Quick [tech] Questions Thread

[Selby]

My last (out of 4) computer with an IDE bus on it has finally given up the ghost.  Problem is I still have data that I was in the process of backing up to my computer that only has SATA support.  I'd rather not buy a junk computer just to get the data off of these 3 drives.  Is there a decent portable enclosure kit still available for IDE drives?  All I can find searching is units that have snazzy colors and bragging about how portable and awesome they are, oh yeah they're all SATA too.

[Salamok]

I think for like $10 you can get a pata to sata converter.

edit: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812270269

[Ironwood]

I'm already thinking the answer is no, but can you get a PCI Wireless card to work with VMWare ?

[Sky]

I think for like $10 you can get a pata to sata converter.

edit: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812270269

I would think something like that. I have an ide to usb that has seen heavy usage over the years.

[Lantyssa]

I'm already thinking the answer is no, but can you get a PCI Wireless card to work with VMWare ?

Only if there is a way to get it to see actual hardware.  Does VMWare have some kind of pass-through functionality?

Does it need to see it specifically though?  If the underlying OS can use the card, VMWare shouldn't care about the specifics of the network.

[Chimpy]

Well, in most enterprise applications, wouldn't the underlying OS be the VMWare hypervisor?

[Ingmar]

I have to imagine in this case we're talking about VMWare Workstation or Player running on a PC, the idea of an enterprise server running off a wireless card is kind of frightening. I've never set it up myself, but a little Googling reveals this:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=760

So it seems like it should be possible, given the right version of VMWare.

[Mrbloodworth]

Can I put this:
EVGA 02G-P4-2670-KR GeForce GTX 670 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

On this:

MB ASUS P5K-E/WIFI-AP P35 775 RT - Retail (Qty=1, Price=$149.99)

The question is really about this: PCI Express 3.0


EDIT: looks like yes, but possibly with some performance loss due to the transfer speed.

[Goreschach]

What exactly about pcie 3.0? Are you asking if it's back compatibile with pcie 1.1? It is, as long as the card and motherboard follow the pcie specifications, which in all likelyhood they do. PCIE is funny like that. You can take a modern videocard and with some grounding tricks and an xacto knife, get it to run in a pcie 1.0 1x slot.

The problem is, of course, that it'll downregulate to the speed of whatever port you have it plugged into. I'm assuming you want to buy a new gpu now and upgrade your cpu/motherboard shortly afterwards? Trying to run a modern gpu in such an old system may be possible, but I'd think it would be rather pointless as you'd probably end up siginificantly cpu-bound.

[Miasma]

The PCIe stuff is supposed to be backwards compatible but I haven't kept up with how that turned out.  A lot of complaints about where the sata ports are on that motherboard, sounds like two of them get blocked by long video cards.  Might need special sata cables if you use them.

[Goreschach]

If that's a problem he could use a pcie riser.

[Mrbloodworth]

Yes, asking about backwards compatibility. I don't really want to make a new machine right now, though I was quite sad my CPU was near the bottom of the list in a hardware survey I took recently.

This is my current setup: http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=18439.msg1079515#msg1079515


I had thought, I would be good for a few years with that motherboard, but it seems pins change really fast currently.

[Rasix]

The second fan on my Twin Frozr isn't spinning anymore.  RMA time?

[Sky]

ZOMG TIME TO BUY AN ARCTIC COO....ok, sorry. You could take it apart, check connections and reseat everything with new thermal goop; but I doubt MSI is as friendly to that kind of stuff as EVGA is.

But srsly the accelero is awesome, fans run lower, way less dbs and runs cooler than the twin frozr I have in sli with it

[Rasix]

I might go that direction.  Luckily it seems to be handling itself OK in most games I play.  I worry that I'm going to play something with a little more graphical punch and it's going to start blue screening due to heat.

I took it out and looked at the two fans.  Cleaned everything out.  The second fan (most interior) is just stiff as hell. The first one spins fine, but the second one just resists any type of movement.  I'm a bit afraid to unseat the whole fan and heat pipe thingamabob.

[Furiously]

Just change your mental approach. Go in figuring, "it's already busted."

[Yegolev]

Need advice and confirmation: How do I conclusively tell if a GPU has melted?  I have a HIS IceQ Turbo Radeon HD 6950 that was not overclocked and was well ventilated.  It's maybe 9-10 months old.  Everything is black.  PC still passes the POST test fine, and from ear I think starts fully.  Nothing is displayed.  Cables fine.

Was playing Magic 2012 and nothing else.  Only other supporting evidence is 1) room was hotter than normal and 2) everything went black, and then fans kicked in faster than I've ever heard them before.  So, gone? 

Check for a label with "ATI" on it.  Then you'll know.

[Morat20]

Ha. My last ATI card died that way. I burned my finger pulling it out. Had an actual blister. That seemed a sign it was, in fact, dead.

[Morat20]

I...hate....Microsoft. HATE THEM.

Not only is getting my Vista reauthorized turning into a nightmare, but I've got some weird ass bug. I *think* it's some deep registry fuckup, some service not starting, or something....

But get this -- on a regular boot, double clicking an exe file? Doesn't run. Gives me a "C:\blah-blah\Desktop\blah.exe" (insert real values there) "A device attached to the system is not functioning" error and then does nothing.

I go to the event viewer and maybe, maybe, there's an error in profsvc (I think that's it) that's a brief "filepath not found" thing. Except I'm not sure that's actually the root cause. I don't know crap about the event system, so I don't even know what to look for.

Weird thing? Stuff installed works. Run whatever from the Start Menu? Just dandy. Just won't run a raw executable that's not installed. Have NO idea why. Google-fu fails me, mostly because 95% of that error message is in scan logs for viruses.

Anyone got a clue?

[Chimpy]

Nuke that laptop from orbit.

[Morat20]

Nuke that laptop from orbit.

It's getting there. Virus is gone. I think critical windows files just got eaten, corrupted, or didn't get repaired back. I'm trying a system restore to way back. If that doesn't work, it's time to save the data and reinstall.

[Morat20]

Nuking it from orbit feels like failure, but....I think failure it is.

Tomorrow I'll spend my evening finding her files and backing them up to a DVD or something. And then Format C: and on from there.

[Merusk]

Ok, 2 hours after my pc has unceremoniously shit itself during beta I give up.  I've reset my bios and tried the restore disk but nothing works.  Shortly after post it will start windows to attempt to recover then it freezes.  The light on my mouse goes dark and the syste mists there, silently running nothing but the case fan.  Same if I try to boot from the restore disk or a USB.  Post to. ..nothing.  Any suggestions? I'm going to bed.

[Trippy]

Is your CPU fan still working? Some possibilities:

* CPU is overheating and shutting the system down

* Power supply is dying

* Something is wrong with the voltage management on the motherboard (e.g. leaky capacitor)

[Merusk]

So far as I can tell the CPU fan is still working.  I didn't want to try and unseat it last night as it was nearly 12:30 and I had to get up in 5 hours. There was air movement but I couldn't tell if it was the case fan right next to it or the cpu fan.

Any way I can test the other two items tonight when I get home from work? At the office now so any further troubleshooting will have to wait.

[Trippy]

If you have another PC you can swap power supplies. MB is trickier to troubleshoot. Also make sure whatever you are plugged into is still good. I've had plenty of power strip sockets die over time.

[Merusk]

I'm plenty sure the socket's ok but I'll give that a shot.  My other power supply is underpowered as it's from an old Dell and the new machine needs a 600w supply.  I've put in a support ticket w/ where I bought it as the machine is only 7 month old. I'd read they had power problems in their support when buying so perhaps that's what it is.

Think it could be anything else that I might want to troubleshoot or are these the only 3 likely causes?  Seems odd I didn't have any problems until running MWO.

[Trippy]

Could also be the video card having issues, though with that you normally see some visual indication or a BSoD.

[MisterNoisy]

So far as I can tell the CPU fan is still working.  I didn't want to try and unseat it last night as it was nearly 12:30 and I had to get up in 5 hours. There was air movement but I couldn't tell if it was the case fan right next to it or the cpu fan.

Any way I can test the other two items tonight when I get home from work? At the office now so any further troubleshooting will have to wait.

Assuming the PC is the one you mentioned in this post, I'm going to hazard a guess that your PSU is probably fucked.  Those CyberPower OEM PSUs are complete shit.

[Merusk]

That's the one and, yeah, I figured as much based on the research I'd done at the time, Noisy.

Trippy - Well, it could be that MWO fried the vid. drivers with its crashes.   I've got a spare card I'll try swapping-in or maybe the onboard video.

[Lantyssa]

More than likely MWO pushed the video card which increased the power draw, which shortened its capacity to provide stable power.

[Merusk]

That makes sense, I certainly hadn't been taxing it with World of Tanks and World of Warcraft or FA3.  I think the most taxing thing I'd played was Two Worlds 2 and Team Fortress.

Hm.. hopefully they'll get back to me.   I really don't feel like buying the only 800w supply on newegg.

[MisterNoisy]

That makes sense, I certainly hadn't been taxing it with World of Tanks and World of Warcraft or FA3.  I think the most taxing thing I'd played was Two Worlds 2 and Team Fortress.

Hm.. hopefully they'll get back to me.   I really don't feel like buying the only 800w supply on newegg.

As long as you buy a quality power supply, you shouldn't need more than 600w for any single GPU system. 

[Merusk]

Bought a power supply at mirocenter tonight.  Nope, that's not it.    I'll return it this weekend.

So instead I pulled the HDD and I'm running check disk on it with the old box to see if there's bad sectors or files.  Sigh.

After this I'm gng to pull the old machine HDD and put it in the new box.  If it won't boot then it's something more severe and I'll force a service call on cyberpower.

Ed:
Update! Exchanged the power supply for a HDD today.  Same problem as before.  So I swapped the vid card with an old one..still the same freeze on 'loading windows.'. Arg.  In a fit do desperation I started swapping Sata cables around.  Yep that did it. 

So looks like I just had a bad plug on the board.  Though now the old HDD isn't recognized by and machine, so it may be bad too.

[Yegolev]

I...hate....Microsoft. HATE THEM.

Not sure why I got chuckles when I suggested Ubuntu.  It has a browser.