Newsletter Archives

• 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).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Hardware AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Graphics, hardware, Hardware Upgrades, HDD, 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