BF2S Forums Tech: Open thread

In newegg's case it doesn't really come as a huge revelation / anything new. People have gotten used, refurbished, or previously opened stuff marked as new plenty, including in this anecdotes from friends rather than just reddit complaints. Who wants to buy a $$$$ video card with oily fingerprint smudges and missing stuff? Years back when I bought from them semi-regularly, RMAs weren't a problem. But there have been mixed dealings.

I don't watch gamernexus.

Who cares if someone's hair is long in 2022. Worst that could happen to him in that field is getting it caught in a case fan.

If the drive is beyond life expectancy and has important stuff on it you should probably attempt to clone it as a matter of fact.

17 year old computer, could also be wacky drivers, controller, cable. A lot of times seems to be the cables in my experience. Chkdsk scan, swap cable, scan again, swap controller, scan again. Try different ports if needed. New cable still getting errors, try another new cable. Sometimes you get a bum one. Drive mfg website probably has tailor-made cloning software.

the cost of the replacement battery will probably be about 2x the phone at this point.

that phone is right on the cusp of falling off the edge of the world of software/firmware support. eventually it’ll be deprecated and you’ll be locked out of the ecosystem. apple do better than most at supporting their legacy devices in this respect, but you can’t keep decade-old devices in the loop of new operating systems, app stores, feature sets, etc, forever.

i imagine most current-gen apps are probably thrashing the modest hardware in it, too. memory bloat is inevitable as things progress.

apple do offer part-exchanges and can give you a small amount of cash for your old hardware. i got 30% off my latest phone by handing in my 4/5-year old previous model. obviously you’ll probably only get enough change for a 4-pack out of a 6s.

Last edited by uziq (2022-03-05 02:17:48)

i think apple’s firmware is actually designed to scale-down the operating speed of the processor/memory as the battery degrades. they say it’s to ‘do more with less’, manage the decline of the phone, etc. cynics would say they’re intentionally making their oldest devices slower to incentivise people to move on.

in any case, a very old phone with a very dead battery will be hopelessly slow.

if you just want a simple, back-to-basics phone, the iphone 13 mini is half the price of the flagships, doesn’t break the bank, and has all the latest gubbins, extremely power-efficient processor, excellent battery, etc. i’ve been posting from mine all week.

it’s laudable to not switch our phones every year – i tend to keep mine for 2/3 generations – but ultimately modern smartphones do have pricey battery tech that inevitably dies.

Last edited by uziq (2022-03-05 02:22:56)

you’ve been posting on this forum for 15 years using tech with china-implicated supply lines.

otherwise, yeah, enjoy that ‘made in australia’ $3000 handset.

brazil tried the ‘let’s protect our industry and make all our own tech’ thing. there’s a reason we aren’t all playing samba simulator IV on the brintendo novo. and those poor saps still end up paying 2x the price for imported consumer electronics.

Last edited by uziq (2022-03-05 02:38:45)

Friendly reminder by the way to keep tabs on the batteries of old devices. I replaced a swollen PSP battery a few years back.

Hasn't Samsung been in and out of China for awhile now? I think they stopped around in 2019 or 2020 in terms of their smartphones at least. Would be news to me if they started up again, but it wouldn't be something I wasn't expecting.

Components themselves are sometimes mfg roulette, sources varying even in some devices of the same model.

The Gamers Nexus guy tiff with newegg was actually elevated to an in-person meeting.



lol

Getting occasional memory issues/crashes

i’d check your ROM, too, if i were you mate. you’ve been POSTing gibberish here for months.

Great posts, very helpful A1

Dilbert_X wrote:

Getting occasional memory issues/crashes, should I try reseating the memory or just go ahead and order new, or maybe a new PC.

Its usually when its idle and probably when Norton is doing something.
Norton does seem to cause problems now and then.

Suggestions:
- make sure drivers are the most up-to-date, but more importantly correct ones. windows update seems to sometimes brick old rigs with an updated driver sourced from the sticky bottom of a dumpster, totally not the right thing. also be careful with driver updaters, although you can sometimes use them to fix damage caused by whatever garbage windows insists you need.
- memtest86 (some mobos I think have this bundled).
- in bios, make sure your timings and frequencies are set to spec.
- pop the sticks and make sure your motherboard's make/model lists the sticks' make/model on the ram mfg's qvl list (although if it's a new issue this is probably an unnecessary step). while you're at it, dust the innards of your PC, but don't blow any dust into the ram slots. don't tilt the can. if you use an air compressor, make sure you have a reliable way to trap the moisture.
- run windows in safe mode and try to replicate the crash if it's predictable.
- try unplugging non-critical hardware and see if you can replicate the crash.
- get a screenshot, photo, or dump of the crash and look it up on a help site.

Without more information it's hard to verify that Norton is what's causing issues. But if the crashes are predictable and easy to replicate, that should be easy to test. Sometimes one problem can masquerade as another.

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

As an all-in-wonder, paid suite, Norton has matured and is currently not actually horrible. I wouldn't laugh at someone for having it installed. It's a bit of a case of a lingering poor reputation at play. Norton being bad is an enduring meme. But I wouldn't have spurned XP back in the day just because Windows 95 was jank.

There are a lot of alternatives that do some of the stuff in the suite better, but you have to be willing to put up with trial fluff, keeping multiple softwares updated and sometimes not getting along with one another, and so on (I've floated on this stuff for years). MSE is pretty decent, so on the top of that I'd just recommend someone get a 2f/mf password manager and maybe sign up for a VPN that does Netflix.

totally unnecessary for a tech-literate person to have a suite of software installed which constantly eats up a chunk of your CPU, revs your hard-drives, intrudes on web browsing, continuously alerts you to false-positives or locks you out of your own system functions 'for your safety', etc.

that whole era of all-consuming anti-virus 'protection suites' is thankfully gone. good riddance.

i install a malwarebytes-type software once a month, perhaps, and do a deep scan. fuck having a day-to-day interruption from some overweening software that keeps trying to sell me shit.