Brontoforumus Archive
Discussion Boards => Real Life => Topic started by: Thad on August 24, 2008, 10:13:18 PM
-
...So apparently I can't go for a bike ride at 11 at night without somebody asking me to fix their computer.
-
...So apparently I can't go for a bike ride at 11 at night without somebody asking me to fix their computer.
How in the hell does that come up during a bike ride at night?
-
Cell phones, like intercoms, make it a lot more convenient to annoy people.
-
bike ride at 11 at night
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAFA1hczTLw
-
Cell phones, like intercoms, make it a lot more convenient to annoy people.
I LEFT MY CELL PHONE AT HOME.
-
Cell phones, like intercoms, make it a lot more convenient to annoy people.
I LEFT MY CELL PHONE AT HOME.
EXT - COUNTRY ROAD, NIGHT
A pickup truck roars along the road. THAD, trundling on his bike, glances behind, illuminated by the truck's high beams. The truck pulls up alongside him and matches his speed. The window rolls down. THAD glances between the cab and the road as his bike wobbles on the dusty shoulder.
:wrong: THAD!
:thad: (surprised) What?
:wrong: THAD!
:thad: WHAT!?
:wrong: CAN YOU FIX MY COMPUTER?
:thad: I DON'T KNOW!
:wrong: ...
:thad: DO YOU HAVE IT WITH YOU?
-
Being asked to do computer work when you're lying in bed trying to get over a cold might trump being asked to do computer work when you're intentionally out of the house without your phone.
...
Maybe.
-
I'm not sure exactly what makes people like us better equipped to fix people's computers. Many of the problems I've fixed in the past could have been solved through common sense; often, the problem and solution are described right in the product's troubleshooting guide.
I suspect that our generation is just not terrified of breaking the computer. Older folks don't want to muss around in the guts of the thing out of the fear that they'll hit the wrong button and fuck everything up worse. We're not terrified of the wrong button because we know that, for the most part, it doesn't exist.
Anecdotally, most of the time I've been enlisted to help, it was because a printer was fucking up. What is it about printers that makes then so fucking finicky?
-
Kazz
they put
alligators in them
to swim around
and
be molested by australians
what were we talking about?
-
Yeah, Kazz, it is basically just that technology is intimidating to people who haven't grown up fiddling with it. There are a lot of variables that aren't obvious. Printer technology, though, is just bad.
-
I suspect it's because printers are made very cheaply because they're only profitable if they break often and guzzle ink.
-
Hard to say what you mean by "people like us". Thad and I are reasonably expected to know how to maintain the standard equipment of our jobs. I'm sure if I had gone to medical school, people would be asking me to poke around inside them while complaining vaguely of their bodies not performing to their possibly unreasonable expectations.
Probably not while I was suffering a cold, though.
-
Hard to say what you mean by "people like us".
People of our generation who grew up fucking around on the internet.
-
I'm sure if I had gone to medical school, people would be asking me to poke around inside them while complaining vaguely of their bodies not performing to their possibly unreasonable expectations.
Probably not while I was suffering a cold, though.
Brentai, I know you're not feeling well and all, but my midi-chlorians aren't properly communicating with the Force. I think their radios are broken, please to fixing this.
I'm not really great with computers and such personally, but I have enough knowledge to get called over to my grandparents' place to try to fix their internet when it goes down or find out why their video and/or sound doesn't work properly.
Installing new parts in my own computer terrifies me, however, but that's because I feel like I only have the Touch of Destruction and will never know love I might accidentally break something with no viable means to restore or replace it.
-
While I still cringe every time I have to deal with an AMD processor with those godawful hook things that you have to attach to the seat just right (do they still make those?), there are very few internal components in your computer that you can damage with regular insertion and removal as long as you remember to keep yourself grounded (which in practice translates to "touch the power supply every now and again").
Swapping video cards is kids' stuff -- and I define it as such because I've been doing it since about the age of twelve.
-
I have a friend whose house has no ground wiring. I'd feel better standing in a puddle of water with an iron hat during a storm than living there.
-
I have a friend whose house has no ground wiring. I'd feel better standing in a puddle of water with an iron hat during a storm than living there.
I feel sorry for that poor bastard--HEY :oh:
I can't wait to move out of here. Again.
-
i have some sort of crazy bioelectric field or something because if i'm not CONSTANTLY grounded, i'll fry shit.
-
i have some sort of crazy bioelectric field or something because if i'm not CONSTANTLY grounded, i'll fry shit.
(http://www.thetick.ws/images/carpetedman.jpg)
-
I have a friend whose house has no ground wiring. I'd feel better standing in a puddle of water with an iron hat during a storm than living there.
After playing Half-Life nonstop for pretty much the entire weekend, I have ideas about this sort of set up.
-
So, my mom's laptop started acting funny and she decided to take matters into her own hands. Needless to say, she doesn't know dick about computers, so this has been the pattern over the last few days:
1. She attempts to fix something on the laptop
2. It doesn't work, so she starts using computer-related words she must have heard on Oprah to describe the situation to me
3. I try to help, but she declines the offer
4. She gets furious at the machine, and I can hear the screams on the other side of the house
5. She stops down to my room, screams at me while trying to explain the problem using her moon language
6. I fix the typically-simple problem
7. Start back at 1.
One of the funnier things she's yelled recently was when she had some stupid internet connection issue. She claimed that both Internet Explorer and Foxfire (that's what she calls it) weren't working because they're not HP products, and she is running an HP laptop, so HP is "angry" that she's trying to run them. :MENDOZAAAAA:
-
My mom knows computers decently and it still took her a few weeks to stop saying "Foxfire".
It's not really irritating. I found the opposite example to be more annoying:
Lorrin Foxfire - NPC (http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=27705)
A reference to firefox?
An obvious one, I might add. ;)
:facepalm:
-
I have never understood this shit.
I mean, in thirty years, are we gonna be like this with virtual mindmeld consoles or whatever?
I CAN'T GET MY ROCKET PACK TO WORK AND THE FLYING CAR STILL ISN'T INVENTED. SON CAN YOU COME OVER AND FIGHT NAZIS
-
my parents keep trying to get me to take an it job just because i can basically bang on my router really hard and 5 times out of 10 get it working within an hour
-
my parents keep trying to get me to take an it job just because i can basically bang on my router really hard and 5 times out of 10 get it working within an hour
Oh god, my parents are like this too. My mom keeps trying to get me to take an IT job at the hospital she works at. When I inform her that I don't know nearly enough to even get hired, she insists that they will teach me whatever I need to know. They're shocked that I don't want to "major in computers" in college, as well. :facepalm:
I have never understood this shit.
I mean, in thirty years, are we gonna be like this with virtual mindmeld consoles or whatever?
I CAN'T GET MY ROCKET PACK TO WORK AND THE FLYING CAR STILL ISN'T INVENTED. SON CAN YOU COME OVER AND FIGHT NAZIS
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v479/aett/20051212h.jpg)
-
Related strip yesterday. (http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/9/03/)
Anyway. As Brent pointed out on page 1 (http://brontoforum.us/index.php?topic=1064.msg23773#msg23773), we're sorta talking about different things here. The reason I haven't applied for an IT job lately is that I fucking hate IT, not that I'm lacking in experience or credentials. Kazz and Niku make a valid point when they say a totally average user of our generation is automatically assumed to be more capable than a user of an older generation, but OTOH when my family assumes I know more about computers than they do, well, I like to think my degree says they have a point (even if prospective employers seem to disagree).
All that said, I don't think we've got a single user on this forum whose skill level is average or lower. I worked at the campus computer store for a few months. Do you know how many people don't know the difference between Windows and Office?
-
It was sort of the inverse a few years back when I was living in Richardson, just north of Dallas. Dad was the big computer guru of the block, and it was something of a second business run out of the garage (his first business was also run out of the garage, incidentally). Bottom line, Dad was the go-to guy for computer stuff.
Last year, when I was going through some computer issues for something (can't remember what exactly):
ME: Hey Dad, do you know anything about this?
DAD: Uh...not really. I don't keep up with computer stuff much anymore...
I guess switching careers from software engineer to directional drilling lead will do that to you. Thankfully, he's still competent enough to tech support for Mom and my sister, so I don't have to get involved. Now, as far as things go for the Wii (which my sister got for Christmas last year)...
Uhh, oh boy. :facepalm:
-
I love being the black sheep (read: the only person who plays video games) of my family, so I never had to worry about the HAY ALEX HOW DO YOU HOOK THIS SUPER X-DREAMGAMEBOXSTATIONTENDO 360 UP TO THE TV AS COLOR COORDINATED AUDIO AND VIDEO JACKS ARE TOO HARD EVEN THOUGH I CAN HOOK MY VCR AND DVD PLAYERS UP FINE requests.
-
Mainly it's about the software that comes out for it, and not the technical aspects of it. Mom's pretty on the ball, and she can figure out how things work pretty easily. I just sort of have to field the questions that a Gamestop employee might have to field, other than the "DO YOU HAVE ANY WIISIXTY 3'S IN STOCK?!"
EDIT: Wow, 300th post.
-
I'm happy to do tech support for most of my family, as long as they remember the things that I tell them. Which is rare. But I've almost got my mother trained to recognize phishing, and my dad's not intimidated, just inexperienced, so the things that befuddle him are the things that are genuinely stupid about software.
On the other hand, I have relatives who ask me to hook up RCA cables for them. Color-coded RCA cables. And these are people who understand how the "input" button on the TV works, so I just can't imagine what they're afraid of. But they've had problems with technology in the past and now they're neurotic, or something.
-
The reason I haven't applied for an IT job lately is that I fucking hate IT, not that I'm lacking in experience or credentials.
Yeah it's not like I wouldn't be willing to shore up my deficient knowledge for a job but uh
i don't want to work in IT at all ever
-
Me neither, but if I don't get a job I actually like soon, I'm going to have to bite the bullet and do it.
-
Having just graduated college and having basically no real job experience, I am very, very close to taking a help desk job........
help me guys :ohshi~:
-
My plan for the future is to work for, and with, people who know more than me.
-
I dodged the help desk job. I did not get a fucking four year degree to help people with excel '97.
Any IT job where you have to deal with 'help tickets' in any form, you will want to kill yourself in a month. I had to do this at ATK. However, I had to do help desk tickets on TOP of being a programmer, and occasional go-to hardware helper.
You want a job that clearly defines programming, if you're trained for it. Failing that, I hope you are qualified to manipulate databases. There is a need for database engineers.
-
Parents with computer problems makes me crazy. I make Kazz deal with my mom's derpy computer problems, because I get irritated after she can't get some simple task that I've taught her about at least a dozen times. If she doesn't want to write down the steps, I'm not helping.
-
You want a job that clearly defines programming, if you're trained for it. Failing that, I hope you are qualified to manipulate databases. There is a need for database engineers.
I program abut as well as a monkey. A smart monkey, but a monkey nonetheless. I'm boned.
-
I should clairify. Database engineer does not mean you hit a server with a wrench all day, and ward off spies. I mean, you get to do that, it's just less than 20% of your duties.
-
You mean I actually have to use the shotgun too?
-
Spy sapping my spreadsheets?
-
Well, while I was having fun with a TF2 joke, I wasn't kidding about warding off spies. Data theft is a real issue. I have to deal with FERPA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Educational_Rights_and_Privacy_Act) restrictions on who can and cannot access information, and how they can use that information after they take it.
So a bit more like "Spy stealin my student addresses to send them hoax letters."
-
You failed. The enemy has taken our intelligence.
-
Helping Lexi use Photoshop and have her actually pick it up quickly: Pretty Nice!
Trying to help her on the phone over the sound of six 18-wheelers roaring by and with a reception that makes me wonder if she's calling from inside a Faraday Cage: :facepalm:
-
What the... Something's up with the hard drive I just installed. The BIOS picks it up just fine, jumpers have been set to slave and everything, but I can't access it after everything boots up. What am I missing?
-
Is it SATA? There's a setting in the BIOS I have to pick to get windows to recognize my SATA drives. I.... forget what it is...
-
No, IDE. The motherboard I'm using is almost four years old, which I guess is around mid-life for computer hardware. I actually had to return the first one I bought because I was a moron and didn't check the connection type.
-
Try setting the jumpers on both drives to Cable Select, if available. Make sure your "master" drive is at the END of the cable, and the slave drive is connected to the middle of the cable.
-
I always hated CS.
-
Well, the computer claims to detect it, but I can't access the new drive... I am right in assuming I can put stuff on a slave drive without installing an operating system, right? Isn't that the entire point of a secondary hard drive?
Also, WHY THE FUCKING SHIT DID MY IPOD DECIDE TO SPONTANEOUSLY BLANK ITSELF? IT WAS WORKING JUST FINE AND DANDY FIVE HOURS AGO.
:fukit:
-
...I feel like it's terribly condescending to ask if you've partitioned and formatted it, but I've spent enough time in tech support to start with the obvious.
-
That was actually my mistake when I installed a new HD a month ago. I formatted it but I had to set a partition. Also look online for your HD's jumper settings; you may need a pair of tweezers in the near future.
-
You should be able to work HD jumpers with your fingers. Almost all brands these days have a lip around the end that your fingernail can grip.
Most modern machines should be able to pick up on whatever hookup you're trying to do using cable select.
Here's a handy guide (http://www.mikeshardware.com/howtos/howto_connect_ide_hd.html) to most relevant things about hooking one up.
I am growing to love SATA connectors more every day. Two cables, then done.
-
steam is being retarded, if i hit the "PURCHASE BUTTON" i get what is displayed in the attached pic
halp, i want goddamn Fallout 3 and Left4dead
-
you suck at internet
-
Lexi's Mac (a Dual 2ghz PowerPC G5) is somehow able to run WoW, but it's been getting a weird graphics glitch the whole time. It looks like wherever there's a transparency of some kind, this black pixely stuff keeps popping up. The end result makes just about any place (snowy/misty ones, in particular) end up looking like the Twilight segments of Twilight Princess.
It looked kinda neat at first, but it really began to get old when we noticed the randomly stretched polygons. I would think that a new graphics card would fix this, but I wanted to make sure here before I drop any cash on one.
EDIT: Wait, so Macs actually do have a screen capture (http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m78/yoji_00/Picture2.png) function, contrary to my prior belief?
-
How to figure out nearly any detail about your graphics card: GPU-Z download page (http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1281/TechPowerUp_GPU-Z_v0.3.0.html).
-
:wuv: To MadMAx!
-
Well, this is new. For some reason, Firefox has decided that pressing the left Ctrl key (but not the right one, mind you) is it's cue to open a new window and go to the Google home screen, regardless of what application I'm using. Photoshop, Homeworld, another Firefox window, whatever.
I did just remove all the keys to do some cleaning (thanks to some fuckface roommate who spilled tea all over it and didn't fess up), but it works just fine otherwise. Like nothing happened at all. I really don't know what to say.
-
:itsmagic: A little help? (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/21/AR2009012104249.html?nav=hcmodule)
"It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said of his new digs.
...
The team members, accustomed to working on Macintoshes, found computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software.
...
And officials in the press office were prepared: In addition to having their own cellphones, they set up Gmail accounts, with approval from the White House counsel, so they could send information in more than one way.
-
What's wrong with six year old Microsoft software? Windows XP? Office 2003?
-
MS itself is trying to go back to six years ago, if W7 is any indication.
-
Want to build your first computer? Here's a good starter guide (http://lifehacker.com/5151369/the-first+timers-guide-to-building-a-computer-from-scratch). [via Lifehacker (http://lifehacker.com/)]
Any nerd worth his salt should try to build their own machine.
-
what is a good computer that is not too expensive these days
-
(http://i358.photobucket.com/albums/oo22/driftycity/advicedogphp-4.png)
-
Want to build your first computer? Here's a good starter guide (http://lifehacker.com/5151369/the-first+timers-guide-to-building-a-computer-from-scratch). [via Lifehacker (http://lifehacker.com/)]
Any nerd worth his salt should try to build their own machine.
It is also worth noting that many things which were obnoxious about computer building are not there any more (AMD see-saw CPU latch which takes 300 pounds of force, I am looking at you).
-
Man, the CPU latch was the reason I always bought a new CPU/Motherboard combo, rather than try and replace just try and replace the CPU. After you slice open a finger it's not something you want to undo to try again.
-
Those were horrible. I resolved not to upgrade this machine's CPU until I was also replacing the motherboard and everything else, just because of how difficult this heatsink was to lever on. I don't know that I can remove it without breaking the hook.
-
...the last time I removed an AMD heatsink, it took the processor with it.
...on the fucking payroll server.
...my last week at the job.
...and it was a processor that was not easy to replace.
-
It was determined to take everything that it could with it.
-
Hey guys, I have a bit of a widget question. Dunno if anyone has any suggestions...
I want to set up my computer at work to come on a specific time, so it's ready for me in the morning when I walk through the door. It has a Windows login, requiring password and entry, like most work computers. There's also a particular application requiring password entry (login name is saved by default, but there is no 'save your password' function) that I would like to come on when I start up.
I don't know if there's an application for this or a windows subfeature (I'm on XP), but I am curious to see if it's possible.
Anybody know anything?
-
Huh... way to post in the entirely wrong thread. How the hell did I manage that?
So, it's just preliminary at this point, but if I'm going to have to buy a new computer anybody have any recommendations?
Requirements:
- This will be a desktop, built from parts. I do not wish to bother with a complete package unless you have a rather compelling argument.
- PC. Suggest "BUY A MAC ZOMG!" and I will hit you.
- Probably going to stick with XP for now. Howl about the alternatives in other threads, thank you. So 4Gb RAM is max, then again that's still plenty for now.
- Higher end, but behind the curve where you're just paying for early adoption/bleeding edge. I'd like to be mildly ahead of the game for a short while, rather than playing catchup from the very get-go for a change.
- I don't have any fixed desire for newer gimmicky items that are not yet fully supported by current and imminent-release software, i.e. dual core, dual graphics cards slots, etc. However, I am not specifically against these either (except perhaps dual graphics cards slots).
- Reliability is a strong point for me.
- Ease of upgrade is a consideration, though only a secondary one.
- Specific programs are not a target. A new computer should run abosolutely anything I could put on it now (TF2, Civ games, Age of Empires 3, outdated Photoshop/Illustrator/Painter) at full graphics, as these games and programs are all two years old (or way older). Any programs I may consider running in future (Starcraft 2), have no released specs to rely on.
- I'm basically looking for what's most cost-effective, without making cost the limiter. So, say, I can get a decent computer that meets my needs for $750, but I get more bang for the back by dropping $1000, I am more than willing to drop the grand. But if the $750 is the better deal and the performance increase for the extra $250 is marginal, then I would go with the $750.
- Upper limit is maybe $1100? $1200 if a really compelling argument can be made to go overbudget.
-
Question:
Have you built your own PC before?
-
I have a friend who does the actual assembly. It's how my current computer was made did last time.
In general, I find that building your own comp gives you much more flexibility and control. And it's usually (though not always) much cheaper than buying a pre-built tower. Also, I plan to reuse my DVD drives, maybe one of the two hard drives I currently have (though I will buy at least 1 new hard drive, they are cheap as dirt right now) and possibly the case*, so that nets additional savings.
-
Your best bet is to search Tigerdirect.com and Newegg.com for various deals. I'd look local for cases because of their bulk and I like to know if the one I'm buying is right for what I'm looking for.
- Probably going to stick with XP for now. Howl about the alternatives in other threads, thank you. So 4Gb RAM is max, then again that's still plenty for now.
XP is fine and cheaper than Vista, although people on these very boards have said that Windows 7 might just be swanky so, but that can wait.
At any rate, if you buy XP you can send off for the 64-bit version at about shipping cost, which would allow you to upgrade beyond 4gb when the time comes (I balk at anyone who ever tells me there is an upper limit to the amount of RAM I need, especially if you're going to be working with Photoshop et al)
- I don't have any fixed desire for newer gimmicky items that are not yet fully supported by current and imminent-release software, i.e. dual core, dual graphics cards slots, etc. However, I am not specifically against these either (except perhaps dual graphics cards slots).
Hey, don't knock the dual graphics cards slots. It's a great way to extend the life of your current video card when you ugprade.
That said, a few quick nuggets off of Tigerdirect.com:
XFX nForce 680i LT SLI Motherboard CPU Bundle (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3896469&Sku=MBM-680-Q6700A) This is pretty much what I have, and it's a helluva lot of power for what you need. Down the road if you need an upgrade, you can just pop out the chip and put a new one in and you're good to go. A bit pricey at $299.99 right now, but Tigerdirect has new deals every other week on stuff like this.
BFG GeForce 9800 GT Video Card (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4115418&Sku=B52-9814) Perhaps the finest graphics card ever made, it's more than enough power for what you want to do. TF2, Age of Empires 3, etc will run smooth as butter at the highest resolutions with everything turned on. Trust me.
And at $99 that is a steal. We're up to only $300 and got two big ticket items out of the way.
Corsair Dual Channel TWINX 4096MB PC6400 DDR2 800MHz Memory (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3228139&Sku=C13-6082) 4gb memory for only $20. Memory is so cheap these days it's not really going to break the bank to hit 8gb even though omg who needs that much so blah blah blah.
If you already have a hard drive, sound card and case, that's pretty much your new PC for less than $400. Of course, that's without windows XP which will run you about, oh say, $100 (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2552182&CatId=672)
That bumps us up to $420 (hehehhehheehehe).
Of course, as an illustrator it would be simply crazy not to have a backup drive plugged in.
1tb Seagate drive for $90 (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4131881&Sku=TSD-1000AS2). By the time you fill that up, you'll be able to purchase something larger for cheaper. That brings us up to $510.
I might be missing something, but that looks like a fairly good PC to me.
Almost forgot, your old power supply probably won't be adequate to power all of that, so here's 750w for about $100 that is boss enough for that machine (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3438609&Sku=C13-2503).
Still pulls in at under $700, minus shipping. Anything else you feel like adding to it?
-
Windows will not cost me a cent, I can assure you of that.
And yeah Tiger Direct and their Canadian competitor (http://www.canadacomputers.com/) are my primary sources for parts.
The specific parts, yeah, that's exactly the kind of recommendation I'm looking for.
-
Then knock out the $100. I just threw it in there in case you didn't have it. You can probably also knock out the $90 hard drive. With those savings, you can go out and buy a case that doesn't suck.
I'm not talking about some pimped out case or whatever, just something that has lots of features to make assembly easy. I never realized how much I needed removeable hard drive bays until my current case came with them.
And that's if you go with the parts I gave you. If you're still looking around $700, you can definitely upgrade to a more powerful video card, and I'm sure my motherboard/CPU combo could get more power as well.
Hell, you could probably plunk down the money for a few more hard drives and setup a RAID 1 or 5 for backup of your art files. Just for kicks. Or get a better scanner or tablet or coat the case in gold I don't care.
This is why I love building PCs. Not only do you know what exactly is going in, it's really fucking cheap compared to some guy building you one.
-
:Michael Bluth: The fact that you're calling dual-core a gimmick just tells me you're not ready to build a PC.
Multiple cores have a performance benefit even on software which isn't programmed to utilize them (which is becoming more and more rare). This isn't back in the day when you'd boot into specific DOS configurations to play each game; multiple cores will take anything going in the background and smooth it over so it doesn't fuck with what you're doing right now.
On a new computer I'd also grab Vista (although 7 will be out by the time you cobble this together???) because Vista's problems aren't on new hardware and you can't get DX10 on XP. Unless you really feel like reinstalling your OS a month down the road because you feel like picking up a game and it requires/supports it. (PS even the worst Vista install is still way more reliable for doing anything than XP64)
-
DX10 is a joke right now. He doesn't need it. The system I gave him won't be able to run it at a playable level, and the graphics performances are tiny. He's best going for XP and waiting for 7. And I'm a guy who likes and uses Vista.
-
Vista has a smorgasboard of problems that aren't hardware related. Any DX10-only game's probably going to show up on X-Bawks anyway.
-
I have a bizarre fondness for my ancient case.
It amuses me to no end to have the guts of a new computer in an ancient mouldering beige case tagged with the label of a defunct computer company several of my friends had... comedic ties to. It looks ancient and unwieldy and ugly as sin. But then, I've always been the kind of guy who gets a gleeful kick out of watching 70 year olds beat 20 year olds.
I've promised myself I'll never force new parts in the old case if they can't be comfortably accepted or if the case would actually cause hardware problems, but that case is on it's third set of guts since 1995 and it's still working, so hey. Go go hunk of metal!
What I really need are those replacement case screws that have a big knobs for easy screwing and unscrewing instead of a normal screw head.
-
Like I said, the only reason to splurge on a new case is because A) You can and B) Removeable hard drive bays are the way of the future.
Also, I forgot to mention it but if you're current HDs are IDE then you'll need convertors to SATA which are anywhere from $10-20.
-
Reagrding the Windows posts, I generally tend to stay one or sometimes two generations behind when it comes to OSes, out of an overabundance of caution. Also, I truly hate bloat and baggage in an OS and no matter how stable, each new iteration of Windows seems to become ever-more massive.
I generally upgrade after support begins to truly fall off (i.e. more new programs would be incompatible than not) or if I am getting new hardware and my old OS is incapable of properly supporting the hardware. XP's RAM limitaitons are mildly annoying, but not enough to push me over that edge.
I've heard okay things about Windows 7, but I'll probably wait for the dust to settle before looking at that angle.
I'd also need to do more research on how severe the DRM is getting these days. If there is one thing that absolutely will have me spitting fire, it's software that tells me what I can and can't do with my own files on my own goddamned computer.
-
XP's RAM limitaitons are mildly annoying,
Well, he did recommend the 64 bit version of XP for that reason. Have you heard poor things about its 64 bit version as compared to the standard 32 bit?
-
Actually, that's something to look into. I vaguely recall some mention of bugginess, but it's nothing that can't be worked around.
To be honest, I'll probably just go with what I have right now out of laziness and then start looking at 7 if I want a performance bump.
-
I haven't had to buy a new OS in a while. You can't buy retail copies of XP anymore, but you can still get OEM installs, right?
-
TigerDirect sells both OEM and regular versions.
-
The 9800GT is remarkably similar to the 8800GT, which had enough horsepower for me to comfortably play Hellgate London of all things at very high settings in DX10, which leads me to believe that any upcoming game which at least had someone pretend to optimize it will run just fine. My point with Vista, though, was more: Reinstalling an operating system after you've got all your shit moved in and your ass-groove is firmly in the couch is one of the most pain-in-the-ass things you can do involving computers, so why not just shoot for Vista 64 now, ESPECIALLY if you were considering XP 64 and playing games on it.
With hilarious regards to the X-box, why the flying fuck would you buy or use a previously existing X-box if you had anything resembling a modern PC? Even keeping the settings down you'll still outperform one, you won't have the near-100% RROD rate, the controls are better, and all this at a slight delay in product release.
Do really suggest getting a new hard drive(s) instead of reusing old ones, especially since you're keeping legacy DVD drives. The performance increase of having everything on SATA is noticable and these days, inexpensive.
-
Oh man, XP64, that's basically the reason I got Vista and stuck with it despite what people say of it.
Also, I was pretty excited about Windows 7, but then I started hearing bad things about DRM with it and that just totally ruined it for me.
-
Okay yes I didn't consider the point that now is the time to buy Vista if you don't want to be faced with potentially having to upgrade in a couple months.
-
I just think it should be clear that multicore processors are not a gimmick. Some of my more computer-geeky friends laughed at me quite a bit when I originally got my quadcore around this time last year. I thought they were being retarded THEN and it's become abundantly clear they were NOW.
I just don't understand why they couldn't see that a heavy move towards supporting them was about as imminent as anything can get. If intel starts peddling about 100 different flavours of a technology, you're being pretty stupid to suggest it's not gonna be common place in about one quarter.
This is of course, not even getting into the fact that it just makes general computer usage a noticably smoother experience.
Anyone who has even a passing knowledge of how PCs really work and has any understanding of mathematics and scope should know that in the Intel and AMD dominated market that we live in right now, PCs are designed with retarded bottle necks. Most PCs that you all have and are running right now are like cars with 48 cylinder engines attached to the fuel injection system of my moped. But the processor companies know that no one knows that and so they just keep spitting out faster and faster processors while we all sit here with our thumbs up our asses waiting for the new part of our HL2 level to load.
-
I'm afraid you picked a poor example of the problem, because there's only so fast you can spin a plate, you know?
But Geo is a wolf completely right. Or, I'd say that if I knew enough about cars to make his statement make any sense to me. Why 48 cylinders? Why not a nice, power of 2? Like 64?
EDIT:
Also, I'm given the impression that the "big" advancement of multi-core processors is taking some of the big hits out of context switching between threads, but I don't know too much about them.
-
Reagrding the Windows posts, I generally tend to stay one or sometimes two generations behind when it comes to OSes, out of an overabundance of caution. Also, I truly hate bloat and baggage in an OS and no matter how stable, each new iteration of Windows seems to become ever-more massive.
It's edifying to think of 7 as actually being 6.1, essentially a service pack fixing all the things that are horribly wrong with Vista.
The problem with XP at this point is that
Well, he did recommend the 64 bit version of XP for that reason. Have you heard poor things about its 64 bit version as compared to the standard 32 bit?
YES.
Driver support for XP64 is shit, and WILL NEVER GET BETTER. Want your hardware to work? Then don't use XP64.
So pretty much at this point you're stuck with getting XP32 and not being able to use the full power of your machine, getting XP64 and not being able to get hardware drivers, and Vista, which has its own host of problems. Or seeing if you can find a way to get the Win7 beta to work even though the signup period is past.
(Or if you're feeling adventurous you could try Linux or go the Hackintosh route.)
-
The problem with Linux is that Mongrel wants to run both Adobe and Valve products.
-
Hackintosh
-
Valve.
-
Nothing really to prevent a multiboot other than space and time.
I'm willing to bet Cedega's got decent support for the more popular Steam games but I haven't used it in years. It's one of those things on my "I would pay money for this again now that I have money, except now I no longer have time for gaming" list.
Tangentially related: I've decided that, if my contract job turns into a full-time position, I'm going to reward myself with a new monitor. (I'd thought about a new portable game system, either a PSP or a GP2X Wiz, but again, I don't fucking have time to play the games I already own; a computer monitor is something I would certainly stare at for several hours every day even if I didn't do much gaming on it.) From the studying I've done, Samsung seems like the best bang for your buck; I'm leaning toward one of their 24" displays in the $250-$350 range. If anyone else has any advice I'd be happy to hear it.
-
Nono, Samsung is a good choice. ViewSonic and Samsung are still my top recommendations.
Also, our current working theory is that I was beset by a very randomly coincidental string of minor problems. Best guess as to any real hardware issues is that the battery on my motherboard is dead, which isn't really too much of an issue and is easy enough to replace.
-
Nothing really to prevent a multiboot other than space and time.
You could say the same thing about interstellar travel.
-
Mother's computer is not booting from the HD or from the CD. It's partially my fault for having commandeered her CD drive for a while, leaving the slot open and allowing dust to collect en masse inside.
Now to try to put the HD on my machine, hope it detects and get the data out. And try not to scream incoherently during the process.
-
...could just as well go in the Slumberland thread, but...last night I was tortured by nightmares of sick dogs and fixing my grandparents' computers.
-
Forum overload.
-
Clearly.
-
Then it's agreed.
-
Sick dogs?
You mean like... Like Constantine and Brentai?
-
I know there was a thread more directly pertaining to computer security but fuck if I can find it. My laptop got the wincodec pro trojan last night that I had never heard of but apparently should have since everyone I talked to today made a grimaced face when I mentioned it.
Anyway, I have an Acer Aspire 5000, when I noticed it developing on my laptop I already had ten IE pages opened and not fully loaded, and twenty of the fake prompts telling me that my computer was about to esplode, with about half as many from AVG saying the same thing. The computer was frozen because of all of the bullshit that had been opened, and when I rebooted it I kept getting the prompts, couldn't open Firefox, or the task manager, with ctrl + alt + delete or the command prompt. It started fucking with me too, decreasing my resolution to 800x400 and things like that. Now the computer just plain wont load from the Acer screen on boot-up and I was praying there was a chance to save it without a full Windows reinstall since I seem to have lost the disks.
-
That second paragraph is the most amazing sequence of bullets-to-feet I've ever seen.
-
Turns out I actually fried my processor on the old compy. It's a shame too, since it was almost ten. I promised the guy I bought it from that I'd dust out the new one he built for me once a week.
I can use an airbrush for that, right?
-
Okay, this is driving me nuts because I know the answer's gotta be obvious and I'm just missing it.
How the fuck do you turn off the little CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICKETY CLICK default noise in Windows when you navigate in IE (or Windows Explorer), when you click a link, go forward, go back, etc.
You know, the kind of noises that very clearly tell your coworkers across the office that HAY GUYS I AM SURFING THE INTARNETS HOPE Y'R NOT BUSY, LET ME RUB YOUR FACES INTO THE FACT THAT I AM DONE MY MORNING ORDERS (sorry, it's a work computer, so I'm stuck with shitty IE).
I mean at first I thought "Oh man, I'm dumb, it must be the generic windows navigation setting and not in IE.", but I'll be damned if I don't see anything for it in the Windows audio settings.
I have been searching in the damn IE and Windows settings for twenty damn minutes without success. So I must give up and confess my utter retardedness.
-
Mute the volume?
-
Don't use IE?
-
Mute the volume?
I do that sometimes, but I want to be able to listen to my mp3s or internet radio.
Don't use IE?
(sorry, it's a work computer, so I'm stuck with shitty IE).
:imagination: WHY DO I TYPE WERDS
-
Just put Firefox on a flash drive. (http://mobilefirefox.com/)
-
Okay fine. Another workaround.
Is it so wrong to just want to get Windows to do what I tell it to do, just this once, just for this one little thing?
It's the moral victory, man, the Moral Victory. :enraged:
-
I mean at first I thought "Oh man, I'm dumb, it must be the generic windows navigation setting and not in IE.", but I'll be damned if I don't see anything for it in the Windows audio settings.
It's called "Start Navigation" under the Windows Explorer section. Just tested it. Ted's solution is probably better all around of course.
How come you're worried about your coworkers hearing your clicking and not worried that they can hear you listening to podcasts?
-
Get an IronKey (http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/thumb-drives-storage/99f1/). (Not a cheap solution)
A secure copy of Firefox included with your IronKey encrypts your browsing session through a VPN tunnel to IronKey's Secure Sessions Service. It works by tunneling your entire web browsing communications through the Tor-based Secure Sessions proxy on your IronKey. The Secure Sessions tunnel connects over an encrypted connection to their network routing servers, which in turn route your traffic between a number of servers, and then eventually out to your destination website. This approach protects your identity and your confidentiality, encrypting and anonymizing your Web surfing on almost any network or VPN (virtual private network).
This thing even defeats some web-filters.
Cool points because this key will /destroy/ itself if someone bruteforces your password more than ten times.
-
Most of them listen to music while working, it's not a big deal. Surfing the internet for hours might be frowned on though.
EDIT. Oh hey, that's neat Max. I don't need it, because my traffic isn't monitored remotely*, but that's definitely a cool-as-hell buy.
*If it was I totally would have been shitcanned by now... so many days in the last month where it's just been totally dead... endless days wasted browsing bad forums.
-
We :wuv: you too.
-
We :wuv: you too.
*Points to forum name*
WEAR IT WITH PRIDE BOYS.
I was really thinking of the MTG and other CCG forums I scan, but the joke reply is better.
-
It's called "Start Navigation" under the Windows Explorer section. Just tested it.
Blessed relief from annoying clicking noises.
-
First thing I do on a clean install of pretty much any OS is turn off ALL the sound notifications. About the only one I need is "IM received when window is not focused". The rest have no utility and just annoy me.
The fact that actually popping up little notifications in the corner of the screen has become vogue is something of a mixed bag. They're certainly more detailed than just playing a sound or showing an icon, but they've become decidedly overused and another thing for me to just turn off.
-
Loving this distro of Ubuntu Netbook Remix (http://www.canonical.com/projects/ubuntu/unr)
Does so many things nicely for my little EeePc 701 4G and its tiny tiny screen real-estate of 800x480. The footprint is a mere 2 gig, much better usage than raw Ubuntu! I pondered using ext4 to see how it performs, but I don't know enough about the configuration utility to set that up, so I stuck with ext3. However, the mouse studders like HELL with the fancy launcher interface.
I want to use this launcher. It assumes you have an Intel Atom processor, which the 701 does not have. So you need a couple patches from here (http://people.ubuntu.com/~apw/lp349314-jaunty/):
linux-headers-2.6.28-11-generic_2.6.28-11.43~lp349314apw5_i386.deb
linux-image-2.6.28-11-generic_2.6.28-11.43~lp349314apw5_i386.deb
Get those, stick them on your desktop, fire up terminal, put in cd ~/Desktop then:
sudo dpkg -i *.deb
After that, reboot then clear away those files.
Now if I can just get scrollkeeper to stop fucking blow up every single time I download a 3rd party app. I HOPE scrollkeeper-rebuilddb is a good enough fix, otherwise I am trashing something I don't quite understand.
-
HNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGHHHHH
Well spent the entire night dismantling my wife's laptop down to the bare bones, because some numbnuts designer decided you can't get to the fan without literally removing every last component - down to pulling parts directly off the mainboard. It's funny how hit and miss my technical knowledge is in that regard (see my last entry in this thread LOL). Actually the worst part was that I had to do it twice after I missed one motherboard screw.
YEAH. WAY TO GO HP.
On the plus side, it once again proves you can take apart and reassemble anything so long as you have the shop manual and know which end of a screwdriver is the business end.
-
Doom reminded me of something that drives me nuts.
I have a fancypants Logitech gaming mouse. Now you see these window settings? (http://brontoforum.us/index.php?topic=2387.msg82329#msg82329)
I don't have the Windows sensitivity up that high, but I do have it high-er. I also have 'enhance pointer precision' on. Only... every time I reboot, the slider stays in place, but the 'enhanced' checkbox unchecks itself. It drives me NUTS.
Tried looking around and I can't fathom WHY?
Any suggestions?
-
Windows Vista SP2 hit today (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd335036(WS.10).aspx). Curious if anybody has it yet and if there are any really noticeable changes/performance tweaks.
-
The Windows 7 beta has been out a while now. If I built a new machine tomorrow, would I want to go with Windows 7, Vista, or XP?
-
From what I've heard, Windows 7 seems to be the clear winner these days. Fixes the problems with Vista, and is faster than XP.
-
ZoneAlarm still doesn't support Windows 7, if you use that. That's the only real disadvantage at this time, though. The difference in net speed between XP/Vista and 7 is basically ridiculous, so it's your choice whether you want to internets safely or internets way more quickly.
And of course, once W7 is officially released everyone will be tripping over themselves to support it, so you'll want to have it at that point.
-
Isn't there also the whole thing where the W7 Beta will blow away your entire computer after a certain period of time as part of Microsoft's countermeasures or something
-
Technically the Beta is over. It won't even let you install that, I should hope. The RC is out now and it's free and unlimited, so.
Supposedly starting June 10th 2010 it'll start automatically shutting down your PC every two hours unless you buy the actual release. I'm sure you can hack that out and just deal with MS bitching at you any time you want to run Office or something, but at that point you may as well be using a pirate copy of full-release 7 anyway.
-
Or you could, y'know, buy Windows.
-
FUCK THAT INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE
-
Or you could, y'know, buy Windows.
The last time I bought Windows, it crippled my grandmother's computer when I swapped some hardware out.
She has a Mac now.
-
When I took my Vista certification test (lol), one of the questions basically amounted to "If you swap out a significant amount of hardware, will your installation be fucked?" The answer, of course, was very yes.
Legitimate users get screwed, as usual.
-
The last time I pirated windows I had no problems of that sort at all :nyoro~n:
-
Or you could, y'know, buy Windows.
Implied. Although I've never used a copy of Windows that wasn't OEM in some way.
-
Won't a new copy of Windows 7 cost somewhere around $400?
-
That is probably the price for Ultimate +2 edition with no OEM, corporate, or educational discount.
So, uh, no. No it won't.
-
Latest rumors I can find are that it will cost $200 for the most basic (read: least bloated) version at launch. Launch will supposedly be some months before the RC starts sticking its penis into you, so by the time you have to worry about it you'll probably be able to secure a non-retail copy one way or another.*
* If push comes to shove, Microsoft has a habit of practically giving its shit away at developer conferences. Keep an eye out for whatever tech event site is serving your local area and see if you can get them to drop an OEM and a couple of free drinks on you.
-
The last time I pirated windows I had no problems of that sort at all :nyoro~n:
That's the point the two posts prior to yours were making, yes.
-
Kazz was asking me about what is vsync, so I pointed him at a pretty good description (http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=928593) from four years ago.
-
Hey, so, I got my new comp in January and I've turned the thing off and treated it like a princess whenever I've been out of the house or asleep for any period greater than ten minutes.
I forgot to do that for the two hours I was hanging out with my dad today. Looks like an electrical surge fried my motherboard. Cool. It's under warranty, but holy balls.
See you Shadow Moses dudes in a few days. I'll try to be less of a psychotic: I've got the time to practice meditating now.
-
Er, not trying to be a nagging asshole here, but do you not use a UPS? Or at least a decent surge protector?
-
In fairness, I never have, and I've never had a power surge.
I also kick my computer regularly and almost never turn it off. It's coming up on the end of its 3-year warranty.
I guess what I'm trying to say is sorry for the shit luck Doom.
-
Yes I have a surge protector but I always turned the damn computer off anyway except the one time.
Anyways happy ending: switched monitors and everything is fine. I don't know why the standard boot-up noises were so subdued last night(I was numbed by shock, perhaps?) but hey everything works and we're just down to 1/2 monitors!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oljMHQvUhS0
-
oh god how can one human experience this much euphoria
-
Our thunderstorm last week (the one where the power went out and I put my hand on a tack and got sideways rain in my face through the window) knocked out one of our external hard drive enclosures. (Drive itself is probably fine, but neither Brad nor I have had the time to get in there and check.) It was, of course, the only one of the drives that Brad does not obsessively back up to the network every night.
-
Doom: Wasn't there a huge thunderstorm in your area last night? I know it hit most of the east coast.
Re Vsync: I was running Portal yesterday, and I ran it both with VSync and without it. Without Vsync, I was getting 200+ fps, but the image tore itself to bits every time I rotated. Turning on Vsync made the framerate 75fps (totally, ridiculously acceptable) and no image tearing.
The new machine is... is just...
:pop: :cake:
-
Yeah, it was huge. I rode it out the first time(Like 2 PM) and apparently it came back at 8 PM and I left the comp on. I guess my monitor or one of it's cables is fried.
-
I downloaded a program yesterday. Programed errored. System files were deleted. More errors. Ran programs to fix problems. More errors. Laptop won't even log in.
Now I have to find my bootup CDs and whatnot after they got shuffled about in two moves. Online now thanks to my DSi. Don't think I'll be on much until I fix my problem or kill myself trying.
-
What the heck did you download?
-
porn forget the name actually but it was something so I could change the visual style of vista. It was supposed to be a nice, simple download.
Sigh. Ah well. This is why I make so many back ups of everything.
-
Ooohkay, looking for a budget upgrade for the old computer since it looks like it may be inadvisable to blow a wad on a new computer in the next few months. Upgrade is mostly for gaming purposes, TF2 and some older games.
Here's what I have:
AMD Athlon 6400 CPU (3200+, single-core)
ASUS motherboard, s939 socket (accepts compatible dual-core processors), HT1000, GeForce 6150 + nForce 430 VGA integrated.
That's right, integrated graphics. In my defense, I was on an extreme budget the last time I had to assemble a new computer and this actually works surprisingly well. I still have better graphics than a surprising number of my friends.
Slots are PCI-E. Computer build is about... four years old?
Anyway, the suggestion that is being made is to pick up a graphics card. Specifically, the ATI Radeon 4770 (512 mb). It's had fantastic reviews for a budget graphics card ($125 or so), and if I'm going to spend $250+ on a new graphics card, then I'd just say fuck it and buy a whole new computer to put it in. This is a low risk option that should have decent rewards.
Alternatively, one thing that has not been discussed is a new CPU. I think i only want to look at this option if a graphics card will not net me any significant improvements.
I am NOT looking to make the system ready for a new game that has yet to come out. That's the main difference between this plan and the plan from some months ago and another reason the budget is so very low. Applications that I am shooting for improvement in are older, so TF2 is probably the most intensive thing I've got.
Basically, I'm looking push maybe another 8 months to a year out of my patience with this computer, then buy a new one anyway. I don't want to have any regrets about the money I spend on this short-term upgrade, so the budget really isn't much, maybe $150 or so.
Thoughts?
Also, if the consensus here is that the ATI 4770 is the way to go, does anybody know where I can GET one? seems like everyone in Toronto is sold out and it's backordered everywhere here with no guarantees of further deliveries, even though it only came out April 30th. I checked several online retailers, but it seems to be in short supply online as well.
-
Mongrel:
Any objections to Nvidia cards? I'd say anything in the 8000 series might work for you. When stepping up to a new PCI-E card, beware the power requirements! Most cards will say how big of a power supply you need in wattage, the real concern is how much amperage the card needs from your power supply 12 volt rails.
"Wait Max, what the hell did you just say?"
Example:
My videocard (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130082) requires 26 amps. (specifications tab, system requirements. Info like this is not on all cards in newegg, consult manufacturer pages)
My power supply (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817148022) has two 12 volt rails (specifications tab, output. +12v1 and +12v2) that supply 22 and 24 amps. This is plenty for my video card and ensures I will not likely damage my video card due to power needs.
EDIT: Amperage information on your current power supply can be found on the specs sticker which is somewhere on your supply.
Unrelated:
Technologizer.com has a great piece on 15 PC design flaws (http://technologizer.com/2009/06/14/fifteen-classic-pc-design-mistakes/) that was a great read at work this morning.
-
I have no particular objections to nVidia cards, just that the ATI one has been suggested by quite a large number of people as extremely good value for money.
I'm smart enough to know that that doesn't automatically mean that I'll net an improvement based on my rig, but it seems like a solid choice.
-
Also keep in mind physical space.
The main impediment to upgrading my current PC is that Dell crowded everything into the case so much and then soldered it. It's the main reason why I want to build my next comp. With a very big case.
-
My first sound card on this machine couldn't record from a microphone because the captured sound was always at a ridiculously low volume no matter how loud I screamed.
I got a new sound card, and I was satisfied with it because I could finally chat on Steam games at a reasonable volume. However, now that I try recording stuff, I find that I still have the low volume problem on everything else. The Windows sound recorder, the recording test in the sound properties, skype, audacity, goldwave, camtasia, everything. Except the voice chat on Steam, which is totally fine and loud and clear. What's so special about Steam? According to the research I've done it seems to rely entirely on Windows settings just like everything else.
It's driving me nuts. I know the sound is making it to my machine just fine, because if it didn't it wouldn't work on Steam either. But if it makes it there, which one of these other fucking tubes is clogged all to hell and where can I buy some computer Drano?
I wonder if I could bypass the entire thing with a USB headset. I hear they basically have the sound card built-in, so maybe that would do it.
Or maybe it's time to move on to sound card the third. Ehhh.
-
Mongrel:
Any objections to Nvidia cards? I'd say anything in the 8000 series might work for you. When stepping up to a new PCI-E card, beware the power requirements! Most cards will say how big of a power supply you need in wattage, the real concern is how much amperage the card needs from your power supply 12 volt rails.
"Wait Max, what the hell did you just say?"
Example:
My videocard (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130082) requires 26 amps. (specifications tab, system requirements. Info like this is not on all cards in newegg, consult manufacturer pages)
My power supply (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817148022) has two 12 volt rails (specifications tab, output. +12v1 and +12v2) that supply 22 and 24 amps. This is plenty for my video card and ensures I will not likely damage my video card due to power needs.
EDIT: Amperage information on your current power supply can be found on the specs sticker which is somewhere on your supply.
Unrelated:
Technologizer.com has a great piece on 15 PC design flaws (http://technologizer.com/2009/06/14/fifteen-classic-pc-design-mistakes/) that was a great read at work this morning.
Well, I confirmed it this afternoon. My board draws very low power and my power supply is rated to 350 watts (+more than enough amps).
So, I return to my original questions:
1) Does this seem like the best "$100" (more like $150) upgrade?
2) You mentioned nVidia cards... did you have an alternate card with a similar output and price range in mind? nVidia does match my Mmotherboards, and I heard most half-life derived engines are slightly friendlier to nVidia chipsets (though I'm taking that one with a grain of salt).
3) Is there any possibility that I am barking up the wrong tree by going for a graphics card?
Oh BTW, I already have 2Gb RAM. Solid and basic, more won't do me much good.
***
Zed, I use a USB mic/headphones. They work great.
-
Technologizer.com has a great piece on 15 PC design flaws (http://technologizer.com/2009/06/14/fifteen-classic-pc-design-mistakes/) that was a great read at work this morning.
13's picture made me laugh
HELP ME MY COMPUTER IS 5 FEET WIDE
-
Just to see if there was anything at all I hadn't done before ordering some USB headphones, I tried using my old worthless sound card to record again.
It...
It works now.
For everything.
Except for Steam.
:endit: :scanners: :gameover:
That is FUCKED UP SHIT. That is HITLER riding a NUKE into an ORPHANAGE of JEWISH KITTENS.
WHAT THE HELL.
-
Apparently my new mic likes to disable itself in the Control Panel. Well la de da.
So, yeah... I really doubt I'm going to ever join a game in the middle of something more specifically weird to me.
It's probably Source switching your mic when you join game. My girlfriend had the same problem, and we found that altering the cfg file was the way to go (https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=5159-QYFK-0185).
FYI I did exactly what you did, unplugged my mic from my sound card and jacked it into a C-Audio USB donglethingy. My actual sound is still being served by the card though, which makes for a fascinating addition to this particular ever-growing-tangle-of-wires-behind-an-electronic-system.
-
Actually, one thing I've noticed is that I have to plug in my USB mic/headphones BEFORE I start Steam, or they don't work. I can't start TF2 and then plug the mic in afterwards.
-
Well, my nVidia card is Very Definitely Dead. There seems to be a rather suspicious amount of that going around these days.
Normally I'd take this as a sign that it's finally time to initiate Operation: PCenstein, but right now the next couple thousand dollars I'm going to make are going straight into un-fucking my dental situation. So I'm left either slipping a bit out to grab a very temporary replacement (which, to be fair, can cost less than, say, a DSi) or roughing it with the onboard GPU for a couple months. Which might not be entirely bad, since I'll be able to see how a normal computer handles 4096 onscreen sprites at once...
-
I hate setting up a new PC for an existing user and waiting forever while Exchange syncs the fucking DELETED ITEMS folder.
One: users should be smart enough to empty their trash.
Two: Exchange should be set up NOT to sync the trash by default.
-
Thad: FUCK yeah. People even using Outlook at all now just pisses me off. What's wrong with fucking Gmail, is it too awesome? Too little spam? Is public/events/invitations/subscription/online/offline in Gcal just too orgasmic for you? What about the security of https? Why the fuck are you still using Outlook, stupid corporate assholes?
I fucking hate Outlook. To me that is now some of the most worthless, obsolete software on this planet.
Mongrel, I'd love for you to get a more powerful power supply, like 500W. You may not technically need it, but if you can find one (and with a nice, big 120mm fan as well), you'll notice quite a bit less ambient noise I think, and less chance of failure. Just don't buy one from Best Buy, they'll charge you $100; I had no choice but make that mistake on our work desktop 6 months ago. (A bird in the Best Buy is worth $100, but one in the Pricewatch is only $22.)
Everything else sounds awesome, except everyone could always use more RAM. I rock a Geforce 6150 myself on this laptop, along with 2GB of RAM; I'd love more, as I can't run Runes of Magic, but I'll have to wait and build a desktop because bitches don't know bout upgradeable laptop video, as well as flying cars.
EDIT: This might be the most unrelated thing evar, but I noticed something weird like that with my older MS Natural USB keyboard and FFXI for PS2. If I plug in my keyboard before starting PlayOnline, it works in the PS2 menu, but PlayOnline won't see it. If I defy logic and wait till PlayOnline has started, THEN plug in my keyboard, it works perfectly. Odd?
-
+1 for hating Exchange. Bonus round: I have to troubleshoot it, but I can't administer it. Passing tickets for the loss.
-
...so, I've been using a Mac Mini as a media box for awhile now. My roomie has one of the Intel models but I have an old G4, and I'm reading in places that it can't handle 720p video. (I don't need 1080p as my TV is only 720p and nobody makes TV shows in 1080p anyway, but I have reached a point where I will accept nothing less than 720p if at all possible. Even stuff that really really doesn't need it like The Office just looks better in 720p.) Haven't actually gotten home to check it out for myself yet; could be that it works at a framerate that isn't TOO bad, or that QuickTime won't handle it but VLC or Core can. But if it won't handle 720p satisfactorily, I'm going to have to start looking at a new media box.
A brand new Mini is a stupid idea, because shooting their price up $100 has priced them right out of the media player market and every other conceivable market they have any utility in. Amazon's got an older Intel model for $450, which I'd consider, but if I could get it for cheaper I'd seriously consider building a new media box myself. Either one of those Shuttle jobbers, or if it would save money I might use an old case I've got lying around. It's mid tower and therefore pretty big for a media box, but it's a very nice, lightweight aluminum case. I've also got a spare video card and 5.1 sound card lying around, so I could save expenses there.
Anyway! Just thinking out loud for the moment. Might start floating actual part ideas later.
-
You may already know this, but the Apple site has a section with cheaper refurbished models. Maybe there's something worthwhile there?
-
I dropped my Mini in for Brad's. Found that VLC 0.9.8 wouldn't play 720p MKV's -- sound was fine, but no picture (or just big green box).
Decided to try upgrading both VLC and QuickTime. QuickTime upgrade required a reboot.
(09:16:57 PM) ThadXBoyd: So, I have a question about the new version of QuickTime. After you install it, is your boot screen supposed to show a non-moving gear and flicker at a seizure-inducing rate?
(09:17:54 PM) [Brad]: hmm
(09:17:56 PM) [Brad]: is it windows?
(09:18:36 PM) ThadXBoyd: No.
(09:18:52 PM) [Brad]: hmm
(09:18:59 PM) [Brad]: probably it's not supposed to do that
EDIT: Swapped Brad's Mini back in.
(09:23:48 PM) ThadXBoyd: ...huh. Well, the good news is it isn't actually my Mini. The bad news is it appears to be my TV. Somehow.
-
I enjoy that he asked if it was Windows. ::D:
-
By way of explanation: this, or something like it, used to happen frequently when I first got my TV. I had a DVR box from Cox (I believe I have previously expounded at some length about what an incredible POS it was), and sometimes it would just cause my TV to lock up. Picture would go blank, it wouldn't respond to the remote, and eventually I'd have to unplug it and plug it back in. Seems to have been a crash resulting from corrupt data the box was sending through the HDMI cable (as it would happen again at the same spot in the video if I tried to replay it). A firmware update to the TV later fixed it and this is the first time I've seen it since. It's also the first time I've seen it show a fixed picture with a godawful flicker instead of just going black. (EDIT 2 for clarification: when I say "fixed picture" -- it only appeared when the TV was receiving a signal from the HDMI cable; when I powered the Mini off it disappeared -- obviously if it had stayed on I would have figured out immediately that it was the TV and not the Mini. As it was, the image coming back up when I plugged the OTHER Mini in was the tipoff.)
Anyway! Now that I got it up and running, it's looking very probable that 720p does not work on a G4. It's interesting seeing the way each player deals with it -- QuickTime just sputters, VLC shows garbage, and MPlayer OSX Extended, on its default settings, renders every frame correctly but at a piss-poor framerate so that the video goes much slower than the audio. (When I have more time I'll see if I can tweak frame skip settings to something tolerable, but I'm guessing probably not.)
So, I may have to buy a new media center instead of a new monitor. We'll see.
EDIT: Oh good, they still make *buntu LiveCD's for PPC. Going to try Xubuntu since that's the lowest overhead.
-
...yeah, pretty much going to have to accept that 720p on a G4 isn't going to happen. About the only thing left I haven't tried is overclocking the sucker, which apparently entails ripping off tiny resistors that are soldered directly onto the processor and which will only crank it up to 1.67GHz, which sources say is still not good enough to play 720p video.
So, I can check whether the P4 Dell I've got lying around is up to the task, and if push comes to shove there's really no reason I can't just put my desk next to my TV when I move into my new place and just hook the damn Mac Pro up to the TV.
-
The P4 2.4 I've got lying around doesn't seem to want to do 720p either (though I haven't tried installing Win7 on it yet, as it doesn't have a DVD-ROM drive and I can't find the AC adapter for my external one and haven't bothered removing one from another old PC yet). Media Player Classic Home Cinema shows some promise, and renders ALMOST at speed; from what I read, it should be able to do it properly if I plunk a Radeon HD or GeForce 7xxx+ into it (it uses DXVA to offload some of the processing to the GPU).
Trouble is, the only AGP card I've got around is a GeForce 6800. A cheap Radeon HD is only around $45, but that'd be a stopgap as I don't want to use this machine as a media box in the long term. So that leaves me the question of whether I'd want to spend $45 on a card I know I'd get rid of later, or save up until I can buy or build a new machine. (I have the GeForce that came with my Mac Pro sitting here -- it is very dusty and I really should blow it off and put it in a sleeve or something -- but I can't see a number on it other than p345. I think it's a 7600. And it's a PCIE card and therefore won't help me with this box.)
-
Got my hands on a nice, lightweight Dell Dimension B110 with a Celeron D 2.53. Was disappointed to discover that "D" is just some bullshit letter and doesn't mean "dual" (as I had assumed it did based on the fact that Pentium D's ARE dual). Was intrigued to find that you can overclock the sucker by 800MHz by bending a pin (http://www.overclock.net/intel-general/465079-celeron-d-330-pin-mod-help.html) (haven't gotten it working yet, but I got it for free so I'm okay with destroying the processor if I fuck it up).
-
Brad wants a new Mini and has offered to sell me his old one (which is an old one, but which he's upgraded considerably -- DVD burner, RAM upgrade -- and has offered to upgrade further with a 250GB hard drive) for a very reasonable rate. (And he's also noted that I can probably sell my also-upgraded G4 for a decent price.) So I'll probably do that. But I'm still going to mess around with that Dimension.
-
Crossposted from InsanelyMac forums (http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=173351&st=0&gopid=1195117&#entry1195117):
The situation is: my roomie and I've been using his 1.66 Core 2 Mac Mini as a media center for the past year and a half or so. He's moving out of town, and he's offered to sell me the Mini for $350. He's upgraded it to 2GB RAM and a SuperDrive, and is planning on putting a 250GB hard drive in there too, so that's a pretty good deal.
But I'm caught in the age-old "power versus size" conundrum -- if I wanted to go mid tower, I know I could get a more powerful and more expandable system for the money.
So, here's what I've already got lying around the house:
Lian-Li PC-62 aluminum case
GeForce 7300GT (PCIE) (came with my desktop, a Mac Pro)
5.1 speakers (analog, mini-stereo)
DVD-ROM drives (an old IDE one and an external USB burner)
Bluetooth keyboard and mouse
ATI Remote Wonder
DVI-to-HDMI cable
HDTV with HDMI input
Here are some things I'm looking at (all on NewEgg):
Power supply: Corsair CMPSU-650TX ($80 w/ rebate)
MB: Gigabyte GA-EP43-UD3L ($80)
HD: Western Digital Caviar SE WD3200AAJS ($50)
Processor: Core 2 Duo E7400 ($120)
RAM: 4GB Corsair ($45)
Bluetooth adapter: D-Link DBT-120 ($22)
Some considerations:
* I'm trying to stay in the $300-$400 range.
* Mainly a media box -- meaning I want it to be relatively quiet (doesn't have to be whisper-quiet or anything) and play 720p video. Everything else after that is gravy.
* Not that concerned about HD space -- I can store my movies on my Mac Pro, and can always add more drives.
* To that end, I want something expandable -- wouldn't mind triple-booting Windows 7 and Mythbuntu at some point. (Or adding a Blu-Ray drive, though I understand OSX won't play Blu-Ray movies yet.)
Thoughts, suggestions, concerns, things I've missed? Does this look like a decent budget media center? Should I make some tweaks? Should I just forget the whole thing and buy that Mini instead?
Thanks!
-
thad break TH-TH-TH-TH-THAD BREAKER!!!!!
-
...I think that's probably my most consecutive posts since the Old Doctor Who thread.
-
Amusing anecdote: Today I finally got around to buying a spare hard drive + enclosure on the cheap to serve as a physically isolated backup/reserve storage (been meaning to for over two years).
Anyway, I drove there on the motorbike. The box for the enclosure took up what little space was left in my top case and I was hardly about to let the hard drive rattle around motorbike luggae anyway, so I was briefly stumped as to a where I could safely store it.
I tried my coat pockets, but they were too small. That's when I realized: my shirt pocket would fit the drive.
So I was wandering around at the shops for the next two hours in my office clothes and my usual giant glasses... with a hard drive in what looked like a pocket protector. I think I was the avatar of the hypernerd for a little while this afternoon.
-
Good Gravy... could the Windows XP process for just doing a simple new hard drive format be any more arcane or difficult to find?
There is no way in hell I would have ever figured that one out on my own.
:negative:
-
Right-Click > Format is arcane and hard to find?
-
Right-Click > Format is arcane and hard to find?
If the computer doesn't recognise it as a drive yet and only sees it as a device, then right-click > format is unavailable as of yet.
You have to go Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management then engage in a gamut of odd shenanigans.
Perhaps it's because it's an external drive.
-
The enclosure should come with some driver software. if not, look up the enclosure model on the blogo-net. That's how i did my last one.,
-
Eh, it's all done now anyway.
-
Okay.
Short version: Can anyone point me towards a decent key-logging program? I'm scared to death of what people might be using my computer for.
Long version: It sounds like my dad is coming back to live at my old place, despite a turbulent divorce and allegations that he browses porn after work. If this is true, it'll most likely be my old PC since it's basically open for anyone to use, like my deadbeat cousin who takes more stupid Facebook quizzes than I'm comfortable with.
My first impulse was to buy a physical keylogger, but I didn't pay attention to the price tag before. I don't think I want to pay $60+ to find out nobody, in fact, goes to zomgtits.com, so a program of some kind seems like the better choice.
-
Why would you want to breach their privacy, what kind of monster are you?
Also, can't you just set up a user account for them to use and then later on peruse through their browser's history or some such?
-
Supposing he knows how to use some anonymous browsing functionality, though?
-
Are we talking about Big Sausage Pizza here or Hello I'm Chris Hanson from Dateline NBC? Because I don't see what the big deal is unless it's the latter.
Alternately, just buy the old man a Netbook.
-
Yoji just thinks it's icky for his dad to be watching tits on the internet.
-
Sounds like his mom thinks that, too. In which case, getting divorced probably did his dad a favor.
-
Hey now, I would be kind of insulted if my girlfriend displayed a much keener interest in BigDickedStuds.com than me.
...
Now, GuroChan on the other hand...
-
I am so tempted to merge this conversation with the other split topic about keys.
-
Hey now, I would be kind of insulted if my girlfriend displayed a much keener interest in BigDickedStuds.com than me.
:wat:
Are you saying you'd be jealous because she visited the site more than you did?
-
Er, curse you awkward semantics.
I'm saying if she was looking at porn all the time when I've got a real SAUSAGE SURPRISE WITH MEATBALLS right here, I'd be wondering what the hell was up. Now multiply that insecure jealousy by a factor of female. Ignore that, I'm just saying I get where she's coming from.
Also if he'd seriously download porn from his own son's computer, he's pretty gross.
-
Yoji just thinks it's icky for his dad to be watching tits on the internet and gumming up his computer with who-knows-what kind of malware/spyware because he's too busy jerking off to browse responsibly.
-
Teach your dad to browse responsibly. It'll be a great bonding experience.
-
Tellin' ya, Netbook.
-
So lock it. Put a password on your account, and lock the computer whenever you walk away from it. It's pretty easy to do.
Alternately, move it to a room people do not have ready access to, like a bedroom.
-
Netbook is the best option. He can browse his porn and jerk it in peace, you don't have to worry about Malware on your PC and you also don't have to feel scummy that you're spying on your dad's internet practices.
That said, it's probably a good idea to point him in the direction of good porn sites that don't try and take over your computer.
-
Fuck that, he can catch Virtual AIDS all he likes as long as he's doing it with his own ePeen.
Plus, seriously, teaching your father to browse for porn. I think that qualifies for the Group W bench.
-
Okay, I'm posting on behalf of a friend who's computer is a bit fucked. Please help if you can, I want to get his computer sorted out.
The problem is that his browser, on opening, opens a bunch of tabs, throws up popups, redirects the browser and it's disabling java most of the time. I wouldn't bother you guys with this, but I asked him to do a system restore to get the virus off his computer, but "the virus/trojan thing convinced my computer that it's not had any changes made to it so a system restore just told me 'no changes were made, nothing we can do'
So basically his computer is flat-out refusing to system restore, which suggests the virus has corrupted those? I've never really had to deal with viruses before, so this is all kind of new to me.
Other information: He's running Windows XP and has tried IE and Firefox. He doesn't want to try Chrome to see if it bypasses the virus as he's more interested in getting it off his computer. He's running Ad-Aware, Spy Doctor and AVG.
I suggested he reinstall his OS and he says he's lost the CDs. I'll pester him about that more if it's the best solution.
-
Whoo boy. That's not the worst virus problem I've heard of (one of them actually managed to remove most of the machine's device drivers somehow) but the registry is almost certainly fucked. I don't know the particular registry keys that relate to system restore, and I'm too about-to-fall-asleep to look it up right now, but that should be a good place to start.
Of course, depending on why it thinks it doesn't have to do a system restore, even fixing the registry so that it can try to restore might not solve the problem. In either case, my advice would be to back up everything irreplaceable (if practical, do this from another, non-Windows system), reformat, and reinstall. It will probably be faster and definitely be much less of a headache. It's the only way to be sure. (Having lost the CDs is not a terribly big deal.)
If he definitely can't back everything up, though... well, it depends on a lot of factors, and I have no doubt that many of the possibilities will be beyond me.
-
Okay, he seems to have fixed it by killing a bunch of processes. Will get the names if it happens again.
-
Tell him to try Malware-Bytes (http://www.malwarebytes.org/).
-
Tell him to try Malware-Bytes (http://www.malwarebytes.org/).
+1. Update it, run it in safe mode, reboot. If that doesn't remove it, it's time for a reformat.
-
Yoji just thinks it's icky for his dad to be watching tits on the internet and gumming up his computer with who-knows-what kind of malware/spyware because he's too busy jerking off to browse responsibly.
Realize conversation is 6 weeks old now, but...Ubuntu is a perfectly good OS for people who only browse the Web. My girlfriend has no trouble using it. Firefox is Firefox.
Actually, partly at her suggestion and partly because I was sick of having my comic book inventory spreadsheet in a different room from my actual comic books, last night I set up an old Dell in my workroom with Xubuntu. It's just going to be for browsing, OpenOffice, and I bought Comic Collector Pro (http://www.collectorz.com/comic/) after verifying it would work under Wine. (I was briefly thinking of putting Windows 7 on the machine, but then realized A) I don't have a 32-bit disc and B) I don't have a spare DVD-ROM drive -- other than USB, and this machine won't boot from USB. Could have just put XP on there, but on balance I decided Xubuntu is far less effort for what is ultimately a spare PC.)
-
I wasn't sure if this was the right thread for this, or if there even is a thread for this. Anyway.
It's a well-kept secret of mine that I record LP videos every once in a while and they are slowly killing my laptop dead. Stuff that ran perfectly when I started is now starting to come up looking like shit when I'm done recording and it's driving me nuts. I don't want to make bad videos! (insert joke here)
Anyway, the main problem with this laptop is it works fine for the first few videos, but it gets worse and worse the longer I record and the underside keeps getting hotter, till it is basically burning to the touch. I wish that was exaggeration but it is not! My fingers have stung for a while after touching it sometimes.
So is this something that means my laptop is fucked? Do I need to get a new one or should I just reinstall my OS and that will magically fix it somehow. I figure Vista is at least partially to blame here, since it is a hungry fucking whore, but it's the OS I learnt how to get my setup working on, so I am kind of loathe to get rid of it. Upgrading to Windows 7 would be fine, since I understand that's the same as Vista but less retarded.
If I have to junk this thing, I want to get a computer that will give me smoother videos while I'm recording. A lot of my videos are really chuggy and unwatchable to the point where I only upload some of them (ho ho) so that needs to be addressed, especially now that I'm being asked to LP PS2 games. This is my laptop, although mine only has a 120 GB hard-drive. (http://www.cnet.com.au/acer-aspire-5920-339279257.htm) You can probably tell it is not very good. If I get a new laptop, it has to be able to not die when I try to record uncompressed video from the ps3, not chug when I run Spelunky and maybe even be able to do all this without me having to close my browser. I don't care if it can run TF2 or not, that is the last of my concerns right now.
I am trying to keep the price under $2000 AUD.
Please help or I may be prematurely retired from LPing. :(
-
it works fine for the first few videos, but it gets worse and worse the longer I record
No this pretty much always happens, just reset regularly or don't use Windows.
and the underside keeps getting hotter, till it is basically burning to the touch. I wish that was exaggeration but it is not! My fingers have stung for a while after touching it sometimes.
This also pretty much always happens. I don't know of any laptop that's not going to become uncomfortably energetic hot; they're pretty much constantly blowing heat out of their undersides. You can buy a cooling base put under it if it's a problem.
Which is not to say that the heat's not doing horrible things to the hardware's lifespan. Laptops are just not that suited for heavy processing, even though everyone does it anyway.
Upgrading to Windows 7 would be fine, since I understand that's the same as Vista but less retarded.
It literally is Vista with some of the retarded taken out. And a couple UI changes.
If you really are going to get a new machine for doing LPs, get yourself a desktop. You should probably have one anyway, since like I said laptops are really designed to just be used when you're on the go and not necessarily doing a whole bunch of heavy CPU stuffs. Beyond that you'll probably want to look for something with a bigger hard drive (likely why you keep seeing your performance drop), max RAM (usually 4 gig) and probably at least an actual GPU (graphics card on desktop, ATi or nVidia sticker on laptop). Beefing up your processor can't hurt but I think the major thing is having BIG MEMORIES MORE MONEY.
-
No this pretty much always happens, just reset regularly or don't use Windows.
Bad at computers.
Anyhow, you should probably get a can of compressed air at your local Office Whatever and blow out the inside of your laptop. Overheating issues where there were no overheating issues before are almost always related to dust buildup.
Windows 7 is Vista without retardation in the same way 2000 is NT and XP is 2000 is NT. It is very much worth the (reinstall), don't upgrade a Windows install on pain of death).
-
Bad at computers.
Oh, I'm sorry, I was waiting for you to back this up with something.
-
An "Upgrade" install is just a full install, with your old Windows and Program Files and shit Windows (Old) folders. I think it's fine to do.
-
sorry, Brent, but unless you're still using 98 or something I don't know what to tell you other than, "You're doing it wrong," if you have to regularly reboot a Windows machine for performance issues.
-
Kay I'll just go ahead and assume you know what the fuck we're even discussing here based on all the stuff you've recorded.
-
Admittedly I do more video stuff on my Mac laptop than my Windows desktop, but I'm assuming you're talking about "FRAPSing gameplay for hours at a time," which I've done in 3-5 hour sessions acceptably, on a much older and less powerful computer than I'm currently running, though I will admit that WoW is less resource-intensive than a PS2 emulator.
The caution against running an upgrade over reinstalling Windows is mostly because you'll occasionally get some weird things happening with program installs being carried over, but it's getting rarer and you don't really get the registry cruft degradation anymore.
-
Thankyou, guys. I will try getting a Windows 7 install, a cooling pad and some air.
-
To be clear, Windows 7 isn't going to fix anything, but it's a pretty good OS and is nicer to use than Vista in a number of ways.
-
A CAN OF COMPRESSED AIR IS $22
WHAT SORT OF WORLD DO WE LIVE IN
-
$18 of my burly American dollars get me a three-pack of compressed air cans. Ah ha ha.
-
Looks like the Aussie dollars I got back in 2006 are worthless.
Cool, I'm out of terlitt paper. :nyoro~n:
-
Looks like the Aussie dollars I got back in 2006 are worthless.
Cool, I'm out of terlitt paper. :nyoro~n:
Uhm, the Aussie Dollar is on the rise. Going by this morning's rates, an AUD can currently be exchanged for about 91 cents USD.
If you have more than a buck or two then you have some non-negligable amount of money.
-
I know, I was just kidding.
-
I got a cooling pad and it seems to have magically, amazingly fixed my computer. Thankyou, everyone.
-
My turn, my turn!
Dear 'No, I will not fix your computer':
My monitor's doing weird things. Sometimes the edges will flicker for a few minutes, but lately the display will shrink to a narrow horizontal line of intolerable brightness across the centre of the screen. I got it used from a friend, and I have a feeling it's on its last legs. Is there anything I can do for it? And if not, what should I get for a replacement?
Sincerely,
Tricked Into Trashy Screen
-
My old old monitor used to do that. I smacked it and it'd fix itself for a time. I figured out what to do though.
I gave it to a friend.
:perfect:
-
I assume it's CRT?
-
Decent LCDs are dirt cheap nowadays, just look up some reviews on Newegg for monitors in your price range.
-
I got a mouse pad and it seems to have magically, amazingly fixed my computer. Thankyou, everyone.
(http://nedroid.com/comics/2009-11-07-beartato-fixcomputer.gif)
-
Fuck I lol'd.
-
...learned more about RAM today than I ever wanted to know.
It turns out there is not actually such a thing as 1066MHz DDR2! It is just overclocked 800MHz DDR2!
I am hoping that setting my RAM at 800MHz will fix the constant hard crashes that have been plaguing all 3 of my OS's without leaving any useful log data over the course of the past month!
-
...This is good to know! I've been kicking around building a new machine. I'm so out of touch with what's current and what's good these days.
-
So I just installed a new Netgear DSL router, and now www.google.com points to the router settings. Anyone fathom an idea why this might be?
EDIT: PROBLEM SOLVED
-
Something screwy in your hosts file?
-
I need to eviscerate something nasty that seems to be hiding in my computer's colon.
Currently running XP with AVG as the anti-virus (also have the standard raft of AdAware programs). AVG keeps BSOD-ing and not finding things, but the comp's suspicious behaviour (and Starr's computer ALSO behaving suspiciously) says AVG ain't doing it's damn job.
Looking for a recommendation on a good free boot CD or DVD (preferably Linux), with a good up-to-date virus scanner included, so I can scan-and-repair from the disk. Or something I can throw on a memory stick (not sure if I can boot from a removable USB key on an XP box - posting from work and can't say for certain - but I figure I probably should be able to?).
Suggestions? Intial Google searching hasn't yeilded any obvious choices... or much of any choices at all, really.
-
That might not be what you're looking for, but every time I've had a suspicious problem that eluded my local antivirus, Kaspersky's free online scanner (http://usa.kaspersky.com/downloads/free-virus-scanner.php) did the trick.
...that link's just for future reference though, because it's apparently not available right now. ::(:
-
I seem to have this odd problem, endemic to all the computers I've owned. If I have a utility that requires all the drives to be scanned, it will fail. I actually went nearly a decade without ever successfully defragging ANY drive - not for lack of trying, mind you (eventually AusLogic's disk defrag program finally did the trick).
Virus scans, or any stuff like that, like only seem to work if I shut everything down, unplug from everything and scan from a fresh startup, sometimes in safe mode. So while I use Windows normally, my preferred tools for scanning for problems has been a Linux-based boot disk (this is about the very limits of my incredibly meagre Linux skill, FYI). I don't know why. When I finally do get a clean scan, I never have any bad viral problems or similar. It's not like I'm one of those idiots whose computer becomes a station wagon full of drunken trojans without my ever noticing - I tend to have good instincts for smelling problems.
I actually HAVE an old Linux OS-runs-from-drive disc somewhere, but it's pretty out of date and had no onboard anti-virus program.
One of my far more knowledgeable friends said that it's 'because I use my hard drives much more intensively than most users" (I save and re-save lots and lots of small files), but that kind of sounds like he's talking out of his ass. Anyway, sooner or later everytime there's a problem I get something to work eventually. It's just a severe disincentive to perform maintenance I should be doing more regularly.
I'll try Kapersky's later. It can't hurt - what's one more BSOD? (Looked at TrendMicro, which I used to use years ago... wow has that place ever gotten TERRIBAD).
-
One of my far more knowledgeable friends said that it's 'because I use my hard drives much more intensively than most users" (I save and re-save lots and lots of small files), but that kind of sounds like he's talking out of his ass.
More like you run file sharing clients 24/7.
I generally prefer AVG over Avira, but it's another free scan to give a shot.
Ewido's not free and I haven't used it in a long time, but it was decent at some point. You could yarr it up to check.
-
More like you run file sharing clients 24/7.
Nope. I have one client installed, Soulseek, and I open and run it very infrequently. I certainly don't have stuff like that on startup (I HATE having stuff that automatically starts up and almost always disable stuff like that).
I don't even leave Steam running when I'm not playing a game.
-
I seem to have this odd problem, endemic to all the computers I've owned. If I have a utility that requires all the drives to be scanned, it will fail. I actually went nearly a decade without ever successfully defragging ANY drive - not for lack of trying, mind you (eventually AusLogic's disk defrag program finally did the trick).
Virus scans, or any stuff like that, like only seem to work if I shut everything down, unplug from everything and scan from a fresh startup, sometimes in safe mode. So while I use Windows normally, my preferred tools for scanning for problems has been a Linux-based boot disk (this is about the very limits of my incredibly meagre Linux skill, FYI). I don't know why. When I finally do get a clean scan, I never have any bad viral problems or similar. It's not like I'm one of those idiots whose computer becomes a station wagon full of drunken trojans without my ever noticing - I tend to have good instincts for smelling problems.
I actually HAVE an old Linux OS-runs-from-drive disc somewhere, but it's pretty out of date and had no onboard anti-virus program.
One of my far more knowledgeable friends said that it's 'because I use my hard drives much more intensively than most users" (I save and re-save lots and lots of small files), but that kind of sounds like he's talking out of his ass. Anyway, sooner or later everytime there's a problem I get something to work eventually. It's just a severe disincentive to perform maintenance I should be doing more regularly.
I'll try Kapersky's later. It can't hurt - what's one more BSOD? (Looked at TrendMicro, which I used to use years ago... wow has that place ever gotten TERRIBAD).
Holy shit, why haven't you switched to Mint yet?
-
Looking for a recommendation on a good free boot CD or DVD (preferably Linux), with a good up-to-date virus scanner included, so I can scan-and-repair from the disk. Or something I can throw on a memory stick (not sure if I can boot from a removable USB key on an XP box - posting from work and can't say for certain - but I figure I probably should be able to?).
ClamAV is the go-to Linux virus scanner. A Google search for clamav livecd led me, improbably, to the ClamAV LiveCD page (http://www.volatileminds.net/projects/clamav/). I also found something called Trinity Rescue Kit (http://trinityhome.org/Home/index.php?wpid=1&front_id=12), which appears to be a more general-purpose recovery kit which also includes ClamAV. Hrm -- I'm currently 25 hours into a badblocks run on an HFS+ formatted external HD (and if the progress is to be believed, about a fiftieth of the way through); I should probably look into that one myself.
It's pretty trivial just to burn an Ubuntu LiveCD and install ClamAV into memory after it's booted, too.
As far as Linux-on-USB, I tried a few of them some years back and my favorite was Puppy (http://puppylinux.org/main/index.php?file=Overview%20and%20Getting%20Started.htm), but that was some years back.
Holy shit, why haven't you switched to Mint yet?
Cyan, if not for your recent awesome posts in the KateStory, I would be banning you for a week right now. Shut the fuck up about Mint unless you're going to say something useful. Nobody likes it when you shill for the same thing over and over in different threads.
We get it. You like Mint. Lots of people still use Windows for various reasons. And you still haven't really made a case for what makes Mint substantially different from Ubuntu.
-
Heh... it's looking more like the problem might simply be the power supply fan failing again (overheating leading to odd stops & shutdowns). But I did want to get a good, up-to-date Linux boot CD for general troubleshooting anyway, so, either way, thanks!
-
Dang, any other avast antivirus users in here? Don't reboot! The latest update gives a crapload of false positives for "Win32:Delf-MZG (Trj)", including on Spybot S&D, various seemingly random programs, and some files that Windows needs to boot. Avast won't let them be used and will basically cause a lock-up.
That is some toxic-ass shit right there. There's a thread on the (currently overloaded) official forums (http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=51623.0) that'll tell you how to disable it all before too much harm is done, but personally I am taking this retarded garbage out of my machine. What the fuck.
-
Dang, any other avast antivirus users in here? Don't reboot! The latest update gives a crapload of false positives for "Win32:Delf-MZG (Trj)", including on Spybot S&D, various seemingly random programs, and some files that Windows needs to boot. Avast won't let them be used and will basically cause a lock-up.
That is some toxic-ass shit right there. There's a thread on the (currently overloaded) official forums (http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=51623.0) that'll tell you how to disable it all before too much harm is done, but personally I am taking this retarded garbage out of my machine. What the fuck.
Dang, that's a pretty huge problem. I just uninstalled Avast off my machine; will that stop any of the problems that are happening?
-
There's a note at the top of that thread saying that the problem is fixed in the latest set of virus definitions.
-
Yeah, I noticed. I just don't want to get caught unprepared by that kind of shit again.
-
It's fixed but at this point I'm beyond caring. I'm savvy enough to know a bunch of obvious false positives when I see one (and I was lucky enough to see it acting up during normal operation and not at start-up), but there's any number of people out there who might have let avast quarantine or delete system files because oh shit there's a trojan in the windows folder on a file with a weird name.
-
Meanwhile, I just clicked the Do Nothing button when the box popped up, and can continue to use those programs~
Quarantining I can maybe understand for the first couple, but the threads full of people who were all, "I DELETED 12 GB FROM MY DELLPUTER" are a little hard to believe.
-
I used the do-nothing button for a while but it kept asking me over and over for the same files, so I got a leeeeettle sick of it.
-
I recently bought a large hard drive. A 1.5TB hard drive. I made two partitions, one for 100GB, and one for everything else. win 7 went on the 100gb partition. Every time I format the large section, it seems to go through the process of about four hours then says it failed to format. Anybody know of known issues with very large drives in Vista 32-bit?
-
Wow. I use avast myself, and from what I'm reading it sounds like I dodged a huge bullet. My habit of never turning off the computer saves the day!
-
Fixed my own problem. Win 7 64bit had zero problem doing a format of the very large drive.
-
Hmm, my power supply seems to work perfectly fine... now that I've removed it entirely from the case.
-
Phew. Starr just got a new computer* (so that she can do some proper 3D rendering) that so completely emasculates mine in every way shape or form that my computer actually wraps back around to some kind of macho for trying to even compete.
Quad-core i7-920, with dual HD 5770 ATI graphics cards, 6 gigs of Ram to start with and blah blah blah etc. I'm sure at least one or two of you has better (maybe Brent or someone), but that's a whole lot more computer than was previously under this roof. The damn case has SEVEN fans - never mind the standard ones on the power supply, CPU, graphics cards, etc,.
So at least she can play TF2 now.
*Or, well, the parts for a new computer. Getting a functioning machine out of it is where every White Guy's Token Asian Friend comes in. Of course, in Toronto, 'token' is better applied to the white guy.
-
Hey,
since when do you qualify as white is it the Asian guy we met in August?
-
Yeah, it's Damon.
P.S. I can qualify as any race I want to, so long as it's white. :HenryFord:
-
I'm sure at least one or two of you has better (maybe Brent or someone)
Uh, my computer was bleeding edge three years ago. It is actually pretty outdated now. I'm planning to build a new one after I cover some basic debts.
-
LOL, the case came with 'pimp lights' standard.
-
welp, my cheapo headset finally shit out, any suggestions?
priced below $100 is a plus
-
I feel like anything by Logitech with a USB port is gonna be fine, and pretty cheap.
-
I feel like anything by Logitech with a USB port is gonna be fine, and pretty cheap.
(http://i630.photobucket.com/albums/uu23/Bon_Bon_2009/scruffy-1.jpg)
-
It depends on what you're going for. I found the Microsoft Lifechat very comfortable and it's about $15. I've found Logitechs to be a little less reliable but I'm pretty hard on my headsets. If you use a headset enough that you want a good one, SteelSeries is probably the nicest at reasonable prices.
-
I'm using a Logitech now. The sound quality is good for a $20 headset, but man is the design awkward.
-
Rocketfish!!
...wait a second.
THIS WOULD GIVE US A CLEAR, FULL EXPERIENCE OF THE HORROR OF SATURN'S TRUE VOICE ON TF2, AND CAUSE US TO CEASE TO EXIST.
-
So like, for the last few weeks my internet's been pretty shit. The last week and a half it's been disconnecting constantly every five minutes or so.
I figured that it might be the modem, so I go on a hunt for a new DSL modem/router combo with wireless. It turns out nobody in TOWN has any DSL modems, let alone wireless router combos.
For lack of a better option I move the modem out to the kitchen phoneline, since it always worked well in there... but I discover a DSL/phone splitter on the modem line that I totally forgot about. I'm wondering if that might've been the culprit, since it's been on there over a year now. Qwest claims the filters need to be changed pretty regularly and a bad one on ANY phone jack in your house can cause problems.
-
http://www.ex-parrot.com/pete/upside-down-ternet.html Learned about this from a friend today. It is amazing, and I giggle to think about it.
-
So my dad's been getting up in the middle of the night for the past couple weeks to get some passwords from people in his company on the other side of the world. English is not their first language, and the other day he was told that the next character was a lower-case dash.
-
I'm finally sending my laptop back to dell. They are replacing the video card and motherboard most probably. I am very excited that soon I can play games again at more than 12 fps :D :D :D
-
Ok, I complained about this a while back, and just tried again today, with the same damn problems repeating themselves.
Dragon Age: Origins will not run on my computer. At a certain point my game will lock up, leading to various, horrible results. For those who know the game, it's in Ostagar, for those who really know the game, it always seems to first happen when I enter the area where the priest is on stage giving a speech. Once it happens though, it seems any save I load anywhere inside Ostagar, or once I get there from a save in the starting area will trigger it.
Anyway! I always get critical system failure. Even with auto-reboot on, sometimes I just get an "analog out of range" prompt and the monitor goes black. More recently I started getting "processing self image setting", which is new to me.
I have DA fully patched, and all the DLC.
I'm running Vista 64bit with service pack 2.
An AMD Phenom 9600 Quad-core at 2.30 GHz with 4gigs of RAM.
ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series video card.
I know my display and monitor drivers are completely up to date, and I should be running DirectX 9 alongside 10, but dxdiag doesn't seem to want to tell me. Outside of that I'm completely lost.
-
Hello everyone!
New problem with my computer, and it is of an EXTREMELY embarrassing nature! Please feel free to laugh it up at my expense.
So whenever I boot my computer up, a uh certain swf object involving a certain ox-horned capcom chinese detective also loads, which means I cannot reboot in polite company ever. It is located at file:///C:/Users/Frocto/AppData/Local/Temp/ and I went there and deleted the object and it has just magically reappeared next time I restarted.
THIS WOULD NOT BE SUCH AN ISSUE IF CLOSING MY LID ON WINDOWS 7 DID NOT HAVE A 50% OR SO CHANCE OF FUCKING THE SCREEN UP
I assume I need to edit the registry to fix it, but I'd have no idea where to start. Anyone want to help?
-
How the hell do you even
Well, try looking at your Programs>Startup (if your hacker is incredibly lazy) first, and then run msconfig and see if you can find anything that is obviously not a startup program. THEN worry about hacking the goddam registry.
Also if it's definitely an SWF maybe uninstall the Flash Player for a bit and try deleting it again, you never know.
seriously what
-
Or just search for the file and delete it?
I mean, you've must have seen it enough that it's boring, right?
-
Well, it was running a program in my startup that I disabled, then tried to delete it. It kept popping back up again like magic. Went and disabled the SECOND program it was running in my startup and deleted it again!
Thanks, Brentai, when Earth becomes inhospitable due to pollution, mankind will be forced to settle on a celestial body of similar size and mass: your god-like tumescence.
-
Man don't put mankind on my dick you're just gonna have aliens trying to invade my dick all the time.
Wait
Nevermind this is ok.
-
It seems like if I leave money in Paypal, it gradually just gets depleted by fees. Is this right?
-
Er... only if you're transferring money. PayPal should only be charging transaction-based fees.
-
Hey, Mongrel's silly old woman here.
I've been having occasions where my display freezes/bluescreens during Team Fortress 2 and now Photoshop CS. I was looking online at help forums. They indicated that I should probably update my graphics drivers from ATI.
This morning I tried to update/repair the graphics drivers for my Sapphire Radeon 5770 x2 CrossFire setup (using the ATI uninstall/repair wizard). About a third of the way through the repair, the display froze and I had to hard power off.
Since then, I've tried to start up several times, but no display at all. I've tried to start up windows in safe mode, but still no display, not even a BIOS screen. Everything else seems to be booting correctly: LED's come on, fans are spinning, caps and num lock toggle properly, HDD light behaves as normal, no BIOS beeps (as per normal).
At this point I haven't yet done any poking around with the hardware. I wanted to get your suggestions and help first before I made any drastic changes like resetting the cmos jumper or reinstalling windows.
My system:
Intel Core i7 - 920
ASUS P6T-SE
RAM: OCZ 6 GB DDR3 - 1066 MHz
GPU: 2x Sapphire Radeon 5770 1Gb GDDR5 w/ CrossFire
HDD: WD Caviar Green 1.5 Tb (1 Tb partition and a 500 GB system partition)
PSU: Antec TP-750w 25A/4x12V
Case: Antec Twelve Hundred
OS: Windows 7 Pro 64bit
Last operational version of graphics driver: Catalyst Control Centre 10.2 for Win 7 64 + DirectX 11
Last temperatures via GPU-Z as of last Sat:
Card 1: Fan speed 35% Temp range 57-63 degrees C after 30 minutes of playing TF2 on full graphics settings on a 32-man server with water (2fort clone)
Card 2: Fan speed N/A Temp range 57-61 degrees C same settings (probably idle most of the time)
I'd like to know if the bluescreens and display freezes are related. I'd like to make sure I didn't damage my gpu's with a corrupted repair of the driver files. My mobo does NOT have integrated graphics so there is no backup option and no other place to plug in my monitor.
-
There's probably a classier way to do it, but I had some similar problems and this worked for me:
1) Download the latest ATI drivers. Don't get the catalyst control center though. That thing sucks.
2) Uninstall all previous drivers, then run Driver Sweeper (http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?page=driversweeper) to really scrub the hell out of it.
3) Reset your compy and boot into safe mode, install the drivers.
4) Reboot into normal mode and download ATITool (http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/).
5) Underclock to about 7-10% below normal speeds. (This may only have been for the HD 38xx series but it worked wonders for me).
-
Question: How does she get over the hump of "Nothing displays at all. When you attempt to go to Safe Mode, there's still nothing on the display." (So in theory she *might* be in Safe Mode, but would never be able to tell).
Like, even if she tried to plug in another screen, it wouldn't matter because nothing is visible right now. Cards are not fried from what we can tell (yes the screen is plugged in and on, ha ha).
-
If you're not getting display even in BIOS or the initial boot or anything like that, then it's a lot more fucked than just drivers. Try another monitor. If that doesn't work, it's probably something fucked in the graphics card, and you're gonna need to start swapping parts around to do a proper diagnostic. I have no idea how Crossfire works though so who even knows if that advice is applicable, but it's worth trying.
Do you do anything to login when you first boot, normally? Like a username/password or anything? If not - if you normally turn the computer on and then after a few minutes you're sitting at your desktop - then try letting enough time pass that it should have loaded all the way, and then open a music file or something from the start menu using the keyboard, just to see if it's actually loading all the way behind that blank screen.
-
No login, even though I did set a password for the admin account (which was the last account I was using when the driver corrupt crash happened). So usually just boot to desktop.
I'm not sure I could find a music file surfing blind with just alt-key commands.
I will try swapping a different monitor if I can find someone who has one to spare for three minutes. One thing I haven't tried is removing the crossfire and testing each graphics card individually in the first PCIe slot.
-
well, "windows key + r" gets you a run command. then just type in the file path of wherever you think there should be an audio file. There's one at c:\windows\media\onestop.mid if nothing else.
-
There's probably a classier way to do it, but I had some similar problems and this worked for me:
1) Download the latest ATI drivers. Don't get the catalyst control center though. That thing sucks.
2) Uninstall all previous drivers, then run Driver Sweeper (http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?page=driversweeper) to really scrub the hell out of it.
3) Reset your compy and boot into safe mode, install the drivers.
4) Reboot into normal mode and download ATITool (http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/).
5) Underclock to about 7-10% below normal speeds. (This may only have been for the HD 38xx series but it worked wonders for me).
Done and done. Couldn't avoid getting the CCC but will run the ATITool tomorrow morning (it's very late here).
I now have my monitor up and running as before. Blender 2.49 renders just fine without a problem. Will try other progs/games tomorrow.
Thanks for everyone's help so far, there's a lot of misleading info out on the tech forums and you guys collectively saved me perhaps another ten hours of searching and failing. :wuv:
Ta-ta for now, passing the kb back to mongrel...
-
Quick question. I've installed windows xp on a new machine, and it automatically called its partition c:. If I put in an old drive that also has a c:, how is it going to work? It's probably no big deal but I'd like to make sure it's not going to make the drive spontaneously generate weapons-grade plutonium, explode, and take out the neighborhood.
-
I believe it will re-map the other drive to a different drive letter.
-
I believe it will re-map the other drive to a different drive letter.
That's exactly what it will do, as I have done this before. AFAIK, the drive letter is assigned by windows and isn't actually stored on the drive.
-
A while ago, I was asked to look at a computer belonging to a friend of the family because it was acting very sluggish. It was a bottom-of-the-line Sony Vaio from 2002 that had seen no Windows Updates or antivirus software for all that time, so it was obviously more virus-ridden than 14th century Europe. It took eight or so passes of Malwarebytes in safe mode before it stopped finding new things wrong, but the computer was still showing symptoms afterward. At that point, was there anything I should have done before just reformatting and reinstalling the OS?
-
Non 64 bit OSes can benefit greatly from a once-over with Combofix (http://www.combofix.org/). Anything Malwarebytes does not pick up, Combofix will.
Irritatingly, Combofix does not work with 64 bit machines, and there is no comparable alternative. Rootkits are harder than ever to deal with in the world of 64 bit windows. :(
-
Though the real answer is that reformatting should have been the first step.
-
(http://i630.photobucket.com/albums/uu23/Bon_Bon_2009/scruffy-1.jpg)
-
I don't believe this.
Everyone said I should just reformat—that my Windows install was a lost cause. I'd gotten a new hard drive, a new XP install disc (Home Edition, this time, unfortunately), and I'd copied all my data across. I couldn't connect to the internet, though, because I hadn't reinstalled my network card drivers. Sure, I could look for the install disc that came with the network card—but it was probably hanging out with my original copy of XP. I decided to try to salvage my old install.
I made a SuperUser post explaining the problem (http://superuser.com/questions/178623/setting-language-for-non-unicode-programs-broke-windows) and started searching for solutions.
At this moment, I am typing to you from my old Windows installation. Everything works fine, with one exception: explorer.exe crashes and will not operate. The Task Manager runs, though, meaning I can run all my software just fine; I just don't have a desktop, system tray, or start menu. The fact that I'm able to post to the boards from Chrome in this crippled state has me ecstatic. I can resume Exquisite Knorpse 3 without any obstacles.
-
There are alternate shells, come to that. I hear they're not great, but it probably beats not having a shell.
-
I remember Litestep being pretty good about 10 years ago, but I have no idea how it's held up since.
-
There are alternate shells, come to that. I hear they're not great, but it probably beats not having a shell.
It's not as inconvenient as you might expect: Ctrl+Alt+Delete, File -> New Task, hit Browse and find the program you want to run. Command prompt also works fine. About the only thing that I might want to do that's a bit laborious is excessive simultaneous file management, like copying+pasting dozens of files at once.
Oh, actually, running Chrome the first time's kind of hard because Google did a great job hiding it in the directory tree. As long as I have one Chrome window open, it's fine; if I close it, I can log off and then log back on, which causes explorer to generate another error, and the error reporting process gives you an opportunity to open the default browser.
Still, I eventually plan to finish the repair. I'm just ecstatic to not be using Julie's slowdown-prone Mac anymore.
-
I remember Litestep being pretty good about 10 years ago, but I have no idea how it's held up since.
I'm not big on the whole NEXTStep design, but most of them DO seem to be based on it.
Out of all the shells I saw on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_shell_replacement), the one I found most visually appealing was Cairo (http://www.elementsoftware.co.uk/software/cairoshell/), which looks a lot like GNOME. But it's apparently still beta and has had all kinds of issues getting developed.
There's always KDE (http://windows.kde.org/), but I'd be skeptical trying to get it to work as a primary shell under Windows. Hell, the only reason I'm even running it under LINUX at this point is because I can't get GNOME to work the way I want it to with ATI's crummy drivers.
-
I tried Cairo! It looks very pretty in screenshots. However: I couldn't move my desktop icons, and it still required explorer.exe in order to actually display the contents of folders, so it was only an intermediate crutch. Still, it's better than nothing, and I can still browse my directory tree through the Run New Task dialog, so I'm ALMOST there.
-
Well, there are other filebrowsing utilities, anyway. I use FreeCommander for side-by-side filecopy; it's idiosyncratic but it's all right.
-
To punish me for not pirating Office, I am now getting WGA false-positives. Thanks, Microsoft. I appreciate that. It's a pretty good system.
-
I am now trying to replace the Notification Area of the taskbar. That'd be the little box with the icons in it next to the clock, which I sometimes erroneously refer to as the system tray (since systray.exe controls some aspects of it). Tried RocketDock, but I can't get it to work; ObjectDock claims that their Plus version includes system tray support, but I can't afford the $19.95 to try it.
Seems like EmergeDesktop was able to do that, so I'm going to give it another shot.
-
I'm unsure how this is less effort than just reinstalling.
-
Don't have a Windows XP Professional disc, and spent about two months trying to find one with no luck.
-
That's noble, but I'd have pirated that shit after 3 days.
-
Okay, this isn't a post for the shit days thread yet, but my computer (which is pretty damned old and has been creaky for some time) may have packed up for good.
Need suggestion on cheap parts for a super-budget rig. The only technical requirement is that it can comfortably play TF2 (not according to the stock specs, but according to the somewhat unknown post-patch requirements*) and that everything stay as cheap as possible.
I'll need everything. My hard drives are ancient, my RAM is probably incompatible with new motherboards, I didn't even HAVE a graphics card, the case prrrrrrobably won't take newer parts, and the power supply has been in such bad shape for so long that I had to keep it outside the case (monitor, etc. works fine).
In general, I'm not so obsessed with penny-pinching that I want to buy a clearly inferior product if a significant performance increase can be had by spending 10% or 15% more, but cost is the dominant concern after meeting the minimum requirements.
*Even if you can't suggest parts, suggesting a set of projected minimum requirements would be appreciated, because as any player can tell you, the official requirements - which are the only ones I can find anywhere - are no longer accurate. Here's the "official" on-paper requirements:
* Minimum: 1.7 GHz processor, 512 MB RAM,
DirectX 8 level graphics card,
* Recommended: Pentium 4 processor (3.0GHz, or better),
1 GB RAM, DirectX 9 level graphics card,
No idea what the real minimum and recommended settings are, but they're higher than this. I met the recommended settings with my old rig (barely), and could hardly play sometimes due to appalling FPS. I almost never had a smooth framerate, I can tell you that much.
-
Define "super-budget". Are we talking $300? $500? $1000?
-
$500 is probably a good yardstick for a maximum, but given that I have no income currently, I have strong incentives to keep it as low as possible.
Deciding how low to go is probably where trying to maximize value-for-money comes in.
-
Do you know what case you have? Those things are surprisingly adaptable, and using an existing case can shave quite a bit of money off.
-
Er, it's not a brand name case. It dates to the late 90's.
...
It's old enough that it's beige and all-metal. Let's put it that way.
It is possible that I won't need a new one, but the old one is cramped and arcane, so I can't say for sure.
I'm going to go look at benchmark part prices this afternoon from the super-discount computer chain in Toronto, so I'll see what the ugliest and cheapest of new cases costs.
-
For the record, here's the old setup:
S939 HT 1000 GeForce 6150 +nForce with 430 VGA integrated nVidia GB LAN
AMD Athlon 64 x 2 CPU (single core... like 3.2 Ghz, iirc)
2GB RAM (can't remember the designator, but it's the "older style" RAM)
-
Well, this isn't exactly my area of expertise, so I don't think this is gonna be the best deal you could find. But this case (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129086) should hold this motherboard (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128450), which will seat this processor (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115221) and this memory (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145322), and hold this video card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121381) and this hard drive (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136075). Before shipping, that's about $450 American, and the manufacturers of the components are all companies I'm pretty sure can be trusted - I'm using their stuff in my current box, and it's working swell. Unless I'm forgetting a piece, and I don't think I am, that should run TF2 quite fine.
Edit: Fuck, forgot the power supply. Here's one (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139017), that puts it at $494.93 American. That's edging a little close to your maximum, but I'm not really sure where to really get significant savings without a major sacrifice of capability.
-
Seems like that setup should work TA, next question though, do you already have an OS you can use? If not you're looking at spending more.
-
Yeah, just going to chump it out with my old copy of XP for now.
I'm hoping this is actually an easy fix though. I remember something like this happened before and it was just that the BIOS had stopped booting from my main hard drive and instead tried to boot from an ancillary drive with some old Win98 fragments on it, which of course caused it to fail to boot. It wasn't a difficult thing to fix, but we had no idea why it happened and almost fixed it by accident, while trying to boot from Linux DVDs.
-
XP is a good OS still, at least it isn't Vista.
Hopefully you can find an easy fix.
-
Well, it's mainly because a lot of my software is old, but works just fine as-is. I don't feel like finding compatibility programs for a ton of my old crap right now. I'm not going to buy a high-end quad-core, so I don't need a new OS for the hardware. When I can afford (or otherwise procure) shiny new software or hardware that requires Win 7 absolutely, then I can look at Win 7 (which is the only thing I'd upgrade to right now).
A budget computer wants less OS processing overhead anyway.
-
Win7 has less processing overhead than XP, I believe, and you shouldn't need compatibility programs unless you're running 16-bit programs on 64-bit Win7 - and that's as easy turning on a virtual machine.
-
I know it's that way on paper, but Starr has had strange issues with legacy software on her fancy-pants system, which does run Win 7.
Just looking to keep problems down. If Win 7 actually has lower overall usage, than I may switch sooner, but I think I'm still going to hold off for now. Plus I'd have to buy Win 7 of course.
-
Question: how good of a deal is this? (http://toronto.en.craigslist.ca/tor/sys/2028341464.html)
It seems a lot more legit than the other "whole computer" listings on Craigslist.
-
Looks like it might be a good get. It being cash on delivery helps with that - I'd see if you can hook it up and test it before forking over the cash though.
-
Question: how good of a deal is this? (http://toronto.en.craigslist.ca/tor/sys/2028341464.html)
It seems a lot more legit than the other "whole computer" listings on Craigslist.
The only thing that bothers me with that listing is that the stuff that is not listed as brand new definitely isn't brand new. The included processor, the C2Q Q8200, hasn't been generally available for purchase since April/May. Same with the RAM, which was no longer available as of around Feb/March. If the motherboard is brand new, then the other components are likely recycled or pulled from other computers. If you don't mind used parts, it probably is ok. D: Does something like this work for you or not? --> http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product/acer-acer-desktop-computer-featuring-amd-athlon-ii-x3-435-triple-core-ax3400-e3102-ax3400-e3102/10152772.aspx?path=1ccc0e752dfd54ca7e6cb4a58ef1f9b7en02 (http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product/acer-acer-desktop-computer-featuring-amd-athlon-ii-x3-435-triple-core-ax3400-e3102-ax3400-e3102/10152772.aspx?path=1ccc0e752dfd54ca7e6cb4a58ef1f9b7en02)
-
He could mean brand new as in he's had it, but this is the first install, kind of like how food is still "fresh" if it has only been frozen the initial time.
-
Yeah, but he would list everything as brand new then, not just the two brand new items...
-
Good points. I was trying to calculate the value of the computer on NewEgg and a lot of the components weren't available, so that was a flag.
Anyway, no need to rush. Going to see if I can fix the current box tomorrow, before I run out and drop munnys I don't really have in the first place.
-
Okay, old computer works again. The BIOS just got its brains scrambled without warning. Again.
Oh well. It's not like I didn't already know that this box is overdue for replacement.
-
So about a year ago I got a new HD, and I've been using it as just a slave ever since. Just a 1.5 TB seagate hooked in via SATA. Anyway, for a while now it's been kind of stalling. The drive never specifically hangs or crashes, but while browsing with Windows explorer it occasionally will hang for about 10-15 seconds, and while watching videos on the drive, they occasionally stall every 4-5 minutes or so. It's also slow as dickens to transfer files to and install stuff on the drive. Is this something I just have to do deal with unless I get a new drive, or would can I scan the disk or reformat to get it to work faster?
-
SATA doesn't actually do master/slave; I assume you just mean it's a secondary drive and not your OS one.
Anyway, a chkdsk is probably a good idea; that'll sort whether there are physical errors or just filesystem corruption. In the latter case it should be able to fix; in the former it'll flag the bad sectors and won't write to them anymore. (If there's just minor physical damage then you should be okay, but if there's a lot then it's likely just going to get worse and you should look at replacing the drive.)
If no physical errors are found but the disk's still slow after a repair, it's worth trying a defrag. If it's still slow after that, then yeah, maybe give a shot at reformatting and see if that helps any.
Strictly speaking, disk size IS starting to outpace what common filesystems are designed for and on some level if you're running Windows you're going to have to deal with some issues on large drives. But the symptoms you're describing suggest more than just basic filesystem slowness.
-
No sooner than I finish the scan of my extra drive, than windows starts warning me about catastrophic drive failures on my main drive. I'm going to perform some disk scans later tonight, after I finish backing up my photos and other information, but should the inevitable happen, I think it's high time I went out and picked up a new HD.
Given that HDs are incredibly cheap these days, I've been giving a lot of thought to a RAID 0 array, to increase disk load times for games and large files (particularly when editing photographs). Does anyone have thoughts on RAID 0, such as the increased chance of total data loss or other risks? Is the increase in speed worth it?
-
Funny you should mention it. I was considering using this newegg deal (http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread.php?sduid=0&t=2328977) to buy two or three HDDs for RAID 0/RAID 5. From the way it was explained to me, however, RAID 5 would be impossible with these drives because of the 2TB limit on MBR's it seems. I could still do it with RAID 0, but I'd prefer RAID 5 because it allows one of the drives to fail and be replaced without losing any data. Whereas with 0, if a drive fails, your data is gone.
-
I'm having an odd problem. My computer is set up with two HDs, one with all the system software on it and a larger one with everything else on it. Sometimes when I boot up my computer, it gives me an error saying that the larger one isn't present. I reboot and it's fine. I dunno what the problem is.
-
hard drives are made by wizards
out of scorpions
-
At a LAN party once, a friend's computer was having problems detecting the network. After fucking with it for almost an hour, someone accidently unplugged the speakers. The computer immediately recognized the network. We tested this by plugging in the speakers again, which would cause the computer to immediately drop. Mid-game, even. Unplugging them again would restore the detection.
-
Was it a wifi connection? Because it's probably caused by signal noise. EM band pollution ftw!
-
Wh-f-huuuh?
I knew cheap headphone/speaker lines picked up signals and noise really easily, but I didn't know there was enough juice through them to make noise (that anyone would care about).
-
Same reason why if you have cell phones close to some speakers, they make that weird beepy-noise.
Great Flippin Question: Crazy Cell Phone Speaker Noise (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kArzbztP7i0#)
-
You guys remember that time I was freaking out because my computer wouldn't stop playing Radio Disney and it turned out it was just somehow acting as an antenna and picking up the radio from nextdoor?
-
Nope.
-
But Aintaer's guess is that the noise from the audio wire was interfering with the wifi. I didn't know they were carrying enough juice to get a big EM signal around them.
Also, no, but I can see why that would freak you out. How did you solve that problem Thad?
-
I actually used to leave my phone next to my speakers whenever I wasn't really using them specifically for the interference. You'd be surprised how freaked out people get when you answer their call before they hear any ringing.
-
I actually don't remember if it was wifi or not. It was a while ago.
-
So here's a new problem. Old HD crashed, bought a new one, now the windows xp install is telling me"can't access disk". It seems aware of the disk, I just can't format our partition. My current option seems to be to a small partition on my backup drive, then force it to recognize the new drive, then reinstall windows. Is this my only option?
-
My first guess is it's an issue with WinXP recognizing SATA out of the box, but if it can see both drives that's probably not it.
You say you can't format the partition -- does it partition and then fail on the format, or fail on the partitioning step? I remember I've gotten NTFS formatting errors before but don't think my solution applies as it was on a Mac.
-
Well, it gives me the menu to pick a drive to partition. The backup drive I can select and use, but it shows the new drive with the "Can't access disk" error. I can't even format it. I thought it might be Sata, but both drives are Sata.
-
Allright, my
battle stationcomputer is now fully operational, running Windows 7 64. W64. So I what I'm looking for is good stuff to batten down the hatches and really make this thing secure. Got Chrome setup, looking to put Avast and Spybot on here, but if anyone has any other solid recommendations on that front I'd love to hear it. Also looking for any software that will make my life easier if you got it.
-
Create a separate, password-protected admin account and do all your general-use stuff as a standard user.
-
I was recently referred to this website after fixing my girlfriend's parent's computer: http://ninite.com/ (http://ninite.com/)
A nice all-in-one stop for software necessities. Beats navigating Adobe's website for downloads.
-
But Aintaer's guess is that the noise from the audio wire was interfering with the wifi. I didn't know they were carrying enough juice to get a big EM signal around them.
Actually no, of more concern is that the signal pumped through the speakers would cause this interference. Speakers are driven mostly by induction coils around a core that is connected to the cone membrane. When you apply a current in this coil, a magnetic field is created around the coils that moves the core and membrane, making the compression and rarefaction for audio.
But if there is a noisy source signal, the amplification could result in a lot of magnetic flux, inducing unintentional currents in any nearby bundles of wires, such as any radio receiver like your wifi device.
-
That makes way more sense. I guess I've just never put my speakers close enough to my antenna to get noise from them before.
-
My computer is giving me a hell of a time. I think my friend brought back a Korean computer voodoo curse, and it's affecting my PC. First was the hard drive failing in its spectacular way, then about 2 weeks ago my onboard LAN went out. This happened after my friend had brought his busted ATI card over to see if the freezes and crashes were a result of his card or his motherboard. After his card managed to crash Fallout, the onboard LAN just stopped responding.
Now about 4 days ago, after removing a really old GeForce card I had in my PC for some reason to lend to him, my video card went out. Though I suspect it may be more complex than that. First my computer just used to load from it. I came home to find it in hibernation, and when I tried to wake it up it didn't do anything. And on reboot, the BIOS never came back up. The computer just wouldn't boot. So I got a replacement card, and it started working again. The only problem now is that when I hibernate, one of two things happens. 1) It doesn't come back on and I have to reboot twice to get it working again. If the BIOS detects my backup hard drive while booting up, it never loads Windows into memory, and I have to reboot again. or 2) It loads back into Windows, which is followed by about 5 minutes of the computer freezing about every 10-15 seconds, with it occasionally blacking out and coming back on and telling me "Video driver has stopped responding and successfully recovered." It did this with either video card I used, either the new one or the old backup one. Once while trying to re-install the drivers the whole computer just shut down.
I really suspect I'm having motherboard problems, which is not something I want to happen for rather obvious reasons. Any other ideas?
-
Last Christmas my dad received a cheap netbook from my aunt. The next day he called me asking how he could move his entire business computer on to the junky net book. I tried to explain that it was not a good idea and gave him a dozen reasons why. He then said yeah but how do I do it anyways. I finally understood why my cousin that lives near by him stopped doing all his tech support.
-
You could always decline.
"Anyone who lets you shoot yourself in the foot either is not good at their job or does not have your best interests in mind."
Or something like that.
-
*sigh*
Okay, I did something which seemed like a sensible enough idea.
Got the new computer up with Windows 7. I plugged in both of my old hard drives to the new box, thinking I would copy my old files off tot he new drive and do some housecleaning while I was at it. But it seems I'm in for some fun because an unknown number of old WinXP folders and files have disappeared as if they never existed.
For instance, I was going to copy my old Firefox bookmark file using the following instructions:
Recovering Your Firefox Bookmarks
•This is documented elsewhere, but perhaps comes across as too nerdy for some. If you're using Windows XP, recovering from a crash or whatever, and find that your Firefox bookmarks (and bookmarklets and bookmark toolbar) have disappeared, here's what to do:
- Find your profile in x:\Documents and Settings\[your XP user name]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles
- There should be a subfolder there called bookmarkbackups. Find the most recent bookmarks html file in there (usually with a date after the 'bookmarks' bit.
- Copy it to somewhere safe and rename the existing one bookmarks.html.
- Copy it to the default profiles folder (up one level from the bookmarkbackups folder, deleting the existing bookmarks.html file.
- Close Firefox if it's running and relaunch it. Your old bookmarks should be restored.
•An easier way is to find file as above in ....\profiles (bookmarks-2009-04-27.json) from old disk and copy back to same location on new disk, go to browser bookmarks then organise bookmarks (ctrl shift b) import and backup then restore your file will be there, restore this and confirm (this will overwrite existing ones) original bookmarks returned
However, when I navigated to my old [XP username] file on what used to be the C: drive, the Application Data file is completely gone!
I was fishing around in some other folders and seemed to notice other curious absences.
Any help? Google is as clear as mud on this issue.
-
I think Application Data may be hidden by default. Make sure your file browser is set to show hidden files.
-
Oh for... Bah!
Well, at least it was an easy answer.
-
So let me get this straight, if I want to change file icons in Win 7 I have to fuck directly with my registry?! (http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/178915-file-extension-type-icon-change.html)
Man, I don't have any huge complaints about this OS, but so far it just seems like every small intuitive thing that windows DID do right for XP and older versions was just thrown right the fuck out.
Like I have a set of regular speakers and a USB headset and on XP, the speakers would play normally, but when I plugged in the headset, the sound would switch to the headphones. When I unplugged them, the speakers would come back on. CRAZY! WOW! But in Windows 7, the only thing you can do is leave them both plugged in and switch manually between the "default" device in the sounds menu (this was confirmed with fairly extensive Googling on Win 7 sound, so no, I'm not asking for help with the speakers).
It's better than Vista I suppose, where the tech recommendation from most sites was "Don't buy USB sound devices, they don't work properly with Vista". HURRRR WHAT.
None of the little things I've run into so far are the end of the world, they're just stupid.
-
Actually Vista has less stupid shit than 7 at this point.
-
::(:
I did eventually find a way to change the icons without fucking with the registry... but it involved downloading an indie-created widget and spending a long tiem manipulating each file type association manually.
I really shouldn't complain. Starr and my friend who conspired with her to get the new computer put Win 7 on, because the new box is a six-core with 8 Gb RAM and blah blah blah fancy-pants. But I would have been just as happy with half the computer at half the price, running Win XP. At least until Win 7 Service Pack 1 comes out.
At least I won't have to get a new computer for a lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng time.
-
It bears repeating that Win7 IS the service pack.
Anyway, yeah, that's pretty lame. But any longtime KDE user can tell you he's seen worse.
-
Like I have a set of regular speakers and a USB headset and on XP, the speakers would play normally, but when I plugged in the headset, the sound would switch to the headphones. When I unplugged them, the speakers would come back on. CRAZY! WOW! But in Windows 7, the only thing you can do is leave them both plugged in and switch manually between the "default" device in the sounds menu (this was confirmed with fairly extensive Googling on Win 7 sound, so no, I'm not asking for help with the speakers).
Um, my usb headset actually works fine without having to toggle things as default ... My usb headset is set as "default communcation device" and my speakers are the "default device", and unplugging my usb headset sends audio to my speakers as expected. I'm not sure why this doesn't work for you though. :(
-
Not sure myself. The system seems to see my headphones as an alternate set of speakers. Microphone works fine though.
DUNNO.
-
One of my monitors is starting to die (distortions on the bottom third of the screen, swapping cables, ports, etc. has no effect), and I'm starting to look for a replacement. Does anyone have any particular recommendations for a good LCD in the $100-150 range, or should I just blindly click Newegg?
-
Plenty of deals to be found on Dealzmodo. I find Samsung's probably the best price for name-brand, but from what I understand the cheapie monitors generally use the same components as the name-brand ones.
-
Latest hilarious UI flaw in Windows 7: So let's say you like all your file folders displayed in a certain way. For instance, I much prefer "list" view.
Now we all now how to change a given folder in any iteration of windows. And in XP (or older) we know how to apply this to all folders. But in Windows 7, there are 5 different folder "templates", so if you change one folder and then hit the "apply to all folders" it.... DOESN'T apply to all folders! And the bet part is that it doesn't TELL you there are 5 different templates! It doesn't mention this ANYWHERE!
So you can either hit "apply all" to any folder you see that's out of whack, in the hopes of eventually hitting all five templates, or there's a lengthy process where you muck around with the root filesystem.
GOOD JOB, MS. *golf clap*
-
Okay, odd question.
Sometimes, for no apparent reason, some of my keys (usually not the letters) will randomly start remapping themselves. So for instance, I'll press "/", but instead of a slash, I'll get "é". Or my punctuation marks will go through a blender, or other things. I've had it happen in Firefox, in Steam chat and a couple others. Usually it happens just within an application, so closing the program and restarting it makes things work (no reboot necessary), but its happened with multiple programs.
Google is hopeless here - I can't seem to find anything even halfway close to what I'm experiencing. Anybody ever heard of this or have any clue what I'm talking about? it only happens once in a while and it's easy to fix. But it's still quite strange and annoying when it does happen (hard to be a good team player in TF2 when your messages start turning into random gobbledygook).
-
Yeah, I used to get that every once in a while; the keyboard input language was switching on me between French (Canada), English (Canada) and English (United States). That's because there's a hotkey for doing that on the fly if you need to, and by the default that hotkey was Left Alt + Shift. If restarting the application fixes it, it's because the keyboard layout is changed only for that instance; you can have, say, TF2 on one layout and Notepad on another, at the same time.
I don't know the exact process for correcting this in Windows 7, but if it hasn't changed too much from XP, you want something like Control Panel / Regional and Language Options / Languages tab, press "Details..." in the "Text services and input languages" box, and then "Key settings...".
I don't know how I managed to hit Left Alt + Shift by accident, but it hasn't happened since I murdered the hotkeys, so I'm not gonna spend a lot of time thinking about it.
-
Oh, it's easy to hit those keys in TF2: Shift-tab brings up the steam overlay, so if your fingers confuse that with alt-tabing, well, there you go.
-
Stupid seemingly-basic question, but you guys might be my last resort.
We have a basic network here. Modem goes to hub, hub goes to our comps. Simple shit. Recently, I've had issues where I'll boot up and have no internet connection. Other computers on the network are fine and have no issues. If I reboot, it may or may not fix itself, so my only answer so far is to keep rebooting until the issue randomly fixes itself for whatever reason.
The repair connections features and the like have totally changed from XP, so I'm out of my depth. The Win 7 Network troubleshooting tool is garbage (no problems found - and no fucking useful information for that matter). I suspect maybe it's a very basic problem with the IPs changing around or something, but have no idea what to do to figure this out.
As usual I've tried Googling for a while before annoying people like a grandpa who doesn't know what a cellphone is, but as you can imagine searches along the lines of "HALP, I CAN'T CONNECT TO THE INTARNETS! WINDOZE SEVUHN! HERPADERP!" just nets me endless pages of inane hopelessness. The only thing I can gather is that Win 7 seems to have general problems with ethernet connectivity that should have been spotted by a brain-damaged nine-year-old (this seems to be a recurring theme with Windows 7 issues).
-
When this happens, does any internet work, or is it completely blank? I mean, can you ping IPs? If so, might be some DNS fuckups.
Can you see other computers on the network? Have you tried a different cable and a different port on the router?
-
Can't see other computers on the network, but it's not an open network like that. Haven't tried to ping IPs or switching router ports. I don't think it's the cable itself, because it works fine once the connection's back up.
I'll try each of those things next time the trouble happens (I haven't isolated a cause, so I'm assuming it'll happen again).
-
We have a basic network here. Modem goes to hub, hub goes to our comps.
There should be a router in there somewhere. Did you mean "router" when you said "hub", or is the router integrated into the modem? Or is it in-between them?
Pinging the router's a good place to start, and I find command-line ipconfig superior to any of Windows's GUI nonsense. Like you say, first thing to figure out is if it's pulling an IP at all.
-
We have a basic network here. Modem goes to hub, hub goes to our comps.
There should be a router in there somewhere. Did you mean "router" when you said "hub", or is the router integrated into the modem? Or is it in-between them?
The former. I have a bad habit of conflating the two terms.
Pinging the router's a good place to start, and I find command-line ipconfig superior to any of Windows's GUI nonsense. Like you say, first thing to figure out is if it's pulling an IP at all.
That brings up something else I discovered. When you try to run ipconfig at the 'Run' line, it actually just blinks on the screen for a second but doesn't do anything you can see or control (not sure if it even runs). Apparently this is normal for Win 7. You have to manually open the command line screen and type ipconfig there (I tried this a little while back). Bizarre.
-
not really bizarre so much as when a command line program is done it automatically closes the window. Unless the program was the command line itself.
-
Yeah that's been normal as long as I can remember.
-
Really? Because I used to be able to run ipconfig from the run line just fine in XP. It would bring up the command line screen.
Oh well, I'm not using XP anymore, so it's not like it matters.
-
Oh yeah, it's totally stupid, but that's the default behavior for Vista and W7. Just saying there's nothing individually wrong with your system if it does that.
-
Really? Because I used to be able to run ipconfig from the run line just fine in XP. It would bring up the command line screen.
Pretty sure XP has to be set up to keep a command-line window open after the program has finished executing. You might be able to do the same in 7; not sure.
-
Yeah, I used to get that every once in a while; the keyboard input language was switching on me between French (Canada), English (Canada) and English (United States). That's because there's a hotkey for doing that on the fly if you need to, and by the default that hotkey was Left Alt + Shift. If restarting the application fixes it, it's because the keyboard layout is changed only for that instance; you can have, say, TF2 on one layout and Notepad on another, at the same time.
I don't know the exact process for correcting this in Windows 7, but if it hasn't changed too much from XP, you want something like Control Panel / Regional and Language Options / Languages tab, press "Details..." in the "Text services and input languages" box, and then "Key settings...".
I don't know how I managed to hit Left Alt + Shift by accident, but it hasn't happened since I murdered the hotkeys, so I'm not gonna spend a lot of time thinking about it.
Alright, I fucking give up. It doesn't working using the old XP path (not a surprise, really) and this is still driving me crazy, because half the time when I hit left alt + shift a second time it doesn't actually reverse the keyboard language change. It doesn't do anything. So whenever I hit those two keys I have to close whatever application I was using.
Google is SHIT USELESS on this topic. All it has is instruction that require registry editing (why does fucking registry editing always come up as a solution to incredibly minor technical issues in Win 7?), but don't even disable individual hotkeys - they just disable hotkeys entirely (it's not clearm but doing so may even disable basic stuff like ctrl + alt + del fer chrissakes).
I am defeated.
-
Manger, Frenchie.
-
Alright, I fucking give up. It doesn't working using the old XP path (not a surprise, really) and this is still driving me crazy, because half the time when I hit left alt + shift a second time it doesn't actually reverse the keyboard language change. It doesn't do anything. So whenever I hit those two keys I have to close whatever application I was using.
Google is SHIT USELESS on this topic. All it has is instruction that require registry editing (why does fucking registry editing always come up as a solution to incredibly minor technical issues in Win 7?), but don't even disable individual hotkeys - they just disable hotkeys entirely (it's not clearm but doing so may even disable basic stuff like ctrl + alt + del fer chrissakes).
I am defeated.
For me with a japanese keyboard layout, at least, the only time I can reverse the current keyed language is to hit the shortcut while in an input box.
So, in TF2, it can only be hit when the chat window is open with the cursor blinking, for example.
You can try the following steps in Windows 7 to get to the screen to disable shortcuts for this:
Control Panel -> Region and Language -> Keyboards and Languages -> Change Keyboards -> Advanced Key Settings -> Hot key for input sequences -> and set everything to "Not Assigned" (or some other keystroke)
You may need to install an additional keyboard first, if the Advanced Key Settings tab doesn't show up. Add anything, and then remove it afterwards.
-
That worked perfectly. I did have to install a new keyboard first because (as you said) that was the only way to get the Advanced Key Setting option to appear, but once I did, I was able to get rid of the shortcut with the click of a mouse. Thanks Yeoz.
***
New question. This one isn't so much a problem as a request for a recommendation.
See, I used to use Audacity to record streaming audio bits I wanted to save as mp3s. Great program, intuitive & easy to use. Problem is that Windows 7 seems to have discouraged the old "Stereo Mix" option at the hardware/driver level due to the usual IP-protection nonsense. There really isn't anything I can do with Audacity it seems (short of buying physical hardware), so I fished around for recommendations this morning. After a little search, Freecorder seemed to be the name that came up most often so I gave it a try.
I wound up disliking Freecorder for several reasons. First off, it's a browser toolbar (I despise toolbar add-ons). Second, in spite of a careful installation it changed my settings anyway with random spammy nonsense like swapping my homepage to Bing* and adding other things like Conduit Engine I specifically told it not to install. All of which are sure signs of assfuckery and computer herpes.
More importantly, there's very little control over the audio. In Audacity the start and stop were independent of the sound source and of course you can cut or add sections (in addition to more advanced sound editing). Freecrapper seems to just ape the start and stop of the source. So, looking for another program. Any recommendations?
*It also changed new tabs to Bing, even though there's no way to change the setting for new tabs in Firefox without an add-on, which I wasn't using - new tabs should always be blank. I didn't have any way of reverting it back to blank tabs except through the remove button on those new tabs, so I still don't know what Freecorder actually CHANGED. RAAAAGE.
In general Win 7 is aggravating me and generally making me feel incredibly stupid on a regular basis. I've never really been the greatest for computer maintenance, but when I was running XP, I could generally find more than enough info through Google to sort out any problems I had on my own. With Windows 7, not only have I repeatedly failed to find solutions to seemingly simple problems, but now I'm downloading questionable software and generally acting like the worst kind of tech-support-nightmare retard.
To use a car analogy, I feel like I went from being able to change my own oil and do my own simple-to-moderate repairs by carefully following a good shop manual, to not being able to change a tire or even figure out how to open the gas tank.
-
Presumably they changed it because Alt-Shift is a really stupid key combination for something. But yeah, it's pretty dumb not to give an obvious alternative.
-
I think the silliest part was having to install a second keyboard just to get access to keystroke management options that are installed by default. There's no way I would have ever even guessed that option existed without Yeoz's explanation.
-
See, I used to use Audacity to record streaming audio bits I wanted to save as mp3s. Great program, intuitive & easy to use. Problem is that Windows 7 seems to have discouraged the old "Stereo Mix" option at the hardware/driver level due to the usual IP-protection nonsense. There really isn't anything I can do with Audacity it seems (short of buying physical hardware), so I fished around for recommendations this morning.
You may want to ask Frocto or any of the other LPers. I know Frocto had similar problems trying to use stereo mix to record from games and emulators or whatnot at one point, but, I'm not sure how he resolved it. I do think getting stereo mix enabled might just mean getting the right driver, but, again, Frocto could probably point you in the right direction.
In general Win 7 is aggravating me and generally making me feel incredibly stupid on a regular basis. I've never really been the greatest for computer maintenance, but when I was running XP, I could generally find more than enough info through Google to sort out any problems I had on my own. With Windows 7, not only have I repeatedly failed to find solutions to seemingly simple problems, but now I'm downloading questionable software and generally acting like the worst kind of tech-support-nightmare retard.
Yeah, a lot of things got shifted around for the sake of user experience, but, a lot of those changes really were step backwards for windows. Sorry. :(
-
I need a good solid IRC program that won't lock me out like mIRC did when my trial expired.
Any recommendations?
-
I need a good solid IRC program that won't lock me out like mIRC did when my trial expired.
Any recommendations?
I use trillian to get on IRC out of habit, and it's nice to aggregate all of your nonsense instant messenging stuff.
-
I use Miranda. It's worked decently enough for a good many years now.
-
BESIRC
-
If you use Firefox, Chatzilla (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chatzilla/)'s decent.
-
mIRC locks you out after the trial runs out, now? Huh. Pirated mIRC, maybe?
-
Hell, maybe just use an older version from some place like oldversion.com?
-
I need a good solid IRC program that won't lock me out like mIRC did when my trial expired.
It's literally trivial to bypass the mIRC nag.
start -> run -> regedit -> HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Software -> mIRC -> LastRun -> Right Click -> Permissions -> Advanced -> Add -> add 'Everyone' -> OK -> Check Deny Full Control -> OK -> restart mIRC
If it can't access the LastRun registry key, where it stores how long you've been using it, it'll always think you have 30 days left, and the trial period never ends.
-
Just google 'x-chat 2' its a freeware version of x-chat for windows.
-
I need a good solid IRC program that won't lock me out like mIRC did when my trial expired.
It's literally trivial to bypass the mIRC nag.
start -> run -> regedit -> HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Software -> mIRC -> LastRun -> Right Click -> Permissions -> Advanced -> Add -> add 'Everyone' -> OK -> Check Deny Full Control -> OK -> restart mIRC
If it can't access the LastRun registry key, where it stores how long you've been using it, it'll always think you have 30 days left, and the trial period never ends.
Does this particular trick work with most trial-nagging?
-
It's literally trivial to bypass the mIRC nag.
start -> run -> regedit -> HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Software -> mIRC -> LastRun -> Right Click -> Permissions -> Advanced -> Add -> add 'Everyone' -> OK -> Check Deny Full Control -> OK -> restart mIRC
If it can't access the LastRun registry key, where it stores how long you've been using it, it'll always think you have 30 days left, and the trial period never ends.
Does this particular trick work with most trial-nagging?
mIRC is particularly badly written application in this regard. Most other applications that stores its nag information in a file or the like will complain that the nag file can't be read or written to and balk and just not run. mIRC just ignores that little problem. That said, a lot of nagware is badly written, so YMMV.
-
Pidgin works quite excellently for me.
-
X-Chat is good, but the Windows version is shareware now. There's an unofficial free Windows build (Silverex) which changes some things, but I forget what.
-
So I've been considering getting a new computer for a while now. And it just so happens that we inexplicably have this goddamned monster (http://www.slashgear.com/acer-predator-ag5900-review-17108360/) at the office supply store I work at. It's somewhere in the range of $970, plus I get a 10% employee discount. I may also be able to get an additional discount if I can nab the display model, which has some minor cosmetic damage* that should be covered under warranty anyway.
Now, here's the thing: there's an associate computer-buying program where I can pay a minimum of 20% of the price (about $199.82; assuming I don't get the display model discount), and then have the remainder taken out of my paycheques in interest-free increments (about $33.30 per cheque, making the same assumptions). If I quit, I have to pay it off ASAP. I have the option to pay the remainder off at any time as well, rather than sticking exclusively to the monthly payments.
It sounds way too good to be true. I am not sure whether to go for it or not. I don't really like spending money that I don't have, but there seems to be absolutely no downside to this outside of being bound to the company until I pay off the remainder.
I'm getting really sick of this shitty HP laptop I've got now. It tends to crash at inopportune moments, it's physically poorly-built, and it's nowhere near powerful enough for my needs.
So, basically, SHOULD I GOPHER IT?
Also, what are your recommendations for setting up a new computer of this sort?
*read: some asshole ripped the jaws off of the DVD trays
-
Acer is a budget brand for a reason; what's the warranty like?
-
Not really sure. Probably a year free of manufacturer's defects. That seems to be the standard. I can add a year through my employer, as well.
I know Acer is hit or miss, but I've been reading up on this particular model and I've yet to find a single negative review, plus I'm getting it at a pretty massive discount (about $400 off the price I keep finding everywhere). I really don't see it as anything but a huge step up.
-
Spec out the parts, and assemble that list of parts on like Newegg. If a significant upgrade is available for a minor increase in cost, do that instead. Then see how the final product compares.
This is assuming you know how to assemble a computer out of parts though.
-
This is assuming you know how to assemble a computer out of parts though.
I haven't a cluuuuuuuue!
-
That's why I got my friend Karl to do it.
-
Yeah I'm thinking I'm gonna' go for this unless I find that there's something catastrophically wrong with it.
At the very least, it's upgradeable, unlike my laptop. I think I can learn how to build one next time.
-
So I'm getting internet next Wednesday,but the provider told me I need to pay an additional fee if I want to be able to use wireless. Is this an idiot tax and they're just blowing smoke up my ass to extract money from gullible people, or can an isp both detect and prevent a wireless router from working?
-
Like you, I think that that SOUNDS like complete nonsense - and by "nonsense" I mean "complete and total bullshit". But I'd rather have a tech-minded person confirm that to be 100% certain.
-
Are you sure it's not, "The shitty modem we lease you/make you buy will have wireless for an extra $x"?
-
Rico's probably right.
-
It is almost definitely that.
At the very least, if it isn't, I don't imagine they would suddenly stop wanting your money enough to not let you opt into it later.
-
I've never gotten in trouble for using a router, so either they can't tell a router from a PC from their end or they don't actually give that much of a fuck. Either way I think net neutrality's still holding up well enough that they can't slap a single user from connecting his modem to whatever the hell he wants.
-
Yeah, they probably have this option just for people who don't even want to know what a router is.
-
Oh, before I forget, one of the tech guys at work showed me a computer that was a little more powerful, has a Blu-Ray drive, and costs $100 less.
So I guess I'll get that one and then buy a cooler-looking case because honestly it looks like a prop from an eighties action movie.
Whee!
-
a cooler-looking case ... it looks like a prop from an eighties action movie.
Your... your sense of aesthetics is as baffling as it is wrong. Incidentally, I've decided that wearing ties that go past your hips is due to come back.
-
I think there's something wrong with my BIOS. It's not recognizing my second HD, and it keeps giving me an error message when I boot up: "3rd slave hard disk error, press f1 to continue." What do I do?
-
Start by checking the cables and ports. Does the drive work if you switch them around?
Past that, updating the BIOS couldn't hurt. But statistically it's far more likely to be a problem with the hard drive than the motherboard.
A good thing to have for situations like this is an external drive enclosure, or at least a cheapy little USB adapter, so you can try mounting the drive externally. That can help you narrow down a problem like this, and of course is also helpful for data recovery if your computer dies.
-
Start by checking the cables and ports. Does the drive work if you switch them around?
I don't know. Will that do anything bad?
Past that, updating the BIOS couldn't hurt. But statistically it's far more likely to be a problem with the hard drive than the motherboard.
A good thing to have for situations like this is an external drive enclosure, or at least a cheapy little USB adapter, so you can try mounting the drive externally. That can help you narrow down a problem like this, and of course is also helpful for data recovery if your computer dies.
How do I update the BIOS?
Keep in mind, this is a problem that's sort of on-and-off, no pun intended. Sometimes the computer will work fine once I boot it up, sometimes it takes 45 minutes of resetting to get it to work.
-
Will that do anything bad?
Shouldn't.
How do I update the BIOS?
If you bought your computer pre-built, BIOS updates should be on the manufacturer website; if you built it from parts, they should be on the motherboard vendor's website. Typically in this day and age they're simple Windows executables.
Flashing your BIOS may kill your existing settings, so you may want to write them down before you do it.
-
My friend Karl is the one who built this machine for me. Also, could it be dust or heat? I give my computer a good air-dusting every week or so, and I did it just now and it seems to be working again.
For the record, here's what the error screen looks like, as far as I could reproduce it:
AMIBIOS (c) 2006 American Megatrends Inc.
G31M-S BIOS P1.30
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E7400 @2.80GHZ
Press F2 to run setup
Press F11 for Boot Menu
3264MB OK
Auto-detecting SATAII_1 ... ATAPI CD-ROM
Auto-detecting IDE1 Master IDE Hard Disk
Auto-detecting IDE1 Slave . IDE Hard Disk
SATAII_1 : HL-DT-ST DVD-ROM DH16NS10 0L04
Ultra DMA Mode-5
IDE1 Master : Maxtor 2R015H1 EAH41MF0
Ultra DMA Mode-5, S.M.A.R.T. Capable but Disabled
3rd Slave Hard Disk Error
Press F1 to Continue
-
Yeah, could just be dust interfering with the connection.
-
Dust also does terrible things for heating and heat causes all sorts of crazy hard-to-diagnose problems.
-
So my external harddrive was working fine two days ago, but yesterday I started getting this:
(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y89/CX-Neo/screencap-1.png)
No amount of rebooting or unplugging seems to help. It still works with my old computer. Any idea what it could be?
-
Have you tried it in a different USB port? First thing that comes to mind if it works on your old computer. USB ports are fairly fragile.
-
Yup. It doesn't seem to do anything, and other USB devices work just fine in the same ports.
EDIT: It works again! Huzzah!
I hope this doesn't become a regular occurrence.
-
Back that shit up while you still can.
-
Eh. Sometimes you'll get weird errors if you don't wait for the 'it is now safe to unplug your usb device' notice before you unplug something.
-
Enclosures are fragile things too. Cheapy external adapters are worse.
-
It's doing it again.
>:I
-
Did you back your stuff up? (nag nag nag)
If the hard drive is removable from the enclosure, try another enclosure.
-
That IS my backup! :c
I just got this computer a few days ago so I hadn't gotten around to transferring everything yet.
As far as I can tell it has something to do with sleep mode. It seems to not work if it's been connected during sleep mode and work fine if I connect it afterwards, but not if those two situations contradict (so I can't just unplug and replug).
Actually...
...
FIXED IIIIIT!
If I unplug the HDD itself from the wall outlet and then re-plug it, it works fine.
Yaaaaaaaaay
-
Its probably something to do with it not shutting down properly before you unplug it from usb.
-
So I had this old secondary drive, which I had mapped to D:, that I wanted to wipe so I could start using it for things, but it had an old Windows install on it and so Windows was giving me shit about formatting it. So I pressed some buttons at startup, got to a recovery menu where I could open the console, and told it to format D: there.
Turns out there's a thing where that's in a magical superspace where all your disc drive letters are incremented by one.
Fortunately, my old C: drive is a terabyte, so it was only 20% done before I realized something was amiss; in any case, I'm now running off my old drive, now properly wiped by the Windows installer, and I get a fun and exciting project now of learning about the magical world of data recovery.
In any case, now that I'm working with a clean slate (Windows 7 64), what's the current best-in-slot plugin for Firefox for reading PDFs? Are there any other applications or tools I should try to use that will make my life easier?
Also, anybody know anything about solid state drives? I did a buttload of research late last year, but I haven't looked at things since then - are there any shiny new market leaders, or should I just go reconstruct my conclusions from last year and buy that?
-
I use Foxit for .PDFs, seems to work alright now that the FF plugin actually functions.
-
My god. The U2311H (http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=320-9270&baynote_bnrank=0&baynote_irrank=1&~ck=dellSearch) is an amazing monitor. I bought it last week when it was on sale for $250.
The colors. The brightness. Oh god, what have I been missing.
-
When swapping out video cards, what is the preferred driver cleaner program?
-
Control Panel > Uninstall a Program
-
So while my old Radeon 2600XT has gotten me through the past 3 years and is good enough to run Mass Effect 2 at 1920x1200 with low graphics settings, I think it's about time for a new video card. (Witcher 2 is part of the reason for this but I'm not going to spend hundreds of dollars for just one game; a new graphics card will of course make all the games I've bought in the last 5 years look prettier too. And possibly provide a better user experience for day-to-day shit, for reasons I will detail below.)
So anyway. I got me a Mac Pro back in Aught Seven, because hey, Intel, and PCIE, and all that stuff, and Apple was supposed to finally be compatible and upgradeable and all that stuff. Well, turns out it's not, mostly because EFI adoption has taken a lot longer to catch on in the PC world than I anticipated. So I've got four choices:
Buy an official Mac-compatible card.
Pros:
- Will work in my computer with no dickery, hackery, or pagan rituals required.
Cons:
Buy a card that isn't Mac-compatible.
Pros:
- Will run just fine in Windows and Linux
- It's not like I boot to OSX that often anyway
Cons:
- I still occasionally like to use my Mac as a Mac.
Buy a PC ATI card and flash the BIOS.
Pros:
- Simple
- Elegant
- Thoroughly documented
- Will provide me geek satisfaction
Cons:
- Won't be able to see EFI boot screen
- I'm primarily a Linux user and ATI's Linux drivers fucking suck.
So that leaves the least elegant option but the one I am currently leaning toward:
Buy a PC nVidia card and use driver injection.
Starting with cons on this one, because they're big but the pros mitigate them somewhat.
Cons:
- PC nVidia cards can't be flashed with Mac firmware like ATI's can. If I want to boot to OSX I'm going to need to have a second graphics card in there just to boot far enough to load the drivers for the new card.
- GTX 4XX cards do not perform to spec under OSX; they effectively function as GTX 285's.
- There are some reports of general instability and weirdness with Fermi cards under OSX.
Pros:
- Good Linux driver support.
- If I don't use it for driver injection, the 7300GT that came with the computer will just sit somewhere collecting dust anyway.
- A GTX 285 is still better than the card I've got in there now, and incidentally costs more than a GTX 460 or 470.
So I'm leaning toward the 460/470 range there. Will think it over for a bit; I don't intend to buy right away as my newfound disposable income has not caused me to forget that I've been unemployed for the past five months and could find myself back in that position at any time. Summer Is Coming.
-
Summer Is Coming.
This is where GRRM rises from his productivity grave and finishes the remaining books at a solid clip, right?
-
I think GRRM is substantially less worried about having to put aside money to pay the power bill than TRRB.
Anyway. Finally got myself a few more gigs of RAM. Haven't noticed any performance boosts just yet but Windows and Linux/X/KDE seem perfectly happy setting aside 2GB just standing still.
(X and Firefox still like to randomly shoot up to 60% CPU usage between the two of them, even when I've got fuck-all open in them. I think this is a product of ATI's Linux drivers, which is one more reason I would very much like to get a new nVidia card.)
-
I just made a new Windows 7 installation to go from 32 to 64. I also backed up everything, and double and triple checked like a good boy. Except I forgot one thing; I have no idea what the actual model of my wireless networking card is, so I don't know what driver to get to make the damn thing work. I'm about to open it back up, as I'm sure it's pasted on the card with a sticker, but man I feel dumb.
Also, more hardware sites should have the autodetect thing that nVidia does so it will just tell you what drivers you need.
-
W7 64 didn't autodetect the thing and the brand? What kind of crap wireless card are you using there?
-
Well, I'm pretty sure it's a Linksys, but I'll know for certain in a minute.
Edit: Got that resolved, but now apparently my microphone port does not exist.
-
I'm not sure what's going on but my mouse's batteries died. I put in new batteries and it said "USB Device not recognized." I went through the usual steps of unplug it/replug it, restart, etc. And it stopped recognizing it entirely. Ok. Whatever. I'll figure it out eventually.
Now it's unplugged. No USB things are plugged in at all. But every 5-10 minutes I get either the "USB Device not recognized" message or the USB Device recognized windows sound.
Now ideally, I'd like to get my mouse working but I really just want my computer to stop spamming me with messages with Ghost USB devices.
And yeah. I went to the maker's website and tried to redownload the drivers. But since it's windows 7, they don't carry drivers for it saying "The mouse will automatically work no matter what on Windows 7, chumps." Downloaded windows' newest USB drivers too.
-
Idea: your USB hub is fried.
-
...apparently they've gotten the GTX 570 working in the latest Developer Preview of Lion, so I'm thinking 560 instead of 470 given that the former benchmarks a bit better, uses less power, and costs about the same.
The smart thing for me to do is wait for the release of Lion next month. I probably have the self control to do so.
-
wake up, internet's down
unplug router and modem, check cables, flushdns, try static dns, still can't do anything
realize i bumped the TURN OFF ALL INTERNETS button on top of the router while unplugging things after about half an hour
feel like a tard
-
Wh... why does that button exist?
-
i have no idea it is just like a button on top of the router that turns off all of the signals and is very easily depressed
-
Apparently it was designed by the same people responsible for New Super Mario Bros Wii's button layout.
-
Went to Fry's to do some price comparisons; did not expect to buy anything. However, there was an open-box GTX 570 being sold for $313, with a $30 rebate on top of that. The guy there confirmed that the rebate and lifetime warranty are still good.
I can't actually USE the thing yet, as Macs are too pretty to come with rats' nests of molex cables coming out every which way and I have to order a couple of Mac power adapters separately. But I am pretty pleased with the deal I got. Once I get that rebate I'll have only paid about $30 more than a 560 Ti, and the 570 benchmarks substantially better and has also been more thoroughly tested on Lion.
-
My computer's been giving me a weird problem lately. I think I've explained before how I have two HDs, and the larger one, E:, sometimes doesn't show up during the boot-up sequence.
Well, now it's starting to disappear while my computer is running! It usually happens when I open a directory with lots of files, or if I'm scrolling through images. The computer will suddenly slow to a crawl and then boop! E: is gone for a minute or so. It is a fairly recent phenomenon and it has me stumped.
Crap, it's a foreigner (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kn2ogbiOuk#)
(0:23)
-
Anyone know anything about microphones?
Both my new gaming headset microphone and proper dynamic microphone sound quiet and muffled. Even right next to the microphone, it sounds like you're hearing someone in the next room. Microphone boost just boosts the background hiss too.
The microphone on my USB headset (Arc got me for the Worst Podcast Ever because he was disgusted how bad my sound recording quality was) works better but has what seems like mains hum. It still sounds recorded through a cardboard box and downsampled to a 64k MP3.
I see Youtube videos where people have good sound quality. What are they doing properly?
-
Especially with computers, a hum from your microphone is probably electrical. Depending on the source, a good conditioning power strip can reduce it, or sometimes spreading out computer internals.
If two separate microphones are exhibiting the same problem, it's probably a Windows/Sound card proprietary control panel setting somewhere gone wrong. It's also possible that your sound card's plug is obstructed or failing so that a full connection isn't made (especially if it sounds like the equivalent of only half-way plugging in your headphones). You could also make sure that the mic doesn't have a hi-lo-off switch somewhere on the cable or something like that.
While I'd think it unlikely since you have two mics failing at once with the same symptom, a loose wire could also be the culprit. This is actually what made me replace my last headset since it's not really worth breaking the thing apart and trying to put it back together.
-
So I am wondering what I should spend my money on next when it comes to computer upgrades. I think the next two are going to be the CPU and graphics card, but I am wondering which one I should replace first.
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 x2 6000+ 3.1ghz
Graphics card: ATI HD 4670
-
So, my PC had occasionally flashed a blue screen at shutdown, now it does it at random.
I think that the videocard (That was a replacement for a fried one no less) is fucked as it had worse performance than the old one even though it had far higher specs even before the bsods
-
Anyone ever had an issue where their VLC seems to raise and lower its volume automatically? It might be doing it to everything, but I only really notice it when listening to some music on VLC.
It is quite annoying. I've already gone into sound settings and turned off that thing that automatically lowers your volume when you get an incoming call, but no change really.
-
Yes.
Or, more precisely, my wireless mouse used to erroneously report scroll wheel movement, which is VLC's shortcut for adjusting volume. Have you noticed any random scrolling in other programs?
Obvious troubleshooting step is to disable volume control via the scroll wheel. If it keeps happening, then it's not that.
-
Hrm, could be, actually. I'm still staying at my folk's place for my recovery, and the PC I've been using has a wireless mouse and keyboard. No scroll wheel issues in anything else that I noticed, though.
Tried looking for scroll wheel control in the settings, but no dice. Nothing under Advanced, either.
I'll try hooking up a wired mouse and see if that does the trick. For yucks I also upgraded VLC and Adobe Flash to their latest versions. Until now I was pretty convinced it was Flash or Firefox fucking it up somehow.
-
Turns out it was just my dang monitor! It doubles as a TV, and apparently has a function to raise and lower the volume to within a certain range.
-
Sounds useful.
-
I was uninstalling some drivers for a scanner that never worked and I got this message:
Unable to delete registry value 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\Update 4300C'.
1. Should I be worried?
2. How do I get rid of it?
-
You're probably better off ignoring it than fucking with the registry.
-
You could try uninstalling it from safe mode? But... What Thad said.
-
I think I've figured out the problem! My primary HD is more than a decade old.
Where can I find a relatively cheap replacement with IDE ports?
-
Take your pick (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007603%20600003442&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&Order=PRICE&PageSize=20).
-
Trouble is that IDE drives aren't really any cheaper than SATA. It might be worth it to you to buy a SATA card.
-
Except then I'd have to buy TWO new hard drives.
And a SATA card.
-
How so? If you were still using one IDE drive, adding a SATA wouldn't prevent it from working.
-
Hi folks,
Looking for a recommendation on a PDF unlocker that is not full of computer aids. Went to reinstall the old one I used to use, and it turns out it doesn't win on Win7 64x.
-
I recall using something called PDF Password Remover last time i had to unlock a PDF. It wouldn't tell me what the password was without waiting years for a bruteforce, but it did strip the protection out so that i could do things like print and copy images and whatnot. And this was on Win7 64bit.
-
Oh yeah, I don't need to *know* the password.
These are old gaming documents from a couple companies that have long since gone out of business and abandoned their products. I need to edit and update the files for current gaming (errata cobbled together by fan groups, etc.). Some Mage Knight stuff, some Decipher stuff, a few other games besides.
I'll give that one a whirl.
EDIT: I know this seemed like something I should just be googling, but the problem is when you type those kind of searches in, you just get a river of available options any number of which could be suspect and no independently-verifiable recommendations in sight.
-
This may be more of a "Calling All Internets!" post, but whatever.
I'm looking for a fair decent quality pair of computer speakers that aren't too large. "Side speakers"/"Tower speakers", whatever you wanna call 'em - the kind with just two units and no separate subwoofer. The main things is that they need to be wireless.
I have an okay pair of speakers already (nothing terrible, but nothing great) but want to be able to play music from one computer in any room of the apt by just moving the speakers around. They don't need to be battery powered (that would actually be a big negative).
Looking to keep costs under $75 or so if I can.
EDIT: It occurs to me that I could just get a wireless USB "cord". This seems like something someone should already be making but a quick google search is not clear. Is that what's meant by a wireless USB adapter? Usually adapters I've seen in the past were meant to work with specific products and not as a replacement for generic USB cable. Do they make wireless speaker adapters (my current speakers are not USB)?
-
This may also be better for the "Calling All Internets!" thread, so move it if you feel that's necessary:
I'm trying to find a laptop IDE DVD burner to replace a busted drive in a friend's laptop. When looking through ebay for a new drive, will I have to get a drive from the same make and model laptop, or will any old laptop IDE drive work properly? If a drive from any maker will work, is it possible to switch the front panels between the two drives to ensure the new one will fit the old laptop?
-
Question.
I have a thing from work that's me get MS Office for TENBUX, So I'm going to avail myself of that (I've usually been fine with Open Office but there's always been occasional file-compatibility issues when saving or using MS-extension files).
What I want to know is:
1) I can get it with a backup CD for an additional TENBUX. Is that worth it at all? The language is not clear on the MS Home Upgrades page and it seems to imply that once I download it, I can't re-download it? That seems kind of odd though, because I figured I was paying for the product key rather than the download? TWENNYBUX is a lot less attractive than TENBUX (of course retail is like TWOHUNNERT, soooo...).
2) Can I install this sucker on a second computer in the same house without Microsnatch having fits about it? It'll probably be more useful for Starr than me in the long run?
-
Hm, which version of Office? Can you get more than one? And is there Canada fuckery?
-
MS Office 2010.
Looks like I can only get the one copy (when I hit the "Add to cart button" a second time it still just shows 1 instance and there's no option to change quantity). I could probably get around this though, by getting a second email confirmation from a co-worker and buying a second copy that way.
Here's the terms of service. It's not even clear if it refers to MS Office, any software they're selling, or the MSHUP website itself:
https://www.microsofthup.com/hupca/termsofuse.aspx?culture=en-CA#EPC (https://www.microsofthup.com/hupca/termsofuse.aspx?culture=en-CA#EPC)
-
So I had to get my computer reformatted, right? Now there's a weird crackling noise on Youtube/Blip/any streaming video.
How do I fix it?
-
Having much the same problem on several video sites on my Kubuntu machine -- could it be a Flash problem?
Make sure you've got Flash updated, and your audio drivers too.
-
Um, Adobe's telling me that my version of Flash is updated automatically in Chrome.
And how do I update my audio drivers? Which ones should I look for?
-
Win7's pretty good about keeping drivers current, but it wouldn't be a bad idea to punch up your manufacturer's page and punching in the model to make sure you've got the latest set.
-
Anyone use PHP semi-regularly? My little brother was asking about the following:
When working on a web application which uses AJAX (PHP, Javascript, Mysql), I am downloading the src files from the server via FTP, modifying them in Notepad++, uploading them back via ftp. Once uploaded, I load up the webpage and click to the page I just modified.
After doing this long, painful process, I am wondering if there is a better system than this. In Object oriented programming, i can edit code and compile it, catching any syntax error, and seeing the changes on the spot. What is the best way for web development?
-
Ideally he should have a local environment set up that he can develop in without having to worry about breaking something in Production. Set up the Apache/MySQL/PHP stack on whatever you're developing on, move your working code to your server directory, edit there and browse http://localhost (http://localhost) to verify it. In general.
If for some reason he can't do that then it's going to depend on whether his host allows SSH sessions or not. If yes, then log in and use vi/emacs (or learn how to tunnel X11 windows so you can use gedit and not have to deal with the massive wonkiness of standard textmode editors). If not then I guess shit sucks son.
-
The "proper" way to do it is to keep separate development and production servers, and to sync between the local copy and the servers using a content versioning system like git.
One of these days I'll start doing things the "proper" way.
-
You are both brilliant shining stars~
Much appreciated.
-
So, my monitor's been bugging out for a few days, and now I'm pretty convinced the capacitors have gone bad. It'll warm up for about an hour if not longer before finally booting. Any chance there's a more helpful do-it-yourself fix for this than "leave it on forever until I can afford a new one"?
-
I had exactly the same problem. It was quite straightforward to buy new capacitors and replace the old ones.
LCD Repair 2 - Samsung 2232BW (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul5LhuCT1y8#)
-
So I was playing Fallout: New Vegas, using the steam overlay browser looking through fallout.wikia.com for stuff, when one page redirected to one of those scuzzy "your computer might have dangerous files on it! Scan now? yes/no" popups. Of course I couldn't close the window normally so I just killed the gameoverlay process, but I had my virus scanner off (because I was playing a game), so now instead of playing F:NV I'm running my virus scanner. Hopefully I didn't contract anything, but argh. So, lesson learned. Don't browse anything through the steam overlay browser with your virus scan turned off, even normally innocuous sites. And maybe stay off of wikia for a few days while they sort this out.
Also, web developers? Any time I go somewhere in firefox and see "please turn off adblock so my 3 kids won't starve to death"? This shit is why it'll never happen.
EDIT: Avast! quick scan didn't find anything. I'd do a full scan, but I had the good sense to kill the browser process instead of actually clicking on "no" and I'm not even sure it was redirecting me to a virus in the first place, so I'm gonna call it good. Still, fuck this shit.
-
Ehhh. It could be something hot off of the presses. How often does avast update?
-
Usually I see the "avast has downloaded new definitions" thing pop up 2-3 times a day, so they're pretty good about keeping up with shit (I assume).
-
Avast flagged Steam itself (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/06/avast_steam_false_positive/) as a trojan over the weekend, but it apparently only lasted 90 minutes so that's probably nothing to do with what you're seeing.
-
Definitely not, as it wasn't on when the problem cropped up. Still, malware bytes didn't find anything (the second time - first time crashed with an error of some sort, I turned off avast to do the second and it ran fine) and neither did Spybot, and my homepage (in both firefox and IE) is still google and I'm not getting any odd behavior out of my computer (more than usual, anyway), so either everything's fine or I got a particularly stealthy virus that's immune to scanning and has the good sense to not throw up a billion red flags that basically scream "HEY YOU GOT A VIRUS NOW I'M STEALING ALL YOUR SHIT THANKS". Which is possible, but for my sanity I'm assuming the former. Probably just a scummy advertisement rather than an actual virus.
-
Yeah, most likely. You didn't click on it or give them your credit card so you're probably okay.
-
Why did you have Avast turned off while using Steam anyway? Was it to prevent popups during the game? It's possible to mute all of Avast's sounds and it says in my copy that it won't display anything during fullscreen applications even with silent mode turned off.
-
Yeah, I've never seen an Avast popup during a fullscreened game.
-
No, it was just to improve performance. It helped Skyrim run better, at least.
Still, I'll probably just leave it running and alt-tab to firefox from now on.
-
My computer started overheating pretty badly the other day to the point of it shutting itself down when I was trying to run the original Mass Effect. I figured that there's probably a cheap solution (new video card, new cooling, etc) but that it's about time for an overhaul anyway and put in an order for the parts for a new machine yesterday. This morning, even stuff like WoW is causing shutdowns. LOOKS LIKE I WAS JUST IN TIME
-
My monitor's been having a real weird time of it lately, what with having hella problems displaying anything if it's just being turned on, as in the power light shutting itself off after a few seconds*, and also there are discolored areas that, while not burn-in themselves, are actually susceptible to image persistence in moderate contrast situations. Plus it's pretty ancient, it goes up to 1280x1024 basically. Basically it's about time I changed it.
I'm looking at taking the widescreen plunge on this, which is also way overdue. That said, the monitors in my price range are like 1600x900. I have like no experience with widescreen in any capacity and I'm kind of anal about vertical space so I was wondering-
Wait what the hell is my problem, I'd lose like 124 pixels of vertical space, what am I even worried about. Everyone's doing widescreen, it must be completely worth it. Never mind, guys. Sheesh. I guess I had to type it.
*: Once it's on it's fine for an indeterminate amount of time though, so I just don't shut down my computer anymore. Which is probably gonna be a problem.
-
What's your budget like? I dunno what's in your area, but there's a whole bunch of super-discounters in Toronto who can get you something decent and cheap, with a vertical resolution better than 900, I'm sure.
Maybe the stores aren't all available, but Tiger Direct and Canada Computers ought to have online stores at least.
-
Well with the budget, it's like... I need a monitor, that's non-negotiable, I need my computer for too much. In that regard, if I had to spend, like, a five hundo, I would. It'd hurt, but I could, and I would. I was looking at the cheapest ones on newegg.ca (that wouldn't be a downgrade size-wise; the one I have now is 19 inches) and they were around a hundred bucks, and that's about where I supposed it would be irresponsible to pay a lot more than that.
That said I am generally smart enough about my finances to have a small rainy day fund, and a monitor certainly sounds like the sort of thing that warrants paying extra for decent quality, since I use it so damn much. So I'm like super cheap but flexible I guess?
You know, I live within walking distance of a bunch of small computer shops so I'll probably check out what they got even if just to have an idea of what I even want to settle for to begin with. I'm all for online shopping but I'll need to have a look at some in person at least. Just gonna have to hope mine holds out until monday.
-
Yeah, I haven't looked recently, but I'm sure you could get something quite decent for $150-200. Examples:
http://www.canadacomputers.com/specials.php?category=LCD%2FLED+Monitors (http://www.canadacomputers.com/specials.php?category=LCD%2FLED+Monitors)
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/Category/guidedSearch.asp?CatId=12&cm_re=Homepage-_-Spot%2024-_-CatId_12 (http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/Category/guidedSearch.asp?CatId=12&cm_re=Homepage-_-Spot%2024-_-CatId_12)
-
Well, I don't know what the Candian equivalent to Dealzmodo is, but I've got Dealzmodo in my RSS and check it daily. When I decided it was time for a new monitor I pretty much watched and waited until the one I wanted fell to US$230.
Not sure if this is still the case, but at that time at least Samsung was the least expensive name brand. It's not much more than your off-brand Suziba whatsit and is probably a better monitor (though when you come right down to it everybody uses the same TFT's anyway). I'm quite pleased with my Samsung, but of course keep an eye on reviews.
And with something like a monitor it's probably best to go check them out in-store if possible. You don't have to buy at the same store you look at, of course, it's just a good way to get a bead on what they actually look like right in front of you.
-
I too would recommend Samsung. They're not so good as to go crazy chasing one, but if you have a choice between roughly equal Samsung and off-brand products, go for the Samsung.
-
I don't know what the canada equivalent is, but you can easily get 19-25inch 1080p monitors for $100-150 on newegg or woot practically 2-3x a week. I'm running dual "debranded" 25inch 1080p HP monitors that look gorgeous and cost me $130 and $150 if i recall correctly. (HP 2509 and 2511)
-
Welp, I've been bitten by the "support a local business" bug. Got a LG 22" LED for 160. They got an aggressive dead pixel policy (which it turns out I probably won't need to take advantage of, thank the Lord), and they're literally four blocks away so the shipping costs are like whatever calories it took me to walk three minutes.
This thing is sexy. The worries I had about losing vertical space were the worries of an idiot; it's like three centimeters shorter, but I will stop noticing within a week. I should have done this years ago.
-
Anybody looking to buy or assemble a new computer or buy new computer parts soon may find this huge image (http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/af150/The_FalconO6/CurrentLogicalPCBuyingGuide/Guide.png) useful.
-
I haven't digested all that because JESUS FUCK WHY AN INFOGRAPHIC, but I want to point out that anybody who tells you your computer can't be future-proofed is old fashioned. My computer is over 5 years old and still plays most things at max or near-max settings. I did upgrade to a newer mid-range GPU a couple years ago, but still.
Moore's Law has kind of fucked off the PC sphere and moved to mobile devices, so the only obsoletion event you really have to fear is the wholesale obsoletion of PCs altogether.
-
I keep laughing when I hear that. No matter how amazing mobile devices get, they still won't have 20"+ screens until we get crazy-ass holographic technology that doesn't need a backing of any kind. And a PC-size case will always be able to hold more tech at a significantly lower price than a smartphone case considering there's like an order of magnitude's difference in volume constraints. Mobile data rates will probably always carry some cost premium over landline data, even if it is only marginal.
Maybe several steps down the line there will be some other reasons PCs become obsolete, but amazing iphones won't be one of them. Maybe PCs will be a little less ubiquitous, sure, but they're far from disappearing.
A better analogue is the car market. As the market for computing matures, more and more sizes will creep in to accommodate people's individual specific needs. We're already seeing tablet/phone size hybrids and interestingly, people are buying them (even though they make for fairly awkward phones). PCs are more like the vans and trucks of the personal computing world [Ted Stevens joke goes here]; whereas smart phones are more like compact cars - good for short hops here and there.
-
anybody who tells you your computer can't be future-proofed is old fashioned
But "future-proofed" is a relative term with easy-to-move goalposts, so it's a trivially true "claim".
I do kinda buy that SSDs are still going to be improving at a brisk-ish pace though.
-
A lot of it does have to do with monitor resolution as in one of the notes in that graphic. I'm doing fine with an old card at 1680x1050 with modern games. If this monitor dies I'll probably have to get a new card along with the replacement, though.
-
I haven't digested all that because JESUS FUCK WHY AN INFOGRAPHIC, but I want to point out that anybody who tells you your computer can't be future-proofed is old fashioned. My computer is over 5 years old and still plays most things at max or near-max settings. I did upgrade to a newer mid-range GPU a couple years ago, but still.
Same here, but I think all that really says is that the importance of Latest-and-Greatest has moved so that it's explicitly a video card issue. Older processor or RAM speed isn't generally what's going to get you.
Moore's Law has kind of fucked off the PC sphere and moved to mobile devices, so the only obsoletion event you really have to fear is the wholesale obsoletion of PCs altogether.
Weeeell, I think before we see that we'll see another round of changing standards. I think SATA's going to stick around for awhile, but USB3's starting to creep up, and fuck knows how long HDMI's going to remain standard, what with a handful of companies pushing DisplayPort and the total compromise of HDCP (http://brontoforum.us/index.php?topic=5529.msg168922#msg168922). As far as PCIE, I don't really know; hasn't it already changed spec once?
And for all that I think Windows 8 looks terrible and nobody's going to want it, hardware manufacturers ARE going to have to ship it, and the good news is that that means MS is finally dragging them kicking and screaming into EFI support. (Small fucking comfort to those of us with 32-bit EFI.)
A better analogue is the car market. As the market for computing matures, more and more sizes will creep in to accommodate people's individual specific needs. We're already seeing tablet/phone size hybrids and interestingly, people are buying them (even though they make for fairly awkward phones). PCs are more like the vans and trucks of the personal computing world [Ted Stevens joke goes here]; whereas smart phones are more like compact cars - good for short hops here and there.
I think you're right on, here, but backing up:
And a PC-size case will always be able to hold more tech at a significantly lower price than a smartphone case considering there's like an order of magnitude's difference in volume constraints.
But that's irrelevant to nearly all users.
Most users need Web access and...that's pretty much it at this point. I'd say end users don't even really need Office anymore. (Business users do, but I'll get to them in a minute.) Phone hardware is more than powerful enough to support the programs a typical end user needs.
The drawbacks of phones -- again, for most users -- aren't in horsepower, they're in interface. You can't write a report with your thumbs. (Well, you can, but why would you?) If you want to sit down and actually use your device for anything more than casual Web browsing, then you want peripherals -- a keyboard, maybe a mouse and a printer, and as you say, a monitor (though if you've got a 10" tablet that might be enough screen space for you). But none of that's got anything to do with how much CPU/GPU power or RAM you've got on the thing.
Mobile data rates will probably always carry some cost premium over landline data, even if it is only marginal.
I think in ten years' time it'll be nominal. I don't think by-the-byte/by-the-minute pricing will last in the wireless space, any more than it did in the land line space.
I'd say the biggest challenge portable devices face at this point is efficiency. Flash is on its way out precisely because it sucks battery life like a Colombian hooker. And honestly I'd say this is a software problem as much as a hardware one at this stage -- the chip makers are doing a great fucking job of coming out with more efficient processors, but software developers have spent the last decade in a world where cycles and RAM were cheap and never learned to bother with optimization.
All that said: phones aren't going to replace PC's for a majority of users for quite some time. Business users will be a major holdout, as will graphic designers and gamers. (Never forget that PC gamers are a niche -- but they're a niche that spends a lot of money.)
I AM curious as to whether tablets will eventually cause a reversal in the trend of laptops outselling desktops. I don't expect that it will, since the price difference between a good-enough-for-most-people laptop and a good-enough-for-most-people desktop is so small at this point and that being able to take your computer with you if you NEED to is an appealing option even for people who rarely use it. But I think, for the minority of users who own a desktop AND a laptop, they might consider trading that laptop for a tablet, and I suspect that'll create a shift that, while not major, will be noticeable.
-
Laptops have already pretty much outmoded desktops for general business use; for high-power use (gamers, graphic designers, developers et al) desktops will always be preferred unless the standard hardware spec of a laptop is changed to allow easier modification. Docked tablets will probably become a lot more common in the retail space, and touchscreen-oriented systems like Android will ironically have to shift more towards accomodating the mouse/keyboard (with touch still the main input).
And that "wholesale obsolesence of PCs" crack was a joke, in case that wasn't clear.
-
Interface is pretty crucial too. Lots of people are much more comfortable with a desktop setup. I kind of went into this with my screen-size comments, but yeah, the full keyboard and the like is just as important.
Battery life was something I'd forgotten. Ironically, it's RIM that's done the best job (by far) in maximising battery life. Too bad they don't push that as a big point (I mean, it's not going to win them a marketing war, but it's actually a pretty good point in their favour to bring up).
I think for casual and business users we may start to see a product come out in a generation or two where a smartphone is docked into a desk setup with full-size screen and keyboard. Business users may embrace this as it only continues the trend of blurring work and home spaces. The threshold is simply a smartphone that matches current low-to-midrange laptops in capabilities.
-
Interface is pretty crucial too. Lots of people are much more comfortable with a desktop setup.
Except that Apple and MS are determined to foist a phone interface onto desktop users whether they want it or not. (GNOME and Canonical, too, for us Linux users, but since I'm speaking of general end users I'll leave that as a parenthetical aside.)
Keyboards and mice are great tools for interfaces designed around them. They're not so good at interfaces designed for touchscreens. And yet here we are.
I think for casual and business users we may start to see a product come out in a generation or two where a smartphone is docked into a desk setup with full-size screen and keyboard. Business users may embrace this as it only continues the trend of blurring work and home spaces. The threshold is simply a smartphone that matches current low-to-midrange laptops in capabilities.
Long-term, yeah, I see that happening, and that could be precisely the reason Apple and MS are so damn keen on unifying their interfaces.
Short-term, people don't fucking want their desktops to behave like phones, because it's stupid. Win8 will do the same kind of business that Vista did: yes, end users will buy it if they buy a new computer because that's what comes with the computer, but business purchasers aren't going to touch the fucking thing. Not even the ones who standardize on Windows Phone (which still has the potential to make major inroads with business customers, since RIM is on the decline and Apple doesn't have a dominant position in that space yet).
-
Anecdotal:
At Verizon I was supporting Jetblue, LiveNation, Vangent and Acosta, and here at HP I support Pfizer. With the exception of Acosta, while all of those companies supported Blackberry, by and large most of their people with smartphones were using Iphones. As soon as Verizon got their own iphone every exec, salesman and mid-range desk jockey had one, and almost everybody at Pfizer has one. For every one blackberry call I get, I get 10-15 iphone calls.
I feel like Microsoft is going to be a day late and a dollar short with the W8 phones just like they were with the W7 phones. The iphone is moving quick to supplant the blackberry and Microsoft is taking their sweet time to get their product to market, I suspect because of this assumption that the only 'business' machine in the handheld game is the Blackberry. Here's the problem: It's my experience that businessmen and accountants and marketers aren't tech savvy. They want a machine that works. The Blackberry used to be the simplest, fastest way to get and send email on the go. Now it's the iphone. Microsoft is going to bring a product to market with productivity apps and 'multi-tasking', and it's going to confuse and frustrate people just like every prior windows mobile device did. The 6700 was the only really successful Windows Mobile phone and that's because it lived in the very brief period where Blackberries sucked and Palm Pilots were dead.
-
Apparently Derbler Three is out to prove me wrong about future-proofing, and now I need a new box. Or at least a new CPU and accompanying motherboard.
I've got between now and mid-May to watch for deals and build a monster out of cadaver parts. WHAT WILL SCIENCE DO?
-
Well, science just launched intel's Ivy Bridge and accompanying Z77 motherboards. So that's pretty damn awesome. Also there's a chance that the nVidia 6xx midrange cards could, potentially, come out before may - but I find that somewhat unlikely. Also harddrive prices are starting to drop again, (about time!) and SSD's are constantly getting faster, more awesome and cheaper.
Seriously though, get an SSD. More than pretty much any other computer upgrade, the money spent towards an SSD will make the biggest most noticeable performance difference. (Except for a videocard if you only care about gaming over every other aspect of a PC)
-
Solid state is pretty amazing. I can't imagine living without one now. Load times are null. I'm concerned about it failing but anything of archival importance is stored on a mechanical drive anyway. Using steam mover is pretty much a necessity.
I'd like to be able to justify the want of the new IvyBridge and GTX680 or whatever but I can't because my CPU/GPU combo still plays games at max 1920x1080.
-
I'll keep it in mind, but the price per byte is still pretty prohibitive. Maybe when I get around to doing a full OS reinstall I'll use one as an OS drive and keep /home on one of my bigger drives.
-
As I understand it, because of the increasing speeds of RAM and the way most virtual memory schemes redistribute latency, we've had scenarios where (game) performance was limited by disk access rather than latencies in RAM to CPU or RAM to GPU transfers since about 2008.
-
I picked up a SSD for my OS and a SSD for games when building this rig and have not had a single regret. Sure they're tiny compared to storage drives, but I have a few of those already where I can keep backups of things while just keeping the essentials on the SSDs.
-
Small SSD/Large HD was the plan for this rig since moment one. Not sure if any kind of RAID is appropriate for that setup though.
-
You can't raid them together, but i'd do either Raid1 or Raid5 for the mechanical drives simply for fault tolerance. If you get one of the newer intel chipsets you can also do this really cool SSD cache thing which should help the speed of your mechanical drives as well. I forgot the name they used for it.
-
I didn't think you'd need to RAID them if all you want is a small archive of backup/restore data, but I don't know why it'd be impossible to do a RAID 1 scheme between the two (or rather a partition of the HDD and the SSD).
-
Huh! My laptop's screen is starting to die.
After about a day of being on the screen refuses to show any light, and I don't have a light source powerful enough to check if the LCDs are updating.
-
I didn't think you'd need to RAID them if all you want is a small archive of backup/restore data, but I don't know why it'd be impossible to do a RAID 1 scheme between the two (or rather a partition of the HDD and the SSD).
Forgot how RAID 1 schemes handle disparate latencies. So it could also just defeat the entire reason for using a SSD.
-
I did a memtest to see if my ram has been the cause of all of the BSODs I had been getting.
500 errors. Yeah, I ordered new ram.
-
Up until about two weeks ago, any embedded video player would stay at full screen whenever I clicked away from the window.
Now the internet is telling me about all the .dlls to replace and registries to edit, or trials to start and applications to install. Any chance someone here just knows what button I hit? (I use Chrome)
-
Has anybody else been having really horrible freezing problems on YouTube lately? I've noticed it on multiple computers, multiple operating systems, and multiple browsers.
Cursory internet searching seems to indicate there's some crippling fuckup with Flash 11.3... but no real solutions other than reverting to v10.x.
-
You mean flash crashing?
-
No, flash crashing is when you unexpectedly show up to parties wearing nothing but a raincoat.
-
I don't like to shed on stranger's upholstery.
-
Has anybody else been having really horrible freezing problems on YouTube lately? I've noticed it on multiple computers, multiple operating systems, and multiple browsers.
Cursory internet searching seems to indicate there's some crippling fuckup with Flash 11.3... but no real solutions other than reverting to v10.x.
Yes, both on my work computer and my home computer, but almost entirely in Chrome. I don't seem to have nearly the same problems with firefox or MSIE.
Ctrl+Alt+Del to the task manager (without actually killing the task) actually seems to fix it pretty frequently for me for some reason?????????
-
Yeah, I noticed that SUMMON THE TASK MASTER does kick Flash's ass a bit, but man is this annoying. I guess I can uninistall and revert to an older version.
-
I had an issue with a flash update maybe two weeks ago. Some webcasts and other flash bullshit wouldn't load until I disabled something called "pepper flash" in Google Chrome's plugin configuration. Didn't bother tho research the reason once things started working.
-
What I'm finding is that when I type "youtube.com" into the location bar it defaults to https:// and then times right the fuck out; I have to manually put in http:// .
Guys I don't really need a secure connection for Youtube; pretty much the main thing I go on there for is to find Frank Zappa videos to embed on my website.
-
Say guys, any suggestions on how to troubleshoot massive, crippling memory use by Firefox [joke about "Switch to another browser" goes here]?
I'm fine, but Starr's using the latest version of FF and her only add-ons are NoScript, ABP, and AVG's Do Not Track (cookie deleter). She regularly gets prompts that FF is using 1-2 Gb of memory (or more) and it crashes ridiculously frequently on her now.
-
The first Google hit for how to troubleshoot massive, crippling memory use by Firefox (http://gnoted.com/3-hacks-for-firefox-double-internet-browsing-speed/)
Can also set a value for browser.cache.memory.capacity
Seriously, though, switching to another browser isn't just a joke. Despite it supposedly being a feature Firefox has had memory use problems for a long time and they don't seem to want to do anything about it.
-
Huh. I did do some Googling before coming here (which I do for any tech issue - asking is a last resort), but didn't get that. :shrug:
I'll give that a whirl when I get home, but I'm not sure the traditional "save memory! tips n tricks" will fix the issue. She can visit like five webpages (bland stuff, like this site or a newspaper) and crash FF and it can give her the warning after only a page or two - sometimes even as soon as she opens her browswer.
More importantly, she has a pretty decent computer and has had no similar issues for the past two years even though there's no real change in her browsing behaviour. This is a clear and dramatic change in behaviour with (apparently) no actions on her part to cause the shift.
-
A friend of mine jest boldly proclaimed that he jettisoned Firefox in favor of Opera. I really didn't even know what to say.
-
A friend of mine jest boldly proclaimed that he jettisoned Firefox in favor of Opera. I really didn't even know what to say.
(http://i.imgur.com/7OoMT.jpg)
-
First question is, how's her RAM? If she's got 4GB or more then yeah, Firefox shouldn't be eating through that.
Second is, has she tried another browser and experienced the same problems?
I still get the occasional high-memory issue with Firefox, but the last time it became a showstopper the problem turned out to be something on the CareerBuilder site. (Firefox kept locking up so much that I switched to another browser, only to find the problem persisted; eventually I narrowed it down to that site.)
I haven't had any trouble running ABP/NoScript but I'm not sure about the AVG add-on. I use AVG on my Windows machine at home but I think the only hook it's got in Firefox is link-scanning.
I like Firefox and keep coming back to it (even on my phone it's become my favorite browser of the 3 I've tried), but its memory problems ARE pretty legendary.
-
She's got 4 GB and recently ran a memtest to check it. She's going to try some different browsers today. I'll let you know.
She was worried she might have caught some kind of computer aids, but her AVG/Malwarebytes tests on that came back clean too (not an absolute guarantee, but reasonable).
-
Okay, a couple different browswers were tried : Chrome and IE didn't have any problems. A friend came over and said it might be related to a plugin, but again, the only plugins she's running are ADP and NoScript (she disable AVG do not track, which helped a bit but didn't actually fix the problem). And she installed NoScript after this started happening. Oh and she also uninstalled and reinstalled FF.
-
Does anybody know much about Google Docs? Or their recent reincarnation as Google Drive?
I've recently been working on a large-ish document (142 pages, 400kb in MS Word), usually loading it up at least once a day and I'm wondering, how bandwidth-hungry is the constant saving/updating of a Google Doc? Would my working on this in FF result in large amounts of bandwidth use? I know that FF usually warns me that I'm using about 500 Mb when I have it open, but I thought this was just memory use on my end.
-
The actual size of a Google duck is probably well less than a meg. If FF says you're using about 500 mb, that has a lot to do with the fact that FF counts all of your tabs in memory, plus all the invisible elements on whatever page you're looking at. This includes all divs and inputs in a page plus all javascript libraries and scripts currently running.
-
I'm just wondering if the constant autosaving could be eating bandwidth.
-
Well! It's sure been a long time since I did anything THIS monumentally fucking stupid:
I formatted the wrong 1TB drive. Instead of formatting the one I just plugged in with a USB adapter, I formatted the one I have Windows installed on.
Worst-case, I don't think I've lost anything vital. Had my latest resume and all the rest of my job paperwork on there, but fortunately I've got that spread out all over various IMAP servers, multiple drives, multiple computers -- you get the idea. I'm looking for a damn job, so I have resumes strewn about everywhere.
And I had my password file on there, but fortunately I'd just finished backing it up to multiple drives and my phone.
So nothing vital. It's just that it took me hours to get the damn thing set up. And it had a Mass Effect save on it that was maybe one mission farther along than my backup.
Fucking irksome, at the very least.
It was just a quick format so the data should still be on there -- just the MBR and whatever other basic stuff overwritten. Might be able to get it back with some partition recovery software. If I can find a good program then it's worth it to try just because I don't want to redo the whole Win7/Win8 installation/configuration thing, reinstall all my programs, replay that lost hour or whatever of ME2...
Fuck. One of those "Well, obviously I should have gone to bed five minutes ago and now I will be going to bed much, much later instead" moments.
I tried the trial version of EaseUS (http://www.easeus.com/mac/mac-data-recovery/) since I'm currently booted to OSX. I was under the impression that trial versions of $90 software were supposed to make you think hey, this software is totally worth $90, but the makers of EaseUS seem to think trial software is supposed to peg two of my 4 CPU's and completely fucking lock up.
TestDisk (http://linuxpoison.blogspot.com/2009/03/how-to-recoverrepair-lostdamage.html) for Linux looks promising.
-
Unless of course my OpenSUSE boot has somehow also become hosed. Wow, that's...huh. I legitimately have no fucking idea how or why that happened.
I...guess it's a good thing I can still boot to my Kubuntu drive? Probably maybe?
-
In a bit of GOOD news, Kubuntu not only booted but already had TestDisk installed. I'm currently 7% of the way through a cylinder-by-cylinder analysis; from what I've read NTFS keeps a backup superblock, so hopefully this thing'll find it in there somewhere. Dunno; no sense waiting around. This time I really AM going to bed.
If I'm lucky, when I get up tomorrow I'll only have ONE hosed OS to worry about.
-
...or maybe it just goes into fucking sleep mode halfway through.
(Remembered I've got fresh bank records and my log of all the jobs I've applied for on there, too. Both possible to reconstruct; the latter a bit more of a pain in the ass.)
-
Last night my router (Linksys WRT54G2) decided to crap out apparently. It detects a signal from the modem, but wont connect to the computer. I can't even connect to the router setup to try and mess with the firmware.
Anyone know what might have caused it or if there's a fix outside new router?
-
Possibly stupid question: Have you tried using a different cable?
-
I'm using the cable that was running from the router to my computer from the modem now and had originally swapped it with the modem/router cable. It's also not communicating wirelessly, even though the laptops can detect it.
-
There is a chance that your ISP has not shut off your internet, but is blocking it.
-
I formatted the one I have Windows installed on.
Worst-case, I don't think I've lost anything vital.
:obvious joke:
-
If the laptops can detect but not connect to it it sounds like some sort of handshake problem. I've had a problem with mine before where the router refused to assign IPs to anything for some reason.
If you don't have any access to the firmware at all then the only solution to that is really "hit the little factory reset button and hope for the best".
(EDIT: If you do that, take it off the modem first.)
-
Since my HDD is currently in its death-throes, I went out and purchased a new SSD and am getting ready to do some clean installs. My plan is to do a dual-boot with Windows 8* and Ubuntu. This is my first dual-boot, and I've been reading online about the recommended steps to do this. One thing that sticks out is that most sites recommend 15 gigs for both Windows and Ubuntu, with the rest to be shared. Now, since I plan to use the Windows installation for gaming and since I have an extra hard drive for media files and backups, I was wondering if it'd be better to split the SSD for more room for Windows to install programs. Is this necessary, or will putting applications and games in the shared space be sufficient? And if anyone has any tips for a first time dual-booter to make the experience more pleasant, I'd appreciate it.
* Since I can't locate my Windows 7 DVD anywhere, I have to pick up a new System Builder DVD. Windows 8 Pro is currently so much cheaper than Windows 7 that I'm hamstrung into getting it.
-
Now, since I plan to use the Windows installation for gaming and since I have an extra hard drive for media files and backups, I was wondering if it'd be better to split the SSD for more room for Windows to install programs.
That's exactly what I do and it's working well. Also, in general, Windows apps seem to demand more space.
I also use Steam Mover (http://www.traynier.com/software/steammover) to shuffle games between limited SSD space and capacious HDD space; it's not as vital now that Steam lets you create multiple libraries, but still handy for keeping everything you want installed all the time, then temporarily moving what you're playing right now onto the SSD.
-
Matter of priorities, I suppose -- I keep Windows on its own 1TB drive and have OpenSUSE on a 120GB SSD. Windows tends to take up more space (mostly because of games), while OpenSUSE is my primary OS; hence that choice.
My current space use for OpenSUSE is 7GB for the root partition (out of 40GB total) and 23GB for the home partition (out of 76GB).
Keep in mind, of course, that Ubuntu will be able to read your Windows partition but not the other way around.
-
But the only time I care about drive latency is when I'm playing games.
-
Right, a fair point. Like I said, it's down to priorities.
-
Whatever you end up doing, install Windows first, then Ubuntu, which will handle Grub (the thing that handles booting into whichever OS). Just leave some unpartitioned space for Ubuntu when you install Windows.
-
<Defenestration> My computer makes no goddamn sense whatsoever lately.
<Defenestration> The start of all this was last night when my surge protector flipped off in the middle of applying a Win7 update during startup.
<Defenestration> It was so gone I couldn't even get it to boot in safe mode.
<Defenestration> So I decide to start over. I take my Win7 OEM dvd, pop it in, reboot. Only the 1 TB drive (1 TB and an SSD drive are what were installed) shows up, and states that Windows can't be installed to it. I can partition and format it, but deleting all the partitions has no effect.
<Defenestration> Checked the bios. Bios stated that both HDDs were not connected to any sata connector despite windows saying they were. The controller was enabled.
<Defenestration> I format the drives using another PC and disk manager. they both show up in the BIOS and the installer now. I install win7 and... well.
<Defenestration> There's all sorts of crazy bullshit. Drivers don't apply at random, then they do, I reboot after a glitch and it reads no boot drives except the DVD. I take a walk, come back, and with no changes at all it boots right to windows.
<Defenestration> etc.
<Defenestration> I'm thinking trash both of the HDDs, start over
-
Before doing that you might want to test them in another computer/test another HDD in that one.
-
Yeah, could be an MB problem -- it's suspicious for two drives to go at once, even given a surge like that. (Some of the goofy and unpredictable behavior could suggest RAM, except that wouldn't explain the BIOS failing to recognize the drives.)
I guess the question is whether you've got a spare computer or a spare hard drive. If you can try the drives in a different machine, do it; if you can try different drives in the same machine, do that -- whichever you can do without having to spend money on new parts first. (And if you don't have any spare anything, see if you can find somebody who does?)
-
I must be the biggest goddamn moron. I just downloaded this cache management tool (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cacheviewer-continued/#id=318214) and I have spent twenty minutes on this guy's own page, the download page for the add-on, and on Google and I cannot figure out how to open the fucking app.
-
Welp. Looks like FF 18 is an unredeemed pile of dogshit. First I have the problem above, then my NoScript controls have simply VANISHED (i.e. there's no NoScript icon, nor can I right-click to allow a webpage - and yes it's installed. I even uninstalled/reinstalled), then it straight up refused to even navigate! I clicked on bookmarks or typed in the address bar and... nothing!
I mean there's errors with widgets or tools or shit, but Jesus hotboxing Christ it's been a while since I had to deal with ALL BASIC BROWSING FUNCTIONS just quitting. I don't even think IE was ever that bad.
The best part is how hostile Mozilla has become. They REAALLLLYY don't want people resetting back to previous versions of a given browser (I am seriously considering reversion to FF17). For any serious problems they suggest a reset. Well re-setting destroys basically everything but your bookmarks. I did it out of sheer necessity but damned if the naked FF wasn't so unwieldy that I un-did the reset. Luckily this fixed the unable-to-navigate problem at least.
Chrome is looking better all the time, Jesus, if only it had FF's add-on suite.
-
Welp. Looks like FF 18 is an unredeemed pile of dogshit.
Well yeah. I'm sure at that point Cid himself will be a hallway.
-
Haven't had any trouble with FF18 yet, though I certainly find the browser's increasingly inconsistent in its UI, across versions and ESPECIALLY across different OS's. The Linux and, of course, Mac versions have kept the menubar on by default, while the Windows version's gone for Chrome-style minimalism with an optional menubar. All the moving-around of different interface elements leads to weird and inconsistent placement of things like add-ons (I think I've got NoScript in 3 different places on 3 different OS's).
I've also been fucking around a little with TenFourFox, because I've pulled my 2005 Mac Mini out from the corner it was lurking in and have been using it for Pro Tools (mostly because it is fucking quiet but also because of the trouble I've been having getting OSX to run properly on my Mac Pro). Mozilla has abandoned support for OSX/PPC, so TenFourFox is a fork.
The most interesting decision the TFF devs have made is to abandon support for Flash and, if I'm not mistaken, all other browser plugins too. I can understand why they do it from a security perspective, because running obsolete, unsupported Flash is a great damn way to open a gaping security hole in your system, but...look, there's still a hell of a lot of Flash shit that hasn't implemented an HTML5 alternative, and I often need to fire up that stuff; it would sure be nice if you gave me the "I understand the risks" option like for sites with bad certificates.
Because it's not like I go "Oh, guess I won't watch this video, then"; I open it up in goddamn Safari instead. And if you were REALLY concerned about my security, you wouldn't be encouraging me to use a goddamn outdated unsupported version of Safari.
(Also: the latest PPC version of iTunes -- which automatically installs if you run a System Update -- requires a version of QuickTime which does not exist for PPC.)
-
Alright now I am legitimately asking for help. I was able to revert to FF17 without any trouble. However, NoScript's icon still wont appear, nor can I bring up the dialogue by right-clicking an affected page.
I tried to simply restore the icon using the customize feature, but the only icons that appear in the customize screen are the base FF utility icons (separator, history, bookmarks, etc.). No Add-On icons appear at all in the customize screen, so there's nothing to drag back to the menu bar.
I have been at google with this for some time and I am really not finding anything particularly useful.
EDIT: I have also forced a regeneration on the extension.### files in my profile. This did not fix things either.
-
I've been noticing huge spikes in framedrop in any games I play recently and my computer has started shutting itself down randomly today.
This really feels like the power source is going bad, but it's only a few years old and about twice what the computer demands. Is there any good way to possibly fix / at least make sure that's what it is before dropping a few hundred bucks on the idea?
-
I'd check your fans before anything else.
-
That said, if it is the power supply, that's like ... eighty bucks for a really good one. Not "a few hundred bucks" either way.
-
If you've got another computer onhand, try swapping power supplies out; that's the surest way to see if it's really the PS.
That was roughly my symptom with my video card for a year and a half; I believe it was sucking too much voltage. A week or two back I underclocked it using MSI Afterburner and it's worked like a charm since. That's probably not your problem since it's been a sudden change in your case and not an ongoing issue corresponding with a specific piece of hardware (and software, in DirectX), but I figured I'd throw it out there.
-
Been seeing subtle small errors here and there that have made me wonder about this box in general and the state of my HD in particular, so I ran chkdsk (including a physical disk check) on my OS partition this morning while I went out. Problem was that when I came home there was nothing but a black screen and I wound up having to hard reboot.
Is there any way to see the results of the last chkdsk a given Win7 system has run, or am I stuck re-running it?
-
Been seeing subtle small errors here and there that have made me wonder about this box in general and the state of my HD in particular, so I ran chkdsk (including a physical disk check) on my OS partition this morning while I went out. Problem was that when I came home there was nothing but a black screen and I wound up having to hard reboot.
Is there any way to see the results of the last chkdsk a given Win7 system has run, or am I stuck re-running it?
A quick search revealed this: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/2172-63-win7-chkdsk-file-location (http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/2172-63-win7-chkdsk-file-location) Not sure if it'll help, but it's worth a shot.
-
I actually found something similar and was able to tget the results, but thanks!
-
The backlight on my monitor is going. I have to turn to power on about a dozen times now before the fluorescent light kicks in. I've confirmed it's the backlight because you can still faintly see the display if you shine a flashlight right at the screen.
Now, my monitor is an older one (a Viewsonic vx2235wm), but I still like it quite a bit. I went screen shopping at some of the local places and frankly I gotta ask. Why is the current screen selection just total shit? It seems like there were only two screens available: The same size, only cheap and shitty, with burring and crap colour. Or a very nice image and colour.... on a 27 inch screen with the exact same resolution as the 22 inch screen I bought seven years ago. I was like, did I actually go back in time? Because my old screen seems way better than anything I saw on offer (TBF, I did spend a full day online doing comparisons before buying this screen, because I really wanted to get something nice, so I think I was ahead of the game at the time).
Anyway, has anyone ever done a backlight repair? Is this really a feasible thing? I mean, if it can be done, it might be a hell of a lot cheaper anyway, so it my be a better idea on those grounds alone.
-
When I bought my monitor I probably spent months shopping -- which, if your monitor is going out, isn't a luxury you're going to have.
I keep an eye out for deals on Dealzmodo, and I think Samsung tends to have the best balance between price and quality.
I've never done a backlight replacement; any place I've worked that's been a case of "Get it fixed by the manufacturer if it's under warranty, donate it if it's not."
At a glance the first tutorial I found was at chrismeyer.org (http://chrismeyer.org/projects/LCD-Backlight-Repair/). It looks like a pretty serious project, but if you can get the parts for cheap then it's not like you've got much to lose. (Keeping in mind my recent work on my Wii and realization that (1) I broke it pretty badly but (2) it's not actually any less functional than it was before I started and (3) I'm only out a $25 Amazon gift card I got for Christmas.)
-
I know there's a local chain that charges $60 for a straight inverter repair, so that may still be an option. But I'd assume that doesn't include the cost of the part(s). If it's not stupidly difficult, I'd prefer to do it myself. The annoying part is that I have no alternate monitor to use in the interim.
The description of rewiring the power and possibly adding a new switch seems moderately daunting though, so I dunno (electricals are easily my worst mechanical suit).
Anyway, I'm not super-concerned with getting the best possible price. It just seemed to me that every monitor available for sale was actually of a significantly lesser quality than the one I currently have. Which seems absurd given how long ago I bought it.
-
The same thing happened my monitor.It turned out to be a capacitor problem. Replaced those, it's now working fine.
Open it up and look for some big electrolytic capacitors. If any of those look like they're bulging at the top, replace them and any capacitors of the same size and type.
-
Damnedest thing happening with my browsers today.
Firefox keeps hanging. Like every time I open a page it just becomes unresponsive; all the open windows appear as just a titlebar and empty gray window. If I give it long enough it'll come back, but sometimes it'll take minutes.
So I tried Konqueror, and it crashes any time I try to load any page.
So I tried Chrome, and it won't load any pages; it just spins for awhile and then tells me the tab needs to be killed.
So I tried Opera, and...Opera seems to be working okay. But its fonts are ugly and it doesn't recognize my Flash plugin for some reason.
Tried rebooting, fsck, downgrading Firefox to the previous version, closing all other open programs -- no change.
EDIT: Gotta be Flash. I realized that all the pages I'm having trouble with have Flash embedded somewhere on them. Flash not working with Opera is WHY every page is working in Opera.
-
Okay, we are having serious usage issues here. We have three people, and three computers and every damn month we are going over our usage cap, with the total only going higher every month (albeit by small marginal amounts) and this is costing me hard dollars, easily more than a hundred, over the past few months. I bought a higher cap a couple months ago, thinking that would cover things, but we are busting through that too.
As far as I know no one has changed their usage habits (and I use damn little bandwidth to begin with), but I need to source this problem. I want to find out which computer is responsible and with that in mind, I'm hoping someone has a suggestion for a widget which can tell me one simple thing: Total upload/download volumes by the computer the monitor is installed on - I'm talking ALL internet traffic.
Does anyone have any recommendations?
-
"Leave Canada."
But no, seriously, if you have access to the computer you can just check the network properties and it should show you upload/download volumes for the current session. Unless the computer is regularly disconnecting, you should be able to see which one it is that way. Right click the connection icon in the taskbar, everything else varies by version of OS but is pretty simple.
-
By current session you mean "Since the computer was last turned on" right? Because that's not really going to help over the course of a month.
Also, On Win7, Network Properties is a totally different animal and I see nowhere there that describes upload/download volumes (Yes, I have googled this and do not see anything close to what you've described). I'm not saying it's not there, but if that's a built-in feature it's not making itself readily apparent.
I've been looking at recommended Net monitors, but they seems to all be looking at "current" (as in immediate) usage, rather than usage over a longer period of time.
NetWorx seems to have been recommended in a couple places. Anyone had any experience with it?
-
By current session you mean "Since the computer was last turned on" right? Because that's not really going to help over the course of a month.
Also, On Win7, Network Properties is a totally different animal and I see nowhere there that describes upload/download volumes (Yes, I have googled this and do not see anything close to what you've described). I'm not saying it's not there, but if that's a built-in feature it's not making itself readily apparent.
(http://i.imgur.com/NllgKej.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/lNGMZ4o.png)
-
Okay, so insert the line about me staring at a screen in confusion or whatever.
With that out of the way, I just want to make sure that "Duration" and "Current Session" all refer to the same thing: Activity since you turned the computer on. Correct?
What I've been getting at is that even though I can see the current usage, it's monthly use I'm trying to get at. Bizarrely enough, we turn our computers off at night.
-
I use ShaPlus Bandwidth Meter (http://www.shaplus.com/bandwidth-meter/) for that exact purpose myself. I got within half a gig of my cap a couple times without being charged, so it seems to be pretty accurate. It even keeps track of your monthly totals as long as you want.
(http://francois.brontoforum.us/miscpic/meter.png)
It's grown less useful as I use my Wii to watch let's plays nowadays but it still does the job computer-wise.
-
Okay, so I bought this monitor (http://www.samsung.com/ca/consumer/office/monitors/led/LS24A450UWT/ZA) to replace the one I've had with the failing backlight. Did some research beforehand - it had good reviews and it had the 16: 10 aspect ratio I wanted at a decent price.
Big problem. It is WAY too fucking bright. I am at 30% brightness and my eyes still hurt. Also, the colour is skewed yellow, but also too cold (so changing the red/green colour sliders to emphasize yellow makes the cold/warm problem worse and reducing the blue slider makes the yellowing problem worse.
Now, I suspect that this all boils down to the colour temperature of the screen being set too high. Default for many LCDs is 9500k and colour looks better 6500k or even 5000k. Unfortunately, my screen's firmware does not seem to have any place to manually set this. It doesn't say anything in the manual, I can't find anything in Win 7, hell, it doesn't even say anything on the manufacturer's website.
At this point it looks like I am going to be stuck returning this thing and sucking on the restocking fee unless anyone else has any suggestions. I am fucking pissed right now. God knows not a single fucking thing I ever buy seems to work right, no matter how bloody much research I do beforehand.
I have searched any number of phrase combinations on google for hours, colour temperature, Samsung, the model number windows 7, blah blah. Samsung also has a pile of little screen-widgets that I tried installing without success.
EDIT: The most annoying thing is that this review of a different monitor (http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/content/samsung_s27b970d.htm) shows screenshots of a very similar firmware, only that version actually has a full colour temperature menu. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
:rage:
-
Tried cranking down the gamma? My monitor is eye-searingly bright at default values, but not half bad at a uniform 0.83. That also gives you another set of R/G/B sliders to play with if you're so inclined.
-
The gamma only has three crude settings "mode 1" "mode 2" and "mode 3", none of which really fix the problem. I wound up diddling with the gamma in Windows and also via my ATI drivers without really fixing the issue.
-
When upgrading from a Radeon X1950 to a Radeon HD 7870, will I have to uninstall the old display drivers, or will the install program on the CD that comes with the new card just handle all that stuff by itself?
-
When upgrading from a Radeon X1950 to a Radeon HD 7870, will I have to uninstall the old display drivers, or will the install program on the CD that comes with the new card just handle all that stuff by itself?
Don't use the display drivers on the CD. Download the latest release of the drivers from ATI's website. Do so on a fairly regular basis (IE when they update) for best performance.
-
I have a 5770 and I can also agree that this is the better option.
-
But if I shut off the computer, switch in the new card, and turn the computer back on, the display will still work before I install the new ATI drivers?
-
If nothing else, it should run with the default Windows VGA driver, at an ass-ugly resolution and color depth. That should keep you long enough to get a current driver. (AMD wisely puts the driver link right at the top of its homepage.) Or, better yet, download the latest version of Catalyst first, stick it on your desktop or somewhere else easily-accessible, and run it as soon as you've got the new card in.
I'd probably uninstall the old driver first just to be on the safe side. Generally if you update Catalyst it'll take out the old version, but I haven't made the kind of version jump that you are before. (It appears you'll be going from 10.x to 13.x.)
-
Oh my dear sweet Jesus this thing works so good :ohgod:
Before (http://0xdeadbeef.brontoforum.us/DSII800.jpg)
After (http://0xdeadbeef.brontoforum.us/DSII1920.jpg)
-
Oh my dear sweet Jesus this thing works so good :ohgod:
Before (http://0xdeadbeef.brontoforum.us/DSII800.jpg)
After (http://0xdeadbeef.brontoforum.us/DSII1920.jpg)
Welcome to real graphics.
I upgraded to a GTX 560 Ti at the same time that Crysis 2 went on sale. I bought it just because :ohgod:
-
I've mentioned before that I've had to underclock my GTX 570 to keep it from BSoDing me.
Still managed to lock up a game of Half-Life under Linux the other day. HALF-LIFE.
-
I've mentioned before that I've had to underclock my GTX 570 to keep it from BSoDing me.
Still managed to lock up a game of Half-Life under Linux the other day. HALF-LIFE.
My 560 Ti's been working pretty nice, especially for one I got slightly-used on the cheap - but I only run Windows there, I have a separate desktop for Linux.
-
This may not be quite the right thread, but after three separate purchases and nothing that seems to refer specifically to this issue does anyone know one way or the other if play-n-charge cables work through a PC?
Just to clarify, I'm not trying to use a 360 wireless controller through the cable. I have a pc controller and a wireless receiver, but can't manage to charge the battery. When the PnC cable is connected the 360 icon on the controller lights up but the LED on the connecting piece of the charge cable doesn't do anything, and the battery doesn't hold a charge. Though I have been able to use it while it is actively plugged in, so it's getting some level of power.
-
As far as I know, the play-n-charge doesn't let you use the Xbox controller on the PC. It just uses the USB to charge; you need a separate wireless adaptor. That's why I bought a wired Xbox controller to use on the PC.
-
Don't do it! :itsatrap:
The USB cable is, yes, for charging only. But the wireless adapters are utter shit; I struggled with one for weeks before I went out and bought a PC USB controller. I'd sync the controller to the adapter, sit the adapter on my desk, and hold the controller not three inches above the adapter -- it'd still drop the signal after five or ten minutes.
-
That's the other reason why I bought a wired Xbox controller to use on the PC.
-
Don't do it! :itsatrap:
The USB cable is, yes, for charging only. But the wireless adapters are utter shit; I struggled with one for weeks before I went out and bought a PC USB controller. I'd sync the controller to the adapter, sit the adapter on my desk, and hold the controller not three inches above the adapter -- it'd still drop the signal after five or ten minutes.
Mine worked when I first set it up, then I didn't use it for a few months and now it doesn't work at all -- doesn't even light up. It is, of course, out of warranty now.
So yeah, echoing the "Don't do it" sentiment. For PC controllers I'd recommend Logitech. I've had a Cordless Rumblepad 2 for like 7 years now and it's a great damn controller (D-pad it a little mushy but still better than the Xbox one); I haven't used the Wireless Gamepad F710 (http://amzn.to/11HNUir) but it looks like basically the same controller updated to work with Xinput and Logitech's universal wireless adapter (meaning you don't need a separate dongle for every piece of Logitech gear you have, they'll all work off one dongle).
If you're okay with wired controllers, the F310 (http://amzn.to/16VURMJ) appears to be the same thing with a wire for half the price. But if you're going the wired route you've got a million damn options -- NES controller, SNES controller, PS1 or PS2 controller, and so on.
-
Man I have had some fucking weirdness with package breakage ever since I started on this whole OpenSUSE thing. Files get inexplicably corrupted and I have to force reinstall packages. For some reason LibreOffice is affected the most by this; it's failed on me and required a reinstallation several times already this week, most recently crashing in the middle of my editing an open spreadsheet and then giving me the inexplicable error "cannot execute binary file" when I tried to start it again.
I suspect physical corruption on the hard drive (since it seems localized to one partition and very specific to one app suite that would presumably be stored around the same physical location), but I'm not sure if SSD's work quite like that. There doesn't seem to be a decent defrag tool for ext4, and I haven't looked into surface scan tools yet. (My recollection from the last time I had a similar problem is that it's not as straightforward under Linux as Windows. Surprising, right?)
For now I've ripped LO3.x out entirely and am trying 4.0 from the Unstable repo. On the off chance that it's just a problem with the package and the Unstable version will actually be more stable.
-- MEANWHILE --
I've been getting terrible Internet service over the past few weeks (which always seems to happen right around the time they raise my rates), exacerbated by infuriating behavior from Firefox. I don't know what the fuck's causing it, but it's as if once it starts timing out on pages, it keeps doing it even if the bandwidth situation gets better. Like, it'll just sit there with a spinning throbber when I'm trying to access my router or even CUPS on localhost. Quitting and restarting fixes it.
-
I have an F710 and don't like it very much, but it's kind of in that aggravating "worst option except for all the others" area. The build quality is just not very good, the buttons are sticky and edgy and the whole thing feels like the thing is a hollow shell waiting to crack. But I did mash my way through two Ys games on the thing with no problem, so it does hold up well enough.
If you have a PS3 controller my suggestion is to just go with that, the drivers are a bit weird but not as terrible as people say they are. Failing that, sure, Logitech.
-
As far as I know, the play-n-charge doesn't let you use the Xbox controller on the PC. It just uses the USB to charge; you need a separate wireless adaptor.
Just to clarify, I'm not trying to use a 360 wireless controller through the cable. I have a pc controller and a wireless receiver, but can't manage to charge the battery.
But the wireless adapters are utter shit; I struggled with one for weeks before I went out and bought a PC USB controller.
Apparently the receivers are very clearly an xbox product, in that they will overheat to the point where the wiring unsolders itself. This happened to my original receiver and started the snowball of investment that lead to me getting another charge kit instead of giving up.
For PC controllers I'd recommend Logitech. ... NES controller, SNES controller, PS1 or PS2 controller, and so on.
If you have a PS3 controller my suggestion is to just go with that, the drivers are a bit weird but not as terrible as people say they are. Failing that, sure, Logitech.
I do have multiple PS3 controllers I usually default to. I'm just lazy enough that since most games have native support for the 360, if anything, that I like having one on hand to whip out and not need to worry about running any background programs or trying to rebind inputs.
It's frustrating how easy it is to automatically hit L1 / R1 for a trigger when the default conversion makes it L2 / R2.
No update on getting anything to work though, or even anyone else who has this exact problem online. Just a lot of people demanding the usb power cord work to transmit data. Guess that was another twenty bucks down the microsoft hole.
-
DS3 tool dude. It emulates your ps3 controller as a 360 controller. You don't have to worry about fiddling around with any drivers.
-
I haven't used DS3 Tool but x360ce is relatively painless. Extract the files, run the executable, configure once (or not -- it's got presets for loads of controllers), and after that it's just three files you need to copy to the same directory as any executable you want to run.
Not nearly as hands-off as I'd like, but once you've done it the first time it only takes about 30 seconds for each subsequent game.
-
Been having an odd problem with my new screen... or perhaps with Windows 7.
I use a very low brightness setting on the screen, but even at a low level, the screen's still plenty bright. Once in a while, when I boot up, the screen is actually noticeably darker (still clear and not dark or anything, but certainly dimmer), only it's not the backlight sputtering or anything - because the mouse is still fully bright white.
Turning the screen on and off does nothing and it's only an occasional problem. A reboot always fixes it.
WTF?
-
The USB hard drive I've had for about two years has suddenly begun randomly disconnecting from my computer.
The LED doesn't stop going but the computer completely stops recognizing it. Sometimes refreshing drive management sees it, sometimes un-and-replugging work. Sometimes neither.
-
Help! I think my computer died for real this time. The motherboard is the most likely cause. What would be a good replacement for an ASRock G31m-s (http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/G31M-S/)? I don't know computers all that well, but a board with a comparable physical layout would be ideal, preferably one manufactured by a better company than ASRock.
-
Well, if you aren't interested in upgrading your cpu, make sure your CPU is compatible. It's a micro-atx, so make sure you get one the same size. Since your old motherboard used DDR2 sticks of ram, you'll probably need to get some DDR3 ram if you get a new motherboard. Good news though, DDR3 ram is ludicrously cheaper than DDR2 ram ever was. You can probably get 4 gigs of ram for about 25 bucks.
-
...
Another false alarm. Apparently what was causing the problem was a component that had slightly fallen out of place.
-
That's computers!
-
I'm trying to find a Firefox plugin that does a few things I need for bookmark management. I haven't been able to find anything because there aren't any unique keywords to use in my google search, so I get walls of hits for things I'm not looking for.
What I'm trying to do is open or organize multiple links (each to a new tab) from a bookmarks subfolder, without opening ALL of those links in new tabs. See, I may spend several hours searching for X or Y and to save myself grief, I'll bookmark them as I find them. Later on I'll want to purchase/read/watch some of what I bookmarked, but not ALL of it at once. I want to pick and choose which bookmarks to open, without having to open my bookmarks menu and going to the sub sub sub folder each time I want to open one link. It's tedious and stupid. The default is to either open one link or all of them - never to select multiples.
Does anybody know an extension that does this?
-
Well I'll be -- I left OpenSUSE alone for awhile and just ran updates from a chrooted terminal under Mint for a few weeks, and it DID eventually fix itself.
Sort of. Now I get errors when I run Firefox. And Lord knows how long this'll last given that the very first thing it's asking me to do is update my nVidia drivers, which is what started this fucking mess in the first place.
Meanwhile, my HTPC is having its own series of inexplicable problems, with settings disappearing, up to and including a restore point that was there a week ago and isn't there now. Symptoms suggest a hard drive going south but I've run multiple scans including a full surface scan and there's been no evidence of that. Could be I picked up some malware somewhere; I haven't been able to find any but then every time Malwarebytes runs it breaks partway through the scan.
-
MTP (for Nexus 7) is half-working again too; I have read access again but no write access.
Haven't had a chance to check whether SMB is working yet.
Still haven't identified what's wrong with my HTPC. Booted to a Mint DVD; once again, no errors coming up in a disk scan. Ran clamscan overnight and it reported 14 infected files, but I stupidly forgot to set it to log (it was late and I was tired) so I don't know what the hell they are and had to run it again.
I'm not sold on the idea that it's some kind of malware outbreak, but every disk scan I've run has come up clean. Could be some corrupted system files somewhere but I haven't been able to find hard evidence of that, either. Could be something running at boot time that's messing everything up (and that I have less trouble in Safe Mode backs this supposition up -- but that I still have SOME trouble in Safe Mode doesn't) but I didn't find anything abnormal with HijackThis either. I've changed AV software and turned off OwnCloud and those haven't had an impact either. (And turning off my backup software feels like a terrible idea given that I've got config files disappearing on me.)
-
/media/win/Windows/System32/drivers/ndproxy.sys: Win.Trojan.Zbot-16275 FOUND
/media/win/Windows/System32/drivers/rdpdr.sys: Win.Trojan.Zbot-16284 FOUND
/media/win/Windows/SysWOW64/deployJava1.dll: Win.Trojan.Agent-346346 FOUND
/media/win/Windows/SysWOW64/taskeng.exe: Win.Trojan.Agent-351251 FOUND
/media/win/Windows/winsxs/amd64_microsoft-windows-rasbase_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7601.17514_none_6c066d50910ecf5a/ndproxy.sys: Win.Trojan.Zbot-16275 FOUND
/media/win/Windows/winsxs/amd64_microsoft-windows-terminalservices-rdpdr_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7601.17514_none_5f60151d5fa6ce24/rdpdr.sys: Win.Trojan.Zbot-16284 FOUND
/media/win/Windows/winsxs/Backup/amd64_microsoft-windows-rasbase_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7601.17514_none_6c066d50910ecf5a_ndproxy.sys_4a9480d5: Win.Trojan.Zbot-16275 FOUND
/media/win/Windows/winsxs/wow64_microsoft-windows-i..etexplorer-optional_31bf3856ad364e35_8.0.7600.16385_none_19ba3f8a72d988f3/iexplore.exe: Win.Trojan.Bamital-996 FOUND
/media/win/Windows/winsxs/x86_microsoft-windows-taskscheduler-engine_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7601.17514_none_e7b3b71a1d1c8662/taskeng.exe: Win.Trojan.Agent-351251 FOUND
...huh, yeah, that might do it.
So ClamAV found them but doesn't look like it's the best program for removing them, seeing as it doesn't look like it's got an option to clean the files, just to delete them, and I don't think I should just be wiping Explorer and a bunch of other system files.
Trying Kaspersky Rescue Disk (http://support.kaspersky.com/viruses/rescuedisk) now. Hope it'll clean it up.
-
Does anyone here have a favorite Linux livecd for data recovery on a Windows machine? I'm sure most any of them will work, but I'm sure one must work better.
-
I didn't have much luck with any of the various boots I tried the last time I needed it.
It might be a good idea to go with something Ubuntu-based just on the strength of package availability. If you wind up looking for obscure FS tools, Ubuntu's a whole lot likelier to have them available as a quick install than any other distro.
-
That was my default, since it's the only distro I use with any regularity. This is what I get for still living in the same city as my parents.
-
I always use Ubuntu for such things, but mostly out of habit and comfort. It's always served my needs though, so I dunno.
-
I wish there was a wider selection of trackballs to choose from, because the Logitech M570 might be the only decent one on the market, and it's still a piece of garbage that breaks inside of a year. This is the second one that has had major right mouse button problems. They have a nice 3 year warranty which I took advantage of last time, but I'm not sure if they will honor it on this RMA replacement.
-
Huh. I've been using the wired version for years and have no complaints. I guess this explains why the wired one goes for crazy prices used.
And apparently so does the Cordless Optical Trackman now, too. Guess I better hang onto the things.
Looks like they still make the Trackman Marble. I've never used it; I take it it's not great?
Kensington's got a couple models now that aren't $100 monsters. Are those any better?
-
Hey, it worked! I had very low hopes, given that it's old enough hardware I couldn't boot from USB so I had to go back several Ubuntu versions to find an image that fit on CD.
-
Ah -- given that restriction I'd have probably suggested good old-fashioned Knoppix (http://www.knoppix.org/), but glad you found one that worked for you anyhow.
-
Everything outside of the two trackballs logitech still makes (the wireless marble just stopping being supported, so they are like 100 bucks new now) and Kensington's products are all not made anymore and ludicrously expensive. Luckily, I think a local pc chain near me might have a trackman wheel in stock at 2002 price.
Kensington's trackballs seem okay, but I would very much miss the regular mouse wheel that doubles as a button. They also have varying mousewheel solutions. The expert has a weird ring around the ball itself, and the thinner, more expensive version makes you turn the trackball itself for mousewheel function. And on top of that I could just buy two more of my crappy malfunction-prone M570s for the price of one kensington device.
Oh, and I am currently seeing if Logitech will honor the warranty of the RMA replacement mouse they sent me last time this happened. Which may or may not work. It would be nice if I didn't have to give them money every 2 years because the build quality of their product is abysmal.
-
Ugh, I don't know what I did but youtube is doing the "video doesn't actually start animating for 2 seconds after starting the video" thing again. Does anyone know anything that I could do to fix this?
-
Tried googling this, but awkward wording means I can't seem to find an answer.
Anybody know how to make Win7 recognize game controller inputs such that my screen shut off won't kick in? I have my screen set to shut off after 10 minutes of inactivity, but while I was using ZNES with a controller, the damn screen kept shutting off - I guess because it doesn't recognize the gamepad use as input activity?
-
Maybe grab Joy2Key and configure the button presses as keyboard inputs? It's a bit of a kludge, but it would probably do the trick.
-
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/21990-power-plan-create-shortcut-change-power-plan.html (http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/21990-power-plan-create-shortcut-change-power-plan.html)
Set this up, and just toggle between the two.
-
So my launch-era 60gb PS3 is finally yellow lighting me. Has anyone had any experience with getting one fixed or refurbished without Sony robbing them of backwards compatibility for PS2 games?
-
I haven't but everything I've seen about yellow light fixes make it seem like a temporary thing. There are services outside of sony that guarantee that you'll get your console back, but they aren't doing anything you couldn't yourself and paying 80+ dollars seems like a waste for a repair job that will last anywhere between a few weeks and a year or two.
-
Two separate yellow light situations for friends were both resolved by taking off the outer plastic and blowing out the dust.
-
Probably every third or forth time I connect to the PSN it kills my network to the point that the only way for me to fix it is to connect my modem directly into my computer, reset my network adapter, reacquire my internet connection, connect my modem back to my router and then reconfigure my network. Its a huge pain in the ass.
-
I'm trying to get something out of the "Add/Remove Programs" widget in the control panel. I uninstalled it from my computer, all the files are gone, and I even went into regedt32 to remove it there, but it's still won't leave the Add/Remove list. I'm using Windows XP. Any suggestions?
-
AVG has been pretty fucking obnoxious, as well as mostly useless lately. I especially love those occasional times it slows my boot-up time and then puts up a message saying "See how much faster your computer loaded?". Basically it's getting really close the point where it's not a solution, it's the kind of problem those solutions are made to solve. Most people I know think it's a useless joke anyway.
The main reason I haven't switched yet is because I'm cheap. My question is, are there still any free anti-virus programs out there anymore that aren't laughable? I have adware and spybot and the like already.
-
If you're on Windows 7, Microsoft Security Essentials is free and honestly excellent. Low-impact, very effective.
-
Seconding the surprising quality of MSE. Unless you're a pretty hard power user, MSE is good enough as your always running AntiVirus.
Still do regular sweeps with Spybot et al, but yeah.
-
As for the Spybot and whatnot, what I've found and gathered is that you only really need MalwareBytes. Anything else is superfluous and incomplete.
At least, that's been my experience.
-
So my launch-era 60gb PS3 is finally yellow lighting me. Has anyone had any experience with getting one fixed or refurbished without Sony robbing them of backwards compatibility for PS2 games?
Speaking from daily internal experience, just do the trade in and pull out your PS2. The BC is not worth the cost of maintaining a crumbling device. Shit's like 7 years old, and you're not going to find a non-Sony repair outlet that can do what you want either. They do not make the parts anymore, and the service center is going to just throw your console onto a pile to be fixed eventually with twine and hope and send you a different console done the same way that will function for 3 months to 2 years until it inevitably YLODs again.
Your options are $129 bucks about every year to say you have BC (90 day warranty) or $99 for a 250 GB super slim (1 year warranty).
I know the super slim probably isn't your favorite hardware design, but the only reason there is a non-trade in option at all is because people bitch endlessly about it.
Two separate yellow light situations for friends were both resolved by taking off the outer plastic and blowing out the dust.
This man (could be) speaking the truth. The yellow light that everyone homes in on doesn't actually mean anything. The flashing red light is the ticket, and is the universal Sony way of saying "HELP HELP HELP I DON'T EVEN." True story, if your Sony camcorder or printer fucks up, it will have the same flashing red light. It probably IS the processor for reasons you already know, but it could be the power supply, the GPU, a faulty fan, etc. If you insist upon 3rd party repair, do not leave your machine anywhere where they don't acknowledge that a YLOD has multiple possible causes on the slight chance that it isn't.
-
So, let's say for the sake of argument that the budget-brand desktop I bought in 2006 is showing its age a bit. And let's say, purely for the sake of argument, of course, that I can't afford an entire new box.
How do I even determine whether there would be a benefit to upgrading cards and RAM and so on? What's the chokepoint before I need a new motherboard/processor?
-
Easiest thing would probably be just to post your specs.
If it's 32-bit, replace it. Beyond that, well, it could be salvageable; I'm running a 2006 Mac Pro and am pretty pleased with it except for the overpriced RAM upgrade and having to underclock the video card to make it stop using too much juice.
I've also got a 2009-era Pentium which is probably the equivalent of a higher-end 2006 machine. It's more than enough for media, and adequate for gaming.
-
Does http://www.logicalincrements.com/ (http://www.logicalincrements.com/) count as an idiot's guide?
-
I've got a Pentium 4 running at 3 Ghz, with 1.87 GB of RAM. My graphics card is an ATI Radeon Xpress 200 series.
So this emaciated old box is at or below the "Destitute" rig specs on Logical Increments, there. This is no surprise. I guess that site's a good estimate of what I'd be paying to build my own rig, but that assumes I'm capable of building my own rig.
-
They point out that even crappy CPUs are great as far as most games are concerned.
Do you have the speed + standard of your RAM?
Because if you don't need to replace your CPU + Board (probably you do, but whatever) you might be able to get something that's got more modern graphics support and fewer RAM problems if you just bump those up.
-
Honestly we're at a point where the average requirements are going to fluctuate wildly, what with new consoles coming out. The minimum required ram is going to start being 6-8 gigs of ram, and who knows where we'll be for CPU requirements. If you want to upgrade, I'd probably wait for about a year to see where we end up.
-
This is true, but I'm guessing he wants to be able to Terraria and/or emulate PS1+2 before the year is up.
-
According to what I can find or scan, I put in all the RAM the system could handle when I bought the machine in the first place -- that's only two gigs. So if I want to upgrade, it'll be a whole new computer. :shrug:
-
Two gigs is what I have right now, and I can still play everything that I want to play as long as it'll run on Windows XP. Heck, according to that logicalincrements list, everything I have except my CPU and PSU are below Destitute; it's a machine I built myself four years ago with parts worth 700$.
-
It's not worth upgrading any machine whose motherboard has a P4 slot on it.
I'd say that, generally speaking, it's worth learning to build a computer. It's easy (and getting easier all the time) and it's cheap. The downside is that it's time-consuming and there are a million little details you can miss that may result in less-than-optimal system performance. (The last machine I built, I had constant crashes until I found out that the overclocking-friendly motherboard I'd bought had defaulted to running my RAM at a nonstandard spec.)
If you want to buy a machine that's already built, there's a reason HP and Dell are still considered the best brands (despite the latter's recent financial difficulties). I've had good luck with Samsung and Asus on portable devices, but I honestly don't even know if they make desktops.
Which is another point: if you're not worried about upgradability, a laptop's not a bad way to go. It sounds like you've got pretty modest spec requirements and could get a laptop for not much more than a desktop.
But you should wait a month. All the best sales happen in November.
-
Oh, buying a new computer is going to be a year-long endeavor, whether I build it myself or buy a stock model. Upgrading this old machine was intended to be a cheaper alternative. Perhaps you've forgotten how not-rich I am!
-
But you're so rich in spirit.
-
And girth.
-
Think I'm finally in the market for a new desktop.
Insurance is covering my stolen Mac Mini for the price of a new one, $600. I liked my Mini as a backup fileserver and for recording audio (since it's so quiet), but it's really not worth buying a new one at full price.
So my thinking -- after spending yet another day of my life yesterday trying to beat my 2006 Mac Pro (https://support.apple.com/kb/SP30) into shape when my graphics card decided to crash it yet again -- is that I'm going to use my Pro as the audio/backup machine (because it'll be pretty flippin' quiet too if I revert it to the 7300GT video card it came with and an SSD, with maybe a couple platter drives to use as a software RAID for backup that I can temporarily disable when I'm recording) and build a new desktop as my primary machine.
I don't need a new video card; my GTX570 can run Arkham City at 2560x1440 with all the shit cranked up to max (except vsync), and that's with the card underclocked so it won't crash my computer. I also don't need a new keyboard, monitor, mouse, or speakers.
But I haven't built a new desktop in 4 years, and that one was a budget Pentium that I built for watching videos. (Actually, I probably AM going to buy a new video card for that one, as it's running an old Radeon HD 2600XT; it's good for video, and games like Arkham City and Brutal Legend will run playably at 1080p but tend to sputter a bit. If anyone can recommend a good sub-$100 video card that'll play recent games at 1080p without too much fuss, I'd like to get one of those. GT 630 doesn't seem like it'd be too bad a deal for that machine, though an AMD card would be more convenient since it's already got AMD drivers installed.) I could use some advice on what parts would be good for a solid mid-to-high-range PC (keeping in mind that, with the occasional graphics card, RAM, and drive upgrade, my current machine has lasted me 6 years and would probably still be a perfectly cromulent computer if not for all the weird little compatibility issues you get when you buy Apple).
I'm thinking maybe something in the i5 range but if I can get a good deal on i7 I might go that route. (And if anyone can give me a good reason to go AMD, I'm willing to listen, but my last AMD card had pretty serious cooling issues and from what I understand the gulf in quality between Intel and AMD has only gotten worse in the years since.) 8GB RAM seems about right. I'd like a case that's decently cool, not too complicated to put together, and not fucking hideous. (Something black or silver and boxy would be just fine. Glowing lights and too many angles are things to avoid. USB3 slots would probably be good for future-proofing, though at present I have zero USB3 devices.) Still want an optical drive that can burn dual-layer DVD's, but don't need Blu-Ray; fuck Blu-Ray. Don't need a wireless card either, as it's going to be sitting right next to my router and I prefer wired speeds on my desktops anyway.
I think I'll probably get at least one new SSD for the new machine (and leave my current SSD in the Mac Pro), maybe also have a 500GB platter drive for Linux storage and a 1TB for Windows/gaming. I've probably got some of those around the house. I'm keeping an eye on SSD sales (of which there always seems to be at least one going on) and I usually go WD for hard drives. An internal card reader wouldn't be bad, but that's one of those things I can always buy later.
Sound needs to be 5.1, because I've got 5.1 speakers. I don't really have any exceptional requirements beyond that, and indeed I suppose that's not entirely necessary as I've already got an external 7.1 Diamond sound adapter, but I'd rather have it be handled internally.
Power supplies -- I'm open to suggestions. Something not too loud that's not going to die on me, doesn't produce cable hell, and has the juice to support my GTX570 (which is the main issue I've got with my MP).
I expect I'll buy this stuff around the time Cyber Monday sales hit. $600 is a ballpark figure since that's the use-it-or-lose-it value my insurance will cover; I can go a little higher but I don't want to stretch my budget too far. (I'll be looking at the usual holiday crunch, too, and I've got other stuff I want to replace -- I'm thinking get a new phone to replace my stolen iPod. And the tricky part is that the insurance only gives you a depreciated value for an item upfront and reimburses you for the new purchase value only after you buy an item -- so, for example, they've given me the not-very-much-money that a G4 Mac Mini and an iPod Photo were worth and, if and only if I buy a $600 computer and a $250 music player to replace them, they'll pay the difference. Which is a good deal, but I need to space out my purchases so I can afford the upfront cost.)
-
By "sound handled internally" do you mean the audio processing or the actual amplification/DAC? If you're using any sort of digital output (optical, HDMI, etc) your onboard audio or graphics card will perform exactly as well as an expensive PCI card. You'll only ever see a difference if you're plugging your sound system directly into the PC, and even then it's kind of hard to appreciate.
Price-performance sweet spot for CPUs these days seems to be in the low end of the Ivy Bridge i7 family. I'm running an i7-3770K myself (which was bleeding edge for non-hobbyists at the time) and, with the exact same graphics card you have, I go max settings on pretty much everything but Metro 2033particlesperfuckingframe.
My computer is loud as fuck though so I'll just shut my damned mouth when it comes to noise.
-
By "sound handled internally" do you mean the audio processing or the actual amplification/DAC?
I just meant an internal sound card, but good point.
If you're using any sort of digital output (optical, HDMI, etc) your onboard audio or graphics card will perform exactly as well as an expensive PCI card. You'll only ever see a difference if you're plugging your sound system directly into the PC, and even then it's kind of hard to appreciate.
Video card's got HDMI audio but I'd need a box to plug my speakers into. And I've already got a USB adapter for that.
Price-performance sweet spot for CPUs these days seems to be in the low end of the Ivy Bridge i7 family. I'm running an i7-3770K myself (which was bleeding edge for non-hobbyists at the time)
Thanks, that's extremely helpful; like I said, I haven't been keeping up with architectures and didn't really know the difference between Ivy Bridge and Haswell. Looks like Ivy Bridge is sticking around for awhile and is probably the better deal (seeing as this is a desktop and I'm not worried about battery life).
Don't know that I'll be doing much of anything that requires hyperthreading, though; what are the advantages of going i7 over i5?
My computer is loud as fuck though so I'll just shut my damned mouth when it comes to noise.
Well, volume isn't a deal-breaker; the point of having a separate quiet computer for audio recording is that I can just turn the louder computer off when I'm doing it.
-
Looked at some benchmarks and it definitely looks like the 3770K is the sweet spot, whether I need hyperthreading or not. Thanks for the tip.
Apparently modern computer case design falls into two categories:
1. Featureless black rectangle;
2. Black rectangle with a bunch of stupid shit on it.
I'm quite enamored of the Thermaltake New Soprano (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009LELIJI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B009LELIJI&linkCode=as2&tag=corporatesell-20) (<-- affiliate link), because it (1) is a featureless black rectangle and (2) has a slot for a SATA drive built right into the top of it, a feature I am 100% likely to use and which would make my USB drive mount completely redundant.
Still not quite in a buying mode just yet, but a picture's definitely starting to form.
Another question: am I likely to need to buy a separate CPU cooler? I've never had a problem with a stock fan on an Intel processor; is that something I should worry about if I keep it at stock speeds, or only if I decide to overclock it?
MEANWHILE, on the Cheap Graphics Card for my HTPC front, I'm thinking Radeon 6670 (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0086A7AB8/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0086A7AB8&linkCode=as2&tag=corporatesell-20). I saw a pretty great deal on the GTX650 on Dealzmodo yesterday ($75 after rebate? Something like that), but that's a PCIE 3.0 card and my HTPC's only got 2.0.
-
Another question: am I likely to need to buy a separate CPU cooler? I've never had a problem with a stock fan on an Intel processor; is that something I should worry about if I keep it at stock speeds, or only if I decide to overclock it?
Stock fans are remarkably good these days. Even with some modest overclocking, they can be fine; I've got one of the early, absurdly overclockable Sandy Bridge i5-2500K chips that I'm running at 4.0 GHz (rated speed 3.3) on the Intel fan alone, and the temperature stays sensible under any load.
One thing I discovered with that build was that my reused old case (Antec Solo) wasn't quite long enough for current graphics cards or some motherboards. I have one unusable HDD bay because the end of my GTX560Ti protrudes into its space, and it wasn't the longest card on the market even when I bought it. Shouldn't be a problem with a modern case, I hope, but worth eyeballing if you can find the dimensions easily.
-
Yeah, my card's pretty long but Maximum PC (http://www.maximumpc.com/thermaltake_new_soprano_review2013) says the New Soprano has 12.2" worth of room for one.
I think I really love this case. I mean, I'm gonna keep an eye out for other options and better deals, but...man, that HD dock is the greatest idea I've seen since they started putting USB ports on the front. And everything else about it is pretty great too. 'Cept maybe the blue glow around the power button and out the bottom, but that's positively restrained by some cases' standards.
-
Hm -- I'm seeing the 4770k starting to sell for prices pretty comparable to (and even slightly below) the 3770k. It must be November or something.
-
Addendum to my earlier comment about PCIe3.0 cards in a PCIe2.0 mobo: I've now seen it from multiple sources that they work just fine, and most likely won't even bottleneck; the difference is in top speed, and cards in the range I'm looking for are unlikely to run any worse on 2.0 hardware than 3.0.
Still glad I didn't grab the 650, as I'm now seeing 6870's for not much more and they benchmark better.
-
...so why the fuck is it so hard to find an enthusiast board without onboard video?
I am picturing a Venn diagram of people who buy Z87 motherboards and people who use onboard video, and the only point of overlap I can think of is labeled "people whose graphics card just died".
I wish they'd just take out the video ports and, I dunno, give me a few extra USB ports or SATA slots or something.
-
I'm not sure? Maybe they want to sell boards to people who are buying their machines piecemeal?
Maybe "people whose graphics card just died" is a statement that represent a large percentage of enthusiasts at some point in their "careers" and it makes some small troubleshooting difference?
-
Classic.
People buying an enthusiast board are buying their systems piecemeal, but they are not buying them without a fucking discrete graphics card.
And that's Thad's point.
-
I'm talking about a scenario where someone would need/want a computer but wouldn't have the $100-1000 to get their target card for some number of months and don't want to spend $50 for a placeholder.
I'm actually living a similar situation right now (though not because of a graphics card).
-
I appreciate having onboard as a reliable fallback at the very least, whenever something goes wrong in my monitor-cable-card-bus-driver house of cards (all of these things have dropped me down to onboard at least once). You're probably not getting any more useful ports in that space anyway, since you can only cram so many powered things together before you start running into load management issues.
-
Welp, following a trip to Fry's (not the one right next to my house, the one conveniently located 25 miles away, because that was the one that had the case I wanted for $20 less than Amazon sells it for), I now have everything but the actual computing parts.
Pretty sure I'm going to go with the 4770K. NCIX is no longer selling it for $320, which is a pity, but I'm betting it'll go down again between now and Cyber Monday, and if it doesn't, well, $340 still puts it close enough to the cost of the 3770K that I can see going with the newer model.
For the board I'm thinking I'll go with the ASRock Extreme6 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157371&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-na-_-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=). Anandtech did a roundup of midrange Haswell boards (http://www.anandtech.com/show/6989/intel-z87-motherboard-review-with-haswell-gigabyte-msi-asrock-and-asus-at-200) and it ended in a tie between the Extreme6ac and the Asus Z87 Pro. I've been an Asus buyer my entire adult life (with Gigabyte as a reliable, slightly cheaper fallback) and never bought an ASRock, but the review indicated that the Asus is the board to go with for cutting-edge features while the ASRock is the one that's got more ports crammed on it than you're ever likely to need. Given the choice, I can appreciate how cool it is that you can flash the Asus board from a memory stick without the need of a bootable OS or monitor, but that is a feature I am likely to use a maximum of one time, and besides that it sounds like the system's got some pretty weird defaults that I'd have to make a list of and change in BIOS before I ever got started.
Near as I can tell the only difference between the Extreme6 and the Extreme6ac is what it says on the tin -- the ac comes with high-speed wireless, a feature which I would welcome in a laptop but which is utterly worthless in the machine that will be sitting six feet away from my router at all times. Whereas the next step down, the Extreme4, doesn't have an MPCIE slot and the Extreme6 does. I have no immediate use for an MPCIE slot, but my reading on the subject indicates that it's useful for SSD caching, which is definitely something I'm interested in checking out later on down the line.
Anyhow, that's what I'm thinking right now. But like I've said, I haven't been keeping abreast of trends and I'm learning as I go here; if anybody has any corrections or suggestions I'll be happy to take notes.
-
I've never actually had to safely uncouch a CPU from its socket before.
Is this the kind of thing that's easy to fuck up?
-
Shouldn't be with the new ones. I've bent pins before on old ones because someone applied too much thermal grease and the CPU stuck to the heatsink and the heatsink yanked it right out.
Anyway, postscript to my Fry's trip: the reason I do not like shopping at Fry's is that they are a computer component store that hires the sort of person who, when you tell him you're here to pick up your computer case, spends 20 minutes wandering around the whole store trying to find it because there are no laptop bags set aside behind the counter.
-
http://m.slickdeals.net/f/6445384-intel-i5-3570k-149-99-i7-4770k-199-99-microcenter-b-m-only (http://m.slickdeals.net/f/6445384-intel-i5-3570k-149-99-i7-4770k-199-99-microcenter-b-m-only)
I've got a Micro Center within pretty reasonable distance if you want me to go acquire one for you.
EDIT: And out of stock. Seems to be a running theme this season.
-
Thanks for the offer; I wound up ordering my motherboard from them and my processor from NCIX. Never ordered from either company before; will let you guys know how it goes.
Guess that rounds it out for now. Got pretty good deals all around; I think when all's said and done I'll only be spending about $100 of non-insurance money.
I plan on some upgrades later -- probably do the SSD caching thing -- but I'm pretty satisfied with my build at this point. On paper. Again, will let you guys know how it works out in real life.
-
Video card blew yesterday, so I started looking at upgrading. Now, thankfully, it looks like PCIe 3 is backwards compatible with 1.1 so I can stumble along for a little bit, but I'm definitely at that point where I can't upgrade anything without replacing EVERYTHING. I've poked around a little and haven't seen anything major scheduled for 2014, but it's been years since I've even looked at components, so I may have missed something.
Is there anything coming up in the near future that's going to make me feel stupid about buying a new CPU/mobo/RAM later this month?
-
Incidentally, I still have trouble wrapping my mind around buying a component that will literally triple my graphics performance for closer to $150 than $200, and have it delivered to me next-day for $3.99.
Old man Rico, still on his porch talkin' 'bout his shoebox-sized external 20MB hard drive and cutting-edge 2400 baud modem.
-
Is there anything coming up in the near future that's going to make me feel stupid about buying a new CPU/mobo/RAM later this month?
No moreso than usual.
Next week is the perfect time to buy new. The week after Christmas is the perfect time to buy used. And if you find some deals right now, you're not likely to see TOO many better deals next week that will make you wish you hadn't. Particularly if you're like me and don't leave the house on Black Friday.
Talking of used, remember I mentioned wanting to replace the graphics card in my HTPC, in addition to getting a new primary machine? Did that last week. Went to Bookman's, which is primarily a used bookstore but which also has some electronics. I found a used eVGA GTX560 Ti with sticker price $90; with my wife's teacher discount it came out to less than $80 with tax. (And about $15 more than that when I got home, put it in my computer, and realized at the last minute that my motherboard only had one power connector and I needed to run to Fry's to buy an adapter. And then they didn't have a molex-to-6-pin adapter so instead I had to buy a molex-to-8-pin adapter and then a 6-pin-female-to-6-pin-male that I stuck on 6 of the 8 pins on the 8-pin adapter. Which I in turn about broke even for on finding that Fry's stocked the case I wanted for $20 less than Amazon but only had a beat-up display model so I had to drive a 50-mile round-trip to the other Fry's, which probably used up about $6 worth of gas.)
tl;dr I don't know how many states Bookman's is in but they're worth checking out if you're scrounging for used computer parts. There are probably other general-purpose used-item stores that stock that kind of stuff too. You probably won't get a much better deal in a brick-and-mortar store than on eBay (or vice-versa -- the blessing and curse of Internet commerce is that it's pretty well leveled the playing field and you're much less likely to get ripped off OR to get a screamin' deal than you used to be), but it's nice being able to actually look at things.
You wanna talk about feeling old, though? I figured my rig out using pcpartpicker.com (http://pcpartpicker.com/). It is a site with a list of hundreds of different computer parts that will, for example, only display motherboards and coolers that are compatible with the processor you've selected, and throw an error if you pick a video card that doesn't have enough wattage for your build. AND it lists the prices on multiple sites, including deals like rebates, free shipping, etc.
(On the subject of rebates: they're nice if you can get them but I would advise always assuming that you're going to end up paying full price for anything you get. Companies do not offer rebates because they intend to give them out, and it's easy to miss out on one on a stupid technicality which may or may not have actually happened, and be unable to reach a human being to discuss it. I consider them under "This would be a nice bonus if the card came in the mail, but I'm just going to assume it won't.")
I certainly still wound up doing my due diligence and plenty of research, but it's nothing like the old days -- hell, I built a computer as recently as 4 years ago and, while I remember there being sites sort of like this back then, they were a lot more primitive.
(Our big end-of-semester project for the computer class I took as a high school senior was to research deals on computer parts and come up with a pitch for a reasonably-priced system to build. The teacher picked the best ones, and when we came back for the next semester we built the computers. A few months later I bought a new computer for college, and it was basically just a slightly-upgraded version of the system we'd built in class. This was back in the days before NewEgg, when Amazon just sold books, and when Fry's didn't even have a damn website and the website that became frys.com was called outpost.com.)
EDIT TO ADD: I think I've already mentioned most of this already, but in case it helps anybody, here's my build:
Processor: Intel i7 4770K. It's latest-generation (Haswell) and is overclocking-friendly.
Mobo: ASRock Z87 Extreme6. One step down from the board that got an award from Anandtech (doesn't have a wireless card); one step up from the board that got an award from Tom's Hardware (does have the mini-PCIE slot that the wireless card goes in).
Case: Thermaltake New Soprano. A bit bulkier and heavier than I expected but still nice, and I really do love the built-in HD mount slot. Looks like really nice snap-in drive mounts, and good cable management. (More stuff we didn't have Back in My Day.)
Power supply: Corsair HX850M. Modular (yet another one of those new things that's just so damn nice to have that I wish we'd had in the old days). More juice than I need right now, but most reviews say it runs pretty quiet so I think it's worth it to get something with more power than I need since I figure for my next video upgrade I'll probably do the SLI thing.
Which brings us to video card: Keeping my PNY GeForce GTX 570. Good card; uses too much juice for my Mac Pro. Sincerely hope it doesn't turn out to be a problem with the card instead of the Mac, but will let you know if it does.
Drives: Bought a cheap ASUS DVD burner; other than that I'm reusing hard drives I've already got sitting around the house. But you can't visit a tech site without tripping over a dozen good deals on drives. You can get a 256MB SSD for around $150, a 1TB spinning drive for around $60, whatever. But for my part, I've got plenty of drives lying around already and, with prices already dropping all the time, I'm content to stick with what I've got for now and watch them keep falling.
RAM: Got an 8GB stick of Crucial 1600 for $60. NewEgg is running deals like that pretty much constantly right now; if you don't see one today, look again tomorrow.
Monitor: Got the 27" one they sell on Monoprice (the model that has an HDMI port, in case I ever need it, though note that HDMI doesn't actually support 1560x1440 or whatever the resolution is; you'll want dual-link DVI). It was under $500; IIRC there was some kind of sale on. Extra bonus: if you spend big money at Monoprice, they'll give you long-term discounts; since I bought the monitor I automatically get the bulk (10+) price on everything they sell.
Keyboard: The same Microsoft Natural 4000 I've been using since 2006. I bought two and use my other one at work.
Mouse: Evoluent VerticalMouse 3. Spendy but I think it really helped with my wrist pain; haven't had a cramp in years. (It might also help that I switch things up with a trackball at work -- that's one of the Logitech ones with the thumb ball that they don't make anymore.) Also, my first one broke after a couple of years of use but their customer service was excellent and I got a replacement quickly and completely covered under warranty. I don't think they make the 3 anymore but I'm willing to bet the current model is solid.
Guess that's everything, including stuff I already had before I bought the computer. Again, I'll let you know how it all goes once I actually get the new machine put together.
-
I haven't really felt CPU-bottlenecked even with an old E8400 Core2Duo, so I'm not planning on going all the way up to that i7, though it is tempting. AMD seems to have the better budget line here even though they look power-hungry, so I'm currently looking at a GIGABYTE GA-970A-D3 for AM3+ support and then ... shit, they have 8 cores for desktop lines now? That's just silly.
-
I think the 8-core lines are still considered enthusiast tier, which is shorthand for "Yes, this is silly."
-
I haven't really felt CPU-bottlenecked even with an old E8400 Core2Duo, so I'm not planning on going all the way up to that i7, though it is tempting.
Yeah, I've said before, I wouldn't be upgrading now if not for (1) being robbed and having insurance give me a choice between $350 in the bank and $700 for a new computer or (2) if my last computer had been a PC with exactly the same system specs. This 2006 Mac Pro is frankly still an excellent damn computer, it just gives me trouble with my non-Apple graphics card and non-Apple OS's.
The days of needing to upgrade every couple of years are far behind us. Hell, that GTX560Ti? I stuck it in a box with a 2009 Pentium. Arkham City now looks better on that computer than it did on my Xbox 360. (It's using whatever settings nVidia's tool set it to -- and isn't THAT another very nice feature I wish we'd had all these years -- which I believe amounts to cranking up everything to the max except DX11 (unsupported) and antialiasing (set somewhere in the middle). And lens flare. Because fake lens flare is fucking stupid. Oh, is there light bouncing off the fucking camera that you are using to film this fucking video game? Dipshits.) Midrange 2011 GPU with a budget 2009 CPU, runs just fine for living room gaming.
And again, my 2006 4-Xeon Mac Pro is still a great machine, and if I were only using it as a Mac I wouldn't have any complaints. (I wouldn't be able to upgrade to Mountain Lion or Mavericks, but...well, like I said, no complaints.)
AMD seems to have the better budget line here even though they look power-hungry, so I'm currently looking at a GIGABYTE GA-970A-D3 for AM3+ support and then ... shit, they have 8 cores for desktop lines now? That's just silly.
My last AMD gave me real trouble with overheating, but that was also back around 2003 or '4. I've still got kind of a low opinion of them since, but I've got to hope they've figured out at least some of the issues they had. Still, their reputation now is probably actually worse than it was then, if only because Intel's improved so much in cooling and power consumption.
Nothing really to add beyond those generalities. Sounds like you're doing your research, so just keep doing that.
-
and of fucking course the 4770k goes on sale for $300 on Amazon three days after I order it.
But this is exactly the kind of shit you need to learn to deal with if you're going to make a habit of buying computers. It's a mild annoyance, sure, but it's also inevitable. So you roll with it.
And hey, they say my stuff should be here tomorrow.
-
Initially very happy with my new GTX660. ~30C idle driving two monitors, ~50C Ultra Skyrim in 1080p with only the rare hiccup. Pretty damn nice for under $200 even if the rebate gets technicalitied. My poor old 9800GT rarely even idled that low.
-
Here's another one for the Living in the Future list: the board has Power and Reset buttons right on it. No more shorting the pins with a flathead!
(MB arrived today. Still no processor so I can't actually do much building yet.)
-
Welp, new computer's all hooked up and won't power on.
Old computer, meanwhile, has had its nvidia drivers crap out because I removed the graphics card and stuck it in the new computer. Even though the remaining card is still an nVidia and was working just fine when I plugged the monitor into it the other day.
This is going to be a long weekend.
At least one long weekend.
EDIT: Well, at least the latter was a quick fix -- reinstalled nvidia-current and restarted X. Didn't even need to reboot.
I hope that whatever's wrong with the new machine turns out to be similarly trivial.
-
It is zero consolation: but when I was throwing new shit into my ancient box, I had a similar no-power left-handed coffee mug moment.
I think I wasn't paying attention and somehow connected the pins on the main board power incorrectly, because it worked when I disconnected and reconnected all of my lines.
-
Yeah, step one is going to be checking the connections. Step two will be disconnecting inessential shit. (Two B means popping the video card.)
If that still doesn't work, step three will be taking out the power supply and seeing if it works in another computer and, if so, seeing if other computer's power supply works with this one.
The downside of having a modern case with nice cable management is that unhooking things will mean a lot more pulling cable back through multiple holes. OTOH, if I'd just left them loose in the first place and it HAD worked, then I'd have had to pull everything and recable.
-
Actually step 1 is just trying a different electrical outlet. Powers up, anyway.
And powers up when I move it back to where it was. So could have been a loose connection, or possible short in the back panel; haven't tried firing it up with peripherals connected yet.
Off to do that.
-
Fired right up on day 2; don't know what the hell the problem was on day 1. Loose power cable, short in the I/O panel, cable inside the case brushing the MB that got moved out of the way when I picked it up -- who knows.
Lots of stuff still untested (haven't tried most of the USB slots or the audio) but most everything is working fine. The hard drive mount is intermittent, unfortunately; at first it didn't work at all and I figured it was a loose cable (power is definitely working; you can hear a drive spin up when you plug it in), but this morning when the computer woke from sleep it recognized a drive there for the first time. Will have to look into it further.
Since the top slot connects directly to a SATA port on the MB, I don't get the "Safely Remove" popup, and don't see any unmount options when I right-click the drive, either. That's something else I'll need to look into.
Oh, and also the optical drive is loud as fuck, but hopefully I won't be using it often.
The old computer isn't faring quite as well. That problem with the nVidia drivers not working? Happens again every time I reboot.
Plus, my monitor's only got 1 DVI port, so I've currently got the old computer hooked in with HDMI, which doesn't support the monitor's full resolution. It's workable but blurry enough that I decided to order a DisplayPort cable so I can use that on the new computer and switch the old one back to DVI.
(As it turns out I picked a good day to order a cable from Monoprice, as they had a "$10 off your next purchase" deal going -- now expired -- and the cable I ordered cost $7.50 including shipping. So if I get and use that coupon, this cable will have cost me -$2.50.)
So far I've got Win7 installed on a 1TB drive in the new machine. I've installed Steam and the plan was for it to spend all night downloading very large games, but apparently heavy network activity does not disable sleep on Windows like it does on the Linux distros I've been using.
Today I'll probably try and put the audio and video through their paces, and see about getting my backup Linux OS installed. (Going to try Debian/XFCE for this outing.) I'll install my primary OS last, so that GRUB will automatically configure all my boot options without me having to fuck around with it.
After I'm comfortably settled in, my plan is to set my Mac Pro up as a pure Mac, running OSX from an 80GB SDD I've got lying around. I'll set up Pro Tools even though I can't use it yet (haven't replaced my stolen mixer), and probably set up ownCloud or some other backup/sharing solution, probably configure my remaining two 500GB drives in some kind of software RAID.
-
My Windows Experience Score is 5.9. The hard drive, predictably, is the bottleneck, which is of course why I keep talking about eventually going to an SSD caching solution.
It is still a marked improvement over my previous score, Windows Has Encountered a Problem and Must Restart.
-
Lost a good big chunk of my day because I forgot Debian's versioning nomenclature is totally oldschool/conservative/designed for servers. I grabbed Stable, forgetting that that's the equivalent of an LTS from Ubuntu or a release from Red Hat, whereas Testing is (roughly) equivalent to the latest stable from Ubuntu or Fedora.
For a minute there I was back in 2003 with a distro that didn't recognize my network card and still thought graphical installers were a pretty neat idea.
-
And then another chunk because I forgot to go to Advanced Options and pick XFCE instead of GNOME.
Now, I can see the reasoning behind the versioning thing.
The reasoning behind having people select their DE at boot time instead of on the screen where they select all their other package groups, on the other hand? That eludes me.
-
...I swear I used to be able to increase the text size in Windows without making the text and graphics all a blurry fucking mess everywhere in everything. Anybody encounter this/know a fix?
It's pretty much the equivalent of the Text-Only Zoom that is the primary reason I still use Firefox.
-
Nevermind.
-
I have spent entirely too much time on Google over the last day being completely baffled that
it is apparently impossible to change the text size independently.
SSD owners out there: It seems to me that it'd take a couple years for the decrease in loading times to make up for the time spent reinstalling Windows and programs. Is the difference viscerally amazing? Looking at benchmarks just isn't the same.
Picked up a mobo, CPU, and 16 GB of RAM for ~$300. Golden age.
-
Yes, the difference is night and day, especially for games. Loading times are close to nil unless you're playing DNF.
-
I figure I'll be getting an SSD the next time I need to do a full rebuild, but that might not be for years 'cause this computer is still pretty damn serviceable for higher-ish end games even though it's three years old with no upgrades since then.
-
Settling into OpenSUSE. There was some weird shit where I had to delete eth0 and then rename one of the other (actually existing) network devices to eth0, but once I had that figured out things started going much better. Have I mentioned how much I love the package management on this thing? While technically most major distros now SHOULD be capable of one-click installs, it just doesn't seem to have caught on with them the way it has with OpenSUSE for some reason.
Package support in fact generally appears to be better than last time, and it was pretty good last time. It's not what you'll get with the Debians or Fedora but it's the next best thing, and what it lacks in breadth it makes up for in ease of installation. It's also way more friendly at dealing with conflicts than any apt-based system I've ever used; if one comes up it doesn't just drop you back to the command line with a vague error, it tells you specifically which versions of which packages from which repos are causing the conflict, and then presents you with options -- keep the old one and cancel, install the new one and go with that repo for that package from here on in, or ignore it and go on through with the possible breakage. It's not perfect -- it tends to list the same options multiple times -- but it gives you everything you need to make an informed decision without having to fuck around with manpages or try to find a solution online.
13.1 was just released last week so there's no nVidia binary package yet. I think I can probably wait instead of fucking around with shell scripts; I've got plenty else to do.
But all 3 OS's are now up and running and connected to the Internet, so I think I can classify the new computer as Finished at this point. Still plenty to do, slowly getting everything just the way I want it like the ass-groove on my couch, and of course now I have to set the Mac Pro up the way I want it, as a studio/backup server. Lots to do, but getting there.
-
Meanwhile, over in the "I'd like to replace my Samsung Chromebook with an Acer one", the C720P has been announced. It's $300 and has a 32GB SSD and a touchscreen, but it's only got 2GB RAM, as compared to the next model down which is $250 and has a 16GB SSD and no touchscreen but 4GB RAM.
Tough call.
-
I have spent entirely too much time on Google over the last day being completely baffled that
it is apparently impossible to change the text size independently.
Looks like it's tucked away under the extremely-helpfully-named Window Color (http://www.pcmech.com/article/how-to-change-system-fonts-in-windows-7/) option.
This may be the least intuitive thing in the Windows Control Panel since having to go to "Add Local Printer" to add a network printer.
MEANWHILE: Batman is not performing nearly as well on the new computer as the old one. Same settings (near as I can tell); same card -- except before the card was underclocked.
I would sure like to figure out why it's doing that.
-
Check your audio setup? People have surprised before by how much their audio settings are screwing them over.
I've personally had trouble with onboard monitor scaling before (apparently some drivers are stupid enough to pass through a scaling algorithm even when you're running at native resolution), and it's usually tucked somewhere away from the regular graphics settings, so try checking that too.
-
I have poor impulse control. A 250GB SSD at $130 was too hard to resist, since it's big enough to just clone my main drive and hopefully not have to worry about reinstalling anything.
-
Meanwhile, over in the "I'd like to replace my Samsung Chromebook with an Acer one", the C720P has been announced. It's $300 and has a 32GB SSD and a touchscreen, but it's only got 2GB RAM, as compared to the next model down which is $250 and has a 16GB SSD and no touchscreen but 4GB RAM.
Tough call.
I think it's gotta be the 4GB version. While a touchscreen is a nice feature and it usually costs a hell of a lot more than $50 to add one, I think the RAM is a more practical concern. Storage is too, but you can replace the SSD in a C720; you can't upgrade the RAM.
No sales today; I'll see if there are any on Monday. If so I'll pull the trigger then; if not, I'll reasonably assume that its already-probably-subsidized-by-Google price is as low as it's going to get and wait until I've got a bit more money saved up. (Insurance will cover it to the tune of $200, but I still have to wait for part of the money to come in after I buy it.)
-
I have poor impulse control. A 250GB SSD at $130 was too hard to resist, since it's big enough to just clone my main drive and hopefully not have to worry about reinstalling anything.
If you're gonna go the cloning route, you should read up on partition alignment, since that can have a huge impact on the SSD drive speed if it's not right.
-
Thad let me know how the new Chromebook goes if/when you get one. I'd kinda like to pick up a Chromebook purely for web and writing stuff, but if you get one you can run emulators on decently, so much the gravier.
-
Oh good, the put everything together and fans and everything spin up but it doesn't actually boot game. I love that game.
-
Oh good, the put everything together and fans and everything spin up but it doesn't actually boot game. I love that game.
Yeah, you can't just clone to an SSD from a platter drive. There's partitioning issues. Best to just install from zero.
-
Didn't even try that part yet. Leaning motherboard, but could be processor. Hate trying to troubleshoot without spare hardware.
Ended up just RMAing both parts today. Also, very upset to discover that AMD is (still? back to?) using the seesaw style of CPU cooler clip. That is a really uncomfortable level of force to have to apply to hundreds of dollars worth of hardware. You'd think they would have figured out a better solution by now.
-
I assume there's a good technical reason for those clips simply because they're too disturbing to be justified by simple cost effectiveness.
-
Well, you want a firm connection between the CPU and the heatsink for transfer, and TIM isn't exactly glue, but the newer Intel option of attaching through holes in the motherboard instead of clips on the socket does that without, you know, the terror. I actually bent a couple of CPU pins getting it off, but the ol' credit card and sewing needle combo still works great for that.
Also, you are completely and absolutely right about solid-state drives. Like, holy shit.
-
Solid state is definitely one of those things where you turn it on for the first time and say "holy shit". I went with Windows 8, which is an even faster boot. I press the power button and I'm logging in five or six seconds later. It's insane.
-
Welp, getting the same damn crash with games that I got on the Mac, so it looks like it was the card all along and I'm going to have to take back some of the things I said about Apple.*
Guess I should probably check the warranty on this thing. Sure wish I hadn't had to get a new computer to figure out that it was the card and not wonky Apple third-party compatibility. Don't get me wrong, I don't regret getting a new computer, but I DO regret that I put up with this shit for the past three years when I could have just gotten the damn thing fixed.
And I guess I might wind up using that onboard video after all.
*Don't worry, I've got entirely new things to say about Apple. Know how you set your monitor to a 2560x1440 resolution in Lion? Well, hope you installed Xcode back when they had the Lion version in the App Store, because for some fucking reason (1) you need Xcode to set your fucking monitor to a high DPI*** in Lion, (2) the App Store has the awesome "feature" of only letting you download the latest version of an app regardless of whether or not it will actually run on your computer, and (3) of course you can't fucking download Xcode anywhere else -- but hey, if you missed the boat, there's always some obnoxious-ass third-party nagware piece of shit that'll set it up just fine in about thirty seconds but then keep popping up every two minutes to beg you for money.
MEANWHILE, on the C720 front: Got it today. It looks a little smaller than the Samsung, and the trackpad is definitely smaller. I think the charcoal-colored outer shell is more appealing than the Samsung's shiny one, but the bottom of the chassis looks like cheaper plastic.
It's way the fuck easier to put Linux on the thing; no dual-boot script needed, because this thing's actually got a dual BIOS that will let you boot any old arbitrary x86/x64 boot disk.
On the minus side, driver support's not really there out of the box; it looks like you need to patch and recompile the kernel to get the trackpad to work. There's a nice script to automate the whole thing, but, well, okay, I may have been exaggerating when I said "no dual-boot script needed" because it's actually a piece of the same script. Also, I'm finding that it's giving me way too many prompts for which file I'm supposed to be patching, and I don't actually KNOW which files I'm supposed to be patching, so I guess I'll let you know how that goes. **
Still, pretty optimistic; lack of trackpad support is of course a nontrivial problem but on the whole it's been way the fuck easier to get Linux installed on this machine than the Samsung and I expect it's going to be pretty smooth sailing once I get the trackpad and video working.
There's a rather wonderful list of fixes (http://flyreddit.com/r/chrubuntu/comments/1rsxkd/list_of_fixes_for_xubuntu_1310_on_the_acer_c720/) on /r/Chrubuntu, if anyone's curious; that's what I'm currently working my way through.
** Edit/Update: Looked up the prompt; found another thread on /r/Chrubuntu (http://ml.reddit.com/r/chrubuntu/comments/1pfqhp/acer_c720_chrubuntu_performance_driver_issues/) that explained it was due to a botched apt-get upgrade (for some reason the Flash installer is hanging on download and that keeps disrupting my upgrades). Ran upgrade again, then the script; trackpad working now and seems to be working pretty well in the 30 seconds or so I took to try it out. But it's past my bedtime so I'll fuck with it more tomorrow.
Can definitely confirm I'm having the issue with flaky wireless that others are reporting; there's a fix for that farther down in the post so I'll probably give that a shot next.
*** Edit/Afterthought: To clarify, "High DPI" is what Apple calls it. I know the difference between DPI and resolution; they're the ones who don't.
-
SNES9X running at 60fps. I am totally comfortable in declaring the Acer C720 as a superior computer to the Samsung Series 3.
-
Should I take back what I said about Acer then?
(Not that I generally say nice things about Samsung either.)
-
I don't know, we'll wait a year and see if the chassis starts cracking at the hinges like the last Acer laptop we let in our house.
Speaking more seriously: it seems to be a solid little machine and entirely better than what I expect from Acer. As I said, I expect that slapping Google's brand on it requires stricter QC than what Acer usually does.
The flaws in the Samsung machine aren't, strictly, Samsung's fault. Mostly I'm just surprised by how poor ARM support is on Ubuntu. (Comparatively speaking, I mean. It's actually really quite good for most standard software.) And the graphics chip in the thing is just too new and off-brand to be supported properly.
The two major benefits of the Acer are the Intel chips (CPU and GPU) and the legacy BIOS. Bottom line is, it's a PC that comes with ChromeOS.
The Samsung purchase was a miscalculation on my part. I've been so consistently blown away by the support of (1) binary packages available through Ubuntu repos and (2) software available for ARM devices that I expected there would be a lot more overlap between those things than there actually is.
Basically: It's not so much that the specs of the Acer are better (though they definitely are, and the machines cost the same) as that the hardware is better-supported.
Ubuntu really has come a fuck of a long way. I'm pretty impressed by how painless it's been to get all this set up now that I'm on a proper x64 system, and how little space it all takes up.
-
PS1 emulation: I fired up Suikoden 2. Audio sputters on the opening cinematic and the animation's less than perfectly smooth in-game, but nonetheless it's not just playable but pretty gorgeous.
EDIT: Spoke too soon; as soon as I used Unite in the first fight Retroarch started using 100% CPU and froze up. Looks like it'll need some tweaking, but this is still a pretty good sign.
I'm curious what, if any, graphics filter libretro applies by default, because I haven't applied any but the 16- and 32-bit games look pretty good anyway.
-
Iirc the default ini file has bilinear filtering turned on. I'm using Retroarch on my Raspberry Pi (haven't tried any PSX on it yet though - I hear it's barely doable but you have to do a lot of tweaking).
-
One of the weirder computer problems I've run into:
The computer won't power off. When you shut it down, it shuts down then immediately boots back up. If you pull the plug, it auto-boots as soon as it's plugged in. Checked all the Wake-on and APM after power loss settings in BIOS, changed to several different BIOS versions, no change. Computer works fine in every aspect.
So, uh, what the hell?
-
Can you do a hard shut-down by holding down the on button?
It could be that dealie is stuck?
-
Yes, it immediately restarts after shutdown that way, too, whether from Windows or during the POST.
-
Hey, uh.
What's a good image viewer for Windows that has .gif support? Because apparently Windows 8 doesn't have one.
-
I like XnView (http://www.xnview.com/en/xnview.php).
-
Yes, it immediately restarts after shutdown that way, too, whether from Windows or during the POST.
A quick google pulls up this guy: http://www.sevenforums.com/bsod-help-support/52072-doesn-t-shut-down-only-restarts.html (http://www.sevenforums.com/bsod-help-support/52072-doesn-t-shut-down-only-restarts.html). But I'd guess you've already tried these remedies?
-
Iirc the default ini file has bilinear filtering turned on.
Hm -- it looks a lot sharper than I usually associate with bilinear filtering, but could be. At any rate, I like it enough that I probably won't monkey with it.
I'm using Retroarch on my Raspberry Pi (haven't tried any PSX on it yet though - I hear it's barely doable but you have to do a lot of tweaking).
Yeah, I bet it'll be easier to set up on a Celeron.
The existence of RetroArch on the Pi was one of the reasons I expected the ARM version to work better. Didn't count on the newer, not-well-supported video hardware.
Can you do a hard shut-down by holding down the on button?
It could be that dealie is stuck?
Hm, there's a thought. What happens if you disconnect the power button entirely?
Obviously this is not a long-term solution, but it could help isolate the problem.
I suppose some pins could be shorted on the MB, but I can't think which ones; if power or reset were shorted then the computer wouldn't come on at all.
Could be some arcane power management setting somewhere.
-
I suppose some pins could be shorted on the MB, but I can't think which ones; if power or reset were shorted then the computer wouldn't come on at all.
I don't trust that I'm super-fixated on the power button. It feels like this is exactly the kind of thing I get completely wrong.
...
I suppose it doesn't need to be a full short to get this kind of behavior. It could be a short that's unstable. Giving a high long enough to hit the power, but not high long enough to trigger a fault or shut down.
But yeah, I just wanted to log my madness for posterity. I don't have any additional ideas.
-
I suppose some pins could be shorted on the MB, but I can't think which ones; if power or reset were shorted then the computer wouldn't come on at all.
Could be the pin pair on the 20-/24-pin ATX power supply connector that actually turns the power supply on: the light grey wire to any ground wire. That could be a fault in the PSU itself, and the easiest way to check would be to unplug that connector and see if the PSU still turns itself on when you plug it into the wall. That won't catch a short on the motherboard, but that seems like a less likely failure to me.
-
Try explaining how the cloud works to your 88 year old grandmother.
Go on.
-
Okay.
Think of the computer as a desk. Think of the cloud as a bookshelf. You can have books on your desk, but if you keep them on the bookshelf, it can hold a lot more and you can just walk over and get the book you need, without having them all on your desk at once. It makes for a cleaner desk, and it's easier to organize, especially if more than one person is using that bookshelf.
-
Except local computers can usually hold more storage space than cloud storage and it takes longer to get things from the cloud. But maybe that's just me.
-
Try explaining how the cloud works to your 88 year old grandmother.
Go on.
It's a library filled with just your books.
You sit at your desk. The porter fetches and removes books for you. They're yours, though, so you can do what you will with them, before they get shipped back out.
-
Yes, they do (outside of the mobile space), but that's not important to explaining the core concept of cloud storage to an 84 year old.
-
I don't even know what you mean by "the core concept of cloud storage."
There's stuff to store. You either (1) don't have room for it, or (2) you need the same stuff, even though you're not "home."
It's just public storage with delivery. That's it. You can probably even skip the library analogy.