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Computer foolery
Mar. 15th, 2015 01:40 pmThe machine I've been trying to target as my one and only desktop to do all the things has been irritatingly erratic. Yet for some reason I kept at it. This morning I decided that maybe I should grab the latest version of Windows 10 Technical Preview. Previously the problem I had with it was that the video would reset frequently; the two monitors attached to the main card would go black, then come back after a few seconds. This was mainly only happening when there was a lot of activity on the screen. On Windows 7, video playback was erratic; youtube would get flaky and slow, videos on the PC would be very jerky.
At some point today I decided to go have a look at the BIOS settings because it sure seemed like a hardware issue. This solved the problem completely. Windows flipped out a bit, rebooted twice and went through an auto-recovery thing, but then came up and it's been rock solid for a couple of hours now and performing better than ever. The culprit in the BIOS seems to have been "cool and quiet" mode which apparently undervolts the CPU. I don't know how that's ever a good idea.
The only remaining problem is that Sony Movie Studio is crashing when I set the bitrate on the videos too low, but I can live with that.
It remains to be seen if the old problem I had with large videos in a directory causing Explorer to go nuts on the CPU and lock up will remain - so far it looks good.
Hopefully this fully stabilizes this machine. It's only 2 years old, so I would generally hope to use it for another 3 to 4 years at least. I have a licensed Win 7 for it so theoretically I can put a legit Windows 10 on it when it's released.
I also gave up on KeePass2 and went back to Lastpass. Keepass just couldn't keep its head straight when updating passwords from multiple devices (phone, tablet, work and home PC). It refused to sync sometimes, and at other times created multiple copies of the database file. Also the integration even with multiple plugins was never even close to as good as Lastpass is. I'd prefer to keep my passwords on more self-provided services, but not at the cost of things being difficult to use and often out of sync. I just didn't have a feeling of confidence from this program.
Oh, and I'm back on Chrome as well. Firefox is OK but it's still one big thread. When I have a tab go nuts the entire app just goes belly-up on Firefox, getting very unresponsive. With Chrome I can just whack that one tab and keep going without a blink.
At some point today I decided to go have a look at the BIOS settings because it sure seemed like a hardware issue. This solved the problem completely. Windows flipped out a bit, rebooted twice and went through an auto-recovery thing, but then came up and it's been rock solid for a couple of hours now and performing better than ever. The culprit in the BIOS seems to have been "cool and quiet" mode which apparently undervolts the CPU. I don't know how that's ever a good idea.
The only remaining problem is that Sony Movie Studio is crashing when I set the bitrate on the videos too low, but I can live with that.
It remains to be seen if the old problem I had with large videos in a directory causing Explorer to go nuts on the CPU and lock up will remain - so far it looks good.
Hopefully this fully stabilizes this machine. It's only 2 years old, so I would generally hope to use it for another 3 to 4 years at least. I have a licensed Win 7 for it so theoretically I can put a legit Windows 10 on it when it's released.
I also gave up on KeePass2 and went back to Lastpass. Keepass just couldn't keep its head straight when updating passwords from multiple devices (phone, tablet, work and home PC). It refused to sync sometimes, and at other times created multiple copies of the database file. Also the integration even with multiple plugins was never even close to as good as Lastpass is. I'd prefer to keep my passwords on more self-provided services, but not at the cost of things being difficult to use and often out of sync. I just didn't have a feeling of confidence from this program.
Oh, and I'm back on Chrome as well. Firefox is OK but it's still one big thread. When I have a tab go nuts the entire app just goes belly-up on Firefox, getting very unresponsive. With Chrome I can just whack that one tab and keep going without a blink.
