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What the fuck is wrong with my computer.
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Is there a way to buy a different cooling device for my PC that actually keeps the computer temperature down. Preferably one that's not so expensive.
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Aftermarket CPU heatsink/fan.
PCI slot fan.
That's where I would start. It depends on the parts that are overheating. -
Somehow blew up my router in the process of trying to enable QoS. Can't figure out what I did that messed it up so bad, but it seems to have something to do with DNS, and I can't connect without going directly modem to PC.
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What were you trying to prioritize?
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Flash it and begin anew? It's weird that QoS would nuke it.
I have two circa 2004 desktop towers open and linked together in the living room. After thirty minutes, I managed a POST screen, after which it just cycles memtest infinitely. Awesome. Time to go raid the local used shop and find an old processor/mobo combo that's functional/still supports IDE drives and AGP cards. -
Xeno:The saga has ended. Finally got a new computer. Took the old one in and the problem was when they initially put it together they never screwed in one of the four screws that hold down the fan so it really wasn't making contact with the processor thus it was heating up like crazy. To top it off that the mobo was missing the fan bracket so the only fan that would've worked would've been a small one that uses the screws. At that point I just told the guy fuck it and bought a new one.
Also, told the tech to put my old HDD into the new one so now I have crazy amounts of space.
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I had an issue once where a power supply fan would not start unless I poked a pencil in and twiddled it around. Eventually it broke so bad that it spat sparks out a couple of times and then wouldn't even turn on.
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Every holiday season I become interested in doing recording/streaming my games, and this one is no different. Therefore I would like advice on how to do so. I was thinking about getting this and wanted to know what other hardware I would need to stream/record the game with my voice over. I guess also some tips on setting the bitch up.
Secondly, occasionally when I start up/wake up my PC, one of my external HDD (my older 250GB maxtor drive) will pop up the "you-just-plugged-in-a-storage-device" window despite not being unplugged between shutdowns/sleep states. Furthermore once in a blue moon it will fail to recognize the drive and I might have to replug it in a few times in order for it to get recognized. Is this something I should be worried about? -
That's what I use. Don't need much else.
Simple quote that should answer your hard drive question. "The failure rate on hard drives is 100%." Not that its necessarily your problem but if its an old drive you might want to look into a replacement. -
So I don't need a mixer or some shit if I want my voice in addition to the game audio?
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if your stereo mix works, you can use that.
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Has anyone tried Xsplit for streaming your PC, how is it? I'd imagine it'd be cheaper than that dyyno application for justin.tv.
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Flash Media Encoder is free.
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FME is free, but it's a pain in the ass. It's such finicky software. Dyyno was nice and simple but yeah it ain't cheap.
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yeah, when I launch FMLE it gives me a "no video input device detected" error and as such can't stream, which is why I was asking if xsplit is any good.
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It's doable though, you just have to keep fiddling with settings. There are a lot of forum posts and websites that will walk you through getting it up. I think SC2 commentator Day9 even has a video version of one.
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FME won't detect the PVR, what can do is use the software that it comes with and capture your screen with VHscrCap.
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I use SCFH with the same results. You just need an intermediary program.
There's no way to delay your mic audio in those programs, is there? Because of the delay on the PVR your voice will be two seconds ahead and sound like you're predicting the future. :D -
Even on my mac with the other software I use there's a lag. I think it's less the software and more pvr itself. I tried playing a game on both the mac and the pc without splitting it back to the tv. That was horrible.
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It is the PVR. The box is doing encoding and spitting it out. Explains the delay too.
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Oh, wait, I read that wrong. Whooops. Yeah, as far as I know there is no way to delay you audio.
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Dave, I thought you already delayed your mic audio? There is a program to do it.
I don't get my voice two seconds ahead because I got a program (VirtualAudio Cable) that just routes the microphone input to the same audio output as my system, sort of acting as a virtual mixer. So the video and audio are synced, but what people see online is like 5-10 seconds behind reality, which is to be expected. Doesn't create an issue unless we start typing "DAMMIT" in the chat before the stream catches up to the part where we game over.
My setup is:
-Hauppauge PVR Component input set to 720p
-Video recording program that came with Hauppauge (forget the name)
-SCFH DSF to capture the preview window and make a "camera" source out of that
-Virtual Audio Cable (paid sketchy Polish/Russian company the $20) to create Virtual Audio Source 1
-Control Panel->Sounds and settings->Make Virtual Audio Source 1 the default Audio Output so all sounds from your computer go here (you will no longer be able to hear audio from speakers)
-Virtual Audio Cable sound looper thingy to route my USB Headset to the Sound Mixer (which will then get routed to the VAC)
-FME with reasonable settings set to stream SCFH video and VAC1 as the audio
There are certainly other ways to do this. I use the Virtual Audio Cable output so I don't have to worry about feedback loops. You also don't need Virtual Audio Cable if you can use "Stereo Mix" properly, which a lot of soundcards don't support, though it is a Windows feature that I think works better on XP. My way is sort of a pain in the butt, but works with the hardware I have, and doesn't result in my having to figure out audio delays or anything. I wish I could do text overlays, but I'm not yet willing to shell out for a better program. -
I'm the one who told you about VAC. :DSpankminister said:Dave, I thought you already delayed your mic audio? There is a program to do it.
I do basically the same thing. Programs like Dynamo sound nice, but the one button solution sacrifices a ton of granularity. I like having the options to fiddle with bitrate and framerate in FME. I don't know if it's a good trade-off for managing 3 virtual audio cables with different time delays in order to steam Guardian Heroes with Joel and make sure his Skype and my Skype is hitting at the same time while letting me listen to his Skype without having to hear the time-delayed audio from the game while also listening to the real-time audio from the game on my speakers.
Sometimes it's a pain.
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Dave said:
I'm the one who told you about VAC. :D
I know, I think I misread your earlier post as not knowing if VAC could do audio delay. Which confused me since you answered that question when I asked you.
Dave said:Sometimes it's a pain.
Yeah. Every so often I wonder if there's a set of batch scripts I could use to do all this stuff with one click. One day I'll get it all set up.
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My computer is in the process of dieing. It started as just takeing super long to start up, like it went from a regular 1 to 2 minute process to taking about 5-10 minutes. Almost all of this time shows up between when the first windows icons with the bar below it shows up, then the screen goes black and usually a few seconds later your desktop pops up, now its like the screen goes black for 5 or more minutes.
Then last night the screen would go black and eventually the computer would jsut restart. Upon trying Safe Mode it would load partly and then eventually it would Blue Screen naming some portion of my windows 32 system files as missing/unreadable/corrupted.
It did various version of that for 15 mintues as i messed with stuff. Then I blew my computer out after which it started up but agian took nearly 10 minutes. Then my computer seemed to work fine aside from an unsual sluggishness. It's pretty old at this point like 4 or 5 years any ideas? Like some of the issues point to a broken windows install but others look like hardware, so im a little confused. -
I think you know the answer.
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I'm leaning towards just reformatting but that would be a pain since I don't think I have a windows disk anymore.
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Yeah, those disks sure do have a way of getting lost.
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I grab an ISO of all media I install.
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I think I do have an iso on my computer but I only give it 20% chance of ever starting again.
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If you have another computer you can get an adapter that will convert sata to USB. That would let you get the ISO even if the drive won't boot. I would imagine you must know someone with a CD though.
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yeah I scavenged a CD from a friend eventually now I have a copy of that CD but it turned out that just running the windows recovery on the CD fixed it eventually.
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Dunno if this is a bit too specific, but what the hell. I just installed KOTOR 2 with the latest version of the restored content mod on my laptop, but as soon as the opening movie ends I hear the sounds of the ship briefly and then it stops working. Any recommendations?
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Try vanilla and see if you're getting the same problems. If you can determine the problem is with the mod well, you're gonna have to do your own research to find a fix or play without.
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Also try running it in XP comparability mode, if you haven't already. Problems with games are usually pretty common. You should be able to google it.
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Thanks, I'll try both.
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"pfn list invalid" and other memory-conflict related BSOD's. Turns out the drive with my page file was 59% fragmented. Moved the pagefile to another drive and running a defrag, we'll see if that helps.
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I'm going to do a small upgrade to my 'puter for Skyrim. Video card and maybe RAM.
I've been out of the game for awhile and don't know exactly what to look for. I want to stay under $100. Any suggestions? I've been looking at these two...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125346
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130682
The more stream processors the better? I have no idea. -
Do you have a PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot on your motherboard? Would you have enough room if that video card took up two slots?
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I'd suggest going for this. I'm pretty sure those cards aren't intended for gaming, but I'm no expert. I think stream processors are pretty important.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814162062 -
Yeah I have PCI Express 2.0 x16. Video cards are the only thing I use the slots for anymore.
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You're going to want 128-bit (memory bandwidth). That last one that Getter posted is sick.
You might also want to consider a 256-bit 512GB card: DIAMOND A4870PE5512 Radeon HD 4870 512MB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card - OEM
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Continuing this trend of asking for hardware advice: I have not built a system since before SATA and PCIe were standards. Indeed, I just disassembled my old Athlon 3200+ machine and stripped the drives to make externals. As much as I love having a netbook for travel and writing, I'm really itching to get a good, game-capable desktop in the house. Is building your own still the way to go, or have pre-built machines become price competitive?
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I'd say building your own is still the best, but it's getting better. What kind of budget are you thinking of?
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The price gap is closer. It depends on if you're feeling lucky in putting things together and not going insane troubleshooting every little issue. The next time we need a computer I'm seriously considering just getting a prebuilt one. This computer caused us about a year of grief, on and off.
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That doesn't mean a prebuilt one isn't going to cause problems. Just that you get somebody to yell at when it does cause problems instead of yourself.
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The problem with prebuilt computers is you say you want a $1000 computer and they waste $200 of that getting some stupid case filled with flashing lights.
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I've always been one to assemble my own system, so I'm used to the troubleshooting aspect. But man, nothing can be as bad as trying to find working drivers under Win95 or Redhat or something. If it isn't that bad, I won't want to kill myself doing it.
I don't know how to make honest budget projections, frankly. I'd like to keep it around six hundred bucks, but I don't know if that's reasonable. Piecemealing it is also an option, I suppose. -
I'd say if you have a serviceable system that you can upgrade decently go that route but if you have to start at scratch you might want to look at prebuilts. Flashing lights aren't that much of a thing any more. In my opinion it's $100 towards ensuring that shit posts. If there's anything I hate when building a pc it's putting every component in and then nothing happens. The next few HOURS of back tracing each part to see where the problem lies is something I don't have the patience for any more. Fuck that, I'll pay the little bit extra that it is now to just push the power button.
Though, I am the one who after fighting with graphics cards and their shitty drivers for the better part of a year, went entirely laptop. There's no bs with whether or not it's displaying properly to my tv. I've yet to run into anything this 2 year old laptop can't handle. Can't max everything but that doesn't bother me. I'm the person who will drop resolution or AA or shadows, to increase the draw distance. -
Under 6 is doable. My current rig cost me just north of 5 and it was a complete rebuild. The only thing I didn't buy was a new monitor. Granted, it isn't top of the line anything but it ran Deus Ex with ease.
