General PC Help Thread - OP updated with useful links - READ

Green Gecko wrote:
That's not a growth wrote:My computer has been off for almost 24 hours and just turned its self on. How do I figure out why it did this? I have my internet via Ethernet, is it possible it's got some sort of wake on LAN function? If so, what would have activated it? How should I diagnose this?

I get this. It's annoying.

Go to device manager, right click > properties on all network devices, Bluetooth, mouse and keyboard etc, under power management tab uncheck "allow this device to wake the computer". Then just use your machines power button.

If you want wake on LAN, enable magic packet only. Otherwise any network activity will wake it.

Thanks GG, I'll have a look next time I'm at my PC.

Or just shut it down if you aren't using it for several hours.

I have never left a PC/laptop on overnight.

I always switch mine off from the mains. I'd be mightily impressed if I walked in to find it had switched on the mains and started itself up.

Open the command prompt. The command "powercfg -lastwake" will tell you what woke up the computer last.

It will probably be some task that you can disable in task manager. Unfortunately, Windows has a nasty habit of re-enabling tasks by itself and I don't know how to get around that.

My problem is that I cannot get my PC to go to sleep/hibernate automatically, even though it supposed to do so after ten minutes of inactivity. Not as much of a problem as it waking up unwanted though. The truth is it's a really old installation and I really need to do a fresh one to clear out some of the endearing 'quirks' my computer has developed. I'm just too lazy so I'll probably wait until I next upgrade the core hardware and am forced to do another install.

Well, you can get around it by not allowing devices to wake the machine from sleep. There's a power button for a reason.

Good shout for finding out what process is actually responsible. I didn't know it was that easy.

Meep wrote:Open the command prompt. The command "powercfg -lastwake" will tell you what woke up the computer last.

It will probably be some task that you can disable in task manager. Unfortunately, Windows has a nasty habit of re-enabling tasks by itself and I don't know how to get around that.

My problem is that I cannot get my PC to go to sleep/hibernate automatically, even though it supposed to do so after ten minutes of inactivity. Not as much of a problem as it waking up unwanted though. The truth is it's a really old installation and I really need to do a fresh one to clear out some of the endearing 'quirks' my computer has developed. I'm just too lazy so I'll probably wait until I next upgrade the core hardware and am forced to do another install.

That didn't work, but I did turn it off the other day so I guess today's boot have over ridden it. I'll give it a try next time it happens.

Hello everyone, looking for some advice.

My current PC Specs are as follows:

-Intel Core i5-4590 CPU @ 3.30GHz
-8GB RAM
-NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760
-MSI H97M-E35 (MS-7846) Motherboard

Could someone please advise me on what the best product is to purchase to give me a graphical boost in games. I'm assuming it's one of the latest graphics cards but would I also need to increase the ram and/or processor to get the benefits of a new graphics card?

Thanks in advance.

ram is fine and the CPU looks fine - a GPU upgrade will help definitely.

Start with just a GPU, I have 20GB RAM and recently changed my G3220 CPU (3 Ghz, I think it was dual core) to a 3.4Ghz Xeon 4 core (with 8 logical cores) and although this offered a small improvement in games, it wasn't significant (although bring it an evil spreadsheet and it will eat it up).
I have the same GPU BTW.

You'd get a big boost in performance from something like a GTX 1060.

Great, thanks for the advice. I'll have a look around for a new GPU, at what point do you think I may see an obvious difference? For example would something like a 980 give me an obvious boost?

Also, if I wanted to invest in a 4K monitor, would my current set up, plus say a 980, be a suitable set up for that?

Sorry for all the questions. :oops:

EDIT: Thanks Dragon, didn't see your post before I posted this

I'll take a look at the 1060.

You'd see a clear difference with a 1060 but you can go for a 1070 if your budget allows for one. It sounds like it will as you're entertaining the thought of a 980 which is outpaced by a 1070. You won't be able to get 4K resolutions at 60FPS without spending a lot of money but even the 1060 will give decent results with modest titles.

Thanks again, Dragon, I'll take a look at the 1060 and the 1070 and see if I can stretch the budget for the extra power.

St Nick wrote:Thanks again, Dragon, I'll take a look at the 1060 and the 1070 and see if I can stretch the budget for the extra power.

I'm using a 1060 and so far everything I've played maxed out @ 1080p has ran 60fps or more (Bar Witcher 3 unless I turn Nvidia Hairworks off then it will hit 60fps)

Death's Head wrote:Start with just a GPU, I have 20GB RAM and recently changed my G3220 CPU (3 Ghz, I think it was dual core) to a 3.4Ghz Xeon 4 core (with 8 logical cores) and although this offered a small improvement in games, it wasn't significant (although bring it an evil spreadsheet and it will eat it up).
I have the same GPU BTW.

Let me know when you have a free weekend to render my 8K Pixar-esque smash hit featuring 100% ray-traced lighting and ambient occlusion on every single blade of grass. 8-)

(The last time I saw / worked on a Xeon was literally in a dual CPU system as a render farm for a visual effects studio producing BBC & C4 programmes and films. I think it had 16 logical cores.)

Since living in Germany, I've learnt the Internet is pretty gooseberry fool so far. The first house was with 02 and was borderline unusable. Constantly cutting out, but it "worked".

The new place has Telekom internet and was fine for 2 days, then it went. Completely gone, with the red light over the internet symbol (a Netgear N300 router). My PC and other devices are finding the router but there is zero connection. I tried a reboot of the router and managed to get to the Netgear genie thing, but everything was in German.

It doesn't seem to be finding an IP address when I left it as dynamic IP whatever in the configuration part.

Our landlady got us a dongle thing, but it's an 8GB limit which has pretty much already gone with 2 people in the house. That's without using Netflix etc either.

Anyone have any theories? Or is the router dead?

Probably nothing to do with you at all. It sounds like you were disconnected for some reason or maybe completely by mistake.

Happened to me a few days after I moved house. It can be a nightmare to get them to fix it depending on who the provider is.

Meep wrote:Probably nothing to do with you at all. It sounds like you were disconnected for some reason or maybe completely by mistake.

Happened to me a few days after I moved house. It can be a nightmare to get them to fix it depending on who the provider is.

Darn.

Yeah, our landlady is in China at the moment so makes it even harder, especially as we don't speak German. Her husband has contacted Telekom, but they are sending a letter?? So then that will be sent to her parents house, who then will let us know. Pain in the arse as I work from home, and our 8GB data limit is basically gone within 3 days :fp:

Only subletting this place for 2 months too, so strawberry float knows how long a letter is going to bloody take to arrive.

Shocked how bad the net is here, to the point Dongles seem to be heard of and popular :dread:

Windows media player has yet again somehow managed to duplicate almost every bit of music on my PC, I have no idea why this happens but it makes listening to full albums rather frustrating as every bloody song is listed (and plays) twice.

I've checked the folder where all my music is stored and everything seems fine with no duplicates at all yet the problem persists .

switch to foobar.

ill send you over my config/setup if you want:

General PC Help Thread - OP updated with useful links - READ

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