Technical Computer Stuff

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SlateSlabrock
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by SlateSlabrock (?) » Wed Mar 27, 2019 8:54 am

That sounds really weird. The only thing that comes to mind is weird Windows boot shenanigans. Maybe grab EasyBCD and make sure that the BCD file is actually on the new hard drive, and that it points to the right place? Otherwise, it might've tried to reboot onto the old, bad hard drive, which is dying and losing files. You could also try forcing it to boot from the new drive in the BIOS.

If the new drive is really that screwed up, I'd expect it to have a bad status in Disk Management in Windows, or smartctl in Linux.

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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Pocket (?) » Thu Mar 28, 2019 2:42 pm

The other problem I'm having is that I can't find a driver for my Graphire4 that works. I remember having this issue before, and someone recommended a specific driver version that ended up working, but that post got lost in the big forum meltdown.
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by minty (?) » Sat May 04, 2019 11:00 am

Has anyone used LibreOffice? I am considering trying to write again, but I don't really want to bother with Microsoft Office and notepad is limited.

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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Void Chicken (?) » Sat May 04, 2019 11:16 am

I find LibreOffice thoroughly okay. It has its aggravating moments, but it's workable.

Though these days I usually use Google Documents to write. Less featured than Libre but if you're just doing words it's fine. Also backs up to the cloud so you don't have to worry about that sort of thing and you can write on your phone or tablet or whatever.

Also for editing, it's a godsend since you can share your document, set it to allow comments, and send your editor/beta reader the link and they can see your changes in real time and so on.

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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Pocket (?) » Sat May 04, 2019 6:19 pm

YOU GUYS, YOU GUYS.

Remember like a decade ago when someone discovered that you can de-yellow old computers and game consoles by covering them in hair product and putting them out in the sun?



Turns out you can do it with literally just sun. We've been duped this whole time.
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by diribigal (?) » Sat Nov 16, 2019 10:39 am

https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2 ... -it-admins

Google: Sorry, just testing a thing without telling you and breaking things for tons of people and gigantic companies. My bad.
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Factory Factory (?) » Tue Dec 24, 2019 1:23 pm

My PC of 9 years is finally done. I've been really bent out of shape by its decline, but somewhere along the line, a powered USB hub I was using suffered some capacitor rot and started putting bad power backfed into the USB ports. Half of the USB 2.0 ports on the motherboard outright died, and apparently all the USB 3.0 ports were operating in 2.0-only mode and would lock up the USB driver if a 3.0 device were plugged all the way in.

So I took advantage of a clearance sale and tossed a new CPU, motherboard, and RAM into the case.

The old and outgoing:
Core i7-3770K, overclocked to a modest 4.2 GHz
Asus P8Z77-I Deluxe
16 GB of DDR3-1600

Technically these are not nine year old parts, but each was a fault replacement one at a time for the original i5-2500K build, Ship of Theseus, it's the 9 year old PC, and it's gone.

The new and shockingly pain-free:
AMD Ryzen R7-2700X, stock clocked (because under moderate cooling, XFR basically accomplishes using up all the 24/7-safe overclocking headroom)
Gigabyte Aorus B450-I
16 GB of DDR4-3200 (because RAM speed matters much more for Ryzen)

After verifying everything turned on and got past POST with these parts outside the case (always test-bench your parts!), I just... took out one motherboard (with parts) and put in the other in its place. I didn't even reinstall Windows, it just rebooted a few times for driver swapping and... there it was.

First, and most important: All the weird bullshit is gone. I can plug in my USB stuff to any port I want and it works just fine. Bless. Worth it just for that. :flutterunsmith:

But second, and this I was *not* expecting: I'm seeing real-world improved performance in everyday stuff. Like, I do video stuff and compile software occasionally and expected to see huge improvement there, since the 2700X has improved per-core performance and double the cores on top of that. But I did not expect my desktop or gaming experience to meaningfully improve. Which they have.

Part of that is just my crappy browser habits. Chrome, tons of tabs, playing a YouTube next to a browser game. Hardly efficient computing. But YouTube no longer chokes when I load up a particularly shabby browser game or have two games open at once. Edit: Now it just mildly stutters :v: And while my game performance had been quite good on average, it took me all of three minutes to see a lack of stuttering low framerates due to CPU-bounding, and load times are a bit improved, too.

So, bless. TYOOL 2018's price/performance processor is actually a meaningful upgrade from Sandy/Ivy Bridge. And there is no substitute for per-core performance.
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by diribigal (?) » Sat Feb 08, 2020 8:02 am

I saw an article claiming that search broke on some Windows machines and you have to super-turn-off bing/Cortana in the registry so your own local search doesn't depend on Windows servers. Is that true?
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Venusy (?) » Sat Feb 08, 2020 10:45 am

I think it did break for a bit but it was working yesterday when I tried it?

EDIT: Yeah, apparently fixed on the 5th: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/02/0 ... 10_binged/

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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by diribigal (?) » Sat Feb 08, 2020 12:38 pm

I'm more concerned with the implication that local search depends on their internet stuff in a non obvious way
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Venusy (?) » Sat Feb 08, 2020 6:00 pm

That would appear to be the case, yes - my best guess is that the search UI queries Bing, expecting either search results, a connection error, or a nicely structured error message. If it gets search results, it formats them appropriately and displays along with local results. In any of the other scenarios, it just displays local results.

However, if Bing sends back garbage data, the search UI doesn't know what to do, and so never reaches the stage it'd normally fallback to displaying local only results.

Still, I believe local searches done via methods other than the taskbar search button/Start search still worked, since they aren't reliant on Bing queries in the same way - it's just it's pretty rare to run an app with a Start menu entry by searching for the filename on the C:\ drive.

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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Pocket (?) » Sat Apr 04, 2020 7:48 pm

OK, I've been putting this off for far too long. Does anyone know if there's anything that can be done to save a hard drive that I accidentally started ghosting another drive onto (it's a weird story) and aborted after less than a minute? My understanding is that NTFS stores its file table in the middle of the platter to minimize seek times, so it should be fully intact, but is there a way to find it and rebuild the partition table from it? I know there are plenty of programs that can hunt down individual files, but I kind of need to retain the original folder structure.
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Pocket (?) » Sat Aug 29, 2020 12:38 am

Um... hey, guys... my wallpaper just suddenly changed all by itself. Out of nowhere. It replaced itself with the wallpaper I use on the other computer downstairs. Neither computer uses my Microsoft account as its login (I tried that once, didn't like how it forced me to use my Live username as the login and defaulted to saving everything in OneDrive folders, and went back to local logins the next time I did a fresh install), the wallpaper isn't even stored in OneDrive, and I have been doing nothing but surfing the internet all evening.

What the fuck just happened. I'm concerned. :starity:

EDIT: And the other computer isn't even turned on right now.
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Venusy (?) » Sat Aug 29, 2020 11:21 am

You may not have used it for the initial login, but did you ever log in after that to both of them with your MS account, and is settings sync turned on?

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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by SlateSlabrock (?) » Sun Aug 30, 2020 4:01 am

Cortana knows all, sees all Image

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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Pocket (?) » Thu Sep 03, 2020 12:24 am

It was settings sync.

I really do wonder what Microsoft's motivation is for sneaking in and turning this shit on without asking. It's not like they're trying to steal people's information, because if they did want to do that, they could just do it instead of messing with visible settings that are unrelated and liable to leave evidence. It's like breaking into someone's house just to dust the furniture.
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by diribigal (?) » Tue Oct 06, 2020 12:18 pm

"Whoops we forgot to count and contact trace for 16000 UK coronavirus cases because we went over the file/table max size":
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-54412581
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Adiwan (?) » Tue Oct 06, 2020 1:05 pm

People should stop using Excel as a database or as a database frontend using some shady vbs scripts running in the background.
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Re: Technical Computer Stuff

Post by Pocket (?) » Tue Oct 06, 2020 5:05 pm

It's basically exactly that scene from Chernobyl where they used a Geiger counter that maxed out at well-into-the-acceptable-range.
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