PC Tech Thread

Budget?

Buy a 13inch Macbook Pro and bootcamp? Yet to see a Laptop that Matches Apples offerings.

Sorry, what's bootcamp, is that a duel boot thing?

Ideally less than £2k

Yeah, really really easy fully supported Dual Boot. It's pretty damn good. No emulation, proper Dual boot. I have it on both my Macs and quite into Windows 10.

Get the 13inch Macbook Pro, but maybe wait for a bit as I think an update is one the horizon although I suspect they may end up making it later in the year...

Anybody feeling charitable?
A mate died about a year ago, and his widow has asked me to retrieve any photos,
(not those sort, my mate was a diver and was slowly digitising his collection of underwater slr photos. he had one of those cool underwater housings for his Canon),
remove any trace of/connection to him, and offer as a donation.

So happens son has a friend in a family of four children, absent father, no pcs currently, so looked like I could do a couple of favours at the same time.

My mate came from a time when drivers were not automatically updated by Windows,
so his Dell Studio, (originally W7, now 8.1), would sometimes suffer from him being suckered into downloading some spurious 'Driver Update' package. A few times I cleared out his previous laptop, and having spent a few hours with this one, I can see why the last windows update was August 2014 and his wife retains the Dell he bought himself in September 2014.

He tried to use Firefox, but ended up being suckered into installing various 'toolbars',
'Delta', 'Movies toolbar for Firefox', 'Movies toolbar for Internet Explorer', and Firefox was anchored on version 24, which had hijacked his downloads in the past.

CCleaner allowed me to remove the above, plus, 'Driver Restore','Driver Update', 'Fix Cleaner', 'MyFree Codec','iLivid','Yahoo software Update'.
'Snap.do' seemed persistent,
and when I installed the latest Firefox from a (disposable) usb stick,
it looked like there were two versions of Firefox running with a 'bad' version superimposed over the good one, with the screen flicking between them until the 'diseased' version won out.

Also he had had problems installing a new Canon printer and the software for at least two dive computers. There is surprisingly little Dell bloatware,
and,
the trackpad is not behaving like a trackpad.
Left clicking brings up a context menu, so does the right click. Depending upon the window you are trying to access, 'Esc' will remove the left click context menu, but attempting to click won't register. A quick check of device manager showed no sign of a trackpad, and 'Windows mouse management console' or some such 'is not installed'.
Also the first letter of any search in the 2nd or subsequent firefox tab will be lost, bit the speaker will beep.

Malwarebytes ran for 90 minutes found 45 threats and the heuristic search topped out at 2270 issues. All deleted. I was unable to find a suitable driver on the Dell website, even after downloading the 'Auto-detect' function, it told me the laptop was a W7 device, not the 8.1 that it is running.

Oh it also downloaded 227MB of Windows updates overnight, and another 40MB this morning,
but still not really usable.

In hope I allowed it to download & install W10, hoping that this fresh install would override all the track/touchpad problems.

4.5 hours later the laptop is running, but the trackpad is the same.
I suspect i am encountering user/adminstrator problems.
(I had to use the Microsoft, 'we'll send you a text or message' to reset the unknow password last night), as now in W10, Device Manager shows no detail,
clicking say on 'Ide ata/atapi controller' gives just the options of 'Scan for hardware changes or Properties'. If 'Properties' is selected the resultant window has none of the expected tabs.

Thanks for reading.

Nuke it from orbit?

what's the tl;dr?

Are the pics on the fucked pc that you want taking off? Or do you just want to fix the pc so you can digitize the pics?

Take the disk out, put it in a usb type external caddy or similar. These are available for IDE and Sata.
Plug the drive into another pc/laptop. As the drive is not a boot drive it is fairly safe just make sure your av is up to date. Recover the pictures and then nuke the drive.
http://www.ebuyer.com/454202-dynamode-usb-2-0-powered-external-housing-for-3-5-inch-ide-hdd-silver-usb-hd3-5-a

http://www.ebuyer.com/482881-xenta-3-5-usb3-0-sata-hdd-enclosure-silver-and-black-gd3561213

Yes.
No.
Would like a functioning laptop to offer to deserving child.

Luckily already possess such a device.

Mrs. mespilus has been known to deny clicking on the wrong options and rendering her laptop inoperative. Like this one, an overnight and an evening was the limit of my patience/expertise.

Don't need to save anything on the harddrive? Wipe it, reinstall windows, if still buggy, flash and wipe it again.

I can wait, why 13" over 15"?

Many thanks your attention & help.

Just F2'ed on restart to have a quick look in the BIOS.

Supervisor password is : CLEAR
User password is: LOCKED
HDD Password : HDD PASSWORD FROZEN

Does HDD Password = the password I enter to gain access to the laptop after (re-) start?

Does HDD PASSWORD FROZEN mean it wont be accessible when mounted in the external caddy?

various ways to sort that computer, one could create a new partition, move the files to it and reinstall windows on the main partition. Some Dells have a hidden partition containing the OS restore although some users delete it to free up HDD space. The options listed above-removing a drive to transfer files are also good. In terms of clearing out viruses/malware some online scanners are good like housecall or eset. Malware bytes is good and the fact you can run it means you probably dont have anything serious trying to hijack the OS-those types of infections tend to wreak havoc with permissions. Instances of software that keep appearing after being removed are hard to track down- usually reside in places like hidden folders in Appdata or in randomly named folders on the root or in temp folders. Sometimes you have to use software to force delete them too. Sometimes you can track down a reoccuring install by searching all files ie . and listing by created most recently. Worth checking whats set to run at startup > type config in the windows search function and open system configuration - there you can tick or untick services/programs running as your OS boots up. Theres a handy tool called combofix which is pretty good at repairing the damage done by warez but its only something for techy types that know the risks and have a plan B. Oh and the trackpad may be a hardware fault - ive encountered many dell inspiron with that fault - sometimes its caused by the battery/psu believe it or not.

@schnelly
Thank you for that.
Unfortunately my 'Hail Mary' of installing W10, means the Studio is now beyond my (very limited) expertise, [W98 for a 1999 desktop for 5 years, two XP desktops until last year-ish, two W7 laptops for 4-5 years yet to jump to W10).
The Studio W10 Task Manager is just a window with a list of the program s I have started,
and the 'More details' button fails to respond to the trackpad,
so I cannot find out what is sending the fan into overdrive at start up,
(but it unlikely to be anything good is it?)
I wondered if the trackpad was just a physical fault, or an inadvertent key combination reconfiguring it.

Im not sure where youre based, i'm in essex so its probably not easy to help if youre in London. I always keep a load of tools for dealing with these kinds of issues- one such tool would be a dvd bootable copy of a linux distro or a disc called hirens which has 'mini xp'- then one could load up the computer with another os to quickly check if the mouse functioned ok outside of windows. The other bonus with a linux distro is you can access the file structure with none of the problematic windows malware slowing things down. Its normal for a laptop fan to spin at 100% for a few seconds at boot before it reduces. If it stays on full its likely the heatsink is clogged or theres a thermal compound or sensor issue. Sometimes the Bios has a setting to run fan at 100% when on AC power ie plugged in. Then re the trackpad - the only other thing that springs to mind thatcan disable the trackpad is the relevant FN key combination but that tends to turn the whole thing on or off.

@Schnell
Thank you for that gracious offer. Indeed I am London based, and the opposite side to Essex!

Fortunately the widow, (converted to iPads a while ago), now a little embarassed,
as previously it only took a a couple of scans to return her late husbands laptops to working condition,
has confirmed the security aspect is worth the £30 odd quid for a replacement hard drive.

So, tomorrow, back off hard drive out, vacuum the chassis, hard drive into caddy, copy the entirety to a spare USB hard drive, new hard drive in and off we go. Hopefully she can locate the original windows key.

I guess for me it's just form (although I own a 15). I prefer the smaller size, specs wise there is not a lot in it apart from the very top end with the discreet GPU.

Can somebody recommend a free audio capture tool for windows?
Asking for a friend - he needs to record "what he hears" to mp3 preferably.
Used to do this with WaveLab back in the day, which was overkill for the task.
Found some freeware tools of course but the files they give all sound "tinny" / shit.

I haven't really used it much (and never on Windows), but Audacity does this and it's free.

Audacity would be my suggestion too. I've used it occasionally on windows

Thank you both, will check it out!

You need to install LAME mp3 encoder and point Audacity at it via options/settings otherwise no mp3 for you!

Couple of things folks... good hardware monitoring tools? For temps and that...
And,
Anyone ever tried to build their own case? Seen this and it blew my mind...
http://www.bit-tech.net/modding/2012/12/23/mod-of-the-year-2012/18