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[heydude6]

I thought I would give an update. As an example of the problem I'm facing, here's a cropped screenshot from Battlefield 1 where the effect is very obvious. That Orange circle used to be a lot smoother looking (The icon too, but I'm not sure you can tell), I promise you that.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I know you guys need much more than that to definitively conclude what's going on, but other examples would require before/after pictures to really see properly (The before pictures are hard to source). With a problem like this, it's very easy to get gaslit into thinking that it's always been this way. I only know I'm not imagining this because I've solved this before by reverting a bad driver update.

The pictures probably could be provided eventually, but I've resolved to try and solve things myself for a bit longer rather than waste your time.

Specifically speaking, I plan on making a back-up of my existing files and then reinstalling Windows. Right now, it's unclear if this is a hardware or a software issue and I believe a factory reset should give me a final verdict. If the issue disappears upon reset, then I know it's software and I should be able to reupload the files from my backup to return to the functional gaming laptop I had before.

If not, then I will begin making plans to get a new computer.


Are there any obvious pitfalls I should be aware of before trying to reset Windows? My main concern currently is potentially pissing off any DRM I have installed.

[Schmaven]

Make sure you have the windows install file and CD key before you start.  I also try to make sure I have a secondary internet search capable device ready to go just in case random issues come up. 

Also, just for curiosity sake, maybe note your CPU / GPU temps and # of running processes before and after the reinstall. 

[Lord Shonus]

Not certain exactly how to search for this, because I'm pretty sure it isn't a hardware issue.

I have a Razer Blackwidow 2019 (according to the product number), and occasionally I'll have a problem where it won't recognize that a key has been depressed - it will think the key's being held down until I press another key. Pressing any other key fixes the problem, which I think eliminates it being a switch issue - if it was a stuck switch, you'd need to press the actual stuck key to make it stop. I was also able to reduce but not eliminate the problem by moving it to a USB 3 port instead of a USB 2, also suggesting a software issue.

The one guide I was able to find suggested a firmware update, but Razer's tool says I'm on the latest keyboard firmware. It also suggested macros might be a problem, but everything I can find says there's no such issue.

Any ideas what else I can try?

[heydude6]

...I've resolved to try and solve things myself for a bit longer rather than waste your time.

Specifically speaking, I plan on making a back-up of my existing files and then reinstalling Windows. Right now, it's unclear if this is a hardware or a software issue and I believe a factory reset should give me a final verdict. If the issue disappears upon reset, then I know it's software and I should be able to reupload the files from my backup to return to the functional gaming laptop I had before.

If not, then I will begin making plans to get a new computer.

So I performed the factory reset. It didn't fix the problem sadly so it's most certainly a hardware issue. Unless I decide to take the laptop apart and attempt a component level repair on the motherboard or GPU, this is the end of my story. Ultimately, it's just a quality of life issue (I can still play games on this thing after all, it'll just be ugly), but still sad.

I should receive some money in a few months, and then I'll be able to get a new PC.

[Schmaven]

.
Any ideas what else I can try?

Is it the same key that always gets stuck being seen as pressed?

The behavior of not resetting until another key is pressed does sound like it could be an electrical issue.  Like if a relay is stuck latched, and something about the new signal is what unlatches it.  Could a crumb or small piece of debris lodged somewhere cause that sort of interference though?

[Lord Shonus]

It is the same key only in that it tends to be noticeable most in certain situations like gaming (meaning I don't stop moving when I let go of the key sometimes). Otherwise it is random. It also doesn't happen if I use the keyboard on a different computer.

Oddly, since I asked that question, I haven't seen it again. Maybe an update I didn't notice fixed it.

[Sirus]

Hiya folks, I'm putting a new computer together soon - ideally this weekend which is completely free - but I've got a couple of roadblocks I'd like cleared up before proceeding.

One of them involves my old PC; I want to harvest the HDD from it and install it into the new case to serve as additional storage (I bought an SSD to use for the operating system and any games I'd like loaded quickly). Not really sure how difficult a task that may be or if the new computer will even be able to use the old drive without a complete reformat (or at all). I do have an external backup drive I can use in a pinch to save everything worth saving, but that will likely be a slow process and I'd worry about missing some important user data (game saves or browser passwords for example) in the shuffle.

Also my current plan is to install Windows 10 via a flash drive, which is supposedly pretty easy to do, but the room in which I am building does not have ethernet access and thus no Internet. Will that be a problem for the OS installation?

All my other issues stem from not having built a computer in many years and mostly assisting on the first one, but I'm watching plenty of tutorials on that sort of thing.

[Starver]

The old HDD issue should be simple, or at least doable. Unless you've had it used in some sort of encrypted/secured format which (SFAIK) isn't a standard installed configuration except for maybe some laptops.

Exactly what to do (hardware-wise) depends upon if SATA or PATA(/IDE). If you've got space in the case. If the Mobo has enough native cables (though there are ways to get around that).

If it really isn't possible to do that, caddies/drive-docks exist that make the old internal-HDD directly into an external-HDD (USB or perhaps eSATA, generally).

No need to reformat the drive, although I'd suggest that (before you use it as a D:/E:/F:/whatever:-driive) you get some sort of Drive Image of it (live Linux-tools bootable DVD packages abound, from which you can create one or other) and store a copy or two on DVD(s)/wherever so that you can hopefully restore it if it ever becomes necessary, then you can aim to go through all the OS-level gunk and old My Documents-type stuff and either shove it into a bitbucket or make use of it as you see fit.

I mean, I tend to just let copies sit around forever. I'm also not very good at cleanly migrating between my own old/new machines.


User data acess is a trickier thing to guarantee.

Browser passwords I would (depends upon your browser how you can do this) export or review the details of and make a note of, because you might not be able to import straight from the system-level files that it has taken pains to have securely encoded such data in exactly so that nobody can recover such details. Work out how you'll have to get it into an importable/re-enterable format before you actually rip the old machine apart, because some things might not be trivial from just the drive contents being loaded into a new systems stack of storage devices. I mean, can a "remember my password cookie" be necessarily transferable? What if you've got a Password Manager of some kind that is constructed to not to have its details stolen from by any idiot with a thumbdrive? Think ahead.

Maybe savegames can be copied directly from the old drive's installed directories into the ones the new installation on the new machine has made. But I wouldn't guarantee that's possible. (And, though it works perfecly Ok like this for DF, in general trying to run the old-install from the old-drive location is probably not going to work as well as you'd want, if at all, for various reasons.)


Sight-unseen, of your particular situation, I might even suggest that it could just be simpler just to keep the old machine 'running' (turning it on only as you need to, to refer to it) rather than rushing into extracting its old drive. If it's still working where it is then you can get used to your new system and then dive into the old one as and when you need to to copy (by eye or by USB drive) whatever you want transfered into your newer computer. After a while (and having made the aforementioned drive-image!) you can finally decide that there's nothing at all new on it and then rip it out, completely repartition/reformat it and use it as a handy further drive.

[Sirus]

Hm, I hadn't thought about the password stuff. I guess I was hoping that everything on the old HDD would just spring back to working order after transfer, but that was probably unrealistic. Anything pointed at C: drive for instance probably wouldn't work anymore. I'll set some time aside for getting all my logins saved, either on paper or a text file, and I guess I better start listing every program I have on the old computer so I can reinstall them cleanly.

I'm afraid you've lost me on the Drive Image thing. I'm not sure I have any DVD-ROMs around, let alone enough to back up a few thousand GB of accumulated data. I also don't have or use Linux, so if that's required it'll also be troublesome. If a Drive Image is something a bit handier I'm willing to learn more, otherwise I'll probably have to break out the backup external drive and save things that way.

As for just leaving the HDD in the old computer and making piecemeal transfers, well that's certainly an option. I only have one monitor/mouse/keyboard because I was hoping to make a clean sweep of things but maybe that was a little overly ambitious.

[LordBaal]

You are better by:
- Cloning your old HDD to your SSD, size allowing of course. Most straight forward option. Then format your HDD or use it as it is as backup.
- Clean, new OS in your SSD. Fresh software install of all programs and games, then copy all personal files, home made videos, photos and audios first, then documents, then everything else like savegames and config files and mods. Once all is up and running, files are safe, format your old HDD and use it as backup for anything you want.

[Starver]

I'm afraid you've lost me on the Drive Image thing. I'm not sure I have any DVD-ROMs around, let alone enough to back up a few thousand GB of accumulated data. I also don't have or use Linux, so if that's required it'll also be troublesome. If a Drive Image is something a bit handier I'm willing to learn more, otherwise I'll probably have to break out the backup external drive and save things that way.

I've used this product in the past, to good effect. In my case I burnt it to a DVD-R (maybe even CD-R? ...and it could have been on a USB memory-stick/thumbrdive/dongley-thing/whatever you call it) and used it in conjunction with an external-HDD to save verbatim images of internal-HDDs (there's some compression factor in doing that, even accounting for 'unused space' still being copied[1]), all through a GUI-like text interface that really only lets you mess up with what you do (if you don't pay attention), not how you try to do it...

Not absolutely necessary, if you don't want to, I'd just suggest it as a precautionary thing, tuned to your particular needs/desires/abilities...

I only have one monitor/mouse/keyboard because I was hoping to make a clean sweep of things but maybe that was a little overly ambitious.

There's always getting some form of Remote Desktop working on the one computer (for which you now don't need IO devices, just a network-style connection of any kind) and control it from the computer for which you do permanently have your peripherals plugged in. Or find a cheap KVM. Or get a decent additional mouse and keyboard (cheap and cheerful will do) and as good a new monitor as you think you can spring to (possibly the current one doesn't even have multiple switchable video-inputs to it, or other features that you might find nice to use).

Compared to most of the hardware costs of a worthwhile new computer, only really the new monitor might be a significant increase (but I don't know how tight the purse-strings need to be for you, right now!), while the faux-KVM option of Remote Desktopping needs perhaps to learn a little about what client/server setups you can work with in your case and might be a learning-curve with (initially swapping at least the monitor between systems as you're trying to make both ends work properly). - But I'm the kind of person who has a small handful of extra monitors (even if I have to fall back to CRTs) and can probably dig up a reasonably working mouse and keyboard, without even having to 'borrow' them from work the next time I'm in the vicinity of the office concerned, so I am perhaps a bit too glib in not thinking of this as a speed-bump on the way to multi-computer nirvana...


Really, I meant to say, short and sweet, that I'm perfectly sure you can solve your problems, but the manner in which you do will depend a lot upon exactly what setup you have. I meant to keep it short and sweet, but... too much width of possible choices to give you the short-sweet answer that I really tried to give you! Sorry. It might be better if you have a techy-type friend who could actually look at what your before/after systems are, perhaps even know what sort of thing you're likely to be capable of (with or without a bit of effort along the way). Or wait for another thread-watcher to respond with a much better distillation of the relevent sage advice that you'd find useful.

((Oh look, LordBaal has indeed given advice that, yes, I'd also credit as being decent approaches. While I've been trying to make this post slightly more reasonable to read. For the cloning option, Clonezilla/the others would of course be one of the ways to do this step, for example.))




[1] Combining with a bit of actual initial disk-clean-up (wisely done) and then using a repartitioning utility[2] to shrink the partition to only the space actually used means the actual partition image is at least as small. It's very useful for creating a redeployable system almost regardless of the disc-size you'd be putting it on. Get it into the smallest-necessary clone-to-disc size and then expand it back out to fill the available hardware. But that's an advanced thing, with other considerations, not at all what you're doing.

[2] I mean, there's Live disks for that too, although gparted suggests you use a cloner first in case you mess up that, which would be a bit chicken-and-egg. But, with that caveat, this linked page suggests other cloners as well as Clonezilla that you might also want to look at.

[3] e.g. a modern mobo might not even have IDE headers, and if your old computer drive is that then you may have to look for a caddy solution, though PCI-ish cards with IDE headers or internally connecting it to an IDE-to-USB converter might also be good enough for your case. There's so many ways to do the physical connection, and even more ways to usefully progress from there and use the physically-connected drive once you've done so. And I've probably used about half of the ones I can think of, which are themselves doubtless only half of the ones that are actually practical (never mind possible) to do...

[Sirus]

Alright so, more information. I'm currently running Windows 7 (yes I know, it's very out of date) on a computer roughly 8 years old. I have a desk, but it's really only big enough for one computer. The new one will have to be assembled probably on my dining table because it's about the only big flat surface at a comfortable height to work with. I don't have Internet access in that room except via wifi, and I don't have an adapter for a desktop.

My computer has a 2 TB HDD and no other storage. It's partitioned into a C drive and a larger D drive, because the guy who helped me put it together in the first place said that Windows 7 could only handle C drives up to a certain size (or something). This computer does have a CD/DVD-ROM drive but the new one does not, so that option is out until and unless I pick up an external drive somewhere. I have some USB sticks hanging around but I'm not sure on their exact sizes (and I need to reserve one at least 8 GB for the Windows 10 boot drive).

Short of hauling the HDD out of its current case and plugging it into the new one, which will have its own SSD for storage, the only option for mass data transfer I currently have access to is an external backup drive that connects via USB.

I kinda like the cloning idea, but I have no idea how to make it work and I also don't really have a way to clone except by just, plugging both hard drives into a single computer anyway.

If I'm not sharing the right information here, please let me know what would be helpful. I thought I was reasonably computer-literate but the more I look at this project the more I realize I barely know anything 

[dragdeler]

I think I cloned with macrium reflect. The software is mildly annoying with being registered but not hard and free to access. It did screw up the boot section. I had to make a macrium recovery stick, and that was able rewrite the boot stuff as it should have been all along. After that it worked fine, C drive upgraded from 250gb to 2tb.


I see 0 reason to upgrade from w7 if you have the drivers and don't need modern feature levels of dx12. Even if it were more unsafe, which like, requires a bunch of suboptimal user decisions... It's just so easy to redeploy compared to w10.

[King Zultan]

What's so bad about Win7 I still use it and I'm fine, also read and experienced loads of reasons to not got to Win10.


Also monitors are easy and cheap to get from thrift stores if you need a second one.

[Lord Shonus]

I kinda like the cloning idea, but I have no idea how to make it work and I also don't really have a way to clone except by just, plugging both hard drives into a single computer anyway.

People (in my opinion) are making this way more complicated than it has to be. How I would do this (how I actually did this, when I upgraded to SSD):

Assemble the new PC with both drives. Leave the SSD blank for now, set the spinny rust drive as the boot drive.

Download a tool called Easus Partition Master, it works a lot easier than the integrated Windows tool. Since your drive is already partitioned into two drives (which was pointless - whoever set it up for you was an idiot. there IS a capacity limit in 32 bit versions of Windows, which is exactly 2TB), a smaller SSD is probably not going to be an issue here unless you bought one that is ludicrously small.  Use the EAsus Clone Partition tool to clone C to the new drive.

Once you have moved the C:\ drive, switch the boot order and disconnect the spinny rust drive. Boot from the SSD to make absolutely sure your SSD is booting properly, because you'll soon be destroying the old installation. If you have any super-important files such as critical that are hard to replace, make sure that they are on the new partition (and preferably backed up to the cloud).

Reconnect the spinny rust drive.

Delete the old C:\ partition from the spinny rust drive, being very careful to ensure that it is the right one. Then extend both partitions to fill the drives. At this point, as far as your files are concerned, your setup is now identical to the old one. Everything should work exactly as it did before.

Now do an in-place upgrade to Windows 10. This is technically optional, but Windows 7 is End Of Life, meaning it no longer gets security patches. This means that you will have increasingly large security issues, and anybody who thinks that you can compensate for that with safe browsing is a fool. Equally important, you're probably going to very much want the improvements that have been made over the years if you're buying a new computer in the first place. The problems with Windows 10 are largely overhyped, and the much discussed telemetry and advertising are trivial to disable. If you're building with very new parts, Windows 11 is also an option, which I've had no issues with. Installing with no ethernet will not be a problem. Windows runs fine without activation, it just yells at you a lot and puts up a watermark. You'll eventually want to do the activation, but it isn't an immediate priority.