The Spam Thread!

[cpd2009]

Today, I acquired an old laptop from my brother. The laptop wouldn't power on anymore, so he got a new one.

I took a look at it, and it's a Dell Inspiron N5110 with an Intel Core i5-2450M Dual Core CPU and apparently 6gb RAM. I plugged it in and pressed power, and sure enough, it won't turn on. I then took a look at the power brick. It has a green LED lit when plugged in. When I press power on the N5110, the green LED instantly dies.

I think the power brick is bad. Luckily, NewEgg has genuine Dell power bricks available for purchase for around $20 USD.

The hard drive was removed, which I was told of beforehand. So I go look at the bottom and access the panel. I find out only the RAM and Wifi card are accessible. How do you get to the empty drive bay? You have to disassemble the entire N5110 unit. >.<

I'm so glad Greta isn't a Dell. She's a Gateway, which is technically an Acer.

[Blackberry Bun]

Exams coming close again.

[RAMChYLD]

No luck will be needed. Centipede appears to be playable. It's more playable than the GameBoy version, which I have in a 2-in-1 "Arcade Classic" pak.

Noted. I guess Ashens just exaggerated about the bluriness of the screen then. According to his review, even the classics disintegrate into an unplayable mess.

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Hmmm, I wonder if NotebookCheck is trustworthy. I tried running The Sims 4 on it with everything dialed up to ultra (except AA- I disabled AA like I do with all games because I perceive it as blurring the screen) and it seems playable if there's two to three sims on screen. Not sure what will happen if I try going to an area with more sims tho.

[cpd2009]

The Tiger Game.com has been ordered on eBay. It should arrive within the next week.

I won't reveal much until it arrives, but it's a rather good lot for the price.

[huckleberrypie]

No luck will be needed. Centipede appears to be playable. It's more playable than the GameBoy version, which I have in a 2-in-1 "Arcade Classic" pak.

Noted. I guess Ashens just exaggerated about the bluriness of the screen then. According to his review, even the classics disintegrate into an unplayable mess.

----

Hmmm, I wonder if NotebookCheck is trustworthy. I tried running The Sims 4 on it with everything dialed up to ultra (except AA- I disabled AA like I do with all games because I perceive it as blurring the screen) and it seems playable if there's two to three sims on screen. Not sure what will happen if I try going to an area with more sims tho.

It should be, considering it doesn't demand as much, and even more so with the open world being (unfortunately) dropped.

[RAMChYLD]

It should be, considering it doesn't demand as much, and even more so with the open world being (unfortunately) dropped.

Unfortunately, this means I'm stuck waiting for AMD's "GTA V Optimized" drivers :/

[cpd2009]

The Sapphire Radeon HD5450 has arrived today, and I thought it would be a rather simple install. Well, the entire process so far has taken nearly two hours so far.

I had a bit of trouble inserting the card since Audrey's case had a flimsy piece of aluminum frame that surrounded the PCI case slots on the inside. It was already starting to get all bent up so I removed it and I was then able to get the card installed. But this is where the trouble starts...

I uninstalled her old graphics drivers and checked to see if I could disable her integrated GPU via UEFI. There is an option for it, but it's greyed out so I figured once I got the card installed, I could go back in and turn off integrated graphics. Wrong.

Once the card is in, the BIOS or even the startup logos won't show at all. Windows 8.1 will eventually appear as it installed the proper drivers automatically, but I still am unable to access the BIOS through a reboot... only Windows displays any output through the card. I tried using a secondary monitor with the cards HDMI output and the onboard VGA, and even trying the cards own DVI output, but none will display her startup logo or BIOS screens. Worse still, Windows keeps detecting a non-existent monitor, but I think this has something to do with the KVM switch so I disconnected that for now.

I'm hungry, so I'm eating now. But I'm trying a few other things, such as removing the card and running a driver cleaner program and only having the HP S2031 connected before I re-install the card.

[cpd2009]

So far, I have tried clearing her CMOS but that too did not work. I tried removing all traces of AMD drivers with a cleaner utility... again. I even tried only connecting the HP S2031.

I have never seen such issue happen before. Normally if I install a new graphics card, BIOS should be able to be seen via all display ports. I can do no such thing with Audrey if the HD5450 is installed. None of the video outputs work at all, onboard or on the HD5450. Only time I can get video is when Windows finishes booting and installs drivers from Windows Update.

Audrey's RAM is still halved by the onboard HD8400. This shouldn't happen since apparently some motherboards automatically disable the onboard GPU if a PCIe GPU is detected. While the onboard video outputs obviously stop working, the ones on the card should output something. But seeing as how I can't even get to her UEFI...

IDK... I'm thinking about using the Acer Veriton M410 as it too has a PCIe x16 slot and a dual core CPU. I would be forced to downgrade to Vista and endure hours of updates, but Audrey simply isn't playing nice with the HD5450.

[cpd2009]

Audrey and the new HD5450 are now working well because I didn't think about a UEFI feature that could affect video cards. I learned that older video cards have issues with newer UEFI-based systems. I had to disable Secure Boot and turn on CSM to get the HD5450 to work.

I now begin the testing phase of the card. So far, so good. However, Audrey's onboard HD8400 GPU is still enabled in UEFI, and I can't turn it off. The option is greyed out. That means system RAM is still cut in half, but I did gain a little bit more of it after the upgrade. She could only use 3.43GB RAM before upgrading, and that went up to 3.93GB after. That is very close to 4GB, but I may need to invest in a future RAM upgrade later on.

[RAMChYLD]

I remember reading somewhere that the card's firmware must also be UEFI-aware for UEFI to be able to use the card. That may be the cause of your problems- the card is just too old for UEFI mode. I have a 6670 in Clementine that does work in UEFI mode tho, so maybe you need a 6000-series card at least to use UEFI.