The Spam Thread!

cpd2009 · 05-28-2020, 07:17 AM

Windows 10 May 2020 update is live. Installing it now....

***huckleberrypie*** · (This post was last modified: 05-28-2020, 10:28 AM by huckleberrypie.)

(05-28-2020, 07:17 AM)cpd2009 Wrote: Windows 10 May 2020 update is live. Installing it now....

Just deployed it on my PCs as well. Strange that they still haven't brought the Chromium Edge out of beta and yeeted the old Edge out tho.

Oh wait, they did publicly release Chromium Edge, but the old Edge is still on Windows 10 for some reason and you'd have to download the new browser separately.

cpd2009 · (This post was last modified: 05-28-2020, 02:40 PM by cpd2009.)

I'm having update issues with Rusty, and it's linked to his odd desire to randomly mess up the file tables on any of the Windows drives. Let me explain...

Every so often when using Rusty, Windows will either complain of drive errors and ask to restart, or some files will go "missing" like I described about a month earlier. A disk check upon reboot tends to fix these problems, but sometimes I have to manually run Chkdsk from the PowerShell. And it doesn't only affect the 1TB drive, it can also affect the other two NTFS volumes, which are the boot SSD and the extra 500GB disk I installed.

During the upgrade, Windows again complained about drive errors and the install seemed to hang. I rebooted and things got worrying. The system rebooted several times and I got a boot error screen. I was given the choice to start Windows normally, and it did load back up without the upgrade complete. I have re-started the upgrade process and I'm hoping it goes smoother. But still, this random drive corruption issue is worrying. Whatever it is, it's affecting all of the NTFS volumes on the system and not just the 1TB drive like I thought. I don't know if this happens under Linux, as I haven't used it that much, but I was able to look at the NTFS volumes with openSUSE just fine whenever Windows decided to lose track of the filesystem tables.

If this keeps up, I may just reinstall Windows using a standard vanilla ISO, but I do not have an extra license key to go around. Would I still be able to reinstall a vanilla Windows 10 using the Dell's activation records, and not needing to purchase an extra key?

Second time is the charm. Smile

The Win10 update succeeded.

***huckleberrypie*** · (This post was last modified: 05-28-2020, 04:08 PM by huckleberrypie.)

Could it be that the power supply or something else is failing? If not for your financial situation, you could've bought a midrange AM4 board, memory and power supply and migrated everything else to said board for testing.

cpd2009 · (This post was last modified: 05-29-2020, 01:20 AM by cpd2009.)

(05-28-2020, 04:04 PM)huckleberrypie Wrote: Could it be that the power supply or something else is failing? If not for your financial situation, you could've bought a midrange AM4 board, memory and power supply and migrated everything else to said board for testing.

I doubt it's the PSU. When I ran the Unigine Heaven benchmark for 3+ hours a few weeks back, the system or GPU never got unstable. Perhaps I should run something more intensive like Furmark. I'm not very keen on using Furmark, but people use it to truly stress test their hardware.

If it's not the GPU, then I have no idea what else it could be. The drive corruption issue is very intermittent, happening at random times. It never seems to happen at full restarts or cold boots. I do have fast startup enabled too. The corruption mostly happens either with fast startup or after several sleep/wake cycles. It leads me to believe either the Dell Win10 image doesn't have good power management, or the UEFI has some buggy firmware of sorts. Dell has offered no updates to the UEFI for a while now, so if it ends up being a firmware issue, then I'm SOL.

Another troubleshooting option is to use Linux for a while and seeing if the same drive corruption issue occurs.

cpd2009 · 05-29-2020, 06:04 AM

I have been running Furmark for 4 hours now, at high settings and 1024 x 768 windowed resolution. System is still stable and GPU temp has stayed between 79C to 82C.

***huckleberrypie*** · 05-29-2020, 01:14 PM

It could also be something with Dell's software causing those weird issues, so yeah while you do lose the out-of-box experience the default Windows 10 installation should give you a clean slate to isolate any anomalies. As far as licences go, Windows should acknowledge the licence key embedded in the BIOS and it should automatically activate on its own.

cpd2009 · 05-29-2020, 05:36 PM

(05-29-2020, 01:14 PM)huckleberrypie Wrote: It could also be something with Dell's software causing those weird issues, so yeah while you do lose the out-of-box experience the default Windows 10 installation should give you a clean slate to isolate any anomalies. As far as licences go, Windows should acknowledge the licence key embedded in the BIOS and it should automatically activate on its own.

I will see if the new Windows 10 update will help ease the drive errors. If the errors still keep happening, then I will perform a backup and reinstall a vanilla Windows 10 setup. I don't really use much of the pre-loaded Dell stuff anyway outside of the Power2Go CD/DVD burner suite. Windows Explorer does a good enough job with CD/DVD burning tasks.

I'm also reconsidering Windows Vista Basic on Daffodil. I would also lose that factory image of Windows XP, but I'm leaning towards a somewhat more recent Windows version. My TV card and recording software work fine with Vista, but I will have to test my older games. 16-bit stuff would be about the same in terms of compatibility as there probably isn't much difference with NTVDM between XP and Vista. It's some of the early 2000s DirectX stuff that can get a bit touch-n-go with anything newer than XP. I would get one benefit out of Vista; being able to install a more recent Intel GMA driver. It was the only driver I could use in Vista, but if I try running it under XP, it detects that the system is a Dell and it throws up an error message telling you to download the driver from the manufacturers website.

Dell didn't think the E310 could run Vista, but with 2GB RAM, Vista Home Basic runs just as good as XP does IMO. Throw in an inexpensive PCI GPU with WDDM drivers and I should be able to get Windows Movie Maker running. Tongue

cpd2009 · (This post was last modified: 05-31-2020, 11:24 AM by cpd2009.)

I'm testing Vista again on Daffodil, and game compatibility with early 2000s DirectX stuff appears to be the same as on 7 and later. One of my collections, eGames "Break" has serious issues. This is normally a fun and quirky collection of indie Breakout clones, and three of them in the Kraisoft "Warkanoid" series are featured. Those three will not launch at all, even with compatibility settings. Another one, Break Gold, does run, and plays well. But the transitions between menus and gameplay are extremely slow. But, this may not be a dealbreaker for Vista. I found eGames released an updated version of this collection in 2010 with Windows Vista/7 compatibility. I ordered an inexpensive NOS copy off eBay.

When I'm not doing techie things, I have started playing Batman Arkham Origins again, trying to finish the sidequests. Currently, that involves finding all of the Enigma extortion data packs scattered all over Gotham. Only two of the Batman Arkham games got released for Wii U, and the others are Xbox/PS/PC only. The latest game in the series, Arkham Knight, is available on Steam for $19.99, and I am considering giving it a purchase in the future. First, I will need to try out the X360CE so I can use my existing USB joypad, or just purchase a Xbox One controller or an Xbox 360 PC connection receiver. I could just use my Switch Joy-Cons, but each Joy-Con acts like an individual controller and they don't have nearly enough buttons to play the Batman game.

***huckleberrypie*** · 05-31-2020, 07:54 PM

(05-31-2020, 11:23 AM)cpd2009 Wrote: I'm testing Vista again on Daffodil, and game compatibility with early 2000s DirectX stuff appears to be the same as on 7 and later. One of my collections, eGames "Break" has serious issues. This is normally a fun and quirky collection of indie Breakout clones, and three of them in the Kraisoft "Warkanoid" series are featured. Those three will not launch at all, even with compatibility settings. Another one, Break Gold, does run, and plays well. But the transitions between menus and gameplay are extremely slow. But, this may not be a dealbreaker for Vista. I found eGames released an updated version of this collection in 2010 with Windows Vista/7 compatibility. I ordered an inexpensive NOS copy off eBay.

When I'm not doing techie things, I have started playing Batman Arkham Origins again, trying to finish the sidequests. Currently, that involves finding all of the Enigma extortion data packs scattered all over Gotham. Only two of the Batman Arkham games got released for Wii U, and the others are Xbox/PS/PC only. The latest game in the series, Arkham Knight, is available on Steam for $19.99, and I am considering giving it a purchase in the future. First, I will need to try out the X360CE so I can use my existing USB joypad, or just purchase a Xbox One controller or an Xbox 360 PC connection receiver. I could just use my Switch Joy-Cons, but each Joy-Con acts like an individual controller and they don't have nearly enough buttons to play the Batman game.

At least Arkham Knight should give you a perfect excuse to flex your Dell gaming rig's muscles. It was a PortingDisaster at the time it came out and even the relaunched PC release with all the patches and optimisations in place couldn't save the game from intense scrutiny, so much that Steam issued refunds to those who couldn't take it any more. Nowadays one can simply just brute-force run the game at high frame rates with a high-end rig, nullifying whatever issues the original and patched releases had.