Quick [tech] Questions Thread

[Chimpy]

Do you have another power supply you can use just to see if it the motherboard POSTs?

[MisterNoisy]

I think Ingmar's computer aids got my PC now.  PC won't turn on and the fan on the power supply doesn't spin-up at all so I think the PS is fried.  Anything else I should check that it could be?

If this is the same machine you posted in the SWtoR thread way back, I'd wager it's most likely the PSU as well - everything else was pretty quality stuff, but unless you spec a brand name unit, iBuypower puts pretty shitty power supplies in their boxes.

[Merusk]

Do you have another power supply you can use just to see if it the motherboard POSTs?

Yeah I have the machine I replaced, I didn't bother trying to swap it last night, though as I've been sick and just wanted to hit the bed at 8:30.

I think Ingmar's computer aids got my PC now.  PC won't turn on and the fan on the power supply doesn't spin-up at all so I think the PS is fried.  Anything else I should check that it could be?

If this is the same machine you posted in the SWtoR thread way back, I'd wager it's most likely the PSU as well - everything else was pretty quality stuff, but unless you spec a brand name unit, iBuypower puts pretty shitty power supplies in their boxes.

Yep, it is.  Previous problem was corrupted drivers that a windows reinstall fixed, but as I tried to do that again yesterday the power supply went kaput. 

[Salamok]

So my work machine is a Dell Optiplex 790 (w7 pro 64bit) with a Radeon HD6350 card in it.  I was kind of hoping to pimp this up to 4 monitors by adding a cheap 2nd video card, so for $35 I bought a Asus HD 5450 Silent I popped it in there but if I connect a monitor to it I get a bluescreen when it attempts to detect the display (Display also gets some weird slanted red checkerboard pattern over part of it).  Now the crappy monitor I am attaching is VGA only and I only had 1 slot available on the machine so I had to ditch the VGA port as it requires a 2nd slot for the low profile option, so I am using a DVI->VGA adapter (I have tried 2 of them oddly both with slightly different pin outs).

Any ideas or just return card for a different model?

edit:  This is a small form factor machine so I am thinking that the 240w PSU is possibly causing a problem. 

[Furiously]

Have you tried it with just the new card? My guess is 240 isn't enough juice.

[Chimpy]

So my work machine is a Dell Optiplex 790 (w7 pro 64bit) with a Radeon HD6350 card in it.  I was kind of hoping to pimp this up to 4 monitors by adding a cheap 2nd video card, so for $35 I bought a Asus HD 5450 Silent I popped it in there but if I connect a monitor to it I get a bluescreen when it attempts to detect the display (Display also gets some weird slanted red checkerboard pattern over part of it).  Now the crappy monitor I am attaching is VGA only and I only had 1 slot available on the machine so I had to ditch the VGA port as it requires a 2nd slot for the low profile option, so I am using a DVI->VGA adapter (I have tried 2 of them oddly both with slightly different pin outs).

Any ideas or just return card for a different model?

edit:  This is a small form factor machine so I am thinking that the 240w PSU is possibly causing a problem. 

There are also BIOS settings on the 790 you may need to change to multi-view with more than one addon card. (I don't know what they are as we skipped the 790 and went to 7010s from 780s)

[Draegan]

Anyone know how to unify the Sync polarity of three monitors?  I've got two identical Dells and an odd high def korean monitor.  Damn you Nvidia surround!

Bah. Nevermind.  I need another DVI cable.  How the fuck do two DELL monitors not come with DVI cables.  VGA?  Really?  Now I have to get an HDMI -> DVI adapter tomorrow since apparently I don't own one.

[Sheepherder]

I think Ingmar's computer aids got my PC now.  PC won't turn on and the fan on the power supply doesn't spin-up at all so I think the PS is fried.  Anything else I should check that it could be?

http://seasonicusa.com/RMABeta/JumpStart/JS.pdf

Which black wire you choose to jumper it to doesn't actually matter.  All black wires are grounds.

If you then plug it in and turn the back switch on it will supply power to anything attached to the various and sundry connectors.  Plugging a Molex fan or cold cathode or what have you will tell you whether it's the mobo or PSU.

[Yegolev]

This is my Steam icon:


I don't know how to fix this on Win7.  It's mildly irritating.  I did a reinstall.  Thoughts?

[Sheepherder]

http://www.winhelponline.com/blog/how-to-rebuild-the-icon-cache-in-windows-vista/

Could also try unpinning it from the taskbar, delete any shortcuts you have elsewhere, and then recreate them.

[Yegolev]

Well, it's not pinned to the taskbar.  I wasn't very clear on that.  But in any case, deleting the icon cache fixed it.  Thanks!  I also learned some things about Win7 processes, I think, but maybe I need to reboot or something.

[Merusk]

I think Ingmar's computer aids got my PC now.  PC won't turn on and the fan on the power supply doesn't spin-up at all so I think the PS is fried.  Anything else I should check that it could be?

http://seasonicusa.com/RMABeta/JumpStart/JS.pdf

Which black wire you choose to jumper it to doesn't actually matter.  All black wires are grounds.

If you then plug it in and turn the back switch on it will supply power to anything attached to the various and sundry connectors.  Plugging a Molex fan or cold cathode or what have you will tell you whether it's the mobo or PSU.

Didn't have to do this, the PSU was just not properly plugged-in. Reseating it worked out, I guess when I removed the vid card I jostled it and didn't try to reseat until the next day when I calmed down a bit.   Don't fiddle angry!

Turns out the vid card IS fried, though.  I was getting crashes and bluescreens more frequently over the last week, even after deleting and reinstalling the drivers so I picked-up a cheapass $50 card at BB this weekend and Tada, no more crashes, bluescreens or overheats.  No FPS, but hey it's a $50 card.

I'd installed the temp monitor someone mentioned upthread and I was hitting 135-140F on the card just standing around in Skyrim.  MW would heat it up a bit as would WOT, but  turing all the vid settings down to "looks like shit!" still caused a heat problem, so I'm just going to RMA the fucker since it's still under its 3-year warranty.   No need to reseat the sink if I've got things covered that way, I figure.

[Sheepherder]

140 F / 60 C isn't too hot for a card under moderate load.  You probably just had a card that was on the verge of being binned as something else, or a shit memory chip.

[satael]

just google the proper temperature for the card. Some can go pretty high without it being anything unusual. If your card really does operate (correctly) at a high temperature you could consider adding an additional fan into the chassis to blow some air towards it.

[Merusk]

just google the proper temperature for the card. Some can go pretty high without it being anything unusual. If your card really does operate (correctly) at a high temperature you could consider adding an additional fan into the chassis to blow some air towards it.

Side of the case is off right now but when it's on I have 3 20mm fans and a 100mm fan and it's sitting in a wide-open area.  Can't get cooler without actually installing an AC unit.

140 F / 60 C isn't too hot for a card under moderate load.  You probably just had a card that was on the verge of being binned as something else, or a shit memory chip.

Google said it should do fine all the way up to 160 or so, but every time it hit 141, it was a guaranteed  bluescreen or crash within a minute.  All I can do is figure it's a faulty card.

[Sheepherder]

Hmm.  Maybe the heat sink on a component wasn't on right.  The temperature probe is usually placed to measure the temperature near what is normally the hottest part of the die, but that doesn't mean much if the cooling is incorrectly installed elsewhere.  Or, it could just be a flaky SM or RAM chip that temporarily fails under high heat.

[Nebu]

Just built my box and have a SSD as my primary and my HDD as a backup.  My bios finds both drives, but Windows 7 doesn't recognize my standard HDD.  I have them both plugged into SATA 3 connectors.  Do I need to add hardware in windows to find and format my second HDD?

Any thoughts helpful.

[Trippy]

Go to Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management

Find the drive in the list and then initialize, partition and format it.

[Chimpy]

Make sure the SATA port the HDD is connected to is turned on in the BIOS. I have had boards that had some of the higher numbered ports turned off by default.

[Nebu]

Go to Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management

Find the drive in the list and then initialize, partition and format it.

Thanks!  All good now. 

[Engels]

Would it kill MS to say 'Found some hard drive, can't read it, please go to Disk Management HERE' or something helpful, for a change.

[Yegolev]

Too busy making TOUCH SQUARES.

[Trippy]

Would it kill MS to say 'Found some hard drive, can't read it, please go to Disk Management HERE' or something helpful, for a change.

MS and the hard drive manufacturers assume that very few end users are installing their own internal drives so Windows doesn't display anything and internal drives are typically not preformatted like external drives are.

[Salamok]

A few questions:

- Is it still recommended to manually set the cache size to 1.5x system memory for win7 64bit when dealing with larger amounts of memory like 12gb/16gb/32gb?

- Using Microsoft Hyper-V VM's if I set 1 VM to be my database server (MS SQL) and another VM to be my webserver (IIS).  If I multihome the VM instances and set up a subnet that doesn't really exist off the box do database queries from the webserver to the database server ever really hit the physical switch or even the physical NIC.

[Lantyssa]

Is the subnet linked to a physical card?

[Salamok]

Is the subnet linked to a physical card?

I haven't actually tried it yet but I was thinking it would just exist on the virtual host adapter.

[Lantyssa]

If you can do that, then it shouldn't ever hit the physical network.  I'm just getting into VMs myself though, so my knowledge is still minimal.

[Salamok]

If you can do that, then it shouldn't ever hit the physical network.  I'm just getting into VMs myself though, so my knowledge is still minimal.

what speed would it be? Autonegotiate: infinity!

[Lantyssa]

You're still limited by the speed of light.

[Salamok]

You're still limited by the speed of light.

Yes but the distances are much shorter.

[Chimpy]

If you use an internal-only virtual interface in Hyper-V it will not ever leave the box (the internal only NICs cannot access the physical NICs at all in Hyper-V).

As far as speed, it will be faster than going out and back into the box but won't go plaid or anything.

[Yegolev]

Disclaimer that I work on other OSes.  I believe the link speed setting is 64k for hypervisor-only networking.  However communication is at memory-speed, not sure the number has any meaning.

[Furiously]

My 27 inch Catleap monitor appears to be on the brink of failure. If I unplug is it will work for a few seconds. But after a couple seconds it will essentially pixelate and fade to black, then the onscreen menus stop working. Then it crashes the system. Any ideas?

[Chimpy]

Might be a bad power supply capacitor.

[Furiously]

Opened up the power supply, it did have a funky smell inside. So I'm guessing that's it. Didn't see any bulges on the caps though.