PC questions that don't really deserve their own thread.

[Monkeylord]

No-one's gonna remember this, but back in December I posted unsuccessfully about my laptop keyboard no longer working after a Win10 update (was perfectly fine before the reboot to finalise). Nothing I found online worked, so ever since I've just been using the on-screen keyboard and a USB one. Seeing how the keyboard wasn't working at all even from boot or in the bios, I kinda put it down to hardware failure rather than software.

Well, yesterday I was browsing online and using 2 finger scroll when the trackpad stopped working. I touched the screen to see if the laptop had frozen (it hadn't) and my wrist hit the windows key. To my surprise it opened the start menu! Then the curser came back and I could use the trackpad again.

I rebooted twice, and both times everything was still working. All keys and the trackpad were fine. Thought I'd lucked out.

3rd reboot, and no keyboard again. Tried uninstalling the trackpad, but no dice.

Anyone got any ideas what could be happening?



The original problem was as follows:

Was using the laptop and got s prompt to reboot following a Win10 update.
Once rebooted, the keyboard wouldn't work. Anywhere.
Device manager sees the keyboard and says all is working perfectly.
Using the on screen keyboard, if I put in caps lock, the led on the physical caps lock button comes on, but the key doesn't work.

It's a Sony Vaio Duo 13, and I can't find any drivers beyond 2016.

Hopefully someone will have experienced something similar. It's doing my nut in!

 

[Dec]

No-one's gonna remember this, but back in December I posted unsuccessfully about my laptop keyboard no longer working after a Win10 update (was perfectly fine before the reboot to finalise). Nothing I found online worked, so ever since I've just been using the on-screen keyboard and a USB one. Seeing how the keyboard wasn't working at all even from boot or in the bios, I kinda put it down to hardware failure rather than software.

Well, yesterday I was browsing online and using 2 finger scroll when the trackpad stopped working. I touched the screen to see if the laptop had frozen (it hadn't) and my wrist hit the windows key. To my surprise it opened the start menu! Then the curser came back and I could use the trackpad again.

I rebooted twice, and both times everything was still working. All keys and the trackpad were fine. Thought I'd lucked out.

3rd reboot, and no keyboard again. Tried uninstalling the trackpad, but no dice.

Anyone got any ideas what could be happening?



The original problem was as follows:

Was using the laptop and got s prompt to reboot following a Win10 update.
Once rebooted, the keyboard wouldn't work. Anywhere.
Device manager sees the keyboard and says all is working perfectly.
Using the on screen keyboard, if I put in caps lock, the led on the physical caps lock button comes on, but the key doesn't work.

It's a Sony Vaio Duo 13, and I can't find any drivers beyond 2016.

Hopefully someone will have experienced something similar. It's doing my nut in!

Click to shrink...

Strange issue; I don't have much knowledge of laptops so apologies if I say something dumb.

Is the laptop touchscreen as well? Does repeating your initial success of touching the screen and then pressing a key do anything?

Have you got the 2004 update yet?

 

[Monkeylord]

Strange issue; I don't have much knowledge of laptops so apologies if I say something dumb.

Is the laptop touchscreen as well? Does repeating your initial success of touching the screen and then pressing a key do anything?

Have you got the 2004 update yet?

Click to shrink...

It is indeed touchscreen. I tried replicating everything (even went back to the same webpage I was browsing), but no joy.

I know it's old now, but this laptop is plenty powerful enough for me and still does everything I want it to, so I'm reluctant to give in over one issue.

Got the 2004 update yesterday and was hoping it would help, seeing how this all started with an update. Stayed up till nearly 1am, but it didn't help.

 

[Monkeylord]

Forgot to mention, my last resort when this originally occurred was rolling back updates, and eventually wiping the whole thing and starting from scratch.

It didn't help.

 

[Dec]

Forgot to mention, my last resort when this originally occurred was rolling back updates, and eventually wiping the whole thing and starting from scratch.

It didn't help.

Click to shrink...

Aye I was going to suggest that. If fresh install, with generic drivers and ruling out any Windows issues, you must either be looking at some bizarre driver issue which I would imagine would have affected someone other than you with this laptop, or hardware failure of some sort (maybe even just a loose connection interally).

 

[Monkeylord]

Might be time to open this sucker up then... That'll be fun!

/s

 

[Nezacant]

No-one's gonna remember this, but back in December I posted unsuccessfully about my laptop keyboard no longer working after a Win10 update (was perfectly fine before the reboot to finalise). Nothing I found online worked, so ever since I've just been using the on-screen keyboard and a USB one. Seeing how the keyboard wasn't working at all even from boot or in the bios, I kinda put it down to hardware failure rather than software.

Well, yesterday I was browsing online and using 2 finger scroll when the trackpad stopped working. I touched the screen to see if the laptop had frozen (it hadn't) and my wrist hit the windows key. To my surprise it opened the start menu! Then the curser came back and I could use the trackpad again.

I rebooted twice, and both times everything was still working. All keys and the trackpad were fine. Thought I'd lucked out.

3rd reboot, and no keyboard again. Tried uninstalling the trackpad, but no dice.

Anyone got any ideas what could be happening?



The original problem was as follows:

Was using the laptop and got s prompt to reboot following a Win10 update.
Once rebooted, the keyboard wouldn't work. Anywhere.
Device manager sees the keyboard and says all is working perfectly.
Using the on screen keyboard, if I put in caps lock, the led on the physical caps lock button comes on, but the key doesn't work.

It's a Sony Vaio Duo 13, and I can't find any drivers beyond 2016.

Hopefully someone will have experienced something similar. It's doing my nut in!

Click to shrink...

Does the keyboard work outside of Windows? (Does it work in Bios?)

 

[Monkeylord]

Does the keyboard work outside of Windows? (Does it work in Bios?)

Click to shrink...

Nope. Like I said, that's why I initially thought it was hardware failure, but 9 months later it randomly worked again (albeit briefly), so that made me reconsider my original diagnosis.

It was on a table, and hadn't been jostled/moved so... We'll... I'm stumped.

 

[Nezacant]

Nope. Like I said, that's why I initially thought it was hardware failure, but 9 months later it randomly worked again (albeit briefly), so that made me reconsider my original diagnosis.

It was on a table, and hadn't been jostled/moved so... We'll... I'm stumped.

Click to shrink...

You were right. :) It's still a hardware issue. Intermittent suggesting something electrical but nothing you do in Windows will correct it. You likely need to replace it (if you can get the part.)

 

[Monkeylord]

I hate that windows lies to me. Every time I look if says it's working perfectly.

Bah!!

 

[AmirMoosavi]

Trying to undervolt my laptop GPU in MSI Afterburner per https://old.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/g4bhue/the_101_gaming_laptop_guide_to_safely_increasing/, not sure why the voltage options are greyed out? I have a Gigabyte P55 with GTX 1060 6GB, Nvidia driver version 452.06:

 

[Dec]

Trying to undervolt my laptop GPU in MSI Afterburner per https://old.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/g4bhue/the_101_gaming_laptop_guide_to_safely_increasing/, not sure why the voltage options are greyed out? I have a Gigabyte P55 with GTX 1060 6GB, Nvidia driver version 452.06:

Click to shrink...

You have to unlock voltage control within the afterburner settings

 

[AmirMoosavi]

You have to unlock voltage control within the afterburner settings

Click to shrink...

Sorry, was just about to add that I'd already done that:

 

[AmirMoosavi]

I changed voltage control settings to third-party just now and restarted, still no change. I'm guessing Gigabyte does not allow this on this model card?

 

[Deleted member 47700]

Does anyone know how to play Netflix on Windows 10 without it stuttering every few seconds? I've tried Edge, Chrome and even the app itself to no avail. I just can't get a consistent 24FPS with it.

 

[Sceptre]

I accidently posted my MAC address and IP addresses online. how could someone hurt me with that?

 

[Dec]

I accidently posted my MAC address and IP addresses online. how could someone hurt me with that?

Click to shrink...

do you have reason to suspect someone would go out of their way to try and use that info?

I wouldn't be very worried in any case, your router should have a firewall and your IP is revealed to tons of people all the time if you play P2P multiplayer games.

 

[Jubern]

Hello guys,

I noticed my PC hasn't been registering middle clicks. It's been that way for a while actually, but I didn't take the time to tackle the problem until today.
After some testing this behaviour is present with any mouse I've been testing, on any software. Scrolling works fine.
I've tried reinstalling the generic driver (no specific drivers exist for my Logitech M545) and googling this, but nothing quite comes up.

Any idea what I could do?

Thank you.

 

[Tomo815]

Guys, Im back with more stupid questions. OK to recap, I recently bought my first desktop, its a mid-range desktop and Im pretty impressed with it.

I would like to imagine that this PC will be good for the next 5 years. For those of you who haven't update their PC for the past 5 years, do you find that you can still play most modern games (with some compromises?). What makes people decide to upgrade their PC? it is because they want to play one specific game that, say, the old GPU cant handle? or it is more like they want to play on ultra instead of medium/low? what games have you made decide to upgrade?

Right now the game that I want my PC to handle is Cyberpunk 2077. I dont know what else will come out in the future, but as long as I can play Cyberpunk with all the bells and whistles, then I am satisfied.

 

[Vex]

do you find that you can still play most modern games (with some compromises?).

Click to shrink...

Yes. And that's the glory of pc gaming: you set your own upgrade times. You don't have to wait for a company to release a new product to upgrade to more powerful hardware or to play newer games. OCing is also another path to more power.

What makes people decide to upgrade their PC?

Click to shrink...

For me, it was that I had the right budget at the right time. I tend to upgrade "mid-gen" and never when new hardware drops. Ive always done that with pc. My pc will last well into the next gen Ampere Era and then some. I will most likely refresh my hardware 2-5 years from now. Unless something really crazy happens with Ampere.

My 980/i54690-non-k PC was begging to be retired. It was struggling with newer titles even at medium. I tend to want to at least play on "high/ultra mix" and Im willing to go down from 4k or 1440p to 1080p to reach 60 fps. So my current build is more than enough for that.

But my old 980 was in a pc I built in 2015. So it lasted ~5 years. Best investment ever. I still have it and may just use it for lower end streaming/media/entertainment.

 

[Scarecrow]

I need to replace the mobo in my gaming laptop. Would that mean that it's copy of Win 10 won't be valid anymore, since the key is tied to the mobo?

 

[XR.]

I need to replace the mobo in my gaming laptop. Would that mean that it's copy of Win 10 won't be valid anymore, since the key is tied to the mobo?

Click to shrink...

The license can be stored and verified if you're logged into a Microsoft-account. Otherwise you probably need to contact support and they'll sort it out for you.

 

[JigglesBunny]

I've been dealing with high CPU and memory usage (anywhere from 80-100%) for months, I've done everything from disabling sysmain to disabling NDU in the registry but the problem always comes back.

Is it time to cut my losses and go for a Windows 10 reinstall? I have an external 8TB HDD that I can use to back up everything if need be.

 

[Tomo815]

Yes. And that's the glory of pc gaming: you set your own upgrade times. You don't have to wait for a company to release a new product to upgrade to more powerful hardware or to play newer games. OCing is also another path to more power.

My 980/i54690-non-k PC was begging to be retired. It was struggling with newer titles even at medium. I tend to want to at least play on "high/ultra mix" and Im willing to go down from 4k or 1440p to 1080p to reach 60 fps. So my current build is more than enough for that.

Click to shrink...

Thanks, this is a brilliant explanation. Looking around a bit, it seems that each new generation of graphic cards offers 50% more power at the same price range, so more or less you get double the power every 5 years or so?

 

[Vex]

Thanks, this is a brilliant explanation. Looking around a bit, it seems that each new generation of graphic cards offers 50% more power at the same price range, so more or less you get double the power every 5 years or so?

Click to shrink...

Using Moore's Law, it seems would seem that the transistor count is doubling just about every 2 years. Moore himself has said that this cannot be sustained forever though. It's anybody's guess at this point.

 

[Scarecrow]

The license can be stored and verified if you're logged into a Microsoft-account. Otherwise you probably need to contact support and they'll sort it out for you.

Click to shrink...

Neat. What other issues should I expect when swapping out the mobo?

 

[MisterAnderson]

I was thinking about making a thread about this, but figured before I did that I should try asking my question(s) here to see if someone in this thread could potentially help me out. I recently started streaming PC and Switch games on Twitch just for fun using a single PC setup with OBS Studio (paired with an Elgato HD60 S for Switch when streaming Switch games). My PC specs:

Acer Predator 1440p 144hz GSYNC Monitor
i7 8700k
GTX 1080 TI
16 GB RAM
Sennheiser GSX 1000 Amp
Sennheiser GAME ONE Gaming Headset

I'm not a Twitch affiliate yet so I'm only outputting 720p/60fps and when I play PC games I run them at 1440p/144hz 95% of the time. I haven't had any issues with encountering performance hits from streaming with my setup - that is, until now. I plan to stream Marvel's Avengers on PC next week, and as you may have heard from the beta impressions thread, it isn't the most stable; and after testing it out myself, this is noticeably exacerbated while streaming. This got me thinking that since I have a spare, reasonably beefy PC...

Ryzen 5 2600
GTX 1060 3GB
16GB RAM
Elgato HD60 S

...that it might be time to try setting up a dual PC streaming setup. However, I love keeping this spare PC set up on my spare desk and available for a friend who semi regularly comes over to play PC games with me (which he might do for Avengers), which got me ALSO thinking that maybe I could possibly get away with using an older, weaker third PC I have instead.

So my first question is: Would it be possible to use the following PC as a dedicated streaming rig when playing a resource demanding game like Avengers if I'm playing it at 1440p but outputting to Twitch at 720p? If not, surely the aforementioned spare PC would be good enough?

i7 920 overclocked to 3.9GHz
GTX 680 2GB
8GB DDR3 RAM (I think)
Elgato HD60 S

I'm assuming it doesn't have enough juice, but honestly, I have zero clue how much horsepower is required for a PC to be a competent, dedicated streaming PC. I was planning on using the guides found in these videos to set it up in either case:

How to Dual PC Stream Without Losing Resolution and 144hz - Up and Running Dual Stream PC
2 PC Stream Setup: Audio Guide (2019)

My other question is regarding the audio setup as described in the above video (using a software mixer): Would the fact that I have my headset running through a Sennheiser GSX 1000 Amp for simulated 7.1 get messed up at all from that setup?

My final question is: would going through all of this trouble guarantee that I would experience any reduction in framerate loss due to streaming the game? Is it possible that it might not even end up helping for whatever reason?

When I was testing the Avengers beta out, reducing the play resolution to 1080p made it run much smoother during my streaming tests, but I REALLY would prefer to play it in 1440p if going through with this dual PC setup would be a guaranteed resource free-er upper. One thing I was guilty of, however, was that I have always kept my OBS preview window enabled. Today I just found out that you can disable the preview and that doing this apparently helps with reducing the framerate hit that you could potentially take during a stream...would this be a game changer for me while running a single PC setup? Basically I'm just asking to make sure this whole endeavor is even going to be worth the trouble if me simply disabling the OBS preview would make a large impact on its own.

 

[Dec]

I was thinking about making a thread about this, but figured before I did that I should try asking my question(s) here to see if someone in this thread could potentially help me out. I recently started streaming PC and Switch games on Twitch just for fun using a single PC setup with OBS Studio (paired with an Elgato HD60 S for Switch when streaming Switch games). My PC specs:

Acer Predator 1440p 144hz GSYNC Monitor
i7 8700k
GTX 1080 TI
16 GB RAM
Sennheiser GSX 1000 Amp
Sennheiser GAME ONE Gaming Headset

I'm not a Twitch affiliate yet so I'm only outputting 720p/60fps and when I play PC games I run them at 1440p/144hz 95% of the time. I haven't had any issues with encountering performance hits from streaming with my setup - that is, until now. I plan to stream Marvel's Avengers on PC next week, and as you may have heard from the beta impressions thread, it isn't the most stable; and after testing it out myself, this is noticeably exacerbated while streaming. This got me thinking that since I have a spare, reasonably beefy PC...

Ryzen 5 2600
GTX 1060 3GB
16GB RAM
Elgato HD60 S

...that it might be time to try setting up a dual PC streaming setup. However, I love keeping this spare PC set up on my spare desk and available for a friend who semi regularly comes over to play PC games with me (which he might do for Avengers), which got me ALSO thinking that maybe I could possibly get away with using an older, weaker third PC I have instead.

So my first question is: Would it be possible to use the following PC as a dedicated streaming rig when playing a resource demanding game like Avengers if I'm playing it at 1440p but outputting to Twitch at 720p? If not, surely the aforementioned spare PC would be good enough?

i7 920 overclocked to 3.9GHz
GTX 680 2GB
8GB DDR3 RAM (I think)
Elgato HD60 S

I'm assuming it doesn't have enough juice, but honestly, I have zero clue how much horsepower is required for a PC to be a competent, dedicated streaming PC. I was planning on using the guides found in these videos to set it up in either case:

How to Dual PC Stream Without Losing Resolution and 144hz - Up and Running Dual Stream PC
2 PC Stream Setup: Audio Guide (2019)

My other question is regarding the audio setup as described in the above video (using a software mixer): Would the fact that I have my headset running through a Sennheiser GSX 1000 Amp for simulated 7.1 get messed up at all from that setup?

My final question is: would going through all of this trouble guarantee that I would experience any reduction in framerate loss due to streaming the game? Is it possible that it might not even end up helping for whatever reason?

When I was testing the Avengers beta out, reducing the play resolution to 1080p made it run much smoother during my streaming tests, but I REALLY would prefer to play it in 1440p if going through with this dual PC setup would be a guaranteed resource free-er upper. One thing I was guilty of, however, was that I have always kept my OBS preview window enabled. Today I just found out that you can disable the preview and that doing this apparently helps with reducing the framerate hit that you could potentially take during a stream...would this be a game changer for me while running a single PC setup? Basically I'm just asking to make sure this whole endeavor is even going to be worth the trouble if me simply disabling the OBS preview would make a large impact on its own.

Click to shrink...

I think it'd be ok for 720p 60fps (the i7 920) but you can easily test this streaming a youtube video or something from that PC and seeing if it drops frames encoding. There is no performance impact on your main PC, since the second PC is just capturing through a capture card. You should get the audio fine.

Having a second PC for streaming is a good thing to have if you have to ability to use one. You offload the CPU load to another PC entirely, ensure no issues with OBS capturing certain games or windows and have a private PC on a second monitor that isn't being captured at all.

Edit: As for just continuing on your main PC, depends if you are running into CPU bottlenecks while streaming or GPU. What are the effects on the stream? Dropped frames when at 100% GPU usage? Newer version of OBS have helped stop this, and for a while you have to run OBS as admin. Are you using NVENC or software encoding? If you are using NVENC you will see good results capping the framerate and setting a workable resolution to keep GPU usage below max.

 

[MisterAnderson]

I think it'd be ok for 720p 60fps (the i7 920) but you can easily test this streaming a youtube video or something from that PC and seeing if it drops frames encoding. There is no performance impact on your main PC, since the second PC is just capturing through a capture card. You should get the audio fine.

Having a second PC for streaming is a good thing to have if you have to ability to use one. You offload the CPU load to another PC entirely, ensure no issues with OBS capturing certain games or windows and have a private PC on a second monitor that isn't being captured at all.

Edit: As for just continuing on your main PC, depends if you are running into CPU bottlenecks while streaming or GPU. What are the effects on the stream? Dropped frames when at 100% GPU usage? Newer version of OBS have helped stop this, and for a while you have to run OBS as admin. Are you using NVENC or software encoding? If you are using NVENC you will see good results capping the framerate and setting a workable resolution to keep GPU usage below max.

Click to shrink...

For some reason when I tried my older PC, everything seemed like it should be working but OBS was only outputting a black screen. I tried the very same setup but with my newer PC and it seems to work, so I wonder if it's because my old PC is running Windows 7 or something...maybe I should upgrade that.

I ran into another problem though, this time with the audio. I'm currently up to this point in the video I linked in my original post above trying to get Voicemeeter Banana set up properly (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXOKG6pfE3U&feature=youtu.be&t=685) which I've followed so far, but for some reason OBS on my streaming PC is still not picking up the microphone audio despite me "connecting" my microphone input channel to the "A2" output which, just like the video suggesting, I designated as the "WDM: HD60 S NVIDIA High Definition Audio" selection (my capture card). I can hear my microphone audio through my headset just fine through the A1 output channel if I select it, but I'm feeling stuck right now as I experiment and search online for answers on why it's not getting passed through to the capture card output.

I'm assuming it might possibly have something to do with the fact that I'm using that external sound card I mentioned that I was worried might throw a wrench in this process (Sennheiser GSX 1000) which is what my Microphone is being pushed through? Is this kind of dual PC stream setup not compatible with an external sound card? Here's what the setup looks like right now (I didn't include monitors, seemed unnecessary):

Dual Streaming PC Elgato HD60 S Diagram

Imgur: The magic of the Internet

imgur.com

Do I have to do any specific sound settings in my OBS source on the streaming PC to pick up the audio? It wasn't mentioned in the video but I'm wondering if it might possibly be something related to OBS settings as well.

 

[flobber]

I got sent a faulty graphics card to take a look at and thought I'd get some new thermal paste on and re-seat it on the off chance it sorts the issues (artifacting and random crashing). While doing so I noticed one of the tiny chips around the outside of the main gpu processor has come loose.

I was curious what these are exactly? I'd guess they are quite important and perhaps this is even the cause of the issue. Probably safe to assume it's buggered either way.

 

[PoppaBK]

I cannot get online in Forza Horizon 4. It seemingly finds people, and then it just gets stuck on 'setting up matchmaking' forever. I played online with Gears 5 just fine, so it doesn't seem to be a basic Xbox live (if that's what it is called) related connection issue.

 

[AYZON]

Does anyone know a good way to stream from one pc to another? Rainway looks like it could do that, im not sure though.
I want to use my gaming pc to stream steam/gamepass games to my laptop

 

[empo]

I got sent a faulty graphics card to take a look at and thought I'd get some new thermal paste on and re-seat it on the off chance it sorts the issues (artifacting and random crashing). While doing so I noticed one of the tiny chips around the outside of the main gpu processor has come loose.

I was curious what these are exactly? I'd guess they are quite important and perhaps this is even the cause of the issue. Probably safe to assume it's buggered either way.

Click to shrink...

They look like surface-mounted capacitors. I guess you could fix it but not without some very expensive soldering/rework gear and experience.
Not sure where you would go to try to get something like that fixed, phone repair place maybe?

 

[aett]

I'm looking to play PC games on a 4K TV that's in the same room. However, I currently use two monitors at my desk and there are only two monitor connections on my GPU: one displayport and one HDMI, so I don't have any free to connect to the TV.

While I could get on the floor and reach behind the tower to manually swap my secondary monitor's HDMI cable to the one that will be connected to the TV, my goal is to make playing games on the TV as painless as possible.

Would I need to get an HDMI switch and connect it to the PC so I can easily change between monitor and TV? If so, should I be looking at the nicer kind that requires an external power source? I might be able to move some stuff around my office, but as it is now, my desk's power strip is full. Or is there another way entirely to handle this?

 

[Crazymoogle]

I'm looking to play PC games on a 4K TV that's in the same room. However, I currently use two monitors at my desk and there are only two monitor connections on my GPU: one displayport and one HDMI, so I don't have any free to connect to the TV.

While I could get on the floor and reach behind the tower to manually swap my secondary monitor's HDMI cable to the one that will be connected to the TV, my goal is to make playing games on the TV as painless as possible.

Would I need to get an HDMI switch and connect it to the PC so I can easily change between monitor and TV? If so, should I be looking at the nicer kind that requires an external power source? I might be able to move some stuff around my office, but as it is now, my desk's power strip is full. Or is there another way entirely to handle this?

Click to shrink...

depends how far away you need the cables to go; but a cheap HDMI Switch is probably fine. There are monoprice models with a physical switch or an auto switch or both. Even some of the cheaper ones have a wall plug

 

[SanTheSly]

So today I turned my PC on as usual and I think my HDD's finally bitten the dust.

It's bizarre, some programs open and work just fine: my browser of choice, discord, spotify, Xbox gaming app.

Others are just screwed.

Steam refuses to open, I can even uninstall or repair the program, the HDD just hangs.

Battlenet opens, games rarely do. I got Overwatch to launch but it felt like the HDD was struggling to load in relevant assets most of the time. Even on the training range, the "server" crashed repeatedly when changing characters and using abilities.

Even when backing up files again today (which thankfully I didn't have to do much of since my last backup was recent) it took 10+ minutes to transfer a single album to the backup external HDD.

Am I safe in assuming this is all caused by bad/faulty sectors? What's my best bet for salvaging the PC?

I was holding off rebuilding until the next Nvidia GPUs and AMD CPUs are announced and available. I can't really afford to rebuild right now because of unemployment and my current living arrangements, but also I have too much money invested in PC gaming to drop it entirely.

I've never actually added/replaced internal storage before. I'm thinking the cheapest solution is to buy and install a new Internal 1TB HDD, refresh windows and just scrap the current one.

 

[Lakeside]

So today I turned my PC on as usual and I think my HDD's finally bitten the dust.

It's bizarre, some programs open and work just fine: my browser of choice, discord, spotify, Xbox gaming app.

Others are just screwed.

Steam refuses to open, I can even uninstall or repair the program, the HDD just hangs.

Battlenet opens, games rarely do. I got Overwatch to launch but it felt like the HDD was struggling to load in relevant assets most of the time. Even on the training range, the "server" crashed repeatedly when changing characters and using abilities.

Even when backing up files again today (which thankfully I didn't have to do much of since my last backup was recent) it took 10+ minutes to transfer a single album to the backup external HDD.

Am I safe in assuming this is all caused by bad/faulty sectors? What's my best bet for salvaging the PC?

I was holding off rebuilding until the next Nvidia GPUs and AMD CPUs are announced and available. I can't really afford to rebuild right now because of unemployment and my current living arrangements, but also I have too much money invested in PC gaming to drop it entirely.

I've never actually added/replaced internal storage before. I'm thinking the cheapest solution is to buy and install a new Internal 1TB HDD, refresh windows and just scrap the current one.

Click to shrink...

I would recommend to purchase a low priced SSD. You can get 1-2TB models cheaply enough (or smaller if necessary). If you are using a spinning drive then SSD is transformative.

Anandtech does a periodic roundup.

August Best SSDs

 

[Skyfireblaze]

So today I turned my PC on as usual and I think my HDD's finally bitten the dust.

It's bizarre, some programs open and work just fine: my browser of choice, discord, spotify, Xbox gaming app.

Others are just screwed.

Steam refuses to open, I can even uninstall or repair the program, the HDD just hangs.

Battlenet opens, games rarely do. I got Overwatch to launch but it felt like the HDD was struggling to load in relevant assets most of the time. Even on the training range, the "server" crashed repeatedly when changing characters and using abilities.

Even when backing up files again today (which thankfully I didn't have to do much of since my last backup was recent) it took 10+ minutes to transfer a single album to the backup external HDD.

Am I safe in assuming this is all caused by bad/faulty sectors? What's my best bet for salvaging the PC?

I was holding off rebuilding until the next Nvidia GPUs and AMD CPUs are announced and available. I can't really afford to rebuild right now because of unemployment and my current living arrangements, but also I have too much money invested in PC gaming to drop it entirely.

I've never actually added/replaced internal storage before. I'm thinking the cheapest solution is to buy and install a new Internal 1TB HDD, refresh windows and just scrap the current one.

Click to shrink...

Run Crystal Disk Info if possible to get a status-read of the HDD.

 

[MisterAnderson]

So I admittedly am quite unfamiliar with what is considered "normal" virtual memory usage, but after getting some random errors lately a rabbit hole I went down encouraged me to check mine. These are the current settings as they have been set automatically...is this normal? Shouldn't my currently allocated NOT be so much more than my recommended or am I just not understanding how it's supposed to work?

virtualmemorycheck

Imgur: The magic of the Internet

imgur.com

My specs:

i7 8700k
GTX 1080 TI
16 GB RAM
Samsung 960 EVO NVME 1TB

 

[SanTheSly]

Run Crystal Disk Info if possible to get a status-read of the HDD.

Click to shrink...

I've downloaded it but I don't really understand what I'm meant to be doing.

I'm going to take it as a bad sign that it took over 5 minutes for Crystal Disk Info to transfer from my HDD Downloads folder to my SSD.

This is what I got, I have no idea if I did it right

 

[SanTheSly]

Just for transparency's sake this is the SSD result too:

 

[Skyfireblaze]

I've downloaded it but I don't really understand what I'm meant to be doing.

I'm going to take it as a bad sign that it took over 5 minutes for Crystal Disk Info to transfer from my HDD Downloads folder to my SSD.

This is what I got, I have no idea if I did it right

Click to shrink...

This is CrystalDiskMark which is a benchmark, I meant CrystalDiskInfo: https://crystalmark.info/en/software/crystaldiskinfo/

 

[SanTheSly]

This is CrystalDiskMark which is a benchmark, I meant CrystalDiskInfo: https://crystalmark.info/en/software/crystaldiskinfo/

Click to shrink...

Whoops, my bad.

These should be better, looks like the HDD is the culprit:

 

[Skyfireblaze]

Whoops, my bad.

These should be better, looks like the HDD is the culprit:

Click to shrink...

Yeah I would say that drive is on its way out :(

Get a new drive if possible and copy over everything important ASAP!

 

[SanTheSly]

Yeah I would say that drive is on its way out :(

Get a new drive if possible and copy over everything important ASAP!

Click to shrink...

Thanks for the advice!

On a side note, I feel like I must have pissed off some deity, because today was the day I was finally able to start trying to stream again, and literally ALL my gaming applications have ceased to work. Everything else is fine, if slow.

What can you do but laugh?

 

[Skyfireblaze]

Thanks for the advice!

On a side note, I feel like I must have pissed off some deity, because today was the day I was finally able to start trying to stream again, and literally ALL my gaming applications have ceased to work. Everything else is fine, if slow.

What can you do but laugh?

Click to shrink...

Sorry to hear! :/ Well it won't help with long-term use but if there's anything important on there that got inaccessible it may be worth to put the drive in a zip-lock bag and then throw it into the freezer for 30-60 minutes. Then immediately reconnect it to the PC, with luck it will restore full-functionality for about half an hour atleast.

 

[SanTheSly]

Sorry to hear! :/ Well it won't help with long-term use but if there's anything important on there that got inaccessible it may be worth to put the drive in a zip-lock bag and then throw it into the freezer for 30-60 minutes. Then immediately reconnect it to the PC, with luck it will restore full-functionality for about half an hour atleast.

Click to shrink...

Thankfully everything important was recently backed up, everything currently inaccessible are all things easily redownloadable to a new drive like programs and games. The only other thing I should maybe make a note of are the websites I currently have bookmarked.

I feel like if I'm gonna invest in a 1TB Sata SSD instead of the m.2 NVMe I was looking at for my eventual new build, I should probably also just move everything there.

The small capacity SSD Windows is currently running on is fine for now, but always threatening to run out of space AND is also roughly the same age as the HDD. I think keeping that ancient SSD around with the OS on it is just begging for more problems further down the line.

 

[Skyfireblaze]

Thankfully everything important was recently backed up, everything currently inaccessible are all things easily redownloadable to a new drive like programs and games. The only other thing I should maybe make a note of are the websites I currently have bookmarked.

I feel like if I'm gonna invest in a 1TB Sata SSD instead of the m.2 NVMe I was looking at for my eventual new build, I should probably also just move everything there.

The small capacity SSD Windows is currently running on is fine for now, but always threatening to run out of space AND is also roughly the same age as the HDD. I think keeping that ancient SSD around with the OS on it is just begging for more problems further down the line.

Click to shrink...

That sounds like a plan! I wouldn't worry too much about your SSD though, it doesn't seem anywhere near its lifespan end and unlike the HDD it has no mechanical parts that can degrade over time. You could still upgrade your OS SSD and then use the 120gb as a SSD fast-cache for games with Primocache if you opt for another HDD as mass storage, I'm currently doing so and the results are quite impressive.

 

[skeezx]

*clears throat

k, so here's the deal. my 1080ti took a shit... i think. all games after five minutes give me these space invader style artifacts and then crash. i'll do more trouble shooting and change out the PSU this weekend and see where that goes but gut tells me card is fried. it was borderlining it's TDP limit for a few years now so i guess my chickens have come home to roost

i have a 970 lying around question is... what kind of mileage can i expect with a 970 in 2020? thinking about putting my 3080ti (now 3090) plans on hold in lieu of a 2080 or whatever simply so i can play some damn games, but pandemic budgeting and all i dunno if i want to pull the trigger

i want to play 1440p with current gen for like 3-6 months. is this pretty much unreasonable at 60-ish fps with modest settings? for reference the last game i played on my 970 at 1440 was Division 1 and it ran pretty okay. and i'm working with a i6700k here if that's germane

not looking for long term, hard line solutions. just want to know what i should expect here. i'm down with just buying something else to tide me over if i really have to

 

[Tomo815]

Guys, do you think in 10 years time or so we are going to get 100 TF GPUs?