Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Lord Shonus]

Ok, hard drive's good. The next step is to check RAM. This is harder.

Follow this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_xFNojChNA

and post your results.

[methylatedspirit]

So, I currently have the laptop. Userbenchmark says that the CPU is actually performing better than expected, so it's unlikely to be thermal throttling. I even tested Prime95 (small FFTs), and the cooling system's definitely capable of dissipating 45W, which is the TDP of the CPU (an i7-6700HQ). Thermal throttling is completely ruled out in my book.

Looking at what HWiNFO64 shows, though, it seems that the effective clock speed is really low (~200 MHz) when it's idling. It's very aggressively throttling itself down to sub-potato speeds at idle. I'm trying to get into the Alienware Command Center to unlock the overclocking options, and it's really damn slow.

Edit: Apparently, no, I don't think this thing overclocks. It requires this Alienware Graphics Amplifier to be plugged in, which is an external GPU enclosure. I forgot, the model of this laptop is Alienware 15 R2.

Edit 2: This is shaping up to be a problem of bloat, not of thermal throttling. I'm tempted to do a full reinstall, but that might be annoying to reconfigure. I'd rather not do that. I should probably try and uninstall everything non-essential to see if performance improves.

Edit 3: I think I found the culprit: the hard drive. It takes 3 minutes to fully load Windows and everything associated with it, which makes it feel way slower than it actually is. It's a bottleneck, in other words. The solution at that point is to just buy an SSD.

[Imic]

Ok, hard drive's good. The next step is to check RAM. This is harder.

Follow this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_xFNojChNA

and post your results.

Nothing. No errors, no abnormalities, nothing.

[Lord Shonus]

That rules out most hardware problems. Hit Ctrl-Alt-Esc and post a screenshot (or two) of your processes.

[Imic]

Lemmee know if any more screenies are necessary.

[Lord Shonus]

We're going to need all the processes running, because we're looking for anythng suspicious.

[Starver]

From the first screen[1], I spot two (otherwise) undifferentiated "Avast" processes, one with an exclamation on it. It's not unusual to see loads of sub-processes for an AV package, as it must necessarily keep an eye on updates, changes, itself, etc and they seem to like that spread of subtly different components, and none of those are (current) system-hogs, but I'd put on a checklist the need to check why that warning on that item. The other Avast items check out as (allegedly) key components, but I can't currently compare with the only machine I know of that has it installed (being in someone else's home) and don't care to swap things more locally, I'm afraid.


And if there's a second AV/realtime-malware scanner further down the alphabet (non-Avast e.g. maybe if you're covered well enough with Windows Defender[2]) they may occasionally trying to check up each other and blocking each other (Philosopher's Problem, effectively) but that's not apparently happening right now, just mentioning it for possible future reference.



[1] With 0.4% of the 2% total processor load, so expecting 5 times what we see there, ignoring rounding errors.

[2] For older versions of Win, I'd have recommended avoiding Windows' own basic AV and choosing a good free one, or a movable feast of the paid ones depending on how they're currently living up to their reputation, but the dynamics have changed a bit over the last few years so I'm not so sure about any of that.
 

[Lord Shonus]

Windows Defender is currently on-par with most alternatives, and runs smoother.


That actually might be the problem, if both are running.

[Imic]

Should I turn things on? If so, what should I turn on? I dedpfinitely have more than one antivirus, but I have no idea what to do with them, and my computer seems to produce new ones out of its arse and I think the friend who usually helps is in on it.

[Starver]

A) If you think you have multiple AVs running, each checking files, that's not ideal. They might be checking files being accessed for checking by another AV, which leads to... well, problems not dissimilar to yours. Or they might be more sensible than that, but it's something to seriously consider. Some (Maleatebytes edit:Malwarebytes (I hate touchscreen keyboards!) is popular) might be only on-demand checkers, so wouldn't tantrum-spiral your PC that way. Tell us which you think are running, or...

B) Do that process list screenshot again, but scroll down, rescreenshot, etc to give us the full list and not just the top bit. That'll reveal all the running stuff (or enough to promote further help) and if as well as Avira we see McAfee, Sophos, F-Secure, Symmantec (e.g.) then we know at least one thing we can argue about how to solve.

Even if it isn't anything like that, something else might show up to solve.

[Reelya]

Should I turn things on?

You should be asking what you can turn off. Uninstall pretty much everything you can except the bare bones. You're not going to die if you uninstall Avast for a bit, unless you surf some really sketchy websites.

Definitely don't have more than one third-party AV software installed at once, that sounds horrible. Note that things like McAfee are often installed by other third-party software because of deals they have. Delete these if you didn't specifically request them to be installed. I consider MacAfee to be borderline malware itself, due to their predilection for randomly installing it with other third-party software when you didn't ask for it. I already have anti-virus, I don't need some sneaky bastards to install the trial version of their own AV suite on my machine without asking me, thanks.

Have one third-party one along with Windows Defender recommended settings. That's all you need. Avast etc are clever enough that they're not going to trip over their feet because of Windows Defender, since all other AV suites would be tested to work alongside that. However having say Norton + Avast + McAfee all installed at once would be dumb.

[wierd]

I hate Apple, and their software ecosystem. I hate it so much.

I accepted a "Can you fix my son's laptop?" project recently. It's a 2008-ish macbook pro. surprise. Hurray.

It does not boot. Oh, it TRIES to boot, but stalls out and hangs with the progress bar at 99% after taking an hour.
Recovery partition does not boot either.

Foolish me, I say to myself, "Sure, I can just download the OSX CD image, and boot that."

NOPE-- Apple, in their *INFINITE* wisdom (cough), only distributes .DMG files. International Standards Organization? Who needs them, and their ISO9660 specification!? We're APPLE! We "Think Different!"-- We're special, and "Have Courage"!

Fuck Apple.

Oh, I found a way to convert it to an .iso, and even a way to burn the .dmg directly, but apparently it needs a dual layer DVDR. Something I am fresh out of, and walmart seems to not carry anymore.

SO, I decide, "Fuck that, I am gonna use a USB disk."

I dig around, and find I am short on USB sticks. (why? Cause people are always needing "Install media" but never bring the damn things back.) So, I dig some more. I have a SATA->USB cradle, and some SATA disks. "Perfect!"

I drop in a 250gb sata drive, and look for a suitable disk imager.  Nope, you are struck with the "Apple!? HAHAHAHAHAH!! There is only TransMac. It's buyware, fuck you!" response, everywhere. (or rather, the "Create bootable USB media with Transmac on windows!!" as the **ONLY** solution discussed in the wild.

Problem? Transmac is slow as shit.  Terrible. Opaque and not worth the money they are demanding. (thank goodness for functional trials.)

This is a USB3 cradle here.  Not some USB 1.1 slow as molasses in january POS. It takes 4 **HOURS** to write the dmg file to the drive. Only, the mac wont see it as a bootable volume, after spending all that time.


Apple, I hate you. I hate you with a passion.  This could have been solved very cleanly if you would just use industry standards, and then I could use something like Rufus to make a bootable USB device. But no.  You have to be shiny plastic people, who "think different."

So--- Changing tactics.

I held down the option key at boot to get the device selection screen. It reports that the recovery partition was for OSX 10.13.3

OK, that was the factory default. I really just want to pull all the data off this thing, and redo it from scratch. Considering both the normal and recovery partitions are hosed, that seems the most reliable means of getting this POS running again.  So, I am pulling that version's .dmg now.  It is 4.7gb in size, so SHOULD be single-layer. (oh, how novel!)

Once I have it downloaded, I will burn it, and see if this obstinate piece of aluminum will comply with my wishes or not. So far, it has been extraordinarily non-compliant though.  Why do people want these things again?

[BigD145]

It's been a pain in the rear for 30+ years. Everything is version specific. The various compressors are incredibly version specific. Getting mods running for Escape Velocity in the 90's was horrible. Everyone had to compress to get things over dialup and no matter which extension they used you would have to install particular versions of the decompressor and even bounce between different computers with different os versions to get the compression working. Then hope a decompressed file would fit on floppy discs or compress it all over again with a version compatible with both computers.

I tried installing Undertale on my sister's macbook some years ago and it refused to work. I don't even know why it failed. I spent an hour trying to figure out how to install a small game on a Mac. Straight download from Humble. Not even using usb sticks or anything. I never got it to work.

[wierd]

90s?

Back then, this is what I would have done:
Install the appletalk protocol on an NT4 or win2k computer, and configure it to serve an appletalk domain over ethernet.
Plug the obstinate mac into that. (assuming you have a mac with ethernet port... Otherwise you would have to fork out for an appropriate peripheral to get ethernet.)

Use said network to transfer the "larger than 1.44mb" files after decompression, using appleshare.

But at least back then, you could just straight up write a disk image in .img format to a diskette on a PC, and have a disk utilities disk to boot a sick mac-- But you still had to contend with all the byzantine bullshit of "No, this is a self mounting disk image in SEA format!! We did that for your convenience! Honest! Nevermind that you need another, working mac (that would cost a fucking fortune!) to use it, since your existing mac is not booting, and you need the contents of the archive to make the boot disk! We totally are not intentionally fucking with you, honest!"  The apple FTP site had the disks in both .IMG and SEA formats. It was very easy to resurrect a sick mac back then with just a PC.

This experience?

NO! DMG format **ONLY**!  The gods at Apple have spoken! We do not speak of the sinful world of PCs! Heretic, you will suffer for your transgressions!  You will find no succor for your wantonly sinful life outside of the Apple Chosen!


Really, Apple would not be quite so bad, if they were not the literal fascist dictatorship of computing (in competition with Oracle and Google for being the most bald-faced evil out there). 

Honestly, why can't they distribute .ISO files like a reasonable software company? Why can't they just use a normal EFI implementation? There really is no excuse for it in this day and age.

... Honestly... I should have had this thing backing up data by now.

[Starver]

As somewhat referenced in the first para (Themes) of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Beginning..._Was_the_Command_Line the analogy of the Mac-as-a-modern-car is appropriate. Though in context to this, that link doesn't give the fuller description of the Mac as having something like "a hermetically sealed engine compartment which is a lot less prone to breaking down [than the hunkajunk Microsoft car] but, if it does, you're forced to take it back to the dealer because you have great difficulty servicing it yourself [unlike the hunkajunk]..."

(Was that only 1999? I would have dated it a couple of years earlier at least...)