More Windows 10 nonsense. (And faulty hardware.)

Here we go again! The boss’s computer is a bit slow as usual, but I decide to use Windows 7 backup image creator (still available in windows 10) to make a backup, just in case. It takes a while, as it’s a 1Tb disk. This fails with “your disk has new bad sectors”. I run chkdsk, but this fails to fix the issue.

So, boot from a linux USB stick, and run ‘disks’ to have a look. It shows 55 bad sectors. Not good!

Scanning up with ‘dd’ shows that there are uncorrectable errors in the 100Mb System Reserved partition. Chkdsk on this partition doesn’t fix them. I’m amazed it boots at all.

I order a replacement disk. This has a noisy spindle as soon as it powers on, so I send it back for a replacement and also order another different make of disk. This arrives sooner than the other, so I make a start with ‘clonezilla’. This clones the C: partition and the so-called recovery hidden partition, but won’t copy the 100Mb system reserved one. Now what to do.

My computer doesn’t have this 100Mb partition, so no help there.

Checking the partition table shows that this is ok, so I boot from the Windows 10 Repair Disk that Windows asks you to make after the backup. Deep, deep in the menus in ‘Advanced Options’ is a “repair my system” function. This also fails. Some searching around suggests you need to do this 3 times. Why?

Anyway it still fails. In a flash if inspiration, I decide to format the System Reserved partition.

Slightly better, the repair function runs, but the system still wont boot. It says “No Operating System Found”. Well that’s sort of true. The OS is there, but the boot process evidently can’t find it.

Further searching around finds that others have been there, and a suggested fix is to boot the repair disk, open a command prompt as administrator and run the following 3 commands:-

bootrec.exe /fixmbr
bootrec.exe /fixboot
bootrec.exe /rebuildbcd

A restart and it magically boots. What a faff!

Further analysis with ‘disks’ shows that her data disk has 32 bad sectors. Let’s hope that’s easier to clone, although it might take longer, it’s 3Tb.

Windows 10!!!!

Although I don't use it much myself, I got embroiled in Windows 10 again today.
At start of day, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the boss's work-room.   There's no internet! was the gist of it. (Also no NAS connection.)
Internet and NAS working ok everywhere else, so I look into it.
Sure enough, there's no light on the ethernet switch, so I follow the cables back and inspect all the connectors.
Inserting a small portable switch/hub next to the offending PC shows the cables are all ok, but no lights from the PC.
A quick reboot fails to fix things, so I raid the drawer and reboot the PC from a USB stick with Linux on it.  This works ok. All lights on and Internet access ok.
Got to be something silly about the windows ethernet driver, so shut it down and boot back into windows, intending to troubleshoot the driver.
Huh! Now it comes up with the ethernet connecting ok. It takes a long while, with much disk and internet activity, but the fault has gone.
I have no idea, other than the windows driver has disabled the connection, somehow, and booting an alternative OS has re-enabled it.
Waiting for a re-occourance, or perhaps the next set of updates.
Linux isn't all that good, but windows is seriously shoddy stuff.

Programming the Baofeng BF-888S.

I’ve recently acquired a couple of Baofeng BF-888S walkie-talkies for an other-end-of-the field sort of task. They’re only short-range, low-power things, and very cheap, but a slight problem is that they come pre-programmed with a weird collection of frequencies that it’s not advisable to use in Europe. (And probably North America, either!)

Sometimes they’re advertised as being 5 watts, but that’s a bit wishful thinking. I think the power was measured but the same people who do MPG for cars, or the savings when you switch utility suppliers. The picture in the ad also shows the battery chargers with US style mains plugs, but mine came with USB plugs.

There’s no keypad or display on these, so I got a programming cable from the usual online bazzar.

It’s really only a USB to serial adapter with connectors for the radio at the other end, and appears to use a Prolific pl2303 chip.

In theory, you could make your own if your computer has a serial port.

I wanted to program them to use the standard PMR446 channels.

There’s 2 ways of doing this. The Linux way, or the Windows way.

Both have their little foibles.

(There’s probably a Mac way as well, but I know nothing of those things.)

Linux.

Just plug the cable into a USB port.

To see what it’s called, run dmesg. Mine came out as ttyUSB0.

Now go to your distro’s package manager and download chirp and run it.

Then turn on the radio and plug it into the cable. (The other way round doesn’t seem to work.)

First off, click Radio/download from Radio.

A window pops up where you can select the port (e.g. /dev/tty/ttyUSB0), Vendor (Baofeng), and Model (BF-888).

Click OK and it reads the current radio settings.

So you can recover if it all goes wrong, click file/save and call the file something like “original”.

I edited the channels to be the following PMR446 frequencies:-

Chan. Frequency.

1 446.00625
2 446.01875
3 446.03125
4 446.04375
5 446.05625
6 446.06875
7 446.08125
8 446.09375

As this is a 16 channel radio, I also set channels 9 to 16 to be the same 8 frequencies.

Save this configuration as something like “pmr446”.

Then click Radio/Upload to Radio.

When it’s done, close chirp, switch the radio off and unplug it, and you’re good to go.

You can then plug in another radio, click file/open/pmr446 and upload it to be the same.

Windows.

This time, there is a choice of 2 programs.

We have chirp, which is the same as the Linux version, and one called 888S, which you can download and install from the Baofeng web site. This one has more settings you can mess with.

Don’t forget to change the Voice Annunciation from Chinese to English.

To find the port, you’ll have to look in “Device Managment” for the serial adapter. Mine came out to be COM3. Then in 888S, choose Setting/Communication Port/COM3. The active one should be the only one not greyed out.

However…

There is a problem with the Prolific pl2302 chip driver. Prolific say it’s supposed to not work with fake prolific chips, only genuine ones, but I’ve never seen one that works. I always get a yellow triangle.

In Windows 10, the answer is to roll the driver back to the Vista version. 3.2.0.0

It may come with the cable, if you are lucky enough to get a cd with it, otherwise download a program that will install version 3.2.0.0 (probably from the pyramidtimesystems.com website).

You can then go to device manager/select the com port with the yellow triangle/update driver/Let me pick from a list… and choose 3.2.0.0 and reboot.

Be aware, any windows update will reset this back to the latest MS version, and you may need to do this again.

After all that, I’ll probably never have to do that again. Oh well…