Firedrops

I am back. It's been a few more days and it is not good. It happened again.

This time, Malwarebytes scan did not turn up anything. ADWCleaner turned up a sogou chrome extension. I can't find anything in my extensions related to sogou, so I just relied on ADWCleaner to quarantine it.

So far, it has not come back yet. I'm waiting a few more days for it to pop up again, and if sogou's back, that's definitely it. Again, it's bizarre that neither my OS nor my browsers (including chrome/opera) are installed on this SSD that it's targeting. The malware is just like "F*** this drive in particular".

Thanks, I went to have a look, HWInfo reports all my drives (including my main OS NVME drive that's (probably) not the one being problematic) are between 35-45 C, which seem fine.

My NVME is tucked on the mobo with some integrated heatsink, and is getting very little airflow since both GPU and CPU are WC-ed. The problematic SSD in OP is bolted onto the back of the mobo tray, also presumably getting no airflow. But with those temps they're probably both fine.

However, the problem seems to have gone away (for now). Things I've done:

1. A MalwareBytes then ADWCleaner scans, turned out some sussy stuff including a "Trojan.BitcoinStealer" and some weird registry stuff, just clicked Quarantine on those. Maybe the bitcoinstealer has been endlessly scanning this one particular drive??
2. A new Windows update has finished downloading and is prompting me to install at next restart. No idea if this has been background downloading and somehow saturating this random drive it's not supposed to be in, but Windows does the weirdest things so I won't rule it out completely.

Past few hours drive activity has been back down to ~1-5%, with task manager reporting read/write speeds of ~500 KB/s, which seem much more in line with expectations. Will continue monitoring.

Update: It's been a few days and it's all good. I'm 99% sure it was the malware. Surprising, given how much praise Windows Defender gets nowadays.

I have a local sata SSD hosting my OneDrive (with stuff like Documents, Desktop... etc also synced here) and as storage for downloads, including torrents through qBittorrent.

It is a Fanxiang S101 2TB. Not a T1 manufacturer by any means, but by most reports they are reliable enough. I've had it for a year so far without other issues, and have done full block scanning to verify true capacity and read/write speeds are as advertised.

Since 2 weeks ago it has started acting up. My system started stuttering frequently, including in games where I'm otherwise maintaining smooth 200 FPS before. I think I've tracked it down to this SSD.

This SSD is not storing my games, nor any other software/apps, but it might be interfering with Windows itself since Desktop etc are on it.

It frequently jumps to 100% disk usage, every few milliseconds. Sometimes it ramps back down straight away, other times it stays up for minutes. Even at 100% usage, the read/write speed in task manager are in the 2-digit KB/s range.

It also seems to be throttling my qBittorrent downloads - popular linux ISOs with hundreds of seeders are now stuck in 5-50 KiB/s, where I used to easily do 50 MiB/s.

I've done a full chkdsk f x r, took 4 hours, absolutely no bad sectors were discovered. It is at about 1 TB usage (out of 2 TB capacity).

Would anyone have any ideas on how to further troubleshoot? Could the problem be originating elsewhere that's cascading into this SSD activity? Does this behaviour seem like malware?

Not much help unfortunately, but me too. Game also likes to freeze for seconds when zooming into scopes.

I suspect it's a CPU bottleneck + some insane spaghetti code.

Got it figured out, with help from this page. The RAM_ID are just locations for 10k 0201 5% resistors. No additional resistors need to be purchased because they're all there, just need to switch positions to toggle the high/low states.

That's not the point. I have sufficient tools and experience replacing SMD/BGA components on PCBs. Plenty of people have done this with Apple PCBs with good success, but unfortunately that doesn't help with mainboard-specific questions that I have.

bump 

I want to attempt upgrading the soldered RAM on my HP 13-ay0095AU from 8GB to 16GB. While I have a lot of experience soldering, this is my first time attempting something like this.

I found the schematics and .cad file (attached). However, I haven't got a clue on how to properly read them. As far as I can tell, they should be the correct and the same board. RAM-related info seems to be mainly on page 12 of the PDF. I've also attached a photo of the physical board, found online.

I have a few questions:

1. The board seems to physically have 8 spots for RAM chips. However, Googling the part numbers for the 8 GB setups (e.g. H5AN8G6NCJR-XNC) suggests that those are 16x 512 MB chips? Am I reading this wrongly?

2. If I find an online vendor with the part "K4AAG165WA-BCWE", do I just order 1 unit? Or 8 units, 1 for each spot?

3. How do the "RAM_ID1...4" work? Are they just bridged pads or resistors or something else? 

Any help/tips/advice would be greatly appreciated!

HP ENVY x360 13-ay00xx series Compal GPR31 LA-J481P Rev 1.0 BoardView.cad Compal GPR31 LA-J481P Rev 1.0 Схема.pdf

The spec for IO Shield is 44.7mm, including a 2.3mm standoff on the mainboard, but the 'few mm' to allow for decorative shrouds is what I'm worried about 

I'm trying to design a table with an integrated 'case', but can't find this info.

For ATX boards including protruding components, such as IO shield, VRM heatsink, and decorative shrouds thereof, is there generally a specification/limit to how "tall" they can get?

I see, thanks. In that case I will just stick to the stock 256GB SSD and just allocate more to virtual memory. I don't need it to be fast, I just need it to not crash whenever I open any 2 programs (including the browser) at once.

Unfortunately this laptop is barely even a year old, and it seems all 13-14" thin-n-lights no longer have swappable ram.

I have a laptop with a tiny 8GB soldered ram with no upgrade slots... looking for the next best thing.

Looking for a 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD in Australia (limited selection), the CPU (AMD 4500u) only supports up to PCIE Gen 3.

But I'm not sure what specific benchmark/metric to look out for. Instinctively I would say random read/write, but Tom's Hardware benches with a lot of other suites as well.

Would anyone like to chime in?

Apologies for the delay. I have tried the boot-repair on a live USB.

First I tried the "normal" option (not the "failsafe"), which leads to this:

And zoomed in for better text clarity:

And it was stuck like that, seemingly unresponsive to any input.

So I shut down the system by long-holding the power button, then tried the "failsafe" option. It seems to have been populating various devices for a while, and finally settled on this screen:

and it appears to be stuck re-trying this? 

So at this point I gave up and powered the system down again, and back into Windows to post this.

Was anything in these photos able to help with troubleshooting?

On 10/19/2021 at 5:34 PM, Master Disaster said:

Please do "cat /etc/default/grub" then grab a picture of the output with your phone and post it.

Done

On 10/19/2021 at 6:24 PM, Kilrah said:

There is a live ISO for boot-repair, can try that, it's always worked for me. Note an internet connection is required.

Do you mean this? 

As title says, after updating from 20.10 > 21.04, something happened to my GRUB and windows was complaining about mis-configured boot environment or something like that, I can't remember clearly anymore. But GRUB menu still appeared, and I could still boot into my Ubuntu OS (although it's duplicated for some reason).

So the first thing that came to mind was to boot back into Ubuntu 21.04, and google for how to repair GRUB. Every single solution pointed towards this rather old looking program "boot-repair", typical instructions goes

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y boot-repair
boot-repair 

So I've got a live boot disk (21.10), and online guides suggest 2 things:

1. Re-attempt "boot-repair" through the Live USB.

A bit skeptical of this, but I cannot do it anyway. The first line outputs this:

E: The repository 'http://ppa.launchpad.net/yannubuntu/boot-repair/ubuntu impish Release' does not have a Release file.
N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.

I googled around but couldn't find any up-to-date and relevant solutions.

2. Something about mounting various partitions and re-installing Grub (possible source from StackOverflow).

I saw a few variants of this, but most were lost since re-starting the Live USB also wipes internet history.

I made sure that the disks and partitions were correct, and eventually this is the output

root@ubuntu:/# grub-install /dev/nvme0n1
Installing for x86_64-efi platform.
Installation finished. No error reported.
root@ubuntu:/# update-grub
Sourcing file `/etc/default/grub'
Sourcing file `/etc/default/grub.d/init-select.cfg'
Generating grub configuration file ...
Script `/boot/grub/grub.cfg.new' contains no commands and will do nothing
Syntax errors are detected in generated GRUB config file.
Ensure that there are no errors in /etc/default/grub
and /etc/grub.d/* files or please file a bug report with
/boot/grub/grub.cfg.new file attached.

So it says there are no issues, I also checked for this `/boot/grub/grub.cfg`, but it does not exist. There is only `gfxblacklis.txt` and `unicode.pf2`.

This does NOT fix GRUB either, it is still shows the minimal bash-like interface.

Anyone have any idea how to help? Are there any more modern attempts at a `boot-repair` program?

Is my Ubuntu+GRUB borked entirely and need a full re-format?

Not sure whether I should use Windows' built-in calibration process for Gamma and Contrast, and if so at which stage of calibration?

I have a Spyder5Express and would be following this guide using DisplayCal.

I'm not sure if it's because of the "splitter"/"renderer", but I can't seem to move my subtitles at all. When I move up (default hotkey Alt + Up), I get the blue GUI updating and saying the position in %, but the actual subtitles don't move. 

This is a problem when zooming in (hardcoded black letterbox videos on my 21:9 monitor), the subtitles go out of frame.

Do you perhaps know how to fix this?

Thanks! WinDirStat worked to delete the file, then I could re-procure it and this time it works.

HOWEVER... another unrelated file just exhibited this behaviour as well, and stayed that way even after a "re-procurement". I could just try other methods, but is this a sign that my HD is going out?

Thanks for the suggestions... but I'm back

It's not an active torrent file, it's been stopped and cleared from my torrent program for over a month now.

Similarly for the other suggestions, I first noticed these stuff about a month ago, and the system's been through about a month worth of shutdowns (and even 1 CMOS clearing) and not being opened by any media player. I, too, was hoping that it would be a 'mere' file lock issue, which is why I just left it for a while.

So finally I tried the safe mode (no networking)... also nope. Still "Can't read the source file or disk."

Quite a puzzler!

I have a season of a show, there's only 1 particular episode doing this. It is a .mkv file. I can open it and watch it, skip around, etc, there's no artifacting or any hint of corruption.

However, this particular file cannot be copied, moved, nor deleted, but it CAN be renamed (still can't do anything after that, though). There's only a vague "Can't read the source file or disk." message on attempt.

I have checked permissions (identical to all the other non-problematic episodes), and did a chkdsk /F on reboo, "Windows has scanned the file system and found no problems. No further action is required."

Anyone know what's up? How can I fix it?

Just got this set of RAM from Silicon Power and tried to tune it up, but there's essentially no information about it online and not even Thaiphoon Burner can identify the Die/Rev, just that Hynix is the manufacturer. So I'm making this thread and hoping it would be the central place to collect information and discuss it, and hopefully identify it better.

Official Webpage: https://www.silicon-power.com/web/product-XPOWER_Turbine_RGB_DDR4_Gaming_Memory_ModuleHeatsink

The ones I bought were 2x8GB Dual Channel, rated to 3200Mhz CL16.

Thaiphoon Burner Report:

1Usmus DRAM Calculator Screenshot:

I am using a launch batch Ryzen 1600 (it even has the Linux kernel bug that I haven't bothered to RMA) on Asus Crosshair 6 Hero, 2 sets of these altogether so 4x8 GB = 32 GB.

All these recommended values worked perfectly, boots on first try and so far no instability. I also checked the differences between selecting MFR vs AFR, and the only numerical difference was tRCDWR and tRCDWD swapping around (16 vs 17). I tried both set ups, and both boot with no discernible differences.

I also ran the built-in benchmark to get these results:

Unfortunately, without more information on the Die and Rev, trying to get FAST preset values just gives errors (not even values).

So far, I'm EXTREMELY impressed by the timings these could reach on my CPU, where previous G.Skill TridentZ RGB 2x8 GB maxed out at 3200 cl 16-17-18-36 (was stuck at 17-19-19-40 until the 2019 bios updates) and wouldn't even boot any tighter, this works flawlessly despite being 4 sticks instead of just 2. I also got these for AUD$115 per pair, which is about USD$80. RGB B-dies typically cost almost double or more, so that's some insane value, too.

Next few days I'll try decreaasing tRCDRD and TRP to 16.

Hey, really appreciate the reply. Wanted to reply earlier but then did more non-rigorous tests/benchmarks and my conclusions kept changing... at some point I was pretty convinced it was not a performance issue, but "1.9x" and above was somehow special in software at some point in the chain, but then I tested a bit more and it seems this "1.9x" was only specific to anime for some reason. "IRL" tv shows can push much further, into ~2.xx speeds, even pretty high res/bitrate videos. However, there were also some old (low resolution and bitrate) shows that triggered it much earlier, at even ~1.4x. Maybe it has to do with the video's codec?

Also, using radeon firmware to monitor CPU and GPU usage, they don't seem to hit 100% when the frame repeats begin. The highest I've got from video playback was ~15% CPU and ~80% GPU. In fact, video playback speeds seem to have very little to do with CPU/GPU usage on my system. It's still correlated, but quite little. IDK if it's because at really high playback speeds, my system realises it can't keep up so it just discards a bunch of frames from rendering? Or it could be because the graph smooths out spikes where the load hits 100%?

Either way, appreciate the thought, looking forward to an updated guide and just let me know if you'd like me to run any specific tests

So I followed this tutorial to get Potplayer properly set up with MadVR;

Lately I've noticed that if I were to increase playback speeds to >1.8, frames would repeat. So the video will keep flashing frames from like a second ago, making it impossible to watch. However, some shows are so slow that 1.8x speed is not enough...

Does anyone know how this could be fixed? Are there specific settings known to cause this, or overwhelms PCs?

I'm using R5 1600, 16GB OC'ed ram, and 5700 XT, water cooled.

I e-mailed Asus to ask about it, they gave me back a canned response.

"No Plans for releasing the ROG CROSSHAIR VI HERO (WI-FI AC). At the moment the non-wifi version is available."

No plans at all???

9 minutes ago, Its Not Important said:

Oh its a pre order? So the price is ramped up on top of european mark up right?

 

Thats reliving 

Yup, according to google translate. Who knows what's going on with pricing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯