Yes, I probably should've bought an M.2 drive and installed windows anew,
but the thought of the number of hours deactivating and reactivating my windows license, or worse having to buy an new copy of windows, then reinstalling everything was just too daunting.
I'm thinking a lot of my woes are once
again up to the ASUS mb and wonder if I'd gone with the pricier MSI I'd have >been fine.
On 3/21/2023 11:54 AM, Justisaur wrote:
<large, LARGE, snip for space>
Yes, I probably should've bought an M.2 drive and installed windows anew, but the thought of the number of hours deactivating and reactivating my windows license, or worse having to buy an new copy of windows, then reinstalling everything was just too daunting.
Too daunting compared to what you just went thru? What's the non-Jewish version of "Oy vey!"?
On Tue, 21 Mar 2023 11:54:47 -0700 (PDT), in
comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action, Justisaur wrote:
I'm thinking a lot of my woes are onceI am never buying ASUS again.
again up to the ASUS mb and wonder if I'd gone with the pricier MSI I'd have
been fine.
My latest build had three strikes on the mainboard, a TUF Z390 Pro
Gaming. The first time the PCI-E lanes went screwy, eventually corrupting the NVMe disk (whee) and causing video crashes at high frame rates in 2d games, or just with plain video.
Bad luck then, right? The replacement was DOA.
The replacement replacement worked fine for a month, and then the second port on the front panel USB3 stopped working right (USB2 only was
reliable). I moved the header over to the secondary and now I have two working front panel USB3 ports. So bad header, not the case cable. I suspected as much, but put up with the bad port for a while afraid to
touch the mainboard with as much as a feather.
When their shit failed, ASUS refused to cross ship anything. For the
first replacement I just bought a new mainboard, then returned that one
to Amazon when it was DOA.
So: 1) Serious problem, 2) Dead as a doornail, 3) USB3 glitches. This is clearly a quality control problem.
This was supplemented by dead stupid, evasive customer service that
couldn't tell me that there was something seriously wrong with the mainboard, or, more likely, didn't want to. They actually tried to
convince me that I should be getting x8 on the video card on the first board, due to the presence of an NVMe drive, and like a chump I believed them. It was a sign of PCI-E lane degradation, and I lost data for their incompetence (and to some degree mine, I was skeptical).
I can't tell you how many times I had to mount the heat sink. It was
nuts.
It did come with a really pretty I/O backplate though. High quality. :^P
As I was poking around I noticed that in the new mb bios it showed that the >drive was in raid mode [...]
Yes, I probably should've bought an M.2 drive and installed windows anew,
but the thought of the number of hours deactivating and reactivating my >windows license, or worse having to buy an new copy of windows, then >reinstalling everything was just too daunting.
So more of a rant. I started putting together and swapping out the parts with the new cpu/mb/ram I bought. I'm thinking a lot of my woes are once again up to the ASUS mb and wonder if I'd gone with the pricier MSI I'd have been fine.
It wouldn't recognize my boot drive as bootable and wouldn't even try. after a
lot of looking things up I found that CSM is the new Legacy mode, which as
I prefer not to use UEFI I'm still using, so I turned that on, no difference.
I was able to get it to recognize it when I put it on my usb sata adaptor (that
thing's been worth it's weight in gold since I bought it more than 10 years ago.)
It booted, but extremely slowly, around 20 minutes, and then froze when I tried to log in. I tried to get it to go to safe mode, what a pain that was
(that's MS's fault.) I eventually had to put my old mb/cpu/mem on a box and
hook it up to the power supply and boot sata on that, and choose to have it
reboot to safe mode, and swap the ps & it back, and it booted up in safe
mode, still very slow, then it said to not remove the USB or data loss could
occur. I couldn't find anything to fix, and sometimes it will just work after
booting to safe mode, so I pulled it and plugged it back into sata, and
nothing again, no bootable devices.
It was pissing me off it'd recognize it as bootable on USB but not off SATA
too as that proved it was capable.
I went down the wrong rabbit hole as what I could find online said I needed to convert from MBR to GPT (UEFI) to get it to boot and started fiddling with
that, I couldn't find anything that would do it non-destructively, which would
mean there wasn't any point, as I'd be left installing windows from scratch and lose my data.
I had thought maybe a bios update might help and went through a bunch of
back and forth with the drive contiguously while fiddling with MBR/Raid as it wouldn't pick up my wifi adaptor in safe mode with networking, and trying to figure out how to get it to update was difficult. Eventually I found that the
bios has a tool in it to pick up the file off the drive, and updated it. When it
finished It said something about a v... something related to UEFI needing to be updated. (I can't get into BIOS right now, and finding any complete info on bios' is woefully inadequate on support/internet.) I figured that might be
related to booting as well, so turned that off, but no.
As I was poking around I noticed that in the new mb bios it showed that the drive was in raid mode, and found something to convert from raid to ACHI which is supposed to be more compatible. I found some instructions to do that, and started following them, but after the first step it said to go in the
bios and change it from raid to ACHI but there was no way to do that on either bios. After I tried booting from it again it gave me an error that /Boot/BCD was missing or corrupt. But at least it was trying to boot from the drive connected to sata on the new mb. However it also gave that error trying to boot from usb or the old mb, so my install was toast.
I created a recovery USB from my son's computer also on windows 10 21H2.
The repair failed and everything else appeared to be destructive, and it appeared the recovery USB wouldn't do an in-place install/upgrade. I found some info on running bootrec, and tried that but it didn't work either.
I at least could access the drive and see all the data was there still, but the
c:\boot folder was missing. Somehow the USBs boot got corrupted while I
did that, so I figured it was time to get the win10 iso and put that on the usb.
After I did that I tried the repair again and this time it rebooted to the SSD,
but now it gave me a blue screen sad face with inaccessible boot device. After a couple reboots trying to get into safe mode it gave me an orange screen with red vertical stripes.
I played around with bcdrec and repairs again and nothing. At last I was able to get it into safe mode though. I saw it popping up saying not to remove the USB drive or it could corrupt data for windows portable. I thought that sounded wrong, and it shouldn't be portable, well apparently just booting up from a usb adaptor makes it go into that permanently, but there's a reg key to turn it off, so I did, rebooted and it started up fully into
windows with the wifi working!
It is stuck still after at least 30 minutes trying install the asus armory crate
(updater.) The CPU is sitting around 1% and is at around 23 C, which is considerably better than it was before.
Yes, I probably should've bought an M.2 drive and installed windows anew,
but the thought of the number of hours deactivating and reactivating my windows license, or worse having to buy an new copy of windows, then reinstalling everything was just too daunting.
- Justisaur
to be working fine *now* other than the driver updater not installing. Oh >wait,
it just finished... but now it wants me to log into my ASUS account?!?
On Tuesday, March 21, 2023 at 1:27:19 PM UTC-7, Dimensional Traveler wrote:
On 3/21/2023 11:54 AM, Justisaur wrote:
<large, LARGE, snip for space>
Too daunting compared to what you just went thru? What's the non-Jewish
Yes, I probably should've bought an M.2 drive and installed windows anew, >>> but the thought of the number of hours deactivating and reactivating my
windows license, or worse having to buy an new copy of windows, then
reinstalling everything was just too daunting.
version of "Oy vey!"?
Considering last time I had to start from scratch it was at least a week.
I'm struggling a bit with drivers, as their updater is still stuck installing,
and all of what I'm finding on fixes for that only applies to their notebooks.
- Justisaur
Though I do have a case with a plastic
viewing panel, mainly because that was the cheapest that had features
and size I wanted. Good thing it's extra wide because that heatsink/fan >tower only leaves about an inch and a half clearance. It's a lot easier to >deal with and prettier being black than my old discolored beige case with >miss-matching front face plates, so I guess I care a little when it doesn't >cost me anything. Technically I could've kept the old case, but I was tired >of getting cut every time I opened it, and wanted one that wasn't made of >razor blades.
to be working fine *now* other than the driver updater not installing. Oh >>wait,
it just finished... but now it wants me to log into my ASUS account?!?
It's been awhile since I had an asus board, but if you installed some
all-in-one package, I suggest uninstalling it, and getting the individual >drivers from their website. Especially if it includes rgb or overclocking >control, just get rid of that crap.
No, hardest game is REAL LIFE! :(
So more of a rant. I started putting together and swapping out the parts with the new cpu/mb/ram I bought. I'm thinking a lot of my woes are once again up to the ASUS mb and wonder if I'd gone with the pricier MSI I'd have been fine.
I went down the wrong rabbit hole as what I could find online said I needed to convert from MBR to GPT (UEFI) to get it to boot and started fiddling with
that, I couldn't find anything that would do it non-destructively, which would
mean there wasn't any point, as I'd be left installing windows from scratch and lose my data.
Yes, I probably should've bought an M.2 drive and installed windows anew,
but the thought of the number of hours deactivating and reactivating my windows license, or worse having to buy an new copy of windows, then reinstalling everything was just too daunting.
Too daunting compared to what you just went thru? What's the non-Jewish version of "Oy vey!"?
Dimensional Traveler <dtravel@sonic.net> wrote in news:tvd3v5$8mqr$1@dont- >email.me:
Too daunting compared to what you just went thru? What's the non-Jewish
version of "Oy vey!"?
Ay, Caramba!
Lol, I don't care about any of that. Though I do have a case with a plastic >viewing panel, mainly because that was the cheapest that had features
and size I wanted.
It's a lot easier to deal with and prettier being black than my old >discolored beige case with miss-matching front face plates, so I guess
I care a little when it doesn't cost me anything.
Technically I could've kept the old case, but I was tired
of getting cut every time I opened it, and wanted one that wasn't made of >razor blades.
Justisaur <just...@gmail.com> wrote:
As I was poking around I noticed that in the new mb bios it showed that the >drive was in raid mode [...]
If on your previous computer you had the SATA interface set to RAID
instead AHCI then this is likely where your problem comes from.
Motherboard RAID is notorius for not being compatible with other motherboards unless they happen to using compatible RAID firmware
(eg. from the same generation of Intel or AMD chipsets.) Getting an
MSI or other manufacturer's motherboard wouldn't have made a difference.
Oh, and you can't actually manually deactivate Windows. Windows should
have detected that your hardware changed once you managed to successfuly boot it on your new PC and automatically deactivated itself. You should
go into the settings (Update & Security -> Activation on Windows 10)
and check your activation status. If it's not activated you'll need to
enter your product key to reactivate it, or sign in with your Microsoft account if you previously linked your key with your account.
I want much larger mainboards and lots of space to work with should I do >another build. The newer cases accomodate -- no more drive cages -- but
ATX mobos still do not. It is very long in the tooth.
No, hardest game is REAL LIFE! :(
On Tue, 21 Mar 2023 23:52:35 -0600, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action, rms wrote:
to be working fine *now* other than the driver updater not installing. Oh >>wait,
it just finished... but now it wants me to log into my ASUS account?!?
It's been awhile since I had an asus board, but if you installed some
all-in-one package, I suggest uninstalling it, and getting the individual >drivers from their website. Especially if it includes rgb or overclocking >control, just get rid of that crap.
Yeah. I turned off Q-Install (or whatever that junkware is called now). There was a well hidden UEFI BIOS setting, otherwise the mainboard would directly install stuff to my root directories on every boot. Took me
forever to figure out how to get it off of my machine.
At least mine didn't require an account!
Zaghadka <zagh...@hotmail.com> wrote:
I want much larger mainboards and lots of space to work with should I do >another build. The newer cases accomodate -- no more drive cages -- but >ATX mobos still do not. It is very long in the tooth.If anything, a new motherboard form factor that replaces ATX would
likely only be smaller. For most people, you can get everything you
want in a Micro-ATX motherboard, the only thing you give up are less PCI-Express slots, but its rare for anyone to have anything ther than graphics card installed.
There is a bigger form factor than ATX, Extented-ATX, but E-ATX
motherboards are mostly insane $1000+ boards that use their size in
part to justify their ridiculous prices. They don't move their main PCI-Express or DRAM slots any farther from the CPU because they want
them as close as possible to the CPU to make layout easier. For the
DRAM slots in particular, this very likely a necessitiy, and they can't
be moved any farther from the CPU.
There have been been a couple of recent innovations though that may
help with your next PC build. One is modular power supplies with the connectors on the side rather than the back. This makes it a lot easier
to attach power cables to the power supply after its been installed in
the case, but doesn't work with every case. The other is motherboards
that have all the connectors on the back. This requires a case designed
for this, and I'm not sure if it catch on, but it does potentially make cable management a lot easier.
None of that would help with a big giant heat sink blocking everything,
but you can usally get by with a more normal sized tower cooler, even on
on top-end CPUs. If not there's always AIO (all-in-one) water coolers,
they just have a small "puck" that sits on top of the CPU.
On Wed, 22 Mar 2023 16:23:28 -0000 (UTC), in
comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action, Mark P. Nelson wrote:
Dimensional Traveler <dtravel@sonic.net> wrote in news:tvd3v5$8mqr$1@dont- >> email.me:
Too daunting compared to what you just went thru? What's the non-Jewish >>> version of "Oy vey!"?
Ay, Caramba!
"Oof da!"
So I was looking through the bios again, and what I had turned off (which >there was no troubleshooting steps I found about on the internet for not >recognizing boot devices, but the blurb after the bios was flashed about it >made me suspicious) was VMD. I'd never heard of it before, and it's related >to intel Optane memory which apparently was a flop. And it reads all the >disks as raid disks, which is why my disks were showing up raid, and had >nothing to do with the settings to turn it off as the drives were never set up >raid.
It just showed up with "activate windows" so I guess it did deactivate, I don't
really care, but it is a bit annoying having the watermark over the bottom >right of the screen, so I'll go about trying to get it reactivated.
Justisaur <just...@gmail.com> wrote:
It just showed up with "activate windows" so I guess it did deactivate, I don'tfrom PC to PC as much as you wish. OEM licences are for a specific PC,
really care, but it is a bit annoying having the watermark over the bottom >right of the screen, so I'll go about trying to get it reactivated. Hopefully you'll have an easier time than DMP did. If you have a retail product key it should go easier, as you're allowed to move your licence
so you may have to convince Microsoft that its still the same PC, if
only in a Ship of Theseus sense.
Supposedly linking your product key to a Microsoft account before you upgrade also can make the process more smooth, but this sounds like something Microsoft would say just to get more people to use Microsoft accounts on Windows.
On Tuesday, March 21, 2023 at 7:18:04???PM UTC-7, Ant wrote:
No, hardest game is REAL LIFE! :(
You got me there...
But it's just a sim, there's no win condition. Damn player likes to
throw diseases and disasters and unbalanced starting conditions.
;)
Easier than I thought. I have Windows 8 Pro I bought through a home
program at a previous employer. I could've sworn I had a new key
when I upgraded to 10, I looked all over for it, couldn't find it, and >finally tried my Win8 pro key, which it just took and activated without
any hassle.
Maybe that was some previous edition, I still have the CDs
and keys for 95, 98, XP as well as a few old versions of office in the same >drawer. I got rid of my 3.1 floppies when I moved a couple years ago,
I think there were floppies missing anyway and there were something
like 23 of them which takes up a lot of space.
I should probably look into getting a license for my son, he's had
the 'Activate Windows' ever since I put together his computer, but
it always seems to be exorbitantly expensive unless you get it OEM
which as you mention are only good for that manufactured PC.
It looks like MS isn't selling it online anymore, but it was $199
for pro 2 months ago. I just checked and you can get keys for
like $4?!? I question the validity/legality though.
That reminds me to complain about the backplate. Still a badly fitting >aluminum can strength pos that takes a good deal of fiddling to get
in there. Admittedly the last few were even more trouble, but it's
basically the same. Of course I tend to go cheap with MB, so maybe
more expensive ones have better backplates?
A couple of the videos I watched when I was investigating coolers, the
dual towers outperformed the AIO water coolers at a considerably lower
price.
Justisaur <just...@gmail.com> wrote:
That reminds me to complain about the backplate. Still a badly fitting >aluminum can strength pos that takes a good deal of fiddling to getThe more expensive ones have backplates already attached or integrated
in there. Admittedly the last few were even more trouble, but it's >basically the same. Of course I tend to go cheap with MB, so maybe
more expensive ones have better backplates?
into the motherboard. I'm kinda surprised not all motherboards do this
these days as forgetting to install the backplate is one of the common mistakes people make.
A couple of the videos I watched when I was investigating coolers, the >dual towers outperformed the AIO water coolers at a considerably lower >price.There's considerable overlap between tower coolers and AIO coolers,
but the top end AIO coolers generally outperform the top end dual-tower coolers. For most people I wouldn't recommend AIO coolers, but they do
make accessing things around the CPU easier. So would a cheap a single
tower cooler as well though. Mine leaves just enough room to access the primary M.2 slot, and plenty of room to access the DIMMs and graphics
card slots.
I just bought some floppy disks for the first time in, what, thirty
years? Since I was working on older hardware, I figured they might
come in handy. Even back in the day, I tended to scrounge my disks (so
many AOL floppies!) so I never needed to buy any. But over the years
they've all been tossed (and, anyway, most of them weren't good
quality to begin with).
I still have a handful of 5.25" disks, including my old Windows 3.0
disks. Sure, I don't have a working DRIVE to use them in, but you
never know when the disks might come in handy. ;-)
The more expensive ones have backplates already attached or integrated
into the motherboard. I'm kinda surprised not all motherboards do this
these days as forgetting to install the backplate is one of the common mistakes people make.
Justisaur <just...@gmail.com> wrote:
That reminds me to complain about the backplate. Still a badly fitting >aluminum can strength pos that takes a good deal of fiddling to get
in there. Admittedly the last few were even more trouble, but it's >basically the same. Of course I tend to go cheap with MB, so maybe
more expensive ones have better backplates?
The more expensive ones have backplates already attached or integrated
into the motherboard.
I'm kinda surprised not all motherboards do this
these days as forgetting to install the backplate is one of the common mistakes people make.
Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:
I still have a handful of 5.25" disks, including my old Windows 3.0
disks. Sure, I don't have a working DRIVE to use them in, but you
never know when the disks might come in handy. ;-)
I still have mine that my parents kept. :O
On Thursday, March 23, 2023 at 1:52:57?PM UTC-7, Ross Ridge wrote:
Justisaur <just...@gmail.com> wrote:
That reminds me to complain about the backplate. Still a badly fittingThe more expensive ones have backplates already attached or integrated
aluminum can strength pos that takes a good deal of fiddling to get
in there. Admittedly the last few were even more trouble, but it's
basically the same. Of course I tend to go cheap with MB, so maybe
more expensive ones have better backplates?
into the motherboard. I'm kinda surprised not all motherboards do this
these days as forgetting to install the backplate is one of the common
mistakes people make.
A couple of the videos I watched when I was investigating coolers, theThere's considerable overlap between tower coolers and AIO coolers,
dual towers outperformed the AIO water coolers at a considerably lower
price.
but the top end AIO coolers generally outperform the top end dual-tower
coolers. For most people I wouldn't recommend AIO coolers, but they do
make accessing things around the CPU easier. So would a cheap a single
tower cooler as well though. Mine leaves just enough room to access the
primary M.2 slot, and plenty of room to access the DIMMs and graphics
card slots.
It looks like the M.2 slot would be a little tricky, it's got a plate (heatsink?)
over it I'd have to unscrew and slide with no extra clearance on one of
the screws. Dims are fine though.
On Fri, 24 Mar 2023 06:38:56 +0000, ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) wrote:
Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:
I still have a handful of 5.25" disks, including my old Windows 3.0
disks. Sure, I don't have a working DRIVE to use them in, but you
never know when the disks might come in handy. ;-)
I still have mine that my parents kept. :O
But does it /work/? Because I bet the rubber band on the motor has
perished and the gears all need lubricating. Unless you've been
regularly using the drive, its probably non-functional... like the one
I have in my (now incredibly neatly organized) collection.
The M.2 retaining screws that came with my mainboard were damn near microscopic.
Was that a bad design choice by ASUS, or is that really the standard?
Zaghadka <zagh...@hotmail.com> writes:
The M.2 retaining screws that came with my mainboard were damn near microscopic.I've only seen one kind, small. I consider the screws in my reading
glasses microscopic, the m.2 screws are just small.
Was that a bad design choice by ASUS, or is that really the standard?
Interesting question. Crucial (at https://www.crucial.com/support/articles-faq-ssd/about-m2-ssd-screws) explains they don't include screws with their SSDs due to a lack of
standard but that the common size is M2x3. Which means two millimeters diameter, 3 millimeters long.
I think that's the size of screws I've had in two computers and a couple
of USB-m.2 cases.
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