Random Question Thread: Tech

[Qeomash]

Dunno, but most "outdated" FF plugins still work perfectly fine in newer versions and can be fixed just by editing the version#:
http://www.storersoftware.com/Fix-Firefox-Extension.php

That sorta worked, though the clock no longer works.

Edit: I do have an addon that restores the status bar at the bottom, but the time and day are just red question marks.

[Ramor]

Friend's clackputer is having some weird issues, his HDD went (i'm fairly positive, it was like 7 years old and chkdsk found tons of bad sectors, was a recent power outage) but when trying a new HDD this new one is also having the same issue as the first HDD which is that when installing windows, it "installs" but then won't boot to an OS and tries to reinstall itself again, what could cause this? It may be a bad second HDD also as it was one I had laying around, but it was working perfectly fine last I had used it.

[Bweigelt]

So I'm in the process of hooking my Wii remote to my computer and I'm curious if I want to use the sensor bar do I have to buy a wireless one or is there a way to use the wired one that comes with the Wii on the PC?

[Jojimbo]

You can mod the Wii sensor bar to use USB (need to be able to solder), but you have to remove some of the LEDs in order to get it under the 5v that USB can supply, I just got a wireless + rechargable batteries because it seemed easier and I have limited available USB slots anyway >.>

[Niya]

Or before you tinker with your sensor bar, just get a few infrared LEDs and button cells with a fitting voltage, tada. The wiimote just needs the infrared signal for better precision on orientation.

[Bweigelt]

Thanks guys I think I'll just fork out the $15 and get the wireless one in that case.

[Qeomash]

Friend's clackputer is having some weird issues, his HDD went (i'm fairly positive, it was like 7 years old and chkdsk found tons of bad sectors, was a recent power outage) but when trying a new HDD this new one is also having the same issue as the first HDD which is that when installing windows, it "installs" but then won't boot to an OS and tries to reinstall itself again, what could cause this? It may be a bad second HDD also as it was one I had laying around, but it was working perfectly fine last I had used it.

Check the BIOS and make sure it's not trying to mount a weird partition or something; be sure boot order is either HD > CD or vice versa. If that fails, maybe try a different IDE or SATA port (whatever the drive is) on the motherboard. They never go bad, but maybe try swapping cables anyway. The only other thing I can think of, besides motherboard, is maybe the power source isn't putting out enough power anymore. *shrug*

[Overburn]

I built my computer over the summer and everything has been fine with it until I started playing Skyrim this past week. Since playing, my monitor randomly goes black into stand by mode and doesn't accepted any inputs (although there is still sound for a bit until that seems to just loop a second or two of sound), forcing me to restart my computer. Looking at temps when I reboot in Speedfan, they all seem to be fine and searching Google seems to suggest it could be basically any part of the computer. Is there any tests I could do to narrow down the problem further?

For reference, this is my computer (with a correct memory instead of Laptop):

[Ramor]

I can't remember exactly how, but I'm sure someone here does, but in the windows administrator tools somewhere there's a crashlog that logs each crash and usually has a cause for it, though I can't remember how to get to that little tool, google may be of assistance. Also, this is somewhat of a stab in the dark and may be totally off course with your issue, but is there a chance that your computer is trying to draw too much power from your PSU when you play Skyrim? It's a pretty graphically/computing intense game (from the looks of it, haven't played it yet) and you do only have a 620W PSU, it sounds like your PSU may just be going into protect mode to stop itself from failing and having your computer just shut off along with it, the sounds you're hearing may just be latent power leftover from the caps dissipating in your PSU also. Just a guess anyway, could be totally off.

[Overburn]

From googling Windows Crashlog, I only get the Reliability History as a build in feature. This just lists all of the crashes as "Windows was not properly shut down" and nothing in the technical details (I'm not sure if this has to do with the fact that I am manually turning off my computer with the power button as 10-15 minutes of letting it sit doesn't do anything).

It seems like there's also a dump file which is created after each crash, which I am currently looking into understanding how to open.

[Niya]

You can always use a stress test for CPU and GPU to see if it's a general problem or something going wrong with skyrim.

Just in case, disable automatic reboot on bluescreens in windows before that (can't explain it in english where you find it, please google it yourself).
Furmark can stress your GPU to 100%, those openGL renders can even create a higher load and power consumption than the card would normally allow.
Core2MaxPerf (DL link at the bottom of the page, it's in german but should be simple enough ^^) stresses your CPU.

Start those 2 and keep watching the temps with speedfan.

€dit: what kind of dump file? If those are minidumps, Bluescreenviewer should be able to show them in "readable" form.

[Overburn]

Which cores should I be putting stress on? I have four options (0-3). Should I do all of them? After five minute, they seem to sit at about 70C . This is from their idle temperature of 35C which jumped to about 58C as the program stated.

I'm not sure what I was suppose to look at for Furmark, but if it was just do the BURN-IN test and check for temps, it seemed to constantly rise to about 85C before a fan seemed to go into high mode (which I've never heard it do before) and I quit it. It seemed though like it was getting close to it's max temperature from the graph t the bottom though. It seemed like it may have been close to capping at about 90.

[Niya]

for full stress you should start both furmark in burn-in mode and core2maxperf for all cores and let it run for ~10-15min.
When you say you never heard the fast mode of your GPU fan, it should at least not be a problem with too high gpu stress through skyrim...

Something else that could be possible: graphic card driver crash. Had something similar a few years back on my nVidia card, during a game pc would first stutter for a few seconds, then freeze with sound loop. But that was under WinXP, with 7 it shouldn't happen since 7 can reset the driver without crashing the whole OS.

[Overburn]

Running both FurMark and core2 seems to actually give me a lower temperature, but Furmark has considerably worse FPS (min:1 max:53, avg:15) compared to when I tested it on it's own (seemed to be a constant video without any jumps, I didn't see what it actually was). The temperature on my card seems to spike up and down but hovers only around 70C this time. The fan speed remained at about 40% at it's max with the GPU load only being around 25%.

Results from core2 are about constant at 70C.

This was over 10 minutes with no crash.

Edit: searching Google and there seemed to be a few other reports of Radeon cards having issues. I guess I may have just been an early person to look for a solution if none of these stress tests can seem to replicate an issue.

[Niya]

Thought so... So it's probably that the radeon driver doesn't like Skyrim Wait a bit, AMD should release an updated version within the next weeks or so ^^

Oh, and about the furmark performance drop: that's a good sign that core2 does its job and stresses your CPU so much that furmark doesn't get enough CPU time to stress the GPU. Might sound a bit strange, but every program needs at least a tiny bit of CPU time to work.

[notorious bum]

Didn't Amazon only make the 1st gen Kindles only in Black and the all white ones would be 2nd/3rd gen?


EDIT: ok, obviously I should have google image searched first, I hate second-hand information. They made them in White.

[Aylee]

With the 4s is skype to Skype calls and or face calling free?

[Xno Kappa]

My xbox isn't showing up on the TV. It seems to be running fine but I've tried changing out the HDMI cable and use a different one but still nothing. Is the AV port borked or something?

[Purrrfect]

Did you try any of the other outputs on the xbox? I'm assuming its like the ps3 here where there is a separate analog out. Also, try other hdmi ports on the tv?

[Aylee]

My xbox isn't showing up on the TV. It seems to be running fine but I've tried changing out the HDMI cable and use a different one but still nothing. Is the AV port borked or something?

thats your problem lmao If your using a HDMI cable you need to be on the HDMI channel... like on my 3 tvs they have component, AV, cable, HDMI1, HDMI2, HDMI3