[wasbit]

Wrong link Dave – unless you meant Flugger Replacement Lenses for Oakley Radar Range Sunglass. Probably this one

– https://www.amazon.co.uk/SDBAUX-Retractable-Charger-Charging-Compatible/dp/B08Y5SFS9F

 

--
Regards
wasbit

Rig 1: Optiplex 3050 SFF
Rig 2: Asus ROG G20CB (rebuilt wreck)
Rig 3: HP Elitebook 8440P

Dear Starfleet, hate you, hate the Federation, taking Voyager. - Janeway

[wasbit]

At the real cheap end of the market are refurb (or not) Optiplex 3050 Micros, core i3, i5 & i7  but word has got out & the prices are rising from the £80 a couple of months back. They also come in Small Form Factor & small tower versions.

I’m in the process of swapping my ancient Windows 8.1 Gigabyte tower to a 3050 SFF. Cloned the old Windows SSD to an NVMe & cloned a 750GB drive to a used 1TB spinner for programmes & data. Windows self activated & all seems to be working well.

--
Regards
wasbit

Rig 1: Optiplex 3050 SFF
Rig 2: Asus ROG G20CB (rebuilt wreck)
Rig 3: HP Elitebook 8440P

Dear Starfleet, hate you, hate the Federation, taking Voyager. - Janeway

[wasbit]

Not heard of Solidigm but I recently bought a used SK Hynix NVMe drive & have some of their RAM in the spares box. All good stuff in so far as I’ve had no problems. Unlike a Lite-on NVME in a PCIe adapter which couldn’t be detected by Windows but that works ok if placed in an external case.

--
Regards
wasbit

Rig 1: Optiplex 3050 SFF
Rig 2: Asus ROG G20CB (rebuilt wreck)
Rig 3: HP Elitebook 8440P

Dear Starfleet, hate you, hate the Federation, taking Voyager. - Janeway

[wasbit]

Having another PC to find the motherboard drivers for, I thought that as I hadn’t used it for some years, I would try out DriverPack Solution & I wish I hadn’t.

Mine is version 17.4.5 run from a USB thumb drive along with all the drivers so that it can be used off line. It wants to run & install everything automatically. It took ages to sort itself out then installed Opera, a Facebook link & something else that I can’t remember before I cancelled the programme & removed the unwanted wares. Shame because it used to be a good programme but perhaps it’s the price that has to be paid when a programme is free & requires further resources.

Happy to report that Snappy Driver Installer Origin did the job. Had to use the online option as I hadn’t downloaded any driver packs. These are delivered to the programme by torrent (found accidentally by hovering the cursor, or right clicking, the downloading line in the GUI).

--
Regards
wasbit

Rig 1: Optiplex 3050 SFF
Rig 2: Asus ROG G20CB (rebuilt wreck)
Rig 3: HP Elitebook 8440P

Dear Starfleet, hate you, hate the Federation, taking Voyager. - Janeway

[wasbit]

My wife takes mine to the local primary school for the children to use in their art classes.

Over the years I’ve bought over 1000 blank CDs & DVDs of which I can account for about 150. Where the heck did the rest go?

--
Regards
wasbit

Rig 1: Optiplex 3050 SFF
Rig 2: Asus ROG G20CB (rebuilt wreck)
Rig 3: HP Elitebook 8440P

Dear Starfleet, hate you, hate the Federation, taking Voyager. - Janeway

[wasbit]

Feared the worst. Hoped for the best. Best won. 🙂

--
Regards
wasbit

Rig 1: Optiplex 3050 SFF
Rig 2: Asus ROG G20CB (rebuilt wreck)
Rig 3: HP Elitebook 8440P

Dear Starfleet, hate you, hate the Federation, taking Voyager. - Janeway

[wasbit]

In a previous post I mentioned Snappy Driver Installer Origin which is great for finding those obscure chipset drivers that normally come with the motherboard CD but are difficult, if not impossible, to find online

– https://www.glenn.delahoy.com/snappy-driver-installer-origin/

In a similar vein is DriverPack Solution by Artur Kuzyakov (& originally posted by Dave)

– http://drp.su/

At the click of a button it will install all missing drivers on any Windows 7 /8/10 & presumably Windows 11.

Major Geeks write up (& download) – https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/driverpack_solution.html

“DriverPack Solution is a utility for the automatic installation of drivers & software.

This utility is entirely suitable for all models of computers and laptops, including Asus, Acer, Sony, Samsung, HP, Lenovo, Toshiba, Fujitsu-Siemens, DELL, eMachines, MSI, and much more.

DriverPack Solution contains the drivers for all devices including Motherboard, Sound Card, Video Card, Network Card, Wi-Fi, Chipset, Controller, Bluetooth, Modem, Web-camera, Card Reader, CPU, Input Device, Monitor, Printer, Scanner, USB, to name a few.”

Lots of Youtube videos on how to use online & offline.

 

 

--
Regards
wasbit

Rig 1: Optiplex 3050 SFF
Rig 2: Asus ROG G20CB (rebuilt wreck)
Rig 3: HP Elitebook 8440P

Dear Starfleet, hate you, hate the Federation, taking Voyager. - Janeway

[wasbit]

Mark Russinovich not Russovich

URLs for the individual websites:

SysInternals – https://live.sysinternals.com/
Mitec – http://mitec.cz/
Nirsoft – https://www.nirsoft.net/
Gibson Research – https://www.grc.com/freepopular.htm

 

--
Regards
wasbit

Rig 1: Optiplex 3050 SFF
Rig 2: Asus ROG G20CB (rebuilt wreck)
Rig 3: HP Elitebook 8440P

Dear Starfleet, hate you, hate the Federation, taking Voyager. - Janeway

[wasbit]

Would a right angle PCIE riser do?

– https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=pcie+right+angle+riser&_sacat=0&LH_TitleDesc=0&_sop=15&_stpos=OX181BB&_fcid=3

 

--
Regards
wasbit

Rig 1: Optiplex 3050 SFF
Rig 2: Asus ROG G20CB (rebuilt wreck)
Rig 3: HP Elitebook 8440P

Dear Starfleet, hate you, hate the Federation, taking Voyager. - Janeway

[wasbit]

Off topic, but as I mentioned RAF Brize Norton – all afternoon we have had two noisy jets circling only to be followed by the Red Arrows & the Black Eagles from South Korea. I’m told it’s Fairford air show this weekend so I guess they were practicing.

--
Regards
wasbit

Rig 1: Optiplex 3050 SFF
Rig 2: Asus ROG G20CB (rebuilt wreck)
Rig 3: HP Elitebook 8440P

Dear Starfleet, hate you, hate the Federation, taking Voyager. - Janeway

[wasbit]

Yep. I set the wife’s app to get the weather from RAF Brize Norton which is only a couple of miles away as the crow flies, reasoning that the RAF would probably require greater accuracy but it’s amazing how often it’s forecast is different to the actual conditions even when taking into account the update frequency.

Edit: Just to add that your posts are read & appreciated even if I don’t agree or comment on them.

--
Regards
wasbit

Rig 1: Optiplex 3050 SFF
Rig 2: Asus ROG G20CB (rebuilt wreck)
Rig 3: HP Elitebook 8440P

Dear Starfleet, hate you, hate the Federation, taking Voyager. - Janeway

[wasbit]

You think that’s bad. Farmers have been complaining for years that tractors  & £500,000+ combine harvesters often use the same basic ignition key.

--
Regards
wasbit

Rig 1: Optiplex 3050 SFF
Rig 2: Asus ROG G20CB (rebuilt wreck)
Rig 3: HP Elitebook 8440P

Dear Starfleet, hate you, hate the Federation, taking Voyager. - Janeway

[wasbit]

I’m always at least 5 years behind the times with hardware. I didn’t think my idea was that innovative. Most people use the router USB port with a pen drive or perhaps an SSD in a caddy. It was just a way of putting a spare M.2 drive to use & can give me a temporary back up of files until I do a proper back up.

BTW I’ve used FreeFileSync for years – https://freefilesync.org/

A couple of years back when I posted about FFS on alt.comp.freeware,  one person complained that they couldn’t use it because of it’s garish colour.

--
Regards
wasbit

Rig 1: Optiplex 3050 SFF
Rig 2: Asus ROG G20CB (rebuilt wreck)
Rig 3: HP Elitebook 8440P

Dear Starfleet, hate you, hate the Federation, taking Voyager. - Janeway

[wasbit]

I don’t have much faith in the accuracy of weather forecasting. My wife’s  Samsung tablet weather app & my weather radar

can be completely different. Even in a distance of 3 road miles between villages there is often a marked difference as to where the rain has fallen. One thing I have noticed is that if there is any rain Swindon will invariably get it.

--
Regards
wasbit

Rig 1: Optiplex 3050 SFF
Rig 2: Asus ROG G20CB (rebuilt wreck)
Rig 3: HP Elitebook 8440P

Dear Starfleet, hate you, hate the Federation, taking Voyager. - Janeway

[wasbit]

I bought a cheap NVMe PCIe adaptor when I was experimenting with trying to boot from an NVMe M.2 drive on a standard bios motherboard. I didn’t do any speedtests, just installed Windows on it.

Because I had a spare 128GB M.2 drive I have just bought an NVMe USB enclosure which I have plugged into the router to use as a basic server. Again, I didn’t do any speed tests but just happened to notice files copying at 30Mb/s – but the router port is USB2.

--
Regards
wasbit

Rig 1: Optiplex 3050 SFF
Rig 2: Asus ROG G20CB (rebuilt wreck)
Rig 3: HP Elitebook 8440P

Dear Starfleet, hate you, hate the Federation, taking Voyager. - Janeway

[wasbit]

For those of us running Windows 11 on unsupported hardware

eg – https://forumite.co.uk/forums/topic/windows-11-on-older-hardware/

MS are saying that when support for Windows 10 ends in 2025 all users must log in with an MS account & there will be no further security updates.

--
Regards
wasbit

Rig 1: Optiplex 3050 SFF
Rig 2: Asus ROG G20CB (rebuilt wreck)
Rig 3: HP Elitebook 8440P

Dear Starfleet, hate you, hate the Federation, taking Voyager. - Janeway

[wasbit]

W8.1 NVMe – 21 seconds to a useable desktop.  Asus H170-P/G20CB/DP_MB, i5 650 CPU, local account with no log in.

W8.1 SSD – 30 seconds to a useable desktop. Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2H, i5 650 CPU, local account, no log in.

--
Regards
wasbit

Rig 1: Optiplex 3050 SFF
Rig 2: Asus ROG G20CB (rebuilt wreck)
Rig 3: HP Elitebook 8440P

Dear Starfleet, hate you, hate the Federation, taking Voyager. - Janeway

[wasbit]

Perhaps get some guidance from your local Citizen’s Advice centre. However it does seem to be policy to steer people away from taking legal action.

--
Regards
wasbit

Rig 1: Optiplex 3050 SFF
Rig 2: Asus ROG G20CB (rebuilt wreck)
Rig 3: HP Elitebook 8440P

Dear Starfleet, hate you, hate the Federation, taking Voyager. - Janeway

[wasbit]

Nothing worse than getting no indication of an impending failure. Luckily these days nearly every user has more than one way of accessing the internet to look up how to solve a problem.

My friends & family think I’m a computer wizard – little do they know. 🙂

--
Regards
wasbit

Rig 1: Optiplex 3050 SFF
Rig 2: Asus ROG G20CB (rebuilt wreck)
Rig 3: HP Elitebook 8440P

Dear Starfleet, hate you, hate the Federation, taking Voyager. - Janeway

[wasbit]

The M2 drive that I used in an adapter in the PCIe slot of my old desktop box had Windows 8.1 installed on it. The files could be read but the drive wouldn’t boot (but that’s irrelevant).  I’m not sure why there should be no other Windows drives while installing to the M2. It didn’t seem to affect the installation on mine but perhaps there is something I haven’t understood.

Bit late now, but I’ve given up on small form factor desktops as the 2 that I’ve had both died within 2 years. No discernible reason, just refused to boot one day. Hope you have better luck with yours.

--
Regards
wasbit

Rig 1: Optiplex 3050 SFF
Rig 2: Asus ROG G20CB (rebuilt wreck)
Rig 3: HP Elitebook 8440P

Dear Starfleet, hate you, hate the Federation, taking Voyager. - Janeway

[Author]

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