Quick [tech] Questions Thread

[MuffinMan]

If I'm going with an I7 for a new build should I go with LGA 1366 or 1165 socket? Is one going to be around longer than the other?

Also, I see three different DDR3 1300 memory standards. 10600, 10666 and one other I can't remember. Difference?

[Engels]

Anecdotally I hear the 1366 is going to be around longer, but remember, this is Intel. They up and switch socket types at the drop of a hat.

As to memory standards, well, check your motherboard to see what's supported, but essentially the difference is speed. You do have to be careful, since a board will advertise that it clocks the memory at this super speed, you get the memory for it, and it doesn't do it well.

Bottom line is you should visit the motherboard's website and see their list of approved memory types/brands and buy those and those only.

[MuffinMan]

I was looking at the specs for the motherboard and all it says is DDR3 1333 but it looks like there is a few different speeds? I was looking at MSI's site for the list of memory but it lists model numbers and I can never find the exact model numbers since I think they vary all the time.

[Engels]

DDR 1333 is a pretty standard memory speed, so I'd just go for a reputable brand (crucial, corsair, kingston) at that speed. You should be fine. You get into trouble if you go for the custom speed low latency 'configure your motherboard to use this uber memory' type of module, such as the Corsair XMS (extreme memory speed) line.

[Sky]

Bottom line is you should visit the motherboard's website and see their list of approved memory types/brands and buy those and those only.

Crucial's memory configurator is pretty good, too.

[Mosesandstick]

In Excel/Openoffice anyone know how to set the line widths of a line graph automatically (or all at the same time) to a smaller value? Having to try and click each data series and change it seperately is completely out of the question for me.

[Reg]

I was copying some stuff onto Data DVDs this morning when I ran into a problem.  The first two worked out just fine but then I failed several  times in a row. I'm using Nero Express to burn the DVD and the write succeeds but then it fails about 10 percent of the way into the verification stage where it reads back all of the data.

I tried burning the same data with two other utilities and it always fails reading it at about the same spot. I'm guessing that something has gone wrong with the writer part of the DVD player as it reads other DVDs with no problem.

Is there any point to trying one of those DVD cleaner discs or should I just blow 30 bucks and get a new DVD burner?

[Engels]

Have you tried burning it at a slower rate? Also, is it the same data that you're copying? Is there a chance that there's some corruption on the source files themselves?

[Reg]

I haven't tried a slower rate but I did try burning different data with the same result. I tried burning with Nero, Alcohol-120 and with the standard Windows Vista utility software and all three failed in the same way. ie. The write says it succeeds but you can't fully read the disk afterwards.

[Engels]

Try a slower burn rate. Sometimes the drives really don't operate at top speed as advertised.

[Murgos]

Try a slower burn rate. Sometimes the drives really don't operate at top speed as advertised.

Or, try different media.

[Reg]

I tried burning at 4x rather than 8x and things improved a lot. It made it almost to the end before reads started failing. Then when I tried again at 2x I discovered that 4x is as slow as my DVD writer is willing to go.

I think I'll just get a new one.  The DVDs I'm using aren't top of the line by any means but they're a package of 25 and the first 15 worked just fine.

[Engels]

Ya, time to pick up a new one. Sorry. I guess you could try using a Linux OS to burn a disk, to see if its the DVD or the driver, but I suspect the hardware itself has gone bad.

[apocrypha]

In Excel/Openoffice anyone know how to set the line widths of a line graph automatically (or all at the same time) to a smaller value? Having to try and click each data series and change it seperately is completely out of the question for me.

Either my google-fu has failed me or the only way to do this is to create a graph with 255 series, all at the line width you want and save it as the default template.

My question, what kind of temps should my GTX260 run at? I noticed a lot of heat coming out of the back of the PC the other day when I'd left WoW on the character selection screen for a while. Checked out the temps and the card is idling at 60oC and under load goes over 90oC very quickly.

Since then I've been running EVGA's Precision tool and manually ramping up the fan speed to 70% or more which keeps it at 60-70oC under load but is noisy as fuck. Auto fan control means the fan is always at 40%, whatever the temp, which is clearly inadequate.

[Engels]

That sounds about right with the crappy factory coolers they're putting out there. Its nearly as if they want your card to burn out! Your card is probably safe-ish till its hitting the 100 C mark. Then again that's getting so hot its probably endangering the lifespan of other components in your box.

Get after market factory cooling for the vid card. I know, it sounds super nerdy over clocker l33t kiddy stuff, but even a simple kind of VGA cooler, not one of these 2 inch thick monstrosities, can drop the temps well below the temps you're citing.

I had a 8800 GT that ran to the mid to high 90s then I put in a childishly simple Zalman fan and the temps dropped to a playable 65C under load.

Another thought is to see what your ventilation is inside the case. Rising temps that can't get out will contribute significantly to an overheated VGA.

[Mosesandstick]

Either my google-fu has failed me or the only way to do this is to create a graph with 255 series, all at the line width you want and save it as the default template.

That's what I've done. Though I used 10 as I don't have anything that requires 255. I think you might be able to do it with VBA macros. This is the sort of shit why Excel is such a pain in the ass. A simple thing like line widths makes it practically completely unusable for scientific work 

[apocrypha]

Thanks Engels. The case airflow is excellent, it's a HAF and the mobo & CPU temps always stay very low. For now I'm just sticking with manually cranking the fans up when gaming. I'll look into aftermarket coolers though.

Moses, yeah, Excel sucks wet farts out of dead pigeons for scientific graphs. Prism or SigmaPlot are far better, but not exactly user friendly 

[Chimpy]

I tried burning at 4x rather than 8x and things improved a lot. It made it almost to the end before reads started failing. Then when I tried again at 2x I discovered that 4x is as slow as my DVD writer is willing to go.

I think I'll just get a new one.  The DVDs I'm using aren't top of the line by any means but they're a package of 25 and the first 15 worked just fine.

On cheap media, QA/QC can be bad enough that a single pack will have random good ones and random bad ones. Using different/higher quality media may fix your issue.

Also, is the drive you are using as a scratch drive (where the app writes before putting to disc) near full or heavily fragmented? That sometimes can cause random errors with copying.

Of course, you can buy a decent quality DVD writer for less than 40 bucks now so it might just be as easy to replace the drive and see if that fixes it.

[Reg]

Well I've wasted so many blank DVDs that I need to buy some more anyway. Maybe I'll buy a name brand and see if that fixes it.  It'll only cost me one disk to find out I guess.

[NiX]

By the sounds of it my HD isn't going to last much longer (gone from quiet to making incredible amounts of noise on read/write). So, is it worth it to get an SSD or should I make an effort to wait for better/cheaper ones?

[Ingmar]

Anyone know how to make mysqldmp return a success/fail code into a text file or something? This would be in Windows. (Install Linux problem solved, I know).

I am cobbling together a really shitty email notification thing for a backup batch job on a Wordpress server but I can't figure out how to make it aware of whether the job succeeded or not when it sends the email, so it is a little shittier than I would like at the moment.

(Probably totally the wrong forum but it seemed like way too unfun a question for Useless Conversation.)

[Salamok]

By the sounds of it my HD isn't going to last much longer (gone from quiet to making incredible amounts of noise on read/write). So, is it worth it to get an SSD or should I make an effort to wait for better/cheaper ones?

I would hold off until the new Intel drives hit, they are pretty much doubling the storage on everything and the spiel is price won't be doubling along with that.

[Salamok]

Anyone know how to make mysqldmp return a success/fail code into a text file or something? This would be in Windows. (Install Linux problem solved, I know).

I am cobbling together a really shitty email notification thing for a backup batch job on a Wordpress server but I can't figure out how to make it aware of whether the job succeeded or not when it sends the email, so it is a little shittier than I would like at the moment.

(Probably totally the wrong forum but it seemed like way too unfun a question for Useless Conversation.)

I have not used mysqldmp but if you are using windows task scheduler you can create a batch file to call the exe and pipe the output to a text file, iirc something like:

somecommand.exe > results.txt

[Ingmar]

I actually found a flag to dump errors/warnings to a file, I must have looked through that list 5 times before I saw it. 

[Segoris]

Alt-tab freezing issues. Basically, when I open Team Speak, Warhammer, or League of Legends and try to alt tab into or out of any of them my comp freezes for 10-20 seconds. Any other game (EvE, Mass Effect 2, DA:O, SC2, etc) are fine. I've tried completely removing and then updating my GPU drivers with no good results. I've run a defrag (which is done once a week anyways as a scheduled maintenance event) since Team Speak, Warhammer, and LoL were the last 3 things installed on my computer (EvE right before TS, then TS, WAR, and then LoL) and this started after installing TS. After those 3 were installed, I still had about 80 gigs free out of ~475gb. I've since uninstalled TS and LoL with no effect and will be uninstalling WAR and EvE to try that out as well.

Anyone have any other ideas as to what may be causing this? There is another issue where if I hit esc while in LoL I would get the same freeze as I did when I alt tabbed, which I figured was due to LoL probably being coded to have the menu work with the client while the game was separate, probably wrong but it was my initial thought.

Basic System Rundown (I really should upload a DxDiag somewhere for times like this):
Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3L mobo
Intel e8400 cpu
4gig pc6400 DDR2 Kingston HyperX
Asus Ati HD4870 gpu

I can run any other tests/diagnosis programs when I get home if needed, as well as post a real DxDiag. For now, I figured it would be good to get some ideas to test out when I get home tonight.

[Engels]

How about the sound driver? A driver hang with TS suggests a sound issue. On-board sound, or dedicated?

[Segoris]

On board sound and definitely a good thought that I'll try updating tonight since I didn't update that recently.

[Lantyssa]

I actually found a flag to dump errors/warnings to a file, I must have looked through that list 5 times before I saw it. 

I figured you had already looked through that list and found it didn't do what you needed.  Otherwise I would have suggested it. 

[Segoris]

How about the sound driver? A driver hang with TS suggests a sound issue. On-board sound, or dedicated?

Wasn't the sound driver. I've tried a couple versions of the drivers, including the stock one, and no change. I've uninstalled all Logitech devices (read of other people having the same issue and some were solved by uninstalling Logitech items) but that didn't work. So I'm still lost and going to uninstall all programs installed around the time TS was and reinstall them as perhaps with all this stuff uninstalled a setting I'm not seeing may be different.

Any other ideas are welcome before I end up format/reinstall which I'd prefer not to do.

[Sheepherder]

By the sounds of it my HD isn't going to last much longer (gone from quiet to making incredible amounts of noise on read/write). So, is it worth it to get an SSD or should I make an effort to wait for better/cheaper ones?

PMR is hot shit, so depending on how old your drive is  and who made it you might get a pretty hefty speed boost.

Really, it depends on whether you can wait, and whether you would like a hefty storage volume if you ever decide to jump to SSD.

[NiX]

I think at any given time I only have 100GB of data on my drive, so I'm not in need of 200+ GB of space.

Wasn't the sound driver. I've tried a couple versions of the drivers, including the stock one, and no change. I've uninstalled all Logitech devices (read of other people having the same issue and some were solved by uninstalling Logitech items) but that didn't work. So I'm still lost and going to uninstall all programs installed around the time TS was and reinstall them as perhaps with all this stuff uninstalled a setting I'm not seeing may be different.

Any other ideas are welcome before I end up format/reinstall which I'd prefer not to do.

Hardware acceleration? Sometimes that causes issues.

[Segoris]

Hardware acceleration? Sometimes that causes issues.

Nope, it was something really stupid that I found out tonight. Somewhere along the line TeamSpeak and PowerDVD didn't play nice. Uninstalling both of them got rid of the hang on my system and now it's working great again.

Thanks for the input people, case closed now, woot! 

[Engels]

Good to hear. You know how PowerDVD installs some crap that runs at startup that's 100% unnecessary. I bet you can install PowerDVD again and then edit either the registery (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run in 32 bit, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run in 64 bit or something like that) or use msconfig to disable the item at startup. Or I think Windows Defender, if you're using it, allows you to remove startup programs too.

Edit: btw, if you aren't familiar with registry fiddling, use msconfig, its safer.

[apocrypha]

Can anyone recommend a good (also simple and free) file sync app for Win7 64? I've installed SyncToys 2.1 and started it running my photos backup, which is 150Gb, 20,000 files from local hdd to NAS. It's now been running for 8 hours and is about 5% done, which seems ludicrously slow. I could just manually copy the entire directory a lot faster.

Edit: It's ok, answered my own question. FreeFileSync has just done the same job in 5 minutes. Hurrah.

[Segoris]

Good to hear. You know how PowerDVD installs some crap that runs at startup that's 100% unnecessary. I bet you can install PowerDVD again and then edit either the registery (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run in 32 bit, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run in 64 bit or something like that) or use msconfig to disable the item at startup. Or I think Windows Defender, if you're using it, allows you to remove startup programs too.

Edit: btw, if you aren't familiar with registry fiddling, use msconfig, its safer.

Good thought, though I'll probably just leave it uninstalled for now.