Switching from Windows 7 to Windows 10

 My computer system was getting a bit old and so I was looking at building a new system. If you are building a computer up from scratch I have found an excellent site called PCPartPicker. This allows you to select the various parts and shows you what is compatible with any parts you select. It also compares the parts prices on websites. It can be used by anyone around the World as it will select the supplies in your region of the World. It's free to join and doesn't cost you anything. There's even a forum that you post questions about your build.  

PC Part Picker

Everything is purchased for the build.  I have gone with an ASUS Z690-A motherboard. The test was carried out, but I hit a problem with the memory modules. I went with the Corsair Vengeance DDR5 32GB. It comes in two 16GB sticks. But the yellow light on the computer board came on, indicating a problem with these. I tried them all in each of the four slots, both together and alone, but no result. Checking around the web showed this was a problem with them and that motherboard. So I purchased two Kingston Fury Beast and fitted them in the suggested slots. Still no result! So I removed one and it worked!! It still wouldn't boot! This time the light came on for a problem with the hard drives. It doesn't tell you which. I suspected one or more of the SATA cables. Four altogether! So I order some more, these came in threes so I ordered two packets. These came during the heatwave. So I wasn't going to mess around with the computer in that! So the operation was put on hold till the following week.  When I made some progress with the device. I did replace the cables, but it made no difference! Looking on-line I found a helpful result. Apparently the green/yellow LED also tells you if you have no operating system installed as it can't boot from that! Also that the direct HDMI connector to the Monitor doesn't show the motherboard system. So I used an adaptor which had the multi pin and one horizontal flat pin to an HDMI connector. And the screen came to life! I quickly was able to establish that all the Hard Drives were working, but it seems some of the fans were in the wrong sockets! So I changed them over. It's not clear which sockets are for fans as some are listed for both the fan and water cooling devices! I was also able to fit the other Kingston in the first black socket and got that to work. 

You can see the new computer in the following photos:

 

The first photo shows the side window with the workings. On the bottom the big box is the Power Supply with all the thick white cables coming from it. Just above you can see the graphics card with the metal cooling on it. Above that with the two white cables can be see the cooling fan of the CPU. To the right is the holder for the disc drive and one of the hard drives. The other two being in a case to the right of the power supply.

The second picture shows the unit in place. The old black computer at the side powered on. The black keyboard is for the old computer, the new one behind is the same type with a dust cover on it. The power bank on the wall has the two supplies for the monitors resting on it. The one to the left is for the new one. At the side of the keyboard is the large calculator I use for adding up sales. Then the A3 scanner with the A4 scanner and some setting up tools sat on top.  

Ongoing.... 

When the brand new Windows 10 Pro DVD was tried, the disc worked and took me to the language selection and then started. Only to be greeted with the message of missing drivers! Searching the net produced little solutions especially from the Microsoft site. There are a couple of YouTube ones, but I had no success with any of them. One video tells you to go to the intel site for a file, but then in the comments points out it has been removed. The chap placed it on Google Drive, but gives no instructions as to what to do next with it. I tried the file anyway and it did nothing! Next I bought a flash drive, costing £18, which supposedly fixes Windows 10 problems. I tried it and still got the same missing driver screen. I tried the repair part of the disc. But the computer hung up. So I had to remove the drive. When I tried it again it didn't do anything! I tried it on my old machine and that treated it as blank storage device! So something must have erased or corrupted the USB stick. So I have finished up with an expensive USB stick! I went to the ASUS website and downloaded any drivers and files from them. I did try them last Sunday and it worked!  So I began the adding of the software that came on discs to the new computer. I had a very old Microsoft Works Suite from 2004, which on the Windows 7 system always needed permission to access things like Word. So I was convinced it wouldn't work at all! But it did and it doesn't ask for permission either. Haven't tried to see if it crashes during operation though.  Page Plus X7 used to do the charts installed and works. The Video editing software that is most uptodate I have works with 10 anyway. Next operation was software from the net. Most of these were free versions so I had no problems with them. Except one - Freecad.  Looking at the blurb on it it was only suitable for Windows 7. No Windows 10 version has been issued. If you have installed the Windows 7 on 10 and it works OK. Let me know in the comments.  There's a number of Apps to still install. I like the Easy Audio Editor software. But you have to download it and they charge you every time you do so. Which is annoying. The main thing to transfer is the bookmarks and logins for the browsers. Which is explained as being simple to transfer, especially by the browser people, but is far from it. One thing you cannot do is link to computers to the same internet connector using a splitter. Either one will connect and the other will not. Some take longer to connect even if the other is shut down. It's like the signal is going to the other computer before getting to the one working first! Since I back up the the files on a portable hard drive(s). It should be easy to transfer them to the new computer. 

15 October update - Managed to transfer the bookmarks, but attempts to put them on the browser bar at the top, didn't work and I finished up with three sets of the same bookmarks in folders marked "imported". The passwords were easy to transfer, but you have to do it separately.  I have noticed a display problem too. Where the screen looks like you get on a TV when a 4:3 aspect is made to fit a wide setting.  The text also is not as sharp as the LG monitor too. Both of these problems were answered by the fact that the Samsung monitor has a lower resolution than my LG!  I tried the LG on the new computer. It did look a lot better, it was even possible to connect them both and switch between screens!  I discovered that the best way to transfer the bookmarks to the browser was to find the place they are located select them all and then copy them. Then open up the browser folder where they would sit and past them there. They then appear! There was an old set of bookmarks, but I couldn't copy them to the USB stick at all. I couldn't get Firefox to export that individual set of bookmarks, it simply transferred the lot! I am going to try copying the original bookmark file and see if that will work on the new system. There's is one more issue to solve. The number generator for the PayPal system.  These issues are stopping any complete transfer to the new computer. So work and even doing this blog is still on the old system. 

29 October update. The original bookmark file did copy to the browser. So that is set. And I did sort out the generator for PayPal.  The last thing now was to copy all the old files from the back up disc to the new computer. This take about five hours! 

5 November update - two problems happened. First on Thursday the Canon scanner was acting up. I eventually got the problem solved by going to the Canon website installing the software for Windows 10. The next issue was the Authy App, which produces a code for signing in to PayPal. It produced the code alright, but the site didn't recognise it! I contacted both PayPal and the Authy App sites, but that produced no results. So I started up the old computer, log on to PayPal and used the Authy App to sign in and then took 2 party authentication off. When I signed in it asked for a phone number added the landline and it produced numbers on the computer which I had to use on the phone. That solved the problem. I have deleted the app from my new computer. I reckon if I wanted it to work, that I would need to delete the Authy account. Then create a new one, adding all the devices again. I would need to delete it from the old computer of course!

Got this message also from Authy Support:

My name is Jairo and I'm a Support Engineer here at Twilio. We pride ourselves on delivering a great customer experience but I understand the app on the new desktop did not work, I want to ensure your questions/concerns have been addressed.
Please note that the reason why the new desktop the codes displayed there didn't work on your account, is because your old device it's unsynced from your Authy account, therefore any new device won't sync the token seen in your old device. I strongly recommend enabling backups in your old device and make sure the codes displayed in your old device is also seen in your new device, to make sure both are synced.  
 
Please take a look at the below article to understand how Backups works and enable this feature.
 
What if I Don't Backup my Authy Account?

. 

Enlargement of a map to a big size and printing it?

 This is a problem I need help with. As some of you are aware I want to build a model railway of the Sheffield Victoria and Nunnery area in OO/HO gauge (4 mm Scale).  To do this I have to make the railway board about 10 feet wide and 70 feet long.  Where to house this is another problem, that I won't go into in this post. Now to get it as accurate as possible, I have got a map from the Ordinance Survey which covers the section. However the map I have is only 11.5 inches longs (29 cm) and 1.5 inches (3.3 cm) wide when printed to an A4 Sheet. Now if the map was scaled up to the 4 mm scale it would come out at the 10 feet (275 cm) wide requirement and I think the length would be 70 feet (2133.6 cm) about.  The problem is that I don't have the ability to enlarge the map to that size, or print it off.  I have tried scaling the image to that size without success. What happens is that the original image has space around it and it scales the space - not the image. Also because there is a curve section making the image look like a sock, I can't using the software I have cut the image away from the space. Or at least when I do the saved imaged still has space around it.  So that is my problem! 

Obviously I don't expect the image to be printed on to a massive sheet of paper 70 x 10 feet!  I was thinking that it could be printed on some of the larger sheets of paper A3 upwards in sections. 

So can it actually be scaled up to that size and then printed out in sections?  

If you can help or you are a commercial printer get in touch below. 

The image is below. As for the costs, I have a figure that I could stretch to at the present time, but I don't want to encourage someone to offer to do it at that price, when it could be done for less by posting it. I do know it won't be cheap. 

Update 28 June

I have imported the map into Templot. This is free software that allows you to scale maps to model railway sizes. It was really set up to allow you to build your own track and make your plans to construct the layout. Now it does take a lot of figuring out to work it. And though I was able to get the map into the software, if it was printed out at the 4 mm scale each piece of A4 paper would have a very block effect on the map so you would see the individual pixels of the drawing and not a solid line or shape. 

The way around this I have discovered is to simply enlarge the map slightly so it keeps the detail, but use the blue square grid of the software that divides the map into 1 foot square sections. From that you can transpose the detail onto the model railway baseboard by dividing the board into one foot square sections that correspond to the map.  This way you can see where each part of the map takes up the space. So a building can be marked off in the square it sits and measured up. 

  The above map shows the scaling down each side and more details of the surrounding area, which I won't be using. The blue lines are the tracks that you have to put in to get the map to print out in the software. 

The next map is a cut down version of the other map. It would have to a couple of feet on the upper end of Victoria Station to take in the Wicker bridge. But it looses a foot on the Woodbourne Bridge end. This makes the whole thing about 76 foot long! 

You can see a more detail section on the map below. 

This is a larger scale map and dates to 1970. Ignore the red balloon and the green track TL001.  As you can see the yellow track from the software matches the distance of the map track.  The blue squares stand out more, the the map also had grid reference squares which show as grey black lines. 

The scaling of these maps helped to find the kink in the track starting position. Up to that point from Woodbourne Bridge the boards would be standard width boards. I have yet to decided on the width of the layout. I think I could get away with an 8 foot width. As I would have to have a strip down the side to get more in. Most plywood sheets come in fixed sizes, so an 8 x 4 foot, if they were laid along the straight section, that would use up 14 boards. I think that would be better than having them laid along the section in two's, thus avoid creating a join along the middle of the layout. As the layout is full of different levels. The plywood could be as little as 5 mm thick. Since no track will actually be at that level.  The final kink section would take another 5 boards.