Quick [tech] Questions Thread

[Ingmar]

BTW I believe you can delete the screenshots associated with those recent BioWare save game files without breaking anything (test on an unimportant save first.) Depending on your settings those files can take up a LOT of space.

EDIT:

And if you want to get into more potentially dangerous fucking around, here is a method I have not tested for relocating your Users directory off of the C: drive:

http://lifehacker.com/#!5467758/move-the-users-directory-in-windows-7

It appears to not be for the faint hearted.

[Engels]

Ya, moving the entire user directory structure to another drive and then creating a hard link from the C to the new user residence seems doable, but potentially problematic in the future. I might be a bit of a chicken here, but how many odd configurations have gone south when MS puts out an update that doesn't take into account the hacks you've had working for years, and you wake up one morning with a system that reports being broken?

[Chimpy]

Which is one of the minor reasons I just make 1 partition on a drive when I install windows. The major reason is simply that I am lazy, of course.

[Sheepherder]

Doing that with Windows 7 is shooting yourself in the leg.  With a rocket launcher.

[Der Helm]

I think CCleaner fucked up some network related part of my registry. Restoring an older registry did not work.
This is what my (paraphrasing here, cause I run the German version obviously) "Network" screen looks like...


I run Windows 7 (64bit) home, reinstalled the network driver from scratch and now I am out of ideas.

Internet still works, though.

Haelp!

edit: Sound seems to be fucked too.

[Chimpy]

Go to search box, type : cmd

Right click on the little CMD icon, select "Run as Administrator"

in the command prompt type: netsh winsock reset

Will require a reboot, but that will rebuild the network stack on any Microsoft OS XP SP2 or later.

Might solve your network problem.

[Der Helm]

Thanks, but that did nothing for me.

I have the feeling that my problem are motherboard related, since both sound and LAN are onboard.

I got THIS model. Now I can't find any Windows 7 drivers anywhere. What the f... 

[Chimpy]

I got THIS model. Now I can't find any Windows 7 drivers anywhere. What the f... 

Usually, the Vista drivers will work for 7 in a worst case scenario.

[Der Helm]

I got THIS model. Now I can't find any Windows 7 drivers anywhere. What the f... 

Usually, the Vista drivers will work for 7 in a worst case scenario.

So far they don't, I suppose I should use the 64bit drivers if I use Windows 7 (64) ?

fakeedit: Looks like the microsoft support pages are actually helpfull. Apparently there is a programm that scans for missing system files (sfc.exe). Sadly I am at work right now and can't give it a try.

Weird stuff happened, some menue items in the "Systemsteuerung" (System Control Panel ?) would not even respond to clicking them.

[Der Helm]

Ok, I am home from work now. SFC does not work because of "resource-protection" ?

Aa repair-install does not work, either. Looks like I will have to do a clean install, which would result in a loss of all data on all hard drives if I understood the process right. 

Any other suggestions before I pull the trigger ? Going to get a few hours sleep beforehand. 

[vex]

You shouldn't lose everything on a clean install.  You will have to reinstall things but unless you format you shouldn't lose anything. 

If your destined for the reinstall route try doing an upgrade from your windows 7 to windows 7 first.  I think that is still possible as it's one of the ways to do a clean install with an upgrade disk and have the licensing work.

[Reg]

If Windows 7 is anything like Vista a repair-install won't work unless you uninstall any Service Packs that might have gone in since you first installed Windows.

[Der Helm]

If Windows 7 is anything like Vista a repair-install won't work unless you uninstall any Service Packs that might have gone in since you first installed Windows.

Which I can't, because the SP1 installation seems to be broken as well.  What the fuck did I do. :D

Actually this is the perfect timing for me, I have to finish a paper till Wednesday, this way Gaming won't distract me until I am done. 

On a related note, microsoft support pages said that registry "cleaners" are "snakeoil" anyway and do not help with system performance at all. True ?

[Engels]

Sorta. With windows xp and a machine that's been heavily used for years and years, it will collect a bunch of registry clutter that does hamper performance. CCleaner is free, and does what these 'snake oil' ones claim to do. Registry Mechanic -used- to be a good program, but now is a benign form of malware.

As to the effectiveness of a registry cleaner on Windows 7, I don't have a machine that's gummed up enough to do a comparison, but it wouldn't surprise me if by comparison to XP the impact is less.

One thing that is probably true is that registry cleaners will in all likelihood NOT solve a problem with your computer.

Der Helm, its possible that Windows 7 has the drivers for your card in Windows Updates. During driver installation, when it asks you to locate the drivers, there's a 'check automatic updates' or somesuch that will download a much larger listing of existing drivers. Not sure if you did that yet.

[fuser]

Which I can't, because the SP1 installation seems to be broken as well.  What the fuck did I do. :D

Did you use driversweeper at one point? Older versions really messed up the base Windows 7 causing SP1 install failures.

See: driver sweeper issue thread

[Der Helm]

No, that one I did not use. Can't check on the name of the program since I am not at home right now but I THINK it was Glary registry repair.

[Ingmar]

I'm with MS, registry cleaners are useless. (And actively harmful at worst.)

You could try going back to your oldest system restore point, unless you already did.

[Der Helm]

I'm with MS, registry cleaners are useless. (And actively harmful at worst.)

You could try going back to your oldest system restore point, unless you already did.

No dice, restore points are broken as well.

 

[Engels]

smells of either HD failure or virusy stuff.

[Chimpy]

smells of either HD failure or virusy stuff.

Yeah, sounds like the nasty rootkit kind of virusy stuff at that.

I say back up any important files you can, and nuke it from orbit.

[Sky]

Is there a decent rootkit revealer for windows 7 yet?

[Der Helm]

smells of either HD failure or virusy stuff.

Yeah, sounds like the nasty rootkit kind of virusy stuff at that.

I say back up any important files you can, and nuke it from orbit.

I very much doubt it, shit started hitting the fan while/after I was cleaning out my HD. I was uninstalling programms left and right and (now) I remember that I allowed one registry cleaner to delete some yellow coloured shit. Looking back that was a very dumb idea, looks like there really IS some important stuff hidden in the registry. I have the feeling that I deleted references to a big part of the SYSTEM, SYSTEM32 and SYSTEM64 folders. At least in my limited understand that would explain why big parts of windows simply ceased to function.

I blame being an old school MS DOS user, I am still used to pruning config.sys and autoexec.bat to free up enough memory to start up my games. I am still able to navigate and use  the "MSDOS-interface" when I have to.

[Lantyssa]

You could try malwarebytes to see if it's able to repair those registry entries, but otherwise it sounds like it's time to backup and reformat.

[Sky]

I blame being an old school MS DOS user, I am still used to pruning config.sys and autoexec.bat to free up enough memory to start up my games. I am still able to navigate and use  the "MSDOS-interface" when I have to.

When I'm tired and not paying attention, I mistakenly enter DOS commands into the BSD cmd line. I also do the opposite and I've run ls -al on my windows cmd line.

[Ingmar]

I am surprised the spam post survived til now - maybe the gambling links in KittyKat's sig there were TOO hidden?

[Trippy]

They are getting smarter.

[Sky]

They are getting smarter.

Almost....self-aware!

[Chimpy]

They are getting smarter.

Yeah, they copied what I said. And since no one around here reads what I say, it got entirely missed. 

[Lantyssa]

Almost....self-aware!

So it's a step up from Cloud Dating?

[Yegolev]

If you use powershell on Win, since it's POSIX you can expect `ls` to work.

My wife's computer is still down, I don't have time to repair it.  I am now suspicious that it is a CPU breakage rather than mobo since the new computer I built is doing the exact same thing.  Although I'm really just choosing to suspect the Intel i5 instead of the ASUS P7P55D.  Might me a smart move to RMA whichever one has the shortest warranty first.

[SnakeCharmer]

Didn't you recently have a PSsomething die?  Talk about a bad run of luck with electronics.  Is the power going to your house extremely dirty or something?

[Yegolev]

Actually, now I think it was the eight-year-old power strip behind my AV center.  My TV, though, is just a piece of shit.  Stupid Mitsubishi.

My PC, being a new build, isn't related to the other stuff.  Pretty sure I just got a bad CPU.  My wife's PC, on the other hand, could be the victim of vibration since it's a regular PC on a rolling table.  It's had tons of issues since I built it, though.

In 2010, I did have two PS3 and one 360 die.  I'm blaming this on the power strip.  I don't like the non-60GB PS3 at all.  I really wish that Sony had the online storage last summer since I would have been able to save a lot of things which were destroyed when the first PS3 Slim went tits-up.  I had managed to use a heat gun to get the 60GB PS3 working so I could do a PS3-to-PS3 transfer, which was a bit hairy since I somehow broke the fan in the old one when I disassembled/reassembled it.  After THAT one died, I invoked the warranty and Sony send me a new unit, so some of my saves were lost forever (Demon's Souls, Dragon Age).  Also I had not done a backup for about two months, but now I backup individual saves every time before I shut down the console.  When the 360 died, I bought a new power strip and things have been quiet since then (minus the TV).

The upside is that I have a 360 in the bedroom now.

So far this year, I've only endured a failed ATi 5870 and a broken monitor on my corporate laptop.

[Strazos]

Wow, you have lots of things die on you. I've only ever had a 360 die on me about 2 years ago, and it was covered. I had back-to-back Radeon cards die on me (those OEM fans SUCKED), and an old GeForce slip out of the AGP slot while the system was on, shorting it out. Had a LED monitor fritz out a few months back, but I didn't buy it new anyway, and the upgrade was So Worth It.

I guess I've had good luck with electronics, generally.

[Hoax]

My GPU (GTX260) is starting to have what I hope are heating issues. NVIDIA monitor software does not give me gpu temp so what do I need to download to keep tabs on my card?

[Yegolev]

I did forget that my 21" LG PC monitor died last December, while I was on a cruise in which all of my luggage was soaked and my wife's $200 silk coat was ruined, and now I have a 26" ASUS.