Tom's Hardware of Finland

Welp, time for us to all get really good at up-cycling old computers I guess.

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once again I resent my most adaptive qualities

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i know that i’m paranoid, but every time windows has an update it wants to install my computer slows to a crawl and eventually crashes, forcing me to restart and install the updates. happened again last night - had a total lockup which never happens, and when i power cycled it installed updates! It’s so god damn consistent that I can’t think it’s anything but purposeful.

Like, even if I restart and don’t install the updates, within a day or two I’m back to “oh, you want to run a program? Good luck dipshit”

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Possible but unlikely explanation: is the update download pushing your boot drive over 90% full?

very unlikely

i dont’ even want an explanation tbh, realizing this is usually a thread for questions now but i’m just complaining. computers are hellish creations not meant for human use, and i’m fine continuing to see them as arcane death machines that live for my suffering.

…but i’ll come back when i decide to build my first pc and ask for real advice lol

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When an update is ready to process, your computer has to open up some specialized valves to let the updates in. After this, the valves are supposed to close. Your computer’s valves might be faulty, and aren’t properly sealing in time, which allows the internal information to slowly drain out (this is what is referred to as a “memory leak”), eventually causing your PC to malfunction. When you finally install the updates, it initiates some basic checks and diagnostics, which get the valves to properly close, until the next update comes in.

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I can’t tell if this is a joke but I’m guessing not

My brain is resisting the valve analogy

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Sorry, it’s 110% a joke. I have this awful habit/hobby of coming up with absurd explanations for computer issues, and I took advantage of the fact that VastleCania explicitly stated they didn’t want a real explanation/troubleshooting guide, to provide a stupid made-up one.

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the phrase ‘boot up’ actually comes from a UK ex-pat likening the conditions necessary for starting the IBM DV-17 to the notoriously finicky Vauxhall Valiant, which would often require the trunk be opened (disconnecting the rear lamps) in order to get enough current for the starter motor to turn over

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It’s legit not a bad metaphor for certain types of memory leaks. The word “leak” became the jargon in the first place for a reason

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For sure, and I was playing on that fact. I probably should have made it more obvious I was referring to real, actual valves.

I think the most absurd descriptions for computer functionality come from misrepresenting what is a physical part or function, and what is virtual. Eg, telling someone to download some more RAM/MHz, or claiming that the internet is a series of dump trucks.

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anyway by far my biggest problem with hangs and bad shutdowns under Windows 10 seems to be down to kernel message queueing. I strongly suspect this is because I treat my computer like homer’s car, with five monitors connected to two GPUs and multiple network disk mounts and Bluetooth input devices and Bluetooth audio devices all running at the same time off of a motherboard that’s been overclocked on stock cooling for a decade in an ITX case I had to cut with tin snips to fit a 250w GPU and has every available bus used. nevertheless, it runs great when it’s running flat out, and it’s only when too many devices change state at once that sometimes it needs to dump a whole lot of I/O it doesn’t always recover from gracefully. could be something like that going on in your case.

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I’m not terribly savvy in regards to computer engineering on a low level, let alone Windows’ underlying framework, but the glimpses I get indicate it’s a fucking mess of code that has never actually been fully rewritten since the days of MS-DOS.

I mean, we’re on Windows 10, and EVERYTHING that remotely depends on explorer.exe still locks up the moment an HDD has to spin up. Lmao. I do not envy the people who have to maintain, update, and add features to that shit.

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i hope bill gates is not too depressed to make a spinal tap joke when windows 11 is announced

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No software is ever fully rewritten, but Windows got two huge rounds of major rearchitecture in Windows XP and Windows Vista that did put everything on a much more stable foundation. The crufty old code is still there but contained so it can’t do as much damage

(The endpoint of what happens if you just keep piling on top of the existing mess was Windows ME and Microsoft learned a lesson from that. Then overlearned it and forgot to add new features in Vista)

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Oh yeah you guys remember a while ago my laptop’s HDD died and I replaced it with an SSD? I dunno if this is related but sometimes if I let my computer sit idle with Chrome up and maximized, the tab it’s currently on will become unresponsive and I have to switch tabs quick to like, get it to “wake up”.

I noticed this only after replacing the hard drive. Anybody have a possible explanation? This is basically a non-problem but I am curious.

Windows 10 actually rearchitected some stuff so that the entire compositor and desktop environment aren’t all run in the same userspace process that basically can’t recreate itself cleanly if it has problems without a full reboot, explorer itself is less of a liability than it used to be, but I/O blocking in general is still way worse on Windows than other platforms, and I assume it’s kind of unfixable at this point.

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Do you mean that the tab becomes unresponsive, you can’t scroll/click/type/interact, but otherwise appears fine superficially, and clicking into another tab, and then back to the one you want, fixes it? Or does it actually blank out after some amount of time?

Exactly this. I never noted this behavior prior to my HDD dying and replacing it with an SSD. So like, I don’t think it’s a RAM thing but I am but a man feeling around in the dark when it comes to a lot of computer biz

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