Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2022 October 16

= October 16 =

Acess to external hd (via network, NOT usb) keeps going on and off at a specific pc, but I can ping it. What can be the problem?
I have a external hd that can be used over the network (it has support to Ethernet cable that you connect to a switch or modem). Recently, I keep getting unable to access the hd via network (but after few minutes or hours I am able to access it again). This thing happens only with my main computer (windows 7), and I am able to acess it with my smartphone as some example. With my main computer I am always able to ping the external hd ip, even if I am not able to access the folders/configuration page (opened at browser by using the ip). What can be the thing causing that problem? I have this external hd for 7+ years and this problem hever happened before.179.134.100.147 (talk) 01:10, 16 October 2022 (UTC)
 * This might happen if two devices have the same IP address on your network. Probably your NAS has a fixed IP address. DCHP may dynamically come up with the same IP number for a new device. Depending on what is in the ARP table will determin where your request goes. But the chances are that any device will respond to a ping. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:53, 16 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks, thats was the problem.179.134.100.147 (talk) 22:26, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

Windows 10 DWM.exe
I have a few questions about Windows 10 dwm.exe. I understand that this is the Windows Display Manager, and that it is what displays my windows of web browsers and of whatever else on my flat-screen terminal. I am using a Dell 3668 Inspiron with four 3.0 Ghz CPUs, which is not capable of upgrade to Windows 11. I have 12 Gb of RAM. What I notice is that sometimes the Commit Charge, Working Set, and Private usage by dwm.exe become large. Sometimes the Commit Charge becomes around 6 Gb, and the Working Set and Private expand to 3 Gb or 4 GB. In that situation, I can see via the Resource Manager that more than 11 Gb is shown as In Use, so that there is almost no Standby memory or Free memory. Of course what also happens is that the machine slows to a crawl as it has too little memory. Is there any useful documentation anywhere on what causes this? More generally, where is dwm.exe documented in language that can be understood by someone whose M.S. in Computer Science was in 1980?

I have found that when dwm.exe becomes bloated in this fashion, I can terminate it from the Resource Manager, which leaves the screen blank for about a minute, after which a new dwm.exe will spawn, using minimal memory. I haven't tried to keep statistics on how often this happens, but it isn't more than once a day, so that terminating it is a tolerable workaround. Is there any downside to killing it other than the wait for it to respawn? Is there a known way to prevent it from doing this? Robert McClenon (talk) 08:05, 16 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I haven't seen this problem, but I found these pages that discuss it. Sounds like it may be a bug in an Intel graphics driver. There are some suggestions for mitigation but I can't vouch for their efficacy.    CodeTalker (talk) 16:41, 16 October 2022 (UTC)
 * User:CodeTalker - Thank you. Yes, that is the problem.  I haven't checked the solutions yet.  I see that there is no mention of killing the process, but that does work, since it spawns a new copy of dwm.exe in one or two minutes.  Robert McClenon (talk) 06:51, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Application to identify computer network
I am forced to work on two computers. In order to transfer data between them I tried to set up a network. When I clicked on network infrastructure I got an error message saying that I need to install an application. There are a number applications for this purpose, but I am afraid to download and install a virus or something worse. I want a recommendation. Thanks AboutFace 22 (talk) 23:57, 16 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Without knowing anything about your setup, if both computers are connected to the internet, and all you need to do is share simple files, then a cloud storage solution is the easiest thing to setup. Viriditas (talk) 07:05, 17 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Network infrastructure is not something you can click on; you must have clicked on a menu item labelled with this term. On which platform and which program did you see this menu item? As posed, the question is not answerable; we need to know at the very least what the purported function of this required application is and on what platform it is supposed to run. --Lambiam 09:12, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

I have Windows 10 on HP Pavilion and a HP Laptop with Ubuntu. I used to work on Ubuntu preferentially but then circumstances forced me to switch to desktop. Now I am trying to get back to Ubuntu and establish a bridge between the two. I will look into the cloud storage. It is interesting. Thanks AboutFace 22 (talk) 21:25, 18 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Honestly, cloud storage solves everything if all you need to do is share files. See comparison of file hosting services. Viriditas (talk) 22:13, 18 October 2022 (UTC)