Computers CHAT - 2021

[NT2C]

Fuck Thermaltake! 

So, I've been upgrading my desktop PC but had a two-week setback due to having to return a DOA MB... that may not have been DOA after all.  At the time that I got the first MB installed and tried to power up there was no response and everything was dead.  In renovating the system I did a stupid thing that really should not have been a stupid thing.  Since the new PSU was just an ARGB version of the same Thermaltake 850W PSU that was being replaced, and because I'm a lazy fuck, I didn't change all the cables.  Both units used modular cable sets and I figured I could reuse the set already installed without having to rewire the case.  When there was no power indication on the MB the very first thing I did was dig out my PSU tester and unplugged the cables from the PSU and plugged in the unused new cables and used them to connect the PSU to the tester. And of course it tested as good.  I then did the whole process of getting an RMA, taking out the "bad" MB and packing it up to send, unboxing it again and removing the M2 drive and water cooler mount that I forgot to take off, rebox it and ship it back to Newegg then wait for a replacement.  Today, replacement in hand, I was getting ready to install the MB but something in my head told me to test the PSU with the cables in the case... DOA.

W.T.F???

So I plugged in the cables that came with it... tests good.  The problem was in reusing the old cables.  Even though the old PSU was also a Thermaltake 850W modular PSU, just like the new one (only differences being new was a platinum and the old a bronze, and the new being ARGB vs the old having built-in RGB) and even though the old cables plugged right into the same spots on the new PSU, there was a difference between them.  Sure enough, looking at the PSU end of the 24 pin MB cable showed one empty connection on the new cable.  The bastards obviously made changes to the wiring of the cables and how they connected with the PSU, but didn't change or key the Molex connection on the PSU so you couldn't use an older cable.

Weeks of waiting and all the hassle of returning what was probably a working high dollar MB that will now be scrapped, all because Thermaltake couldn't be bothered keying a changed connector.  Fuck 'em.  I'm pissed enough right now to avoid all their products in the future.

[Rednex]

So something that happened to me, bought my girlfriend a refurbished Dell OptiPlex 9020 from Amazon. I play a few games and for together time she likes the one game Valheim. It got delivered Friday, then Saturday i set it up. Open box had bubble wrap around it had a keyboard and mouse, and wires ( HDMI and power ). Plugged the power cord into an outlet and other end into PSU port. It came to life, and i let go of the power cord it died. The plug in port on the computer was loose and wobbled, it only ran when i held the plug just right. Then the HDMI cord would not go into the ports at all. I looked at the ports and they looked different to what i have seen before like a dull gray. So Sunday spent time with Amazon's support member to get it fixed.

Now a week for the new refurbished computer to show up, she was/is kinda disappointed with not having her own computer to play with.

[mzmc]

Fuck Thermaltake! 

I've been through similar shit with a variety of supposedly "high end" PSUs and have entirely changed to be quiet! as a consequence. Three years and running. No issues yet.

So something that happened to me, bought my girlfriend a refurbished Dell OptiPlex 9020 from Amazon. I play a few games and for together time she likes the one game Valheim. It got delivered Friday, then Saturday i set it up. Open box had bubble wrap around it had a keyboard and mouse, and wires ( HDMI and power ). Plugged the power cord into an outlet and other end into PSU port. It came to life, and i let go of the power cord it died. The plug in port on the computer was loose and wobbled, it only ran when i held the plug just right. Then the HDMI cord would not go into the ports at all. I looked at the ports and they looked different to what i have seen before like a dull gray. So Sunday spent time with Amazon's support member to get it fixed.

Now a week for the new refurbished computer to show up, she was/is kinda disappointed with not having her own computer to play with.

Stored in a humid environment, oxidation in the ports, then overly aggressively cleaned during refurbishment?

Because the Dell all-in-one stuff usually uses decent components, I've never heard of shenanigans like that...

[Rednex]

Well it was refurbished by Amazon , which means the cheapest they can find. It was $400 USD. Here's a copy and past of its features, not sure how decent they are. The keyboard and mouse it came with were both wireless.
【KEY FEATURES】
-Dell OptiPlex 9020 Small Form Factor (SFF)
-Intel Core i7-4770 3.4GHz Processor
-32GB Ram
-1TB Solid State Drive (SSD)
-WiFi & Bluetooth Adapter
-Includes Wireless Keyboard And Mouse
-DisplayPort to HDMI
-Windows 10 Professional (64Bit)
-DVD Drive
-Onboard Intel HD Graphics
-Sound Integrated
-Network: 10/100/100 Gigabit Ethernet
-Microphone
-Headphone
-Audio Line In/Out
-Expansion Slots & Bays:
-(1) Low-Profile PCI Express x16 Slot
-(2) Low-Profile PCI Express x1 Slots
-(1) External 5.25" Drive Bay
-(1) Internal 3.5" Drive Bay
-(1) External 3.5" Drive Bay
-1x VGA
-2x Display Port
-1x Serial Port
-10x USB: Front-panel's USB ports

[mzmc]

Still strange, because desktop PC don't go through enough insertion cycles (Giggity) to wear out the ports (Giggity), and the Dells are usually made with decent components. Huh.



Anyone know anything about connectivity issues in Linux? I'm running Linux Mint 20.2 Cinnamon x64 on my laptop, and the damn WiFi is acting up.

It's a Realtek RTL8723BE PCIe Wireless Network Adapter (2.4 GHz only), and I will just spontaneously and without any reason lose internet access, but not WiFi or connection to the router. The router (or cable modem, really) does in fact claim that I'm still online.

It must be a software problem, because it doesn't appear when the same machine is running Windows, and it's completely cool, so it's not a heat issue, either. And signal strength is like a million dB, so that's not it.

I'm stuck with either constantly manually dis- and reconnecting, or putting "sudo service network-manager restart" into the terminal every few minutes, and it's starting to damage my calm. I've got work to do. 

[NT2C]

Still strange, because desktop PC don't go through enough insertion cycles (Giggity) to wear out the ports (Giggity), and the Dells are usually made with decent components. Huh.



Anyone know anything about connectivity issues in Linux? I'm running Linux Mint 20.2 Cinnamon x64 on my laptop, and the damn WiFi is acting up.

It's a Realtek RTL8723BE PCIe Wireless Network Adapter (2.4 GHz only), and I will just spontaneously and without any reason lose internet access, but not WiFi or connection to the router. The router (or cable modem, really) does in fact claim that I'm still online.

It must be a software problem, because it doesn't appear when the same machine is running Windows, and it's completely cool, so it's not a heat issue, either. And signal strength is like a million dB, so that's not it.

I'm stuck with either constantly manually dis- and reconnecting, or putting "sudo service network-manager restart" into the terminal every few minutes, and it's starting to damage my calm. I've got work to do. 

I could swear I saw a YouTube video about this just yesterday.  It came up in my feed and caught my attention because I have a Mint distro installed on one of my laptops but I haven't played with it in a few months so I didn't watch the video.  Might come up if you Google it.

[NT2C]

Fuck Thermaltake! 

I've been through similar shit with a variety of supposedly "high end" PSUs and have entirely changed to be quiet! as a consequence. Three years and running. No issues yet.

I swear, at a dozen points tonight I was ready to spend the money and get what I need to make my own cables.  It's not just the change they made that has me aggravated, it's dealing with flat cables that have to be routed through places no flat cable should ever have to traverse and, seemingly inevitably, the connector is always facing the wrong way, sometimes on more than one axis.

[mzmc]

I could swear I saw a YouTube video about this just yesterday.  It came up in my feed and caught my attention because I have a Mint distro installed on one of my laptops but I haven't played with it in a few months so I didn't watch the video.  Might come up if you Google it.

Googling it was not really helpful, but apparently it fixed itself by setting the adapter from wlan0 (Linux default) to wlp2s0 (Ubuntu) and back.

I swear, I'm a proponent of open source, Linux in particular, but everyone claiming it "just works" needs to stop drinking.

[SCBrian]

On the Mint issue - Just a heads up if you use a sandbox - I saw a couple of reports that firejail may not be playing nice with 20.  I use Mint in Vbox

[mzmc]

I don't.

The only good explanation I have found is that many Realtek Onboard WiFi adapters have two antennas, and both Lenovo and HP usually only connect one. So if the operating system doesn't know which one it is, it might pick the wrong antenna. If you set antenna_sel to 0, which should be default in Ubuntu & Mint, the adapter should be set to auto and recognize that one antenna is not connected, based on high SWR.

Fiddling with that seemed to help. Which is all kind of weird, because I always had good signal strength & SNR, and never lost connection to the router. I only lost internet access. I could have sworn it was a package routing issue.

Ah, screw this, I gotta stop messing with that and go back to work.

[NT2C]

My PC lives again!

[CG]

My PC lives again!

Bright & shiny.

[MacWa77ace]

Need advice. DFU here.

I have a really old laptop HP Elitebook 6960p running Windows XP. [yes I know]

A couple of years ago I bought a 1TB external drive to back up my PS4 and that laptop and for some other stuff. Plug and play, worked great, backed up everything fine. Then I connected the external drive to a newer PC running windows 7 to do some other stuff.

But right after I connect it to windows 7, the old HP computer will no longer see the drive. It looks like the external is running exFAT. Which IIRC is for the extra large HDD's. [school me please]
Pretty much any PC computer I connect that drive to can see the drive except the one HP I bought that drive for.

Why did it work at first but stop being seen by the HP after being connected to Windows 7 machine? The file system is the same. Is there a fix that doesn't require reformatting the drive?

[NT2C]

Need advice. DFU here.

I have a really old laptop HP Elitebook 6960p running Windows XP. [yes I know]

A couple of years ago I bought a 1TB external drive to back up my PS4 and that laptop and for some other stuff. Plug and play, worked great, backed up everything fine. Then I connected the external drive to a newer PC running windows 7 to do some other stuff.

But right after I connect it to windows 7, the old HP computer will no longer see the drive. It looks like the external is running exFAT. Which IIRC is for the extra large HDD's. [school me please]
Pretty much any PC computer I connect that drive to can see the drive except the one HP I bought that drive for.

Why did it work at first but stop being seen by the HP after being connected to Windows 7 machine? The file system is the same. Is there a fix that doesn't require reformatting the drive?

The easiest fix might be to just "upgrade" the XP machine to Win 7, though I can't think of any reason the XP machine isn't seeing the drive.  The Win 7 machine didn't convert it to NTFS, did it?

[MacWa77ace]

Need advice. DFU here.

I have a really old laptop HP Elitebook 6960p running Windows XP. [yes I know]

A couple of years ago I bought a 1TB external drive to back up my PS4 and that laptop and for some other stuff. Plug and play, worked great, backed up everything fine. Then I connected the external drive to a newer PC running windows 7 to do some other stuff.

But right after I connect it to windows 7, the old HP computer will no longer see the drive. It looks like the external is running exFAT. Which IIRC is for the extra large HDD's. [school me please]
Pretty much any PC computer I connect that drive to can see the drive except the one HP I bought that drive for.

Why did it work at first but stop being seen by the HP after being connected to Windows 7 machine? The file system is the same. Is there a fix that doesn't require reformatting the drive?

The easiest fix might be to just "upgrade" the XP machine to Win 7, though I can't think of any reason the XP machine isn't seeing the drive.  The Win 7 machine didn't convert it to NTFS, did it?

Nope it says exFAT in the properties. I can't figure it out either. IIRC for the TB sized HDD NTFS won't work, has to be the exFAT which is standard.
I was thinking the USB firmware got changed on the external somehow?!? Old HP has 1 and 2.
I hardly use the laptop anymore, its set up to record PVR's from my PS3, do some video editing, and I was using the external for direct storage of the video files but haven't done anything with PS3 for a while. But I also have itunes on the laptop and direct converted a ton of CDs to the external also with playlists etc. The itunes has the files in its library but can't see the HDD either so while some MP3s are on the internal and play fine, the newer stuff is on the external and are 'file not found'.

I don't think the laptop is hardware compatible with WIN7. And not worth it $$ wise. I don't have a licensed copy.

I have another question on another laptop.

I guy at work gave me his old laptop, said it didn't work, wouldn't boot. I ran some diagnostics on it found that somehow he erased the HDD. Long story short I recovered a bunch of photos for him but kept the laptop because he didn't have the Toshiba recovery discs. It was also a WINXP and I do have a couple of liscenses for WINXP PRO. So I formatted the drive and did the install from the disks but the disks didn't have the drivers for the networking so after the install I couldn't connect to the internet to register the software license.

I searched the intraweb and found a couple of drivers and installed them but wasn't 100% sure they were even the drivers I was missing. They weren't labeled network driver if you know what i mean. That didn't work. Anyhow. Why doesn't the licensed disk have all the drivers for all the hardware to get a new system install going?!? I'd never tried that before so expected it to just go after a full install of the new system software.


ETA: I had removed the HDD from the Toshiba and put it in an external case, connected it to the HP laptop to run the diagnostics and the data recovery software. 

[NT2C]

I don't think the laptop is hardware compatible with WIN7. And not worth it $$ wise. I don't have a licensed copy.

I have another question on another laptop.

I guy at work gave me his old laptop, said it didn't work, wouldn't boot. I ran some diagnostics on it found that somehow he erased the HDD. Long story short I recovered a bunch of photos for him but kept the laptop because he didn't have the Toshiba recovery discs. It was also a WINXP and I do have a couple of liscenses for WINXP PRO. So I formatted the drive and did the install from the disks but the disks didn't have the drivers for the networking so after the install I couldn't connect to the internet to register the software license.

I searched the intraweb and found a couple of drivers and installed them but wasn't 100% sure they were even the drivers I was missing. They weren't labeled network driver if you know what i mean. That didn't work. Anyhow. Why doesn't the licensed disk have all the drivers for all the hardware to get a new system install going?!? I'd never tried that before so expected it to just go after a full install of the new system software.


ETA: I had removed the HDD from the Toshiba and put it in an external case, connected it to the HP laptop to run the diagnostics and the data recovery software. 

Win 7 hardware:
Processor:
1GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64)
Memory:
1GB RAM (32-bit) / 2GB RAM (64-bit)
Hard disk:
16GB available disk space (32-bit) / 20 GB (64-bit)
Display:
A screen resolution of at least 1024x768 pixels.
Graphics:
DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

Buy it here: https://www.electronicfirst.com/wind%D0%BEws-7-professional-oem/?c=USD Current price is $5.99

[NT2C]

I shall have to reexamine my cooling setup on my desktop machine.  The coolant pump thrums and the fans are sounding like someone a few houses over using a leaf blower. 

[CG]

Picked up a new Dell laptop from BestBuy for one of the ladies at work.  Decided I'd plug it in so it was fully charged when the IT company comes to pick it up.  Blue Screen of Death, straight out of the box.  It restarted, checked its memory, and said it's fine, but I'm not dealing with that.  Return.  Ordered straight from Dell with the nonprofit discounts and got a much better deal.  IT will just have to wait until next week to pick it up.

[Rednex]

Ok so got the second refurbished Dell Optiplex computer from Amazon. It is the same style model as before, this time the port for the power cord works. The HDMI cord it came with don't fit the damn HDMI port. So I ordered a DVI to HDMI adaptor because i thought the DVI was the screw on old computer type connector , it's what it looks like to me. So it comes and its bigger then the same looking female connector on the computer. I'm ready to use it as an expensive target by now. But first let me google stuff like " what looks like HDMI but ain't" . Well I learned something this computer uses Display Ports.... and the DVI well it's a VGA connector.
So order a HDMI to Display Port cable and it works.

Being dumb/ ignorant on a subject can get expensive. 

[NT2C]

Now, understand that with Display Port connections they lock in place and there's a button to release them.