jmasta111

Hello, I am aware that this is a strange request, but it is an important one nonetheless, and one that I know is possible but have forgotten how to properly execute. Without getting too much into the details, there are several software packages that run undetected in the background of Windows that I need to be able to ensure cannot be circumvented through the use of Reset This PC, Restore Point, and Safemode with Networking. The purpose of this is to modify / corrupt Windows system / registry files to the point thus that these features cannot be re-enabled short of booting into Windows install media and doing a clean wipe / reinstall. So, first of all, a few disclaimers: - I am aware that Reset This PC can be disabled via the /disable reagentc command in CMD, but this is insufficient because it can simply be re-enabled via CMD with similar ease and minimal expertise. - I have been able to successfully disable the effective use of "Reset This PC" (both when activated through Windows or when Windows boots into its recovery environment after failure to boot several times in a row) as well as Safe Mode with Networking. This was done by messing around with the applicable registry entries to the point at which the features no longer worked. I figured this out largely through trial and error, and with relative ease, but failed to document how I went about doing this and have forgotten how to repeat it. I have a computer in which this was successfully applied (Windows 10), if anyone is interested, although I'm certain that someone who actually knows what they're doing in Windows Registry beyond a novice understanding could figure this out. - Removing a user as an administrator is not a sufficient solution, as I am looking for a solution which is effective on Administrator accounts. So, I know this is possible, as I have done it before, and not that long ago. However, I cannot for the life of me repeat what I did. This is probably due to the fact that I am sort of a "jack of all trades, master of none" when it comes to IT, and complex registry editing for unintended uses is certainly not my strongest suit. I am fully open to try something other than what has worked for me before, if someone more knowledgeable than me has recommendations. Thanks in advance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbWV58AH9eg&list=UU0vBXGSyV14uvJ4hECDOl0Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqHk26cDbro&list=UUkWQ0gDrqOCarmUKmppD7GQ

I might be the only one who would pick this, but honestly I find the included subwoofer really awesome. It really took me by surprise but would work really well to leave on your desk so that you could plug into it and get better bass when you get home.

Okay guys so i've done some searching around on some old threads and have concluded that the issue likely lies with the VRM on my motherboard, Asrock 970 Extreme 4, which simply cannot handle the power of my 8350. My chip isn't overclocked so I find it quite disingenuous of them putting out this board, claiming that it can run the 8350 when in reality it's power design and cooling simply aren't up to the task. So, that being said, what is my best option to address this issue for now? I can't just go out and buy another motherboard and really need to get this issue fixed by tomorrow if possible. I've got another 120mm fan laying around an 80mm fan. That being said, i'm not sure exactly where I should mount them. Ideas for a quick fix? (not even sure if this would be possible seeing as I already directed a fan straight at my motherboard). I am going to attempt to reverse the 120mm fan at the back of my case so that it will intake instead of exhaust, and then set another 120mm fan at the top exhausting to balance things out again. Hopefully this will work as i'm going to be pretty shit out of luck if it does not.

I pointed a tall standing fan just about 6 inches from my PC with side panel off at full blast and saw some change, but still had the issue quite badly. (changed from happening every minute to every few minutes)

That's a good idea about using GPU-Z to detect my VRM temps, I will do that. And yes, I did check my CPU, although that's a good point to raise. I am aware that throttling occurs when my 8350 hits 65C, which is why I clean my rad weekly due to the dust in my room clogging it up.I don't think that it was my CPU, but it's possible. Is there something else I should do to rule out it being my CPU? All I did was check my CPU temps and it seemed in order, although I am aware that is a very basic way of testing.

Hey guys so i've been having a problem with my GPU (Gigabyte 7950 Windforce) for a few months now. I have been experiencing some very bad fps lag spikes when playing intensive games. At first the games play just fine, running smoothly with no stuttering and FPS in the ballpark of what i'd expect, but then the FPS drops to ~5-10fps for several seconds before going back to normal again. While this happens, I keep an eye on my CPU/GPU temps and clocks on my second monitor, and noticed a trend going on. My GPU (FX-8350) never gets above 55c and my GPU never gets above 60c (it gets quite hot in my room so this is actually quite good all things considered), however I noticed that my clocks seem to drop to 300 and 500Mhz when these spikes occur. This is obviously far below what it should be running at (running at factory OC of 1000/1250) and seems to be what the card idles at, which really isn't right. I should mention that I clean my case and components thoroughly once a week (as my room attracts a lot of dust) and have 5 case fans (four 120mm and one 92mm blowing cool air directly at my GPU from the bottom of the case). This is a big issue and i'm really just not entirely sure what could be causing the issue. I've tried updating my drivers and running the GPU at lower clocks, but neither of those things seem to have any difference. I am also sure that there are no Youtube videos playing in the background which i've heard can cause the card to lock into 2D mode, but I also don't see how that would be the case seeing as it has those fluctuations and isn't stuck at those low clocks. I did a test while playing the new Wolfenstein game yesterday and found that I was getting very bad and frequent throttling regardless of clocks. I decided to try to open my case, ramp my GPU fan up to 100%, and point a standing fan I have in my room at the case at full blast. This lowered my CPU and GPU tempurates as I would predict, and the throttling became noticably less frequent, but it was still happening every 3-4 minutes even under these extreme thermal conditions. So, my question is what do you think is causing this and how should I go about fixing it? Could it be that the VRM's on my GPU are overheating? Are there some settings that I need to adjust? Firmware? Let me know as soon as you can guys as this would obviously be something i'd want to address as soon as possible. My specs: FX-8350 @ 4.0Ghz ASrock 970 Extreme4 Corsair H60 CPU cooler (stock fans) 4x2GB DDR3 (1333Mhz) Gigabyte Windforce 7950 @ 1000/1250 1TB 7200RPM Seagate Barracuda 3.5" HDD 500GB 7200RPM Western Digital Caviar Blue 3.5" HDD Antec Neo Eco 620w 80+ Bronze PSU AverMedia Live Gamer HD (internal HDMI capture card) Asus 24x DVD-R/W Optical Drive NZXT Tempest 410 Elite Cooler Master CM Storm Quickfire Pro Mechanical Keyboard (MX Brown) Corsair M60 Mouse Acer 21.5" (1920x1080 via HDMI-to-DVI adapter) TN Monitor @60Hz Dell 15" Old POS VGA Monitor (1024x768 via DVI-to-VGA adapter) @60Hz M-Audio Producer USB Condenser Mic Logitech 2.1 Stereo Speakers

[TUMBLEWEED INTENSIFIES]

A little over a week ago, I left my computer for about half an hour and when my girlfriend went to go wake up my displays... my main monitor had gone white. I went to inspect it and after a quick test to be sure that it wasn't my video card or DVI cable, I came to the conclusion that something was clearly wrong with the monitor itself. Having encountered this same issue several years prior with a friend's monitor, I knew that the issue may lay with the internal video cable connected to the panel itself. So, after 25 minutes of wedging the casing open with a screwdriver because this monitor had no external screws to get inside (I really hate when companies do that), I finally got the thing apart and wasn't incredibly encouraged by what I saw inside. This monitor has previously died on me a couple years prior (not a white screen, it died with absolutely no life whatsoever) and so I had it sent in to be repaired. I don't know whether the monitor I got back was my original monitor or whether they had just replaced it with a refurbished one, but they had done an absolute terrible job of working on it that's for sure. The insides were loosely held together with this very cheap tape that caused all the parts to wiggle around much more than I would be comfortable with. I started by removing this tape and replacing it with some gaffers tape (in the words of Ryan Shrout, gaf tape solves all). After that I located the internal video cable, unplugged it, and proceeded to clean it thoroughly to be sure that the connectors were all making good contact. I also used canned air on the female part of the connector to be sure that there wasn't dust or something of the sorts. I slapped it back together and low and behold... it worked! I realized at the time that this may not have been a permanent fix and several days later I found that the monitor had gone white again, just as I had feared. So, I popped it open again, cleaned the connector and... it worked again. Well, over the past couple days the amount of time between the monitor working and going white has been decreasing until tonight when after I cleaned it, it didn't go back to normal again. So, I realize the odds of this thing being fixed are low, and I definitely can't spend very much time or money on it... but I wanted to know if any of you had any suggestions before I bite the bullet and replace it. Anything you can think of trying that might help to resolve this issue? I should also mention that I know that the monitor is actually a rebranded Acer monitor and it's an LG panel on the inside. This information probably doesn't change much, but maybe it could add some context for someone. Anyway thanks guys, I appreciate your help. -Julian

I'll try the GPU and let you all know if that fixes it. I've checked to see that there aren't any bent pins on my CPU, but how would I deal with removing foreign debris if that were the case? I don't see how there could be any on my socket on the motherboard seeing as I just had it replaced, but maybe on the CPU? Perhaps thermal paste on the pins or something. I did let my girlfriend handle my CPU when we re-applied thermal paste so that I could teach her for when she did her rig, but I supervised her and didn't really see that she did anything wrong. Plus, this was AFTER the freezing started happening so I don't know how that would be a possibility. But I don't know I suppose that's a possibility if it doesn't end up being the GPU. I mean, maybe she had some thermal paste on her fingers and got it on the side of one of the pins or something. Who knows. I suppose i'll cross that bridge when I get there, but i'm not messing around with my CPU without knowing what i'm doing as that is not something I have any experience dealing with. Ehh, I just really want to get this fixed more than anything at this point. It's been a month now and of course this is RIGHT as my YouTube channel sees another growth spurt so there are at least 200 people who have subscribed to me during the last month but not seen a single video from me in their sub box, and that bothers me greatly. Anyway, i'll make sure to continue to post my findings here and a solution once I find one for anyone who stumbles upon this thread in future experiencing similar difficulties. So yeah, i'll do that or whatever I just don't even at this point blegh

Hello, i'd have to disagree with you on the probability of GPU and PSU. While it is a very valid point that you brought up about it crashing during video encoding, I had tested the video encoding with OpenCL and any form of GPU hardware acceleration turned off as well. On top of that, powers supplies delivering inadequate power when under certain loads is a very likely cuplrit for these sort of issues. Although this is not true for all, most peripherals/components have a pretty limited spectrum of voltages they will tolerate, and if, when a dieing power supply is put under load and therefore begins outputting incorrectly, the issue we are seeing manifesting could very well be caused by this. Especially when you consider the downward slope in loads that were required to get the computer to crash: first just encoding, then heavy work/gaming, then simply light use, and eventually freezing before even getting to the desktop. HOWEVER, everything I just said is moot because... ON THE PREVIOUS EPISODE OF BULLSH*T COMPUTER DIAGNOSTIC (updated TL;DR)... My computer began to freeze on a more and more regular basis with no BSOD. At first it began failing only when video encoding but then began to freeze after lighter and lighter loads until the point where it will fail before even getting to the desktop. After a myriad of attempted common fixes were tried (see first few posts), I decided to change out my RAM (my RAM was bad anyways and I needed a new kit regardless). When this didn't work I tried a range of last-stitch easy fixes to see if any of those would solve the problem, yet it still persisted. I tried: -Clearing CMOS -Updating BIOS -Raising voltages on CPU/NB and DRAM -Thoroughly dust computer and components -Ensured all connections were properly made with no apparent damaged pins -Removed all nonessential components (only keeping CPU,PSU,GPU,HDD,and Mouse/keyboard) -Running Disk Check from Bootable Win8.1 disk, but computer froze during stage 5 of this ruling out HDD issues -Ran Xubuntu from a thumb drive to double check that HDD wasn't an issue (still froze) -Properly cleaned and re-applied thermal compound to waterblock After the problem continued to persist after this, I RMA'd my motherboard, but after I got it back and built the rig together again... the problem still persisted in the same way. Then I concluded that the Power Supply was the next most-likely candidate, so I ordered a Corsair CX600 off of Amazon to try (which I will return) before going through the multi-week long process of an RMA. The power supply came today and after plugging everything back up again, the problem still persisted. I did however find I could load into Xubuntu (a very resource-light linux distro) via USB drive for consistently longer than I could for Windows 8.1 via Hard Drive ( I could actually get to the desktop and screw around with programs for 4-5 minutes before crash). I should also mention that I attempted to plug the PC into a different wall outlet and surge protector, which I knew was a long shot, but a friend of mine previously had issues with bad power from his wall. This also solved nothing. SO at this point we find ourselves with only two candidates left: the CPU and GPU. Obviously, I found the GPU being a MUCH more likely culprit for the issue and was going to contact a friend of mine with an old 8800 GTX laying around to see if I could borrow it for testing. I did, however, wanted to come on here and post my findings before doing this to see what everyone here makes of the situation. So... thoughts?

Right, yeah that it is a very common problem for this type of issue and as such it was the first thing I checked (bought a new kit of RAM because i've been needing some new RAM for a long time now anyway). But regardless the issue persisted,and now here we are. You are right and I was just coming to double check. I will test with a new PSU and if it fixes it i'll RMA mine. Hopefully the next time I reply to this thread it will be to say that it worked

I appreciate your post but please read all of what was posted before and my specs. I have said that I have already tried a brand new kit of RAM and if you looked at the spec list my board has no onboard graphics, so that is not an option either. Also, it is very unlikely that a failed graphics card would cause this. When they fail they don't tend to cause system freezes in the way I am experiencing. Again, thank you for trying to help though.

Okay so I'm here to update you guys on the issue. I RMA'd my motherboard and got it back yesterday. I rebuilt the system and low and behold, I am still having the issues. The system freezes when I boot to Windows 8.1 from hard disk and when I boot the latest version of Xubuntu via USB thumbstick (although it does boot so I know all the components are connected together properly). So, it wasn't the motherboard. At this point I am thinking that it is probably the power supply, which I feel like a moron for not testing before the motherboard because it is much easier to test. I figure that the best course of action at this stage seeing as I have no extra power supply suitable to drive my rig (even with only essential components) would be to order one off of amazon, test it, and then return it. If it turns out that I plug in the new power supply and it DOES work then I guess it's time to RMA my PSU as well (again, I feel very dumb for not doing this before). If it doesn't work... well I guess i'll cross that bridge when I get there. Before I do this though I just wanted to hear your guys' opinion on whether this would be the best course of action or not. Thank you for your continued support

I updated the main post for those who don't like reading. Happy now?