Computer Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread II

[hobbsyoyo]

On second thought, don't bother looking into it unless you want to for your own reasons and still want to share what you find.

It is now highly unlikely in my estimation that this laptop will be able to remotely access any games with anything approaching satisfactory quality. It can barely run IE and Firefox, so I've got no faith it can handle streaming Civ 5 from my desktop. I got this laptop second hand from a relative; the screen went bad and they didn't want to mess with it. I fixed the screen and did a full system restore, but it's painfully slow even though it's only two years old. I think the internal components may be a bit worn or damaged from overheating. It was always on someone's lap in such a way as to prevent proper airflow.

Thanks anyways.

 

[Mise]

Can't they make an Airplay sort of thing for Windows? I mean, Airplay allows mirroring over wifi, right?

 

[Zelig]

Well then you'd be looking at something like Miracast, and either airplay or miracast wouldn't be very useful as is, since it just streams the display, you still use the peripherals on the original system.

Also, it tough to build video streaming systems with latency that's low enough for gaming. I've got a couple displays hooked up to my laptop via USB3 (so way faster than any network connection), and it's fine for watching movies or desktop use, but the latency just kills gaming.

The Nvidia Shield is basically the best-in-class example of game streaming from PC-to-mobile, and was pretty much custom-built specifically for that.

Edit: Now I'm really tempted to buy an Nvidia Shield, but then I remember I don't actually have a gaming PC.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

What's Nvidia shield and airplay?

As for latency issue - I really only planned on using Civ 5 SP, so it's not a critical issue the way it would be with shooters.

 

[Zelig]

Airplay is the Apple-specific wireless display technology. They got a jump on the technology, but Miracast is the most likely open standard to come out ahead to do the same thing.

Nvidia shield is basically an xbox controller bolted onto a 5" Android screen that can stream games from desktop PCs.

 

[Mise]

The peripherals are the easy part - not much data to transfer so no problems there. I use Synergy, which even works on ARM linux...

I think if you're playing a game like Civ you can probably get away with the 5 fps and low res gfx from just using VNC or RDP. At least give VNC a go and if it's a total fail then nothing's lost as it's all free...

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Is there any way, preferably free, to find out if my internet is being throttled?

 

[Zelig]

What do you mean?

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Such as utilities to measure datarate(?) speeds (or something else?), to show whether my ISP is throttling my internet?

 

[Loppan Torkel]

This perhaps - www.bredbandskollen.se/ ?!

 

[Zelig]

Such as utilities to measure datarate(?) speeds (or something else?), to show whether my ISP is throttling my internet?

What do you mean by "throttling"?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

ISP's in the US will sometimes purposely slow down your internet connection when you have streamed more data than a preset limit or if they suspect you torrent.

 

[Zelig]

Well on most ISPs, you're getting throttled 100% of the time to whatever speed plan you're paying for.

And regardless of actual speeds, torrents will pretty much always be QOS'd to low priority.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

PE is talking about intentionally throttling below the speed that you paid for.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Yes, that. Basically, it's done without the user's knowledge or consent.

 

[Souron]

It's just a box with two options, check the drive or do nothing. Usually these kind of boxes have an option to 'always do the checked option' but this one doesn't. I will try and get a screenie later.

I haven't let it check the drive becaise I am afraid it may screw things up. The drive works perfectly - no issues. So I don't want the computer to check it, find issues that may not really be a problem and erase bb's tuff while trhing to fix it. It's my main back-up drive and it also is a primary storage place for some files. I am going to back it up soon to dvd storage as a fail safe, then I will let the drive be checked.

I'm not sure what's going on, but these are the possibilities I see:
1)The drive check is malware.
2)Windows is encountering a recoverable error when accessing the drive
3)The drive itself is set to run chkdisk or similar on boot, and Windows reading this, and deciding to run chkdisk after it boots instead.
4)There's a windows specific marker on the drive saying to check the drive.

I'd try to rule out malware, then let the check run.

 

[Zelig]

I wouldn't run the check ever, I've had it mark the entire free space on perfectly fine drives as bad, which requires a format to fix.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I'm not sure what's going on, but these are the possibilities I see:
1)The drive check is malware.
2)Windows is encountering a recoverable error when accessing the drive
3)The drive itself is set to run chkdisk or similar on boot, and Windows reading this, and deciding to run chkdisk after it boots instead.
4)There's a windows specific marker on the drive saying to check the drive.

I'd try to rule out malware, then let the check run.

Thanks, but this sort of thing is what scares me:

I wouldn't run the check ever, I've had it mark the entire free space on perfectly fine drives as bad, which requires a format to fix.

There is nothing wrong with the drive that I can tell and it doesn't have this issue when connected to other computers IIRC.

 

[Quintillus]

I had a USB flash drive that caused Windows to want to perform a check for errors when I started the computer with the drive in. Seemed to work just fine, though. I think I did let the check run once or twice, but it still wanted to run it every time, so eventually I just ignored it and never ran it.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

What are the differences between downloading and installing an EAxis game through Origin versus installing the game from a physical disk bought from a store?