Someplace to stash my stuff
starkers's Articles In Personal Computing » Page 2
November 22, 2020 by starkers
As the title suggests, Big Beastie underwent a complete makeover.  Turns out my Cooler Master 1200w PSU was the culprit with my Threadripper build and causing the mobo and CPU to short out.  It was throwing out 18v - 20v on the 12v rail, thus shorting out all that was connected to it.  I'm not expecting CoolerMaster to compensate me for the damage [about 1400 bucks] so I've moved on and Big Beastie now has an Intel 10th Gen Core i7 10700F LGA 1200 CPU mounted on an ASUS ROG Str...
June 14, 2020 by starkers
I'm not having much luck with computers just lately.  My Big Beastie with the Ryzen Threadripper X2920 suddenly died and I had to take it into a techie to find out how and why.... being I have no diagnostic tools to speak of.  It turns out that the mobo just up and died on me.  Geez, it's not even 6 months old and it retired itself. Anyhow, that wasn't the end of it and I got some good news.  The techie sent it back to MSI and they promptly replaced it without question.&nb...
February 28, 2020 by starkers
It doesn't matter which conversion program I use, my PC freezes up during conversions,  Sometimes it is very early in the piece and sometimes as much as 60% to 70% has completed, which is really annoying because none of it appears in the conversion folder until 100% has completed, meaning the time and effort was wasted. If anyone can suggest what and why this may be happening I'd be most pleased as I have family awaiting their videos. TIA, Mark.  
January 28, 2020 by starkers
After moving interstate from Queensland to Tasmania, it came to pass that my primary PC wouldn't start.  I tried all sorts of things and no go, it was dead in the water.... or so I thought.  Upon removing some of the components to make way for a new build, I inadvertently touched the Start button on the motherboard and the machine started.  Turns out it was a faulty hard-drive, that once removed the machine started without issue.  Thing is, I had already set my heart on an AM...
September 5, 2018 by starkers
I was so pleased with myself once I had gotten my Cosmos II Big Beastie all set up with Win 10 and all of my most used programs.  It was a long time coming, what with mobo issues and the like, and it was fantastic to sit here in front of the 35" ultra wide screen connected to it....UNTIL MS decided to sneak in an update around 3.00 AM and borked quite a bit of stuff. I know it was around 3.00AM cos I walked past the machine to go to the toilet at 3.06 AM and noticed it was on and downloa...
May 27, 2018 by starkers
Yeah, as the title suggests, I'm having trouble with notepad.exe constantly reinventing itself.... no matter how many times I end the process in Taskmanager/Taskkill in CMD as administrator.  I no sooner end it and it is back pretty much instantly.  When this happens the CPU is running at over 90%, often at full tilt, 100%.  Not only that, it is writing files that I cannot find.  So far it has written over 30Gb of files I am unable to locate, and on a 120Gb SSD, I will run ou...
December 1, 2017 by starkers
Couldn't wait 'til after Christmas, which apart from Christmas Dinner and Christmas Pud is just another day for me these days. We'll just have a quiet dinner and day here among ourselves, and maybe visit or get a visit from my sister.  Other than that it'll be fairly non-eventful, which suits me fine. So anyway, I've been wanting to rebuild for a while now, and earlier this evening I decided to bite the bullet and order the parts I want: Asus ROG Crosshair Hero VI/ AMD Ryzen 1700 bun...
March 27, 2017 by starkers
At long last, after various hold-ups and distractions, days when I felt like crap with vertigo and arthritis, I finally got my AMD FX 8350 in the Thermaltake Level 10 case up and running again.  Admittedly, there were a few things I needed to do to it - like install an AMD GFX card to match the CPU brand-wise, swap out some RAM and HDDS, etc - but that was just one part of a larger project.  I've also been remodelling my desk and reorganising everything so I'm not using as much...
February 5, 2017 by starkers
Well the title say it all, I just found a portable apps manager in Liberkey and I'm finding quite useful indeed.  Not only does it keep all the apps handy in the one place, I've been able to uninstall several similar/equivelant programs to save space on my SSD, being the Liberkey versions tend to have a smaller footprint. The program is similar to Nirsoft's app manager, but I like Liberkey better.  Now for those of you who don't know about Liberkey, take a look here...
November 8, 2016 by starkers
Just when I thought I'd overcome the keyboard and mouse issues that came with Windows Update, Microsux goes a messes thing up again... and not through regular Windows Update... this time. Last night I was working on some video conversions when all of a sudden my machine BEGINS TO REBOOT: ''Working on Updates.  Do Not Turn Off Your Machine'' Like WTF? Windows Update is disabled.  No, it was done through Scheduled Maintenance which was running in the background ...
October 24, 2016 by starkers
Yup, you read it right, Apple created a one-handed pop out keyboard for both left and right handed users, yet it is locked away because Apple does not want people using it.  Like I said, how stupid is that? You can read more about it here. The only way an IOS user can access this feature is to jailbreak their phone, thus voiding the warranty and possibly messing up the phone entirely.  Perhaps a 3rd-party developer will come up with one.... IF Apple allows it to appear in...
October 23, 2016 by starkers
Okay, just kidding.  Stardock can't do/think of everything; however, this nifty little tool from Nurgo Software is pretty cool.... not to mention somewhat useful. Yup, TidyTabs adds tabbed browsing to Windows Explorer and programs such as Word, Notepad and others. While the program does detect tabbable programs, there is a whitelist and blacklist to either add your own or remove those you don't need or use. I got is earlier and am quite chuffed at how useful it is.... havin...
October 1, 2016 by starkers
In the early days I made it quite clear that I did not like Win 10 and that I'd stick with Win 8.1 because it is fast, stable and reliable.  In fact, I'm still using 8.1 on my main rig and am happy with the choice to remain with it.  However, I have Win 10 0n my HP 2-in1 and like it much better now that I've tweaked it to suit my likes and needs.  In some cases I used 3rd-party apps to achieve the desired result, but often times I could adjust things in 'Settings&#...
February 21, 2016 by starkers
The title pretty much says what the problem is, and for the most part it isn't an issue.... until I want to use various 3rd party programs to defrag and/or clean up. For example, the wipe free space in Ccleaner is unavailable, with the select boxes for each HDD greyed out and the drive description being SSD, which it isn't.  The other program I can't use is SmartDefrag.  Again, the select boxes for my HDDs are greyed out, and the drives are recognised as SSDs. Thing i...
June 4, 2015 by starkers
Well my CoolerMaster Cosmos II, ASUS Maximus VII Hero mobo and CPU cooler have arrived... at long fechen last. Oops, I did say rant off, didn't I?   Still, I waited long enough... and maybe there's a little residual frustration lingering. Anyway, I unpacked the Cosmos II.... and what a beastie it is, too!  I thought the Thermaltake Level 10 was a beastie, but this beastie beats that beastie by quite a bit.  It's fechen huge!  Put it this way, and not...