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[wierd]

I wanted clarification on the system type first thing;  I mentioned that there are several in the 1K range that are quite nice.  He persisted with talk of a system build, so I obliged.

[Starver]

Well thank goodness the 10TB HDD I won from them doesn't seem to have that fail rate wow!

All individual drives have 0% fail rate, until they flip to 100%, of course.

(Correction: If you're not (un)lucky enough to get a dud from the off!)

[Gentlefish]

Well thank goodness the 10TB HDD I won from them doesn't seem to have that fail rate wow!

All individual drives have 0% fail rate, until they flip to 100%, of course.

(Correction: If you're not (un)lucky enough to get a dud from the off!)

Well I hope not! The rep on r/buildapc seemed like they'd be more than happy to replace a DoA once I get my build together in the spring.

Thankfully I can't afford it now with the new AMD chips on the horizon since I'm going to be running an RX 580. CUrrent rumors are looking great for Ryzen 3

[Eschar]

I'm trying to download the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS .iso. Overnight, Chrome was able to download 1 GB out of 1.8 GB... and has made no progress, whatsoever, over the next two days.  There are intermittent "Failed - Server Problem" errors that I have to resume from, and when I do, it continues to download at... the blistering speed of 0 bytes per second. For two days now. Is there a chance that it will work if I start the whole three-day long process over, or will I just get stuck again? (In which case, it looks like I'm stuck with Windows for, well, the rest of my life.)

[wierd]

grab the torrent version.  It is a far more reliable method to get large files, and in this case at least, would be perfectly legal.

[eerr]

Yo, I've got a new computer, just bought the cheapest one at bestbuy.(a dell that doesn't come with a monitor)

It sounds like someone attached one of those noisemakers you find on a bike wheel.

What do I do?

I was hoping to run this computer while I sleep(A discord bot).

[eerr]

I forgot to mention this, but the previous computer had a similar problem
This was the main reason I wanted to replace it.

I don't understand why though

[wierd]

Any chance you can record the sound, and then post it on soundcloud or something?

I would be better able to identify the issue if I can hear it myself.

[eerr]

After some inspection:

Problem 1: the usb+jack speakers were picking up static. This happened if plugged in the speakers and grounded/plugged in the cable.

The speakers can go.

Problem 2: I hear a noise and the blinky light comes on.
 It has a picture of a cylinder.

Problem 3: The fan is louder than I would like.


Buying the cheapest tower was probably a bad idea. *shrug

[wierd]

problem 1)

This is a common thing with integrated sound hardware.  The actual hardware that makes the sound is baked into the northbridge chip. Very often, there is not very good ground isolation, so digital noise from the processor or other data travelling over the PCI bus can be heard as an audible buzzing.  Possibly, you could add a lowpass filter or the like, but I have just gotten used to hearing it. In days of yore, I would add a discrete soundcard, but old fashioned PCI card slots are getting very rare these days, and I refuse to shell out money for a PCIe soundcard just to overcome the buzzing. 

Problem 2)

This is the sound of the hard disk making accesses. It is a physical device, with a physical arm that gets pushed around by a magnetic seek coil. It can move around rather quickly, and makes a little chittering/clattering sound when it does.  Some drives are louder than others.  The symbol that looks like a cylinder is the symbol for "hard disk".

Problem 3)

Not much you can do about that, aside from switching to liquid cooling, and that's more hassle than it is worth unless you are driving some insane hardware that needs it.  Adding some dust filters to the intake ports, and putting the tower on the floor underneath the desk can alleviate a good deal of these sounds.

Depending on what you use your computer for, you might benefit from a lower-power computer that does passive (fanless) cooling.  Some Mini-ITX boards that use Atom processors are able to accomplish this, but you wont be winning any benchmark test competitions with one.

[anewaname]

Excessive fan noise...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

When one of your computer fans is making a lot of noise and you are not sure which one it is, you can turn off the computer, open the case, find the fans, then turn the computer on and for each fan, press lightly with your fingertip against the central hub of each fan (lightly, just to slow the fan speed by about 20%). If the noise drops greatly when you do that, then you have found the problem fan and can choose how to fix it. Just avoid touching the blades, the boards, or accidentally pushing wires against other things while you slow the fan.

Usually noisy fans are also causing excessive vibration, and that is not good for the rest of the computer parts in the long run. Better to replace a fan than let it decrease the lifespan of the rest of your computer. For non-new computers, a fan's blades can accumulate dust too, so this is a +1 for adding dust filters, even home-made ones.

[Starver]

Visual inspection might help too. I had a PSU fan lose a blade, most obvious when peering into the block (harder than observing a CPU/etc fan, except maybe the ones on a perpendicular graphics card, slotted in, with its plastic manifold guiding air from/to the rear plate) when powered off, and carefully prodded round with something (non-conducting and otherwise not totally unsuitable).

I repaired that one myself by opening it up (*beware of latent high charges*, mostly but not entirely in the mains-side parts of the PSU - not as dangerous as messing with CRT electronics, but I'm still not recommending it as something everyone could do) and finding an equivalently-sized fan in Maplins (now closed), our Radio Shack equivalent.

Shortly after recommissioning, I heard the a PC fan suddenly whir up to a previously not experienced speed. Shut it down and found that the CPU fan, this time, had broken. At the spindle. It had disconnected from the blades around it (still as a whole) and with virtually no air-moving load or detected cooling effect, it had gone to the maxest of max speeds. Another trip to Maplin and one (far more trivial) fan-replacement later, that machine was working again. If I hadn't been there, I imagine it was at risk of having ended up with a fried chip, but I was lucky.

(Still is. 15-or-more years later, working 24/7/52.1767857 for almost all that time apart from weekly soft-reboots to prevent OS-related memory-leak crud from building up in its ?16?Mb RAM. Except that the last time I fully shut down and restarted this machine (to hoover its internals of dust) it seems the CMOS cell needs replacing. That'll wait for the next dust-down, though.)


So, erm. Yeah. Look at the bits and pieces, even when not running you might see something wrong with a fan. Though it may be either a hidden issue (part-worn ball(s) in an internal bearing-ring, not worth digging into beyond replacing with fan assembly as a whole, dependant on it being one of those generic X-mm black square-framed fans or not) or the mechanics might be working perfectly, and it's either a build up of dust restricting the air-flow efficiency (suck/blow it away, with or without mechanical prodding/brushing/scraping, maybe) or even an imperfect connection of fan/heatsink to to whatever hot bit that f/h is servicing, and until you get it properly thermally reattached (however it needs it) it's just trying to do more work because the sensors know it isn't actually cooling like they think it should be.


This may sound daunting, but only because it could be loads of little things, from trivial to maybe-you-want-to-get-a-professional-in level, and we can only cover some of those as suggestions. With any luck it'll be towards the low end of that spectrum. And easily proven to be, too.

[Frumple]

... yeah, ended up saying screw it and going with the lenovo mentioned. Came in today. My initial unboxing/beginning-debloat impressions are

A: I can work with this and
B: Whoever decided this touchpad was a good idea needs to be shot. Out a cannon, with a cannon, I dunno, something. Most touchpad design separates the mouse buttons from the main pad for a gorram reason.

Going to need a mouse. Sorta' have one but it doesn't work well. Maybe a keyboard, too. Input ergonomics on this thing are kinda' non-standard and janky.

[AzyWng]

Small white "X'es have appeared in the bottom-left corner of all my desktop icons - in the place where the shortcut symbol would normally be.

What does this mean and how do I change things back to normal?

EDIT: Now they're green circles with a check mark inside them. I dunno if that's good or bad.

[Starver]

Might be related to the registry key for this thing. If you're familiar with this, seek out

Code: [Select]

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell IconsTo change it from normal to another symbol, a value named "29" should be given data "%windir%\System32\shell32.dll,<somenumber>", with <somenumber> being (in all cases I know) a (negative?) number relating to the shell-default icon position. (Check - if you're familiar with it, the file-association icon chooser, maybe you can marry up values to the images shown as available in there from shell32.dll - assuming it isn't shell64.dll these days or something.)

This might not be quite right for your version of Windows, whichever that is, but if you feel confident tweaking it, perhaps temporarily removing the "29" ktem, if it's there, and see if it goes back to normal. But only if you're sure how to restore it*. But memory tells me that "-50" is the number relating to the default (can't currently check) as opposed to super-sized arrows, etc.

I don't think ypu can break things (more!) by fiddling with other numbers, though, for the overlay concerned. And changes may only happen on restart, so it's not necessarily a quick "change, check and then try another change". Perhaps some GooglegFu powered by this suggestion would be the wisest next step?

* e.g. know how to export this bit only (or edit the export down to just this) for a quick re-import restore if necessary.