The Computer Thread

I'm glad you got your audio problems fixed, Balmung. I know virtually nothing about Linux so I wasn't much help. That said I am unsurprised a kernel upgrade was the catalyst to the fix.

All I know is that Linux audio is a big enough mess that if you enter pretty much any integrated audio device into Google, you will quickly start finding results for people having trouble getting that device to actually spit out sound because some part of this tangle: [1]◊ (outdated in the specifics, but its point still stands) doesn't respond right to the hardware and the whole thing collapses. Though in actuality, I'm overstating the problem and like 99% of any audio problems most Linux users have can be solved by futzing with either pulseaudio or ALSA until they play nice.

I just so happened to have one of the newer and less Linux-agreeable audio devices in the Realtek ALC892 and a rather unhelpful mobo manufacturer in Gigabyte (only provides Windows drivers and tells Linux and Hackintosh users to go figure it out for themselves).

On the flip side, when I updated my old laptop to Linux Mint 17.2, its older audio hardware worked without any fucking around.

edited 16th Mar '16 12:38:29 AM by Balmung

My reaction to that picture? "J.S.F!", and no that's not an acronym for the Joint Strike Fighter, but a tad more blasphemous than that.

I wonder what the similar map for the 64-bit kernel version of Windows 10 would be though.

In all seriousness, a dependency map for Windows audio is apparently about as complicated (simplified version here: [1]◊ (omits XAudio and a whole mess of Windows-only audio libraries)), but everyone just grins and bears it because it's a lot harder to get away with asking Windows users to figure it out for themselves, so everyone actually bothers to publish drivers and make them easily accessible. And then just to make it easier still, puts them on the disk that comes with the hardware.

Basically, the process for converting ones and zeroes into actual audio output is quite complicated and requires several layers of libraries, codecs, drivers, and other software on any O/S.

edited 16th Mar '16 1:50:10 AM by Balmung

Wow. TIL. I'm glad I don't program.

Those maps didn't show the codecs. Just the libraries and drivers. Anyway, programmers live for complexity.

Here's me thinking the ideal maxim would be KISS.

But then this happens: http://m.xkcd.com/927/ and the tangle gets bigger.

Something weird just happened. I haven't used my laptop for a week, and when I turn it on for an hour. Then it randomly gets shut in a sleep-mode thing while I was still using it. I couldn't get it out, so I tried hard-resetting, which didn't work. Then, I leave it for a couple minutes, come back, press the power button to turn it on to complete the hard reset, it shows the screen that I normally get after the computer is shut down or has been in sleep mode for a long time, so I enter my password and find that...everything is still the way it was at the start of all these problems, as if the computer had just gone into sleep mode despite me holding down the power button to initiate a hard reset.

Huh?

I think I'm in need of a new mouse.

Do you ever use hibernate mode? Your computer might be configured to autohibernate on a critically low battery. Hibernate starts up like from shut down but acts like sleep mode.

No, I was at a comfortable 25% battery or so.

After a few years of hard battery use and a few weeks of schlepping it around a hot, sunny Texan summer, my laptop completely lost touch with how much power was actually left on the battery. I eventually bought a new battery and that fixed it, but before I did, the battery meter never read anything between 5% and 95%, and if I ever unplugged it, it would decide it was in critical battery and shut down within 90 seconds.

edited 14th Apr '16 9:25:33 PM by TParadox

Something is wrong with my keyboard. Typing this line ends up looking like this:

Somethib3n9g/a ibs wro3n9g/a wibth msy-8 pkesy-8ibo/ard.+ T|sy-8pkib3n9g/athibs lib3ne e3nds upk loopkib3n9g/a libpke thibs.

just started today.

edited 15th Apr '16 4:45:24 PM by Yinyang107

Is it a compact keyboard and is numlock on?

turned out my sister had spilled water on it earlier. Working now.

Finally got Stereo Mix working on my Windows 10 rig - that means I've got sound coming out of my television speakers AND my hi-fi. I'm currently listening to Biffy Clyro and they're fuckn' awesome. Need to turn the volume down a bit or else my upstairs neighbours, who've a habit of waking me up at three in the morning with their fights, will start getting shirty at me.

Need to see if it just works on videos and songs, or if it will also work on games.

I just bought a Windows 10 HP laptop. Along with all the HP crapware, the thing is annoyingly slow for a brand new PC. I miss Vista.

Get yourself a program that gets rid of the crapware HP has foisted on you. As far as I know one of the places to get it would be from HP themselves. I'm sure they've ran into consumer rights groups who have forced that upon them.

Meanwhile. I'm getting black screens of death from my graphics card. I'm at my wits end - I've even tried UNDER clocking the bloody thing by 100Mhz, forcing constant voltage and crossing all my fingers to see if that makes any difference.

If it persists in pissing me off, it's going back to the shop with me with my most obdurate face on to get a replacement.

PC Decrapifier.

I, too, am having audio issues. It seems to be spreading into other issues - I shut my computer down, found out it didn't shut down correctly days later, there was no sound, none of my games would load, I couldn't watch Youtube videos and ultimately had to restart it.

That seemed to fix things.

However, I started Starcraft II, and expected it to be problematic because it was still installing the last 30-40 percent. It ran fine, but then, out of nowhere, black screen. The game came back on thankfully, but the sound was out - so I closed it, and then the window wouldn't close properly and I had to use Task Manager.

Naturally, that knocked out the audio. And Youtube won't work.

There are 3 things I can already expect to hear:

• Update your drivers - I have Geforce Experience which does it automatically. Is this not recommendable?
• Download some program/Driver Sweeper to manually uninstall/clean out old drivers and install newer, better ones. But according to Experience and Geforce's website, I already have the most recent drivers.
• Make sure your at the system requirements for the games you're playing. Already checked that, GTX 970 is well above most of the games I'm playing, Undertale, Recettar. Starcraft II and Fallout 4 have been the most demanding.

edited 7th May '16 3:30:22 PM by FOFD

My graphics card's pretty much dead. It works almost fine in 2D apps, like web browsers and so on, but it continually craps out in 3D ones, like the STALKER games I'm now addicted to. It needs to go. Problem is how to get rid of it - I cannot in good conscience sell the thing as a working item on Ebay, and I'd get pennies on the deal if I punted it as service and repair or faulty. And I'm not sure if I'd get my cash back from CEX (the shop I got it from, not a badly spelled word for shagging. ) as I traded in a crapload of stuff to get it.

Grr. It can't be an overheating problem as I've underclocked it, and there's a massive Arctic Cooler 3-fan HSF assembly fitted.

At this stage I'd get a cheap 5.1 PCI Express sound card and use that, or the sound output on your motherboard until you can afford to get a new graphics card. Yours sounds terminal.

edited 7th May '16 4:30:17 PM by TamH70

Could be that the graphic's card has not been inserted properly so the cooler can't detect it

Nope, it's pretty well secured with a screw and the clip the case came with. And all the cables seem to be attached properly as well - I can't see any loose ones.

My laptop is in the shop because the power button didn't work. I couldn't save the important files. I'm worried.