Computer Repair n Tips

@Austruck, well I am glad you are getting sound advice on such issues as built in graphics, upgrades, etc , and hope you make the best decision based on that advice. It 's all a bit complicated for me, and there are times I think of upgrading my software to something I truly understand- like 2 tin cans and a string😄

But meanwhile, since I missed out on wishing you a happy birthday ( since I just discovered who you are) - let me be the first to wish you a Happy Mother's Day. In fact, all of Mofo should wish the same. After all, if it weren't for you, we wouldn't be here. Yoda too lol. But we're all here, on mofo, having oodles of fun!

Have a great day! 💐

If you ever want any advice, just drop a question in this thread.

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

Okay, so I bought this low-end gaming rig and I'm setting it up now. Boy, it's been eight years since I've bought a desktop, so transferring all the DATA I've accumulated has been NO FUN AT ALL for the past two days. Our home network setup is wonky and never allows me to directly transfer files from one computer to another, so I'm using Dropbox, which takes twice as long. Still not done.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/cyberpo...?skuId=6204022

Quick question: It comes with no card reader and no CD/DVD drive. Well, I can live with that, right? I'll just add a drive. But I see NO WAY to actually put in a drive so that I can, umm, OPEN IT or access it. The whole front of the CPU case is solid and doesn't seem to move or slide at all.

Is this a "thing" now? No media drives at all? Only USB ports for sticks? I hate to have to add an external drive to sit on top of this gargantuan case, but if I must, I must. It seems STRANGE for a gaming rig to not have a drive. I have plenty of games on disks...

Thoughts?

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Yep, no optical drives is a thing these days.

I built my last PC without one but finally relented and bought a Blu Ray burner so I could rip my discs to a NAS, but that's all I've ever used it for. A usb DVD writer is pretty cheap and it'll do all you need it to do.

I have one of these -

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-SE-...ung+dvd+writer

That's what I bought, a Blu-Ray burner recommended by a geeky computer forensics friend. This one:

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

But since it was meant to be internal, it's not sleek and pretty like yours. Hubby has a case I can put it in, but still. Boo!

The USB drive is just DVD, I bought it before I got the Blu Ray writer ...... which is exactly the same model as yours.

I've decided to keep the external drive and just add an enclosure that'll turn it into an external USB drive. This:

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

And now I have to also get an HDMI-to-VGA dangling dongle so the HDMI port can handle the VGA plug. The HDMI adapter I currently have is so short that the VGA blue part of the cable bumps up against the DVI cable for the main monitor. Whoever designed this computer was an idiot!

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Sorry you are having trouble. Yeah some designs these days are really limited, but I guess that is where everything is headed and eventually desktops will probably go away as well as internal hard drives. I still build my own stuff and even install a floppy drive. Hey call me crazy .

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“The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.” – Sir Richard Burton

There are apparently 1TB SSD drives out there now, so yeah, I imagine hard drives will become dinosaurs soon.

But since this is a gaming rig, I would have expected at least the ABILITY to install a CD/DVD drive. I still have a lot of games on DVDs and CDs! Not EVERYTHING is just on Steam.

So, the HDMI dangly dongle worked perfectly. I'm back to my dual-monitor setup. Yay!

Now, the Blu-Ray burner drive in the case/enclosure isn't being recognized by the computer so I'm currently trying to solve that problem.

And, Taccy, I need another suggestion for a good graphics card in a LOW LOW price range. I want to upgrade the integrated graphics in this rig (AMD Radeon RX Vega 11) to a standalone graphics card. Last time you recommended the GeForce GTX 960 (more than two years ago now) and it handled any game I threw at it. I can get a card like that again now for about forty bucks (what a deal!)… or maybe there is now something out there slightly better in a low-ish price like that.

Thoughts? I'm not a high-end gamer like a lot of you here, and I wouldn't care about a framerate if it slapped me in the face. But this integrated card decided to freeze up on me when I tried to play Creativerse on Steam. So much for calling this a "gaming computer," eh? (Seriously, why call it a gaming computer when it can't handle Steam games?)

Thanks for any modest recommendations! (Also, any clues on getting that internal drive to work as an external one? I've just written to LG's support tonight asking for guidance but sometimes those sorts of responses are less than helpful.)

Yikes, the prices of cards is a little high for my tastes. I might cannibalize the card from the old computer once I'm sure I'm done with it... Eeesh!

I don't see anything that doesn't cost way more than I want to spend. Probably cannibalizing the old card... (sigh)

@Tacitus, and anyone else who's computer knowledgeable,

I'm having a strange computer problem that I thought might be my video going bad, but then I noticed that it only seems to happen in Google Chrome, so now I'm not sure. I'm getting some black boxes that pop around the screen when I scroll up and down the page. It seems to only happen on MoFo and on IMDB, but I don't go to a lot of other sites, so those may not be the only sites affected. However, it does NOT happen on eBay, Paypal, Walmart, Best Buy, etc., but I know that those sites are less graphic intensive. It also does NOT happen in graphic editing programs, even if I open around 100 pictures to bulk edit images.

Here's a screen shot of the boxes on a MoFo page. If I open multiple tabs, it doesn't happen on all the tabs, usually only 1 or 2, and if I reopen the same page in a new tab, the boxes go away.




BTW, I'm running a Lenovo computer with Windows 8. (I don't remember the specs, but it came with and it's running Windows 8, so that should give you an idea of how old the system is.) I haven't added anything recently, (software or hardware), and I scanned the system for malware and it came up clean.

Any ideas on what might be causing this issue?

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I also want to add that I'm not a gamer. My version of computer games is stuff like Solitaire, Bubble Shooter, and Tetris. (And I'm not getting the black boxes in those games either.)


I'm considering buying a new system anyway, but I only need a low-end system for my computer needs. Any suggestions on a good bargain on a low-end computer?

I'm currently looking at these two systems:

From Best Buy for $450:
Dell - Inspiron Desktop -
Model: I3668-3106BLK-PUS
SKU: 5775302
Intel Core i3
Windows 10
8GB Memory
1TB Hard Drive

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/dell-in...?skuId=5775302


From Micro Center for $400:
Acer Aspire TC-780-UR1A Desktop Computer
Intel Core i5-7400 Processor 3.0GHz;
Microsoft Windows 10 Home;
8GB DDR4-2400 RAM;
1TB 7,200RPM Hard Drive

http://www.microcenter.com/product/5...sktop_computer

I've never seen an issue like that, sorry. No idea what it could be - That it only happens in Chrome is weird but, then again, Chrome is known to be a pretty RAM-intensive browser so there might be a problem there.

Of the two PCs you linked to, I'd definitely go for the second one, the Acer, because it has a better processor.

I've gone down the internal/external route a ton of times with hard drives, but never with an optical one. Is the caddy you bought specifically for that job?

Re: GPUs, I'm a bit out of the loop with the latest tech, especially from AMD, but all the cool kids on a budget seem to be saying good things about the Nvidia 1050ti (and it has to be the TI model).

Taccy, I got a response from LG (the manufacturer of the drive) with a bunch of suggestions, so I'll try those. Yes, this case was specifically made to make an internal drive into a plug-and-play external drive. In fact, it was suggested not only by my friend but by Amazon.

One of LG's suggestions might very well work.

ALSO: @gbgoodies : My dad's seen the same thing on several of his sites lately, only he's using Opera. Frankly, he's also on Wi-Fi (my mom's computer is plugged directly into the router with ethernet) halfway across the house, so my thought was that they were video ads trying to load but never quite finishing. But if you're seeing them HERE, then maybe that's not what they are!

Thanks for the help.

I did some research on the black boxes, and apparently it's a problem with Google Chrome that they've known about and been trying to fix for over a year. According to the Chrome techs, they thought they had fixed it a few months ago, but it seems to have come back worse then before in their latest update. They recommended toggling the hardware acceleration setting in Chrome to see if it goes away, so I turned it off, and hopefully that will fix the problem. If it doesn't, they recommend uninstalling this version of Chrome and installing the newest beta version. (Hopefully I won't have to do that.)

I have several MoFo tabs open right now, and so far, so good, but only time will tell.

I wonder if Opera has a similar issue...

I've never used Opera, so I don't know anything about it, but I found most of the information about the Chrome problem in the Google Chrome forums. If Opera has a similar problem, there may be information about it on their forums. (If it's an Opera issue, there are probably a bunch of people looking for help there, so there might be solutions too.)