Garlic

There is, running all drives in PATA mode works fine. But that is slower, and slower is unacceptable. I want to run my fancy 10.000 RPM HDDs at max speed. Heck, I even threw in an SSD for Windows 7. This is a performance system, and I want SPEED!

I am building a triple boot retro gaming PC from parts I had lying around, but I have hit a wall while trying to install Windows XP with the system in ACHI mode. I need to slip in a driver for the ACHI SATA controller in the XP preboot environment, and to do so I have downloaded what was supposed to be the correct one for my motherboard and prepared a floppy disk with the files which I attempt to load by pressing F6 when prompted. However, iaStor.sys keeps causing unexpected errors (4101 and 4113 in line 2113) no matter which driver I attempt to load. The system in question has a Fujitsu D2812-A11 motherboard with a Q45 chipset, and my CPU is a Core 2 Duo E8600. What ACHI driver should I use? And why will the ones I have not load?

Hi. I am setting up an old laptop that is dual booting Windows 7 and 10, and usually when I make systems dual boot Windows I go to device manager and disables every drive that are not containing the active Windows installation, as I don't want the OSs to be able to make changes to drives containing other versions of Windows and potentially mess things up. It usually works just fine, but in this case (Thinkpad E520) I am not allowed to disable the Windows 7 drive from Windows 10. I could easily disable the Windows 10 drive in Windows 7, but when I try to do it the other way around the option is missing. What am I doing wrong? Best regards, Michael

My CPU and GPU temps are not as horrible as I feared they would be. I might even try to squeeze a moderate overclock out of them of the mobo doesn’t combust on me beforehand, and especially if I can pull off a little undervolting in the process. That said, the cooling solution I run on the CPU is a Silverstone AR06 which is the biggest cooler that I can fit in my case, and the GPU is a triple fan Gigabyte Windforce. I also get the exact same wild temperatures on TMPIN6 and 8 temperatures when I run the PC with the side panels off, so I am beginning to suspect that the error is more of a sensor issue than a thermal issue. If you have the same kind of board in an active system, would you mind checking your motherboard temps real quick?

Hi. I am assembling a new system from used parts, and most importantly I am building the system in a Silverstone ML08 case. These cases are renowned for being little hotboxes, so I installed HWMonitor intending to monitor CPU and GPU use and assess the need for extra cooling measures. But would you look at the TMPIN6 and TMPIN8 temperatures on the motherboard, something is almost on fire! I inspected the caps on the board expecting to something to have blown up, but there is no physical damage to see. Apart from these readings, the system feels and performs as normal. What is going on here? Is my motherboard defective? Why is the PC not shutting down to protect itself? My specs: CPU: i7-3770K Mobo: Asus P8Z77-I Deluxe RAM: 2x8 GB DDR3-2133 GPU: GTX 980 ti PSU: Be Quiet! SFX L Power 500W

I am finishing up a retro Pentium 4 build this weekend, but I accidentally bought a 24-pin ATX PSU for a motherboard that has a 20-pin connector- Rookie mistake! Apart from requiring a 20-pin ATX connector I also need a floppy connector for this build, and these two things combined rules out all of the PSUs that my local PC shop has in store apart from one; A Chieftec Value Series unit. Does anyone here know if these PSUs are any good? None of the components in my build are valuable, but they are hard to replace and I would hate for a sketchy PSU to blow them up. I did check the PSU tier list, but I did not find any relevant info on this specific unit.

Are you synchronizing your desktop across devices? Even if you just run one system, it may synchronize with a predefined setting in the cloud and rearrange your icons. Whenever I install Windows with my personal Microsoft account it will synchronize my wallpaper to the one I used back in 2018, and there is no changing it before I disable desktop synchronization in settings. I imagine that your icon arrangement can be the same. Why anyone would want this feature is beyond me. And how this stupid idea made it past QC at Microsoft is even weirder. Windows would be much better with 99% of its "features" removed.

The App List is now pruned and proper, thanks a lot

As the title says, I wish to hide some programs on my PC so that other people who might use it never finds them, but for some reason Windows has decided to make this difficult for me. The App List is already hidden from the Start Menu, but I want to go one step deeper and remove the programs in question from the App List itself. Why I can't just right click and chose 'Remove from this list' as on all previous versions of Windows is beyond me, but why make anything easier when you can just complicate stuff instead, right? At any rate there has to be a way, because why would anyone want all of their apps visible to anyone to begin with? I should mention that I am not trying to remove the programs in question from the system, I very much want to keep them here, I just want to keep them for myself.

Hi. I am fixing up an old laptop for a friend, and no matter what i do I run into this issue where where the sound works fine for the first few minutes after boot, but then the internal speakers just stop working.Headphones on the 3.5mm jack or USB speakers continues to work, but I want the internal speakers to work as well. I have searched far and wide and found out that many owners of Medion systems from this time period has similar issues, and that some people have had luck uninstalling the Conextant SmartAudio HD drivers and had Windows load the default drivers, but this does nothing for me. I have also replaced the internal speakers thinking that they were faulty, but the new speakers did not help either. I have also found some people claiming that editing the Windows registry solved their problem, but the lines they say to remove does not appear in my registry. I have also dug up some older drivers for this specific system thinking that the latest drivers must be defective, but none of the drivers I have found were able to recognize the hardware. I am at my wits end. This PC is cursed beyond belief, and I just want it to work. What can I do from here?

That is the problem, there are no 720p/1080p option, only 480p and 'automatic' which looks like a squished 480. I got another active HDMI to DP converter off of Amazon that specifically listed the nintendo Switch as compatible, but I still have no luck. I am looking into updating the monitors firmware as a last resort, but other than that it looks like my dream of playing in docked mode will not be achievable.

I just checked. Taking the KVM switch out of the loop does nothing, I still only get 480p.

I use an original dock, the one that came with the system even. And yeah, there is a lot of posts on Reddit, but most of them are about how Switch firmware 4.0.0 broke compatibility with a lot of older TVs and monitors, but apparently that issue was fixed by firmware 4.1.0. I haven't seen any recent posts about this issue.

I recently bought a Nintendo Switch OLED with the intention of mostly using it docked on my 1440p gaming monitor at my desk. I have a lot of devices here, so I use a 4 PC to 1 monitor KVM switch from Level 1 Techs and assigned the 4th channel to my Nintendo Switch dock using an active HDMI to DisplayPort adapter drawing power from one of the USB ports on the dock itself, but no matter what I do the Nintendo refuses to output anything higher than a 480p signal. I use premium DP 1.4 cables, and I have made sure that all software is up to date. I even tested the Nintendo and its dock on my living room TV to make sure that it was not broken, and there it was perfectly capable of outputting 1080p as it should. Why does my Nintendo hate my monitor? Have any of you had a similar experience?

Hi. I have a Lenovo USB sound bar attached to my ThinkVision monitor, but it keeps falling off and I think I need a plug or a screw to keep it in place. Here is a picture of where it appears that something is missing: There are no plug or screw listed on the parts list for the product, so I can't just find it on amazon and call it a day. Would you happen to know that the thing is called?

The cache drive is mostly for spinning up VMs, which is something I should probably have mentioned that I plan to do as well. I also want to run a Plex, which is why I am keeping the GPU in the system. As far as I have read, the GTX 1050 ti is strong enough to transcode video up to 4K. I don't know much about Docker containers either, but now that I can run them I might as well find some that are useful. I hear that Pi-hole is great.

A while back I saw the LTT video on turning your old gaming system into your new server, and that got me in the mood to do a similar project myself. However, I want to take it a step further and set my server with a proper server OS, and all of the cool kids seems to be running Unraid. My old gaming PC looks a lot like Anthonys PC from the video. It is a Lenovo Thinkcentre M92p SFF tower with an i7-3770S, 16 GB of RAM and a GTX 1050 t that I for some reason haven't sold during the GPU craze. I already have one of those ODD bay converters installed that fills the ODD with a 3.5" bay and two 2.5" bays, one of which is housing my old WIn7 installation. My plan is more or less to throw in a spare 1 TB SSD I have sitting around as a cache drive and get two 14 TB WD Red 3.5" 5400 rpm and mirror them for my storage needs, but I have some questions before I shell out the money for the drives: 1) Are the slow 14 TB drives a good idea? I read a blog by a guy running two 4 TB drives and his monthly parity check takes 6 hours, so if the length of the check scales linearly with size mine will take days. I also opted for the 5400 RPM drives rather than 7200 RPM in the hopes to minimize noise and vibration in my tower. Is 7200 RPM drives a better solution? And should I get smaller drives? 14 TB is a bit overkill for my needs anyway, and if it can make the monthly parity check more manageable I could make do with 8 TB. 2) The PSU in the M92p is only rated for 240 Watts, and when I add the parts I plan to use to pcpartpicker it recommends a minimum PSU capacity of 288 Watts. Is the 240 Watt PSU viable for my use case? 3) I am a little worried about running Unraid from a flashdrive. How do I pick one that are less likely to die on me? Thanks.

I like the form factor, the metal body and the gaskets, but I didn't even notice the south facing switches. The knob looks cool (to me, I understand that some don't like it), but I would accept volume buttons as well. And yes, by modular I mean hot swappable switches, plate options are nice but less important. Bluetooth is no good to me. I will be connecting the keyboard to a laptop dock, and I want it to connect through a USB dongle so I won't have to re-pair the keyboard every time I switch between any of my personal laptops or my work PC.

I really want to build a keyboard tailored to my exact preferences, and I would like to find a product like the Glorious GMMK Pro but without the inexcusable design flaw that is the stupid wire. So far my searches has come up empty, but there has to be someone out there who offers a wireless modular mechanical keyboard with a volume knob, right? Can anyone point me towards a competent product?

Hi! I just picked up an IBM Thinkpad at a garage sale, and it came with an activated Win7 installation on it. I want to do a clean install on it as a part of my restoration effort, but I also don't want to buy a brand new Windows license for it. Is there any way to retain the Win7 license through reinstall? I don't have any of the paperwork that originally came with it, and the sticker on the back contains a WinXP product key. Thanks.

My cat decided to take a nap on my G915, and somehow managed to change my RGB settings and get them stuck in a pattern where the G1-5 keys are green, the Logitech logo is red, and all of the other buttons are dimly white. I have tried to reenable my previous RGB profile, resetting the keyboard to default, delete G-hub and installing it again, but nothing helps. My RGB setting is now as my cat set it, and I can't seem to change it back no matter what I do. Any ideas as to how I can change it back? If it helps the MR button was blinking when he got up, so that have been pressed, but I I have no clue what else he managed to press.

I am running an old HP T610 thin client as a Windows XP retro gaming PC, and I am trying to set up Radeon Dual GPU using the integrated Radeon HD 6320 as well as a Radeon HD 6450 discrete GPU, but while Catalyst can see both cards, no Crossfire option appears! the mobo is sourced from ASrock, and as far as I can tell the chipset in question supports Crossfire. Also the iGPU and dGPU share architecture and while the dGPU is stronger they are still within the same ballpark. In other words, this should work but does not. Have any of you tried Radeon Dual GPU? And how did you make it work? I run Catalyst 14.4 just because it is the latest one supported by WinXP, but earlier versions might be more compatible with Radeon 6000-series GPUs. I don’t know. There is a lot of dead links to compatibility charts on AMDs website, but they have apparently scrubbed the actual context years ago. I assume that 6320 and 6450 is compatible just because that would make sense, but again I just don’t know. How do I make this work? Thanks.

How do you run your RAM? A friend of mine had the same problem on a Ryzen 5 3600 system, and it turned out that he was running his ram at 2400. As soon as he enabled XMP he was fine.

I have several, but I do enjoy building retro PCs and often pick up used cards on eBay if I see one that is interesting. One of my friends had his RX 5700 XT die on him recently, and he made it through the RMA period on a Radeon HD 7570 that I lent him. It does not handle modern games well, but it beats having no display output. The spare that I am most likely to use myself is the Intel UHD 630 in my main tower.l

I am trying to save a mangled Thinkpad T430, and one of its primary problems is that the screen is marred by scratches and pressure marks, and now that I am replacing the screen I might as well upgrade it. Does any of you know where to find a 1600x900 glossy IPS display that will fit a T430? Or at least a nicer TN one. I have found several guides on how to do it but none of the vendors they link to have anything in stock, and the screens I can find on eBay are questionable at best. Thanks.