External Drive Not Recognized? This Is How To Fix It In Windows

External drives — either USB flash drives or external hard drives — should be easy to use. In some cases, you may connect your drive to a Windows PC or another device with a USB port and find that it’s not recognized. This problem can be caused by partition issues on your external drive, using the wrong file system, dead USB ports, driver issues in Windows, or other problems. In a worst case scenario, the drive itself may simply be dead.

The steps below will be the same for both USB flash drives and larger external hard drives, which work similarly.

Does the Drive Show Up in Disk Management?

First, let’s check whether Windows detects the drive when you plug it in. Plug your removable drive into your computer. If it’s an external hard drive, you may have to flip a power switch on the hard drive to activate it. Some heavy-duty removable hard drives may even have to be plugged in with a separate power cable before they’ll work.

Next, open the Disk Management tool. To do so, press Windows Key + R, type diskmgmt.msc into the Run dialog, and press Enter.

You should see your external drive listed in the Disk Management window. Even if it doesn’t appear in your Computer window because it doesn’t contain any partitions, it should show up here.

If you do see the drive here, you can continue to the last section where we’ll format it properly so Windows or your other devices can access and recognize it.

If you don’t see the drive here, continue to the next section where we’ll try to determine why your drive isn’t recognized.

Making Windows Recognize the Drive

If Windows doesn’t see your drive at all, it’s possible there’s a hardware issue with your computer’s USB port, a driver problem with your Windwos computer, or you may just have a dead drive.

First, unplug the drive from your USB port and try plugging it into another USB port on your computer. If it works in one USB port but not another, you may have a dead USB port. If you’ve plugged the drive into a USB hub, try connecting it to the computer instead. Some USB hubs won’t provide enough power for your external drive to function.

If the drive doesn’t show up in Disk Management even after you skip the USB hub and connect it to another USB port on your computer, it’s tough to know for certain whether the drive itself is bad or the computer is having a problem. If you have another computer nearby, try plugging the drive in there to check whether it’s detected. If the drive doesn’t work on any computer you plug it into — be sure to check whether it appears in the computer’s Disk Management window — the drive itself is likely dead and will need to be replaced.

If the drive does work on other computers — or you don’t have another computer around to test this with — Windows may be having a driver problem with the drive. You can check for this using the Device Manager.

To open it, press Windows Key + R, type “devmgmt.msc” into the Run dialog, and press Enter.

Look under Disk drives and check for any devices with a yellow exclamation mark next to them. If you see a yellow exclamation mark, you have a driver problem. Right-click the device with a yellow exclamation mark, select Properties, and look at the error message. This error message can help you fix the problem — you may want to perform a Google search for the error message you find.

Such problems can be tricky to fix. If the problem started recently, you may want to run System Restore. You may want to use the Update Driver button to install an updated driver, use the Roll Back Driver button to revert any changes, or use the Uninstall button to uninstall the device from your system and hope that Windows will reinstall the driver and configure it correctly when you reconnect the drive.

Partitioning and Formatting the Drive

We can use the Windows Disk Management tool to fix partition and file system issues with the drive. If you see that the drive is unpartitioned and is full of “unallocated space,” you’ll want to create a new partition on it. This will allow Windows and other operating systems to use it.

To do so, right-click inside the unallocated space, select New Simple Volume, and go through the wizard to create a new partition.

If your drive is partitioned and you still can’t see it, ensure you’ve set a drive letter so you can access it in Windows. This should happen automatically, but if you’ve manually unset the drive letter, the drive may not show up and be accessible in Windows.

To do this, right-click the removable drive’s partition, select Change Drive Letter and Paths, and add a drive letter. For example, add the letter G: and the removable drive will be accessible at drive G:.

If the drive does appear to be partitioned, it may be partitioned with the wrong file system. For example, you may have formatted the drive with the ext4 file system from Linux or the HFS Plus file system from a Mac. Windows can’t read these file systems. Reformat the drive with the newer NTFS file system or older FAT32 file system so Windows will be able to recognize it.

To reformat a partition, right-click it, select Format, and select your desired file system.

Note that this will erase all the files on your drive, so you’ll want to copy any important files off of it first — for example, if you formatted the drive on a Linux or Mac computer, take it back to a computer running Linux or Mac and copy your important files off of it before continuing.

If you can’t access the drive from another device, such as a DVD player, smart TV, game console, or media center device, it may be formatted as NTFS. Many devices, even Microsoft’s own Xbox 360, can’t read the Windows NTFS file system. They can only access drives formatted with the older FAT32 file system. To fix this problem, simply reformat the NTFS partition as FAT32. The drive should then be recognized by other devices when you connect it to them.

Note that this process will erase the files on your external drive. Copy the files off the drive to back them up first, if necessary.

Following this process should solve most of the disk recognition issues you’ll encounter. If a drive isn’t recognized by any computer you connect it to and never shows up in the Disk Management window, it’s probably dead.

Have you ever had to do any of the things here to fix an unrecognized external drive? Leave a comment and let us know what worked for you!

Image Credit: Vincent Wei on Flickr

One OS, three installation options: What's the best way to install Windows 8?

Ahh, Windows 8. If you’ve decided you're ready to plunk down your hard-earned cash to give this modern UI a shot, you'll want to spend a few minutes considering just how you take your first steps into the Windows 8 experience.

You have three ways to install Windows 8 after you’ve purchased it: (a) Run it as a virtual machine on your current operating system; (b) dual-boot it alongside your current operating system; or (c) perform a full install and overwrite the OS you're currently rolling with. While the installation methods vary in complexity, all three are within the grasp of even Windows novices, and each brings its own pros and cons to the table.

Let's take a deeper look at each option.

Running Windows 8 in a virtual machine

One of the easiest ways to play with Windows 8 without having it affect your current operating-system setup is to install it in a virtual machine. While you can get fancy and purchase premium VM software like Parallels Workstation for this purpose, a completely free program called VirtualBox accomplishes the same thing, minus a few bells, whistles, and advanced options.

Installing Windows 8 in VirtualBox.

A virtual machine is exactly what its name suggests. VM software allows you to install and run a virtualized operating system within your existing operating system, and everything you do in that Inception-like second operating system is contained within its own individual environment. Once you're done playing around with your virtualized OS, you can eradicate it with just a few clicks of the mouse—the virtualized OS is really nothing more than a series of files on your normal system’s physical hard drive.

We can’t stress this enough: What you do within your virtualized OS has absolutely no bearing on your actual operating system. Delete files. Change settings. Do whatever you want! Once you’re done tinkering around for the day, all you have to do is shut down your virtualized version of Windows 8 to return to your normal operating system's desktop.

The downsides? First, running a virtualized OS requires more configuration steps than installing Windows 8 directly. For example, most VM software requires you to have a processor that supports hardware virtualization to run Windows 8, and you'll have to make sure that virtualization is enabled within your system’s BIOS. A quick and easy way to check all of this is to download Microsoft’s official Hardware-Assisted Virtualization Tool and run it as an administrator on your PC. If you’re ready to virtualize, the tool will let you know.

Second, you'll need to make sure your that PC's core components are up to the task of virtualization. Not only must the machine fulfill the minimum hardware requirements for Windows 8, it must also be able to handle not one but two concurrently active operating systems. That's right: The virtual machine will use the same physical hardware resources as your normal OS, and because both systems will be running simultaneously, we recommend virtualizing Windows 8 on rigs with hefty system specs to ensure that you have enough resources to dedicate to both operating systems. In an ideal world, you'll allocate at least 3GB of RAM to each OS.

Even with a beefy system, running Windows 8 virtually will likely deliver a slightly less than perfect experience on a standard PC, with occasional graphical lags, performance hiccups, and the frustration of having to move a mouse cursor between operating-system environments if you run the VM in a window rather than in full-screen mode. And Windows 8's Internet connection sometimes glitches out momentarily in VirtualBox.

Our advice? Virtualizing Windows 8 is a great way to get a feel for the OS before you’re ready to commit for good, but it’s no replacement for a full-fledged installation.

Dual-boot Windows 8

Dual-booting Windows 8 alongside your current operating system is an easy process—so don’t be scared if you’ve never done it before. We've already published a guide that can walk you through creating a new, Windows 8-ready partition on your hard drive and starting the installation process itself.

Allocating partitions to prepare for a dual boot installation.

Once the secondary operating system is up and running, you’ll be given a "choose-your-own-adventure"-style screen whenever you boot up your PC, asking you whether you’d like to boot into Windows 8 or the other OS stored on your hard drive. If you don’t pick an option, your system will default to Windows 8 after a brief period of time.

The benefits of dual-booting are obvious: You gain access to two operating systems instead of one, and the performance of neither system is impacted by the other, because each is just a simple, separate partition on your hard drive.

The drawbacks? Once you opt to dual-boot, it can be a real hassle if and when you decide to remove Windows 8, and go back to a single-boot system using your older Windows operating system. Spoiler: You’ll have to poke around in Windows’ Boot Configuration Data Store Editor (bcdedit.exe) just to ensure that you have a means for booting back into your legacy OS after you’ve tossed Windows 8.

In other words, don’t just delete the Windows 8 partition!

You’ll also be sacrificing room on your hard drive to run two operating systems that are completely independent from one another. It almost goes without saying, but installing an app like Steam on Windows 7 doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to run it through Windows 8—they're two separate worlds. You’d have to install Steam on Windows 8 as well, duplicating your efforts on a single drive.

All that said, dual-booting is a tried-and-true process for making the most out of two different operating systems if you absolutely can’t live without each. We recommend the process wholeheartedly unless space is of the utmost concern on your system. And if that’s the case, maybe it’s time for a second hard drive.

Fully installing Windows 8

Here we go. The biggie. You’re ready to take the full plunge and wave goodbye to your legacy operating system forever. Windows 8 has arrived, and it is the conqueror on your desktop. Let no other operating system stand in its path.

Installing Windows 8 is extraordinarily easy and extraordinarily quick. First, though, pay heed to the gentle but firm notice that you get only one shot at this if you’re doing a clean install. Make sure that you’ve backed up all important files from your existing operating system before you wipe it and start anew.

Upgrade or fresh install? Choose wisely, young Padawan.

You'll also need to decide whether you’re going to upgrade from your existing operating system or go with a completely clean installation. In short, an upgrade installation will do its best to preserve your files and settings from one operating system to the next. Just how much of your existing OS experience is preserved depends on what you’re running: When upgrading from Windows 7, Windows 8 will attempt to preserve all your personal files as well as your applications. But if you're upgrading from Vista or XP, Windows 8 will preserve only the files, and you'll have to reinstall your apps afterwards.

The other option is to perform a clean installation, which completely wipes your existing OS and all the files on your hard drive partition, then follows up with a fresh, brand-new installation of Windows 8. Scorched earth.

So which do you pick? The jury is out. More experienced computer users who really enjoy the clean slate of a wipe-and-install—or who are otherwise terrified that they aren’t going to get peak performance from whatever drivers Windows 8 keeps around from Windows 7—should opt for the clean installation. A clean install is also a great way to give your PC a "do-over" to clean out the clutter that accumulates over the years. Indeed, on the second go-around of app installations, you might be less likely to install programs you don’t actually use much.

Otherwise, Microsoft has improved the upgrade process so that it’s not all that scary transferring information over to a new Windows (Windows 8) installation. You’ll still want to go into the nooks and crannies of Windows 8 itself to ensure that all of your major settings have transitioned over. We also recommend that you go straight to the manufacturers’ sites for new drivers for your various system components—video card, sound card, motherboard, and so on.

And, once again, please save your settings before you upgrade. For example, while your preferred Internet browser might make the journey to Windows 8, the operating system might not keep your bookmarks.

I love installing apps, so I love the thrill that a fresh install brings to the table. That being said, we have no official recommendation for which Windows installation process—clean or upgrade—would best work for you. There definitely are trade-offs in either scenario. Now that you know what's on the table, the choice is yours.

Wrap-up

You'll be staring at this screen no matter which method you choose!

And there you have it! If you’re most concerned with having an easy exit and don’t mind trading a bit of performance in the process, then virtualizing Windows 8 is a great way to get familiar with the OS—and tweak it in all sorts of crazy ways—without doing any damage to your existing OS. Dual-booting Windows 8 is a compelling option for mixing the old and the new; you’ll just give up a bit of space to do so. And going the distance with Windows 8 will give you the option to upgrade or start from scratch.

No matter which method you choose, you may want to check out our guide to optimizing your first 30 minutes with Windows 8 to ensure you make the most of your new OS.

What is Overclocking? The Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Understanding How Geeks Speed Up Their PCs.

What is Overclocking? The Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Understanding How Geeks Speed Up Their PCs

Overclocking is the action of increasing a component’s clock rate, running it at a higher speed than it was designed to run. This is usually applies to the CPU or GPU, but other components can also be overclocked.

Increasing a component’s clock rate causes it to perform more operations per second, but it also produces additional heat. Overclocking can help squeeze more performance out of your components, but they’ll often need additional cooling and care.

What is Overclocking?

Your computer’s CPU comes from the factory set to run at a certain maximum speed. If you run your CPU at that speed with proper cooling, it should perform fine without giving you any problems.

However, you’re often not limited to that CPU speed. You can increase the CPU’s speed by setting a higher clock rate or multiplier in the computer’s BIOS, forcing it to perform more operations per second.

This can speed up your CPU — and therefore speed up your computer if your computer is limited by its CPU — but the CPU will produce additional heat. It may become physically damaged if you don’t provide additional cooling, or it may be unstable and cause your computer to blue-screen or restart.

Can You Overclock?

You may not be able to overclock your CPU. Many motherboards and Intel CPUs ship with locked multipliers, preventing you from tinkering with their values and overclocking your CPU. Intel sells expensive “Extreme Edition” CPUs with unlocked multipliers, targeted at enthusiasts that want to overclock and squeeze every bit of performance out of the CPU.

If you want to build the most powerful gaming PC imaginable with a water-cooling system so you can push its hardware to the limits with overclocking, you’ll need to take this into account when you buy the components and make sure you buy overclock-friendly hardware. If you have a standard CPU, you probably won’t be able to tinker with it much.

Why You Might Want to Overclock

The advantages to overclocking are clear: You get a faster CPU that can perform more operations per second. However, overclocking has become less critical over time — where overclocking once offered a more responsive desktop and faster performance in Microsoft Office, computers have become powerful enough that most users probably won’t even notice the difference. Your computer is likely bottle-necked by other things — perhaps a mechanical hard drive, if you don’t have solid-state storage — so you may not see a noticeable performance difference most of the time.

Gamers or enthusiasts that want their hardware to run as fast as possible may still want to overclock. However, even gamers will find that modern CPUs are so fast and games are so limited by graphics cards that overclocking doesn’t work the magic it used to.

How to Overclock

Every CPU is different, and every motherboard has different BIOS options. It’s not possible to provide a guide for overclocking that will work for everyone. But we’ll try to outline the basics, anyway:

• Ensure Your System Has Proper Cooling: Your CPU comes with a heat sink and fan from the factory, which are designed to handle the amount of heat produced at the CPU’s standard speed. Speed it up and it will produce more heat. This means that you’ll probably need additional cooling. This can be in the form of an aftermarket heat sink that can dissipate more heat and/or a more powerful CPU fan that can blow the hot air away. You’ll want to have a good amount of free space inside your computer’s case so the air can move around and eventually be blown out by the fan in your computer’s case, which may also need to be upgraded. Air flow is very important for handling heat, as just having a heat sink or CPU fan won’t help if all that hot air stays trapped inside your case.
• Consider Water-Cooling: Hardcore overclockers may want to use a water-cooling system, which is more expensive. Water-based coolant is pumped through tubes inside of the case, where it absorbs the heat. It’s then pumped out, where the radiator expels the heat into the air outside of the case. Water-cooling is much more efficient than air-cooling.
• Overclock in the BIOS: You’ll need to go into your computer’s BIOS and increase the CPU clock rate and/or voltage. Increase it by a small amount, then boot your computer. See if the system is stable — run a demanding benchmark like Prime 95 to simulate heavy use and monitor your computer’s temperature to make sure the cooling is good enough. If it’s stable, try increasing it a little bit more and then run another test to ensure the PC is stable. Increase the amount you’re overclocking by bit by bit until it becomes unstable or the heat is too much, then drop back down to a stable level. Overclock little by little to ensure it’s stable, don’t just increase your CPU’s speed by a large amount at once.

The Downsides

When you overclock your CPU, you’re doing something you weren’t supposed to do with it — this will often void your warranty. Your CPU’s heat will increase as you overclock. Without proper cooling — or if you just overclock too much — the CPU chip may become too hot and may become permanently damaged.

This complete hardware failure isn’t as common, but it is common for overclocking to result in an unstable system. The CPU may return incorrect results or become unstable, resulting in system errors and restarts.

If you’re overclocking, you should slowly increase the clock rate and test every new level to make sure it’s stable. You should also monitor the temperature of your CPU and ensure that you have proper cooling. The cooling that came with your CPU probably won’t cut if. If you’re using a laptop without much space for additional air flow, don’t try to overclock — there’s generally just not enough space in a laptop to handle the heat.

Overclocking Resources

If you are interested in overclocking, you’ll want to find information that applies to your specific hardware. The web is full of forums where people discuss their overclocking experiences, like Overclock.net,  and guides for specific CPUs.

Note that even CPUs of the same model aren’t completely identical. One CPU may have more tolerance for overclocking, while another CPU over the same model may not be stable at the same speeds. This all comes down to natural variations in the manufacturing process.

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Overclocking can apply to phones, too. There are apps that can overclock a rooted Android smartphone. However, between the additional heat and battery life hit, using these apps is generally not a smart idea.

Image Credit: Campus Party Mexico on Flickr, Wikipedia, Don Richards on Flickr

Technopheniac Explains: How Does BitTorrent Work?

Technopheniac Explains: How Does BitTorrent Work?

BitTorrent consumes 12% of total Internet traffic in North America and 36% of total traffic in the Asia-Pacific region, according to a 2012 study. It’s so popular that the new “Copyright Alert System” targets BitTorrent traffic alone.

BitTorrent may be popularly known as a method of piracy, but it isn’t just for pirates. It’s a useful, decentralized peer-to-peer protocol with significant advantages over other protocols in many situations.

This article will help you understand how the BitTorrent protocol works and why it’s not just a tool for piracy..

How BitTorrent Works

When you download a web page like this one, your computer connects to the web server and downloads the data directly from that server. Each computer that downloads the data downloads it from the web page’s central server. This is how much of the traffic on the web works.

BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer protocol, which means that the computers in a BitTorrent “swarm” (a group of computers downloading and uploading the same torrent) transfer data between each other without the need for a central server.

Traditionally, a computer joins a BitTorrent swarm by loading a .torrent file into a BitTorrent client. The BitTorrent client contacts a “tracker” specified in the .torrent file. The tracker is a special server that keeps track of the connected computers. The tracker shares their IP addresses with other BitTorrent clients in the swarm, allowing them to connect to each other.

Once connected, a BitTorrent client downloads bits of the files in the torrent in small pieces, downloading all the data it can get. Once the BitTorrent client has some data, it can then begin to upload that data to other BitTorrent clients in the swarm. In this way, everyone downloading a torrent is also uploading the same torrent. This speeds up everyone’s download speed. If 10,000 people are downloading the same file, it doesn’t put a lot of stress on a central server. Instead, each downloader contributes upload bandwidth to other downloaders, ensuring the torrent stays fast.

Importantly, BitTorrent clients never actually download files from the tracker itself. The tracker participates in the torrent only by keeping track of the BitTorrent clients connected to the swarm, not actually by downloading or uploading data.

Leechers and Seeders

Users downloading from a BitTorrent swarm are commonly referred to as “leechers” or “peers”. Users that remain connected to a BitTorrent swarm even after they’ve downloaded the complete file, contributing more of their upload bandwidth so other people can continue to download the file, are referred to as “seeders”. For a torrent to be downloadable, one seeder – who has a complete copy of all the files in the torrent – must initially join the swarm so other users can download the data. If a torrent has no seeders, it won’t be possible to download – no connected user has the complete file.

BitTorrent clients reward other clients who upload, preferring to send data to clients who contribute more upload bandwidth rather than sending data to clients who upload at a very slow speed. This speeds up download times for the swarm as a whole and rewards users who contribute more upload bandwidth.

Torrent Trackers and Trackerless Torrents

In recent times, a decentralized “trackerless” torrent system allows BitTorrent clients to communicate among each other without the need for any central servers. BitTorrent clients use distributed hash table (DHT) technology for this, with each BitTorrent client functioning as a DHT node. When you add a torrent using a “magnet link”, the DHT node contacts nearby nodes and those other nodes contact other nodes until they locate the information about the torrent.

As the DHT protocol specification says, “In effect, each peer becomes a tracker.” This means that BitTorrent clients no longer need a central server managing a swarm. Instead, BitTorrent becomes a fully decentralized peer-to-peer file transfer system.

DHT can also work alongside traditional trackers. For example, a torrent can use both DHT and a traditional tracker, which will provide redundancy in case the tracker fails.

BitTorrent Isn’t Just For Piracy

BitTorrent isn’t synonymous with piracy. Blizzard uses a custom BitTorrent client to distribute updates for its games, including World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, and Diablo 3. This helps speed up downloads for everyone by allowing people to share their upload bandwidth with others, leveraging unused bandwidth towards faster downloads for everyone. Of course, it also saves Blizzard money on their bandwidth bills.

People can use BitTorrent to distribute large files to significant numbers of people without paying for the web hosting bandwidth. A free film, music album, or game could be hosted on BitTorrent, allowing an easy, free method of distribution where the people downloading the file also help distribute it. WikiLeaks distributed data via BitTorrent, taking a significant load off their servers. Linux distributions use BitTorrent to help distribute their ISO disc images.

BitTorrent, Inc. – a company responsible for developing BitTorrent as a protocol, who also purchased and develop the popular µTorrent torrent client – is developing a variety of applications that use the BitTorrent protocol for new things via their BitTorrent Labs project. Labs experiments include a syncing application that securely synchronizes files between several computers by transferring the files directly via BitTorrent, and a BitTorrent Live experiment that uses the BitTorrent protocol to help broadcast live, streaming video, leveraging the power of BitTorrent to stream live video to large numbers of people without the current bandwidth requirements.

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BitTorrent may be primarily used for piracy at the moment, as its decentralized and peer-to-peer nature are a direct response to efforts to crack down on Napster and other peer-to-peer networks with central points of failure. However, BitTorrent is a tool with legitimate uses in the present –  and many other potential uses in the future.

Image Credit: Header Image by jacobian, central server and peer-to-peer network diagrams by Mauro Bieg on Wikipedia

Geek School: Learning Windows 7 – Networking

Geek School: Learning Windows 7 – Networking

Last time we looked at the theory behind IP addresses, subnet masks and name resolution, and we ended the installment with a practical guide on how to change your network settings. This time we take that knowledge and extend it by introducing things like DHCP, Network Locations, Ping and much more.

DHCP

The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol is used to assign IP addresses to devices on the fly, as opposed to setting the IP address of the device manually like we did in the last article. In fact, you probably use DHCP all the time but just aren’t aware of it, for example when you take your laptop to a coffee shop that has free Wi-Fi. DHCP is useful in many scenarios. Let’s take a look at a few.

• With the number of mobile devices we use on the rise, we find ourselves constantly needing to connect to different networks. For example, you need to connect your phone to your Wi-Fi at home and to the Wi-Fi at work. Without DHCP we would have to change the IP address on our phone every time we got home, or to work.
• Large companies can benefit from DHCP. Can you imagine having to go around and set 1500 IP addresses, only to have the Network and Communication team come to inform you that because of a bad design decision you need to change the IP addresses on all those work stations?

DHCP uses a four step process, commonly known as DORA, to assign an IP address.

• Discover – When you connect a DHCP enabled device to the network, it broadcasts a message to all nodes on the network (technically this is called a DHCPDiscover packet), asking if any one on the network is a DHCP server.
• Offer – If a DHCP Server receives the DHCPDiscover packet, it looks in its scope (a fancy name for the list of addresses that it is allowed to give to devices) for an available address which it then in turn sends back to the requester in a DHCPOffer packet.
• Request – When your device receives the DHCPOffer packet it sends a message back to the DHCP server requesting the offered address.
• Acknowledge – The DHCP server then give your client the go ahead to use the IP address using a DHCPAck packet.

Setting up a DHCP server is beyond the scope of this series, but in order to make sure that your clients are configured to use DHCP, open the properties of your network card and confirm that it is set to obtain an IP address automatically.

APIPA (Automatic Private IP Addressing)

A Windows 7 computer that is configured to use DHCP can automatically assign itself an IP address if a DHCP server is not available. For example, this could occur on a network without a DHCP server or on a network if a DHCP server is temporarily down for maintenance.

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority has reserved 169.254.0.0-169.254.255.255 for Automatic Private IP Addressing. As a result, APIPA provides an address that is guaranteed not to conflict with any devices on your network.

After the network adapter has been assigned an IP address, the computer can communicate with any other computer that is connected to the same networks and that is also configured for APIPA. When troubleshooting, if a DHCP enabled computer has an APIPA address it is often a sign that it can’t connect to the DHCP server.

Network Locations

The first time that you connect to a network, you must assign it a network location. This allows you to maintain different Firewall profiles and network settings for different networks. For example, you may want to be able to discover devices on your home network but you certainly don’t want to be able to discover devices connected to the Wi-Fi at McDonald’s.

There are four network locations:

• Home Network – Assign this profile to a network when you know and trust the people and devices on the network. Network discovery is turned on for home networks, which allows you to see other computers and devices on the network and allows other network users to see your computer.
• Work Network – Assign this profile to small office networks. Network discovery is turned on for Work Networks by default.
• Public Network – Assign this profile to a network that you might connect to in a public place such as an internet cafe or an airports. Network discovery is turned off by default.
• Domain Network – This is the only network profile that you can’t assign to a network. It is automatically assigned to you when you join an Active Directory domain.

Below you can see the Windows Firewall with Advanced Security MMC console, which shows you that there is a different Firewall profile for each network location.

Troubleshooting Tools

Most of our time is spent troubleshooting problems on existing network infrastructure rather than setting up new networks. The following are the command line tools you will need to get acquainted with in order to troubleshoot network connectivity effectively.

PING (Packet InterNet Groper)

If there is one tool you need to remember from this troubleshooting section, its PING. The PING utility uses ICMP echo requests to test connectivity between you and another node on the network. The syntax of the command is simply ping followed by the IP address or hostname of the node you want to test connectivity to.

ping 192.168.0.254

Tracert

We use tracert, pronounced trace root, to track network traffic as it traverses the network. It is useful for determining where the point of failure in a network lies. The syntax of the command is is simply tracert followed by the IP address or hostname of the node you want connect to.

tracert google.com

NSLookup

The NSLookup command queries a DNS server for machine name and address information. To use NSLookup type nslookup followed by a host name or IP address.

IPConfig

When used alone, IPConfig tells you basic information about your network interfaces, such as their IP address and subnet mask. However, there are a few hidden gems.

• Using IPConfig with the /all switch shows you verbose information about your network interfaces.
• Using IPConfig with the /release switch forces your network card to release its IP address, you would then use IPConfig with the /renew switch to request a new IP from the DHCP server.

NetStat

Netstat is used to view port information on your machine. For example, you can see if there is any application listening on a specific port. Whenever I have had to use NetStat, I have found it useful to use the –ano switch.

Homegroups

One of the cool new features in Windows 7 is the Homegroup feature that allows easy sharing of files between machines. Today we take a look at how to add a new Windows 7 machine to an existing Homegroup. To start using the Homegroup feature we need to create one first. On the the computer that is going to be hosting the Homegroup type homegroupinto the search box in the Start Menu and hit Enter.

In order create a Homegroup, you have to have your Network Location set to Home or you will get an error as shown below.

To change your network location, click on the What is a network location hyperlink and then change your network location to Home.

When the configuration is complete you will be asked what you want to share with other people in the Homegroup. Select what you want to share as needed.

Once the Homegroup has been created you will be given a password. Write this down in a safe place as you will need to enter it on the other machines for them to be able to join your Homegroup.

Now head over to the PC you want to join to the Homegroup and again type Homegroup into the Start Menu. This time click on the Join button.

Then enter the homegroup password.

That’s all there is to it. You now have two computers linked together via a Homegroup. To view member of the group and what they are sharing, open explorer and select Homegroup on the left hand side.

Homework

• The only void, in terms of network, left to fill is IPv6. So hit up Wikipedia and find out how if differs from the IPv4 information we covered in the last lesson.

How to Easily Share Files Between Nearby Computers

How to Easily Share Files Between Nearby Computers

It’s a common situation — you have several computers near each other and you want to transfer files between them. You don’t have to pull out a USB drive, nor do you have to send them over email — there are faster, easier ways.

This is easier than it was in the past, as you don’t have to mess with any complicated Windows networking settings. There are lots of ways to share files, but we’ll cover some of the best.

Windows Homegroup

Assuming the computers are using Windows 7 or Windows 8, a Windows Homegroup is one of the easiest ways to share files between them. Windows home networking has been extremely complicated to configure in the past, but Homegroup is easy to set up. Just create a Homegroup from the Homegroup option within Windows Explorer (File Explorer on Windows 8) and you’ll get a password. Enter that password on nearby computers and they can join your Homegroup. They’ll then have access to your shared files when they’re on the same network — you can select the libraries you want to share while creating a Homegroup.

Someone using the other PC will just have to select the Homegroup option in their file manager, browse your shared files, and download them to their computer. If a guest comes over, you don’t have to do any complicated Windows networking configuration on their PC — just give them the password to the Homegroup and they can quickly join it.

Linux users can use the file-sharing features built into their Linux distribution, which should also be fairly easy to use.

Dropbox LAN Sync

Many people transfer files between computers by syncing them with a cloud storage solution like Dropbox, Google Drive, or SkyDrive. Unfortunately, this can take a while — the file will have to be uploaded to your cloud storage provider’s servers before it’s downloaded back to your other computers. This is a very silly way to do things, when you think about it — it can make syncing a large file take forever. If the computers are on the same network, why not just sync the files directly between them?

Dropbox stands out among the crowd by offering a “LAN Sync” feature that does exactly this. If two computers running Dropbox are on the same network, they’ll sync files directly between each other without the long upload and download. If you add a 1 GB file to your Dropbox, it will quickly sync to your other computer running Dropbox if it’s on the same network.

Best of all, you can share folders in your Dropbox with other people. If they are on the same LAN network as you are, they’ll also get the benefits of LAN sync. That means you can directly sync files to someone else’s computer if you’re sharing the files via Dropbox and you’re on the same network.

Of course, you must have enough space in your Dropbox account for the file, as it will be automatically uploaded to your Dropbox anyway. Whatever service you’re using, small files will sync quickly even if they must be uploaded first. Another service like SkyDrive or Google Drive isn’t a bad solution if you only want to transfer small files between computers, even without LAN sync.

USB 3.0 Drive

A USB drive is the old standard — it doesn’t work wirelessly, but it’s a fast way to transfer files. Best of all, it doesn’t require the computers to be connected or on the same network at all.

USB drives can be faster than Wi-Fi, particularly if you’ve picked up a flash drive with USB 3.0 support. Of course, you must plug the drive into USB 3.0 ports to get the speed benefit — most USB 3 ports are blue inside, so you can look at them to determine which ones are USB 3.0 ports.

However, if you have wireless hardware that supports the new 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard, a wireless transfer might be even faster. 802.11ac Wi-Fi has a theoretical maximum of 1.3 Gigabits per second (Gbps), while USB 3.0 has a theoretical maximum of 4 Gbps. Both will be significantly slower in real-world use — USB 3 will likely be faster when speed is crucial for large files, but if maximum speed isn’t necessary, modern wireless hardware may be more than fast enough.

BitTorrent Sync

If you want to keep files synchronized between your computers — ensuring you have access to the same files locally on each hard drive — you may want to try BitTorrent Sync. Unlike Dropbox LAN Sync, there’s no cloud storage component, which means there’s no limit to the amount of files you can sync. If you configure BitTorrent Sync to only work between computers on your local network, it won’t upload anything over the Internet. Unlike Windows Homegroup, BitTorrent Sync will automatically synchronize the folders you specify so you don’t have to manually copy files back and forth.

Just install BitTorrent Sync on both computers, choose folders you want to share, and generate a “secret.” Provide that secret key to other computers running BitTorrent Sync and they’ll then keep that folder in sync. This will happen entirely over your LAN if the computers are on the same LAN and your files will remain private and local.

The focus on a shared secret — not on accounts — means you can share a folder with a different person just by giving them the secret. You don’t have to mess with user accounts or sharing permissions.

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There are other ways you can transfer files between computers, but these are probably the best ones. If the computers aren’t on the same network, you can create an ad-hoc wireless network or even directly connect them with an Ethernet cable to take advantage of network sharing features.

Image Credit: carlesm on Flickr, Windell Oskay on Flickr

How to Connect 2 Laptops or PC via WiFi (Ad-Hoc)

How to Connect 2 Laptops or PC via WiFi (Ad-Hoc) |

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Connect two laptops or pc through WiFi-Share files between two laptops via WiFi

If WiFi is used for transmitting & receiving of data from Internet Service Providers (ISP) then it can also be used for sharing between two Laptops or PC. It is easy to setup connection between two WiFi powered computers, you just need to follow steps below. Considering two computers as 'PC-1' & 'PC-2'.

Setup for PC-1:

• Open 'Properties' of 'My computer'.
  My computer>Properties
• Click on 'Computer Name' Tab, then click on 'Change' Button. Give it a name, here we are using 'PC-1'.
  My computer>Properties>Computer Name
• Also change 'Workgroup', provided at the bottom of same dialog box. Give it any name as 'Technopheniac'.
  My computer>Properties>Computer Name>Workgroup
• Now, goto 'Network Connections' & open 'Properties' of your 'Wireless Network adapter'
  Network Connections>Wireless Network adapter>Properties
• Goto 'Wireless Network' Tab & click on 'Advanced' button. Select Computer to Computer (Ad-Hoc) connection option. Now click on add preffered networks & specify details as:
• Network name (SSID) - WiFi 
• Network Authentication - Open
• Data Encryption - Disabled
• Tick this connection if its not already done.
• Now configure TCP/IP connection settings. Goto 'General' Tab & select 'Internet protocol (TCP/IP) & click properties. Enter following values:


• IP Address - 192.168.0.1
• Subnet Mask - 255.255.255.0
• Default Gateway - 192.168.0.2
  
  
• Click 'OK' &  save the changes.

Setup for PC-2:

• Open 'Properties' of 'My computer'.
  My computer>Properties
• Click on 'Computer Name' Tab, then click on 'Change' Button. Give it a name, here we are using 'PC-2'.
  My computer>Properties>Computer Name
• Also change 'Workgroup', provided at the bottom of same dialog box. Give it any name as 'Technopheniac'.
  My computer>Properties>Computer Name>Workgroup
• Now, goto 'Network Connections' & open 'Properties' of your 'Wireless Network adapter'
  Network Connections>Wireless Network adapter>Properties
• Goto 'Wireless Network' Tab & click on 'Advanced' button. Select Computer to Computer (Ad-Hoc) connection option. Now click on add preffered networks & specify details as:
• Network name (SSID) - WiFi 
• Network Authentication - Open
• Data Encryption - Disabled
• Tick this connection if its not already done.
• Now configure TCP/IP connection settings. Goto 'General' Tab & select 'Internet protocol (TCP/IP) & click properties. Enter following values:
• IP Address - 192.168.0.2
• Subnet Mask - 255.255.255.0
• Default Gateway - 192.168.0.1
  
  
• Click 'OK' &  save the changes.

Now open your Network Adapters & connect. Note that the paths for various operating system may vary, but process will be the same.

If you are having some issues with DHCP then here is 'How to start it':

• Open 'CMD'
• Type 'NET START DHCP'

If the problem still persists then try deleting your network & make a new with a password.

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