

• Test T60 again for comic reading.

• Install Win10 IoT on old desktop 

• Deraid HDDs

• Copy data from 5tb

• Setup up network shares for all folders

• Setup remote desktop

• Test access from HP

• Check power consumption

• Check remote control range

• WoL?

• Use HP Stream as NAS…??

• Attempt to block internet access

• Bitlocker ext drive on Win10 and try on Win11 and vice-versa.

Tablet-based NAS adventures continue!

1812

The BushNAS project continues!

A mixed bag today. I began despondent and it took me a long time to get around to doing anything. As it turns out, the day went alright in the end.

No touchscreen, but that wasn’t expected, and the sound doesn’t work, probably due to a driver issue, but I don’t think I’ll need sound for this tablet’s intended use.

The big problem was the Bush tablet kept randomly powering off, which is such a massive flaw in a NAS. At first I thought there was a fundamental issue that would utterly derail the project and was about to give up on it and drag an old laptop off sale on eBay and back into service.

Not so fast, depressed person! Perhaps it’s just your defeatism talking.

Having used a Raspberry Pi or two for more than five minutes, perhaps my brain was subconsciously tuned to find a possible solution: the power. Checking the back of the tablet, it asked for an input of 5V 2.5A, whereas the PSU I was using was 2.1A. THERE’S YOUR PROBLEM. Tried a 2.4A supply: also powered off. Right, will a 3A supply suffice? It needed hacking a bit to solder on a micro USB connector instead of its barrel jack, but… it seems to work! Managed to do quite a few things and it didn’t power off.

Then there was a palaver with Gpedit: I needed to use it to get rid of the utterly pointless pre-password splash screen (imagine the collective amount of time wasted by millions of people having to dismiss that screen hundreds of times…) 

I tried the process once, but the power situation arose during it and the system powered off. After that was sorted and everything was stable, I couldn't access Gpedit:

“Failed to open the group policy object. you might not have the appropriate rights.”

What??

A googling revealed this:

https://anandthearchitect.com/2021/09/16/gpedit-msc-failed-to-open-the-group-policy-object-on-this-computer/

But when I followed the file path it suggested, it wasn't there. More googling led me here:

https://community.spiceworks.com/t/how-to-gain-access-to-gpedit-msc/670989

…and I felt like a right muppet because it was just that the folder I was looking for was hidden and I hadn't thought to check that. Amateur.

So, onto the NASing.

I used this page:

https://pureinfotech.com/setup-network-file-sharing-windows-10/

And followed the instructions for “using basic settings” which sounds right up my pathway.

And… it just worked. I was able to share a folder and have it appear on another computer on the network straightaway, which was VERY surprising, as a lot of my experience trying to do the same thing was much more difficult. For this to work over WiFi is a nice bonus.

Now, I’ll just find a suitable place for the BushNAS to live, along with the external HDD case. That’s connected to the tablet via a USB hub (funnily enough, the one that was formerly powered by the 3A PSU) and it’s all USB 2.0, but this NAS is about accessibility rather than speed.

A surprisingly successful day.

BushNAS!

2004

Finally getting around to sorting a centralised NAS… in the cheapest way possible! An old Bush-branded tablet running Windows 10 connected to a 2TB drive in an external case. Gotta start somewhere.

In the interests of future-proofing, I'm working on moving all my machines to IoT for its super-longterm support.

The Big Box is done, as is one of the T410s. Hit a snag when trying it on the Bush tablet as it's 32-bit only, so had to make a new installation disk with an older version of Enterprise that is 32-bit. Hopefully I can convert it to IoT with the amazing [redacted] script program.

Using Driverpack solutions 16 to install some drivers, especially the WiFi. Frozen completely part way through this process, so did a hard reset.

Back in Windows, tried activation script without internet, just out of interest; no dice. 

So Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC is activated, but because I had to install the older 32-bit version, the method on the [redacted] website to convert to IoT doesn't work, so no IoT for me. Oh well, LTSC is still better than the old Education version I was using.

Just for posterity, to convert LTSC onto IoT in future (e.g. after changing language), these are the keys:

Windows 10:

[redacted]

Windows 11:

[redacted]

Haven't tried Driverpack solutions again; it got me as far as having WiFi & Bluetooth so now I'm just going to trust to Windows update to install drivers. It would be weird if the touchscreen suddenly worked after all this; it never worked in windows 10 before.

Should I try installing Windows 11 on it…? Is there a 32-bit version?

(A few moments later.)

No, there is no 32-bit version of Windows 11, so the 2019 version of 32-bit Win10 LTSC with support until 2027 is the absolute latest version that will run on this Bush tablet. After that… Well, I just better get saving up for a proper NAS in the next three years!

New mini PC; selling-off old computers; Win11 taskbar & updating

2012

I was weak, and bought another mini PC… I nearly bought a different one, but in the end went for an identical model to the last one, for cross-compatibility & familiarity. It’s called a Trigkey Green G4 and offers a crazy amount of processing power for around £160.

It’s all part of, bizarrely, actually simplifying my computing life. I’ve sold four out of five Raspberry Pis, the WacMacWiniMini is gone, as is a crappy old Acer Aspire One, and three more old laptops are for sale on eBay, though noöne seems to be buying those. I’ll just lower the prices until they go. Getting all those machines ready for sale was a saga in itself, but not one I documented here, as there was A LOT. The only useful thing I remember was when trying to get into the BIOS on the HP laptop, I needed to have an external keyboard plugged in to press the key to get BIOS or boot menu. That’s by design, for some reason, which is just zarking stupid.

ANYWAY

The point of this mini PC is to have its guts removed and those guts placed into an also-gutted original Playstation chassis to be used as a retrogames emulator.. This was a project I started more than a decade ago; it was to be a Sonyberry Pistation (a name I was very proud of coining at the time) with a Raspberry Pi in the Playstation case. Having resolved to not faff around with Pis or Linux anymore, I’m just going to use a Windows PC. It will be far easier.

Well, it should be easier…

Windows 11 has a lot of annoying features which will have to be worked-around, or gotten used to, just like when I made the migration to Windows 10; it was painful, but I dealt with it.

One annoyance with Windows 11 is that older versions didn’t allow for Taskbar icons to remain uncombined and to show labels; this ‘feature’ (which should be default) didn’t appear until later versions when people, rightly, complained about it.

Well, these mini PCs come with an older version of Win11 (21H2) which DOESN’T have the taskbar options, so Windows needs updating to the latest version. I remember this happening on the first Trigkey I bought, months back, and posted on Reddit about it at the time, where people told me to update (even though Windows claimed it was up-to-date):

https://www.reddit.com/r/WindowsHelp/comments/1fgvz9y/missing_taskbar_behaviors_are_driving_me_mad/

I must have got it to work then (didn’t I…?) but this little PC just kept claiming it was up-to-date when it blatantly sodding wasn’t.

Back to Reddit.

I followed a link in one of the replies to Microsoft’s Windows 11 installation page:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows11/

Which seems like a dumbass way to go about getting updates.

Anyway, I went with the first option: download the Installation Assistant, cos I couldn’t be bothered to download the media and make a bootable USB. So lazy.

I began the procedure, and it ERRRRED with Error 0x8007007f. Back to Reddit? Yup:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/q1jisz/anyone_else_seeing_error_0x8007007f_when_trying/

It seems the consensus on a solution is to run the Assistant as admin, which shouldn’t be necessary, but hey, this is still easier than Linux!

IN OTHER NEWS

I’m rethinking the striped drive I made on the old massive box computer; I think I’ll unstripe it and just spread the backed-up data across the drives manually. It seems if something goes wrong with just one of the striped drives, all data is lost across all of them because they’re all in one volume: one dead disk = a whole dead volume.

Stupid sign-in options: something on this page worked:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/1359312/hpw-to-log-in-without-pin-or-password-in-windows-1

Windows 10 until 2032; fiddling with Windows 11

1551

Downsizing: that’s what’s going on. I have far too many devices, many of them decrepit, so it’s time to get rid.

Some of what I've been doing is trying to do is stay on WIndows 10. I'm not sure of the legitimacy of the techniques for this upon which I've stumbled, but the links & videos aren't taken down, so how illegal can it be...? If you're interested, look for a video by ArronGAMEZ entitled How To Stay On Windows 10 Until 2032. Not the capitalisation I would have chosen, but the method seems sound.

In other news:

Windows 11 context menu made good:

https://captivateteacher.com/articles/windows10-context-menu-windows11

Windows 11 for normal PCs:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/1czhpg6/comment/l5hkice/

Mini PC Windows 11 reïnstall:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MiniPCs/comments/1bwln7l/problem_malware_in_a_nipogi_chinese_minipc_which/

Some settings for Windows 11:

https://www.davidleonard.london/2024/02/09/lets-finish-setting-up-your-device/

Mac Mini / Whack Winnie: installing Windows on a Mac. Also: Duckstation Playstation funtimes

1608

The reason for disabling automatic updates, as detailed in the previous entry, is to do with installing Windows 10 on a mid-2010 Mac Mini (+ Windows = WhackWinnie), which is a process I’ve gone through AT LEAST four times now. Windows 10 installs fine, but upon updating and restart, there’s no display output. My workaround was initially to disable ALL updates, as above, but I paid more attention on one of the installs and noticed it seemed (logically) that it was when the Nvidia driver updater that the system Belgiumed-out.

So, another install later: I allowed updates, but then went into Devices and disabled the Nvidia driver. The display seems fine using whatever driver Windows uses when that is disabled, and the system works fine upon restarting. All other updates install fine.

Someone else seems to have suffered the same issues:

https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/win-10-on-mac-mini-mid-2010-blank-screen-installing-vga-driver-if-use-gpt-format.328962/

I’ve come across this “Bootcamp” thing, which seems to be some Apple affair for dual-booting. I ignored it all and utterly wiped any trace of Apple off the harddrive, for better or worse, wisely or wrongly. The only tricky thing has been when trying to access the boot menu: this seems to require a wired USB keyboard, and holding Alt upon power-on.

Windows seems to be running ok, though there’s no way of getting sound out of the machine; not via HDMI or the headphone jack. That’s a setback.

We’ll come back to the WhackWhinnie a little later on (if I remember…)

1830

Duckstation:

https://www.reddit.com/r/EmulationOnPC/comments/p8ph2z/duckstation_not_opening_sdl_or_qt_file_because/

PS3 wireless controllers:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PS3/comments/nwi796/how_to_dual_shock_3_on_windows_10_wirelessly_and/

Duskstation has been a great success! Honestly, it’s been a surprising success considering how, as usually detailed here, nothing really works…

I’ve been able to install it on my regular Win10 PC (no Linux or Whack Whinnie nonsense going on) and jumped through A LOT of hoops to get controllers working. Unintuitively, wired controllers (OG PS controllers connected via USB adaptors) have been a bit of a flop, especially for two-player, but wireless PS3 controllers connected via USB (and A LOT of ancillary programs) have worked GREAT and even worked for two-player!

I’ve had a truly joyous time playing Nuclear Strike (there are various aspects of the game controls which gel with my mind, somehow) and Crash Bandicoot was a big hit. I want to have another go at playing through the Oddworld games, and see if the James Bond games live up to Goldeneye…

ANYWAY…

Here’s some of the previous crap I put myself through when trying to get the MacMini to work:

Next time: Retropie, MacMinux, DuckStation on WhackWhinnie