DigitalDuckling

Hey there people!
I got a little bummed out by my computer today, and want to share with you readers out there just to release some of my frustration:

Well it is summer! Yay! Sunny days and what not. This is all great, but it is not a great season for computers! I am currently on the end of the first term of AM and I decided to play a game on my computer for once. Based on what I have seen from E3 this year, (the new Splinter Cell game in this case,) I decided to just start playing the series. Starting with the first game that came out for quite a while ago. This didn’t turn out great, not only because of the horrible gameplay, but my frickin’ “CPU Alarm” went off.

I decided it was about time to clock down my CPU for the summer so that it wouldn’t overheat. Setting my system back to auto settings actually didn’t help me much; Windows constantly started freezing over. Which is strange, as that ment that I technically have clocked it down like 880MHz, but then I started thinking: “What if my CPU gets over loaded now that it is a whole lot slower?” So I set it back  and my system is as stable as always. Now I think the big problem I have goten to is tat SC maxed out my load; making my CPU overheat.

This had me run the ol’Google for quite some hours, and what do I have to show for it? ThreadMaster GUI

Supposedly it is supposed to not set the priority, but limit applications CPU load. This won’t make your software run faster, but you can prevent the system from crashing or overheating; at least theoretically.

Or if these things doesn’t consern you, how about limiting the CPU laod of your antivirus scan, or while extracting files with WinRAR etc.? Making you able to use your system even though it is runing a CPU heavy process.

No Comments | In: Hardware, Software | | #

If you are in some kind of school your teachers have probably told you that you are not supposed to eat next to your keyboard.
I can agree that it makes sense, but food is normally not liquid. Liquid is the keyboards worst enemy;
I have been breaking this rule ever since i sat in front of a computer and frankly I have had my accidents, (only breaking my own stuff, but still). About a week ago this wonderful luck stroked me once more:

I was reading some article on the web while eating my breakfast. Pure awesomeness made me push my half liter cup of milk over my keyboard and the rest of my desk. Brilliant! My first reaction was to pull the plug on the keyboard and try to put it upside down as far as it went, with the chord tangled, stuck inside a cable jungle I would have to rip it to make it let go.
After cleaning up the mess I tried to just wipe the milk of my keys and hopefully be able to use the keyboard still… (My keyboard is a old school Logitech G15 with LEDs under the keys) When I plugged it in it really seemed to work fine, but after some seconds it started to blink like crazy. I could type on it, but some of the keys did amazing stuff… I mean not that amazing, but every time i hit “a” a “z” followed… so typing “I’m enjoying a pie” would become “I’m enjoying az pie”
I decided to give it a shower in the old sink and let it dry off, (figured that it wouldn’t smell preferable over time anyhow.)
Putting the keyboard away to dry off, I dug up awful Microsoft keyboard with the delete and ins buttons all mixed up funny. I survived using it all the way till now. But now I am writing on my good old G15 again… and only problems is some buttons that do not work that I rarely use!

Last time I made my keyboard a mess I fell asleep drinking beer next to it… my keyboard was hung over for weeks, but worked perfectly after (that time it constantly hammered F1 like it was calling for help :p)
Conclusion: Milk kills more Keyboard cells than alcohol every year!

No Comments | In: Hardware | | #

A couple of months ago I bought a new laptop so that I could improve my work-flow, and entertain myself while I’m on the go. Doing so I didn’t think about the fact that though 4 GB of RAM does sound nice I would only be able to use 3 of them due to the pre-installed 32 bit version of Vista. I figured later that it would be a possibility to upgrade to a 64 bit license later, but you can’t do that from Home Premium apparently.

Enough about that; the point is that for some reason after I installed SP1 I discovered that my system reported that I actually had 4 GB of RAM, (which put a smile on my face,) but I did doubt it being right.
After some Googling,  I discovered that 32 bit OSes does support up to 8 GB of RAM, (wow,) but that really doesn’t matter because the catch is that you must have some kind of special chipset on your motherboard, (will get into that later.)
What I got out of the knowledge I browsed through was also that as the limit without such hardware is 4 GB. <<Alright!>>, I thought, <<this means that I actually get to use all of my RAM.>> But NO! Reading further there are more limits; You are actually limited to 4 GB TOTAL, this includes the Graphics Cards’ RAM. <<OK, but I do not have 1GB of Graphics Memory. So, where did it go?>> <<I don’t know…>> I read in several forums that if my Graphics have like 256 MB RAM I should be using about 4GB minus that; ergo 3,75 GB

Through this resource from Microsoft, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946003/ , I discovered that could run a System Information tool (Msinfo32.exe) and it would show me exactly how much of my physical memory is being used… to my disappointment, only 3GB. I should be able to use more, and I think it is very strange that I do not get more then exactly 3GB. Others get 3.5 or 3.25 or even 3.75.

A friend of mine once told me that as a matter of fact Vista always displays less RAM than it actually uses… Well, apart form what you can read from this, that is only partially true.

If there is anybody out there reading this and know how I can at least get the extra (4GB minus Graphics Card memory) GB out of my computer please tell ME NOW! I will love you forever!

Edit: 03.05.09 – 09:25AM
I have discovered that it might be impossible to get the extra RAM out of my 32bit systems;
Other hardware uses RAM bus as well and it is the RAM bus that limits the RAM you get to use.

No Comments | In: Hardware | | #