Sharing Drives from Windows PCs

On the PC with the drive you want to share:

• Right-click on the folder you want to share.
• Choose Properties.
• Go to the Sharing tab.
• Click Advanced Sharing.
• Check Share this folder.
• Set a Share name.

• Click Permissions.
• Add a group for Everyone.
• Give Everyone all permissions.
• Click OK to close all dialogs.

• Go to Control Panel > Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Center.
• Click Change advanced sharing settings.
• Make sure Network discovery and File and printer sharing are turned on.

Now comes the fun part.

• Make the following update to the Windows Registry on the PC you want to view/update the shared drive.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanWorkstation\Parameters] "AllowInsecureGuestAuth"=dword:00000001




I make this update on all PCs just to be sure.

Large Language (Model) Lies

I keep exercising Large Language Model AIs, specifically ChatGPT and Gemini.

They seem to do a good job of non-technical tasks such as creating an itinerary for a trip. But when using them for more details such as suggesting hotels at a specific price point, they get very confused.

Recently, I tried just playing with ChatGPT.

I gave it the following prompt:

does the water go down the drain backwards in the southern hemisphere

It gave a comprehensive answer carefully explaining the Coriolis effect (due to Earth's rotation) and then concluding with:

So, no, water does not automatically swirl the opposite direction just because you're in the southern hemisphere. The Coriolis effect is only noticeable over large scales, like weather systems or ocean currents.

Now came the fun part. My next prompt was:

Then why do dial phones in NZ have numbers backwards?

Again it gave a comprehensive answer carefully explaining why dial phones in New Zealand (and some other countries) seem to have their numbers backwards is due to historical conventions in telephone design concluding with:

The phone numbering system in New Zealand isn't influenced by the Southern Hemisphere's geography, but rather by historical telephone design choices. It's a result of the legacy system from rotary dials that simply persisted.

Here's a picture that I found. 

And the fun continues. My next prompt was:

Then do the touch buttons start with 1 at the bottom?

And a another comprehensive answer but just a lie:

Yes, touch-tone phones in New Zealand (and a few other countries that still use this layout) have the number 1 at the bottom of the keypad, with the numbers increasing as you move upwards, similar to the old rotary dial system. So, the layout for the number pad looks like this:

7 8 9
4 5 6
1 2 3
  0

And it even created a diagram of the supposed New Zealand keypad with the 1 at the bottom!

Of course, I challenged that answer.

where can i see a photo of a NZ phone keypad

Needless to say, it went downhill from there.

ChatGPT finally conceded:

You're right! I apologize for the confusion. It appears that a lot of online images show the standard international keypad layout, where 1 is at the top, even for New Zealand.

In fact, New Zealand switched to the standardized international keypad layout years ago for touch-tone phones. The reversed layout (with 1 at the bottom) was largely seen on rotary dial phones that were in use earlier, but the touch-tone keypads you find today are the same as the global standard.

Sorry for the mix-up earlier! Let me know if you'd like to explore any other details. 

My prompt:

Then why did you lie to me?

ChatGPT's response:

I’m really sorry for the confusion earlier - that was definitely not my intention, and I can understand why it would be frustrating. I made an error in my response about New Zealand’s phone keypads. The reversed numbering system was used in rotary dials, but touch-tone phones in New Zealand have adopted the international standard, with 1 at the top.

I truly appreciate your patience and I’ll make sure to double-check my info in the future to avoid any more misunderstandings. Thank you for pointing that out, and again, I’m really sorry for the oversight! If you have any more questions, I’m here to help.

Help like that I don't need.

 

Happy New Year 2025

It's time for my annual New Year's post. Most of these are oldies but goodies but still very applicable even for Windows 11.

Here's my list of things I think you should check once a year.

Some of the steps may be a little out of date but I think you can find your way around. If not, leave me a comment and I'll help.

Plan for Windows 10 End of Life

Password Store

PayPal Preapproved Payments

Offline Backup

Certificate Store

Router Configuration

Guest Network for IoT

Windows Defender and Windows Defender Offline

Controlled Folder Access

System Restore

You'll sleep better.

Broadband Data Usage

I last shared by broadband data usage in 2020. Here's my latest chart.

The bump in 3Q2021 and the spike in 3Q2024 are both upload of pictures and data to various clouds as I have transitioned my backup strategies.

When the blue stack is below the y-axis that indicates that Comcast didn't report as much WAN data as my router did. The occasional blue is usually an issue with my router collecting data.

Since my 2020 post, Comcast has reinstated their data caps but raised it to 1.2TB. Steady state, I'm still below .5TB. I can throttle my cloud uploads as necessary.

Backup 2024

I've been riding the Drobo train a long time. It has served me well. But in early 2023, Drobo closed their doors. My Drobo kept working but reports began of failing units and subsequent problems replacing the hardware. Eventually, my son-in-law's Drobo suffered a hardware failure. He purchased a used replacement but never could get the drives to be recognized. Luckily, he used the Drobo as a backup and the primary copy was still good.

Anyway, this sent me on a quest for a path forward for myself.

My immediate solution was to buy a 4 TB SSD and copy the sensitive contents off the Drobo to that which I did.

I remembered that when I built The Next Decade, I included 2 4TB drives in a Storage Spaces mirror. The Drobo utilization was less than 2TB so that would easily be contained in the Storage Spaces mirror. And even then, probably 1/2 of the Drobo was old DVD rips that I could easily live without.

But then, I wouldn't have an off-site backup. I actually had never had an off-site backup of the Drobo.

As I studied the move from Trump to The Next Decade, I had to research how to switch my CrashPlan definitions to the new server. In that process, I found that I had UNLIMITED storage with CrashPlan.

So I copied the sensitive data (less than 1TB) from the Drobo to the Storage Spaces mirror and included that data in the CrashPlan backup. It took about 3 weeks for CrashPlan to upload that.

I'm sure you all use the 3-2-1 Backup Strategy (archive.org).

So now I had the data mirrored (1), backed up to the cloud (2), but not yet offsite (3).

I have been using Macrium Reflect for several years with good success. I was backing up to a 5TB USB drive that I kept offsite (3). But it bothered me that I had to install Macrium Reflect on each system. Subsequently, I only ran it on Trump.

You'll recall that I had experimented with Drive Snapshot. Due to complications of my own doing, it wasn't satisfactory for me at that time.

So I looked at it again.

This time it did exactly what I needed. It runs as a portable application. I just put the executable on the target drive. It does it's own compression and encryption.

I bought a new 5TB USB drive and am backing up not only The Next Decade but a collection of my laptops. I did a full backup initially and am doing differentials each month. As these backups are encrypted, I keep this drive offsite (3).

For those laptops, I had been using Windows System Image Backup. I still like that as that you can restore from a Windows Recovery Environment but it's all or nothing.

I have created a bootable WinPE disk to use to restore from Drive Snapshot.

Now, I'm looking at taking that interim 4TB SSD and mounting it as a NAS drive (4). You can't have too many backups.

To move data around, I used FreeFileSync.

It's been a journey.

The Next Decade

About every decade, I upgrade my "server" PC. In 2009, I built "The Big Honker". In 2016, I built "The Trump".

With the end of support for Windows 10 in November 2025, I started looking to replace "The Trump." That configuration had served me well but in the summer of 2024, I was thrown a curve. Drobos started to fail and I discovered that Drobo had closed their doors. While I didn't suffer any failure, I started looking for alternatives.

"The Trump" had mirrored 2TB drives that had been faultless. So I looked at even bigger drives for this decade's server. I chose mirrored 4TB CMR drives still using Windows Storage Spaces.

This meant that I needed 2 3.5" internal drive bays. I still like to have a DVD burner. I always look for lots of USB ports, now with USB 3.0. With "The Trump", I had to use an SSD just sitting loose so this time I was looking for an M.2 bay or two.

I found an HP EliteDesk 800 G4 Tower for $364. I populated it with 32GB of DRAM for $66, 2 Western Digital 4TB drives for $150, a Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500GB NVMe M.2 SSD for $64, and an HP Slim CD/DVD RW for $30.

It came with Windows 10 Pro which I upgraded to Windows 11 Pro.

Chrome Nuisances

Google's Chrome is my browser of choice. But it does have some nuisances.

I finally got fed up with a couple of them and spent a few minutes figuring how to eliminate them.

First, was the "<web site> wants to Know your location":

Go to chrome://settings/content/location:

The next is "Sign in to <web site> with Google":

Go to chrome://settings/content/federatedIdentityApi?search=additional+content+settings:

You can thank me later.