Computer issues, Viruses, trojans, crashes, install problems etc Options

[mirocu]

Yay for more storage space!

[Sakiri]

I have a WD Elements 1 TB external I use for storage. I also didn't save my YouTube vids after I uploaded them, because of space constraints.

I have a 1TB spinner drive in my PC as well. Videos get huge though and I delete them when I'm done with them.

[Decrepit]

As mentioned in a different thread yesterday, my PC crashed to desktop in two game, several times each. In TpF1, it occurred as soon as I took the game off pause to begin play. In TpF2, it occurred while riding in one of my trains, after maybe four or five minutes of play. In addition, TpF2 displayed random small colored circles on screen a few seconds before each crash. (TpF1 did not.)

TpF1 seemed okay after reverting to an earlier save. TpF2 crashed again after doing that.

This morning I cleaned the PC's innards via a strong air-blower, specially purchased for the purpose. The Graphics Card looked clean prior to treatment. In fact, the entire PC had no more than a thin layer of dust. No more that would accumulate after a couple of days without dusting. I therefore wasn't expecting much.

With the PC reassembled and booted, I first ran Heaven Benchmark, letting it complete twice without interference. No issues. Temps never rose above 76C, though they stayed there fairly consistently during the second run. What little research I've done says that 85C is the danger point. TpF2 isn't acting up now either, though I've not ridden a train since cleaning the PC.

My worry is that maybe the graphics card is going bad. This is a horrid time for it. The only current card that appeals to me is the RTX 3080, with an SRP double what I'm used to paying for GPUs. What's more, they sell for hundreds more than that, when they can be had at all. Same goes for the entire RTX 3000 line. The new AMD's are likewise hard to find and overpriced, not that I'm much interested in them.

My hope is that yesterday was a fluke. Time will tell, I reckon.

[Acadian]

Sorry, Decrepit. Blowing things out can't hurt so I'll keep my fingers crossed for you that your puter holds up okay until your coin purse and a desirable graphics card can reach an agreement.

[mirocu]

The folly of PC gaming; constant upgrades and replacements.

[TheCheshireKhajiit]

The folly of PC gaming; constant upgrades and replacements.

And speaking of, Khajiit just ordered a new PSU. It’s an 850w that I found on Amazon for $99. Hopefully it will be ok and not a “get what you pay for” situation. Nothing ventured, nothing gained I suppose, and returns are super easy with Amazon these days anyway, so I feel pretty good about it.

I will say that this is the first component that I’ve had to replace since I built the system back in 2016, so “constant” may not be the best word to use when describing the frequency of buying upgrades and replacements.

This post has been edited by TheCheshireKhajiit: Mar 29 2021, 12:19 PM

[mirocu]

Khajiit knows what I mean

[Decrepit]

The folly of PC gaming; constant upgrades and replacements.

And speaking of, Khajiit just ordered a new PSU. It’s an 850w that I found on Amazon for $99. Hopefully it will be ok and not a “get what you pay for” situation. Nothing ventured, nothing gained I suppose, and returns are super easy with Amazon these days anyway, so I feel pretty good about it.

I will say that this is the first component that I’ve had to replace since I built the system back in 2016, so “constant” may not be the best word to use when describing the frequency of buying upgrades and replacements.

My primary PC's PSU is 850w, as if that's relevant here. It's been a good unit, so far as I can tell. Never gives me a lick to trouble. An irony is that one reason I decided on the unit I bought is that it has a super quiet fan, which turns on only when/if the temperature rises beyond a certain level. Naturally, it was right at that time when my hearing to a noticeable plunge. I suspect the PSU could be appreciably noisier than it is without me noticing. Which wouldn't have changed my mind. As I recall, the 850w unit was on sale for the same price as its 750w equivalent at the time.

[TheCheshireKhajiit]

The folly of PC gaming; constant upgrades and replacements.

And speaking of, Khajiit just ordered a new PSU. It’s an 850w that I found on Amazon for $99. Hopefully it will be ok and not a “get what you pay for” situation. Nothing ventured, nothing gained I suppose, and returns are super easy with Amazon these days anyway, so I feel pretty good about it.

I will say that this is the first component that I’ve had to replace since I built the system back in 2016, so “constant” may not be the best word to use when describing the frequency of buying upgrades and replacements.

My primary PC's PSU is 850w, as if that's relevant here. It's been a good unit, so far as I can tell. Never gives me a lick to trouble. An irony is that one reason I decided on the unit I bought is that it has a super quiet fan, which turns on only when/if the temperature rises beyond a certain level. Naturally, it was right at that time when my hearing to a noticeable plunge. I suspect the PSU could be appreciably noisier than it is without me noticing. Which wouldn't have changed my mind. As I recall, the 850w unit was on sale for the same price as its 750w equivalent at the time.

My current PSU that is giving me trouble is a Corsair Bronze rated 750w. The new one is from a company called Segotep and it’s a Gold rated 850w that actually costs less than what I paid for the Corsair. It has pretty good reviews, though only about 80 of them.

[Decrepit]

The folly of PC gaming; constant upgrades and replacements.

And speaking of, Khajiit just ordered a new PSU. It’s an 850w that I found on Amazon for $99. Hopefully it will be ok and not a “get what you pay for” situation. Nothing ventured, nothing gained I suppose, and returns are super easy with Amazon these days anyway, so I feel pretty good about it.

I will say that this is the first component that I’ve had to replace since I built the system back in 2016, so “constant” may not be the best word to use when describing the frequency of buying upgrades and replacements.

My primary PC's PSU is 850w, as if that's relevant here. It's been a good unit, so far as I can tell. Never gives me a lick to trouble. An irony is that one reason I decided on the unit I bought is that it has a super quiet fan, which turns on only when/if the temperature rises beyond a certain level. Naturally, it was right at that time when my hearing to a noticeable plunge. I suspect the PSU could be appreciably noisier than it is without me noticing. Which wouldn't have changed my mind. As I recall, the 850w unit was on sale for the same price as its 750w equivalent at the time.

My current PSU that is giving me trouble is a Corsair Bronze rated 750w. The new one is from a company called Segotep and it’s a Gold rated 850w that actually costs less than what I paid for the Corsair. It has pretty good reviews, though only about 80 of them.

Mine is an EVGA Supernova G3 series 850watt Gold. It's the first non Corsair I've bought in some time. Suprising, these nearly four years later it's still sold on Amazon. Either it or some later lookalike namesake. Over 1000 reviews, 91% five-star, Significantly more expensive that what I paid! Good to know it seems to have withstood the test of time, unscathed:

(link) Amazon EVGA Supernova GS series 850w PSU (link)

(I don't recall mine having the 10yr warrant the Amazon sold unit does, but don't rule it out.)

This post has been edited by Decrepit: Mar 30 2021, 10:50 AM

[SubRosa]

[TheCheshireKhajiit]

Power supply arrived. Will install after work tonight.

[TheCheshireKhajiit]

Power supply installation successful. The system seems to be running fine. Will try to do a normal gaming session tomorrow to make sure everything is working the way it should.

[macole]

I'm ready the build a new PC, if the GPU prices and availability ever gets smoothed out.

[Decrepit]

I'm ready to build a new PC, if the GPU prices and availability ever gets smoothed out.

<sighs> I empathize with anyone contemplating a high-end GPU acquisition in current market realities.

[TheCheshireKhajiit]

Turned on my pc this morning with intentions on giving it a real work out, but I couldn’t make up my mind what I wanted to play!

Settled on BATTLETECH but only had time to run one mission. Everything went fine though. No random shut down. Hopefully it will continue to behave.

[Decrepit]

Swapped monitors between my two active PCs today, to see if the IPS Viewsonic has better color/contract than my primary PC's TN Viewsonic. Results were mixed. The IPS is better overall, with Nvidia color control settings at 'default'. The TN, again set to defaults, is far too bright. Whites are significantly crushed. Blacks, on the other hand, are pretty spot-on. The IPS crushed whites too, but not nearly as much as the TN. It's blacks are fairly on par with the TN. Thing is, at default settings, the IPS is lackluster. The TN 'pops'. But those whites are too much. My eyes tend to get sore after a while unless I monkey with the control panel. Problem there is that taming whites has thus far resulted in oversaturate black,s so that the overall image is too dark.

What actually decided me to stick with the TN its 144hz refresh rate. The TN sports 60hz. I figured that the sort of games I play (and don't play) might render higher refresh rates irrelevant. Nope. Fired up TS2021. Panning the countryside from within a locomotive cab of a moving train is vastly smoother at 144hz. Much more so than anticipated. Even scrolling web pages is appreciably smoother. I can't see myself going back to 60hz.

So I'll once again monkey around with the TN in hope of hitting on an acceptable compromise between good color/contrast and over-bright whites.

[Decrepit]

Here's the calibration site I use to test monitors for accuracy:

(link) LCD monitor test images (link)

The important calibration screens for me are:
....Black Level
....White Saturation
....Contrast

Gradient (banding) is useful to evaluate a monitor, but I've not needed it during adjustments. (Neither of my current monitors show banding worth bothering about. My Viewsonic's image is better than the test page "What it should look like" image.)

Gamma Calibration: Neither of my two monitors come anywhere close to recommended settings. Nor can I adjust them to be correct. My original digital monitor, a Viewsonic 19" 1280x1024 standard ratio TN, was best at it, only a little off on two of the three calibration bars, spot-on on the third. Great monitor for everything but gaming, where its ultra slow response times caused noticeable screen tearing and ghosting. (It was also power hungry, and made a satisfactory space-heater. Heat eventually did it in.) Its replacement, a 24" 1920x1080 Samsung TN, couldn't match the old Viewsonic, but had noticeably better Gamma than my current monitors, both of which show readings very near the top of the calibration bars. (It also had better colors out of the box and caused no eyestrain.)

This post has been edited by Decrepit: Apr 14 2021, 03:08 PM

[Decrepit]

With its latest update, Firefox' 'New Tab' window now conforms to the rest of Firefox when 'dark theme' is selected. That tab's background is now darkish gray rather than eye-frying white. About time! I was going to post a capture of that tab, but some link-icons kept permanently pinned there are best seen by my eyes only. For security reasons, not naughtiness.

Had a comprehensive eye exam yesterday. First since 2019. (I skipped 2020 due to the pandemic.) Looks like some/all issues I currently have with my left eye when at the computer might well be due to changes in that eye rather my monitor. I'm ordering a special computer-distance glasses through the place that examined me. Those glasses are, according to that establishment, fully covered by my current insurance. (I did, btw, voluntarily pay extra for use of a fancy examination machine that is more sophisticated than eye dilation.) I'm a bit skeptical about that, but we shall see when the glasses arrive, I reckon. I'm ordering a new 'regular' pair of bifocal glasses free-of-charge through the government, that being one of my military retiree benefits. They are ultra basic and nothing to look at, but I care nothing for that.

[Decrepit]

Here's my primary PC's motherboard. It's been a good board these four years. What ultimately decided me on it is that it has Sound Blaster audio built in. The high quality Sound Blaster card in my secondary computer is PCI bus, as opposed to PCIe, so couldn't be transferred. The card is a bit more sophisticated than the Aorus motherboard sound chipset, but with my hearing what it is that's no big deal.

It's of course obsolete nowadays.

This post has been edited by Decrepit: Apr 22 2021, 08:25 PM