Yes, I've done the same thing! To redirect it, open Explorer, go This PC, then right-click Downloads, Documents or whatever you want to redirect, select Properties. In the dialogue box that opens, select Location tab and choose the new location. It really helps not to have your pictures and stuff on your C: drive!

Oh ok! So then you can just delete it off your c:drive?

That's the idea!

And you could do this with all the major windows folders?

Yes, I moved Documents, Downloads, Pictures, Videos and Music. I think it's probably better not to touch Desktop, but maybe I'm just paranoid.

My C: drive is only 118GB, and it still has 77GB free. My E: drive is 465GB and it has only 83GB free... uh-oh.

Uh oh indeed!

You and Macole have given me a lot to think about. I appreciate the info y’all have provided.

Time to get a 2T SSD for all those TWMP mods, me thinks.

Khajiit unboxed his new pc case (Phanteks Enthoo Pro) this morning. I knew it would be roomier than the current pc case (Cooler Master HAF 912), but really underestimated how much of a difference those extra few inches would make. The thing looks massive compared to the HAF 912! Spent most of the morning getting acquainted with how the interior is laid out and tinkering with the frame to see what can be easily removed and what can’t. I’m very pleased with it, and can hardly wait to start transferring my components into it. That will be a project for maybe next weekend.

I’m trying to decide if I want to bother installing the optical drive. I haven’t used it in fairly long while.

If you have room, install it. Because if you don't, the moment you finish putting together your PC and hang up your antistatic gloves, your glance will fall onto an old DVD labeled "Wedding photos" or something equally important. And imagine the repercussions if you can't view those again!

I love my Enthoo Pro. It's easily the best case I've used. Mine too replaced a HAF, only mine was/is a full-tower HAF. It's larger than my Enthoo. Yet the Enthoo is "roomier" and allows much better cable management.

As to the optical drive, I too am in favor of installing it from the get go.

(My HAF still houses the secondary PC. I'll at some point need to swap out much of its current innards for parts removed from my primary PC during its recent semi-upgrade. I'm not looking forward to working inside it.)

Yes, I agree on keeping the opti-drive. I have two installed and use them both. I'll not give them up until I can no longer get Lightscribe disks, love that little label maker.

I've been thinking of getting a new case and the Ethnoo Pro is high on my list.

Mrs. Khajiit talked us into installing the optical drive after all.

So, I just couldn’t stand it. I went ahead and moved all of the components over to the new case. Got everything screwed in and plugged up, hit the power button and… nothing. Went back and made sure everything was plugged in correctly (especially those godawful little case plugs for the power button and front panel leds). Everything was. Did the paper clip test thing to make sure the PSU was functioning. The fan started spinning. Tried the thing where you touch a screw driver to where the power button plug goes. Nothing. Now I’m afraid something happened that killed my motherboard.

Ouch! Is there any way to test the cable from psu to motherboard?

Ouch! Were you wearing antistatic gloves or at least a grounded wristband? Static discharge can be deadly to computers.

Don't panic. Check the connectors again. Try disconnecting a few things to see if it boots up then. But if it is really your old computer in a new housing, you should not be having issues like that...

Come to think of it: does the power supply unit come with the case? Could it be that it's defective?

The PSU is fine. You can test them by sticking a paper clip in certain holes in the connector that hooks into the motherboard. First you turn off the PSU and unplug it from the surge protector. Next you unhook the connector from the motherboard and with the clip that secures it to the motherboard facing up, you put a paper clip in the 4th and 5th holes on the top row of holes. Next you plug the PSU back into the surge protector and flip the switch to “on”. If the PSU is working like it should, its fan will start to spin. If nothing happens, then you know you have a bad PSU.


I… was not wearing anitistatic items, but I didn’t when building the thing either and it was fine for years. I suppose it’s possible that there was a static discharge, but would I have noticed that? Also, the power supply was the same one I had in my old build. Purchased separately from any case.

You would not necessarily notice a discharge. Not wearing antistatic gear is like playing Russian roulette. You get lucky, or not.

But it is besides the point now, other than please get some wristbands at least for your next computer surgery. Just read up on it.

The question with PSU is not whether it can power up the fan but whether it can power up the entire computer. It is not a yes/no answer. Does it have enough capacity? That was the background of my question. But again, since the power supply is your old one, it should be fine indeed.

So, did any of the internal components change at all? Because if the answer is no, it becomes difficult to trace the problem. Are there any fuses that could have blown? Any obvious burned smell or black parts? I'm guessing not... Perhaps you have to start unplugging things until the PC boots, then start adding the components back in.

And please wear an antistatic wristband!

Oh yes, I’ve learned a valuable lesson about the anti static thing. Anyway, the only thing that changed was the case. Of course, the front panel plugs are a little bit different from the other case, and it has a USB-C connector that my mobo does not support so I couldn’t plug that in. The components are exactly the same, well, except for a 1tb SSD that I did add. Would that keep the whole system from turning on? No obvious burn smells. I think when I get home I may try the 24 pin cable from my old PSU, just to make sure it’s not that cable. I don’t know. I’m just really upset with myself for messing with it when it wasn’t necessary to.

EDIT: No I won’t try the 24 pin from my old PSU because I just read that could fry the components.

It would if your PSU is not powerful enough to provide juice for the whole PC, and the requirement has now been increased with whatever that hard drive requires. So the first thing to do would be to disconnect the new component and to get your PC to work in its old configuration but in the new housing. You know that should work, and if it doesn't then something is either not connected right or is broken, so fix that first. Then when your PC is booting again, add the new hard drive.


That is indeed very upsetting, Khajiit! But hang in there, you'll sort it out, and will know better next time. If it ain't broken... you know. Works every time. And we keep falling for it over and over and over again. Such is life.

I’ll try that, for sure.

I'm late to the party, and in any case can think of no new insights to put forward. It's possible that the motherboard battery died, but they generally last ages before expiring, and it seems highly unlikely that it would choose to die at the same exact time as the components move. For what it's worth (nothing), my primary PC's month's-long shimmering/flickering-graphics issue solved itself. I turned it on one day to attempt to run more tests before my eyes fried, to boot into a rock-solid screen. No idea what happened, but I'm not looking a gift-house in the mouth.

See, I really don’t like when these things just “sort themselves out”, lol
I need to to know why!! Why are you doing this, and why did you just decide to start working?!

I am glad your problem has been resolved, at least for now.

I know exactly what you mean.

Did you know that mods can go off like milk? Just like that, without you changing anything. This happened yesterday. My Oblivion wouldn't start. I didn't change anything at all!

After some investigation it turned out that OBSE wouldn't start. Why not? Going through OBSE mods (the ones that come in a form of DLL rather than an ESP), I discovered that Oblivion Display Tweaks DLL stopped working. I've had it there with exactly the same settings for some two years now! My Windows no longer updates! My video drivers are the same! What happened?!

I still don't know what happened, but I found that I had to change some of the tweaks in the INI. Namely the TickFix method had to be changed from 1 to 2. The description says "it's the same thing, but done with a different method". Well, why is method 1 no longer suitable? Huh? And why method 2 now works????

Ugh, yeah, that’s annoying!

Ok folks, another day, a new problem. So, I didn’t even look at my PC yesterday but when I got home today I decided to work on it. I unplugged everything from the mobo except the PSU and case connections, plugged the PSU back into a surge protector and flipped the switch, then hit the power button. SUCCESS! The LEDs on the mobo lit up and fans are spinning. We were getting somewhere. I plugged everything back in one by one and nothing kept it from turning on. So I moved the pc over to the tv to try and see if it would post. No signal. I also noticed that the keyboard and mouse are not working. I’ve read some things to try but would like to see what you guys had to say about it.

That sounds like your wall outlet is dead, or at least a breaker has flipped.

How are those devices connected; cable or remote? The only thing I can think of that they have in common is the rear I/O panel on the mobo.
Does your mobo have a post button and/or error code lights? If so try to post and get the error code.
Trying to think of something but coming up blank. Truely annoying.

So, you plugged in everything that you also had plugged in from the start, and now it boots? So why did it not boot the first time? Perhaps the issue is with connectors.

Keyboard and mouse: where are you plugging them in? I'm assuming they are wired USB, so are you plugging them in directly to the motherboard or into some other board that may or may not have a stable connection to the motherboard?

When you say the PC doesn't post, do you mean you have no video output? How is this connected? Do you connect your TV straight to the motherboard or - more likely - to a graphics card which again may or may not have a stable connection to the motherboard? That's a lot of connections to check.

I believe your i7-4790 has integrated graphics. You might want to try plugging the PC into a monitor (or whatever) via the motherboard's integrated video socket rather than the GPU and see what happens. Assuming you didn't disable integrated graphics in the BIOS.

I greatly appreciate everyone’s input. In the end, this was the advice that led me to solve the issue:



The error code lights on the mobo. I forgot to check this! Ok, so error code on the mobo display showed 2b, which Google told me was a RAM issue. I took out one of the RAM sticks, and the display appeared and sent me to the setup screen and BIOS (I had taken out the battery to reset the CMOS, which was apparently unnecessary). Then I turned it back off and I took out the RAM stick that was working and slotted the other one. Uh oh. No signal again. I took it back out and looked it over. It looked mostly fine except for a smudge of some sort on the contact so I took some isopropyl alcohol and gently wiped the contact with a paper towel soaked in a small amount of the alcohol. When it was dry, I slotted it back in and… SUCCESS! The display returned. Turned the pc off again and slotted the other RAM stick and booted windows just fine. Whew! Thanks again to all for the helpful advice, and now my pc is resting comfortably in its spacious new housing!

Glad your PC issue turned out to be something easily solvable!

And now, a not-so-shameless plug:

I recently bought (link) this item (link) on Amazon, which makes it far easier to see what I'm doing while tinkering around inside a computer case. It is of course useful in many other scenarios.

Man, I definitely wish I had something like that when I was doing all of this, lol
That would’ve been very helpful!

Modern high tech version of the 'penlight in your mouth'.

Lol

YAY!!!

Khajiit, congrats on sorting it out!

Couldn’t have done it without my Chorrol fam!

Nice!

I’m thinking about getting an AMD RX 6700 XT for my next PC build. It’s on sale on Amazon currently. Anyone here familiar with AMD cards and how they behave?

I have never had an AMD, so I have no idea.

AMD behaves badly with Oblivion. Don't know about other games, but the processing is very different from Intel, so if a game (or any software) is optimised for Intel, it will perform badly on AMD. You need to read up on the websites for those applications that you intend to run. Serious applications have benchmarks, while games have forums with possibly useful posts.

Oh sorry, guess I should have clarified that I was asking about AMD GPU’s
I’m eying an Intel i5 12600k for my next cpu.

Exactly the same goes also for GPUs, according to what I read about issues with AMD graphic cards with Oblivion.

No problem here with a
CPU
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
and a
GPU
AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT

I have to limit the maximum frame rate to 240 to keep it from running way faster than the monitor

Since 2016 my GPU has been an AMD RX480. I've had no issues with it while playing Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim. Unless you're going to be heavy into ray tracing your choice of a RX 6700 XT is a good one.

So, it seems that what I read about problems with AMD and Oblivion is just an urban myth! So for the better!

Likely just one old card model had probs.

Well, it was a difficult struggle, but wisdom prevailed and I ended up not buying any new PC components. Oh well, it was fun shopping. I guess.

I went and done it, bought myself a new toy, an RTX 4070. Overkill, considering my monitor is a 24" 1080p, and is likely to remain so for some time to come. An irony, my last build sported a Gigabyte (Aorus) motherboard and an MSI GTX 1070 GPU. My primary PC now has an MSI motherboard and a Gigabyte GPU. As for the GPU physical swap-out, it was a no-brainer, except that loosening the GPU socket's card-retaining-device took far longer than it had any right to. This was my first opportunity to work inside the PC using the headband flashlight bought some months ago . . . two thumbs up! A solid recommendation.

I worried that the new GPU might be so massive/heavy it needs a support post or brace to prevent sagging and possibly damage to the PCIE slot. Pleasant surprise No1: though the new GPU is a three-fan model, whereas the 1070 is a two-fan model, both GPUs are the same length. Pleasant surprise No2: the 4070 weights slightly less than the 1070! It also requires only a single eight-pin power cord from the PSU. The 1070 needs both eight-pin and a four-pin CPU power adapters. Neither GPU nor motherboard feature RGB lighting, a plus for me. Not that it matters. The PC case it situation such that I can not see its side-panel glass.

I also updated to the "latest" Nvidia GPU driver. Naturally, they released a newer driver the very next day. I've not yet bothered to LD it.

Ooo nice! Have fun with it!!

The RAM I ordered finally showed up. It is a simple install. Just open the case, and pop them into their slots.

So naturally it took over two hours of fighting with the damn thing. *sigh* First off the memory slots are on both sides of the CPU, and their orientation flips when they change sides. So the top side is different on each. I did not notice that, so first I was putting half of them in backwards, and did not realize I was doing so.

Next the slots are really close to the CPU, which of course has a massive heat sink and fan atop it. So there is zero extra space on one side, and it is merely tight on the other. If that was not enough, the RAM currently in place (that I was keeping, I was just adding more chips to the slots that were still open), got in the way of me reaching the motherboard. To make them look cool the company put an extra plastic piece on the back with their logo on it. It makes it easy to handle, since there is plenty to grab on to. But it also makes it impossible to get my fingers in between the spaces between the chips that way.

So I had to pull all the old RAM out, to the put the new RAM in, and then put the old RAM back in as well.

Then the computer would not come on at all. So I went back through all the chips to make sure they were seated. And the computer would not come on. So I took the new chips out, which meant taking the old ones out to get at them first, which meant putting the old ones back in. And the computer still would not start.

And I unplugged the power cable from the PC, plugged it back in, and then it would boot.

Because of course it would that way.

So I did it all over again, and put all the chips in. Pulled the power cable out and put it back in, and it worked.

Except I only had 28 GB of memory. It should have been 32. So I used CPU-Z (a handy little utility program) and it showed one of my memory slots was empty. Of course there was no way to tell which slot that actually was. All I could gather was that it was one of the new chips, because it showed the manufacturer name of every chip it did see, and I was missing one of the new ones.

So back into the case I went, pulling more chips out, putting them back in, unplugging the power cable and putting it back in, and now I have my full 32 GB of RAM.

Yay!

While I was at it I cleaned up the inside of the case, since I had not been in there in a while and a lot of dust had built up. I even took out one of the fans and the side panel and washed them both off.