Newsletter Archives

• The resources you need for a secure computer

  Posted on July 22, 2024 at 02:42 CDT by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  ON SECURITY

  

  By Susan Bradley

  With over a year left before Windows 10 stops being supported in its current fashion, are you reviewing its health and well-being?

  Just the other day, I came across a home computer that was not a happy camper. Its C (boot) drive was too full. Upon review, I found that it also had a D drive with room for data, so I went into storage settings and moved 30GB of photos from the pictures folder to the D drive.

  Why was this important? Because the PC was not installing updates. Clearing out space on the C drive provided the room for updates, and soon the PC was acting normally. Now we can wait to see how it responds to the constant pull of AI — and decide its future later, perhaps next year.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.30.0, 2024-07-22).

  On Security Backup, Boot Drive, Corruption, Internet Speed, Local Storage, Newsletters, RAM, storage, Windows Updates

• Terabyte update 2024

  Posted on June 24, 2024 at 02:42 CDT by Will Fastie • Comment in the Forums

  HARDWARE

  

  By Will Fastie

  This year, the numbers are bouncing around and the trends are muddled.

  Except for the influences exerted by events such as floods in Thailand and global pandemics, pricing for storage usually follows a predictable trend line.

  Prices are behaving slightly differently this time around. I will offer some thoughts about why this might have happened, but I admit to a lack of clarity.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.26.0, 2024-06-24).

  Hardware HDDs, Newsletters, RAM, SD Cards, SSDs, storage, Storage Prices

• Born to fail?

  Posted on February 19, 2024 at 02:45 CST by Ben Myers • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 21.08 • 2024-02-19

  BEN’S WORKSHOP

  

  By Ben Myers

  A beguiling and captivating laptop showed up here with a bad combination of RAM and SSD.

  One of my clients recently traded in a Dell Inspiron 15-7568, a laptop with a brilliant 15-inch, 4K (3840×2160) resolution touch screen; eight gigabytes of memory; and a 256GB solid-state drive (SSD).

  Nice, but troubled.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.08.0, 2024-02-19).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  Ben's Workshop Newsletters, Paging, RAM, SSD

• Desktop computers: Re-use!

  Posted on July 11, 2022 at 02:43 CDT by Ben Myers • Comment in the Forums

  HARDWARE

  

  By Ben Myers

  Make sure the most critical hardware works right before you go ahead.

  Previously, I described the most basic steps to get a computer dirt-free and bootable, with a working power supply. These tasks established a baseline for additional work to assure that the computer is in very good operating condition for whoever is going to use it.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.28.0, 2022-07-11).

  Hardware Graphics, Hardware, Hardware Upgrades, HDD, Newsletters, RAM, SSD

• Patch Lady – the minimum amount of RAM

  Posted on May 6, 2020 at 15:09 CDT by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  …. so as I was building my 2004 version of Windows 10 in a virtual machine I built it with my “normal” RAM memory that I do for testbeds…. 2 gig.  And proceeded to hit several OOBE errors during setup.

  As per https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4020048/windows-oobe-fails-when-you-start-a-new-windows-based-computer-for-the  “This issue occurs because the specific timing of the OOBE process causes a deadlock situation”

  Hmm says I.  Deadlocks and race conditions normally occur with starved resources.  And I shut down my VM, upped the RAM memory to 5 gigs and hit the start button so it would pick up again from the OOBE sequence (that’s the part that ask you where you live, what language, etc).

  Sure enough the OOBE completed happily this time.  Let this be a lesson… don’t buy a Windows 10 computer with less than 4 gigs of ram… it’s not going to be happy!!

  Windows 10 Patch Lady Posts, RAM

• LangaList: Is high disk usage a RAM problem or a PC problem?

  Posted on September 18, 2019 at 06:16 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  Another pearl of wisdom from Fred Langa:

  If a PC is running slow despite having reasonably current and otherwise-healthy hardware, then too-little RAM is for sure a prime suspect…  start by loading up on RAM: It’s usually the cheapest, fastest, easiest way to improve performance.

  Troubleshooting, Upgrading RAM