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Hi again Dave.

I hope CCL have sorted your problem but if not it is certainly true that switching supplies like those in a PC need some load to run. Higher power PSUs tend to require a higher minimum load. I cant work out if you are using any disks at all in your system but it may be worth attaching a spinner just to see what happens. The problem is usually on the 12+ rail and a spinner will draw more than the required 1A on start up.

Anyway good luck and let us know what happens.

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<p style=”text-align: left;”>Sorry you are right Ed ?</p>
I may post elsewhere though ?

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Ed

We were lied to in the 70’s

Ment to be the EEC not the EU

And how can anyone not know what they were voting on after that leflet our gov sent out ?

I got a stamp and sent it back

 

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Ed

We voted out of the EU get over it

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You do have to be careful picking a new graphics card. I once got a 6300 to replace an FX5600 and it was only about 2 thirds as fast !

Have a look at Palicomp if you want a  whole new PC. I like their system builder.

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I must admit I have not seen the Windows did not shut down properly screen in a while but I don’t know what’s changed exactly. I do know if you shut down Windows 10 improperly 3 times in a row it presents you with recovery options so maybe they just added a counter ?

If you start any version of Windows in safe mode it will list the drivers it is loading as in your screen shot.

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I will also mention that if you have a BIOS system you do not “Have” to have a System partition.  If you let Windows 10 setup partition your drive you will get one but if you have an existing version of XP installed you won’t. In this case the boot manager and config files are put in a Windows partition.

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I would love to know what is in the 100MB hidden “System” partition these days. Under Windows 7 you could assign it a drive letter and mount it from Disk management but under W10 I have been unable to do so. This partition contains Windows boot manager and the boot configuration data base (BCD) but there is other stuff in there too I would like a look at.

By the way the “System” partition is always formatted as FAT as it is a requirement of the UEFI standard and Microsoft does the same with BIOS systems too. If im not mistaken the “Windows” partition must be NTFS for NT based versions of windows because it is the only type they can boot from.

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You are welcome John. Better luck with the next one ?

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Oh and NTFS will also add the bad cluster to the bad clusters file so it never gets used again, unlike with FAT.

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Im just going to describe one of NTFS’s self healing features here because I can’t help myself ?

With the FAT system an entry in the file allocation table points to the first cluster of a file and then that cluster points to the next cluster in a linked chain. The last cluster in the chain is marked as end of file instead of pointing to another cluster.

If a cluster goes bad then you will loose all of the file past the bad cluster at the very least because there is now no way to find the next cluster in the chain.

NTFS stores file records in the Master File Table and it works in a different way. NTFS stores file data as contiguous RUNS of sectors and the file record contains the runs starting cluster and its length. If data is appended to a file then a new run is created and added to the file record.

You can probably see how this prevents lost clusters and cross linked clusters but its better than that because of virtual cluster numbers (VCN). The file record actually stores a run’s starting cluster as a Logical Cluster Number (LCN), VCN pair. The LCN represent the physical clusters on the disk, starting at 0 and continuing to the end of the disk. The VCN represents a clusters position within a file, starting at 0 and continuing to the end of the file.

If a cluster goes bad then NTFS can map in a new one and here’s how its done.

Say a file has just one run with a starting VCN of 0, a LCN of 100 and a length of 10 clusters. If a cluster, lets say 105, goes bad then NTFS will amend the length of the original run to 5 and then create a new run with just one cluster in it, starting with VCN 6 and pointing to a new good cluster. NTFS will then create a third run starting with VCN 7 and a length of 4 containing the rest of the LCN’s.

So you now have three run’s instead of one but the file is still valid with the VCN’s sill running from 0 to 9.

If you happen to be running software raid then the Windows Volume manager will fill the new cluster with data from the copy but even if you are not then loosing just one cluster may not matter much in say a jpeg file.

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Hi John

I haven’t personally seen that scanning disk thing since Windows ME but I would be interested in the result of your test.

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Version two point ten ? Surely that’s version 3 ?

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I don’t like the sound of the quivering display. It could well be a problem with the adapter PSU. Can you try powering the drive from your PC to test this ?

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Infact it is slightly better than that because if NTFS has successfully logged an entire operation but it has not been marked as complete because of a system crash then NTFS may decide to redo the operation instead of rolling it back.

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You can thank NTFS for that.

NTFS is a journaling file system so it keeps a log of any proposed disk changes before it actually makes them. If an operation is successful it is marked as complete and gets removed from the log.

Every time Windows starts it runs a mini version of CHKDSK but it only has to scan the log file for incomplete operations, not the entire disk.

If an incomplete entry is found then NTFS rolls back the whole operation. This protects the disk structure but sadly not the data.

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I may have posted something like the above before. If so then sorry for repeating myself. I sometimes forget what I post where ?

On a different note then I upgraded the memory last week from 6GB to 12GB and the only program to show improvement was the DOOM reboot. Doom says it requires 8GB as a minimum and it showed a slight stutter sometimes with on 6 but now it dosent.

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If you think Charles Babbage had a raw deal then pity Ada Lovelace. Ever heard of her ?

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Im afraid a lot of it is down to hostile takeovers and asset stripping. The General Electric Company almost single handedly wiped out our electronics industry by doing zero research (Except that paid for by the MOD) and then just buying any company with a good idea. Of corse they just kept the idea and liquidated the company.

I do not know why any company that values its survival would list on the stock exchange these days because they get clobbered by an asset stripper the moment their assets exceed their stock price.

Long live JCB !

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Hi Dave

I only just read your post about the ageing i7 CAD machine. A problem with the i7 800 series is that it only has PCIe v2 lanes in the graphics slot.The first generation PCH is almost identical to an ICH10 so it only has PCIe v1. Even if there is an extra SATA 3 controller on the mother board it can only run at about half speed.

For the above reason I went for the i7930 with 36 PCIe v2 lanes from its X58 chip. The SATA 3 and USB 3 controllers on my mother board each have their own PCIe v2 lane and I get more or less full speed.

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