Posts by Jonathan Mendoza17

I’d probably toss in Waking Life by Richard Linklater. It feels like that specific theme sort of drifts through almost all of his films—just a subtle, constant thread, really.

I think your CPU should be perfectly fine for a stress test, but that GPU? Yeah, it’s pushing it a bit too hard. Speaking from my own little trial-and-error experience here—and I've definitely been there—you really have to be careful with how much thermal paste you use; just a tiny amount will do. I actually had a similar situation once where I used about a pea-sized amount and hit 83 degrees during a stress test, but after I went back in and applied maybe three times less than that, the temp dropped right down to 73. My advice? Don't try to spread the paste manually—that usually just makes a mess—just put a small dollop right in the center of the chip. Then, when you're mounting the heatsink, give it a gentle, even press with your hand to help it spread out naturally. If you just tighten the screws without that extra bit of pressure, it might not be making enough contact. So, if I were you, I'd pop that graphics card open again, give the old paste a thorough cleaning, apply a bit of the new stuff, and you should be golden. Also, it honestly wouldn't hurt to pick up some high-quality paste—nothing too crazy, but maybe skip the absolute cheapest stuff you find at the drugstore.

I suspect you might be wrestling with how to pull data from one worksheet over to another—it can definitely be a bit of a headache at first!



Now, if what you're actually looking for is some help with sorting through all those rows...

WinDirStat is actually a pretty handy tool—it’ll give you a visual breakdown of exactly how much space every single folder and file is hogging on your drive, which makes it much easier to spot what's worth deleting. You might want to take a peek at that hiberfil.sys file; if you're rocking a decent amount of RAM, that thing can grow to be absolutely massive! If you don't actually use the hibernation feature, you can just clear it out. Also, it wouldn't hurt to check your System Restore settings to see how much room those recovery points are eating up.
Now, if you're looking to just wipe the slate completely clean and delete everything, your best bet is really just formatting the partition—though, obviously, you'll have to go through the whole process of reinstalling Windows afterward.

Thanks, darkowl72. I think I’ve actually made up my mind—I'm going to go with a compatible one instead. I mean, when you realize I can grab five replacements for the price of a single original, it’s hard to ignore that kind of math, right? It's just such a massive difference. I'm assuming they'll all work fine with my printer, though—as long as the CE 285A label is the main thing to watch out for, we should be good, shouldn't we? Fingers crossed the shape and fit are spot on!

Alright, so I’m on the hunt for some new toner—my HP LaserJet Pro M1132 MFP is running low. According to the official HP site, the specific replacement I need is the CE285A (HP 85 a). I started doing a little digging online, and at first, I kept running into these options

which are sitting around the $200$50
mark.
But then—and this is where things get interesting—I kept searching and stumbled upon these instead

going for about $40$20
.
What's the catch here? Is it actually the same stuff? I can't quite wrap my head around why there's such a massive price gap. Is it a quality thing—like, will the cheaper one just fail me when I need it most? Is it actually worth grabbing the budget version, or am I just asking for trouble down the road?

30 - Pink Floyd - Shine On You Crazy Diamond
29 - Led Zeppelin - Stairway to Heaven
28 - Simon and Garfunkel - Bridge over troubled water
27 - The Doors - The End
26 - Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb
25 - Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody
24 - King Crimson - Epitaph
23 - Simon & Garfunkel - The Sound Of Silence
22 - The Eagles - Hotel California
21 - Jefferson Airplane - White Rabbit
20 - The Pogues feat. Kirsty MacColl - Fairytale Of New York
19 - Procol Harum - A Whiter Shade Of Pale
18 - Velvet Underground - Heroin
17 - Dire Straits - Private Investigations
16 - Deep Purple - Child In Time
15 - Radiohead - Paranoid Android
14 - Queen - Innuendo
13 - The Temptations - Papa Was A Rolling Stone
12 - Talking Heads - Once In A Lifetime
11 - Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart
10 - Black Sabbath - Paranoid
9 - James - Getting Away With it (All Messed Up)
8 - Pearl Jam - Black
7 - Jimi Hendrix Experience - Voodoo Child
6 - Alice in Chains - Would?
5 - Dire Straits - Romeo and Juliet
4 - R.E.M. - Man On The Moon
3 - Led Zeppelin - Babe I'm Gonna Leave You
2 - The Rolling Stones - You Can't Always Get What You Want
1 - The Cream - White Room

Typically, you’re looking at F2 or F10—though sometimes you might need to hold down the Fn key as well, so try tapping Fn+F2. Even the Esc key might trigger something useful. Usually, those little prompts pop up right on the startup screen the moment you boot the laptop, provided you can catch them before everything else loads.
And just as an aside—your hard drive actually has zero impact on the BIOS. The BIOS lives right there on the motherboard, so it ought to function perfectly fine even if there isn't a single drive inside the machine. Have you had a chance to test that HDD on another computer? You could always plug it into a desktop to check. As for the freezing issues, well, there are honestly a million different reasons why that might be happening.

It’s not quite that straightforward—if I'm following your logic correctly, anyway. Drivers are pretty much hard-coded to the operating system they were built for. So, just because you have a driver for your mouse on Windows 7, that doesn't mean it'll play nice with Windows XP. Which specific mouse are we talking about here?

I’ve got a bit of a half-baked theory here, though I can't say for certain if it applies to your specific situation.
It actually happened to me twice—right after updating my Nvidia drivers (not with AMD, by the way)—where my PC would just freeze right at the Windows login screen after a restart. To be more specific, sometimes it was a total black screen, and other times it looked like a shrunk-down desktop with nothing but the logo sitting in the middle of a sea of blackness, completely unresponsive. After I went through the whole exhausting cycle of reinstalling drivers, running repairs, and all that fun stuff, I finally realized the culprit wasn't even the PC—it was the TV connected to my graphics card! During the boot process, the system was detecting two displays, and for some reason, it was trying to push an image to both—either in extended mode or cloned mode—and things just glitched out. It probably flagged the TV as the primary display, or maybe it was struggling with mismatched resolutions or aspect ratios... who knows, it was a mess. Anyway, the fix was surprisingly simple: while the computer was powered down, I physically unplugged the TV from the graphics card so only the monitor remained. Once I did that, Windows booted up perfectly fine. Then, once everything was fully loaded and running, I plugged the TV back in, and it recognized it without any drama. Everything worked smoothly after that.
It doesn't sound like an exact match for what you're experiencing, but if you have multiple displays hooked up, it might be worth a shot. Who knows, it might help someone else out too.

1. So, apparently Marilyn Manson once pulled out one of his own ribs just so he could have a little solo session—talk about extreme dedication, right? 🤦
2. Get this: Axl Rose is actually an anagram for "oral sex"—his real name is supposedly William Bailey
. Wild. 3. Then there's Prince—he didn't really believe in the concept of time, or rather, he felt that if he didn't count the years, he wouldn't actually age
. Such a vibe. 4. Speaking of Prince, his The Black Album was originally slated for a 1987 release, but he actually blocked the label from putting it out! He was convinced the music was so dark and sinister that releasing it would unleash some primal evil upon the world—some say it was all due to the massive amount of ecstasy he was using back then. It finally saw the light of day in 1994, once he presumably felt it was safe
. 5. I heard a story about some advertising agency that tried to buy the rights to Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire to use in a commercial for hemorrhoid cream... naturally, they were shut down immediately
. 6. You know, Vangelis actually couldn't read or write musical notation at all. Everything he did was purely by ear and memory—just pure intuition
. 7. Bob Marley's father was actually a white man, a British sailor. At the time of Bob's birth, his father was 60 and his mother was only 19. Because of that, people used to call him White Boy
. 8. As far as vocal range goes, Mike Patton reportedly holds the title for pop-rock singers, clocked in at a staggering 6 octaves. But the actual world record belongs to Tim Storms, who hit 10 octaves—which, according to Guinness, is also the lowest pitch ever produced by a human voice
. 9. And here's a fun bit of trivia: Lucy, that famous archaeological fossil representing our ancestors, was actually named after The Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" because someone had been playing it on repeat the day she was discovered
. 10. Believe it or not, the most popular instrument in the entire world is actually the harmonica 😁
.

Oh boy, here we go again... 🤣
Alright, let me break this down for you with a bit of a deep dive.
VGA - purely analog signal
DVI-A - strictly analog signal
DVI-D - strictly digital signal
DVI-I - handles both analog and digital signals
HDMI - purely digital
DisplayPort - purely digital

See, the thing is—your monitor can only receive an analog signal, so that’s exactly what you need to feed it. If your graphics card is putting out a digital signal instead, you’re going to need a converter to bridge that gap. Now, if your card happens to have a DVI-A or a DVI-I port, you can just use a passive adapter—which is great because they're super cheap since they don't actually "convert" anything; they just reroute the pins to pass that analog signal through. But in any other scenario? You'll need one of those slightly pricier adapters that actually does the heavy lifting of converting digital to analog (probably around $10-$15).
So, my advice is to double-check whether your graphics card features a DVI-I connector or a DVI-D one. If it’s DVI-I, you're in luck—just head over to $10 and grab a simple passive DVI/VGA adapter. If it isn't, then you'll specifically need a DVI-D/VGA, HDMI/VGA, or DP/VGA adapter. Just keep in mind those types actually perform signal conversion, which is why they aren't quite as budget-friendly. I'd budget about $43 depending on where you decide to shop.

Okay, things are looking way better now! I gave the heatsink a good scrub with some 70% isopropyl alcohol and applied a much more modest amount of Artic Silver. After running an OCCT burn-in test for about 20 minutes—with the ambient room temperature sitting at a warm 28.6°C—the temps topped out at 73 degrees. That is a literal 10-degree drop from where I was before.
I definitely overdid it with the thermal paste the first time around; even though it didn't look like a massive glob, there was clearly too much excess squeezing out around the chip, which I suppose just choked the cooling process. While I was at it, I decided to refresh the paste on the CPU as well, which shaved off another 2 or 3 degrees. Honestly, I’m really happy with how this paste performs.
Given how hot it is outside right now, I think these temperatures are perfectly fine—plus, once the weather cools down in a month or so, I expect everything to drop by another 8 degrees or so.
Anyway, a huge thanks to Timothy Kim60 and everyone else for the solid advice.

Timothy Kim60 said:The temperature is higher—though not high enough to cause damage—and that gray tint left on the copper shouldn't be an issue, provided there isn't any thick, crusty residue you can actually feel with your finger; the grain size seems fine. Just keep in mind that if your room is sitting at 86°F and your case lacks decent airflow, those temps aren't actually that surprising. How high does it peak while you're gaming? (You can track that using MSI Afterburner or various other monitoring tools like PlayClaw)

So, yesterday I spent about three or four hours straight playing The Witcher 3, and from what I could tell while watching the temps, they hovered around 78°C—though Afterburner showed a peak of 81°C later on, which I guess happened at some point without me noticing. I checked my room temperature, and it’s hovering around 85°F. My case isn't exactly top-tier (it's a Thermaltake Commander MS-III) and I just have the front and rear fans installed. A side fan might not be a bad idea, though I'm not entirely sure it would even fit. Also, it feels to me like this Gigabyte Windforce 3 pushes air more radially than axially, which probably messes with the overall airflow too.
I honestly think I applied way too much paste—now that I'm doing a little digging online, everyone is saying you should aim for a grain of rice rather than a grain of a pea😁 which makes sense, given how small that surface area is compared to the processor itself. It might not be a bad idea to redo it all.
I can't seem to find this IC Diamond paste anywhere in stock. I also stumbled upon this
regarding that specific paste. Honestly, the selection of thermal pastes available here in the States is pretty lackluster. I've been looking at Arctic Cooling, but I'm not seeing anything significantly better than that.
Also, regarding the cleaning, he recommends using isopropyl alcohol. Now, what on earth is that supposed to be? From my Googling, it sounds like something people use when they're making cannabis oil😁 Can I just use regular high-percentage rubbing alcohol from a drugstore, or do I really need to hunt down this specific stuff? I have this screen cleaner that's supposedly natural and free of both alcohol and ammonia (though the ingredients aren't clearly listed anywhere). Think that would work for cleaning the chip? 😁

Timothy Kim60 said:It’s all the same—you can definitely use

Alright, thanks! I tried my hand at it, though—if "tried" is the right word—because I'm honestly not entirely sure if I should be happy with how things turned out.
I didn't go out and grab a fresh tube of something fancy; I just used the Coolink Chillaramic I had on hand. The card was absolutely caked in dust, so I went ahead and tore the whole thing down to give it a thorough cleaning.
At idle, the temps are sitting around 38-40°C. I decided to put it through its paces with an OCCT stress test—maxed everything out, naturally—and let it run for about 20 minutes. For the first 10 minutes, the temperature climbed steadily until it hit 83°C, where it seemed to finally plateau. Now, I don't know what to make of that... it’s probably a solid 86°F in my room, but even so, 83°C feels a little high, doesn't it? Is this acceptable, or should I get back in there and try again?
Regarding application—I placed a pea-sized amount right in the center (since the chip is square rather than rectangular, that felt like the most logical move to me). Do you think that's too much paste?
As for the cleanup, I used cotton swabs to wipe away the old stuff, and I managed to get most of it off quite cleanly. However, looking at the copper surface on the heatsink, there's still a bit of gray residue from the old compound stuck in the micro-textures of the metal. Should I have scrubbed that off with some isopropyl alcohol? Could that actually be causing an issue? Or maybe I just need to upgrade to a higher-end thermal compound.
The card in question is the Gigabyte R9 280 WF3.
The real kicker, though—and this is what's eating at me—is that I didn't record the temperatures before I started this whole ordeal, so I have no baseline to tell if I've actually improved things or made them worse.

Apologies for dropping this here instead of starting a whole new thread—just wanted to keep things tidy since my question is pretty quick.
Is the thermal paste used for a GPU actually the same stuff we use for a CPU? Or is there some specific detail I should be looking out for? I’ve got some leftover Coolink Chillaramic from an old CPU cooler setup—do you think that'll cut it, or am I asking for trouble? If it's not up to par, I'd love to hear if anyone has a solid recommendation.
Also, regarding the application itself—it's the same deal as usual, right? Just a little pea-sized amount right in the center?

Indiana Jones, Mad Max, Terminator, Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean
Just thought I’d drop by and totally throw a wrench in your new poll 😁

You end up losing the warranty on the whole rig, but you still have coverage on the individual components themselves. What that actually means is—if something goes haywire—instead of just dropping off the entire tower and saying, "Hey, fix this," you’ll have to play detective and figure out which specific part is acting up. That said, you could always ask them if you can bring your own HDD over before they put everything together so they can install it for you. That might actually work.
And honestly, I think you'll be totally fine for more than two years—unless, of course, you're the type who absolutely insists on cranking every single game setting to the absolute max.

He mentioned he doesn't actually need the HDD—so, in my opinion, that opens up enough room to squeeze in a much beefier graphics card.

Yeah, looking at those errors, it’s pretty clear some crucial Windows services have just checked out—which is why you're hitting that BSOD. If you decide to go through the trouble of a clean Windows reinstall and the same thing keeps happening, then we’re almost certainly looking at a hardware issue—either your RAM or the Hard Disk Drive.
To test the RAM, if you've got more than one stick in there, you can try pulling them out one by one to see if the instability clears up.
As for the Hard Disk Drive—if you don't have a spare lying around—you could actually pull it out entirely and boot the system from a live DVD instead (maybe something like Hiren's, Linux, or Knoppix...) and if everything runs smoothly that way, well, that would suggest the Hard Disk Drive is indeed the culprit. You might also want to try swapping out the cables connecting the drive, just to rule out a faulty connection while you're at it.