PC Building Guide and Discussion #13

[SniperHF]

Computer related question...

So I have an old Asus ROG G750jw laptop, the hinges broke and the screen just snapped off and I never bothered to get it fixed as the parts are hard to find and the housing is cracked and an epic pain to fix. So I found an older Lenovo Thinkpad that I had that had a corrupt hard drive that I haven't replaced. I was curious, if I swapped my hard drive into that laptop (the Lenovo from the Asus) is there a way to keep the OS the same and just add the drivers that the new laptop has?

Hardware stuff I am iffy on and I wish I knew more about this than I do.

Any help would be appreciated.

If it's Windows 10 it *should* work , you probably won't even have to do any prep work and it will start adding the drivers by itself. You might find better ones on the manufacturers site but let Windows finish doing it's thing first. I'd turn it on and leave it for several hours, restart as it demands.

The problem you will run into though is the windows key situation, storebought PCs and laptops too naturally use an OEM key and those are only good on the PC they came with.
IF the older Lenovo Thinkpad was Windows 8/10 from the factory it may have the old key stored in UEFI and your transferred windows will pick it up and it will probably just work. If it's a Win 7 laptop you may need to enter manually if it's on a sticker. So that's the main pitfall, look out for needing to activate Windows and in the end if stuff goes wrong you might be out another $100 for a license. But presumably the Lenovo had a key and it's usable. Assuming both are the same IE WIn10 Home and Win 10 Home.

I do find that transfered OSes, even on Win 10 which does it better, still never perform quite right. Sometimes good enough, sometimes not.

 

[Osprey]

After Windows has booted on the new laptop, you could do a Reset from within Settings and choose to keep your apps. That won't give you a fresh Windows, but a fresher Windows that maybe runs better.

 

[Honour Over Glory]

If it's Windows 10 it *should* work , you probably won't even have to do any prep work and it will start adding the drivers by itself. You might find better ones on the manufacturers site but let Windows finish doing it's thing first. I'd turn it on and leave it for several hours, restart as it demands.

The problem you will run into though is the windows key situation, storebought PCs and laptops too naturally use an OEM key and those are only good on the PC they came with.
IF the older Lenovo Thinkpad was Windows 8/10 from the factory it may have the old key stored in UEFI and your transferred windows will pick it up and it will probably just work. If it's a Win 7 laptop you may need to enter manually if it's on a sticker. So that's the main pitfall, look out for needing to activate Windows and in the end if stuff goes wrong you might be out another $100 for a license. But presumably the Lenovo had a key and it's usable. Assuming both are the same IE WIn10 Home and Win 10 Home.

I do find that transfered OSes, even on Win 10 which does it better, still never perform quite right. Sometimes good enough, sometimes not.

Mate, my only worry then, would be to lose the data I have on that hard drive I would be putting into the newer laptop.

I think that lenovo has a windows 7 OS, whereas my Asus had Windows 10.

 

[SniperHF]

Mate, my only worry then, would be to lose the data I have on that hard drive I would be putting into the newer laptop.

It won't go anywhere.

Another way to get the data might be to get an external hard drive enclosure. You plug your drive into it and it turns your drive into an external that connects via USB.

 

[Honour Over Glory]

It won't go anywhere.

Another way to get the data might be to get an external hard drive enclosure. You plug your drive into it and it turns your drive into an external that connects via USB.

I've looked into that. But the issue for me is the Lenovo has a corrupt hd that I need to replace so the other hd is there but there are programs and files on there that I don't want to lose. It's why I'm considering the swap but specs wise it might not be suitable.

 

[JetsFan815]

Computer related question...

So I have an old Asus ROG G750jw laptop, the hinges broke and the screen just snapped off and I never bothered to get it fixed as the parts are hard to find and the housing is cracked and an epic pain to fix. So I found an older Lenovo Thinkpad that I had that had a corrupt hard drive that I haven't replaced. I was curious, if I swapped my hard drive into that laptop (the Lenovo from the Asus) is there a way to keep the OS the same and just add the drivers that the new laptop has?

Hardware stuff I am iffy on and I wish I knew more about this than I do.

Any help would be appreciated.

I tried something like this before and it didn't work (although the OS in question was Linux not Windows). My work laptop's screen cracked and I thought I'd be able to just swap the harddrive into the new laptop. Didn't work as apparently during the installation process it hardcodes hardware specific info into the OS installation on the drive and when that doesn't match with the new host laptop it doesn't boot up, my hard drive also had full disk encryption enabled so it might have been a function of that feature.

It doesn't hurt to try though, try it out and see what happens. If it doesn't work I'd get a USB adapter for your HD and a USB drive, take it to a friend's computer, back up all your data onto the USB and then put the drive back in your laptop and do a fresh OS install on it.

 

[SniperHF]

my hard drive also had full disk encryption enabled so it might have been a function of that feature.

That's almost certainly what did it (sounds like it did its job too )

 

[WickedWrister]

Seeing some high CPU temps that I believe are causing crashes when playing some games. Idle in anywhere from 45-60C. Running a AMD Ryzen 5 3600x.

Currently using the stock CPU cooler and thinking about re applying the thermal paste because that might've been smudged when i applied it originally.

 

[SniperHF]

What are the load temperatures?

 

[WickedWrister]

What are the load temperatures?

Load temps? like while gaming? 60-70+C

 

[SniperHF]

60-70+C

That shouldn't crash anything. Unless the + means like 95C.

It is somewhat possible another component (VRM, for example) is overheating and causing crashes, but pretty unlikely. Pointing at temps is kind of old hat in the PC world but it really should go the way of the dodo. The vast majority of the time it's not temps. CPUs are designed to throttle back speed well before it overheats.

If you want to try and track it down I would open up the event viewer and look at Windows Logs > System and sort by the timestamp and look for around your crashes. It might give some clues. You're looking for yellow and red, the I information ones are okay. You can post screenshots and such if you see something and aren't sure.

 

[aleshemsky83]

Make sure to turn off any overclocks you have. As a PC ages an OC that used to be stable can start crashing. Had that issue with my GPU recently.

 

[WickedWrister]

This all sounds normal to me.

Basically if you want cooler idle temps you can disable the 0% idle speed and have it run at like 20% and see what it does. I'm not familiar with Nvidia's options these days but I assume it has some fan controls in there somewhere. If not you can use Afterburner.

The main reason for 0% fan speeds at idle is noise. But a graphics card fan that isn't a crappy blower doesn't really make that much noise <40% depending on the model.


It's possible your card had a poor application of thermal compound and it's breaking down causing higher temps. But it's not that old a card so it's unlikely.

@SniperHF

I get a "your rendering device has been lost" error when playing Overwatch PC game, and a similar error when playing other games. I'm thinking its a driver issue? But I have the latest version of AMD driver software, AMD Adrenaline, and Ryzen Master (reverted back to stock settings)

 

[Osprey]

I get a "your rendering device has been lost" error when playing Overwatch PC game, and a similar error when playing other games. I'm thinking its a driver issue? But I have the latest version of AMD driver software, AMD Adrenaline, and Ryzen Master (reverted back to stock settings)

I've never seen an error about a "rendering device," but my guess is that that's related to streaming. I believe that AMD ReLive is the software component related to streaming. I always choose No when asked to install it. Try uninstalling that or, if you can't uninstalling all of Adrenaline and then re-installing it without ReLive.

 

[JetsFan815]

That's almost certainly what did it (sounds like it did its job too )

I figured at that time it would have worked under the assumption that the key was somewhere on the drive and I should be able to transplant it into a new host as long as I remembered the password.

 

[Bruins4Lifer]

Been a while since I visited the old Geek Emporium/PC Build threads, but I just finished up an upgrade on my 10-year old PC and starting to get back into gaming a bit. Other than a few things, I'll probably keep this build for another 10 years too.

Old parts (that I'll maybe put together into a HTPC):
CPU: Core i5 750
Cooler: Zalman CNPS10X
Mobo: ASUS P7P55D-E Pro
Ram: G.Skill Ripjaws X 1600 MHz 8GB (2 X 4)
GPU: 2x SLI Radeon HD 5850
SSD: Samsung 860 Pro 256 GB (upgraded my SSD to this a year or so ago)

New parts:
CPU: Ryzen 9 3900x
Cooler: Dark Rock Pro 4
Mobo: ASUS Strix X570-E
Ram: G.Skill Trident Z Neo 3600 MHz CL16 32GB (2 X 16)
GPU: Zotac 2070 Blower (picked up used)
SSD: Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB NVMe M.2

Parts I kept:
Case: Cooler Master CM 690 II
PSU: Corsair HX 850W
HDD: 7x HDDs (various sizes)
Drive: LG BluRay reader/writer

I will be using a 4K monitor/TV so I'm planning on upgrading to a 30-series RTX GPU later in the summer/fall. Also maybe down the road when newer NVMe SSDs are pushing the limits of PCIe 4.0 I'll upgrade there too.

 

[sigma six]

Yeah just a bit of an upgrade there.

 

[expatriatedtexan]

thoughts on best 2tb m.2 drive price to performance? The Samsung NVMe drives are a bit out of my range price wise. I'm thinking about the XPG SX8200 Pro 2TB 3D Nand NVMe wich goes for about $270 on amazon. Any thoughts or other suggestions?

 

[SniperHF]

thoughts on best 2tb m.2 drive price to performance? The Samsung NVMe drives are a bit out of my range price wise. I'm thinking about the XPG SX8200 Pro 2TB 3D Nand NVMe wich goes for about $270 on amazon. Any thoughts or other suggestions?

I don't really keep up with the SSD market, way too much hassle
TPU has their "performance per dollar" graph in every review, It's usually helpful.

 

[God King Fudge]

Ok. I'm at my wits end with this issue I'm having.

The other night, I plugged my iPhone into my PC using a USB-C to Lightning Cable. Shortly after, my PC froze. When I rebooted, none of my USB ports work except for the sole 3.1 USB port. When I'm in BIOS, it shows one mouse and one keyboard plugged into the PC. It doesn't work in safe mode. Just the one USB port.

Device Manager shows the USB x HCI Compliant Host Controller with the trouble signal, code 10, unable to start. I have uninstalled, disabled, driver updated and nothing works. I've tried installing MOBO updates, nothing. I went as far as trying to do a full Windows restore last night, but my PC won't enter recovery mode, either. It just sits at the ASROCK splash saying please wait for hours and when I shut it off, it boots to desktop saying the PC wasn't able to be restored.

I have no idea what else to try. I guess I can get a PS/2 Keyboard and just do a total wipe of my drive and start fresh, but I'd really hate to do that.

Any ideas?

PS if this needs its own thread, I'll move it. I generally post this stuff in this thread to not junk up theboard, but it's not really on topic for the thread.

 

[Morbo]

So my motherboard fried recently, and I had to do an unplanned upgrade to a new MB/CPU...went with ASUS Z390 and i7-9700K.

my question is about the drives...I have an SSD and a hybrid for storage. the system was originally build mid 2016.

what is a good lifespan for these drives, and when should I think about replacing them? no problems so far.

 

[SniperHF]

Device Manager shows the USB x HCI Compliant Host Controller with the trouble signal, code 10, unable to start. I have uninstalled, disabled, driver updated and nothing works. I've tried installing MOBO updates, nothing. I went as far as trying to do a full Windows restore last night, but my PC won't enter recovery mode, either. It just sits at the ASROCK splash saying please wait for hours and when I shut it off, it boots to desktop saying the PC wasn't able to be restored.

For the record, I know basically jack about USBC so keep that in mind.

Have you tried these two things:
Completely remove power from the PC and let it sit for a min, then start it.
Reset CMOS via removing the battery (don't even bother with the jumper crap just yank the battery IMO)

 

[SniperHF]

what is a good lifespan for these drives, and when should I think about replacing them? no problems so far.

I would consider the lifespam to be as long as a traditional HDD cause that part would be more likely to die first.
2016 is not that like for a home use drive, it should be fine.

 

[Commander Clueless]

Ok. I'm at my wits end with this issue I'm having.

The other night, I plugged my iPhone into my PC using a USB-C to Lightning Cable. Shortly after, my PC froze. When I rebooted, none of my USB ports work except for the sole 3.1 USB port. When I'm in BIOS, it shows one mouse and one keyboard plugged into the PC. It doesn't work in safe mode. Just the one USB port.

Device Manager shows the USB x HCI Compliant Host Controller with the trouble signal, code 10, unable to start. I have uninstalled, disabled, driver updated and nothing works. I've tried installing MOBO updates, nothing. I went as far as trying to do a full Windows restore last night, but my PC won't enter recovery mode, either. It just sits at the ASROCK splash saying please wait for hours and when I shut it off, it boots to desktop saying the PC wasn't able to be restored.

I have no idea what else to try. I guess I can get a PS/2 Keyboard and just do a total wipe of my drive and start fresh, but I'd really hate to do that.

Any ideas?

PS if this needs its own thread, I'll move it. I generally post this stuff in this thread to not junk up theboard, but it's not really on topic for the thread.

Oof. That's a rough one.

I have had the error before, but I believe it was always driver related and a reinstall of the driver would fix it. Unfortunately, error code 10 (if I recall correctly) can also be used for a generic unknown error.

Sorry, not much help...

my question is about the drives...I have an SSD and a hybrid for storage. the system was originally build mid 2016.

what is a good lifespan for these drives, and when should I think about replacing them? no problems so far.

It sounds like a stupid answer, but it often depends on your use case (heat issues aside).

So the dumb answer is I would use them until you notice any major slowdowns or they start to show signs of failure, assuming you have backups for any critical information you may have, if any.

TL;DR Back up your stuff and run your drives into the ground.

 

[God King Fudge]

For the record, I know basically jack about USBC so keep that in mind.

Have you tried these two things:
Completely remove power from the PC and let it sit for a min, then start it.
Reset CMOS via removing the battery (don't even bother with the jumper crap just yank the battery IMO)

I've done the power removal, have not done battery removal, so I'll give that a shot tonight.

I know that I'll never use that USB C port again.