General Computer Thread

[Bry_Sinclair]

This may not be the right place to post something like this, but thought I'd see if anyone else was having this problem. After my latest round of updates for Windows 10 I now can't open my start menu and it's really bugging the crap out of me! Is there a straight forward fix available for it anywhere?

 

[Santaman]

Can't say I know Win10, I avoid it like the plague, the only thing that might work is installing classic shell which replaces the windows start menu etc, added bonus is that you can make W10 look like win7 or even XP.
http://www.classicshell.net/

Its freeware so it won't cost you anything.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

This may not be the right place to post something like this, but thought I'd see if anyone else was having this problem. After my latest round of updates for Windows 10 I now can't open my start menu and it's really bugging the crap out of me! Is there a straight forward fix available for it anywhere?

http://home.bt.com/tech-gadgets/com...g-here-are-four-ways-to-fix-it-11364000314532
Of course, this is not guaranteed to work -- it's Windows after all.

 

[Santaman]

I only use Windows (8.1) for gaming, everything else I've moved to a Linux machine, so even if I have to move to Win10 it will be a rather empty machine with only an OS and games on it, I also intend to butcher the crap out of windows... remove Cortana and everything else I don't like..

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Why not run Windows in a virtual machine under Linux or vice versa? No need for two separate systems or a dual-booted system.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

If it's a known problem, there is probably a batch file you can download to fix the (likely) registry error.

Otherwise, try to find which update did the deed and uninstall it, then hide it so it doesn't reinstall.

 

[Santaman]

I already have a large amount of machines so its not a hassle for me.

Why not run Windows in a virtual machine under Linux or vice versa? No need for two separate systems or a dual-booted system.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Me too -- I have two HP Proliant servers in addition to my desktop. I use the servers to host a number of different VMs with various OSes.

 

[Santaman]

One 8350 FX, two Phenom II's 2 Athlon 5350 AM1 machines, one of which is now my desktop/general purpose machine, several Athlon x2 64 machines, a Dell T3400 Q6600, Dell Optiplex 745 E6600, clone Pentium E2220, those all run Win 7 or Linux MInt, besides these I've got a lot of vintage machines ranging from a IBM XT 8088 running at a blistering 4.77 Mhz to a socket 939 Athlon 64 single core and then some 8 bit Atari and Commodore machines two Atari ST's and two MSX's

My only server is a recalcitrant IBM Netfinity 1000/3000 machine which is powered by a Pentium III 600 Slot 1 chip combined with 128 Mb ECC RAM and a 9.2Gb Quantum Viking II SCSI drive, it will run either Win2K or Xubuntu 6.06 LTS nothing else, it hates Windows 9.xx, it hates NT, it hates OS/2, it even murdered Puppy Linux...

 

[Marc]

This may not be the right place to post something like this, but thought I'd see if anyone else was having this problem. After my latest round of updates for Windows 10 I now can't open my start menu and it's really bugging the crap out of me! Is there a straight forward fix available for it anywhere?

Do you have another account on your computer that you can use? It could be a windows issue or it could be something has screwed up with your user profile.

I've had instances in the past were I couldn't access the start menu properly logged in with my regular account abut when I changed to the administrator account on the computer it would work fine.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

One 8350 FX, two Phenom II's 2 Athlon 5350 AM1 machines, one of which is now my desktop/general purpose machine, several Athlon x2 64 machines, a Dell T3400 Q6600, Dell Optiplex 745 E6600, clone Pentium E2220, those all run Win 7 or Linux MInt, besides these I've got a lot of vintage machines ranging from a IBM XT 8088 running at a blistering 4.77 Mhz to a socket 939 Athlon 64 single core and then some 8 bit Atari and Commodore machines two Atari ST's and two MSX's

My only server is a recalcitrant IBM Netfinity 1000/3000 machine which is powered by a Pentium III 600 Slot 1 chip combined with 128 Mb ECC RAM and a 9.2Gb Quantum Viking II SCSI drive, it will run either Win2K or Xubuntu 6.06 LTS nothing else, it hates Windows 9.xx, it hates NT, it hates OS/2, it even murdered Puppy Linux...

That's a lot of kit, to say the least.

 

[Santaman]

I dread the idea of having to move someday...

 

[Marc]

I dread the idea of having to move someday...

at least they can be easliy moved (if time consuming).

Heard of one guy back home years back who had a Vax 11/780 sitting in his house which he was using to run a public access internet system.

Of course that was 20 years ago - these days I'm not sure he could afford the electricity to run it.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

at least they can be easliy moved (if time consuming).

Heard of one guy back home years back who had a Vax 11/780 sitting in his house which he was using to run a public access internet system.

Of course that was 20 years ago - these days I'm not sure he could afford the electricity to run it.

You know that's one thing I often wonder about when I see youtubers with massive servers in their room / basement haha..... You gotta wonder how they can afford to power some of the setups that they have.

 

[Santaman]

http://home.iae.nl/users/pb0aia/cm/index.html
Also a Dutch guy, he has PDP and VAX machines and a whole boat load more..

http://www.corestore.org/IBM.html
Someone with a love for IBM mainframes.

As for a VAX's powerdraw, IIRC it was 2Kw for every CPU cabinet or something around that, been a while since I've seen one.

 

[Marc]

http://home.iae.nl/users/pb0aia/cm/index.html
Also a Dutch guy, he has PDP and VAX machines and a whole boat load more..

http://www.corestore.org/IBM.html
Someone with a love for IBM mainframes.

As for a VAX's powerdraw, IIRC it was 2Kw for every CPU cabinet or something around that, been a while since I've seen one.

guess that sort of thing you can do when you don't have a wife or kids around

Never managed to get up close and personal with a Vax - used one at a uni in the 1991/92 for cobol programming (and my first exposure to e-mail and usenet news)

But some of the machines bring back memories from reading about them in magazines (though dad had a Kaypro II which got the floppies changed from full height horizontal to the half height vertical and courtesy of a modification could run a 5Mhz - oh the speed

 

[Santaman]

I remember reading and drooling over the latest Pentium III running at 500Mhz yes, 500Mhz, I was using a Cyrix M2 200+ at that time which was all I could afford, I actually still have that machine..

Years later I managed to get my hands on a P-III 500, it was old by then and I compared it with some other machines I had and it was kinda mixed, yes it would have been a lot faster than the Cyrix, at the time it was introduced it rightfully was the fastest X86 chip by a large margin but it was at that time SO damn expensive that it was old and slow by the time ordinary people could afford it..

 

[Marc]

I remember reading and drooling over the latest Pentium III running at 500Mhz yes, 500Mhz, I was using a Cyrix M2 200+ at that time which was all I could afford, I actually still have that machine..

Years later I managed to get my hands on a P-III 500, it was old by then and I compared it with some other machines I had and it was kinda mixed, yes it would have been a lot faster than the Cyrix, at the time it was introduced it rightfully was the fastest X86 chip by a large margin but it was at that time SO damn expensive that it was old and slow by the time ordinary people could afford it..

Never used or sold any Cyrix based systems and only one PIII system. IIRC they were tad picky on the OS so the system I sold had Windows NT on it which was a bit of change for the user.

 

[Santaman]

Cyrix chips were a bit fiddly, with the right board they would devastate every other chip, MHz for MHz they were incredibly fast, however, not with full 32 bit code and their FPU was not the best which actually didn't matter in those days.

Pity Natsemi killed them.

Pentium II and III sucked at 16 bit and mixed mode, however pump some 32 bit code through them and everything changes, they were rock solid at floating point stuff as well.
And then came AMD, K5 was meh, K6 was awesome already but the early Athlon and Durons were magic, a lowly Duron would pulverise any Celeron which cost more and performed rubbish, and also come very close to Pentium III performance costing only a fraction of those.
Same with the Athlon 64 vs Pentium 4, pity Intel payed every OEM to keep buying their inferior chips which damaged AMD, I still refuse to buy Intel chips the machines I have I usually get for free because they're obsolete.
Oops, end of rant..

 

[Random_Spock]

I am... and . Windows 10 made my laptop completely freeze and crash. As in the drive itself wasn't even running (the light was off). I wasn't able to move my touchpad or do anything, outside of hard shutting it down.

Ugh. I'm beyond angry right now. I'm livid. I hardly had any tabs open. Just five. I'm guessing it was in part due to Tumblr. But it doesn't excuse Windows. They're not off the hook with me. Others have run into this problem. In part due to the updating that they keep on doing.

Just double checked via my task manager and the disk went down for a bit, so I'm betting the culprit is update related.