POST COMPUTER PROBLEMS IN THIS THREAD ONLY

[Wilbur]

Some have all 5 contacts connected ,some less. For just charging for example they only need two of the contacts connected. Cheap cable from pound type shops generally equal crap.

[canadagoose]

(this isn't really important as the scanner's going in the bin. I'm about 60% sure the problem is the timing belt has gone, but since the only replacement I can find is £15 and new scanners are around £60. Grrr.)

Just FYI, you can probably get a printer-scanner combination more cheaply than that, although I'm not sure what the quality will be like.

[MojoJojo]

Yeah, I could but the ink costs would be awful. I was looking at ecotank 7700 as recommended by TechMoan, but the cashback offer has expired and at £450 it's not worth it. It would be nice to print photos, but I've got an old colour laser that's cheap to run

[mothman]

Are phone problems OK in this thread? Because I have a few problems with a new iPhone...

1. If I click on a YouTube link in Safari, it opens in a new tab not the app. Clicking and holding doesn't give me the "Open in YouTube" option.
2. Tapping on a misspelled word when typing used to highlight the word and suggest a correction. Now it doesn't, it does flash up briefly but then goes away.

Any ideas? I'm usually pretty good at navigating settings to find the right one, but this has defeated me...

[mothman]

First one seems to have resolved itself following an app update overnight. The second one, I see an iOS 12.01 in my future...

[Sebastian Cobb]

Are there different types of Micro-USB cable? I was trying to get a scanner working at the weekend and was getting nothing. Then I remembered that we had a leapreader pen that would only charge with the micro-usb cable it came with and tried that - and big surprise the scanner sprung into life with some horrible grinding noises.

So what's special about that lead?

(this isn't really important as the scanner's going in the bin. I'm about 60% sure the problem is the timing belt has gone, but since the only replacement I can find is £15 and new scanners are around £60. Grrr.)

Have you tried soaking the belt in hot water for a bit? Used to work on belts for turntables, tape machines etc.

[MojoJojo]

Hmmm, not a bad idea. Might give it a go if I have time, things are quite busy at the moment.

[Z]

I just bought a Thinkpad X220T hybrid, I don't know why. What are some kind of neat things I can do with it before I inevitably gift it away? Wacom pen support and apparently works as a hackintosh okay so there's a good bit of room for possibilities here. Could it be useful for learning Adobe/Sketch/some shit?

So as an update to this, I haven't used it much yet but the build quality is INSANE. This looks like it was in the middle of a warzone and is still sturdy as fuck. There's a legit chance this'll become my main laptop if High Sierra installs on it, almost certainly if I can upgrade the CPU

[Sebastian Cobb]

I've got an x230 with High Sierra on it. It wasn't that hard. If it hasn't already get an SSD in it though.

I think the 220 is supposed to be better for hackintosh purposes as you can flash the bios to remove the wifi card whitelist.

[Z]

Yep, apparently 220s are an absolute doddle. The regular X220 might be the most common hackintosh laptop even.

The tradeoff with the 220T is that I can't swap out the 768p screen so it mightn't be viable as a portable option but I'm still a bit baffled that a machine from 2011 that I can get for 50 pounds is this good. Probably gonna be buying one for my mam at the very least, probably my brother too.

[hedgehog90]

50 quid?
Where?

[Sebastian Cobb]

I had a look at this today, the only downside of the 220 over the 230 is that it apparently won't run Mojave as they're dropping Sandy Bridge support. High Sierra should work though.

Works really nicely with linux as well. And seemed ok with W10 when I booted into it, didn't really use it because linux did everything out the box.

[New Jack]

I need to mention I put Linux Mint on my old ThinkPad and it's boss.

Sorry. Terms and conditions. Have to mention using Linux.

[Zetetic]

Computer fucked.

Occasionally my Windows desktop computer crashes - screen turns into a bunch of vertical stripes, sound loops the last few 100ms, otherwise ends up in a hard lock.

XCOM 2 seems to trigger it the most reliably but I've had it fall over in a couple of games over the last few months. (Years? My memory is terrible.)

Possible culprits:
- Graphics card, Radeon 7850. No sign of overheating, and happily sits at 75ºC or so for 15 minutes pegged to 99% by FurMark while memtest-cl runs (1GB) tests in the background.
- RAM. Doesn't seem to throw anything up on the built-in Windows Memory Diagnostic under default settings. Two sticks of 4GB - tried pulling one and the crash still occurred.
- CPU (i5-4570 CPU)?
- Motherboard (B85-G41 PC MATE)?
- PSU (OCZ-ZT 550W)? (This should support a good 100-150W above whatever the machine actually wants, as far as I can tell.)

I've used this as an excuse to upgrade the graphics card (to a B grade^* RX 480) so I might be able to exclude the first of these (or sort-of confirm it) in a day or two. Although given that it's a complete hard-lock (and not just the game crashing etc.), I'd be surprised if this fixes the problem other than indirectly. It might well make it worse...

Could try the one-stick-of-RAM at a time thing more carefully than I did last night.

Any idea how to investigate the rest without effectively buying another computer in the process?

Edit: There's nothing in the Windows Event logs etc. as far as I can tell, but I might not be looking in the right places.

^{* Neatly adding another possible issue to the situation.}

[hedgehog90]

For what it's worth, that sounds a lot like the time my graphics card died a few years ago.
I don't think you'd get a visual prompt like stripes if it wasn't graphics related.
You could try removing the graphics card and using the onboard graphics for a bit and see if it happens again?

[Zetetic]

That's a very good idea - thank you.

Particularly as it looks as though the Intel HD Graphics 4600 of the i5 should support XCOM 2 just about - helps from a testing point of view...

[Zetetic]

Working so far, which I'm going to take as a vindication of my decision.

[hedgehog90]

If you plan on replacing the card, I'd recommend registering the card on the ATI site and requesting an RMA.
Even if it's out of warranty, I've been surprised how many times I've successfully RMA'd stuff despite an expired manufacturer's warranty.

[hermitical]

I'm not a complete idiot but I can't be bothered to try and filter out the info.
Would it be relatively easy to connect a large external drive to a BT Smart Hub 6, to use it for a network drive for audio/video, torrents, Soulseek etc?
Would I be able to access it remotely?

[hedgehog90]

I'm not a complete idiot but I can't be bothered to try and filter out the info.
Would it be relatively easy to connect a large external drive to a BT Smart Hub 6, to use it for a network drive for audio/video, torrents, Soulseek etc?
Would I be able to access it remotely?

I haven't got a BT Smart Hub 6, but after a quick look on google and youtube the answer appears to be:

Yes and yes

Just connect the storage and enter into the address bar of Windows Explorer (assuming it's Windows you're running):

\\192.168.1.254

Or whatever your hub's ip address is.

Alternatively it should appear in Network as a detected network device too:



You'll probably be prompted for a username and password, which if you haven't changed it should be printed on the back on the hub.

[Zetetic]

If you plan on replacing the card, I'd recommend registering the card on the ATI site and requesting an RMA.

The curious arrangements around design and production of graphics card being being what they are, it's actually manufactured by MSI, who tell me to bog off to the retailer. Might try it on with them anyway.

(All slightly complicated by the fact that this was actually bought by my father who was himself RMA'd since then.)

[hermitical]

I haven't got a BT Smart Hub 6, but after a quick look on google and youtube the answer appears to be:

Yes and yes

Thanks!

I was hoping it would be relatively simple. I want to consolidate and sort all the music, tv, films etc that I have spread over a number of small drives, and I'd like to get back into Soulseek after many years away...

[Zetetic]

RX480 seems to be working fine. Thanks again hedgehog90 for the support.

[Queneau]

Yesterday I knocked a cup of squash over. It got near the Macbook and so I quickly started to dry and then clean, thinking of all the potential porn I could lose. Luckily everything seemed cool but now my "q" key doesn't work. The only thing I have noticed that isn't right with it. Is it possible that some liquid could have done this? Or perhaps my wiping it all down with a towel and some wipes and stuff after? Anyone any ideas of how to fix this? Currently I am pasting qs into words. Bullshit.

[Queneau]

Yesterday I knocked a cup of squash over.

You s*****c.

[hedgehog90]

Best bet is to open it up with a screwdriver and do a thorough cleanup job.
This won't necessarily fix it, as experience tells me. I spilt some water on a keyboard (s*****c) and no matter what I tried, 2 or 3 keys remained completely fucked.

[to infect aside]

Is there a way of installing an operating system onto an SSD using a computer that's not the one the SSD is going to be used in? I've been buying bits of gaming PC recently with a view to paying some computer lads to eventually assemble the thing. Having the OS already on the disk would cut the price of this affair by a fair bit, so I'm wondering if that's a possible thing to do. Would using a SATA to USB cable, a borrowed laptop and a thumb-drive Windows installer thingy do the job? Also, if this were possible, could I then install other software/games etc onto the SSD after that?

[Wilbur]

No. 🙄. Well not easily. You can run Ubuntu off a  separate boot device  I believe but it was a faff last time I looked at it I seem to recall.

[to infect aside]

Dangit. And if I were to put the drive into another PC, a fairly underpowered one, would I be able to stick Win10 onto it even if that PC might not be great at running that OS?

[hedgehog90]

I'm not 100% sure about this, but I assumed if it's the same CPU architecture as the machine you're planning to use, then you should be able to install Windows 10 on one and transplant it into the other, no?
ie, You wouldnt be able to run Windows 10 installed on an AMD CPU if you then plugged the same SSD into an Intel CPU based board.

In the past I've managed this, moving a drive from one PC to another running the same installation of Windows.
When I upgraded my CPU & motherboard it wouldn't boot so I had to reinstall the OS, that was Intel to AMD though.

May I ask why you want to do this anyway? If you're having a PC built without an OS, assuming you have a dvd drive/usb port and a Windows 10 installation disk/USB stick, then why don't you install it on the PC when it arrives?