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[feelotraveller]

Is there any way at all I can make my goddamn computer work in a way I'm comfortable with without editing the registry?

Install Linux.  QED 

[wierd]

Follow with WINE from the dev branch. Pick a windows-like WM.

All will be good with the world. (well, most things will be good with the world...)

[AzyWng]

Is plugging in your charger supposed to slow your laptop down?

I was playing a computer game on my laptop, and I noticed that once I'd plugged it in, the frame rate dropped a lot. Is that normal?

EDIT: Also, does defragmenting your hard drive affect its memory usage at all or not?

[Lord Shonus]

Is plugging in your charger supposed to slow your laptop down?

I was playing a computer game on my laptop, and I noticed that once I'd plugged it in, the frame rate dropped a lot. Is that normal?

No. It should, in fact, improve performance because most laptops throttle performance under low battery conditions. Try getting some cans of air and blowing out the vents - it is possible that your system unthrottled, but ran into cooling problems that dropped the performance.

[AzyWng]

I don't see very much dust around the vents and we don't keep cans of air around the house. Would raising up the laptop help?

Also, third question: Should you defragment the windows pagefile, and if so, how?

[wierd]

Pagefile is less important than an unfragmented MFT, but it is beneficial to keep it from being heavily fragmented. (2 big fragments or so is not too terrible, but if it is shotgunned into lots of teeny fragments, it will be most unpleasant when the system has to hit the swapfile.)

To defragment it, you will need a 3rd party defrag tool that does "boot time defragmentation".  There are some choices for that, but a fairly good free one is "Piriform Defraggler."  It cannot do MFTs, but it can do the pagefile, and other system log files that get shotgunned all over the drive and contribute to bad file placement over time.  (To do MFTs, you need something like O&O, and only the paid version at that. The free trial does not let you defrag MFTs, but the paid version does. Scalpers.)

A good rule of thumb to get good results defragging the page file, is to move it to another drive by setting manual pagefile behavior (or turn it off, and let windows complain for awhile while you do the needful first...), defrag the bejeesus out of the drive a few times to get a big chunk of contiguous space, then move it back/turn it back on again, then boot time defrag the drive.  Defraggler's "space--allow fragmentation" advanced option is great for this, because it will fill in empty allocation units (and fragment files to do so) in order to have contiguous free space at the bottom of the drive. (this is also useful if you want to shrink a volume... just FYI) This forces the system to have to make the swap file in that contiguous area when you turn swap back on again/put the file back on the system drive.   After that, the boot time defrag will see that the page file has zero fragments, and will skip it. Running a normal defrag afterwards will fix the radical fragmentation that "space-- allow fragmentation" causes.

[Thief^]

To be honest, a large page file is not too useful these days. You used to be recommended to have it at 2.5x your RAM size, as using the page file was expected. These days it's so slow that restricting it to the size of your ram of even half your ram or lower is much better. You always need some as there are occasional apps that insist on using the page file and will crash if it's disabled. Having it too large will just cause a misbehaving app to make your PC unusable, so it's best to set a limit so that runaway apps will crash instead.

On my work PC I have 32 GB of ram and Windows only recommends a 5 GB pagefile!

[wierd]

agreed, but 5GB is a very large file, and if windows is managing the page file (default), if it is insufficient, it will allocate more as needed. This fragments the page file, which is then tricky to get contiguous again.

Best practice, IMO, is to tell windows to stuff it, set pagefile control to manual, then set the size yourself after doing the tricks I mentioned earlier to force a very large contiguous block of free space for its creation.

Keeping it on manual will prevent windows from auto-growing it again under stress, which will then cause windows to display a "page file insufficient" error window. It will also prevent it from fragmenting again, or getting overly bloated.

[Lord Shonus]

Literally within the last 10 minutes (I was using it to play DooM not an hour ago) my Logitech G710 keyboard's gone completely insane. Some keys do nothing, others type the wrong character, while still others typs strings of random characters. I've tried uninstalling Logitech Gaming Software, unplugging it, restarting, unplugging it then restarting, and deleting the driver. I don't think it's the language settings, because my backup keyboard works fine. Any ideas?

EDIT: I've figured it out. There is some sort of fault that causes it to lose function if any of the modifier lights (Game mode, cap loc, num lock, scroll lock) are lit. Barring a thorough cleaning fixing it, I fear I will have to replace it.

[TheBiggerFish]

To be honest, a large page file is not too useful these days. You used to be recommended to have it at 2.5x your RAM size, as using the page file was expected. These days it's so slow that restricting it to the size of your ram of even half your ram or lower is much better. You always need some as there are occasional apps that insist on using the page file and will crash if it's disabled. Having it too large will just cause a misbehaving app to make your PC unusable, so it's best to set a limit so that runaway apps will crash instead.

On my work PC I have 32 GB of ram and Windows only recommends a 5 GB pagefile!

....
32 GB of RAM?

[wierd]

High end workstations and mid-size servers can easily have that amount installed.

The limitations of current designs are more motherboard chipset restrictions than CPU bus size restrictions-- though for some, the CPU's memory controller is a limiting factor still.

Several noteworthy offerings from MSI and TYAN are able to do this. They tend to be AMD based though.

[TheBiggerFish]

Ah.  That explains it.

[wierd]

At least with Tyan's EATX offerings, a good many are XEON based Intel offerings.  Support up to 512GB of RAM, multiple CPU sockets. 

Not for normal consumers, for sure.  Intended for small transactional databases, etc.

[TheBiggerFish]

Holy carp that is a lot of RAM.

I mean, it is a database, but seriously, lotta RAM there.

[wierd]

Here is one of said offerings.

http://www.tyan.com/Motherboards_S7086_S7086GM3NRE

You will totally need a full size tower chasis for that though. EATX is quite large. Probably need a really big PSU to power it properly as well.
Overkill for gaming, but just fine for a small server.

(edit-- those really arent 16x slots afterall. Those are some proprietary high speed SSD slots of some kind. It has provision for 16x slots, but via risers. That will not work in a standard case at all most likely. Servers arent meant to have big honking graphics cards in them anyway. It has integrated video, and that is sufficient for its intended use. Still, 512gb max design capacity.)