Category Archives: tech

Windows 10 wont enter sleep mode – solved

Ever since i upgraded my PC last year, my Windows 10 pc will not go to sleep and neither will the monitor and that’s with a fresh Windows 10 installation. The first thing i did was to press the “Restore default settings for this plan”..didnt work.

I’m really finding it hard to figure out how this is a problem when with my old hardware it was never a problem. The only thing i cant think off is that its the motherboard and some setting in BIOS thats not quite right.

This problem has been happening since i installed the new hardware and for some reason i thought it was normal..but remembered how my old PC would behave it would just go to sleep when the windows 10 power settings told it too.

Hardware Specs:
MSI B 450-A PRO (latest BIOS)
AMD Ryzen 2600
Win 10 64 210h (latest)
32GB DDR 4 3000

Possible fixes:

  • Steam running
  • Nvidia Overlay
  • GeForce Experience
  • USB Controller/Joystick being plugged in.

Solution:
After reading about the same problem being caused by a controller being plugged in, I disconnected the Joystick from my PC and within one min the screen had gone off.

Logitech Extreme 3D pro is causing the the issue:

Logitech Extreme 3D pro
https://www.tenforums.com/performance-maintenance/27004-windows-10-will-not-auto-sleep.html

Sources:

Solution Found Here
https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/monitors-wont-go-to-sleep-why.244167/page-3

How to install two PHP versions in Window XAMPP?

While Xampp with PHP7 is great there are times when you need PHP5 for an old project. I found this great article on medium the other day on how to have two different PHP versions and one Xampp installation. The alternative is a pain as running two Xampp versions is just too much hassle.

The below article allows you to setup xampp to use PHP 5 and 7 when ever you want. So for normal projects you would use the address’s below, basically it makes xammp listen on port 8888 (or whatever u want) for requests and then uses PHP5 to interpret/compile any Php5 code.

PHP 7http://localhost/myproject
PHP 5http://localhost:8888/myproject

Article with details;
https://medium.com/@naingdroid/how-to-install-two-php-versions-in-window-xampp-b1402c23f42

Call of Duty Modern Warfare – Shuts down my PC -[solved]

After almost 7 months of this problem and having tried everything i read about it, i decided to run a temperature monitoring program in the background while i played the game.

When i posted this problem on reddit every post i read said to check temps.  Now i never overclock any PC hardware so i thoughts thats not the problem, i was wrong.

BIOS Settings:
There was a setting in the BIOS of the motherboard i had that was called ‘AMD TURBO-CORE’ which would over clock the CPU and cause an increase the temperature of the CPU.

TLDR/Long story Short/i dont care:
The CPU i had was an AMD FX 8350 and normally it would be around 70C Max load.  However this bios setting made temps hit 82C+  and thats where the PC would shut down as a measure to protect it from damage.

Suggestions for various websites that havnt worked;

  • v-sync on in the graphics settings
  • set ‘custom frame limit’ in game to 60 fps see GFX settings
  • turned off the NVIDIA in game overlay
  • shutdown almost everything running in background;
    • steam, Ea Origin,Epic Launcher
  • disabled Hyper-V
  • disabled Windows 10 fast start up
  • Power settings CPU min state 0%
  • Set max Framerate of Graphics card in the NVIDIA Control Panel to 60fps.
  • Cleaned all Fans in the PC case.
  • changed default sound format to 44100 mhz
  • AA SMAA 1x
  • Texture Filter Anisotropic filtering: Normal
  • uninstall Realtek Audio & LAN drivers
  • Reinstall Windows 10

Resources & Links;

PC shuts down while playing from modernwarfare

Google Authenticator App – What they dont tell you

So i have been using the app for ages and had a number of different accounts setup on it.

  • ubisoft
  • google
  • lastpass
  • rockstar games
  • Epic Games

New phone, new problems:
When i got my new phone i assumed that when i logged into my google account and downloaded the Authenicator App again that it would setup the app with the codes that i had on the app, Wrong.

How wrong i was! it doesnt do this and i would need back up codes for all the services/apps i had installed!  I thought that i only needed the backup codes for the app and not for each service that i had installed.  Your talking about multiple back up codes for multiple login services.

Hard drive failures – Western Digital Hard Drives are winning!

Over the years ive had two hard drive’s fail but one failed before there was even a chance to know the drive was about fail probably before S.M.A.R.T back in 2002/2003.  It was a brand new drive with alot of programming stuff on it.  I didnt think id need to backup a brand new drive oh what a lesson learned.

The first one was at a time where there was no google cloud and no online sync and backing up was a pain in the ass.

The Windows 10 1903 update
When the Windows 10 1903 update “rolled out” it became one of the worst experiences ive ever had to go through in upgrading a Windows PC in almost 20 years.

When i did get the fecking thing to work after two BIOS tweaks it revealed another problem. Everytime windows booted up one of the harddrives would dissapear for no reason.

Turns out after a few software hard drive diagnosis programs, the drive is kinda fu*cked and its a Western Digital Drive.

S.M.A.R.T – Self Monitoring and Reporting and Tool:
This invention in hard drive tech is fantastic, if your having problems with a hard drive and do a scan if there are any problems with the SMART settings then you could be in trouble.

Now the drive is still working but S.M.A.R.T is reporting problems with the drive which isnt a good sign.

Thats two Western Digital Hard Drives dead!

Dont buy Western digital Drives im guessing i bought these drives cause they were the cheaper option and that wraps up this post with this link to a survery of hard drive failures and yes Western Digital is number one.

Hard drive failure survey;
56,224 hard drives later, Western Digital fails most often

 

 

 

Pcie 3.0 vs Pcie 2.0 [ x16 ] Differences – Does it even matter

I was wondering if my current PC’s motherboard which is almost 6 years old at this stage would cause a performance deficit with a Graphics card with a PCI-E 3.0 interface

This video on youtube from vmreviews seems to suggest that it doesn’t really matter and that the difference is minimal at best. From reading the comments people say its like a 1 fps improvement at best.

Another video seems to suggest the same result;

Motherboard upgrade:
The problem lies in upgrading an entire motherboard for just PCIE 3, it doesn’t make sense. Its difficult to know but the above video seems to show that there’s no real benefit.

Motherboard ,CPU and Ram Upgrade:
This would of course bring a better results but its almost impossible to guess how much benefit it would yield. I would guess a 20% increase in overall performance would be possible? Not something possible and still way too expensive to do.

5 Years on and still going:
My current PC setup has been going for almost 6 years, which to be honest is almost incredable. the only upgrade ive made in the time was to switch out the CPU from an AMD FX 4350 (Quadcore) to an AMD FX 8350 (Octocore) and ive no complaints in performance regarding most current PC titles. This is the longest peroid of time where ive not upgraded my PC.

Im not sure what it says about the state of the PC hardware market where i feel games are being held back by the consoles.


How to create a free SSL cert for your website

One of the most annoying things about having a website is the fact that you have to pay for an SSL cert and that its an extra it shouldnt be.

I dont need an SSL cert!
100% true this website is only a blog but googles chrome browser no will start warning about sites not having an SSL cert and seriously fuck google for that.

Create and install a Free SSL cert for your website with ZeroSSL in the following video.  Its fairly simple and quick to do.