An update: I have now installed The Witcher 3 on my PC, and remarkably it can run it very well, even though according to the specs, I should have set all graphics to their lowest setting. Not so. This 15 year old i5 PC is doing great, amazingly so. And I also got a mod that allows Geralt to finally sit down, so no more staying on his feet 24/7... Phew... Let the adventure begin! (Also, he got his hair back as in Witcher 2, which is a plus. Not sure what did it because he didn't have it on PS4 and I didn't install any hair mods. Perhaps GOG did it when no one was looking. Good job.)

Glad your game's running well!

Not a technical issue, but I got hit with another YouTube "Switch to Prime or disable your Adblock" threat yesterday morning. Turns out my Firefox Adblock extension hasn't been updated since Nov 2023. Switched to Brave Browser, which has its own built-in Adblocker enabled by default. No YouTube threats (yet?) using Brave! My current issue with Brave is that, since having to reinstall Win10 due to unrepairable boot partition corruption, I no longer have my favorite and/or most essential websites appearing on its "new tab" page. It's gonna take some time to rebuild those. I'll do so at leisure when I first need to visit one of those sites, rather than make a time-consuming intense project of it.

Had to rebuild that myself when switching to Chrome as Firefox started having issues with youtube.


Have you tried Adblock Plus, Decrepit? It works by fast-forwarding the ads right to the end immediately and since it doesn't outright block anything, youtube can't detect it and make a fuss! If you try it with Firefox, maybe you don't have to switch to Brave

You folks seem to have more issues with YouTube. My only issue is it's way too expensive, if you want to buy into the full package. And I kinda have been thinking about that because there's some content on there (such as the Xena show) that I can't get on Netflix or Hulu or HBO. But those three services are cheap! Hulu (with HBO) is about $7.00 a month, thereabouts. For YT it is a LOT more.

By the way I read back a page; still not sure what shorts are. They don't seem like commercials. Maybe I'm lucky I'm not seeing them.

Is there any such thing as a program which BLOCKS updates. I'm having issues with the forced Windows updates Microshaft keeps forcing on this computer I'm typing on now. It is possible to Uninstall updates of course. But it takes over an hour to uninstall the one which keeps messing things up. I mean, this is MY computer.

Shorts are basically Youtube's version of TikTok clips.


I don't know how newer version of Windows work, but you should be able to simply disable automatic updates if you go to Windows Updates in your Windows maintenance area. I did that as soon as I bought any of my computers and never had an issue.

AH I see. Tik Tok gives me a headache, so yeah I can definitely relate.

I just did a little research, and yeah, you are right, crow. It's looking like I can just go into the Start menu and keep diving. Supposed to be a way to disable automatic updates, which is good. Leery of installing some program (unless you folks know it's safe).

Be back later!

I think you should be able to go to the Control Panel and then Windows Update and from there disable it. You should not have to install any program.

There is no way to disable updates. I've been through my menus every way & back & forth. There is only a way to delay the next update, which I've already done 3x so far. My computer is telling me I've already met the limit there.

Windows 10, by the way. On my gaming computer (which is Windows 8) I do remember there was a way to disable auto-updates.

Anyway, gonna try to research this further.

Here's an article on how to permanently disable updates in Windows 10 (until you are ready to enable them again, which can be done). I have not tried this myself.

Thank God for Windows 7

Good to know. Thanks

Thanks Decrepit. I found a solution yesterday while surfing, which led me to a different set of windows. But I was able to Disable them, I think. We'll see. If that solution doesn't work in the long run I can try the one you posted.

I use Winaero Tweaker. It's a utility that allows you to set all sorts of things, including disable updates. It's very easy too.

I just switched to Linux. No more forced updates.

Screenshot of desktop?

Thanks Lena. That's what I'm looking for, if I have to install a program, is one of us saying "this works and it's safe".

Yeah, I've been using Winaero Tweaker for years. Even our IT department had to admit it was safe.

Looks a lot like a windows desktop. Will get a Pic later.

Well it's been 4 days, I think I'm in the clear now (knock on plastic). No forced update, nor have the annoying messages shown up recommending I manually update. Interesting thing, the method I found after an internet search is nothing near to what Decrepit found, nor did it seem related to the normal Start menu options at all.

I was told to enter the Start menu > Settings and then typed gpedit.msc into the search bar (I think). This opened up an entirely different section (different program?) of my home computer called Group Policy Editor. From there I followed a path of options until I was able to disable updates.

My question: what is Group Policy Editor?

Sounds like a setting thing where you decide if something can be applied to all user profiles of the computer, like games and such, or only to the Administrator, like passwords.

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On my backup Win7 updating pictures and savegames. Also updated two flashdrives. This computer hasn't been on since late October last year so I think it was due.

I keep jumping between adblockers. Now Adblock started giving me issues so I tried going back to uBlock Origin that stopped working before, but now it seems to work again. Clicked several videos and nothing yet. We'll see how this goes.

I have been using UBlock Origin on Firefox for years no, and it has always worked great for me.

I also just recently learned that you can sometimes use it to get around news sites that try to block you with a paywall or want a login. When they pop up go up to the menu bar and click on the UBlock button. A drop down will appear with a big power button to disable UBlock entirely. But don't click on that. Just below it is a line of smaller buttons. On the far right is one that looks like this: </>. Click on that and it disables java script on the site. Often that will allow you to read your article.

Useful tip, thanks SubRosa!

This post is not to report a computer Issue, it is to report how I fixed a computer Issue. Me. By myself. I used to put electrical tape on my TV!

Two years ago my room computer died; which meant most of the backup copies of my stories, game & personal pictures, and so on got lost. Stuff I was in the middle of working on, etc. most of it gone. Long story. Anyway, that computer was always super-fast. Photobucket loaded in 3 or 4 seconds, Any process (opening files, pictures, videos) I never remember any slowdown. Damn thing was like a workhorse and a stallion combined. ... And I noticed this because back then the computers I used at work were SO MUCH slower. And they crashed sometimes if more than two windows were opened.

Anyway, two years ago I got a new computer to replace the kaput one, as some of you may know. The newer computer was never as fast. And it's been getting slower. An example: any time I need to right-click on something, even a word file, it would take up to a minute for the menu to pop up (the menu with Open, Open File Location, Copy, Paste, etc.) Tried defragmenting last week, which helped a little bit.

Well, this week I was cleaning all my computers & consoles with compressed air, I noticed began looking at the RAM in the new computer. Could the problem be RAM?

Solution: I popped the new computer's single RAM module (whatever it's called) out, which is 4GB. Remembered an internet post I read recently which said something like "any modern computer should have a minimum of 4GB". Hmm. Next, I popped the RAM module out of the old computer, the one which died 2 years ago. Wow, that one had 8GB. No wonder it was so much faster.

I was about to go shopping on NewEgg until I got the bright idea to see if I can just pop the 8GB RAM next to the 4GB. 💡 Thankfully, their contacts matched. DDR3, I think they are. Anyway, now the new computer's got 12 instead of 4. It's like night and day!

The End.

Wow, Renee! I can do the open the puter and blow out the dust part with compressed air but nothing beyond that.

I have 32GB of spare DDR3. Can I email it to you?

Noice! Good job!

ha ha yeah, maybe so.

Then again, RAM is really super-cheap, I noticed I went on Newegg last night and was surprised to see upgrading RAM costs less than my weekly grocery bill.

Past Renee - *turns on console to play*

New Renee - Aight, lets open up this computer, transpost some connections and resolder the chip sets, no biggie


In other words - Well done

Had a bit of a snaffu in Bioshock 2 tonight where the game kept crasching over and over even as the save was loaded up. Turns out this game is known to crash in this particular map (Fontaine Futuristics) with the graphics set on max and coming down into the labs. The solution was to simply turn it down to medium which I absolutely hate to do since this game is nothing short of gorgeous, but better to have the game ugly and playable than the reverse. I will try to bump it up on the next map.

Started up my cottage Windows Millennium computer tonight, something I haven't done since last October.

Phew, that must be ancient. Wonder what kind of games you could play on that? Certainly some of those early ones like Ultima.

It's from 2000 so it's gr8

I can play some good games on it; Deus Ex, Duke Nukem 3D, Half-Life, Doom, Chasm: The Rift, Alien vs Predator, Driver and of course Chip's Challenge! Plus a slew of other games. It's my main cottage computer ever since my beloved Windows 3.1 gave up on me

Does it do the dial up thing or is it not connected to the internet?

The latter. Don't even have a dial-up modem for it.


But it does have the Johnny Castaway screensaver!

Lol sorry, I don’t understand that reference

Johnny Castaway

That would be rather neat, having an earlier computer. I bet that's great perspective, being able to see how far computers have come.

It is. And not only that, it brings me such nostalgia when I see the old Millennium desktop and the games I used to play. Not to mention Johnny Castaway with its typical early 2000 graphics

I have a new puzzle for you, wizkids. I've been observing some baffling behaviour on my PC. It's a straight up Intel i5, 8GB RAM, NVIDIA 1060 4GB graphics card, running Windows 10 and Oblivion. With this hardware, when I enter an open-plan city with lots of NPCs walking around, I get a momentary dip in FPS for about 15 seconds. If I stand still and let the game work through it, it all settles down to reasonable levels and I proceed as normal.

But here comes the puzzle. In Windows settings you can go System -> Display -> Graphics settings (on the bottom of the screen). This opens a new page "Graphics settings" and on there you've got section "Graphics performance preference" where you can set up prefereces per application (per EXE file). So I decided to see what the effect would be, picked Oblivion.exe and set it to High Performance. Also did the same for the OBSE loader, just to be on the safe side.

Now when I start Oblivion and go to an open-plan city, I don't get a noticeable FPS dip (well, may be I do for about a second, passes very quickly), but what I notice is that bunches of NPCs are just standing around instead of going places and also some of the doors don't work. That is, I activate it and it doesn't teleport me to the interior. These problems go away after about 10 minutes.

First I thought it was a bug, but then I realised why this happens. The interiors behind the doors have not been loaded yet! It's a big place, lots of NPCs and interiors to process, and the game takes a lot longer now processing it all. Namely, some 10 minutes. As soon as the interior cells are loaded, the NPCs start walking. The reason that they were standing still initially, was that their destination was in the cells not yet loaded, so there was no path to there yet.

Question: has anyone seen this before? What kind of weirdness is this???? I can't even reproduce it 100% of the time, seems to depend on what else is going on in the PC. Is there a way to tell Oblivion NOT to do this? I mean, tell it to go ahead and load those cells straight away, otherwise it's just too weird?

Seeking opinions and stories here, if no actual advice is available.

You didn’t mention whether the game data was being loaded from SSD or regular spinning rust. The rate of mesh, texture and other game data loads is a big factor at that phase. Oblivion being single-threaded on the CPU also adds a bottleneck to the initial draw.

When ESO runs into this problem, it gives lower priority to textures, as they are larger units to load, and the selection of which one to display is on the server. Other players sometimes appear as silhouettes (that move) before their textures arrive. They may also have generic body shape etc., as these details have to be fetched from the server database. I often see my companion load naked and their armor arrives later. The numbers involved in an online game are different, but the considerations about how to get everything in place at the same time stay the same.

At some point, the trade-off between loading a smaller compressed archive and the time needed to extract from it comes into play. Running from loose files forces the issue, but it may not be the best choice.

Ok! Finding out things about Windows has become much harder than it used to be. But here we are. I have two hard drives: one has Windows on it, the other has games:

Windows: SAMSUNG MZ7LN128HCHP-000H1

Games: SEAGATE ST500DM002

The games drive definitely looks like a traditional HDD since it's got rotational speed...




I load everything from BSAs - no other way when you're also making mods in the same folder.

This morning I solved an issue with my secondary computer, discovered during my bro's visit this past Sunday. That PC's monitor speakers no longer produced sound. After several fruitless attempts, it finally dawned on me to check and see if Nvidia's audio driver was enabled. It wasn't. It wasn't even installed! I reinstalled the most recent drivers for the GPU. Problem solved. My question is, why did this issue crop up in the first place? I haven't messed with that computer's Nvidia drivers in ages, no new ones having been issued for the GTX 670 in several years. Yet up until recently sounds played just fine. It's beyond me. In any case, it's fixed now.

Things stop working for no reason - yep, that's computers for you.


Good you got it sorted

Decrepit, can you tell me how to place an image on imgur in the correct album? As it is, I can upload a picture but to find it I have to select "All images" in order to find it. I cannot find it in any particular album.

Alas, I can not help you with this. To the best of my recollection, I have never used Imgur Albums, unless it was very early on.

Do you want to know how to add a new photo to an existing Imgur album?

Yes. It used to be so easy before the "improvement"...

I don’t know if it will help but this is what I do.
Open your album so that pictures are in single column file https://imgur.com/hVSHDqL.jpg
Use the scroll bar to scroll down to the bottom, depending on size of album you may have to wait a minute are two for this to work properly.
At the bottom click on Add Image button. https://imgur.com/RzXLnZT.jpg

Hope that helps.