The Windows and Windows Software Megathread

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The Lord Bude: May 23, 2007; ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE

Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:

It could be some kind of driver crash causing the issue. Perhaps the event viewer could shed more details on if anything is crashing preceding the restart? I also got similar symptoms once when one of my GPU power cables wasn't fully plugged in. It was coming loose, and at random points my computer would freeze and then reboot. It started at a couple times a week and got progressively worse. It may not be your gpu power cables specifically, but it may help to reseat your components and pull out and plug back in all of your power cables. I can already tell that the sporadic nature of the crashes is going to make troubleshooting this a pain, though.

All I get from event viewer is 'the system failed to shut down cleanly' entries and at the same timestamp Event 161 Volmgr 'Dump file creation failed due to error during dump creation'. Checking cables and stuff is gonna have to wait till the weekend.

The computer turns 4 years old in a couple days, it might be time to start thinking about a replacement.

# ? Oct 20, 2021 12:55

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# ? May 19, 2024 03:29

Dirt Road Junglist: Oct 8, 2010; We will be cruel
And through our cruelty
They will know who we are

Seconding GPU issues. I usually see those problems when there�s a thermal or power related event on a GPU (and a lot of times it crashes so hard it doesn�t know why when it wakes up). Could be as simple as a bad driver.

# ? Oct 20, 2021 18:18

Klyith: Aug 3, 2007; GBS Pledge Week

Eh, could be PSU -- the most typical / recognizable PSU failure is one where it cuts out under load, but that's not always the case.

Anyways I'd start by doing a memtest run, because looking at memory integrity is a good & quick sanity check.

After that, open it up and do the reseat cables & cards etc. If this is a DIY PC, or especially if it's a retail machine that is made with standard parts (ie not Dell, HP, etc) I'd strongly look into a PSU swap. A lot of cheap pre-built PCs come with totally junk PSUs.

# ? Oct 20, 2021 18:33

c0burn: Sep 2, 2003; The KKKing

It's worth removing any dust buildup and repasting your CPU and GPU too.

# ? Oct 20, 2021 19:14

The Lord Bude: May 23, 2007; ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE

I built the PC myself, it's a few days short of 4 years old, and the PSU is an EVGA Supernova G3 750w (a superflower built 80+ gold psu, pretty much one of the best on the market at the time). The interesting thing like I said is that if it is heat/power related it's really weird that the crash only ever happens when the PC is idling, not at load. GPU is an EVGA 1080ti, it's factory overclocked and I have the power/temp target sliders turned up but otherwise I haven't touched it. It never goes above 90c at load; and the CPU never goes above like 50c - it's got a 280mm radiator on it. Temps seem about what they've always been.

gonna run the memtest as suggested, probably tomorrow though. Then on the weekend will check cables, gpu and ram seating and update drivers and everything. I don't think I've bothered to update my gpu drivers in probably over a year, I don't play many AAA games any more, just indie stuff and wow classic these days. Hopefully one of these things solves the issue because I really, really don't want to be unseating my CPU. A good dusting probably wouldn't hurt either.

# ? Oct 20, 2021 19:19

Klyith: Aug 3, 2007; GBS Pledge Week

c0burn posted:

It's worth removing any dust buildup and repasting your CPU and GPU too.

Highly unlikely to be a crash inducing problem. Blowing out the dust never hurts, but I wouldn't repaste without a sign that it's needed (especially for a GPU, which aren't exactly easy to disassemble a lot of the time).

The Lord Bude posted:

I built the PC myself, it's a few days short of 4 years old, and the PSU is an EVGA Supernova G3 750w (a superflower built 80+ gold psu, pretty much one of the best on the market at the time). The interesting thing like I said is that if it is heat/power related it's really weird that the crash only ever happens when the PC is idling, not at load.

Hmm, in that case I'd put PSU further down the troubleshooting list, but not scratch it off completely. Very good PSU, but even very good things can have defective units and they have warranty for a reason. And the thing about idle vs load is that while load means more stress on components, your PC is probably idle for way more hours of the day. So it's more a probability thing that a random, non-load-dependent failure probably hits when idle.

Basically whenever I see repeated hard resets that are so drastic that there's no OS involvement, the PSU is the first piece of hardware I swap out. Not because it's always the PSU but because it's an easy 1:1 swap, and otherwise verifying that a PSU is good is impossible without lab equipment. And also if it is a PSU problem, it can be harming other components over time.

However, I keep a spare PSU around which makes things easier

quote:

GPU is an EVGA 1080ti, it's factory overclocked and I have the power/temp target sliders turned up but otherwise I haven't touched it.

I'd definitely reset that type of slider to default while troubleshooting. Even when you're not gaming, I think those are changing the operation of the card. (Also, I think the EVGA 1080s were a bit questionable in VRMs or something? I'd probably be a little more gentle on them all around, especially right now when a replacement is a $1k drop.)

# ? Oct 20, 2021 20:13

The Lord Bude: May 23, 2007; ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE

Klyith posted:

Highly unlikely to be a crash inducing problem. Blowing out the dust never hurts, but I wouldn't repaste without a sign that it's needed (especially for a GPU, which aren't exactly easy to disassemble a lot of the time).

Hmm, in that case I'd put PSU further down the troubleshooting list, but not scratch it off completely. Very good PSU, but even very good things can have defective units and they have warranty for a reason. And the thing about idle vs load is that while load means more stress on components, your PC is probably idle for way more hours of the day. So it's more a probability thing that a random, non-load-dependent failure probably hits when idle.

Basically whenever I see repeated hard resets that are so drastic that there's no OS involvement, the PSU is the first piece of hardware I swap out. Not because it's always the PSU but because it's an easy 1:1 swap, and otherwise verifying that a PSU is good is impossible without lab equipment. And also if it is a PSU problem, it can be harming other components over time.

However, I keep a spare PSU around which makes things easier

I'd definitely reset that type of slider to default while troubleshooting. Even when you're not gaming, I think those are changing the operation of the card. (Also, I think the EVGA 1080s were a bit questionable in VRMs or something? I'd probably be a little more gentle on them all around, especially right now when a replacement is a $1k drop.)

Yeah I definitely don't keep a spare PSU lying around. Good point on the GPU though. This computer is old enough that I really don't want to spend money on it, if I can't make the problem stop with what's already been advised then it's probably going to be a case of seeing how long I can stick it out before I get a new computer, which was tentatively going to be a 2022 thing anyway.

# ? Oct 20, 2021 22:19

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

Klyith posted:

Try https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html with:
nircmd closeprocess winword.exe
ping -n 10 127.0.0.1>nul
robocopy /MIR blah blah

The ping command is just a cheap way to do a 10 second wait in a batch script, to give time for your onedrive sync to happen.

I think that'll work on word, it fully exits once you close all the windows right?

edit: actually just using taskkill without the /F sends a termination signal that should allow graceful closure

Ah, the nircmd worked great and it didn't need to be invoked with a vbs to make it silent, so that's good!

# ? Oct 20, 2021 23:51

Gromit: Aug 15, 2000; I am an oppressed White Male, Asian women wont serve me! Save me Campbell Newman!!!!!!!

The Lord Bude posted:

All I get from event viewer is 'the system failed to shut down cleanly' entries and at the same timestamp Event 161 Volmgr 'Dump file creation failed due to error during dump creation'.

Is it a setting in Windows that makes the PC reboot on a major error like that, or is it an unstoppable reboot? If it's a option you can change, make it go to a bluescreen instead so you can read the error message. Might at least point you in a direction.

# ? Oct 21, 2021 01:11

Klyith: Aug 3, 2007; GBS Pledge Week

Gromit posted:

Is it a setting in Windows that makes the PC reboot on a major error like that, or is it an unstoppable reboot? If it's a option you can change, make it go to a bluescreen instead so you can read the error message. Might at least point you in a direction.

Even if you have it set to auto reboot without showing the bluescreen error, the OS will write info to the event log + dump memory if it is able to. The bluescreen itself is pretty cosmetic.

# ? Oct 21, 2021 03:05

Gromit: Aug 15, 2000; I am an oppressed White Male, Asian women wont serve me! Save me Campbell Newman!!!!!!!

Klyith posted:

Even if you have it set to auto reboot without showing the bluescreen error, the OS will write info to the event log + dump memory if it is able to. The bluescreen itself is pretty cosmetic.

Sure, but will the system get to the bluescreen without being able to write to the log? My work laptop sometimes bluescreens and I don't *think* I've seen anything useful in the log, but the BSOD at least gives me an error number. Having just written all that, surely if it could write the number to the screen it could write to the event log...

# ? Oct 22, 2021 05:26

Jippa: Feb 13, 2009

I'd like some incredibly basic Excel advice please, I have never used it before.

I need to record my work which is lots of short tasks which fall under different categories which I enter in real time as I am doing them. Can someone just point me in a direction of what to search for on this?

# ? Oct 22, 2021 08:42

Woebin: Feb 6, 2006

Jippa posted:

I'd like some incredibly basic Excel advice please, I have never used it before.

I need to record my work which is lots of short tasks which fall under different categories which I enter in real time as I am doing them. Can someone just point me in a direction of what to search for on this?

Do you need to do it directly in Excel? I've been using Toggl for years.

# ? Oct 22, 2021 08:45

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

Yeah I'm a little confused but if this is about time tracking, I use an auto-tracker called ManicTime.com that tracks what you're doing, provides screenshots and can be highly customized for automation.

# ? Oct 22, 2021 12:39

Icept: Jul 11, 2001

I have a question about copying / deleting files that I hope someone has encountered before.

So I have zip files full of financial postings for each month of the year, in PDF format. This is perfectly fine.

In each month, I need to grab the same files with the account number in file name, ie. the zip contains:

1000-A.pdf
1000-B.pdf
1000-C.pdf
1001-A.pdf
...
9999-C.pdf

Let's say I need to grab the following (around 1700 files)

1017-B.pdf
2671-A.pdf
...
9902.C.pdf

The list of files I need from each months zip file is currently in a CSV file, but can be converted to whatever is needed.

Is there some way to make copy accept arguments from a file? Or maybe this is best done by making a batch file that has ~1700 lines of copy xxxx-n.pdf lines in it?

# ? Oct 22, 2021 12:53

Klyith: Aug 3, 2007; GBS Pledge Week

Icept posted:

Is there some way to make copy accept arguments from a file? Or maybe this is best done by making a batch file that has ~1700 lines of copy xxxx-n.pdf lines in it?

Copy can't do that itself, but this is a pretty simple batch script.

# ? Oct 22, 2021 13:46

Icept: Jul 11, 2001

Thanks for the help, much appreciated!

# ? Oct 22, 2021 14:24

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

I have to use Zoom for my job and I'm wondering if anyone has gotten a global mute/unmute shortcut to work?

I've even tried using a little macro device and programming it to do ctrl+f13. Zoom recognizes this and sets it as the "global shortcut" for mute/unmute call, but pressing it while I'm in a call does nothing.

tuyop fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Oct 24, 2021

# ? Oct 24, 2021 22:02

Toast Museum: Dec 3, 2005; 30% Iron Chef

tuyop posted:

I have to use Zoom for my job and I'm wondering if anyone has gotten a global mute/unmute shortcut to work?

I've even tried using a little macro device and programming it to do ctrl+f13. Zoom recognizes this and sets it as the "global shortcut" for mute/unmute call, but pressing it while I'm in a call does nothing.

The prerelease version of PowerToys has a feature that includes global hotkeys for toggling camera, mic, or both.

# ? Oct 24, 2021 22:21

DerekSmartymans: Feb 14, 2005; The
Copacetic
Ascetic

Toast Museum posted:

The prerelease version of PowerToys has a feature that includes global hotkeys for toggling camera, mic, or both.

I have a 10+ y/o saitek USB keyboard with three buttons: volume up, volume down, & mute. No software or drivers needed. It works the same if I get an interruption while speakers or headset are being used. I do have a very small widget (SoundSwitch, maybe free in MS�s store now? Idk) to switch between the two when I press Right CTRL+NumPad 0. Keyboard�s Mute works on either.

# ? Oct 24, 2021 23:15

Arivia: Mar 17, 2011

DerekSmartymans posted:

I have a 10+ y/o saitek USB keyboard with three buttons: volume up, volume down, & mute. No software or drivers needed. It works the same if I get an interruption while speakers or headset are being used. I do have a very small widget (SoundSwitch, maybe free in MS�s store now? Idk) to switch between the two when I press Right CTRL+NumPad 0. Keyboard�s Mute works on either.

I think tuyop is meaning muting/unmuting your microphone, media keys on keyboards are for muting your sound output not input.

# ? Oct 24, 2021 23:33

Gromit: Aug 15, 2000; I am an oppressed White Male, Asian women wont serve me! Save me Campbell Newman!!!!!!!

I have various devices on my LAN and it seems that in a Windows Explorer window I can not get to them via \\DEVICENAME, but have to use \\DEVICENAME.local (or the IP address). Any ideas on what I need to change to be able to leave off that .local suffix?

I had a different router some time ago and it worked then, but since using a Netcomm NF18MESH it's no longer working (and I don't have that old unit to compare settings). Did it used to work because the old router was doing something a bit more clever with DHCP that assigned machine names or something?

No big deal - at this stage I just want to know what the issue is to learn a bit more about how this is working under the hood. I can get over adding the suffix, but until today I didn't know I could get to the devices like that and thought the whole name thing was completely dead.

e: no, it's weirder. Works fine from and to a spare Windows 7 box but not with my main W10 machine. However, W10 can get to W7 without needing a .local, whereas my NAS requires it from W10 but not from W7. Looks like an OS thing that I'll need to look further into. Perhaps the router change thing was just a coincidence.

e2: My Nvidia Shield had the same issue, so it must be something on the router rather than OS-dependant.

At this stage I'll probably do a little more Googling and call it a day, but please let me know if you have any ideas on where I could look. Right now I think my new router just doesn't support hostname stuff in DHCP as nicely as that other one I had for a while.

Gromit fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Oct 25, 2021

# ? Oct 25, 2021 04:10

Computer viking: May 30, 2011; Now with less breakage.

The .local addresses are from mdns - which is a local network broadcast system; it does not use your router or dns server.

You can try asking your router directly - something like nslookup mypc 192.168.0.1 , with the appropriate hostname and the ip of your router.

Another thing to think about is the default domain: your router can and probably does send a default domain in its DHCP responses- basically telling the clients "you live in this domain". It will typically also be used in dns queries, so if the domain is "home.arpa" and you try to connect to "box", windows will quietly try box.home.arpa as well.

It may of course just be that your router doesn't do dynamic dns updates, and the difference between the machines is if they quietly fall back on mdns or not.

Oh, and the appropriate domain for this sort of use is apparently home.arpa - which was only reserved a few years ago. I hadn't heard about it before my partner tried to find a definite answer to what was best practice while setting up our router (again) - it's his article (and my photo).

# ? Oct 25, 2021 08:51

DerekSmartymans: Feb 14, 2005; The
Copacetic
Ascetic

Arivia posted:

I think tuyop is meaning muting/unmuting your microphone, media keys on keyboards are for muting your sound output not input.

Oh, sorry. I was going to say I had a Packard Bell keyboard in 1997 that could run everything. Click one button for email, one for Word, one for games, etc. It was even ps/2 so it didn�t take up a USB slot (also USB wasn�t invented yet 😛).

Edit It came with a separate microphone that you could toggle on/off via keyboard, too.

DerekSmartymans fucked around with this message at 14:58 on Oct 25, 2021

# ? Oct 25, 2021 14:48

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

Toast Museum posted:

The prerelease version of PowerToys has a feature that includes global hotkeys for toggling camera, mic, or both.

Stupid question but how do I install the pre-release version of powertoys? Love Fancyzones and the colour picker but I don't have this video conference feature.

# ? Oct 25, 2021 16:15

Ynglaur: Oct 9, 2013; The Malta Conference, anyone?

tuyop posted:

Stupid question but how do I install the pre-release version of powertoys? Love Fancyzones and the colour picker but I don't have this video conference feature.

Go to https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/releases and install the latest Experimental release.

# ? Oct 25, 2021 16:39

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

Awesome, thanks! This works great. Got some of the useless buttons on my Logi K780 configured for that woo!

# ? Oct 25, 2021 19:58

Gromit: Aug 15, 2000; I am an oppressed White Male, Asian women wont serve me! Save me Campbell Newman!!!!!!!

Computer viking posted:

You can try asking your router directly - something like nslookup mypc 192.168.0.1 , with the appropriate hostname and the ip of your router.

I tried this and get:

code:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>hostname
THISPC

C:\WINDOWS\system32>nslookup THISPC 192.168.20.1
Server:  cloudmesh.net
Address:  192.168.20.1

*** cloudmesh.net can't find THISPC: Non-existent domain

No idea where it gets cloudmesh.net from as it doesn't appear in any of the device settings.

If I just try a lookup on my PC's IP address, I get:

code:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>nslookup 192.168.20.2
Server:  one.one.one.one
Address:  1.1.1.1

*** one.one.one.one can't find 192.168.20.2: Non-existent domain

I don't think this is getting me anywhere, though.

# ? Oct 26, 2021 13:45

Toast Museum: Dec 3, 2005; 30% Iron Chef

Gromit posted:

I tried this and get:
code:
C:\WINDOWS\system32>hostname
THISPC

C:\WINDOWS\system32>nslookup THISPC 192.168.20.1
Server:  cloudmesh.net
Address:  192.168.20.1

*** cloudmesh.net can't find THISPC: Non-existent domain
No idea where it gets cloudmesh.net from as it doesn't appear in any of the device settings.

Apparently Netcomm NF18MESH routers route that address to themselves, similar to Netgear routers' use of routerlogin.net

quote:

If I just try a lookup on my PC's IP address, I get:
code:
C:\WINDOWS\system32>nslookup 192.168.20.2
Server:  one.one.one.one
Address:  1.1.1.1

*** one.one.one.one can't find 192.168.20.2: Non-existent domain
I don't think this is getting me anywhere, though.

Any chance that you specified DNS servers in your PC's network settings? 1.1.1.1 is Cloudflare's public DNS, so it can't resolve your private addresses.

# ? Oct 26, 2021 13:55

astral: Apr 26, 2004

I feel like there�s significant confusion between netbios, dns, and Bonjour going on here.

Here's a somewhat-outdated article that covers some of the basics:
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-netbios-name-resolution-really-works/

# ? Oct 26, 2021 21:41

Gromit: Aug 15, 2000; I am an oppressed White Male, Asian women wont serve me! Save me Campbell Newman!!!!!!!

/\ Thanks, I'll have a read and see if it points me in a direction.

Toast Museum posted:

Any chance that you specified DNS servers in your PC's network settings? 1.1.1.1 is Cloudflare's public DNS, so it can't resolve your private addresses.

Oh yes, definitely! I forgot I use a custom DNS in my ethernet connection to get around a government block on accessing subtitle websites (promotes piracy, apparently!) I use 1.1.1.1 and 8.8.8.8.

# ? Oct 27, 2021 03:40

astral: Apr 26, 2004

I was going to say you could probably get it working if you switched your DNS config around so that your router used 1.1.1.1 as the upstream DNS server and your devices used the router for theirs, but if the router already doesn't let you look up the local one, that probably isn't enough do the trick.

Does your Windows 10 PC use DHCP (including if it has a static reservation) to get its IP address, or is its address specified manually on the machine itself?

# ? Oct 27, 2021 09:45

Computer viking: May 30, 2011; Now with less breakage.

astral posted:

I feel like there’s significant confusion between netbios, dns, and Bonjour going on here.

Here's a somewhat-outdated article that covers some of the basics:
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-netbios-name-resolution-really-works/

Does modern windows still use/support netbios names? I assume AD has been DNS only for ages, but in a home setting I guess mDNS is the first real replacement.

# ? Oct 27, 2021 18:05

WattsvilleBlues: Jan 25, 2005; Every demon wants his pound of flesh

Is it known when Office 365 will get the new interface on the release channel?

# ? Oct 28, 2021 21:35

Gromit: Aug 15, 2000; I am an oppressed White Male, Asian women wont serve me! Save me Campbell Newman!!!!!!!

astral posted:

I was going to say you could probably get it working if you switched your DNS config around so that your router used 1.1.1.1 as the upstream DNS server and your devices used the router for theirs, but if the router already doesn't let you look up the local one, that probably isn't enough do the trick.

Does your Windows 10 PC use DHCP (including if it has a static reservation) to get its IP address, or is its address specified manually on the machine itself?

My PC does use DHCP but with a static reservation. Don't get too tied up on this, though. I'm sure you have better things to worry about and this isn't hurting me much, it's just vaguely annoying and weird more than anything.

# ? Nov 1, 2021 00:53

fletcher: Jun 27, 2003; ken park is my favorite movie; Cybernetic Crumb

I'm on Windows 10 and at some point recently my screen saver, auto lock, and even monitor power savings modes are never triggered. My screens just stay on all the time. Why are they not turning off anymore and my auto-lock screen is not happening?

# ? Nov 2, 2021 02:51

astral: Apr 26, 2004

Gromit posted:

My PC does use DHCP but with a static reservation. Don't get too tied up on this, though. I'm sure you have better things to worry about and this isn't hurting me much, it's just vaguely annoying and weird more than anything.

Also make sure to check Windows' public/private network setting. Private should enable that broadcast/discovery.

fletcher posted:

I'm on Windows 10 and at some point recently my screen saver, auto lock, and even monitor power savings modes are never triggered. My screens just stay on all the time. Why are they not turning off anymore and my auto-lock screen is not happening?

I'm having the same problem, and while I suspect it's a misbehaving program, I haven't dug into it yet other than checking for anything strange in the powercfg requests.

# ? Nov 2, 2021 05:07

LRADIKAL: Jun 10, 2001; Fun Shoe

A very sensitive mouse can pick up vibrations quite easily. try flipping it on it's back.

# ? Nov 2, 2021 05:38

Arivia: Mar 17, 2011

LRADIKAL posted:

A very sensitive mouse can pick up vibrations quite easily. try flipping it on it's back.

Okay, now it's saying "uguu~" and is making doe eyes at me and it's creeping me out. Please help.

# ? Nov 2, 2021 05:42

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# ? May 19, 2024 03:29

Medullah: Aug 14, 2003; FEAR MY SHARK ROCKET IT REALLY SUCKS AND BLOWS

Oh hey my PC isn't locking/going to sleep either. I know I had some stuff that was keeping it awake (Plex, a program that emulated a controller) but I thought I had it figured out. I need to look at the Powecfg settings again

# ? Nov 2, 2021 12:30

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Windows and Windows Software Megathread

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