Softlink Computer Systems

Softlink Computer Systems A one stop shop for IT support, telecoms, broadband, office 365, IT hardware, and cloud services. Business and domestic support available.

09/04/2026

Unless you are a techy, this post will be meaningless!! One of the businesses we support has a Dell T430 server using the standard H730 RAID card. Unfortunately, this card isn't happy with modern SSD's. BUT, you can upgrade the card to H750 (which is 2 generations later). Unfortunately, Dell don't make a cable that connects card to the T430 backplane because they probably prefer you to buy a new server. But we were able to find a seller on eBay who could supply a suitable cable. So, 😁...... we saved our client having to replace the server.

18/03/2026

Oh No! It's happened again. Failed SSD with no backup, and the freezer trick didn't work. I only trust one company to recover the data from it, and I am pretty sure it will be at least £600 to do it. It is a very difficult job. Just about every computer now has an SSD in it because they are massively faster than mechanical disks, and massively more dangerous because of what happens when they fail. My PC is backed up every day. Our server is backed up every day... So....

13/03/2026

My old iPad Air (original version) has finally been pensioned off, because it doesn't work with a lot of websites anymore. BUT, I am getting Dave to try to jailbreak it and install a lightweight copy of Linux. This isn't easy because Apple designed it all to exactly match what they wanted at the time and don't feel inclined to help anybody to re-use this out-of-date kit. Anyway, let's see how Dave does, and if he is successful, how well it works. I will keep you posted. Meanwhile, pop that old iPad in the draw... just in case we come up with something....

24/01/2026

Well its happened again. This time a 5 month old NVME solid state disk failed. No backup since the customer's previous computer more than a year ago. Fortunately, we were able to recover the data by putting the drive in a freezer and reading it using a USB NVME adapter and a long USB cable passing through the freezer door seal. The customer was lucky!! All you need is an external USB disk, free software from the internet, and some the determination to do it every week.

19/09/2025

I am starting to get a bit twitchy about solid state drives. Nearly all computers for several years have had solid state drives. As I have said before they do not fail gracefully. There is a really useful piece of software called CrystalDIskInfo which will tell you how your SSD is doing. It is free. if the "Health" gets below 30%, plan to get the disk swapped for a new one. It isn't desperate at that stage but you need to be planning a replacement. It is a straightforward job. You just clone the whole of the old disk to the new one. if the new disk has more capacity than the old one you also have to move partitions about to make the new space available. But for your average techy it is easy.

09/09/2025

Microsoft OneDrive is a useful tool. You tell it to put your desktop, documents, photo's and videos onto one drive and the likelihood is that all your data is safe. If your disk expires you have a new disk, put your Office 365 back-on, and get OneDrive to synchronise and all your stuff is back. There is a gotcha. If you accidently delete something it will go in your recycle bin and into the OneDrive recycle bin. One drive will remove it from its recycle bin 30 days later. It will stay in your local recycle bin until it gets to the bottom and then it will go the next time you put something in. Your local recycle bin has a certain amount of space allocated. (Right click on the recycle bin and choose properties, you can change it there if you want.) As the recycle bin fills up it eventually throws out the oldest item(s) when there is no space for the latest thing you recycled. So, if you have accidently deleted something (you don't know when), you are likely to have more luck in your local recycle bin than on OneDrive. So.... never tidy-up your recycle bin!!😊

06/06/2025

Some people who bought computers from us a while back are now coming back to us for replacements because of the need to move on to Windows 11. Since we often haven't heard from them since we supplied the computers 10 or more years ago they must have been trouble free. It is a pleasant surprise to see them again 😊.

20/04/2025

Some of you who look at this page may be wondering what the significance of Datto Silver Partner is at the top. Well Datto is Remote Management and Monitoring software we use with some of our business customers mainly to monitor for developing errors in Windows. Windows will start reporting errors before the user notices anything going wrong. So, we can phone them and tell them there is a problem with their computer before they phone us and tell us the same thing. What Datto doesn't do is monitor what the user is doing so it isn't some kind of spy software.

20/04/2025

I had some weird disk corruption on an SSD in my own computer the other day. I just couldn't write anything to the disk and no amount of trying to fix it did anything. Also, my Macrium Reflect that I use for backup was reporting a backup error saying the media was unreadable. I thought the disk had failed and replaced it restoring the data from backup (engage smug mode 😁). I was surprised the disk had failed because it wasn't old. So, once I had got my computer working, I decided to investigate further and used Diskpart to "Clean" the disk. This deletes all the partitions on the disk and even deletes the boot sector. So, the disk was back to the state it was in when new. I recreated the disk as a GPT disk, and formatted it fully (took ages, which is why we use quick format usually!). I was then able to write loads of data to the disk, and it all worked normally. Strange, or what?

30/03/2025

As you probably know Microsoft will not be doing any security updates to Windows 10 after October 14. They want everybody to be using Windows 11. The snag is that Windows 11 requires a thing called Trusted Platform Module version 2 (TPM v2 has security stuff loaded into it), and secure boot. Older computers might have TPM V1.2 or no TPM module at all, and might not have secure boot. If you try to upgrade to Windows 11 it says you can't. There is a way round it. There is a complete guide here done by a company called pureinfotech. I can't give you the link, you will have to search.
You will need a free tool called Rufus. Again, I can't give you the link but you will find it easily if you search. (Facebook won't let me give links.)

If you don't want to try it yourself, we can do it for you. 😁

29/10/2024

We have had a mini-epidemic of 4 - 5 year old laptops locking-up suddenly. This was caused by them overheating. The thermal paste used to ensure good thermal contact between the processor and the heating sink had dried out meaning the heat was being transferred properly anymore. If your laptop is behaving strangely in this way, take it to your computer repair people and get them to check it over. Another one we had in had a lot of dust in the cooler but that was easily fixed by a thorough blasting with an air duster.

08/10/2024

Well it has just happened again. Another failed solid state disk. Fortunately the customer had a backup. Hope you have!!

Address

Stroud
GL51LQ

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

Telephone

01453765927

Website

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