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[Il Palazzo]

My laptop has been acting up too.

The CPU and/or GPU (they're close together and on a single heatpipe) are heating up something fierce whenever I try playing a game. One can't really hold the laptop on the lap any more, and it gets stuttery after a while. It used to run relatively demanding games without any issues. Now it gets super hot even with small, low-graphics titles and I'm getting worried about my sperm count.
The problem appeared gradually, over several months.

The fan works, the intakes and exhausts are unobstructed, and the heatpipe is attached. The copper of the pipe is blackened at the bottom, where it touches the plastic. The task manager doesn't seem to indicate any extreme resource usage.

Any ideas?

[Jopax]

The black stuff sounds like burnt plastic, which might be impairing the cooling somewhat. Other than that, try replacing the thermal paste on your CPU since that could be causing issues with head dissipation as well.

Anyways, managed to fix my issue, kinda. Got a neat little program that monitors how windows processes audio and similar in real-time and if there's any latency which could cause issues like mine. As it turns out there was and it said that my most probable cause is either CPU being throttled (it wasn't) or an issue with BIOS. So I updated BIOS to a newer version. That fixed the issue pretty well it seems.

Except now windows isn't registering the existance of a battery in the laptop. It'll use it if it's unplugged but it doesn't seem to be able to access the charge level anymore. Think I'll try reverting to the older BIOS version to see if the problem returns that way or if it even fixes the new issue :V

Edit:

Well, that's not even an option since it seems to refuse to go back to an older version, guess I'll have to hope for a new update to come out whenever (even tho the most recent one is over two years old at this point, so fat chance there) and hope something else doesn't fuck up majorly in the meantime :I

[AzyWng]

Two questions:

I very recently got a new pair of headphones with a mic attachment. The headphones work fine on my laptop and my phone, and I can use the mic on my phone, but I can't use the mic when the headphones are plugged into the computer.

The heapdhones are Turtle Beach Ear Force Recon. Don't know what number exactly, however, but I do know there aren't any specific drivers for the headphones. The laptop is Windows 10.

How do I make the mic work on my laptop?

Second question - How do I emulate Windows 98? I don't own a copy of it, sadly, but is there a way to legally acquire one, and if so, how do I emulate it? Again, Windows 10 laptop.

[BigD145]

Do you have a headphone and mic jack on your computer or is it a single jack? I'm guessing your headphone plug looks like this

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Your computer probably does not have that 4th contact and is audio only. You'll likely need a splitter to get separate audio and mic outputs.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

2nd- Windows 2000 should run anything from 98. There may or may not still be a developers version floating around. That one has no license key.

[Lord Shonus]

Windows 2000 should run anything from 98.

98-2000 was one of the first big "compatibility breaks", because 2000 is NT-based.


Windows 98 is not for sale anymore, but you could probably get a copy on Ebay that includes the liscence book easily enough. For emulating it, there are several options. Which one you choose depends on what you intend to use it for.

[AzyWng]

Single jack, I'm afraid - so using a splitter is not an option.

As for what I intend to use Windows 98 for?

Well, I think one of the games I own (Survival Crisis Z, which I've brought up/complained about a number of times) might run a lot better on an older OS, so I intend to emulate Windows 98 for that.

[Lord Shonus]

That looks a bit iffy. Most of the emulation options I know of either are not gaming-oriented, or else are focused on much earlier games than that.

[BigD145]

Single jack, I'm afraid - so using a splitter is not an option.

Get a usb headset or an adapter to turn yours into usb.

[scourge728]

irrelevant now

[Reelya]

2nd- Windows 2000 should run anything from 98. There may or may not still be a developers version floating around. That one has no license key.

Ah, as others have said, not much chance of that. DOS->3.1->95->98->Me is one product line, whereas NT->2000 is a completely different product line. Here's an article written at the time about the compatibility issues : https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/win2k

As for emulation, DOSBox is capable of running 3.1 or 9x Windows versions, as are VMWare or VirtualBox, all of which are free to use.

[Lord Shonus]

There's a lot of things from 9x that won't run on XP, for a variety of reasons. It took developers a long time to accept the "just talk to Windows, and Windows will talk to the hardware" paradigm, and some early hardware (graphics cards, especially) needed software to be programmed specifically for it, in a way that is incompatible with newer solutions.


That's why PCem is my favored solution, but the specific case here seems to be too new to run under that.

[Reelya]

That's why PCem is my favored solution, but the specific case here seems to be too new to run under that.

Windows 98 would run on a 486 though, and PCem says it supports that. Windows 98 minimum specs were 486DX2-66

BTW I recommend 98lite as a tool to reduce the footprint and resources of 95 and 98 installs. We were able to get 98 installs small enough to run on a system with a 40MB hard-drive with this thing back in the day:

http://www.litepc.com/98lite.html

[Lord Shonus]

Windows 98 will run fine in PCem. The discussion was started by somebody who wants to run Survival Crisis Z, which appears to need more than the Pentium I processor that PCem tops out at (and needs a beefy computer to run anyway).

[wierd]

Win2k has a pretty good VDM.  It just needs an addon package called VDMSound, and it can run just about anything you can throw at it that is a Dos game.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/vdmsound/

Does VESA, MSCDEX, DOS4GW protected memory, and all that fun stuff, right in the VDM.

[wierd]

My laptop has been acting up too.

The CPU and/or GPU (they're close together and on a single heatpipe) are heating up something fierce whenever I try playing a game. One can't really hold the laptop on the lap any more, and it gets stuttery after a while. It used to run relatively demanding games without any issues. Now it gets super hot even with small, low-graphics titles and I'm getting worried about my sperm count.
The problem appeared gradually, over several months.

The fan works, the intakes and exhausts are unobstructed, and the heatpipe is attached. The copper of the pipe is blackened at the bottom, where it touches the plastic. The task manager doesn't seem to indicate any extreme resource usage.

Any ideas?

This sounds like copper 2 oxide.  It will impair thermal conduction if this is where the interface is to the CPU.

If that is the case, get some brasso copper polish.  Apply a small quantity to the corner of a paper towel, and clean the CPU and GPU contact surfaces, then rinse with clean water.  Apply fresh compound, and test function.