GMail, Yahoo and Hotmail

A long standing customer of mine asked me to look at his girlfriend's system. She was having problems with both her Yahoo and her Hotmail emails.

We jointly decided that we would move everything onto GMail.

Now, I have done this before and, financially, it just doesn't make sense. It takes far, far longer to achieve than any customer is willing to pay. It is 'easy and quick' if you can use GMail's imap facility but, just using POP is very long winded. All that POP does it to move the contents of the inbox - it doesn't even see the other folders.

Luckily this lady had only 15 to 20 folders in her various accounts but, even so, it took a long time.

The process works as follows - pretty well identically for both Yahoo and Hotmail:

• set up a POP account in Gmail and import the contents of the Yahoo or Hotmail (YH) inbox
• in YH, create a new folder for the contents of the current inbox - called, for example, 'CopyInbox'
• move all the emails in the real inbox into the CopyInbox - move, not copy - the result should be an emty inbox in YH
• back in GMail, create all the folders that are used with YH
• edit the POP settings, telling the system to put all the (yet to be) imported emails into, say, the first of the new folders without putting them in the GMail inbox
• back in YH, copy all the emails from that first folder that you selected in GMail and put copies in the inbox
• back in GMail, wait a bit or click 'collect mail now' and wait for all those emails to populate the selected folder
• when they are all through, go back to YH, either delete all the inbox (if you copied them) or move them back to the source folder (if you moved them)
• that will have moved all the emails in Folder1 say in YH to Folder1 in GMail so YH and GMail will then both have all of the same emails in Folder1
• repeat the process for Folder2 etc etc etc
• the problem comes when GMail will complain that you have exceeded the number of accounts - well, we haven't actually added lods of new accounts but GM thinks that, each time we save the POPped emails into a different folder, it is a new account. I found no way round this - all I could do was to turn of GMail, wait a day and restart - it seems to sort its act out and let you continue.
• lastly, when all the emails in all the folders have POPped to GMail, go back to the 'CopyInbox' folder and move everything back to the real inbox and make sure the POP settings in GMail send all new emails directly to the GMail inbox.

After a few iterations, all was well and we had all of her Yahoo and all of her Hotmail emails in the right folders in GMail. There were a few glitches that occurred during POPping with some emails being in multiple folders. These are easily remedied using GMail's ability to search on labels.

It took a long time but the end result is much cleaner and tidier. The Yahoo and Hotmail accounts are still there and still working. People can still send to her using those old email addresses. But she doesn't need to open either of those accounts (apart from periodic housekeeping) as all new emails are copied to GMail and, if GMail is set up properly, she can even send from either of her Yahoo or Hotmail accounts if she can't be bothered to move everyone to her new GMail account.

Laptop Repair

A lady called me round to look at her laptop, an HP dv2175, which kept crashing.

The first thing I did was to take out the hard drive and back everything up onto one of my external drives.

When I restarted, I left it on my bench and,sure enough, it kept turning off, sometimes almost immediately and sometimes after 10 or 20 minutes. When I turned it on in the morning, it lasted 30 to 40 minutes. So, I figured it was an overheating problem as it common with this series from HP. When I picked it up, I nearly dropped it - the base was far, far too hot to touch.

After it was cold, I uncovered the hard drive, turned it on its side and ran it outside in the cold. I loaded Speedfan and various other temperature related utilities and discovered that, while the CPU was running slightly above normal limits, the hard drive temperature rose steadily until it hit 70C - no wonder it was too hot to touch and no wonder it kept crashing!

Having scoured the internet, this is a common problem. New motherboards are expensive and they may or may not resolve the problem. When I looked on eBay, there were dozens up for 'spares or repair' with very similar symptoms.

Having had a similar experience with a Dell XPS M1330, where the GPU overheats, I took the dv2175 apart and, as I lifter off the top cover, I could tell immediately that the GPU was supposed to cool via the top cover via a small thermal pad. These are supposed to be sticky both sides but this had come completely unstuck so the GPU was simply pouring heat into the interior of the lap with no way to get rid of it. No wonder the hard drive was hot - it was less than an inch away.

Given the temperature of the GPU, I figured that a thermal pad wasn't going to resolve the problem. Not my strongest area but thermal pads seem to have a thermal conductivity of 4 - 10 w/mK whereas copper shims run and 400 w/mK - roughly 100 times as conductive. I bought some pure copper shims and cut one down to size and attached it with Arctic's MX-4 paste - supposedly one of the best available. I was concerned that, since this paste is not an adhesive, it might allow the copper shim to slide off so I put some self adhesive thermal pads around it to hold it in place. I then added some more MX-4 to the top surface and replaced the top cover, screwing it down as hard as I could.

When everything was back in place, I restarted everything, this time just sitting on my bench with the hard drive cover back on. I eagerly watched the temperature of the hard drive...

Well, ever since it has never exceeded 52C - a bit hot but tolerable and roughly 20C or even 30C below what it was.

A Senior Moment

One of my older clients - 75-ish - had been awy for a 3 week holiday.

When he returned, he called me up saying his PC would not turn on.

I went over, hit the On button and it immediately sprang into life.

It turned out that he had been pressing the Dell logo rather than the power button.

WiFi Problems

Having fixed dozens if not hundreds of wifi systems, I figured that I would only be with this particular client for an hour or so.

He had had problems with his Dell laptop connecting wirelessly to the internet. He blamed Dell as he had had another problem as well and had called Dell's helpline. he said that they had walked him through resetting his router - I was surprised that Dell's helpline would ever do that but still.. He blamed them for his current problem - it really only started after he had finished with them. So, I figured that they had told him to wrongly set some of the settings.

I inspected the Netgear and couldn't see anything wrong. so I reset it back to the factory settings and restarted everything.

Of course he had forgotten his password but that wasn't a problem. it worked fine when wired to the router but not wirelessly even though his laptop was only 3 feet from the Netgear router.

Still the same problem.

We tied his wife's Dell and that was the same. Even on ethernet, the internet connection kept dropping and returning. That had to be the router so I persuaded him to buy a new one - one that I always use a Draytek Vigor 2710n.

I went back the next day to configure it, presuming that all would be well.

Well, it still wasn't! Eventually I found that the house opposite was using the same channel and, somehow, was broadcasting a huge signal! - Much larger than 11n should do!

Not really my problem but, after a shifted his channel as far away from this rogue all worked!

Blue Screen of Death - Won't Turn On (BSOD)

There must be a million reasons for a PC not starting. I thought I knew quite a few.

This particular PC would boot but, before starting Windows, there was a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). The error message was Process1_Initialization_Failed and the STOP code was 6B.

Again, there are hundreds of these Stop codes and messages but there are websites that list most if not all of them. There are also loads of forums with messages from people who have had these problems before and, hopefully, sorted them. Generally, if you put in a stop code or error message, there are hundreds, if not tens of thousands of people similarly affected. Sadly, a code 6B query gave me less than 5 or 6, none of which were remotely useful.

I tried Safe Mode and it failed. I tried Last Known Good Configuration and it failed.

I tried a Repair installation and it failed - though I am still not sure. The XP system disc found the hard drive, found the right file system and found a correct partition table. It also indicated that it knew which partition held the XP system but instead of offering to repair it, it offered to reformat it! Bad news - since the owner didn't take backups.

Next stop - my trusty UBCD4Win - a portable version of XP that runs from a CD. This is an invaluable tool that I use frequently. It booted slowly but it always does and, when it had loaded, it too showed all the various drives with the right file systems. Superficially, it all looked good. However, when I started the hard drive diagnostics and chose ChkDsk, it immediately showed errors. And the errors kept on coming! Even worse, the errors showed file-names and they weren't only Windows system file-names, many of them were clearly data file-names.

I left it running and asked him to call me when it had finished.

After around 2 hours, it had finished and I rushed round to see what it said. Amazingly, ChkDsk had not only reported the errors but it had also appeared to fix them. I had set it running with the 'correct errors automatically' parameter set but I didn't really expect it to work.

At the end, it reported that it had fixed the Master File Table - a rather important system file. I don't know what had caused to MFT to become corrupted but, at least temporarily, it appeared to be ok. I left the owner with the advice to back up all the data files from the C: drive onto something more secure and, at least, to replace the drive. Although ChkDsk may have repaired the MFT on this occasion, I still didn't know what had caused the problem and, since he ran his business from it, I wouldn't trust it.

Laptop keeps switching off!

Got a call this lunchtime from a new client - funnily enough, while he was getting off a bus!

Anyway, he said his laptop kept turning off - unasked. Sometimes it might last an hour or two and other times, it would turn off four of five times in a morning. As you can imagine, this was very inconvenient.

I had three or four thoughts.

• Power supply - sometimes power supplies get damaged or the wires get worn and the output is not what it should be. Generally, they will just fail but, I guess, there could be cases where it carries on going just enough to power up the laptop but not enough to keep it going.
• Power options - in the Control Panel, you can set what the laptop should do to save energy. I figured that these might be set ridiculously low or something. They are unlikely to act irregularly but worth checking.
• Fluff in the fans! - this was high on my list. People often sit the laptops on cushions, on the sofa or on the floor where the air intake can suck up dust and fluff. If enough gets in, it can reduce the efficiency of the fan resulting in overheating. If the CPU gets over its maximum working temperature, the BIOS will just turn it off to protect it. To contain the problem, laptops generally have a fluff filter on the way into the fan, so all that is needed is quick bit of housekeeping. However, there was a particular Dell laptop - I have forgotten the model - where the fluff filter was after the fan. So the fluff was sucked in by the fan and then couldn't escape! All that could be done was avoid putting it on the floor or cushions. It was fiddly getting all the fluff out but it worked fine thereafter.

Anyway, when I started checking these, they all seemed fine. The fan entry and exit were completely clear of muck. The power supply seemed absolutely fine. The battery was fully charged - so the power supply was obviously providing enough energy to run the laptop AND top up the battery. And the Power Option settings were fine.

A bit of head scratching followed, followed by a bit of shuffling of the laptop on my knees as, without noticing it, it was getting uncomfortably hot. Unconsciously, I had moved it to allow my knee to cool down. When I noticed what I had been doing, I checked the CPU temperature. They were showing 89°C - uncomfortably close to its maximum temperature.

Since it wasn't a fluff in the fan problem, the next places to look are other hardware and software. Since the fan appeared to spinning all the time at full speed, I checked what the CPUs were doing - Task Manager showed they were running at a high operating load - 80% and above. There was nothing to show in the Applications tab so I checked the Processes.

And there was a likely culprit - Google Desktop Search was running at 50% of CPU! For these of you who don't know what it is, it is a search engine that indexes, potentially, the whole of a PC's files, not just for file names but also for content. So, not only can you search for shoppinglist.doc but you can also search for butter or eggs or whatever was on your shopping list within the shoppinglist.doc document. Similarly, it can even index the contents of all your emails. It can be a lovely tool to have available - providing (a) you don't index too much and (b) your CPU can take the strain. This one couldn't.

Since the client wasn't there, instead of uninstalling it, I merely turned it off, rebooted and rechecked the temperatures.

Within a couple of minutes, they had dropped from nearly 90°C down to below 60°C - much more comfortable on my knees.

So, I don't know that I have fixed his switching-off problem but I bet I have.