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POST COMPUTER PROBLEMS IN THIS THREAD ONLY

Started by Nobody Soup, February 08, 2013, 12:41:30 AM

Previous topic - Next topic
Right. I'll probably just give them a USB boot installer thing myself, see if that makes things a bit cheaper. Mobo, cpu & RAM came pre-assembled so that ought to help too I guess. Thank ye for the info.

Quote from: hedgehog90 on December 04, 2018, 11:04:31 AM
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?

I've got real bad Internet where I live currently, so I'd like to get everything I need onto the machine using the computer shop's broadband as opposed to my patchy phone tethering setup. Have it ready to plug&play as soon as it gets home, essentially. Having an SSD with Windows already installed would've saved time & money.

hedgehog90

#2011
I still don't get why you need to have Windows on the SSD before you get the machine.
Just download/install the Windows 10 installer onto a USB (Media Creation Tool), then once you receive your rig plug in and boot from the USB and install the OS onto the empty SSD.
No internet required during installation, should take around 10-20 minutes.
Unless you're planning to install lots of other programs that require an active internet connection during installation, it should be ok to download them from your workplace (onto any storage device, not necessarily your ssd) and install them at home offline, if needs be.

Sweet, so I can just download my Steam library onto an external hard drive then install them on the PC?

hedgehog90

#2013
Quote from: to infect aside on December 04, 2018, 02:37:03 PM
Sweet, so I can just download my Steam library onto an external hard drive then transfer that to the PC?

That's a bit different, not difficult though.
You can either use Steam's backup function (video walkthrough) or you can just move the contents of the steamapps and userdata folders to the same location on a new harddrive (located in c:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\, or wherever you installed Steam).

Lots of games don't use the steam cloud save system or Steam's userdata folder, so you should also have a look inside your general Windows appdata folders if you want to keep all your save data.
Look inside C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming and C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local for any folders with game or dev studio names, that'll be where settings and save files are stored for that particular game/studio, just move them over to the new drive in the exact same locations once you've installed Windows 10 & Steam.
Also you might find some save files/settings in C:\Users\<username>\Documents or C:\ProgramData.
To make life easier you could just copy the entire user folder over.
Oh, and make sure to use the same drive letter and username when setting up Windows for less hassle.

Hopefully that should work.

I'll have to see if I can salvage all that from old hard drives, but failing that, it's still possible to use some other PC with Steam to download games to an external drive then install from there onto the new computer, right?

hedgehog90

Yes, just transfer the steamapps and userdata folder inside the Steam folder or use the backup function in steam.
Using the backup function is easier/safer but will probably take longer.

Sound, thanks a million dude! This stuff gives me an itchy brain, props to those who do it for a living.

thraxx


Right. Mylaptop's hard drive has gone broke n shit, won't even boot.

Grateful for advice on:

Is it easy to replace and reinstall the OS? (I've looked at some vids on You Tube and it looks fairly simple).
Can I go for an SSD?
Are the repair quotes I've received reasonable?

My laptop's Asus G75 It's got two hard drives and the one that has gone tits up is the boot hard drive so that needs replacing.  The repair shop says that it's physically damage and nothing can be recovered.

Can I just buy and put in a new hard drive, will it automatically just link to the other hard drive which is still working?  Can the computer hack having a both an HDD and an SSD?

I've been quoted as followss for repair:

Replacing SSD HDD 960GB & installing windows 10                           £210.00

Replacing HDD 1TB & installing windows 10                                          £110.00

Thanks for your advice yo...



Just been lucky enough to get a pretty decent 2nd hand Macbook Pro of my mate. it's a mid 2014 model with a pretty top spec. of 2.8 GHz, 16GB RAM. how easy is it to reset to factory settings and get latest OS X uploaded? i have looked online and not found anything too helpful. The sound only comes through Bluetooth at present so hope it fixes that as well. Would appreciate any advice or pointers.

greencalx

Start it up in Recovery mode: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201314 and click reinstall MacOS. If you want to do a completely clean install, you need to make a bootable drive with the installer on it so that you can erase the hard disk and start from scratch. This is a bit of a faff but not that bad - a search for macos clean install will tell you how to do it. The hardest part is making the bootable external drive.

Personally I would do the recovery mode thing and set up a fresh  admin user account and see how you get on from there. Might also be worth resetting the SMC and NVRAM, both of which are not much harder than a reboot.

Thanks GC am currently doing the reinstall MacOS? Will report back. Appreciate the advice and expect more questions now. Cheers.

greencalx

Good luck. Is your motivation to clear out crap that might have accumulated during its previous period of ownership? In general, things are reasonably good at remaining self-contained: if you have an up-to-date base system (which the reinstall will provide you), then if there are superfluous apps then it's usually just a case of dragging those to the trash to uninstall them. (Some apps are less well behaved, though). Things to watch out for are Login items (i.e., apps that automatically get loaded on login, sometimes without a visible presence - search for those in System Preferences) and third-party kernel extensions. As far as I am aware, you have to go into the Terminal to investigate those. This isn't a big deal for me (I live in the Terminal) but if you're not familiar with the command line it can seem a bit scary at first sight. However, if you don't notice any weirdness (kernel panics, causing the machine to shutdown, extended periods of the spinning beachball of death) then probably everything is just fine and you can enjoy.

ETA - also meant to say that once you have your own admin user account, you can delete the existing one to get rid of any cruft that might be associated with that. This will get you pretty close to a clean install without having to throw out the baby with the bathwater (e.g., if there are installed apps you want to keep).

lipsink

Hey, I dunno if anyone can help with this one.
My friend has sent me a video through Google Drive. It donwloads as a MOV file. When I download it and open it through Movie Maker or Windows Media Player it just plays the audio (in Movies & TV it says ('This item was encoded in a format that's not supported')but if I open it through Kodi or Quick Time Player it plays audio plus video.
I really want to open it through Movie Maker so I can do some quick editing. Can anyone help?
Thanks

the

I don't think WMM opens Quicktime formats, so you'll need to convert the video to a suitable format.

This is decent for doing it online (as long as you don't mind uploading the video file):  https://www.online-convert.com

Or if you want an installed programme that transcodes videos - I haven't used this, but I've heard it recommended (64-bit Windows only):  https://handbrake.fr

lipsink


popcorn

I have a 2015 MacBook Pro and its keyboard and trackpad have suddenly completely stopped responding. I've made no software or hardware changes I know of. Only power button works.

Can't log in as I can't type.

Restarting doesn't fix it. Tried restarting in safe mode but I don't think it's working because you need to restart holding keys and the keyboard isn't working.

If I plug in a USB mouse it works but my Mac usb keyboard isn't working.

Dead soon?

greencalx

Doesn't sound good. Am I right in understanding that an external keyboard isn't working?

Unless you've set it up so that you can access it remotely via ssh, there's probably not much you can do apart from booking a repair appointment.

popcorn

I have two USB Mac keyboards and I know both of them work on other machines.

However, the first one didn't work with my sick laptop, and now i've tried the other one and it works fine. (I tried every combo of USB ports with the first keyboard.)

Now I can log in, at least.

popcorn

Tried PRAM reset , didn't fix it but I also have no way of telling if the reset happened at all as it gives you no feedback apparently .

popcorn

Booted in Apple Hardware Test, no problems detected.

However, if I go into Settings > Trackpad, my Macbook says there's no trackpad detected. I assume this isn't just talking about external trackpads and if everything were were working OK it wouldn't be saying that.

If I go into Settings > Keyboard I can't find anything to say it can or can't see its own built-in keyboard.

MojoJojo

If one keyboard works and another doesn't, and you've tried different USB ports, I'd suggest trying a powered USB hub and seeing if the non working keyboard works in that.

Very much a long shot, so only worth trying if you have one already.

popcorn

Thanks, but I don't think that would be helpful.

The problem is that my Macbook's built-in trackpad and keyboard have both suddenly packed in. It's those I need to fix.

I initially found that using a USB keyboard didn't work either, but my other one works perfectly for some reason. Getting the first USB keyboard to work with the laptop isn't the mission.

MojoJojo

Sorry, I didn't explain - the trackpad and keyboard will be connected to USB internally*. The fact they've both stopped working and a USB keyboard also isn't working suggests something's gone wrong with the USB controller. The fact a different USB keyboard works suggests it might be a power issue, hence why I suggested a powered USB hub.

It is very much a long shot though.

*or I think this is the case, I'd like to check but I am on a desktop at the moment.

greencalx

Yeah, it is annoying that these 'magic start-up keypresses' never provide any feedback on whether they were detected or not.

It is, apparently, possible to zap the NVRAM from the command line, see e.g. here, but I'm not sure how much I trust the instructions. On the other hand, if your machine is pretty much buggered anyway, then it shouldn't hurt.

On the other hand, if you type nvram -p at the Terminal you can see what is in your NVRAM; I guess one can compare before and after reboots to see if anything happened or not...

But it does sound like a hardware problem: Mojo's diagnosis sounds pretty plausible.

Quote from: greencalx on December 30, 2018, 11:07:12 AM
Good luck. Is your motivation to clear out crap that might have accumulated during its previous period of ownership? In general, things are reasonably good at remaining self-contained: if you have an up-to-date base system (which the reinstall will provide you), then if there are superfluous apps then it's usually just a case of dragging those to the trash to uninstall them. (Some apps are less well behaved, though). Things to watch out for are Login items (i.e., apps that automatically get loaded on login, sometimes without a visible presence - search for those in System Preferences) and third-party kernel extensions. As far as I am aware, you have to go into the Terminal to investigate those. This isn't a big deal for me (I live in the Terminal) but if you're not familiar with the command line it can seem a bit scary at first sight. However, if you don't notice any weirdness (kernel panics, causing the machine to shutdown, extended periods of the spinning beachball of death) then probably everything is just fine and you can enjoy.

ETA - also meant to say that once you have your own admin user account, you can delete the existing one to get rid of any cruft that might be associated with that. This will get you pretty close to a clean install without having to throw out the baby with the bathwater (e.g., if there are installed apps you want to keep).

Thanks Greencalx, I appreciate that. I did the reboot with reinstalling The Macosx but am back with same version and all my friends details still. It also won't let me upgrade past Yosemite and the spec is more than capable of being able to handle this. One of the main reasons I want this to run NI Traktor II with a kontrol mixer. The current version doesn't allow me to run the NI downloader. Anyways, as said thanks for help and I am prob being thick and need to spend a bit more time actually looking into it.

popcorn

Success. I fixed my unresponsive keyboard and trackpad by replacing the trackpad cable. This was a cheap and easy job. YouTube videos online just in case anyone else has the same problem one day.

Two mysteries.

The original trackpad cable had a tiny dent in it. I assume this is what broke it. I can't figure out what on earth caused the dent. There's no corresponding dent on the MacBook case. Any ideas?

The second mystery is this. I noticed some blistering on another component (looks unrelated). Some googling suggests it's part of the battery.



(Don't worry, I dusted it before I put the case back on.)

I'm a bit concerned. Does this look like bad news? Dead soon?

greencalx

Quote from: Pinckle Wicker on January 05, 2019, 02:04:48 AM
Thanks Greencalx, I appreciate that. I did the reboot with reinstalling The Macosx but am back with same version and all my friends details still. It also won't let me upgrade past Yosemite and the spec is more than capable of being able to handle this. One of the main reasons I want this to run NI Traktor II with a kontrol mixer. The current version doesn't allow me to run the NI downloader. Anyways, as said thanks for help and I am prob being thick and need to spend a bit more time actually looking into it.

I don't recall what vintage you said it is, but I seem to recall that it's sufficiently recent that you ought to be able to install Mojave. By "friends details" do you mean it's signed into their iCloud account? My suggestion would be to go into System Preferences, and in Users and Groups create a new User with Administration capabilities. Here you will set up a password for that user. Then log out, and log back in again as the newly created user. This should then take you through the setup process, where you can create a new iCloud account (if you don't have one already) and link it to your machine. You should then be able to download apps etc from the App Store "as you". In there you should find the Mojave installer: try downloading this and see if it will run. If it does, you are in luck, and can upgrade. Otherwise we will need to figure out what is going on.

Once you are happy you don't need your friend's admin account any more, you can go back to System Preferences (in your new account), and delete the existing one. You can choose to archive the files etc associated with that user, in case you ever need to retrieve them. I think this will get you pretty close to where you want to be. I'm not sure what happens to any paid-for apps that were downloaded from the App Store by your friend - perhaps they stop working if the computer is no longer linked to that iCloud account... I've never transferred ownership of a Mac before, just migrated to new machines when my old ones have given up the ghost.

Quote from: greencalx on January 06, 2019, 11:15:58 AM
I don't recall what vintage you said it is, but I seem to recall that it's sufficiently recent that you ought to be able to install Mojave. By "friends details" do you mean it's signed into their iCloud account? My suggestion would be to go into System Preferences, and in Users and Groups create a new User with Administration capabilities. Here you will set up a password for that user. Then log out, and log back in again as the newly created user. This should then take you through the setup process, where you can create a new iCloud account (if you don't have one already) and link it to your machine. You should then be able to download apps etc from the App Store "as you". In there you should find the Mojave installer: try downloading this and see if it will run. If it does, you are in luck, and can upgrade. Otherwise we will need to figure out what is going on.

Once you are happy you don't need your friend's admin account any more, you can go back to System Preferences (in your new account), and delete the existing one. You can choose to archive the files etc associated with that user, in case you ever need to retrieve them. I think this will get you pretty close to where you want to be. I'm not sure what happens to any paid-for apps that were downloaded from the App Store by your friend - perhaps they stop working if the computer is no longer linked to that iCloud account... I've never transferred ownership of a Mac before, just migrated to new machines when my old ones have given up the ghost.
It's a 2014 model running on 2.3ghz and 16GB RAM.
Cheers again for the intel. I will have a bash at this tonight.

Mid 2014. 2.8GHz Intel Core i7. 16GB 1600 MHz DDR3

It's not signed into their iCloud account no but they are still listed as main user. I have tried to do a reset on it a few times now and keeps coming back to them.
Tried the 'add user' option under preferences and no joy with that. It keeps not letting me sign into my icloud either, even though i know am using the correct password. Not that it saying incorrect it just doesn't do anything. Is it best just to start again? I have an iMac as well so was hoping that i can match up to that.

Okay I set up a new Apple ID and that seems to have done it. Thanks very much for your help on this GC. Buying you a virtual pint!
Was really frustrating as I knew I was typing in my current I'd and Apple account but it kept knocking it back and sending me a message to my iPhone with a code but there was no option for code. Anyway am sure I can spend a bit of time on that later now I have Mojave downloading. Cheers!!