Random Babbling Thread 120

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At least it wasn't "I wouldn't know anything about that."

 

Mystra, What would you do?

 

Me either but I think I might try it! I don't think my laptop is new enough to play this game because it keeps stalling out

 

Already have it, but definitely recommended to get it if you don't have it. Don't bother with Unreal 2, though (which is also on sale), which is more of a techdemo.

Unreal is from 2000 1998, so your laptop shouldn't have any problems to run it, though I do remember having some issues with it on my previous computer, probably a driver issue, or something. Deus Ex uses the same engine, if I recall correctly.

I really like Unreal, it has great atmosphere. One of the classic shooters, pretty much defining the FPS shooter from Doom onwards (together with Quake). Also, the music is great.

 

It's impacting the world. Any company, including those based in the States, have to comply with it if they wish to continue doing business on our continent.

It's a massive pain in the ass for those of us who rely on automated information exchange for the smooth working of our software. The constant emails are just the tip of the iceberg.

Thanks for letting us know about Unreal. It's a classic, along with UT99 (which I still have in a box on the shelf).

Edit: Ooh, I'm a star sapphire.

 

Saw it yesterday, got it immediately. I feel almost bad for not supporting the developer, though.

 

I played it. It's fun, if a bit simplistic. I only wish it had a co-op mode. It would be so much more fun with two people.

 

Thanks for the heads-up. Though at this point it'll probably just end up being another game that I haven't played.

A bit of a rant on building my new PC:

I finished setting up my new PC this weekend. I've never had this much problems making a new build, though. I started the previous weekend (not last weekend, but the one before that), but after spending half a day getting everything installed into the old case (though admittedly I spent a lot of time dusting everything while taking out the old stuff), I had everything installed. New case fans, new PSU, new motherboard/CPU/memory, new graphics card, new SSDs, everything installed. Start it up... and nothing happens. Fans go on, but I get nothing on the screens.

After a lot of swearing and rebooting, removing different things from the motherboard to see if I can isolate a component that is causing the failure, I gave up and built the old motherboard back into the case. New PSU, new graphics card, new harddrives, all works on the old motherboard.

So I contacted the shop, and they suggested to try to update the BIOS/UEFI of the motherboard, because it might have an older firmware that doesn't support my new CPU (a Ryzen 5 2600). Though this was two days later, as there was a sunday in between. Bit of a catch 22 there, though. I need a CPU in order to be able to update the BIOS, but I need an updated BIOS in order for the CPU to work. In the end, it was faster and not a lot more expensive to just get the cheapest AM4 CPU I could find, and to use that to update the BIOS myself.

So last weekend, I finally had time to update the motherboard BIOS, and finally, it worked.

So I wanted to install my copy of Win7. Except it hung on the very first screen of the installation. Well not exactly crashed, but as soon as the windows files were loaded, I lost power to my keyboard and mouse. Again lots of rebooting and swearing, but to no avail. A bit of googling revealed that this was not an uncommon occurrence, and apparently caused by the lack of native USB 3.0 support by windows 7. Apparently changing some USB settings (for legacy USB and XHCI support) worked for some people, but no setting I tried actually worked. I have no USB 3.0 ports on the back of the motherboard either. There are USB 2.0 ports on the motherboard itself, and I connected those to the front USB ports, but still nothing if I put the keyboard and mouse on those ports.

I'm guessing my motherboard doesn't have native support for USB 2.0 anymore, and that's what tripped up the Win7 install. I tried a Linux live boot to see if I couldn't update the Win7 installation with USB 3.0 drivers. It might be possible, but after messing around with it for a couple of hours, I was getting pretty tired of it. Not unexpected, but trying to update a windows installation image in Linux is not very easy, and all tools for updating said windows image are (understandably) for windows.

By the evening, I'd been messing around with it for the entire day (roughly since 6:00 in the morning). So I just bought Win10, and installed it. It works, but man, wouldn't Microsoft just want to know everything you do, all the time. If you just leave the privacy options on the default settings, you give them permission to log your key strokes, microphone, camera, browsing behaviour, everything.

If I didn't use the PC a lot to play games, I'd have installed (K)Ubuntu, instead. I tried the 18.04 LTS and it looks pretty slick, better than the Kubuntu 14.04 that I have on the laptop. Easier to setup than the older versions as well.

 

As someone who's gone through these exact problems, I feel for you. But honestly, didn't the motherboard come with a warranty? Updating the BIOS is the least they could do.

The issue with the USB drivers for Win7 is a massive pain in the ass. Like you, nothing I tried worked and, after a day of banging my head against the wall, I simply decided to go to one of my friends and fixed the windows image on his rig.

And yes, Kubuntu 18.04 is sweet. I use it for work every day and I wouldn't trade it in for anything.

 

I actually tried to reinsert the old HDD with the old windows installation on it, it might not have worked very well with the new hardware, and certainly windows would have complained about needing to reactivate it, but I'd hoped that it would at least let me update the image.

No such luck, though. First time I plugged it back in, the PC wouldn't even boot. Just a short blip and then out. Like a short circuit or something. Then I tried it on another line from the PSU and it booted, but it didn't see the HDD in the UEFI. Next time I booted, it didn't even see the DVD player that was on the same PSU line.

It seems that when I heard something making a rattling sound that morning, when I finished updating the BIOS of the motherboard, it probably was that HDD with the old windows installation dying. Quite catastrophically, it seems. Never had a HDD die on me and then causing a short circuit in the PSU.

Well, at least I had the new build functional at that point. And it would have been even more annoying if it'd died on me and I'd still have to order the new hardware. But I think it was at that point that I decided to just fuck it and buy a Win10 license.

Which reminds me, that old laptop (10 years old netbook) really needs a replacement. It starts chugging if I just open the browser ffs. Although, admittedly, Firefox is a massive memory hog. Just running SP in Firefox, and nothing else, it uses a lofty 700 MB of memory. I don't remember it using that much in the way of resources on Win7, though. But since the laptop only has 1 GB of memory, that could cause a bit of slowdown.