Computer Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread

[lndm]

Just because the greyed out slider is sitting on 50%, doesn't mean the fan is fixed at 50% (or did I misunderstand?)

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Thanks. Just don't like it being set just on 50%, I like the dynamic range atitool gives but it won't work for some reason. Oh well, the card runs pretty cool on 50% anyway, don't want to risk burning out the fan.

Plus fans get exponentially louder as I have discovered. Im now amazed at how *quiet* the fan is when its running at 70% cus its on 90%-100% almost 24/7 now

Just because the greyed out slider is sitting on 50%, doesn't mean the fan is fixed at 50% (or did I misunderstand?)

It effectively is. Most cards unfortunately do not have good fan regulation. Mine wouldnt even ramp up to 50% when it got to 80C which is way past the point of comfort. I had to use RivaTuner to set a dynamic range.

 

[Ulyaoth]

Well, I set it to 100% and it was the first time I even heard it, I'm amazed at how quiet this computer is compared to my old one. It wasn't too loud for me(even the big case fans on high don't make too much noise) It was just making an annoying sound like it wasn't spinning all too great. It'd idling pretty cool anyway, 25C, I can only hope it'll stay cool under load.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I like slightly noisy fans as you can tell they're actually running. I don't like noisy hard drives, like my old Maxtor.

 

[Ulyaoth]

Yeah, I keep getting worried everytime I walk into my room now because I can't hear that my computer is even on so I get worried it's shut itself off or something.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Why don't OEM CDs work on different computers? They use special drivers or something to detect? Someone I know upgraded his computer (including mobo) and now the OEM CD doesn't work, I recommended to him a Linux distro till he gets a copy of Windows.

 

[Perfection]

I don't know if this helps any, as it's for databases and it's early in the morning so everything's garbage to me

Given that has absolutely nothing to do with what I asked it's not really useful at all.

 

[Till]

On a new computer (64 bit architecture) can a device on a (standard) PCI bus directly address RAM (the lower gigs 3.some odd gigs of it, at least), or must it go through some intermediate hardware?

Even old motherboards support Direct Memory Access for PCI, so i assume that new ones do so, too. The PCI specification supports 64-bit addressing over Dual Address Cycling (DAC), so that shouldn't be a problem, either (as long as the device designer bothered to include an implementation).

 

[Perfection]

Cool.

Some day I will actually learn how a computer that isn't a single chip works.

Today is not that day mostly because in three minutes it will be tommorow

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Last night I had a dream that my hard drive was dying and it gave me a BSOD. Then, instead of being upset, I went and played games at a non-existent amusement park in town. Does it actually do that? (The BSOD, I mean.)

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Blue screen is caused by calling the system level function KeBugCheckEx in a device driver. So either the driver itself calls it or part of the windows OS detects something has gone wrong and calls it for you.

Dodgy hardware doesn't cause a BSOD, when the driver finds something went wrong that it can't recover from it is the only thing left to do.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Thanks.

I remember back in the Windows 9x days, I'd get a BSOD by taking out a CD while it was in use. Now NT-based systems just show an error in the OS.

Interesting thing between Vista and XP: In XP, it'd keep nagging you till you put the CD back in, and it wouldn't even let you close whateveer needed the CD. In Vista, it only nags you once, but then it lets you close the program. However, it only has happened once in Vista, so not sure if this is the norm.

Another question: What would happen if there was a headcrash on the boot sector when the computer was first powering up? And what's the most common (mechanical) type of failure? I think logical corruption is the most common altogether.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

In the 9x days you got a BSOD just by looking at the PC in a funny way

The CD/floppy thing used to be really annoying yes, although it did give rise to my most hilarious windows error message anecdote (better than "an unknown error has occurred"), when it asked me to insert the Windows CD into drive A:.

I don't know much about disk hardware I'm afraid. I was a serial comms and Bluetooth driver guy.

 

[Ulyaoth]

I got a question, I turned on my computer and there's a lot of kind of, clicking and whurring noises I'm assuming coming from the hard drive. Should I be worried or is this normal? It's likely if it's normal I could never hear it over the roar of my old computer's fans.

Also, playing Oblivion yesterday the sound was really messed up, could that be because of a crappy onboard sound controller? Because my old Nforce 2 gave really good sound quality, and I don't remember having the issues with sound playing Oblivion on that computer. What I'm talking about is that the volumes were all messed up and clipping over each other wrong. Like in the prison, I couldn't hear the guards coming well until they were right next to the door when they suddenly jumped from barely audible to screaming, then the emperor talking to me was barely audible again. In the imperial city then, in the market district, there was like 5 conversations going on and all were really loud and wouldn't tone down like they should as I go away from them. Is it a settings issue or just crappy sound driver issue?

 

[LucyDuke]

Static electricity. Last night I took a blanket out of the dryer and went and sat with my laptop. The blanket was superstaticy so I kept it away from the computer. Is that necessary? Is there anything to worry about?

Sometimes when I try to load a fullscreen game (SimCity 4 specifically), it won't show up. It'll be in the processes list in the task manager, but won't show up in the taskbar or in alt-tab. I kill the process and try again. Sometimes it works, sometimes I have to repeat. What's this all about?

I don't have any physical volume controls on my laptop. The only way I can adjust volume is to click the volume icons. Is there some way I could assign keyboard keys to adjust volume? It's Vista Home Basic if that makes any difference.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Clicking and whirring: My hard drives normally whirred. The clicking I need more info one, is it like a metallic clinking or just a tapping? My old Maxtor used to do both, clicking especially during a defrag.

Crappy sound: Was your volume on either the speakers or the OS too high? I get crappy sound that way. Or the wrong drivers. Or the game was going glitchy on you.

Static: Keeping it away can't hurt. But I think static is more likely to be dangerous when you open it up.

Fullscreen games: Happens to me a few time, don't know.

Volume control: On my keyboard, it has this spinny thing (?) that adjusts the volume. But since yours is a laptop.... I dunno.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Static electricity. Last night I took a blanket out of the dryer and went and sat with my laptop. The blanket was superstaticy so I kept it away from the computer. Is that necessary? Is there anything to worry about?

I don't have any physical volume controls on my laptop. The only way I can adjust volume is to click the volume icons. Is there some way I could assign keyboard keys to adjust volume? It's Vista Home Basic if that makes any difference.

No, the computer is grounded. Unless you're talking about opening it up and keeping it disconnected and then whacking it with that blanket, nothing bad is gonna happen.

You need a program to capture key presses which probably means another program

Static: Keeping it away can't hurt. But I think static is more likely to be dangerous when you open it up.

Volume control: On my keyboard, it has this spinny thing (?) that adjusts the volume. But since yours is a laptop.... I dunno.

Correct.
Didnt LucyDuke say there's no hardware volume control? Your response was completely useless.

 

[Ulyaoth]

Clicking and whirring: My hard drives normally whirred. The clicking I need more info one, is it like a metallic clinking or just a tapping? My old Maxtor used to do both, clicking especially during a defrag.

Crappy sound: Was your volume on either the speakers or the OS too high? I get crappy sound that way. Or the wrong drivers. Or the game was going glitchy on you.

Yeah, I think it was the game, was just playing Bioshock and it sounded fine.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I had a really scratched CD (Tom Petty ). I tried putting it in the drive and it spun up, but it wouldn't detect, no autoplay and it didn't show up in my computer (the drive was there, but not the CD, and when I tried opening it it asked me to put in a CD). I waited about a minute before taking it out. Other CDs detected, so I'm assuming it's the scratches. Is this normal?

Either ways, I'll probably just download the album again and burn a copy, as I've paid for it.

 

[Turner]

Other CDs detected, so I'm assuming it's the scratches. Is this normal?

Pretty much.