Category: Technology

After logging in to a website that needed a username and password, the screen just went blank. After a few tries, I resorted to the classical work around of trying the website in another browser. I usually work in Chrome but I also have Thunderbird and Microsoft Edge installed on my machine. 

I encountered the same problem with Thunderbird, so I concluded that this was not a browser problem. I contacted technical support for the website. After a long-winded online chat session I did get logged in. But later that day I found that logging in from the browser still failed with the blank screen. 

The next step is a Windows reboot. I had ruled this out because everything else on my computer was working normally.

When I clicked the Windows “Shut Down” options, I noticed that there was an entry there for “Update and restart”. 

This triggered some memories of unstable behavior in the past when software updates had been installed but were waiting for a final reboot. After I did the Update and restart, my browser could login to the website.

So what is the problem here? 

Earlier versions of Windows had an option to ask before doing a software update. But a lot of users were not installing software updates. Their machines were vulnerable to virus and other software attacks because they didn’t have the latest security patches. So Microsoft changed this policy and automatically updates Windows 10 machines.

A good way to see if your machine is in the middle of a software update is to look in the Shut Down menu. If there is the extra entry for “Update and restart” you should do this as soon as possible to avoid some very strange and unpredictable behavior.

I was working on my laptop in the kitchen instead of my office where I usually work. I noticed that the login to Windows was really slow. I was further from the router than normal, so my Internet connection was probably a little slower. Why should this affect a simple login?

I remembered that I set up Windows 10 with a Microsoft account. There were many recommendations to do this and it didn’t seem to be that easy to use an alternative.

I reviewed the “advantages” of using a Microsoft account, and didn’t really see any that were relevant to the way I use my PC, or to the way I suspect most other people use Windows. I don’t use many Microsoft apps and I didn’t see any value to synchronize my laptop with my Android phone or iPad (if Microsoft software even works very well with “foreign” machines).

I found that it is not that difficult to switch from a Microsoft account to a Local Account. Just go into Settings and search for Accounts/My info.

Once this was done, sure enough my Windows login was a lot faster. To see a noticeable speedup like this, a fair amount of data must have been transmitted (sent and/or received) between my computer and Microsoft servers.

So what was my PC sending to Microsoft?

I have no idea. I spent some time researching this question and I could not find any detailed explanations from Microsoft or third party tech experts.

Whatever data is being copied, I would rather none of it get stored on Microsoft servers. If you have similar concerns, switch your Windows user to a Local Account.

When I created this blog, I wanted it to include my earlier Virus Info email messages. So I simply copied and pasted each email into a blog post. They all looked good.

Then a reader informed me he was seeing image.png instead of images in one of the blogs.

I found that Firefox in Windows and Safari on my iPad had this problem. I had never seen any of these broken images because I always use Chrome.

For my blog I use the platform WordPress. I compose the blog message in a word processing type window. WordPress converts it to HTML so that it will display on a website. Clearly it was not generating the correct HTML for all browsers.

WordPress is big, really big.

“WordPress is the most popular web management system in the world and is used by nearly 75 million websites. According to WordPress, more than 409 million people view more than 23.6 billion pages each month and users produce 69.5 million new posts and 46.8 million new comments every month.”

So how could my simple copy and paste fail so badly?

Software bugs.

Trying to contact WordPress for help to correct this would have been a long, arduous process. So I did some experimentation and found a way to “fix” this myself. In each blog, I saved the images separately to my computer, deleted them from the blog message and then copied in the saved images.

When you signed up with an Internet Service Provider (ISP) you probably got a range of options for download speed, ranging from 10 Mbps (Megabits per second) up to 1 Gbps per second (1000 Mbps).

A byte is 8 bits, so 10 Mbps is 1.25 MB per second.

At 50 Mbps (40 MB/s), you will get good Internet access including HD (High-definition) streaming and online gaming. Plus you can share the connection with 3–4 other computers without noticing a slowdown. You can download high resolution photos in seconds and HD videos in just a few minutes.

Let’s suppose you have 50 Mbps service. Can you actually download data from the Internet this fast?

It depends on the Wi-Fi speed between your computer and the router. Here’s a typical home set up for your Internet connection. Anything using the Internet has to first send the data over the Wi-Fi network.

Wi-Fi is subject to a lot of noise interference (see the previous blog). Generally, the further your computer is from the router the slower your Wi-Fi connection is going to be because of interference from walls, ceilings and any other large objects in the path.

You can measure the speed of your Wi-Fi connection with this tool.
https://www.speedtest.net

The Wi-Fi is network is shared among all the computers in your house so you need to run this from each device that uses the Internet. If you find that some of your Wi-Fi speeds are low, you should see if you can move the router and/or the computer so they are closer together.

Then add up all the Wi-Fi download speeds to see if your Internet connection is fast enough when all computers are streaming video. If the Wi-Fi total is greater than your Internet speed on your plan, you might want to consider upgrading to a higher speed. But if the Wi-Fi total is less than your Internet plan, you may want to change your Internet plan so you are paying for only the speed you can use.

I was happily working on my computer in my home office the other day and suddenly most of the tabs in my browser reported a network error.

Like most home Internet setups, my computer uses a Wi-Fi wireless connection to connect to the router provided by my Internet Service Provider (ISP). The router connects to a modem that sends your request to the ISP network where it gets forwarded on to the Internet.

 
I went into the Wi-Fi settings on my Windows computer, disconnected the Wi-Fi and then reconnected it. You can find the Wi-Fi settings by using the Search on the Taskbar (magnifying glass icon).

I went back to work and for a time everything was fine. But then I lost the Wi-Fi again. I checked on my mobile phone and it still had a Wi-Fi connection. So there was no problem with the Wi-Fi router, it was strictly a local problem on my computer.

I looked along a line of sight from my computer to the router which was downstairs in the kitchen and tried to think of what might be blocking the signal. Well right front of me I saw that the door to my room was closed. Now I often work with the door closed but this time on a hunch I got up and opened the door. Now after I reset the Wi-Fi it worked for the rest of the day without any further outages.

Why did this happen?

Wi-Fi is a radio signal. As such, it is subject to all kinds of noise disruptions. If you have ever listened to an analog radio, you know that there is often interference and you get crackle and other noises. For a digital signal such as Wi-Fi, the tiniest little noise that you wouldn’t even notice on a radio is enough to signal an error. Internet data is sent in packets typically about 1,500 bytes long. Any error in the packet means that the whole packet is discarded and the sender has to transmit the whole packet again. So a small amount of interference or noise on your Wi-Fi connection can create a lot of retransmissions that result in long delays when you are trying to use the Internet.

A major source of interference in our house is the microwave oven. Microwave uses radio signals that are in the same frequency band as our Wi-Fi, the 2.4 GHz frequency band. Our Internet router is in the kitchen and whenever the microwave is on it effectively knocks out the Internet for everybody.

Cordless phones, baby monitors and garage door openers also use the 2.4 GHz frequency band, so they can also interfere with your Wi-Fi.

Some routers support another Wi-Fi frequency band, at 5 GHz. If your router has this option, you will see another Wi-Fi network name in your device’s WiFi settings. You might want to consider using it instead of 2.4 GHz.

5 GHz is faster and less prone to interference from other devices since fewer devices use this frequency. However 5 GHz may have a smaller coverage area and is less successful at penetrating solid objects.

So computers that aren’t too far from the router should use 5 GHz. But mobile phones which move around and may be farther away from the router should use 2.4 GHz. 

We were looking forward to a lovely dinner at a restaurant in Rome. I checked Google maps on my phone for the directions. It was about a 15 minute walk and looked pretty straightforward. Every few blocks I checked the map because there were a lot of turns onto small streets.

After about 15 minutes, I noticed that the street corner I was approaching looked kind of familiar. Sure enough, we had been there earlier. While I was scratching my head, my wife asked a shopkeeper for directions. Ignoring my phone, we were able to follow the directions and arrive at the restaurant.

But it was too late; it was a very popular restaurant and they had given our reservation to someone else. But in Rome this is not a problem. There are so many restaurants that we had no trouble finding one nearby on the lovely Piazza Navona and had a thoroughly enjoyable dinner.

So what in the world had caused the directions on my phone to fail so badly?

I knew that mobile phones have a radio receiver that reads signals from GPS satellites (Global Positioning System) that are continually broadcasting their position and time. The phone’s position can be calculated by solving for four unknown quantities — latitude, longitude, altitude and the time it took for the signal to travel from the satellite to your location. If you remember some high school algebra, you know that solving for four unknowns requires four equations. So your mobile phone needs to get GPS readings from four satellites.

I also knew that GPS signals could be obstructed when you were surrounded by tall buildings, such as in Manhattan, downtown New York City. But Rome, and certainly where we were, does not have very high buildings. On the other hand, the streets are extremely narrow so there is not much sky visible. This was probably the reason I did not get the right directions on my phone.

What is the lesson to be learned from this?

Simple. If you suspect that your GPS may not be accurate, look up at the sky. If you can’t see lot of sky, your GPS may not work. However, this does not necessarily mean that your map directions will fail because mobile phones also use cell phone towers to determine location, but it may not be as accurate as GPS which determines location to within 5 meters.

Historical note: The first GPS system was developed for the U.S. military during the cold war. In 1983 a passenger plane on route from New York City to Korea entered prohibited airspace because of navigational errors and was shot down by Russia (the Soviet Union). After this, the U.S. made GPS available for civilian use to try and avoid such disasters. Not long after this, Russia also made their  satellite system available for civilian use. Many smartphones will use the Russian satellites as well as GPS. Europe and China are also developing navigational satellite systems.