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!