What Have You Done Today - (Computer Version)

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So I said this earlier:
Sonygamer455
1. Figure out how to keep my external HDD from powering down after short periods of time because it's proving to be rather problematic for me when playing games since I keep all of mine on it.
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I finally found the setting to change it yesterday thanks to this post on Reddit and it worked! I have no idea what it was set to previously, but after doing this, it was no longer powering down so darn quickly at inconvenient times like it was before. However, it seemed to be staying on indefinitely and I did not want it to do this because that would decrease its lifespan. So I experimented a bit and found that the numbers in that command represent how many minutes. So I set mine to 5 because I felt this was acceptable and sure enough, that was about how long it took to power down when I don't use it. Really glad this is finally sorted because it had been a thorn in my side ever since I got my new PC.

However, along the way, I found out my other external HDD I had been using for years was dying and I needed to move everything off it soon before I lose everything. So now I am going to have to figure out where to move it because I have stuff I don't care to lose on it right now. Fortunately, it's still operable for now, so I have a chance to get it done, but I hate that it's on the verge of failing because I've been using it religiously for years now and it rarely gets unplugged anymore. I guess now would be a good time to start thinking about getting another one someday.
 
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Last week, I made an audio file in practicing podcasting. Using my new JLAB GO Talk USB Microphone and Audacity, I made an audio file just over eight minutes in length as a pilot episode. That podcast has not been released. Because I have YouTube in mind, I am looking to make a video first accurately depicting the audio file's content, and then send the audio version to the likes of services like Soundcloud and various other media where podcasts are usually consumed.

This could be the start of something new for me. Oh, by the way, an official name for my podcast work has not been determined yet.
 
Mate of mine gave me a spare router (Asus RT-AX58U V1) that was floating around, so I upgraded my old one (D-Link Python AC1600). My old one served me well, but it was struggling with the range - wireless speeds dropped to literally a quarter at the edge of the house, and my Nest Mini seemed to drop out frequently (though I've heard Google Assistant is hopeless now, in general).

Did a speed test, and the speeds are now the same throughout the house.
 
So as of yesterday, I have officially discontinued using my old 2TB Toshiba external HDD I've used religiously since 2017. I got it back in late 2016 I think, but didn't use it much until I got a new computer in 2017 that only had a 256GB SSD, which was way too small for me, so I regularly depended on that external HDD for years afterward. Now, however, a friend of mine noticed it was dying and he insisted I get everything off of it soon, so I did. I decided to migrate my lossless CD rips I did recently and my video game music to my PC because I use them somewhat regularly, everything else was moved to my 8TB Xbox drive. I felt like if I used certain files often and I had the space on my PC, I may as well put them there for convenience since I have little reason not to now. Going to go through the other stuff and see if I want to put anything else on my PC because that 8TB drive is primarily for gaming and it goes back and forth between my PC and Xbox Series X. Someday I am going to get a new external HDD for etc stuff to replace my dying drive, but that may be a while.

Currently, I am doing some FTP'ing to and from my PS3 trying to get GT5 set up the way I want it, and eventually, I am going to do the same with GT6 as well. Been a while since I've tinkered with both.
 
I (basically) finished my Home Assistant. I didn't really go too crazy with a bunch of light switches/bulbs. Just one in my office to mess around with and an outlet switch for our living room lamp so the wife doesn't have to get up, reach up, and twist the knob (no sympathy from me!). I did get a smart front door lock and a garage opener to add to my zigbee 3.0 setup.

Getting the touchscreen to sit flush and level on the wall was something new for me. But I managed it just fine with the right tools and some YT ideas. I initially had this planeed to be running on a Pi, but I heard that the UI can be sluggish so I bought an MSI Cubi N and threw some double sided sticky tape on it (I did however completely forget to strap ducttape around it >_< ). So far so good, the Cubi is set to power on when power returns from an outage (I did do testing as well as an actual outage) and the VM is set to autostart along with Chrome going into fullscreen.

I need to play with the vertical stack cards some more to get a couple of the cards to sit where I want them to, but here it is, after 3 weeks of planning and work, here's the final result:




Jerome
 
Upgraded the power supply in my PC to a Silverstone 500W TFX. This is, from what I can tell, the only option for the TFX form factor if you need any more than 300 watts. It was not cheap. :lol: I needed it though, as I also purchased an RTX 4060 low-profile which requires an 8-pin PCIe power connection. The PSU came with so many additional cables that, despite my best efforts, the inside of my case may now cause physical pain to look at (not that it was anything interesting before, though). To demonstrate:

KenFWmB.jpeg


Of course, I had upgraded CPU/GPUs (and more) in the time between those two pics, but I thought the comparison would be more entertaining if I used the oldest pic I had of the PC in its current case. :P On the left is just after I transplanted the (originally) CyberPower's guts in to the InWin CE685 I've used since. Anyways, once the PSU was installed, it was basically impossible to keep my optical drive, so I've done away with that. Unfortunately, I had also lost the black plastic insert that covers the 5.25" bay by default, but after some eBay browsing, I found a more "functional" replacement:

ab2tpGB.jpeg

Molex-powered, dual 40mm intake fans. They're no Noctuas, but they aren't the loudest I've had either. I also run a power switch out the back so that they only run if I want them to, which they usually do if I'm playing games. Helps to keep CPU and GPU temps tightly around 60C.

So, I've used this PC for a long time (I've been posting about it since 2016!), and at each upgrade/stage of its life, especially since 2020, I told myself "alright, this is as far as I take it, now I save for its successor." Yet here I am, going on 9 years of ownership, still pimping out this Haswell dinosaur with new stuff. THIS TIME, I mean it. I've got a parts list and everything! I'll be reusing the PSU, GPU, and case though (or maybe buy a new, but identical case, as my front I/O seems to be dying for some reason).
 
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JohnBM01
Yesterday, I attempted to boost my computer's VRAM through a combination of BIOS changes and a registry edit. This is all to try to play "rFactor 2." I bought it (again) and will keep it this time instead of doing another buy-refund sequence. Turns out, since I'm using Intel integrated graphics, I technically have NO real VRAM (or VRAM that can't be detected). I later learned my mini office PC actually does not have the 512 MB VRAM needed to play rF2. I have 128 MB VRAM. So I may need to invest in an eGPU dock and an eGPU that has the at least 512 MB VRAM needed to play rF2 for my mini office PC.

There are some people I heard of who played rF2 and are using integrated graphics. One person even said one has been able to play rF2 better with integrated graphics than with any true GPU or EGPU. It is sad that I could play a game like Assetto Corsa very well but not rFactor 2. Then too, rFactor 2 has been a hot mess of fail. I heard GTA4 had kind of the same issue involving not having enough VRAM. However, since I haven't enjoyed any GTA after "GTA: Vice City Stories," I can't confirm any issues involving the PC version of GTA4

I'm low on money, so I can't do much else right now.
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Are you using DCH drivers? If you use older non-DCH drivers for your graphics driver, the registry edit method should work. You would have then successfully downloaded more RAM!
 
Downloaded the PS Vita content manager again today so I could copy all my old pictures and videos to my PC and they're all copying as we speak. Backing everything up now that I have enough room to store them all and some of it is desirable stuff I no longer have on hand anymore outside the Vita itself, so I don't want to lose that. Won't lie, that's the first time I've used the content manager in a while now and one of the very few times I've used my Vita at all in recent years. Oddly, it only charges when it's plugged into my computer now. :odd:

To think I used to use this thing religiously over 10 years ago for reasons unrelated to gaming.
 
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Saidur_Ali
Are you using DCH drivers? If you use older non-DCH drivers for your graphics driver, the registry edit method should work. You would have then successfully downloaded more RAM!
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I am not even sure if I have DCH drivers. I stayed away from rF2 since it has been such a pain to try to set up. I could look into trying again again to find some kind of working formula.
 
JohnBM01
I am not even sure if I have DCH drivers. I stayed away from rF2 since it has been such a pain to try to set up. I could look into trying again again to find some kind of working formula.
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You most likely have if the drivers are relatively new. You can find out if you go on driver details for your graphics driver and scroll down the list of .inf files showing and if DCH is mentioned, then you have DCH drivers. If you change to the legacy non-DCH drivers, you should be able to get it working with the registry edit of DedicatedSegmentSize.

I have sent a request to game support to see if they can patch the game to detect shared system memory. Will see what they say but won't hold my breath given it has been an issue for many years now. I wonder if the new Le Mans Ultimate game suffers from the same issue.
 
Decided to power up my old laptop this morning and install 2 programs on it since I still had a need for it and I also plugged in a bunch of HDD's to check their health since I couldn't do it on my new computer. Much to my misfortune, 2 drives associated with my PS3 were in bad health and so was the one installed on my PS2, so I am gonna have to replace them someday. Fortunately, I already had plans on doing so with the PS3 anyway, but it seems I need to act sooner rather than later since the drive apparently could die at any moment now. In the mean time, I guess I better back up anything I don't want to lose.
 
Recently, I installed the latest version of [now] Android TV to my Xiaomi Mi Box S. No longer is it Google or Google TV on the device; it is now Google TV. I haven't noticed any sort of incompatible media so far since this change.
 
Started out by reinstalling some old PC games in a new directory on my computer so I wouldn't have to deal with that permissions crap in the program files folder and I got a few done. Until for some reason, my external disc drive got to where it would no longer show up on my computer anymore despite powering on just fine. :grumpy: Went to my other computer just to verify if it still worked or not and it still did, so I knew it wasn't malfunctioning. After talking with a friend about this, this apparently is related to a registry entry that got altered or deleted, but I don't know what it could be unfortunately.

I've already tried a few things with no luck and I for the life of me have no idea what the exact cause was. Going to try a few more things and see if I get lucky, but I have a feeling I may have to just reinstall Windows 10 again just to fix it. :ouch: Pretty frustrated by this because I use that external disc drive somewhat often for music and gaming and I have a need for it right now.
 
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Sonygamer455
Started out by reinstalling some old PC games in a new directory on my computer so I wouldn't have to deal with that permissions crap in the program files folder and I got a few done. Until for some reason, my external disc drive got to where it would no longer show up on my computer anymore despite powering on just fine. :grumpy: Went to my other computer just to verify if it still worked or not and it still did, so I knew it wasn't malfunctioning. After talking with a friend about this, this apparently is related to a registry entry that got altered or deleted, but I don't know what it could be unfortunately.

I've already tried a few things with no luck and I for the life of me have no idea what the exact cause was. Going to try a few more things and see if I get lucky, but I have a feeling I may have to just reinstall Windows 10 again just to fix it. :ouch: Pretty frustrated by this because I use that external disc drive somewhat often for music and gaming and I have a need for it right now.
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Have you checked to see if the DVD drive has a drive letter assigned to it in Disk Management?
 
Sonygamer455
Here’s one I took yesterday, it’s drive F. I can’t make a new one since I’m not home right now, but I looked a few hours ago and it was about like this, even though I had PC game in it.
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Odd.

Have you tried uninstalling the DVD drive in Device Manager? Could be a borked driver causing the issue. Additionally, are there dedicated drivers available for the drive?
 
Sonygamer455
I have, multiple times, but with no luck.

I don’t think so, as far as I know it’s just like any other drive I have in the sense you just plug it in and it’s ready.
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Apparently there are a couple of registry keys that can corrupt and cause issues with removeable media. Don't know if you've seen this article but I would try methods 5 and 6 if you haven't already.
 
Korza
Apparently there are a couple of registry keys that can corrupt and cause issues with removeable media. Don't know if you've seen this article but I would try methods 5 and 6 if you haven't already.
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Sorry for the double post, but I just tried step 5 and it worked! :D Now my drive is showing up again and I can continue on with what I was doing. Thanks again for the tip! 👍
 
Korza
Nice! Glad that worked as I was all out of ideas. :lol:
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I was about out of ideas as well, but this did it for me. I saw this method earlier but didn't try it because I seem to recall doing something like it before on my last PC and it led to some pretty bad results. However, upon remembering I can just back up the registry, I had enough peace of mind to try it and thankfully it worked! :)

Curiously, I didn't have an UpperFilters registry, so deleting LowerFilters was all I could do.
 
Saidur_Ali
You most likely have if the drivers are relatively new. You can find out if you go on driver details for your graphics driver and scroll down the list of .inf files showing and if DCH is mentioned, then you have DCH drivers. If you change to the legacy non-DCH drivers, you should be able to get it working with the registry edit of DedicatedSegmentSize.

I have sent a request to game support to see if they can patch the game to detect shared system memory. Will see what they say but won't hold my breath given it has been an issue for many years now. I wonder if the new Le Mans Ultimate game suffers from the same issue.
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Okay. Just over two months since my past post regarding rFactor 2 starting woes, I can indeed confirm I have DCH drivers. I had to see a separate site to learn if I have DCH drivers for my display. I don't have or know how to change over to non-DCH drivers to better be able to play rF2 if that is what it takes to play this game finally.
 
JohnBM01
Okay. Just over two months since my past post regarding rFactor 2 starting woes, I can indeed confirm I have DCH drivers. I had to see a separate site to learn if I have DCH drivers for my display. I don't have or know how to change over to non-DCH drivers to better be able to play rF2 if that is what it takes to play this game finally.
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Uninstall graphics driver and install this legacy one (25.20.100.6373): https://www.intel.com/content/www/u...acy-intel-graphics-driver-for-windows-10.html

If you do the registry trick of DedicatedSegmentSize afterwards, in theory rFactor 2 should run. I have yet to receive a response from support to fix it. Might try a more direct approach and see if they can fix it for future versions.
 
Based on what I seen, the DCH drivers have "AMD64" on them when I checked the Device Driver info for the INI files. My device driver is an Intel HD Graphics 530. Not sure if I have to have Intel drivers or something.
 
JohnBM01
Based on what I seen, the DCH drivers have "AMD64" on them when I checked the Device Driver info for the INI files. My device driver is an Intel HD Graphics 530. Not sure if I have to have Intel drivers or something.
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AMD 64 just means it's the 64 bit version of the drivers, it'll work on an Intel system.
 

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