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440-476-3351

(Bruce Corson)


440-552-6706

(Karen Poccia)

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Why Does Your Wi-Fi Suddenly Cut Out?

February 15, 2019 by Karen Poccia

Think back to the last time you had to go without the Internet. Maybe you rolled with the punches, did some laundry, played some Scrabble with your family – good for you. The rest of us were in total chaos, churning butter by hand and spinning yarn into waistcoats (what do we use the Internet for again?). Regardless of your coping abilities, it can be a real headache to lose your connection in the middle of a movie, or during a Super Bowl party, or when you’re up against a work deadline. Many of us know that a quick power-cycling of our modem and router can often do the trick, but why does that even need to happen? Is it too much to ask for things to work perfectly all the time? A little bit of understanding can go a long way to ease frustrations, so let’s delve into what may be going on behind the scenes with your router.

Just like a desktop computer, routers have their own operating system, central processing unit, and memory, among other components. These elements help it manage data traffic to your various devices. Unfortunately, just like a desktop computer, these components can get overloaded. Similar to how your computer can freeze up when you have Word, a few instances of Excel, and 38 Chrome tabs open, pushing tons of data through your router to many devices in your household can also slow it down – sometimes to a complete stop.

Additionally, most home Internet connections use what are called dynamic IP addresses. You can think of IP addresses as street addresses, identifying a given device on a network. Internet service providers will assign a public IP address to each of their routers for only a certain period of time. Once this time expires, your Internet service provider will give the router a new one (this is the dynamic part of the term). In cases where the router is very busy, it might not properly connect to the new IP address, resulting in the router continuing to use the old one. This is sort of like attempting to receive mail that was sent to a previous address.

Yet another issue that can arise is with the private IP addresses within the home network. Private IP addresses are known only to a router and its home network. The router has a pool of these IP addresses that it doles out to the various devices on the network. This assignment process operates dynamically, as well. It uses a network protocol called DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol). A computer might be assigned one private IP address for a period of time, removing that IP address from the available pool. Once the computer disconnects from the router, the IP address is thrown back into the pool. Should two devices ever be assigned the same private IP address, the network interface on both of them will get disabled, causing each device to lose connectivity until the conflict is resolved. Why might this happen if the router is supposed to be keeping an eye on this IP address pool? It’s possible, for instance, to unwittingly have more than one similarly configured DHCP server distributing overlapping addresses, a situation that could arise if you have multiple wireless access points or other devices with an embedded DHCP server. For this reason, it’s mandatory to allow only one DHCP server to run at a time. Too many DHCP servers spoil the broth, as they say.

Restarting your modem and router can help to reset the above listed issues and give the devices a little bit of a breather, allowing them to start again fresh with corrected IP addresses and less congestion.

If you have concerns about your Internet connection, please reach out to your friendly specialists at Patient Computer Help for Grown Ups to set up a consultation.

Patient Computer Help for Grown Ups assists people with their Macs and PCs in the Chagrin Falls and Ohio City areas.

Filed Under: Networking, Tech Tips Tagged With: Chagrin Falls Computer Repair, Cleveland Computer Repair, Computer Help, Internet Troubleshooting, Ohio City Computer Repair

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Do You Really Have to “Properly Eject” a USB Drive?

January 4, 2019 by Karen Poccia

It’s a situation with which you may be familiar…You’re at work and you just finished transferring a presentation from a coworker’s computer to a thumb drive. You decide to show off a little and just pull that USB right out. You know you’re supposed to eject it first, but you see yourself as a bit of a John Wayne type and you want your coworkers to know it. You strut away as the office looks on, impressed.

Technology tips

I hate to be a wet blanket, but your party trick may actually cause more harm than admiration. The warning to properly remove flash drives is there for a reason – a proper ejection prevents your data from becoming corrupted in the event that your system is busy writing something to the drive. Think of the data transfer between your computer and your external drive like moving people across a bridge. If you eject the drive mid-data transfer, it’s a bit like removing a bridge while there are still people on it.

Even if your computer shows that the data has already been transferred, it is not yet safe to remove because of something called write caching. Your computer uses write caching for removable devices as a way to improve speed. Any data you are attempting to transfer to an external drive is held in a cache in the computer’s system memory. Rather than forcing your program to focus on a data transfer at the very moment you ask it to, the computer puts the data in the cache and waits until the most opportune time to complete the task. Properly ejecting the drive commands the computer to go ahead and finish the transfer.

If you have a Windows computer, you can disable write caching (File Explorer -> right-click on your external drive -> Properties -> Policies -> select Quick Removal) with negligible performance loss, however this is not a fail-safe. There is still a small likelihood of data loss. On a Mac, you’re better off not messing with the write caching and knowing that it is automatically enabled.

How to Properly Eject a USB Drive

On a Windows device, open My Computer and find the USB device you’d like to disconnect. Right-click on it and select Eject. The computer will notify you when it is safe to pull it out.

If you’re a Mac user, locate the external device (likely either on your desktop or in the left-hand panel of Finder), left-click on it and drag it to the trash (bottom right of the screen). If done correctly, the trash icon should change to an eject icon (a triangle with a horizontal line below it). As soon as the eject icon disappears, you can remove it. Alternatively, you can hover over the device in the left-hand panel of Finder and click the little eject button that appears after the name.

Patient Computer Help for Grown Ups assists people with their Macs and PCs in the Chagrin Falls and Ohio City areas.

Filed Under: Tech Tips Tagged With: Chagrin Falls Computer Repair, Cleveland Computer Repair, Computer Help, Ohio City Computer Repair

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  • I have worked with Bruce on several occasions and can attest he has an impressive knowledge base and troubleshooting ability. He is also very easy and pleasant to communicate with. He is a great resource. Read More
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  • Bruce does a fantastic job helping people who may not be completely computer literate. My PC was running really slowly and we couldn’t figure out what the problem was. It turns out we were infected with some sort of virus. He was able to come in and fix it in a short amount of time. Read More
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  • Bruce is so helpful, PATIENT, friendly, and knowledgable when it comes to helping people through PC challenges and opportunities! He is my go to resource when I have gone beyond my tinkering capacity and he’s always quick with a suggestion or with ideas to get past many issues we encounter in our connected lives, with... Read More
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