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I have an Acer Aspire 5755G with an Atheros AR5B97 wireless adapter that might be crapping out. Sometimes it drops all wifi connections and needs a reboot to work again. I'm considering just buying a new wifi adapter and slotting that in there. It's currently 2.4GHz only, which is a little crowded in my neighborhood. Would it be possible to buy one that supports 5GHz, or would that be a waste of money because 5GHz needs different antennas?
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Jun 29, 2013 12:58
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LCD Deathpanel posted:I replaced the wifi card in an Acer netbook with an Intel dual-band mini-PCIE card and it worked fine, so it's probably OK to replace the card in yours, but you'll want to check on whether your model has specific wireless card requirements. HP laptops for instance won't boot if you use a wireless card that's not on the BIOS-approved list, whereas most Dell's don't care what card you install. Great! That's just what I was hoping to hear. And that card is a lot cheaper than I was expecting to have to pay, to boot! I'll Google around a bit to see if it's compatible, but for that price I might as well just try if I can't find anything. Thanks for your help.
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Jun 29, 2013 19:47
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I replaced my notebook's wifi card today and everything works fine and better than before. (Thanks again LCD Deathpanel for the recommendation of the card.) Only problem is that Windows decided that with a new wireless network adapter, a new wireless network list has to be made. That's fine and dandy, but I would like to import my old wireless networks that I don't readily have the codes for to this new list. I can find them in the registry, but I have no idea how to move them to the new list. Anyone have any ideas apart from either waiting until I'm around those networks and then asking for the key again, or plugging the old card back in and exporting the networks one by one?
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Jul 2, 2013 16:42
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YoursTruly posted:Sticking DDR2 in a DDR3 board. I'm really surprised you managed to fit it on there since they're keyed differently. You might wanna check for physical damage if you ever run into memory problems. Or if you ever want to sell the DDR2 you jammed in there.
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Aug 1, 2013 05:58
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YoursTruly posted:Well I was already running into memory problems before the mishap, but I'll take a closer look at the motherboard before the new RAM arrives. The memory slots looked normal to me, and the DDR2 still works when plugged into the old computer. Is there anything in particular I should be looking for on the motherboard? Mainly if the keying peg is still intact and not obstructing any pins. But if it still works, then that's a good indicator you didn't damage anything (too badly). The damage, if any, is probably limited to just that little plastic keying peg.
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Aug 1, 2013 14:31
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agarjogger posted:Anybody ever succeed in unsticking a stuck pixel either by molesting it with a pen, or by running one of those epileptic programs to use its adjacent pixels to shake it loose? I've got two stuck red. I've had some success with unsticking a stuck pixel on my old laptop by rubbing it with a soft cloth (as to avoid scratches, still had to apply some force), after using one of those flashy massage programs stopped working for it. It'd eventually return, but I could just rub it again to fix it. But I've also had pixels that I never managed to fix on other monitors. YMMV.
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Aug 10, 2013 21:41
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CrystalDiskInfo is good for reading the SMART data of your hard drives. If you want more than that you could try SeaTools, which can perform generic tests on non-Seagate drives as well.
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Aug 12, 2013 22:22
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Samurai Sanders posted:I've tried every USB port I have. And how am I supposed to check the bios when as I said, I cant access the bios menus? You could try to reset the BIOS options with the jumper and see if that fixes anything. You could also try to find someone who will let you borrow a PS/2 keyboard and see if that works.
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Aug 26, 2013 14:26
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goodness posted:Yes. The router is downstairs about 50 ft away. The Ethernet runs through the wall up to my room. I can plug the Ethernet switch in in my room and then plug the computers into it? Yes you can.
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Aug 28, 2013 02:17
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Wulfolme posted:Could one of those cables breaking its connection while the computer is running do real damage to something? If it's not a threat to the integrity of anything, I'd rather not replace it. I've had the thing since 2006. If the cable comes slightly loose while it is running it could start arching and damage the connector and the motherboard permanently by the heat generated, or start a bit of a fire in extreme cases.
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Oct 7, 2013 10:59
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ConfusedNudeMan posted:I couldn't find the pagefile and hiberfile anywhere, even checked for hidden files. You need to turn on the option to view system files, too.
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Oct 9, 2013 01:06
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I decided to update my graphics drivers yesterday as I was running really old ones (12.8). I uninstalled all the AMD/ATI software, rebooted, cleaned with the free version of Driver Fusion, rebooted again, installed the latest beta drivers (13.11_betav1) and rebooted yet again. And again after Windows Update updated the .NET framework version that got installed along with the drivers. The main reason to do this was because I noticed that hardware acceleration in Firefox was disabled on account of the driver being too old. Not that I ever really missed it, but I figured it couldn't hurt. Turns out that Firefox has some issues with rendering pages with (many) animated .gifs in them with hardware acceleration enabled. Pages eventually become like this:  These corruptions are limited to the window with the .gifs and are entirely within Firefox. They scroll along until they go off-screen and then are fixed. They're also fixed when that window's focus changes. And they're obviously capturable with printscreen. Animated areas are unaffected. I've since fixed it by disabling the hardware acceleration option in Firefox and haven't had any other issues. I won't miss hardware acceleration since I never used it and I'm sure the newer drivers will improve a whole host of issues. But since I actually embarked on this to get hardware acceleration working in Firefox, I have to wonder if I did it wrong or should have used a different version or what. My graphics card is a HD 7870 and OS is Windows 7 x64. So, in short, did I gently caress up the graphics driver update process or is Firefox just quirky?
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Oct 14, 2013 23:57
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Alereon posted:Try the Catalyst 13.10 Beta 2 drivers, 13.11 Beta 1 only adds support for the new R-series cards and Anandtech also noticed rendering errors. Thanks for the swift reply! I'll try those tomorrow.
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Oct 15, 2013 00:12
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Alereon posted:Try the Catalyst 13.10 Beta 2 drivers, 13.11 Beta 1 only adds support for the new R-series cards and Anandtech also noticed rendering errors. LCD Deathpanel posted:I just installed 13.11 beta 1 yesterday since I figured it was about time to update my drivers. I'm still getting those rendering issues with 13.10b2 so I'll just leave hardware acceleration in Firefox off for now. Thanks anyway.
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Oct 15, 2013 08:36
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jadebullet posted:I was wondering if there is any way to continue to use my old wireless keyboard with the new mouse? I tried googling it, but all I could find was how to install a mouse, or guides to buying them. Is it a Unifying receiver? If so, you can run the Logitech Unifying Software utility to pair the new mouse with your existing receiver. Unifying equipment have a little orange logo on them. 
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Oct 15, 2013 12:16
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Lady Gaza posted:Apologies if this isn't the right place to ask, but couldn't see any other relevant short question threads. I have a USB stick with security software installed (Integral Total Lock); I'd like to remove this software so the stick is completely clean. I have the password. Any ideas? I've searched around but couldn't see anything helpful. The stick's vendor's site might have a tool that'll let you get rid of that junk. I know Maxell provides a tool to get rid of the security junk on their sticks, at least.
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Oct 19, 2013 23:27
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Senor P. posted:I've noticed my computer is gradually becoming louder the last couple of weeks/months. An easy way to check is to run with an open case and then temporarily stopping a fan by sticking a piece of plastic or wood in there gently. Make sure you don't stop them for too long and give them a push if they don't spin up again after you remove your object.
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Oct 20, 2013 18:20
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While the wifi chat is interesting and I'm hoping it'll continue for a bit because reading stuff like this is how I learn about it. Wouldn't a good solution be to get some powerline network adapters? Sistergodiva's dad won't have to look at cables running through the house. And the kid would get a wired connection. I don't use these things myself, but I've heard they're pretty good nowadays.
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Nov 3, 2013 22:46
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Alereon posted:While this gets you away from issues with nearby wireless networks, standard Homeplug AV equipment provides the same experiences as Wireless-G. Here's an Anandtech review of a decent variety of Homeplug AV equipment, you can see it's just as bad as WiFi. You'd likely get a much better experience with the latest Homeplug AV2 or G.hn equipment, but that costs so much it would be much smarter to just buy a good Wireless-AC router and adapters so you just have a good wireless experience. I see! Thanks for teaching me that.
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Nov 3, 2013 23:12
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londonmoose posted:The hard-drive for my laptop is failing and I'm looking towards replacing it. It is a 2.5" SATA Toshiba HDD (i.e. it looks like a fairly generic laptop hard-drive). Any 2.5" drive should be fine, but do take note of the height of the drive, some thin laptops only take 7 mm ones. You could also look into getting an SSD for a nice speed boost, as well. There's a megathread with more info here.
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Nov 17, 2013 17:54
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londonmoose posted:I don't have a proper ruler to measure the height precisely (as well as terrible eyesight), but it appears to me to be closer to 9.5mm than 7mm, which I'm guessing is standard? Yeah, that sounds like a standard notebook hard drive. Any 2.5" SATA hard drive should work for you. If you do end up with a 7mm one, there are little plastic shunts you can use to fill the space available. Or you could fill the gap with some cardboard or other non-conductive material. But if that's necessary depends on how the hard drive cradle in your notebook works.
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Nov 18, 2013 11:26
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Starhawk64 posted:The thing is that the issue also occurs with a fresh install. One symphtom I've noticed when it happens is my mouse will stop working and I lose the wifi connection. If I was listening to audio, I would get crackling and it would either slow down and crap out or I'd get an audio loop and then the whole thing hard locks, no blue screen at all. I've had similar symptoms with my notebook due to a lovely wifi adapter. It wouldn't hard-lock but maybe that's because I caught it and rebooted before it got that bad. The problems went away after replacing the wifi adapter. Of course in my case it was a mini PCIE adapter in a notebook and I don't know what you're using for wifi. But it might be worth checking if you still get the problem after removing or replacing your wifi adapter.
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Nov 20, 2013 11:04
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Starhawk64 posted:It never occurred to me that it could be the wifi adapter causing the problem. I am able to use it in XP though so that's weird. I guess it's worth replacing since it would be cheaper to do. A Live CD runs the OS without installing it. It's an easy way to check if it's a hardware or a software issue. Nonetheless, even if the issue doesn't crop up while running on the Live CD, you can still try to see if the issue occurs in Windows with the wifi adapter removed. Because it might be easier to just replace that than to try and find a driver version that doesn't cause issues.
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Nov 20, 2013 13:46
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BigRed0427 posted:Are there any good, free tools to see if your hard drive is OK? I'm starting to have some trouble with my PC and I wanna make sure it's not the hard drive. http://crystalmark.info/download/index-e.html Crystal Disk Info is what you want. Just get the portable standard version. If it shows caution for anything but temperature you should get to backing up your important files asap.
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Nov 22, 2013 16:05
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rizuhbull posted:I have some stuff I want for safe keeping but don't know how to store it. I was thinking of an external HDD in a safe with some other paperwork. How's that sound? Should it be put in a static-free bag? Is there anything I should worry about in the future with it? How do you store your digital personal information, pictures, video, etc? How long do you want to store it? http://www.mdisc.com/  I actually don't have any real knowledge on this subject, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity. I do remember reading that SSDs and (most?) other forms of flash memory start losing data if left unpowered long enough. So if you're going the hard drive route, make sure it's a mechanical one. And nowadays the
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Nov 27, 2013 12:19
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Josh Lyman posted:I thought this was a joke website but it's real Only reason I knew about them was because my optical drive has their logo on it and I wanted to know wtf it meant. The concept behind it sounds pretty  burning grooves into artificial stone and all.
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Nov 28, 2013 11:22
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BigBadSteve posted:Devices over 32GB generally need to be formatted as NTFS or ExFAT (FAT & FAT32 won't work on them). FAT32 works just fine on the 500 GB hard drive I have for my Wii, but it gets pretty slow when you use it for such large volumes. FAT32 is also not very resilient. So making sure there's no disk activity when it is disconnected/shut down is pretty important. This was why Windows always ran ScanDisk if you rebooted your Windows 9x computer without shutting down first. You just need to use some other tool than Windows' format to do it. Not that I'm saying people should use FAT32 on such large drives unless they have somewhat good reasons.
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Dec 5, 2013 03:25
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C-Euro posted:Is there any point or merit in upgrading RAM in a laptop? My laptop is a few years old and I was thinking of trying to squeeze a little more life out of it by moving it from 4GB to 8GB of the stuff. I feel like someone told me that you can't really do that in a laptop, or at least do it easily, but my brother did the same thing with his Macbook Pro and he swears by it, so I don't know what to think. He has a couple of more hardware-savvy friends and I'm wondering if they told him to do it? If you multi-task a lot or use programs that eat a lot of RAM it is most definitely a good idea. It's pretty easy to do, too, but keep in mind that laptops use a different size of memory (called SO-DIMM) than desktops. 4 GB is an OK baseline amount of memory. To see if getting more RAM would be advantageous to you, you could open up the task manager and check out the Performance tab. That'll show you your memory usage. You could even use the Resource Monitor button to show a more detailed view. Keep in mind that standby memory is not actually in use, it is merely data kept in memory in case you might use it again any time soon. If you decide that you want to upgrade to 8 GB, you should first check how your memory is currently laid out. Usually laptops have only two slots, so if it's 2x2GB then you'll want to replace that with 2x4GB. If it's 1x4GB you could get away with just buying a single 4 GB stick of similar (or equal) stats, but it's best to buy matched pairs. You can check by either opening the hatch on the bottom of the laptop or by using CPU-Z's Memory and SPD tabs.
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Dec 6, 2013 14:37
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SpellEdge posted:So I just built my first system, and I have one issue with my case fans. Case is a corsair carbide 400r, m.b. is an asrock z87 extreme4. The front fans on the case have a regular 4 pin molex connector. there was no spot on the motherboard to plug this in(unless I missed it) but I had an adapter to the smaller 4 pin connector. I used the adapter to plug the fans into the pins marked chafan on the mobo and they aren't working. I'm hoping I did identify everything correctly and am not plugging something in where it shouldn't be plugged. The molex connector is supposed to go to your power supply, not your motherboard. Modern power supplies may not have any molex connectors on them anymore, in which case you will need to get an adapter. The small 4 pin connector you have might be a floppy drive power connector.
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Dec 8, 2013 22:59
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Factory Factory posted:It's for the integrated graphics on the Intel chip. It presents no problems at all and can only ever be useful (e.g. if you ever remove the graphics card for troubleshooting and need to use the integrated temporarily). Would you recommend installing it to someone who's been using a graphics card and never installed the Intel graphics drivers for over a year (me)? Fake edit: I'm considering doing a full driver update pass since way back when I installed everything I just grabbed the ones from ASUS' page instead of going to each manufacturer's site and getting them there and might as well install them at that time. poo poo like using Driver Fusion to clear out remnants is only really necessary for AMD/NVIDIA graphics drivers, right?
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Dec 27, 2013 20:46
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MadlabsRobot posted:If I have 2x2GB of 1333MHz RAM in my computer and add another 2x2GB of 1600MHz RAM, will the 1600MHz run at 1333MHz then? The 1600MHz RAM should run at 1333MHz. But mixing RAM may or may not cause stability issues. As for the power issues, maybe your CMOS battery is low and needs replacing.
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Jan 30, 2014 11:29
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Nondescript Van posted:I have a weird problem. I just put together a new system with a gryphon z87 mobo with a seasonic x series psu . The thing is, it will not shutdown and stay off. I shut it down (Windows 8.1) and everything goes off, then about 3 seconds later the psu clicks and everything turns back on. I get no errors in Windows or weird boot behavior. It's all normal. Some piece of hardware or program might be deciding it doesn't wanna go to sleep. Try looking in your event viewer's system logs for entries by Power-Troubleshooter. Or opening a command prompt and typing in powercfg /lastwake. If it turns out to be a piece of hardware, see if you can find it in Device Manager. Then open the properties, go to the Power Management tab and uncheck the checkbox that allows the device to wake the computer.
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Feb 5, 2014 09:52
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ShredsYouSay posted:How serious is it to find out that your 12 volt rail is overvolted? I've been experiencing some unexpected system power downs following installing a new gfx card(which from a wattage stand point is the same as the old one), and according to HWInfo64, the 12 volt rail is varying between 14.9 and 16 volts. HWInfo64 is really not very good. When I first built my computer it wasn't capable of properly reading the sensors on my motherboard and claimed my 12V was putting out -17 while my 3.5V was at 24. Check in the BIOS' hardware monitoring tab or use GPU-Z's sensor tab to check the GPU's sensors. If that still says your 12V is not within 11.4 to 12.6 V (12V ± 5%) then you should get worried. E: I got HWInfo64 and HWMonitor confused in my head. Still, check what the BIOS and GPU-Z say. Geemer fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Feb 9, 2014 |
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Feb 9, 2014 17:48
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ShaneB posted:I have a bunch of SATA drives that are like 4-5 years old and I'm afraid to do anything with them, or generally don't need them any more. What should I do with these drives? Hammer some nails through the tops and toss them? Do some secure wipe and donate them to a local computer hardware place? Is secure wipe even a real thing? I like to just take them apart, rip out the nice and strong magnets (be careful you don't pinch your fingers with them) and my mom likes to take the platters as they're nice and reflective. Welmu posted:Would it be technically feasible for hard drive manufacturers to make a ~5400 rpm HD in the form factor of a 5.25" bay slot (dvd-drive sized)? I'm mainly curious if there any technological barriers due to the larger platter size that prevent their implication - it would be pretty sweet to overcome the density barrier for a while and purchase a large ~8tb drive, as long as it's reliable. I used to have one of these motherfuckers and if I still had an IDE board I could get one for kicks at a local thrift shop. Long before that I also had a 800 MB(!) monster that was two 5.25" bays high and one wide. That thing had eight platters inside.
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Mar 6, 2014 00:34
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I've got one, even if it isn't currently an issue or even going on anymore. Over the course of the years I've had three (wildly) different computers have their built-in ethernet port's MAC address change to 00:00:00:00:00:10. One of those happened after brownouts, but the other two just happened randomly. Anyone have any idea what's up with that? My biggest regret is that I never got to see what happened when two of them were on the network at the same time, because they just happened to be spaced out over various upgrades or replacements.
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Mar 14, 2014 03:38
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Alereon posted:That's the first valid MAC address, indicating that something wiped it or prevented the MAC address from being read. Are you sure it wasn't being overridden via some software you had installed? Pretty sure I never had any MAC address changing software on those computers. It was two XP boxes and one was a Windows Home Server v1, that's the one that got changed during brownouts. I think that I didn't even know you could change your MAC address back then. Only times I noticed what in the router's DHCP tables so I really can't say for sure what was going on in the software department back then. E: One of the XPs was mine, the other was my dad's. So he probably had different software running than me.
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Mar 14, 2014 03:51
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Not really a hardware question, but I'm looking to migrate a family PC to a new, somewhat less crappy, build that recently became available to me. (AMD A4-3300 with a sluggish HDD to an AMD A8-5600K with an 128 GB Samsung 830.) I'll be installing Windows 7 on the new system again, because I don't see why I should let that license go to waste. What is the best way to transfer over user accounts? Is the Windows Easy Transfer thing really as good as it makes itself out to be? 
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Apr 22, 2014 16:28
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Inspector_666 posted:WET is great, just run that and see if there are any niggling settings that need to get moved (Firefox profiles and poo poo like that won't get moved.) This is great to hear. I was worried I'd have to hunt down esoteric Outlook files and the like.
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Apr 22, 2014 17:41
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Trip report on using Windows Easy Transfer: Yeah, this tool is pretty nice. But gently caress Outlook forever. WET doesn't even touch Outlook 2010 at all and all the guides I find are either outdated or flat out lie about buttons being in configuration menus. Including Microsoft's official guides. All I want is to move the contacts lists between computers, the messages are all on Gmail anyway. This shouldn't be so hard. 
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Apr 27, 2014 23:15
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Inspector_666 posted:The easiest thing to do is just open Outlook and export the contacts to a CSV list, then import it on the new computer. Since it's Outlook to Outlook you shouldn't have issues with the field mapping or anything. I can't believe I didn't think of that. I'll have to wait until I can try to import them, but at least I got them exported properly. You may have just saved me from a major headache, so thank you.
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Apr 28, 2014 08:57
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