Posts by Matthew Young35

ruggedfox28 said:Quote : The Best F1

Honestly, I think it's a pretty stupid idea. Someone could just show up at the start of the season, drop a default standings table, and then basically never bother updating it for the rest of the year... plus, that table becomes totally useless after just three or four races anyway, since team strength and speed are constantly shifting...

The Joker prediction actually makes way more sense here... since it actually accounts for the last forecast posted...

Quote : The Best F1

I'll get it sorted... 👍

Quote : The Best F1

Those numbers and team colors aren't making it into the charts. They don't serve any purpose and just make everything a cluttered mess...

Of course, even in that scenario, someone would be disqualified after failing to submit an entry three times in a row.

Here are some thoughts to chew on for the upcoming season.
Everyone can submit their own "default" prediction; if you fail to send in a specific forecast for a race, we'll just go with your default one.

Sean Rodriguez7 said:I have a desktop PC
-64 MB graphics card
-768 MB RAM
-2.0 GHz processor
-80 GB HDD
I'm wondering if I could install Windows 7. Will it run okay, or will it lag? I want to know ahead of time so I don't run into any trouble. 🙂

Please help me out. 😁

You could technically install Windows 7 on that rig, but it’ll crawl along like a scandal following a Republican Party administration.

That isn't the only distinction at play here.
In reality, that 4GB limit is simply a side effect of the fact that 2 to the power of 32 equals 4GB, meaning the processor can't address more than 4GB. The memory might physically be there, but there just aren't enough addresses to reach it.

If my memory serves me right, there are certain chipsets and 32-bit processors out there that actually support up to 8GB.

Beyond the addressing issue—and the resulting impossibility of accessing more than 2^32 addresses (4GB)—the difference lies in how 64-bit processors "naturally" handle much larger numbers, specifically 2^64. This means that, for instance, adding two large numbers (or any calculation where the result exceeds 2^32) is processed faster on a 64-bit processor.

There is more to it, of course, but...

Brian Campbell36 said:You’re wrong. I just ended the process and the issue was gone!
The usage dropped from 25% all the way down to 0%!
At least, that's what happened on my machine.

Of course it dropped to zero once you killed the process that was acting up in the first place.

I am trying to point out that a standard system reboot would have killed that process anyway.
Is that really such a difficult concept to grasp?

Brian Campbell36 said:No, I just killed the specific driver process that was sitting there hogging 25% of my Intel i7's resources while idling! 😉

A simple right-click, select "End Task," and the headache vanished.

Now it’s sitting at a perfectly normal 0% idle usage.

If you see a process eating up juice that isn't even related to drivers, then you've actually got a real problem on your hands.

But kill a core system process? Then the whole OS goes down with it.

I certainly hope you didn't kill an actual processor service. 😁

When you shut down a PC, every single process is terminated anyway.

So, does it really matter if you manually kill a process first or just hit shutdown and let the OS clean house? It's essentially the same thing—the only real difference is the order of operations.

Besides, that process will probably just respawn the next time you boot up the machine.

Well, I figured I’d chime in here, provided there’s still room at the table...

Brian Campbell36 said:...

If we're talking about drivers, just right-click, end the process, and then reboot the machine.

Well, you haven't actually accomplished anything with that approach. In fact, you might as well have just performed a standard restart.
🤷

Raymond Adams48 said:I finished installing Windows 7 along with a few programs and games, and then the system went ahead and ran its own updates for Service Pack 1 and several other things.
Now I'm noticing that even when the computer is idling, the CPU usage sits somewhere between 20% and 30%.
It really ought to be closer to just 1% or 2%.
What am I looking at here? Any advice?

Are we talking about a laptop here? It's possible the system is just scaling down the processor frequency during idle states.

You don't even need to go through all that trouble. Just carve out a 200 GB partition, run a quick format, and you're good to go.

Taylor Morales31 said:Fine, I’m the idiot here. Let’s move on.
At the end of the day, everyone has their own preferences. It’s your machine, and you should be the one to decide exactly what gets installed on it. 👍

And then there’s that whole issue—how we tend to be so offensive.
I never once called you an idiot.
What I said about it not working because of the language settings was just a joke. Obviously, that isn't the actual reason for the failure.
In my view, having any software or an operating system set to American makes it practically unusable. That isn't to say it won't function, of course, but the experience is significantly worse. It just doesn't work for me.

David Parker44 said:I honestly don't get why some people feel embarrassed by our language. Why would anyone think a foreign tongue is somehow superior?🙂

It’s not about being ashamed of my native language. The real issue is that when it comes to technical terminology, our language becomes a complete mess.
Beyond that, looking at the quality of recent translations, it seems the people handling them are practically illiterate when it comes to IT.
In the tech world, English is the absolute standard. Trying to fight that reality is just tilting at windmills.

Brian Campbell36 said:So what?
Everything from Microsoft Office to Winamp is already in English. ☕

That’s exactly why it isn't working. :P

Windows in English 🤦

Benjamin King2 said:Once you hit F8, the first option on the menu should be "Repair your computer." Those files live on that tiny hidden partition—about 100 MB—that gets created during the Windows installation. If that partition isn't there, you'll have to use a recovery CD to run the repair.

When I tap F8, "Repair" doesn't even show up. All I get is "Safe mode," "Safe mode with command prompt," and "Normal boot."
I don't think I have any sort of small hidden partition...
Actually, I am 100% certain it isn't there. 🤷

Benjamin King2 said:If you’d had a disc on hand, you wouldn't have needed to mess with the hardware. At the very least, you should have made a system repair disk if an installation disc wasn't available.

The repair utility should launch automatically from the hard drive if there isn't a bootable disc present.

It's hard to say exactly what went wrong off the top of my head. You should check the repair log located in the C:\Windows\System32\LogFiles\SRT folder.

Well, shoot, I didn't have a CD.
I managed to track one down in the meantime, though.

The log files aren't offering much insight; according to them, everything looks fine.

Is there any way to trigger that repair without using a CD? I mean, I got it running by tinkering with the hardware, but is there a more "standard" way to do it?

Noah Sanchez39 said:Try restoring the system using the sfc /scannow command; you might also want to look into other advanced startup options 🙂

PS. I haven't actually had much reason to use them myself, so I'm not entirely sure how effective they really are.

Benjamin King2 said:Run Startup Repair from a boot disk—specifically that first option from the link Noah provided.

Problem solved.
First, I tried tapping F8. That gave me options like:
"Safe mode"
"Safe mode with command prompt" (or something similar)
"Normal Boot"

All three options yielded the exact same result: a black screen with nothing but a cursor. The only thing that actually triggered a response was hitting Shift five times, which brought up the prompt asking if I wanted to turn on Sticky Keys.

Then came the panic. I started frantically searching for a Windows DVD. Naturally, I couldn't find one.
It was already 8:00 PM, and I needed my computer functional by 9:00 PM so I could catch the Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea FC match.

In a rush, I booted into Ubuntu 9.4 and searched the disk for an ISO. I thought I had one saved (which reminded me I need to make a new one), but of course, there was no image to be found.

It was 8:37 PM.

I opened up the machine and unplugged the DVD and HDD, then swapped them to different ports.
Windows began the boot process, but just as the black screen and cursor were supposed to appear, the computer restarted itself. At that moment, I was convinced it was a hardware failure; since the Live Linux environment worked fine, I assumed the HDD was dying.
Then, during the Windows boot sequence, out of nowhere, it dropped me straight into some sort of recovery menu.
I used a restore point from there, and suddenly, everything was working perfectly.
8:55 PM.

So, what can I say? What's the moral of the story here?
What actually happened, and how do I prevent this from happening again?
And more importantly, how do I access that recovery menu without resorting to playing surgeon with my hardware?

I made it just in time for kickoff... ended in a 1-1 draw.

Alright, let's hear it from the experts who swear by the idea that Windows doesn't need a clean reinstall at least once a year... I could use some help here.
The problem:
Every time I boot up, the logo flashes on the screen, but before I can even reach the login prompt, everything goes black. I can still move my cursor around, but that's about it. The keyboard seems responsive, yet Ctrl+Alt+Delete won't trigger anything.
I tried booting into Safe Mode, but no luck there either. It's completely stuck.
I'll keep tinkering with it for a bit, but if I haven't cracked it by the weekend, I’m just going to wipe the drive and start fresh with a new installation.
Any suggestions?

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing...ctor/#features

I’ve only had to deal with a full reinstallation once in the year I’ve been running Windows 7.
It’s certainly seen some meaningful improvements compared to the days of Windows XP.

Still, certain old habits die hard.
First off, they just seem to get slower and slower over time.
There is always some phantom process or junk file bloating up the hard drive.
And if you happen to plug in a lot of different USB peripherals? Good luck. Drivers tend to get completely scrambled, and frankly, there isn't much you can do to force them to behave properly again.