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

[Decrepit]

Not yet having heard from EaseUS, I took matters into my own decrepit hands and again attempted to use the website License recovery/transferal tool. It took awhile, monkeying around with no idea what I was doing. I eventually received an email with new 'code'. I inputted the code into the retrieval tool. Nothing happened. On a hunch, I inputted my five-year-old License Number, the number that didn't work before, into Partition Master's activation field. BINGO . . .Partition Master Pro activated! Go figure.

Since then, I:
. . . reduced E: partition (dedicated solely to Oblivion) by roughly 15gb, then moved it to abut with F: partition.

. . . reduced D: partition (productivity software) by 3gb and abutted it with E: partition.

. . . moved an unlettered recovery partition to abut D:

. . . increased C: so that ii abuts the unlettered partition. Voilà! My system partition now has more breathing room. Not as much as I want, but I need a larger M2.NVME drive for that.

These operations were quick and painless. I could have cut time by executing them all in one fell swoop, feel more comfortable working on one partition at a time. (Windows itself can do much of this, but Partition Master is more sophisticated. Besides, it's bought and paid for. Why not use it?)

[Acadian]

Glad you were able to get that program going again and achieve success on your partitioning.

[mirocu]

when my original computer's hard drive died a couple months ago, I lost a lot of stuff which was stored on there. Took the drive to a shop, and they did manage to restore some of its content, but the NPC Quotes.txt page with years of NPC comments, questions, quotes got lost! Grr... it sort of makes me mad at myself to think about it, because I should have backed so much content up... grr...

I'm very sorry to hear that, Renee. It's because I'm scared of that myself that I make so many frequent backups of everything and storing it on three different flashdrives as well as on another computer. Think I will boot that one up come Easter and update it with my stuff again. Got a lot of things at this point!

[Lena Wolf]

I am switching computers. My Oblivion has become too large to play on my 15 year old rig. Actually, it still plays perfectly fine in Cyrodiil and Skyrim, but the Southern provinces use those new detailed meshes that just drive down the FPS too much. Also I think it is indeed too big and no longer fits in the 4GB of RAM.

I bought a new computer. Well, it's a new-to-me old computer, but this one is a lot younger - it's only 10 years old. It is about twice as good and cost me 3.5 times more, and this is all that I can afford. This one has double the RAM (8GB) and a better Intel CPU (i5 instead of i3), and mostly it's got a better NVIDIA card - this is a GTX 1050 Ti with 4GB video RAM, while the old one is a 720 with 2GB video RAM. This new card can actually do HDR while the old one can't, not in practice, anyway.

Like I said, about twice as good.

The write-up said it had WiFi, but actually it only has LAN. I think the seller is too young to know the difference. Never mind, WiFi dongles are cheap and cheerful these days. And on the plus side, it has PS/2 keyboard and mouse connectors so that I can finally use my trusty old keyboard without USB converters. Will have to fetch it from the garage where it is currently collecting dust. Lots and lots of dust.

Oh, and it's Windows 10, a fresh install, but I don't mind because I didn't have to do it! It arrived, I plugged it in, it worked. Job done.

So now I need to give it some brains - install Oblivion, for one. With our internet speeds downloading the 6GB package from GOG takes 4 hours. And of course the 4GB chunk failed to download and has to be done again. Count another 3 hours. May be tomorrow, if I'm lucky. I'll transfer what I can via the local network from one PC to the other, but some things just need to be re-downloaded so that they could be installed correctly in Windows with the appropriate Black Magic. So may be in a month or so I'll actually have a PC I can play on. Don't do this too often.

[Renee]

Lena-- Very wonderful. Your old computer has served you well, but yeah, that feeling of upgrade when you get more RAM, more processing power, and shinier graphics, it really is worth the extra money. At least to us it is.


mirocu-- Don'cha know it. Nowadays just call me Miss Backup. This weekend I backed up my entire gaming computer: Program Files and (x86) folders, included. My new computer (my auxiliary one) has Windows 10, but I'm determined to keep my gaming comp as Win8 if I can. I've had that computer since 2014, I figure something will go wrong eventually, there. At least this time, I'm ready for it.

[Lena Wolf]

Renee - you can't just copy everything under Program Files... well, you can copy it but you won't be able to just put it back on the disk and expect the programs to run. It's a Windows thing, they need to be installed properly so that the Registry would get updated, a few virgins sacrificed and a couple of Revenants resurrected. All very Dark Arts. So just focus on copying your files.

This is what I came up against now that I'm trying to set up this new PC. I found that I needed the download archives of those programs that I wanted installed, and I had to run the installer to install them, I couldn't just copy them. Today I finally got Oblivion installed, but that's just naked Oblivion, without OBSE or any mods - that stuff can fortunately be copied over. So here is what I'm doing:

- On the new PC download Oblivion from GOG like normal. Install it in C:\Games\GOG\Oblivion using the installer so that all the Registry gets updated correctly.

- On the old PC copy C:\Games\GOG\Oblivion and everything in it onto an external drive. This is currently ongoing, expected to take 16 hours. (!!!) What?! SIXTEEN HOURS to copy from the hard drive to an external one?! But so be it, it's 220GB. How did it even happen? Never mind.

- Once that is done, plug in that external drive into the new PC and copy everything onto the internal hard drive - presumably another 16 hours.

This is going to work because Windows already knows to expect Oblivion to reside in that folder because I used the installer to install it there. Fingers crossed. I'm running out of virgins.

[mirocu]

My rig is also bout ten years old but I still only have 4GB of RAM

[Lena Wolf]

My rig is also bout ten years old but I still only have 4GB of RAM

But you are probably not trying to stuff the whole of Tamriel into it, are you? I had no issues in Cyrodiil either.

[mirocu]

That's true. Running Oblivion and Fallout 3 on good settings on my rig is no problem at all. I guess it would be different playing ESO n stuff.

[Lena Wolf]

That's true. Running Oblivion and Fallout 3 on good settings on my rig is no problem at all. I guess it would be different playing ESO n stuff.

I'm not playing ESO. It's Oblivion. I'm adding the rest of Tamriel to it and it's getting a bit big.

[mirocu]

OIC! You're doing THAT thing! Yeah I can see how that also could bear down on your computer.

[Lena Wolf]

OIC! You're doing THAT thing! Yeah I can see how that also could bear down on your computer.

Yeah, I might have to do some pruning. Black Marsh is getting the snip!

[Renee]

Renee - you can't just copy everything under Program Files... well, you can copy it but you won't be able to just put it back on the disk and expect the programs to run. It's a Windows thing, they need to be installed properly so that the Registry would get updated, a few virgins sacrificed and a couple of Revenants resurrected. All very Dark Arts. So just focus on copying your files.

Dang! You know, I thought of this after I posted my message a couple days ago. The whole registry key thing. Grrr....

I do remember back in 2014 copying all the gaming stuff from my original computer to my gaming one did take a few hours. Not 16... probably more like 2 or 3. But it sounds like you are in a more advanced stage of modding than I was.

What are virgins?

[macole]

I do remember back in 2014 copying all the gaming stuff from my original computer to my gaming one did take a few hours. Not 16... probably more like 2 or 3. But it sounds like you are in a more advanced stage of modding than I was.

I was thinking that you can "clone" the drive but I'm not sure that would work either. That is what I was going to try next time I upgrade.

What are virgins?

A mythical creature that rides unicorns in an idyllic woodland setting, perhaps?

[Lena Wolf]

I do remember back in 2014 copying all the gaming stuff from my original computer to my gaming one did take a few hours. Not 16... probably more like 2 or 3. But it sounds like you are in a more advanced stage of modding than I was.

I was thinking that you can "clone" the drive but I'm not sure that would work either. That is what I was going to try next time I upgrade.

As far as I am aware, it only works indeed for the whole disk, that is including the system part. I only have one hard drive, so my Windows is on that disk too. I have considered simply swapping the disk from the old PC into the new one, but that would result in all the wrong drivers - the new PC has very different hardware from the old one which was the whole point of upgrading! As I am not willing to mess with Windows drivers installation, I decided to go the slow route and copy the data to an external drive and then from it back onto the new PC. It also gives me a backup. And may be I don't need to copy all 230GB of it onto the new PC after all.

Oblivion is only 6GB, so how did I arrive at 230GB? Well, it's Oblivion, but it's got the entire Tamriel in it. That's a lot. Plus I had backups. Plus experimental stuff. Plus, plus, plus... I don't even know what. Mostly backups. So those will be copied onto the external drive but not onto the new PC.

What are virgins?

A mythical creature that rides unicorns in an idyllic woodland setting, perhaps?

NO COMMENT!! <real comment censored>

[mirocu]

Just updated my latest Oblivion save files and real life pictures on two flashdrives and on the backup Win7 which I'm currently on. It was due on that one for sure.


So yeah; update them files, folks!

[Lena Wolf]

I am still not switched to my improved PC for Oblivion, the reason being that I figured out how to get Oblivion to work properly on my old PC. I switched off a few large mods, and now it fits into memory and doesn't lag. Almost.

Plus, here's a new excuse: I am installing Morroblivion on the new PC. With our download speeds, it will take me the better part of a week to download everything - that's Morrowind and Morroblivion, as I already installed Oblivion there. This is going to be a fresh install with just the basic mods for Oblivion, just so the game would feel similar to what it is in other provinces. I don't intend to travel between Morrowind and Cyrodiil too much, so I'm not going to bother with TWMP conversions or anything like that.

Once that is done, I will end up with two Oblivion computers - the old one with TWMP and the new one with Morroblivion... Why do simple when you can do complicated?

[mirocu]

Once that is done, I will end up with two Oblivion computers - the old one with TWMP and the new one with Morroblivion... Why do simple when you can do complicated?

And here I am, having two computers with Fallout 3, Oblivion and SimCity 3000 installed and updated. I don't even use the second one at all for gaming or anything else, it's just for backup just in case. This way I can just jump right into any game at any time if need be and not having to bother with all the technical stuff. And like I said I also have the latest savegames from all the games on three different flashdrives stored in three different locations; spreading the risk. All of this for the ole Justin Case.


So.... Yeah. Keeping it simple

[Decrepit]

Finally got around to updating my Nvidia GTX1070 drivers to what is purported to be their final Win10 "Game-Ready" drivers, which date back to summer 2021. (There are several newer "Studio" drivers for it.) I paid close attention this time and made sure I DIDN'T select Nvidia Audio drivers for installation. I forgot to do this last time, and think it's the reason my SoundBlaster audio settings have to be re-configured each boot. (My motherboard has built-in SoundBlaster audio.) Then again, maybe not. We'll see come tomorrow.

[Renee]

Not really a computer issue per se...

Internet Explorer is getting shut down soon. Next month, I think. And Microsoft Edge is taking over. But the problem is, there are some older websites which don't run well with Edge, such as, an editor site I use for work. I can open this site in Edge, but Edge doesn't handle the editor portion very well. It messes up the coding, and the pages get all jumbled once they are viewed.

There's also our home, Chorrol.com. I like viewing it through Explorer. Can't really explain why, Chorrol just has a slightly different look through IE which I prefer.

Microsoft Edge is supposed to have some sort of compatibility mode for older sites, but .. eh... I want see if anything other browsers are out there.

So the question is, are there any other browsers dedicated to older sites? ... I have tried Google Chrome and Firefox by the way, these two browsers don't work with my work editor site.