[Ed P]

Dave, I hope the existance of an old Win10 disk and a 1Tb drive are not driving your decisions. As I and Wasbit/Dave have posted, there are perfectly adequate ready builts available at a cost that is 50% or so of your budget.

Most also come with Windows 11 installed, and available space for the 1Tb drive to be used as a spare/backup storage.

[Ed P]

Unfortunately John it sounds like you have a painful but non-emergency problem. The NHS web site in this case  tells you to go to your registered dentist.

However if you live in a city that has a dental hospital/school I would try my luck by going there. Walk-in treatment is term-time week days only, and while the care is great you may well be treated by a supervised student. Given the extreme difficulty in getting on an NHS list the dental hospitals tend to be over-crowded with real emergenvy work so they may well tell you to go away.

If you have an unusual problem which your dentist did not cause, he may decide to refer you to the dental hospital and they may then stick you on their (long) waiting list. Something like this happened to me when an eye-tooth extraction resulted in a hole through to my sinuses and hence to my nose. This caused bleeding that could not be stopped by the dentist and resulted in an emergency trip, and in my case damned painful cauterization treatment without anaesthetic. (blood flow apparently would wash out any local anaesthetic).

[Ed P]

My edit was too slow.

I tried to add:

Alternately it could of course be TRIM.

 

[Ed P]

On re-reading I realized that my write-behind comment was a bit opaque.

Normally SSDs are processed to use Write-through while slower HDDs often use write-behind.

link

If the Win10 PC was fully updated it should have automatically fixed things when you substituted an SSD for the hdd. However I suspect your friend never bothered to keep the software up to date. If so there is a chance that the SSD was set to use write behind, and I suspect that this may have caused the craziness.

All wild speculation on my part but it would partially explain why this PC behaves as though it is a part of the Zombie invasion, and is programmed to kill SSD drive contents !

 

[Ed P]

As there is only a C Drive, I think it would be wise to check the system files using the SFC/DISM combo.  While a more likely problem area is in the write-behind area, I think you need to check that this is not being caused by bad system files.

[Ed P]

I’m quite confused as to what works and where.

I now make the following assumptions based on what you have written so far.

a) The C-Drive is apparently OK (but I still think it needs a SFC/DISM check for bad system files)

b) All the craziness takes place on a data drive . Drive 4 which is lettered D or F

c) Drive 4 seems to corrupt anything that is attached to it. If true, take out Drive 4 and attach to your PC, put a couple of file folders on it, reattach, reboot and see what you get. If corrupted, then the PC mobos disk controller is suspect or it has corrupted drivers (running SFC/DISM should eliminate the latter as a problem)

If everything points at the disk controller then I think it is time for a new PC as you could waste a lot of time/money trying to resusitate a PC that is well past its sell-by date.

[Ed P]

Have a lo-cal beer on me!

[Ed P]

Sorry – it looks as though you had better do a fresh install and use your backups.

Making a wild guess, I would say that you have a mobo/disk controller problem, and if you plan to treat yourself to a new PC (preferably a Win11 one) I’d do it before trying to restore your files, as it sounds as though you have a really spooky Halloween PC that kills disks it contacts!

Although I’m happy building PCs, it has reached the stage where those new PCs which only allow SSDs to be added/exchanged do all I want at a very competitive price.

[Ed P]

(Before) or after changing the Bios battery try running SFC and DISM in admin mode.

Right click Command Prompt and run as Admin.

Type in

sfc/scannow and let it run

(You may need a Windows Installation Disk if any of the system files are corrupt)

then Type in:

DISM /online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth

Some people recommend running

chkdsk /f /r

Frankly I would not do this before having a bit copy of the drive as chkdsk often gives more problems than it solves!

I’d rather disable hibernation using:

powercfg -h off

again in Admin mode.

[Ed P]

I note that Beelink have a number of different cpu/hdd combos.

The Intel N5105 was the one that I purchased for SWMBO. As I had a spare 2.5 inch hybrid hdd I also installed that to give her a backup/data storage disk. Not really necessary, but it did satisfy me that the Beelink could easily be expanded.

[Ed P]

I’d suggest that you try running through the Windows 10 Hibernation Troubleshooting checklist:

link

Hibernation has always been an issue with Windows 10 and earlier. Luckily Win11 generally seems to fix these issues.

I bought SWMBO a Beelink computer – small footprint, reasonable price, good support, but does everything she wants in a small office PC

[Ed P]

+1

 

[Ed P]

Sorry, I obviously got the PM’s name wrong – according to Joe Biden it should be: Rashi Sanook.

[Ed P]

Well we are stuck with Sunak, one of the richest men in the UK as PM.

In addition to his concerns for whipping the rebellious Conservatives into line, he says that he ‘understands’ the concerns of the populace. I really wonder if a man who does not even pay for his own petrol has the slightest idea of the real concerns of 80% of the populace.

He could show some modicum of understanding simply by immediately increasing the  thresholds for Universal Credit earnings  and the 55% taper ‘tax’ to allow for food and fuel price inflation.  He needs to dump his previous policies of taking money from the poor and giving it to the rich.

[Ed P]

Your reply sent me down an Internet rabbit hole, as I realized that I knew very little about any Amplifiers except Class D  DSP amps. I didn’t even know what a class D amplifier meant other than it gave a very reasonable low cost LoFi output for my Pi setups.

What a rabbit hole! I never knew just how many different types of amplifier exist. All the way from Class A right through to Class T. If you ever do want to build your own setup including an amp then Class T looks the way to go as this DSP amp apparently  combines simplicity, power efficiency and low distortion comparable with the best Class A-B transistor driven amps.

If you too want to wander down the Amp rabbit hole, this is the link I finished on.

[Ed P]

Well :

The Truss bridge to nowhere was brought down by a Braverman.

Now what? It looks like Hunt has cornered the Chancellors chair for a while as no Prime Minister in their right mind would move him out as things stand. He has also stated that he will not stand for the pm role, and it is always good to have a

I guess we now need to see the bookie’s odds on Bojo, Badenoch, Braverman, Mordant, Sunak (heaven help us) and Wallace (assuming he will stand).

However who ever it is will only get in as a result of our broken version of democracy. Given that the pundits say that politically  an election HAS to take place before next summer, imo putting in right-wing austerity mongers would be an even worse Conservative political disaster. On that assumption it looks like Wallace or BoJo, with Mordant as an outsider.

[Ed P]

keith with the teef wrote:

I cannot find the words to express how disappointed I am with the conservative party.

They play with themselves, we pay!

Like you I cannot understand how a political party can so thoroughly implode. I just wrote the following in a note to a US friend during a discussion on events in Ukraine.

“I’m afraid to say it, but the UK is a busted flush and
incapable of taking any leadership role. My Government
cannot even lead itself. The UK swapped a Government that was
led like an immoral mendacious boozy football club, but with some
sense of purpose, to one that is incompetent and flounders around
causing both friends and enemies to wonder what the hell is
going on! ”

Its not just friends and enemies, I too wonder what the hell is going on!

.

[Ed P]

The peoples of Ukraine whether supporters of Zelensky or Russia have suffered terribly, and the horrible situation has just become even worse.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Twitter on Tuesday that in the past eight days, “30% of Ukraine’s power stations have been destroyed, causing massive blackouts across the country”.

Imo affairs in Ukraine are reaching a critical juncture, and none of the outcomes are at all palatable.

a) A sticking plaster solution will be for Zelensky to now seek an accommodation with Russia. He will have to trade territory in order for Putin to be able to tell Russians that their sacrifice was worthwhile. Zalensky will also need to ‘win’ something, and EU membership may not be enough – he will certainly want border guarantees. (UN troops?). Long term peace would be hard and have to follow a Georgia example.

b) The horrible mess continues and Russia continues to erode Ukraine infrastructure. Western AA support would slow this down but not stop it. Ukraine will only survive the winter by the EU diverting its power supplies at a huge economic cost. This will almost certainly cause rolling power cuts in the UK as well. I’m not sure that the European West would have the stomach for this outcome. With Truss just damaged goods, the UK will offer no leadership, and another Winter of Discontent would be politically unacceptable.

A ruined infrastructure will completely scupper Ukraine supply lines and make a Zelensky ‘win’ impossible.

c) Putin completely loses his mind and uses tactical nukes – Armageddon would then be very close. I do not think this is a likely outcome as despite the continuous propaganda we get, Russia has a lot of support in countries such as India, and much  of Asia,Africa and South America. He can afford to play a long kamikaze drone game and just bluster about nukes.

[Ed P]

Sorry – they would be wasted on me. Too many years working in high decibel, high frequency environments mean that I’m now just barely a Lo-Fi man!

[Ed P]

Les. wrote:

n the latter case, you do NOT want repeated stop and start situations —  maybe not start up

I’d make a wild guess that this does not apply as the central heating system is controlled by a thermostat, and is likely to have a situation where the heating goes on and off at frequent intervals (albeit minutes rather than seconds between on and off), but the pump ought to cater for thermostat ‘noise’ and frequent cycling).

This link implies that single phase pumps can be used with an UPS. They do not caveat it by pump brand, so I guess the capacitor is start or start.plus run. The Plumbers Forum talks about start capacitor.

Interesting – I now know more about the boiler circulating pumps than I ever did before – almost enough to be dangerous!

[Author]

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