Thanks, Renee. I don't actually look for an answer since I don't think I'll get it to work anyway, and it isn't any sort of deal breaker. I just wanted to vent

Actually have a sound problem with Red Baron too so I guess it may be sound card related and/or Windows Millennium related. Probably both. It's interesting how Duke works 100% and the other DOS games don't though.

What are you using for sound? if you have a Sound Blaster 16 laying around, I would pop it in and see what happens. I skipped Windows Millennium so I'm just taking a shot.

My intuition here was correct. For some reason the fans in my brand-new graphics card weren't coming on. Drivers installed? Yes. I noticed the fans do come on briefly while my computer's powering up, so it's not a power issue. But they wouldn't work while gaming!

I had to install Afterburner to MANUALLY turn the fans on. So they're working now, but is this normal? I don't think it is.

Yeh, now that I've got the Afterburner program displayed, my GPU temp is 30.4C while idle instead of over 40.

I don't have it myself but maybe I can find it somewhere. I doubt it, though.


Not sure what soundcard I have on the Millennium now, btw.

I am having fun with the HP support site. I wanted to find out if the laptop I intend to use in the UK meets minimum ESO spec. It appears that if your warranty has expired, you can't get far enough into the site to inquire whether your warranty has expired. It doesn't simply tell you that, but it says your serial number is invalid.

However, it appears that the lowest configuration of that model should be OK. It is running Win 10 64-bit, has at least 4G ram, and the only doubt is the video spec. We will find out heuristically on Monday. The machine is already there, and I only have the box in the USA.

Good luck!

Funny, I just got an HP myself, with 4GB of ram. Not using it for gaming though; it's for work and also writing / surfing when I'm not in my room.

My previous laptop died this week after 6 years of service. It's a cheapie laptop, one of those Google Chrome deals. Literally just internet and some basic storage. The advantage: it was so cheap I could just leave it around at work, even in public places. My newer laptop is a couple steps up, so gotta be more careful.

Since the empirical answer to "will this laptop run ESO" was no, I now have a new one, for which the answer is yes,

Nevada is an ASUS A15 with an AMD Ryzen 5 7535 CPU, and nVidia RTX4060 GPU 16G RAM and an annoying lighted keyboard I am still trying to set to less annoying. The mouse is misbehaving, too.

But I can play and get onto discord at last. Wheee!

For reasons I now use Chrome on parents' computer and I have just installed three adblockers on the advise of the FBI.

Best one for Youtube seems to be "Adblock For Youtube" if anyone is interested.



Also; can anyone recommend a good youtube video downloader?Nevermind I found one that seems to work

Edit 2: I have now downloaded several if not all of my seasonal Youtube videos, including BigMacDavies' Pirate Doom series from five years ago. And if you know me you should expect I have also copied all videos to a flashdrive and will subsequentally copy them to more computers and flashdrives.

Gotta have my back covered - OORAH!

You installed an adblocker due to the FBI's advice?? Why would they offer advice?

Good job backing up, Crow. I backed up all the text from the drive in my original computers, way back in 2021/22, as well as the folder paths for all games & the Downloads folder, but never bothered backing up pics & videos. Wish I'd done that as well. Well some vids are on YouTube, and most pics are on Imgur or PB, but still.

Question for Chorrol. Thinking I'm going to replace my CPU this fall, in my gaming computer. I might also replace the motherboard as well. These are the only components original to the rig. 🖲️ Not only are they 10+ years old, but the motherboard is bottlenecking my new hard drive's speed, and is also not able to keep up with the GPU's speed, or the new displayport cable.

Any advice? I just read a bit of info here online: keep my work free from static, make sure I do lots of research to make sure everything is compatible, and so on. Anything else?

I won't have to "program" a new processor, will I?

Replacing a motherboard is the biggest thing you can do with a computer. Because everything else is dependent upon it.

The first thing to keep in mind is you cannot put just any processor into any motherboard. Make sure you are buying a processor that will work in the board you buy.

Also, make sure the board is the right form factor for your computer case. Unless you also want to buy a new case while you are at it. If you do, it will be the cheapest of all three.

Likewise, make sure your new motherboard will have the right type and number of connectors for your devices. Especially the right kind of slots for your RAM. But also video card, hard drives, optical drive, etc...

Yes, Sub Rosa offers very good advice Renee. To reinforce what she already stated, be sure you get a mobo (motherboard) that matches the cpu you get (mobos come made for either Intel or AMD processors, so make sure your CPU matches your mobo). Also pay attention to what kind of RAM a potential new mobo accepts (newer ones are probably going to be made to take DDR5, but you might consider getting a board that takes DDR4. Might be cheaper).

(LINK)An informative recent video on Google Chrome(LINK) and derivative browsers and add blocking. Thankfully, my browsers (Brave and Firefox) are largely immune to Google's latest/upcoming changes. Well, except that pretty much all search engines nowadays reply on Google algorithms, a topic the video doesn't address.

Thanks for that link, Decrepit. I shall save it for future reference


I don't use FF anymore on my computer ever since it started to act up and freeze everything with no idea why and no fix available. Might have to try Brave at some point, how would you say it works for someone coming from Chrome?

Not having used Chrome in years, and then only on those rare occasions when Firefox proved inadequate, I'm in no position to accurately compare Chrome and Brave. There are likely lots of YT videos that do so. I will venture to say that since Brave uses a modified version of Chrome's Chromium engine, geared toward user privacy, Chrome users should easily adapt to it. I'm to a point now that I don't miss Firefox at all, except that Firefox's "New Tab Page" allows more quick-launch website icons. But even that is not as big a deal as it seemed at first.

Finally finished upgrading my PC after a week of troubleshooting and waiting for new parts. The new CPU I bought shipped bad out of the box and I had to swap pieces in and out until I narrowed that down. Replacement came in and worked immediately.


New CPU, more RAM, and a new GPU means I'm ready for modern games at high settings!


Final build:

• MSI X470 GAMING PRO CARBON ATX AM4 Motherboard
• AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 3.7 GHz 6-Core Processor
• G.Skill 16GB (8GBx2) DDR4/3000MHz Dual Channel Memory (GEIL Super Luce RGB
• Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory
• Toshiba DT01ACA100 1 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive
• Crucial MX300 525 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
• XFX Speedster SWFT 319 Core Radeon RX 6800 16 GB Video Card
• EVGA 1000 GQ 1000 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply
• Corsair Carbide Series SPEC-04 ATX Mid Tower Case

I confess I don't even really know how to spell cumpewtre but that sure sounds like a lot of gigamojo! Hope you're pleased when you try out a game!

New ‘puter, woot! Sounds like a good’n! You wouldn’t telling us what it ran you would you?
If you don’t wanna that’s ok, I would understand.

"Modern" games?


Don't know what that is, but happy youre happy!

I understand most of what Kane mentioned. Come a long way since the days of electrical tape covering Oblivion's compass.

Kane can you post a pic of your tower/case?

I've got about $700 in the upgrade. With the legacy components I have, I bet the entire thing is just shy of $1,200. It's good, but nowhere near top of the line. Doesn't even have liquid cooling.


Here's the link for the case. Mine doesn't look much different on the inside.

Thanks. Whenever I go to Micro Center I can't help but get all google-eyed in the cases section.

I'm with Renee. As long as it has pretty lights and I can play my game with the graphics set to 'Oh wow!' I'm happy.

You have a Micro Center nearby?! *swoon* I wish I could be so lucky.

Congrats Kane! Happy pixel smashing days ahead.

I have a Micro Center nearby too. In fact, I am still using the computer I built from parts I bought there about 13 years ago.

There are two MCs in my parts! One's down near Rockville (near Bethesda) and the other is north of Baltimore. I prefer going north. Less traffic.

Alas, no Micro Center near me, not even a Best Buy since a tornado totaled ours at the start of the pandemic.

I’ve never even seen a Micro Center, lol

I'll say! Considering you were a computer gaming n00b only some odd years ago, you know a heck of a alot more than me who's been PC gaming since the mid-90s!


Neither have I, probably for obvious reasons


@Kane - Cool case!

[censored], that's awful. And so if Best Buy got erased in your parts, I wonder what else was in that tornado path. Where do you shop for gaming stuff?

The tornado also erased our Barnes & Noble. It was finally rebuilt, in a new location, earlier this year. Sad thing for B&N is that during its absence I ceased buying paper books in favor of Kindle e-books. As for computer gear, I usually buy online from NewEgg and Amazon, buying locally only rarely. (Even when we had a couple of stores carrying computer parts, it was rare that they stopped the exact parts I wanted.)

We lost our Best Buy last year. That being said, I buy most of my gaming stuff from Amazon. Games I usually just buy digitally on whatever platform.

Yeah some issues with Youtube nagging on me for using a blocker. Refreshing the page seems to work for now.

Also; my adblocker doesn't really block any ads, rather it fast forwards them right to the end so it really shouldn't be detected

Well, after further issues from the last time I posted, I now actually am up and running with my upgrades. The CPU I wanted just would not sync with my existing motherboard, so after I returned the second CPU I ended up buying a whole new motherboard and a better CPU. It's now the PC of Theseus but it works! The only existing parts are the case and hard drives. I also plan on getting a new SSD down there road, though.


Transferring Windows was the only thing I had concerns about, but it went flawlessly. Just had to make sure my license was linked to my MS account and all I had to do was login with that on the first boot up.

Sounds awesome!

Great news then, Kane!

After many trials and tribulations (and experience points gained), success!

Started my backup Win7 and updated savefiles from Fallout 3 and Oblivion to it. Also pics taken up till now. Haven't had this one up and running since 1st of July so it was due.

On my backup Win7 again to update a couple of pics and savegames for Oblivion.

I also downloaded another adblocker just because, and an autoplay blocker that actually seems to work!

If anyone wants to try as well I have the link here (Chrome)

Edit: Ok, it seems it's not bulletproof after all. It apparently works best when opening a video in a new tab (i.e right-clicking and not left-clicking).

Updated my Windows XP with all images and most recent savegames for Fallout 3 and Oblivion. I don't see it as a backup computer for daily use but it never hurts to have yet another storage!

After a year of procrastination, I finally drummed up the gumption to replace the 500GB NVMe drive that, until yesterday, served as my primary PC's "O" drive/partition with the on-hand 2TB NVMe drive removed following last November's unrecoverable Windows 10 load-partition corruption SNAFU. Pre-swap, with the 2TB drive housed in an NVMe / USB adaptor, I shrunk its two remaining partitions and then moved them to the far end of the drive. That allowed me to create a new "O" partition over twice as big as the 500GB NVMe. I then copied my 500GB "O" partition data (games) to the 2TB "O" partition, turned off the PC, made the physical swap, and fired up the PC. Voila! At some point, I will move the data on those two other 2TB NVMe partitions to a dedicated storage solution, but there's no great hurry.

With the above done I can resume turning my previous primary PC into a secondary PC . . . when I drum up the gumption.

Been trying out a number of adblockers again since I've been experiencing issues on and off with the one(s) I used. Seems like no adblocker is flawless anymore.

mirocu: That's amazing you've got an XP-based computer. Long ago in the '90s I had a chance to buy a used computer from my job for just $300, but money was tight. It had Windows 98, which would be fun to have in these modern times, just to see the differences.

Decrepit: Hey, good luck! The drive on my auxiliary computer (not for gaming) is also just 500 gb. So I need to be careful. Especially with memory hogs like videos.

My "computer issue". Yesterday I put my gaming computer online to download some stuff into New Vegas, and got the first instance of "Your computer is Windows 10, which will soon be outdated! Would you like help in transferring to Windows 11?"

Heck no!!!! Thank goodness we get a choice in the matter, is my opinion.

Dodged a bullet there I guess, Renee. I hate updates I didn't ask for which is why I have everything turned off. Some roll their eyes at that but it has served me well over the many years. Even better when I simply can't upgrade my browser because my Windows is too old!

Feels like I just switched to Win10 from 7. I’m not changing the operating system on my current PC again. When I build a new PC I will, but it’s just not worth it for this old one.

Looks like Brave has introduced a thumbs up/down system for websites without collecting data from the user. Maybe that will be the browser I eventually migrate to?

This is the motherboard which I'm pretty sure fits into my 2014 gaming PC. Nothing's wrong with the board I've got now, but I'm just thinking ahead.

That board (in the link above) is refurbished. Its original manufacturer was MSI and is a refurbished Kaili, right? I'm looking at its layout (where the RAM slots are, where the graphics card goes...) and it looks close enough to what I've got.

I mean, I'm not going to buy something so important off the 'net, I'm going to research what else is out there, but some of y'all have actually built these things. So you'd know.

Micro Center is just up the road, about a half-hour away. Can I assume they'll have something I can just replace the original board with? Or is the Kaili too far out of date?

Cool, tahnks!

Strange times, computer-wise.

For about two months, Malwarebytes did not recognize my primary PC, though I've paid for a Premium subscription for some years. However, the Malwarebytes site correctly showed both primary and secondary PCs as being activated for Premium. (The secondary PC wasn't affected and still ran Premium.)

I ignored it for a while. When I finally decided to remedy the situation, I ran into what proved to be an unsolvable SNAFU. Every time I attempted to access the activation server, I received an error code saying that it could not be reached. A recommended uninstall/reinstall did nothing. This went on for some days.

I then caught a severe case of influenza Type-A, which eventually morphed into something nastier. I still suffer from whatever it is, often feeling utterly miserable for long stretches of time. No way was I up to tackling the Malwarebytes SNAFU.

Fast-forward to yesterday, February 15. A strong storm passed through the area. Power was out from around 1400 until fifteen minutes before my normal bedtime.

This morning after breakfast, power restored, I booted the primary PC, launched Brave Browser, and was greeted by an ASUS ROUTER configuration screen, asking for certain log-in data. This scared me. The router is ancient. I've not had to fiddle with its controls in forever. I floundered here for a while. Then, out of the blue, a window popped up with what looked to be my correct login info. BINGO! I'm able to reach websites. Hurrah!

I'd not been online long when Malwarebytes popped up, informing me that it had just scanned the PC and found nothing amiss. I've had to do these scans manually since the Malwarebytes SNAFU first appeared. I launched the full Malwarebytes app. Sure enough, the PC is now recognized as running Premium. All Premium functions are active. I fear that I'll boot tomorrow and find the SNAFU returned. Time will tell. <crosses fingers>

Yikes. Influenza can be really dangerous and draining, right? I got super-sick last summer after walking innocently through a late summer rain in bare feet. Thought it was COVID, but turns out it was pneumonia, and it was a nasty sickness. I seriously thought I was dying.

What is malwarebytes? I don't feel like Googling, so just curious. Edit: Oh, I see, it's an app. So, sounds like success on your end!