112 OCTOBER2020|COMPUTER SHOPPER|ISSUE392
HELPFILE&BUSINESSHELP
Werecently moved torural Devon. Our
family was craving achange ofpace,but our
broadband has slowed down, too: we’re
luckyifweget 7Mbit/s. With two adults,
two teenagers and plenty of devices,
browsing the internet can be atedious
experience.It’s particularly bad if the kids
want to download agame,orifthere are
patches forthe PCs or our Synology NAS.
There’s talk of avillage-wide upgrade
coming in the next 18 months, but is there
anything practical we can do before then?
Felix Nelson
There maynot be much you can do to boost
the outright speed you’re getting. It won’t hurt
to run through the usual suspects, such as
plugging the router intothe BT master socket
and swapping microfilters. Rule out poor Wi-Fi
while you’re at it by speed-testing with awired
Ethernet connection to the router.
If none of that helps, you maybeable to
use the connection abit more intelligently.
Start by asking the kids to download and
updategamesovernight whenever possible.
On each PC, open the Start menu, type
windows updateand run Windows Update
settings from the results. Select Delivery
Optimisation in the leftpane and make sure
Allow downloads from other PCs is on, and
PCs on my local network is selected. Now click
Advanced options. Under Upload settings, set
the minimum bandwidth and upload limit. You
mayalso want to limit background bandwidth
fordownloads, but it’s probably not wise to do
so forforeground updates; you’ll want them
to go as fast as possible.Intheory,this will
Speedup my broadband?
want to specify different disk and memory
cache sizes to the defaults.
With the proxy server installed, return to a
PC, search forProxy and select Change proxy
settings. Turn off Automatically detect
settings, then add the NAS under Manual
proxy setup.Here you can use the IP address
of the NAS, but if you didn’t configure astatic
IP it’s better to use its network name,such as
Synology.The default port is 3128.
Youcan configure most other devices
to use aproxy.The option is usually under
the advanced settings in the network
configuration page.Notethat, depending on
the device,you mayhavetoconfigure the
settings separately foreach user,and you
mayhavetouse an IP address rather than
anetwork name.
encourage your PCs to updatecollaboratively,
reducing the demand on your bandwidth.
If your NAS is the XX11 series or newer,you
can install the free Proxy Server package.By
doing this, and configuring your devices to use
it, the NAS will createalocal cache of various
internet resources such as web pages. This
has the advantage of both reducing the
amount of broadband traffic, and speeding up
loading times to the pages you visit often.
Start by logging in to DiskStation Manager.
Open Package Center,find and click Proxy
Server in the list, then click the Install button.
If prompted, choose the volume to install to.
Click Next, then click Apply and wait forthe
install to finish.Click on the Open button,
then add your email address in the first field
and click Apply.Onthe Cache tab,you may
I’mrunning Windows 10 Pro on my main
PC. All of my SD cards, whether formatted
in my Panasonic camera, or my Windows
10 or Windows 7laptops, showin my main
PC as writeprotected, even though the
locking switch on all of themis in the
unlocked position. The cards can be read,
formatted and written to on my two
laptops. Ineed help!
Glyn Foster
This could be aphysical problem with your
main PC’s card reader,adriver problem, or
some other Windows issue.The first thing to
try if possible is to add another card reader
to your main PC. If this works, disconnect it
again and try removing the drivers forthe original card reader.Open
the Start menu, typedevmgmtand run Device Manager.Your card
reader should either appear under Disk drives or USB controllers.
Right-click it, select uninstall, and opt to deletethe driver software.
If the original card reader still isn’t working properly after areboot,
it maybethat the mechanism that detects the card’s lock switch
position is stuck, obstructed or broken. Tryusing abright torch to
lookinsidetheslot,concentratingonthe
side that the card’s lock switch is on. If
there’s abuildup ofdust, you might try
blowing compressed air in, or putting a
vacuum cleaner to the slot.
Some users report that gently teasing the
metal arm at the right of the slot can work,
but this should be alast resort. If you’re
going to try it, use fine-nosed pliers to create
atiny hook at the end of astraightened
paper clip.Turn the PC off and isolateitfrom
the power first. Trytohook the farend of the
arm out only amillimetre or so.Beextremely
gentle: the arm is very fragile.
If you tried asecond card reader and this
didn’t work, the problem rests with Windows,
and maybefixed by adding anew Registry entry.Click the Start menu,
typeregeditand run the Registry Editor.Expand HKEY_LOCAL_
MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet, then right-click Control, select
New>Key and name the keyStorageDevicePolicies. Now right-click
that key, select New>DWORD (32-bit) Value,then right-click the entry
and name it WriteProtect. Finally,double-click the entry and set the
Value data to 0, click OK, then reboot.
SD business
⬆Adding this Registry keymay cure acard reader
stuck in read only mode
⬆Increasing the memory cache values will make the cache faster,but hog your NAS’s RAM
