A thread for boring computer questions.

Hi, I'm backing up my buddies computer with a 1.5 TB seagate backup plus HD. The comp is a 10.6.8 iMac but the external is only compatible with 10.9 or higher. Is it correct that I can use disk utility to reformat the external to make it compatible?

i can't think of a formatting reason why a drive that works on 10.9 wouldn't work on 10.6.8 other than ... hardware?

but if it is a format issue then yes use disk utility to format on the 10.6.8 mac and it will default to a sensible option for that version

it should work with any computer. the os requirement is for the Seagate software which you probably won't want to use. time machine or carbon copy cloner are gonna be what you want

yeah it was the seagate software that required the OS. Formatted it anyway via disk utility, my friend had used 950 GB of 1000 :-/ thanks!

im currently in the middle of the most drawn out, painful upgrade of my life.

a few weeks ago i spilled a cup of coffee down my desktop while reorganizing my room. kills it. the system is dead, won't turn on, etc. the power works but only one fan is getting it and it sounds like it is turning over. i took it apart and there was coffee on the motherboard, so i think, no prob, just get a new motherboard.

i go out and get a new motherboard. installing it the next day i realize it won't take my CPU. this board is LGA1151 and my CPU is LGA1150. my mistake was finding a board that supported an intel i5 chip, i didn't realize there were different generations, so i was trying to fit a gen 5 chip in a gen 6/7 board. of course while trying to get this to work i bend a bunch of pins ruining the board and my chances of returning it. whatever.

next trip to the store i am looking for a 1150 board and nobody fucking sells them. i bought a motherboard + cpu combo last year and now nobody carries motherboards with the 1150 sockets anymore. so i say fuck it i will just buy a new motherboard + cpu combo to make this easier. i get a i5 7500 7th generation with a nice motherboard. oh yeah this is gonna be a sweet upgrade, im thinking.

later that day i realize my ram doesn't fit this new board. ram i bought a year ago to go with the old new board. what the fuck. are they killing upgrade? i grew up in the 80s, i used to build 386/486 computers swapping parts, all that shit is a distant memory now. you have to buy new hardware. there is no way around it.

i look it up on the internet, i have to buy entirely new ram, and ram that is $10 a GB, which is way more pricey than it used to be when i bought it last time just a year ago. what choice do i have, now i am in the hole $400 and if i do not keep spending money on this i will never get my computer back.

today i got the memory in the mail. i plug it in, i hold my breath, the computer turns on. thank the lord. i login to windows 7. there is my wallpaper (Twin Peaks episode 8 a bomb test fyi) there is sound. hmmm... something's wrong, i can't login to the internet, in fact my LAN isn't recognized at all. i download some drivers and put them on a USB drive. my computer won't read it. then a message pops up:

Unsupported hardware: Your PC uses a processor that is designed for the latest version of Windows. Because the processor is not supported together with the Windows version that you are currently using, your system will miss important security updates. Please select the "learn more" link to address this situation.

no idea where the link goes because it opens a browser window that is useless because my LAN driver is not installed because Windows 7 will not work on a new CPU becauase FUFUSDUXFGSDFG ESDBFJIOTYGhsd rgdiriutgoges4rdifgcv

seriously fuck microsoft fuck computers rn

that's horrendous and stupid and bad

jebus, i didn't know things had gotten this bad in Windowsland

RAM prices have been insane the last 15 years or so - instead of continuously getting cheaper and better, the market fluctuates constantly (and suspiciously) according to rare earth mineral supply or whatever

that CPU/Windows 7 shit is bizarre

Microsoft just doesn't support newer hardware in old versions of Windows, because back porting sucks. tbh it's very obvious with Apple computers: they are the only hardware vendors, the hardware you buy is not guaranteed to run any OS version released before the version that comes bundled with it

Adam, I would bet (if they still do it this way) since you got a cpu/motherboard you qualify for an OEM Windows 10 license? might not be any cheaper than just getting Win 10, though.

It's insane to me you still have to pay money for Windows

maybe if they go further down the hardware route they’ll stop that

(my workplace has msdn licenses for developers and I do not, in fact, personally pay for windows)

Speaking of xpost avoiding the use of Seagate software, what's a good external hard-drive set-up (with and without system imaging) for Win 7? Was thinking of just=plug-in, no software, for saving music, docs etc. another one for occasional system images (vs. this ransomware I have heard tell of). The latter mandating software, yes?

mh thanks for the advice, i dont pay for windows either ;-)

ended up installing Windows 10, only to realize i had formatted my hard drive! i had selected the partition with my old Windows but apparently it deleted the entire drive. i spent an hour in abject terror that i had deleted my entire life's work, all my photos, all my video work, every song i ever recorded, etc. i loaded some recovery software and sweet jesus it found my formatted partition. currently using EaseUS Recovery software to bring my archives back from the dead. it is possible to save gigs of data even if you format over it for a new Windows install!

this will probably be the last time i ever do piecemeal upgrades tho. it is cheaper and faster to just buy a new machine. it was really weird to buy a new cpu and motherboard and have windows refuse to run wtf

by default i think windows does the "quick" format which is basically a fake wipe

How can I make my Win 10 laptop more like my phone, such that I can speak rather than type commands when I'd like to? This would be most helpful with Google -- the ability to bark my search than have to type it out. Thanks a lot.

so... i'm going to try to clear the space to be able to upgrade mah windows 10 (per above issue).

if i want to temporarily move some files, system things and application files and such, is there any good rule of thumb as to what i can move without disturbing anything, so that it can just be copied back afterward? i don't know my way around the standard system setup to be confident of what belongs where.

i’d start with your user directory, typically at c:\users\j. or whatever your username is. Some files you probably want to leave there, but anything in documents, music, other libraries can be moved

yeah i got that one covered, not much except a bigass dropbox folder (that won't get me all the way where i need to be deletion-wise)

Applications may well have config files stored elsewhere (AppData, Public Documents folders etc), if the update is not going to affect them (not sure how big an overhaul you are doing?) you're okay.

Otherwise it's probably safer to reinstall any apps you think will be lost in the update.

i'm only running a few that aren't preinstalled anyway. i wouldn't be surprised to have some of the preinstalled ones touched by the updater, most of it's MS stuff.

one idea is to run Disk Cleanup (Cortana Disk Cleanup > and you will find it), and select all the options including the 'Clean Up System Files' option.
Also, check the other tab 'More Options', as this is where you get access to clean up 'System Restore and Shadow Copies'.
Before hitting the Go button, W10 will advise as to how much space this will clear, so, if its not enough then i would not bother, and find something else to sort out.
Note : this is kinda risky, but not that much, as it does not affect anything other than backup/restore options.

also.
got to Settings > Apps > Sort by Size
you could be surprised as to which app is soaking up a lot of space.
i once when drunk installed 'Sonic Dash', and just found out its 2Gb!
now for my machine thats not too serious, but if on 32Gb, then thats definitely a goner.

so Window is doing this thing where my monitor shuts off if there is no activity but it doesn't take into account when i'm playing music. so i'll put on some music and then in 10 minutes the computer just goes to sleep. wtf.

also VLC now makes a chime every time a song starts to play. i can turn this off but Windows turns it back on. again, what the fuck, Windows?

Control Panel > Power Management (or something similar) should have separate power controls for monitor and hard disk. You can increase the amount of inactive time before the HD goes to sleep or even disable it. Maybe it's currently set to 10 minutes?

Dunno about the VLC thing though.

ty!

fuuuuuuuuck

so this is what my Windows 10 looks like right now

http://www.computerstepbystep.com/wpimages/wpbd68dc26_06.png

pretty much up shit creek without a paddle here. when i look up fixes, they are written in English but i can't see any English words because all of the characters are boxes and triangles. also when i look this up i see it was an issue in Windows XP. 15 years ago!!!! why didn't you fix this 15 years ago Bill Gates you piece of shit????

from what i can tell i made the terrible error of installing a new font. kill me now.

really love that Windows 10 won't let you hotkey into Safe Mode without setting it up through a menu first. great idea, geniuses.

Cool that you can make Windows 10 look like XP though.

yeah i had to borrow a screenshot bc it is impossible to do anything on my computer. luckily that has been a problem that has gone unsolved for 15 years so rest assured the characters on my Windows 10 desktop match those seen above.

also props to Windows for using a different font for some menus, so that i can still type in "recovery" in the search bar and have a menu come up that says "Recovery" in plain English at the top while all the descriptive text inside the dialog itself is undecipherable hierglyphs

doubt that this will help you at this point but you can get into safe mode in windows 10 by holding the shift key while you click restart. you also may be able to boot to a bootable usb and do a 'refresh' which would allow you to reinstall windows w/out losing data.

Does the F8 trick not work on BIOS startup with Win10???

F8 did not work for me! i was able to get some text readable and then configure for Advanced Start Up and supposedly a blue screen w options is supposed to pop up on reboot but i saw nothing. i moved the mouse and it looked like it was in safe mode, mouse cursor over a black screen.

then the cursor started flickering to a blue Germs Burn and back to a cursor, flickering back and forth really fast. it just sat there doing this until i shut it off and played BOTW instead.

ok its weird. i found some fonts i had downloaded and reinstalled them and now my font for everything is this cheap open source copy of a real font. well not everything, my clock still looks like a ziggurat.

Internet Explorer works fine but when I try to open Chrome it is displaying in all heiroglyphs and in that browser cannot connect to the internet. which is weird, because a font shouldn't really have anything to do with internet connection.

in Chrome what characters it is trying to print on the screen, i have no idea what they say. i guess a temporary solution would be to copy the test and paste it into notepad.

you can get into safe mode in windows 10 by holding the shift key while you click restart

thanks! ill try that. i do have a bootable USB a reinstall may be in order lol. i have had Windows 10 for less than a season and already im doing this.

Run a virus scan when you're able to.

Also, this might help:
https://www.digitalcitizen.life/4-ways-boot-safe-mode-windows-10

ok that's the webdings font with some of the characters not displaying properly.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/3nimxl/windows_10_font_got_changed_to_wingdings/

ok, best instructions

Hmm. My Local Disc (D) has completely disappeared ...

(Or ... anyone recommend/trust a computer repair person in Oxfordshire?)

??

This looks...unhealthy

ERROR: Service 'jobs' failed to build: failed to register layer: Error processing tar file(exit status 1): write /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.9/cc1: no space left on device

^C^C% ➜ v1 git:(master) ✗ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity iused ifree %iused Mounted on
/dev/disk1 112Gi 95Gi 17Gi 85% 4051615 4290915664 0% /
devfs 186Ki 186Ki 0Bi 100% 643 0 100% /dev
map -hosts 0Bi 0Bi 0Bi 100% 0 0 100% /net
map auto_home 0Bi 0Bi 0Bi 100% 0 0 100% /home
/dev/disk2s1 58Gi 38Gi 20Gi 66% 603920 4294363359 0% /Volumes/research

I ran fsck -fy in single user mode, it fixes some errors with invalid block counts or something like that and boots up ok, but problem persists

Installed Mac OS to usb no problem, just blew everything away and started again, looks a lot healthier. dotfiles worked perfect!

/dev/disk1 37Gi 15Gi 22Gi 41% 548297 4294418982 0% /
/dev/disk0s5 3.6Gi 25Mi 3.6Gi 1% 78 4294967201 0% /Volumes/downloads
/dev/disk0s4 19Gi 4.9Gi 14Gi 27% 109 4294967170 0% /Volumes/docker
/dev/disk0s7 19Gi 2.7Gi 16Gi 15% 122 4294967157 0% /Volumes/vagrant

thank you for the instructions mh! i will try as this is exactly what the issue was w my computer.

the good news is that i was able to boot from the USB i used to install and run chkdsk /r /f /x on command prompt to fix disk issues. sadly upon starting my machine i find that Windows 10 will not start. it seems to be trying to start Safe Mode but is stuck on a loading cursor. i can reinstall Windows but attempting to do so brings up a "This hard drive is locked" message. wonderful, my only operating system will not start and has not provided the necessary tools to unlock the hard drive and fix its shit. i googled this and found myself at a website called www.windowsreport.com and thought, should i really be downloading "repair tools" from a website with that name?

this shit is so tiring. i have been dealing with Windows since 3.1 and it seems like things have only gotten worse. the scary thing is Microsoft Windows is used in public infrastructure. i see it all the time on the public transit terminals and monitors. i know it is Windows because the system is down and i see the same damn error dialog box i see at home. scarily, this tech is everywhere. this stuff is running space stations. i fear the state of shitty bloated UI accidentally bringing down modern civilization far more than any AI.

tbh the best thing about cloud/container stuff is Microsoft having to make OS variants that are first-class citizens that aren’t the mainline gui version

the kiosk stuff was always pretty halfassed, they’re getting closer on that front

I have a coworker who loves to talk about this and I roll my eyes, but he’s not wrong.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/02/intel_cpu_design_flaw/

great now the next time Windows updates my computer will run 30% slower

Crucially, these updates to both Linux and Windows will incur a performance hit on Intel products. The effects are still being benchmarked, however we're looking at a ballpark figure of five to 30 per cent slow down, depending on the task and the processor model.

or 5%

but probably 17.5%

most workloads won't notice much difference at all. the 30% is a ceiling that assumes a shitload of calls that require the kernel page separation stuff