Random Tech Questions you want answered.

fenomas wrote:

Because of an open-source project I maintain, over the past few months several different people have reached out to me who are "working on a metaverse project" or similar, as if that was a specific thing. Does anyone here know what "metaverse" means here, in a modern tech/biz context? Is it a technology, a business model, or what?

It's weirder than I thought

https://www.howtogeek.com/745807/wha...

It's a persistent digital world that can be interacted with via VR. I think.

Weird problem with my PC (i7700k, 1080ti, Z270 Mobo, 650 (750?) watt power suppy).

I'm getting lockups and periodic nvidia related bluescreens... the catch is that its not heat related. In fact, these only seem to once or twice during the first hour after I turn it on in the morning (I do full shutdown every night). I haven't had any lockups playing games, temps are all normal, its almost like its not "warmed up", and it locks. When it locks up I'm not really doing much of anything... maybe browsing... checking emails, etc and it just freezes. KB and Mouse unresponsive, though if I spin the mouse wheel, there is the sort of Mobo "beeping" sound.

Given the bluescreen refers to nvidia, I'm going to DDU out my drivers and reinstall, but wondering if anyone else has any thoughts.

Power supply, maybe? GPU RAM beginning to die?

Power supply would be my first thought.

Would definitely give the system RAM a test as well with memtest86+.

What is the best way to wipe all the info from a laptop? My dad is getting rid of his, and is giving it to me to clean all the stuff off it. Assuming it is still functional, what is the best way to do this?

I am thinking a complete reinstall of windows would do this. How would I do that?

Pull the drive or SSD and hammer it to bits. Then install a new one. Pull the battery to reset the BIOS. Replace the RAM. (Actually I’d do that in reverse order, and for most people only pulling the disk drive would be necessary.)

You could also reload the firmware. Depends on how serious you are.

Reinstall of Windows is not sufficient.

Robear's option is the safest.

For a middle ground between the two, use DBAN with one of the stronger data wipes (not just the "Quick Erase" 0-ing out) to repeatedly overwrite the data on the drive without having to replace the drive itself.

Nuke the laptop from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Carlbear95 wrote:

Weird problem with my PC (i7700k, 1080ti, Z270 Mobo, 650 (750?) watt power suppy).

I'm getting lockups and periodic nvidia related bluescreens... the catch is that its not heat related. In fact, these only seem to once or twice during the first hour after I turn it on in the morning (I do full shutdown every night). I haven't had any lockups playing games, temps are all normal, its almost like its not "warmed up", and it locks. When it locks up I'm not really doing much of anything... maybe browsing... checking emails, etc and it just freezes. KB and Mouse unresponsive, though if I spin the mouse wheel, there is the sort of Mobo "beeping" sound.

Given the bluescreen refers to nvidia, I'm going to DDU out my drivers and reinstall, but wondering if anyone else has any thoughts.

https://www.ocbase.com/

This program may be able to help you figure out your issue. It helped me diagnose a bad CPU when my just several months old computer started crashing on me. Up until the version came out that started reporting what the specific error was, I was going insane trying to pin point the exact issue I was having. After several weeks of hardware swaps I had it narrowed down to CPU or Motherboard with no way to test either individually. The OCCT program helped me make my final call. Hopefully with new version of the program it will help you figure things out sooner!

Robear wrote:

Pull the drive or SSD and hammer it to bits. Then install a new one. Pull the battery to reset the BIOS. Replace the RAM. (Actually I’d do that in reverse order, and for most people only pulling the disk drive would be necessary.)

You could also reload the firmware. Depends on how serious you are.

Yeah I would pull the hard drive, or drives from the system and disconnect the battery for like a day or more.
You can then replace the hard drive or drives and hook the battery back up and install windows again. That is if you even care to go that extra mile. LOL

Memtest86 did return some errors so that's annoying. I'm ready to upgrade the PC but the unavailability of parts makes it pretty difficult. 98% of the time the PC is running fine (I think), so who knows how big a deal the memory test errors really are, but now I know... which kinda sucks. Its so weird because crashes seem to only happen shortly after I turn the PC back on, and I haven't (knocks on wood) had any crashes while working or playing games... just like using a web browser.

Try cleaning the contacts and reseating the RAM? Maybe you have some misaligned or dirty contacts that resolve themselves once the chips heat up and expand ever so slightly.

*Legion* wrote:

Reinstall of Windows is not sufficient.

Robear's option is the safest.

For a middle ground between the two, use DBAN with one of the stronger data wipes (not just the "Quick Erase" 0-ing out) to repeatedly overwrite the data on the drive without having to replace the drive itself.

This is what I usually do, when I'm not giving my old hardware to friends or family. Honest question: is it really necessary to go nuclear (as in: smash the drive to bits etc.) for a consumer device? When selling it on ebay for instance?

I usually pull the HDD/SSD and put it in a drawer and then sell/give away/donate the PC (or let it sit in the corner until it decomposes whichever).

dejanzie wrote:
*Legion* wrote:

Reinstall of Windows is not sufficient.

Robear's option is the safest.

For a middle ground between the two, use DBAN with one of the stronger data wipes (not just the "Quick Erase" 0-ing out) to repeatedly overwrite the data on the drive without having to replace the drive itself.

This is what I usually do, when I'm not giving my old hardware to friends or family. Honest question: is it really necessary to go nuclear (as in: smash the drive to bits etc.) for a consumer device? When selling it on ebay for instance?

This will be going from my dad to me, so I am not sure that I need to go as far as smashing the HD to bits.

Depends if you want to snoop all your dad's porn or not

(I am totally kidding)

dejanzie wrote:

This is what I usually do, when I'm not giving my old hardware to friends or family. Honest question: is it really necessary to go nuclear (as in: smash the drive to bits etc.) for a consumer device? When selling it on ebay for instance?

For drives with highly sensitive data, destruction is the only proper option.

I think the data on most personal local drives is less sensitive than people tend to think. Recovering a long-expired cookie to my online banking session isn't gonna get you very far.

Especially if the disk used full disk encryption. Destroying the partition (thus destroying the encryption key) and then overwriting the already-encrypted drive with garbage should make any sort of data recovery incredibly impractical.

Yeah, but if you have password lists or medical records or financial info, you might want to consider the hammer. (And he did ask for how to get rid of information he didn’t want passed on. I mean, this is kind of a standard approach, but as I said, pick and choose according to your requirements.)

Hello guys.. i have a MSI 970 GAMING Mobo.. with the 4 slots of ram installed. But if i want to book the machine with 1 2 or 3 dimms of ram it DOES not START... it wants me to put in the 4 dimms... is ther any way around this?

I cant even get into bios if any of the 4 slots of gam is not installed..
i would apprecite help

I don’t think 3 will work. With a pair, I’d expect to put them in slots 1 and 3, or 2 and 4, not adjacent to each other. Did you try that?

Let me go try that

It should boot with 1, 2, 3, or 4 sticks it just isn't optimal to run in a mismatched setup. Look in your manual to see which slots they recommend you use in 1 and 2 stick mode and test your sticks one at a time and then two at a time. Also while looking in the manual look up the diagnostic codes and how your motherboard displays them so you can see what the issue is other than just guessing.

Carlbear95 wrote:

Weird problem with my PC (i7700k, 1080ti, Z270 Mobo, 650 (750?) watt power suppy).

I'm getting lockups and periodic nvidia related bluescreens... the catch is that its not heat related. In fact, these only seem to once or twice during the first hour after I turn it on in the morning (I do full shutdown every night). I haven't had any lockups playing games, temps are all normal, its almost like its not "warmed up", and it locks. When it locks up I'm not really doing much of anything... maybe browsing... checking emails, etc and it just freezes. KB and Mouse unresponsive, though if I spin the mouse wheel, there is the sort of Mobo "beeping" sound.

Given the bluescreen refers to nvidia, I'm going to DDU out my drivers and reinstall, but wondering if anyone else has any thoughts.

Thanks for everyones suggestions. DDU+Updated drivers so far seems to be doing to the trick. This is day 2 without a lockup (was pretty much 100% for the last 2 weeks). The memtest errors still annoy me so I'll dig into it a bit more, but hopefully I'm over the hump.

Thanks guys.. still looking into it

Carlbear95 wrote:

The memtest errors still annoy me so I'll dig into it a bit more, but hopefully I'm over the hump.

If you're getting memtest errors, you should plan sooner than later to replace that RAM. Even if it turns out to not be the source of your immediate problem, it will be the source of problems soon.

I'd recommend selectively pulling sticks out and running the tests again to see if you can isolate the fault down to a single stick, rather than having to replace the entirety of your RAM.

Unless you are using 4GB sticks. Replace those guys pronto
Seriously though, RAM is cheap still, yeah?

fangblackbone wrote:

Unless you are using 4GB sticks. Replace those guys pronto
Seriously though, RAM is cheap still, yeah?

Yeah, DDR4's reaching the end of the line, but we haven't hit that weird period yet where prices rise because stock drops.

It's not hard to find 16GB of DDR4 for $50 or so. Here's a pair of 8GB chips of 3200 on sale for $51.

Relatively cheap... my issue is that I'm probably going to upgrade my PC in the next 12 months... so buying new RAM for my 4 year old computer that won't be as snazzy as the RAM I'll buy for my new computer is something I don't want to do.

Unless somoene tells me my 4-year old DDR4 3200 RAM is still the best choice for a new computer that I can build today. (Isn't DDR5 out now?).

Some brands of RAM carry lifetime warranties. Check to see if they could be RMA'ed