PC Tech Thread

What would Jesus do?

Give the laptop to me to donate to https://transtechtent.com/ who will wipe it, install an OS, and then give it to kids in needs or families in poverty.

Buy yourself a TPM compatible laptop and move on :)

Yeah that's the one I was going to post. I did the registry things during the install.

I think I did in on some VMs which worked out OK

What about these add-on TPM2.0 modules? If I could find one of those, I wonder if that would work...

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/gigabyte-gc-tpm-20-trusted-platform-module-compute-securely

It's a desktop machine not a laptop - I was considering moving to laptops only.

I do have an old Sony laptop I could donate.

Problem with laptops is trying to use old shit, like adding video capture cards if I ever get around to trying (again) to dump all my handycam footage to the PC for editing.

Oh, then you probably can buy a little card to go onto the motherboard to give you TPM.

I did that with my Asus board, and then installed Debian.

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-Z170MX-Gaming-5-rev-10/sp#sp

includes a

"1 x Trusted Platform Module (TPM) header" so I might be able to grab one off ebay and try that. It's a 20-pin slot and most of the 12-pin stuff on ebay doesn't mention compatibility though.

Just buying a brand spanking new laptop is probably the best idea (until I see their prices)

Also wondering about this. I have an old Surface Book 1 in which the battery is shot, but works fine for my needs. Would like it to be Android really in order to ditch a lot of apps from my phone, but I don't think this model is supported on a lot of the 3rd party ROMs.

Edit: new page fail, this was in regards to Win 10 support ending.

My Win 10 support ending motion has been to replace everything I can with Debian 12... except a single machine which is now Windows 11.

I am tempted to Debian all the things... but the Win 11 machine is my gaming machine and not all of the games I play have a working Linux port, and I also use this for content creation and work things, which means a lot of AV stuff. I don't yet have alternatives to all of my Windows software, so just this one machines running Windows 11 carries that load.

"Sadly the modules are not interchangeable. We do not stock the 20 pin module as it was discontinued a few years ago. We don't stock a product that will work for you sorry."

I put Ubuntu on my Surface Go 1 recently due to the Windows support ending (and it being pretty slow).

Installed fine with wifi, touch screen and keyboard all working straight off.

something like this?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Encryption-Security-Gigabyte-Standalone-Processor/dp/B0BGSM1QTQ
I'm sure there's a non Amazon option

Maybe. I read somewhere else of them having issues with DDR3 memory or maybe just the age of the board and the DDR3 thing was not the direct issue. I can't remember what mine is.

from command line
wmic memorychip get devicelocator, memorytype, partnumber

google the part number

anyway, you know all this ;)

Nah, first I have some butternut squash risotto then I just look at the order email. Quicker (if you ignore the lunch break) than trying to use wmi ;)

"Corsair DDR4 Vengeance LPX 32GB (2x16GB) 2400MHz Memory Kit"

I guess for £20 it's worth a punt

The soldering in the pics looks worse than mine though..

Any assistance appreciated.

My partner [with a masters in software development] has apparently never heard of Fn-lock on a keyboard, so last night was trying to find a way to disable it. She ended up in BIOS, apparently made no changes as there was nothing relevant, exited without saving, and now the PC won't boot. It goes straight from the POST page to saying "Starting automatic repair", then into the blue "Your computer failed to start correctly". I can't boot via "Start up Settings" in UEFI to try safe mode etc.
I've reset BIOS to defaults with no luck.
I've run SFC / scan now, which does say it's found and repaired corrupt files, but I run into the same problem on the next boot.
I've run chkdsk, chkdsk /f, chkdsk /r, and chkdsk /r /scan, none of which return any results.
I've used a USB recovery drive which fails to achieve anything.
Unfortunately I have no recovery image or restore point to fall back on.

It is an older SSD and I initially thought maybe it's just failed coincidentally, but since running chkdsk and it coming back unremarkable I'm not sure that's the problem.

Running W11. Some hardware changes a couple months ago, happy to elaborate on request but I don't think it's relevant. Despite this I've tried removing everything removable, one at a time. No dice.
Any ideas?

Go back into BIOS and, if you can't see anything to fix, reset to defaults?

Sorry, forgot to mention I have tried that.

How did you run chkdsk if it's not starting - safe mode or recovery drive?

Do the contents of the drive look correct apart from whatever is stopping Windows starting properly?

Via the command prompt in UEFI.

Drive contents look ok, but going through the drives individually it appears windows is installed on E: (despite saying C: in all the explorer windows prior to this issue?). So now I'm rerunning chkdsk on the correct drive. Will report back.

You sure the UEFI boot order hasn't changed and altered the (stupid, unstable) Windows drive letter assignments?

Do you actually have 3 or more partitions (or drives) and can you see their labels in the UEFI shell?

I'm not sure of that, but even if I use boot manager to select the correct drive I run into the same issue immediately.
Likewise, removing all drives except the boot drive changes nothing, I still go straight to "preparing automatic repair" from POST.

Apologies for what seems like a silly question, but does the screen showing "Your computer failed to start correctly" not offer any options for repairing things?

Perfectly valid question, I've been caught out not doing the simple stuff before!
It does (the "Repair Windows" option which comes up as ones of the first things to try), but it makes no difference. I've checked the log and all checks completed successfully.

I have now made it worse by messing around with the bcdboot command.
So now I'm just going to reinstall via USB and hope I don't lose any files 🤞🏼

I also hate to point this out now, but the status of Fn-lock is a software thing. It can be toggled with Caps Lock + Fn.

Don't I know it.
It's Fn+X+L for 3 seconds on my Keychron. She apparently tried this and it didn't work. I have since done it successfully so I think she didn't hold the combination long enough. C'est la vie.