Quick [tech] Questions Thread

[Chimpy]

I think you would be a prime candidate for a Mikrotik. 

http://routerboard.com/

[Yegolev]

Nice.

[Hawkbit]

I bought a MacBook Pro for my wife. In setting up for her work VPN access, they're requesting she install Webroot AV. Does anyone have experience with the Webroot brand? They seem a bit pricey compared to all the free solutions I've used on PC over the last 15 years.

[Yegolev]

I find it somewhat dumb that she has to pay for her own VPN client.  I do not believe it can hurt to try alternate solutions.

[Merusk]

New power supply from the office last night, mobo is sending power to everything but I don't get a POST beep. However, I think I disabled that but I can't remember.

The monitors don't detect anything from the Graphics card or the MOBO when I plug into both. Any other ways I can check to see if the MOBO is totally fried.

[Trippy]

Is there a button or something to do a BIOS reset?

[Merusk]

I'm sure there is. I'll have to hunt down the motherboard instructions online.

[Venkman]

So I just finished my two-part upgrade to a GTX 970 and an Crucial SSD (last minute switch out). The card works awesome. Used that for two nights before having time to upgrade the HD.

I went from Windows 7 to Windows 10 during the freebie Windows 10 upgrade window. So I don't have a Windows 10 disk. But since the SSD came with Acronis True Image, I was able to clone my HD to my SSD no problem.

Well, until I booted to the SSD.

I've got the SSD and the HD both hooked up on my mobo (SATA 2). I got the SSD to boot. But after logging in to Windows 10, I get a flashing screen (every second). After googling, looks like a pretty common occurence. However, the most cited solution (deactivate two windows services while in safe mode) does not solve my problem. If I turn off those two services, my task bar won't completely load and I get a "memory 0x00223EF.... canot be accessed" error. This is whether I click/unclick/restart from normal mode all the way down to bare bones Safe Mode.

The two other solutions I've seen are the same as above plus removing iCloud (which I don't have) or Norton (which I never ever will have).

Has anyone run into this? Only things I can think of are:

1. Clone's not working. If it's not working, do I need to wipe the SSD, install Windows 7 there and then apply the Windows 10 freebie upgrade to that drive?
2. Clone's fine but the nVidia driver's not working. I assume either I follow the solution in #1 or I remove the nVidia driver from my HD and then clone again and then install nVidia there.
3. Clone's fine but I should disconnect my HD and just have my SSD plugged in.

The reason I haven't tried #3 yet is I'm paranoid. I've never seen this before and don't want to get too crazy with hardware. I know, I'm already knee deep in this, but I figured I'd ask before continuing

[apocrypha]

Create a Windows 10 bootable USB key, disconnect the HDD and do a clean install Windows 10 on wiped SSD.

My experience has been that a clean Win 10 install is a lot better than the upgrade path, it solved multiple problems I was having on 2 separate machines.

[Venkman]

Awesome thank you I'll try that later this morning.

Edit: got everything up and running. The computer certainly boots faster. But I'm surprised by the lack of improvement in Division loading times (loading the game and loading Fast Travels). The only difference seems to be as I'm running around the world. The content does stream in faster during that period, and the game doesn't crash if I turn too fast while sprinting.

Another question: safe to defrag SSDs right? I try and do that once per quarter at minimum. Probably dumb question but in my googling about the SSD issue yesterday, I ran into a post from someone who said don't.

[MahrinSkel]

There is no need to defrag an SSD. The purpose of defragging is to put all of a file into one place in sequential order on the disk, which lets the drive read it in one go, without jumping around the platter.

SSD doesn't care where the data is, it's all solid state RAM (random access memory) anyway, so defragging just causes it to do a lot of writes. Writes are bad, for flash based SSD's, eventually they use up the disk. Although SSD's have reached a point where that isn't as big a deal as it used to be (they used to have only single-digit thousands of writes before Bad Things happened, now it's hundreds of thousands to millions), since there is literally no gain from doing it, don't.

If I had to guess, I'd say your loading times are bottlenecking on bus transfers to the video ram, are you sure it's running at x16? Some of those multi-card SLI's only have x8 or x4, although usually they can support a single in x16 they may need the BIOS tweaked to do it.

--Dave

[Chimpy]

Windows should recognize that your drive is an SSD and enable TRIM and disable "Disk Optimization" (which includes defragmentation) automatically.

[Viin]

Edit: got everything up and running. The computer certainly boots faster. But I'm surprised by the lack of improvement in Division loading times (loading the game and loading Fast Travels). The only difference seems to be as I'm running around the world. The content does stream in faster during that period, and the game doesn't crash if I turn too fast while sprinting.

The Division has *horrible* loading times. I wouldn't use it as a benchmark.

[Venkman]

Thanks folks. So, no defragging, I'll deactivate optimization if it's active, and don't use Division as a benchmark.

[WayAbvPar]

More of a security question here. I am trying to download a utility to hopefully unfuck my son's Kindle Fire (it is stuck in a boot loop of some kind). Amazon wants to sell me a new one, since it is like 3 whole weeks outside of the 90 day warranty (seriously, fuck you Amazon). I have found 2 or 3 different possibles, but they are A) hosted on Mediafire and B) (and more importantly) get scrubbed by my AV as containing Trojans. I am thinking these could be false positives, but I am not terribly interested in risking my PC to find out.

Anyone have experience with these? Or have any advice on how to fix the Fire that doesn't involve handing money to Amazon?

[MahrinSkel]

Have you tried to do a factory reset on the Kindle? Or installing Cyanogenmod? looked this up, Kindles more recent than 2012 apparently don't work

--Dave

[Goreschach]

Do kindles have one of those reset holes you stick a paperclip into? Have you tried that?

[WayAbvPar]

No reset hole. Can't do a factory reset because it doesn't respond to any input. Just restarts to the Amazon logo over and over again. When I plug it into the USB port on the PC I can hear the connect/disconnect chime over and over as the PC recognizes it and then loses it.

After a feedback email in which I reminded Amazon that I have purchased quite a few Kindles from them (seriously, probably 10 or more over the years for my family and myself), I got a return email from Kindle support asking me to call back and discuss an exception to the policy. So I clicked the link, got a call, spent 20 minutes being put on hold various times, and was told they do not have the power to offer an exception to the policy.

So now I am on a Quixotic crusade to prevent anyone else from ever buying a Kindle Fire (the regular e-readers are much less shitty). Fight the power!

[apocrypha]

Right, I have a friend who had similar problems with a new Kindle last week and she got a replacement yesterday. Keep trying, took her 3 phone calls.

[Rendakor]

Anyone here know anything about making a podcast? I'd like to record and cast our D&D sessions, but have no idea where to start. I've got a decent mic but no idea what to use for recording/editing software or where to host that sort of thing.

[Trippy]

Anyone here know anything about making a podcast? I'd like to record and cast our D&D sessions, but have no idea where to start. I've got a decent mic but no idea what to use for recording/editing software

What platform are you on?

or where to host that sort of thing.

SoundCloud.

[Rendakor]

Windows. 7 on my main machine, 10 on the laptop that will be recording.

[Morat20]

Random question: I just noticed my LCD monitor has gone...weird. The two bottom corners have these triangular dim spots. Everything still shows, but it's like the brightness suddenly drops.

I think it happened abruptly (but then again, maybe I just didn't notice it until my wife called attention to it).

Any ideas? Dying LCD monitor? Wife/kid/random bump to some weird NVIDIA setting or monitor setting? Loose cable?

Edited to add: This is a desktop monitor, not a laptop.

[Trippy]

Picture?

Sounds like your backlighting is dying.

[Morat20]

Picture?

Sounds like your backlighting is dying.

Duh, I'm an idiot. I went to post a screenshot which clearly would not show the dimming.

Here:


I have no idea why that won't open. Clicking it in a new tab works though.

I went ahead and ordered a new monitor. This thing is a good five or six years old at least, and whatever it was was instant. I didn't see it this morning, and there wasn't any driver updates, setting changes, etc.

[Morat20]

Yep, monitor. Now I have a new one. Which is a slightly different size, which is killing my OCD. I'm going to ignore the urge to fiddle too much with the settings, given how (in contrast) awfully dim my old LCD had become.

[Sky]

Close to pulling the trigger on a NAS. Just getting tired of random bullshit and we need centralized storage. Do we still like the Synology (currently DS216j)? Probably adding a pair of 3TB Reds for price/tb sweetness, though my tendency would be to go a bit higher for future-proofing of cat videos.

[Chimpy]

Synology is still a good bet.

[MahrinSkel]

The DS215j has been going great for me, the 216j supports larger drives (up to 8tb), faster CPU (1.3ghz instead of 800mhz), and has 2 USB 3.0 ports instead of 1. You can add external drives via the USB port and have the DS manage them, which gives you some future headroom.

The cheap-ass WD Greens I have in mine are doing fine, but it doesn't get stressed much (rare that it is streaming more than 2 videos). The management apps work great, but my university network doesn't play nice with them so I wind up using the web interface via Synology's relay most of the time. Setup was pretty painless once I locked it onto one IP from the router. It will wipe anything on the drives when you mount them.

--Dave

[Morat20]

Close to pulling the trigger on a NAS. Just getting tired of random bullshit and we need centralized storage. Do we still like the Synology (currently DS216j)? Probably adding a pair of 3TB Reds for price/tb sweetness, though my tendency would be to go a bit higher for future-proofing of cat videos.

Let me know how it works if you get it. That's my next big purchase, and the Synology is top of my list.

[Rendakor]

Soundcloud isn't going to work for podcast hosting; it's $15/month for unlimited hosting (free is only 3 hours ) and I'm not ready to pay an MMO sub just yet. Anyone know of something decent that's free?

[Venkman]

We want to cut the cord again. But this time I want to give the wife DVR capabilities (we didn't have it last time we tried).

I'm not worried about the cost. It just needs to be super simple for her. I never watch TV. I'm eyeing the Tivo Roamio OTA DVR, but I'm wondering if there's a better option.

[Trippy]

Do you have a computer that you can hook up to your TV full-time?

[Venkman]

I could cobble one together. What's the best software/remote/hardware combo to get so she could use it easily?

[Trippy]

You'll need a capture device, preferably with multiple tuners, some software that can record live TV and play it back, and a PC with a decent CPU and lots of drive space (and reasonably fast if you have a quad-capture device). You'll probably also want a remote that will work with your TV software unless you are used to using a mouse and keyboard from the couch.

If you have a Windows 7 PC you can use that would likely be the easiest since it comes with Windows Media Center so you don't need any additional software. Media Center is sort of available for Windows 8/8.1 but the Media Pack add-on which you would have to purchase may be hard to get since Microsoft stopped selling it to resellers/distributors. Other software you can try include MediaPortal and Kodi (formerly XBMC). Of those three I've only used Media Center for recording TV. I used other commercial software but they are no longer available (SageTV* and BeyondTV).

A capture device would be something like this Hauppauge PCIe card with quad tuners. I haven't used that particular one but I've used a bunch of their older products, both internal (PCI or PCIe) and external (USB).

For a drive you'll want a 7200 RPM drive if you are going with a quad-tuner. If you are going with a single or dual-tuner a 5400/5900 RPM drive would work fine.

You can also use multiple drives, though depending on your software you may have to move files over manually to the other drives -- i.e. some software can only record to a single drive but can playback from multiple drives.

* SageTV has been open-sourced but is looks to be kind of a pain to get setup and running now that it is no longer a commercial product