Aaron44126

MS Defender definition updates will continue while Windows Update is paused. (I pause it every month and just open it up when I want to run monthly patches, and I have checked on this.) Microsoft has become more aggressive with the Windows 11 upgrade, I’m not surprised to see it being installed for people who didn’t really ask for it. (This is exactly why I prefer the LTSC version…)

Backwards compatibility with games/apps is fine and not something I really hear complaints about. Personally, my main issue with Windows 11 is that Microsoft feels fine changing/adding stuff in monthly updates rather than waiting for the yearly feature updates, and their update QC doesn’t seem to be as good as it used to be. I have other issues (some of them “philosophical”) which I have written about in the article linked in my sig. But for most people, Windows 11 will be fine. You have 10 days to roll back anyway, so you can give it a try.

It absolutely did. I did not hear them cycle on at all when I first powered it up which is a big change from what I normally got from the Delta fans. I have done close testing to see if I can hear them turn on at all, since I rarely reboot and the fans are just always on rather than cycling on and off now …..

Microsoft update aggression at its finest… After the first reboot, you’ll be at a screen where it is spending a while doing the update and giving you a % progress. Just force the system off (hold the power button down) during this and start it up again. You might have to do it twice, but it will give up and dump you back on Windows 10 with an error saying the upgrade failed. If you don’t want to do that, then you have 10 days after the upgrade to roll back to Windows 10. I’ve done this multiple times without issue. The option is in Settings under Recovery.

Yeah, I was thinking that this could be an issue with the battery not being able to provide high power output. The system should not abruptly power off, no matter what load you throw at it. I’m still thinking the battery is the most likely culprit and I would not be the least bit surprised if it is a poor-quality non-Dell battery put in there by your refurb vendor, which would explain its apparent healthiness but poor behavior.

This has been addressed directly. The heatsink is in the expansion bay with the dGPU. You don't detach the heatsink separately from the GPU card; they swap in and out together as one unit (in a way, similar to desktop GPUs). This allows for a different size heatsink depending on the dGPU, and you don’t even have to repaste anything when swapping the dGPU.

I'm not sure about this gen, but in past gens there has been a restriction preventing you from choosing both WWAN and the UHD display together; you had to pick one or the other. (I have Precision 7770 with UHD display and it did not come with WWAN antennas.)

I think that it will be Optimus / hybrid graphics only. There is nothing in the expansion bay pinout regarding display passthrough from the dGPU. There would have to be a number of pins dedicated to passing through an eDP signal, but there is nothing of the sort. Direct output from the dGPU to an external display might be possible using the USB-C connector on the back of the system (the GPU bay), or maybe they will add other outputs like mDP/HDMI to the GPU bay. (The expansion bay can provide additional outputs on the back side of the system.) There's also still no indication as to which GPUs will even be available. With "rumors" that NVIDIA has been rejecting most laptop designs with modular GPU chips, I wouldn't be surprised if the GPU selection is AMD-only, at least at first. There should be a full spec reveal for Framework Laptop 16 before the end of "spring". [Edit] Nevermind, I take it back. I thought that the right DGFF port was PCIe only, so I just looked at the left port pins. But on the right port, past the PCIe lanes, there are DisplayPort pins listed as "DisplayPort interface for internal display" and some other display pins like backlight PWM control. So, it does look like it should be possible to connect the internal display directly to the dGPU.

Are you on BIOS version 1.10? I don't think anyone has confirmed whether Dell has updated the Intel microcode yet. It is expected that this will happen with an upcoming BIOS update, and when they do, undervolting will not work anymore.

I wouldn't want to live with this... I am doubting that this is a software issue at all and I can't see drivers causing the system to abruptly power off. I think that most likely it is just a bad battery. I'm assuming that this is not under warranty with Dell? (Dell does offer a one-year warranty on Dell Outlet systems, but it sounds like you got it from someplace else.) You can check the warranty status at dell.com/support, and if it does happen to be covered then you can just have Dell replace the battery. Otherwise, here's what I would do. Open it up and see if the battery is even a genuine Dell battery. Non-Dell batteries seem to be problematic more often than not. Reseat the battery cable while you are in there. (Probably won't fix it but you never know...) Replace the battery. See if you can get your vendor to do this; clearly, it has a problem. If they can't/won't source a genuine Dell battery, it's probably worth buying one on your own if you want to keep the system. If the issue still occurs with a new (Dell) battery, I think you're looking at replacing the motherboard. In any case, you shouldn't wait long before raising the issue with your vendor in case the system has some kind of return window that you could miss.

I'll fix the link. "Restart BG thread" button lights up only if the background thread crashes.

New heatsink from Dell arrived. (Still have another one on the way; I'll keep it as a spare.) Here it is, as it came: Observations: My original heatsink had Delta fans and this one has Sunon fans. This is the same swap that @win32asmguy got way back in August or September; I saw that @MyPC8MyBrain got the opposite swap back in December with one of his systems (system came with Sunon fans and Dell sent a Delta fan replacement). Compared to the one that @win32asmguy got (pictured below in the spoiler block), mine has a much yuckier job with the GPU thermal paste. It looks like they might have added it afterwards rather than used a factory "stamp". It was "goopy" and some of it got stuck to the plastic packaging material (as you can see here), but it still seemed to be covering the copper surface well enough, so I put it in without attempting to clean and repaste. (I'm more concerned with the CPU paste application than the GPU; it's really hard to overheat the GPU in this thing.) They didn't do a great job with some of the thermal pad positions and I fixed those up before putting it in. (Also, different colored thermal pads compared to the one that @win32asmguy received.) Before: My system has a fair amount of apps open but not much going on. CPU load ≤4% (mostly on P cores), turbo boost disabled. Average CPU core temperatures in the upper 50's °C, and fan speed RPM in the 1400-1500 range. After: Fan speed consistently lower by a couple hundred RPM, temperatures lower by a few degrees, more than I got from repasting but not a major difference by any stretch. I'll say that I like the fan better though. I can't hear it powering on and it is generally quieter, and I might be making this up but it also seems to be kicking more heat out the back at low RPM. I'm not going to mess with it anymore for now since the system seems to be stable and performs within my needs. But if it gets worse I'll probably ask about a system replacement. (I still have an outstanding issue that pops up when running Optimus disabled, too...)

Twitter's recommendation algorithm is open source. GitHub Twitter blog post The Verge article [Edit] Just find it kind of funny that the pitch at the end of the Twitter blog post asking people to join links just to an email address, rather than something like an actual HR jobs portal with a list of open positions and a process to submit an application. I wonder how well their recruitment process is going right now .....

@Dell-Mano_G I was wondering if you could take a look at these quick questions regarding the new 7000 series systems. Small list this time, it seems at a glance that the systems aren't much different than last year's. Am I right in assuming that there is no PCIe5 support in these systems? (Intel has been teasing it for their latest HX CPUs but it doesn't seem to be of much use yet, with no discrete GPUs and very few SSDs supporting it.) Other than the CPU & GPU refresh, are there any notable changes to point out? Is the "thin chassis" option for the Precision 76X0 gone? Can you share anything about CPU & GPU power limits for these systems? Have power limits been increased at all from Precision 7X70? Thank you.

Sean Hollister at The Verge spent some time dissecting Framework's DGFF pinout. It looks like: Framework is anticipating that you could put a second battery in the expansion bay — added to the standard internal battery, you could probably have well over 100 Wh capacity installed. (...If you don't need a dGPU.) Framework is anticipating that the system could draw >180W of power via USB-PD. (So it shouldn't be a low-power system, limited to 130W or something like XPS 17?) https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/30/23612467/framework-laptop-16-battery-parts-games

I was given an Apple Watch Series 3 when it was pretty new, and I used it until this past fall when Apple stopped offering watchOS updates for it. (I do feel like five years of software support for a smartwatch was pretty good, though hopefully as the hardware matures they can make that even longer.) I went and bought an Apple Watch Series 8. The Series 3 is still usable of course (my wife still uses one), but as a tech guy I do like to be current on the software. The small model is fine for me (currently 41mm), I don't think that I would want it to be any bigger. I don't have an LTE one. I don't really see the point. I'd be paying extra for the device and then for an extra cell service line as well. The watch will just tether data off of my phone, and I'm never far enough away from my phone for that to be an issue. I guess I could see it being handy if you wanted to like go for a run and not have to bring your phone along ...? Going from Series 3 to Series 8 was quite a jump. I greatly appreciate the larger screen (mostly achieved by making the bezel smaller, rather than by making the watch larger) — it's large enough to use a QWERTY touch keyboard, even. I also like the always-on display... I can check the time without it being as obvious that I am doing so, ha. Also, it is super speedy compared to my Series 3, things that used to have to "wait" for are way just snappier. As for what I use my watch for, the main thing is that it is really nice to be able to receive and reply to messages or even take phone calls without having find or interact with my phone. It's also handy to have instant access to the weather forecast and my daily calendar without having to pull up some other device. I also use the "timer" feature quite a bit and occasionally ask Siri questions (unit conversions are really handy). I also use it for workout tracking, though I don't do much with that data. Also, I generally appreciate having it keeping a biometric history like regular heartrate measurements, blood oxygen measurements, daily steps, and so forth — though I don't do much with that data either, it appears that it will keep this data "forever" and it could be handy as a baseline if I do have some health problem in the future. Plus it is always on the lookout for things like irregular heartbeat, heartrate too high for your activity level (I've gotten this alert a few times when I was really worked up about something at work), a car crash, taking a fall from a ladder, environment dangerously loud for your ears, and so on.

If you look up the term "Steam emulator", you can find replacement steam_api.dll / steam_api64.dll files that you can drop in your game directory that will allow games that check for Steam's presence to work without the Steam client installed. As long as you have the game files downloaded, that should allow you to play your games indefinitely. However, it won't provide Steam online features (achievements / leaderboards / chat), and some games that have more aggressive DRM than just the Steam client check will not like the "bad" Steam DLL file. Oh, and I'd avoid having those fake Steam DLLs around on a system that also has the Steam client running; I'm not completely sure about this but I think I saw reports on Reddit of some users getting their accounts banned because of this. Mozilla has committed to supporting Windows 7/8 at least through the release of Firefox 115 ESR, which itself will continue to get security updates until 3Q 2024. They could go longer. It doesn't seem that a decision of when to end support has been made yet. (I actually use Firefox ESR as my primary browser.)

The embedded controller firmware is open source, but it doesn't look like the BIOS is (unless you have the "Chromebook" version of the laptop). It's possible that Framework could open source the BIOS at some point. They didn't open source the EC firmware until about six months after the original Framework Laptop 13 launched, and their article indicates that they like to continue down the path of open sourcing other firmware components. Though, people have been doing BIOS mods for a long time so maybe someone experienced will take a crack at it. I doubt that there has been as much interest in modding for their 13" system as there would be for proper high-performance systems. I did find one thread where someone took a crack at it and it did not seem to go well. (Also, since laptop design-to-market time is about two years, even if Clevo does want to adopt this, it would probably be at least 2025 before we see anything.)

Doubtful. It only issues commands to the Dell embedded controller (EC). The only other tools that I am aware of that also talk to the EC are SpeedFan and HWiNFO. In the end, this is "unsupported manipulation" of the EC's behavior and I'm not at all surprised if some models have issues. Issues with XPS systems are well documented — for example, display brightness control from the keyboard breaks after manipulating the fan speed. (I personally have ever only used this in a few Dell Precision laptops and one Inspiron.)

Let's see. SBF now has an additional charge to his name, having allegedly sent $40m of cryptocurrency as a "bribe" to "one or more" Chinese government officials to get some funds unfrozen. Also his bail terms have been updated. He's not allowed to use a smartphone anymore, he has to use a non-Internet dumbphone. He has to turn in his laptop and will get a new one configured to "only allow access to certain sites" — doesn't seem like it would be too hard to work around that, if he really wanted to ......? He's already demonstrated a willingness to skirt the rules while out on bail. https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/28/23660076/sam-bankman-fried-accused-bribe-chinese-officials-ftx ...I read through the list of "allowed web sites" in the court document PDF and I see that archive.org is on the list. He could use that to access basically anything ...? I guess it wouldn't allow for outbound communication, though.

The great benefit to Framework's approach is not just the connector, but putting the GPU (+ cooling for it) in its own little enclosure at the back of the laptop. This enclosure doesn't have to be a fixed size, just a fixed width. If you want a more powerful GPU, then the enclosure will be bigger and stick out of the back of your laptop a bit more. What has doomed MXM and other modular GPU attempts in recent years (i.e. Alienware Area-51M) is basically the fact that each GPU generation these days needs more space and power for the highest-end chips, so they often don't fit within the design constraints of laptops even one generation old. This is why you see MXM cards that are in weird "larger than standard" shapes no longer physically compatible with other laptop models, Alienware failing to offer upgrades to their Area-51M that was billed as somewhat futureproof, and so on. It looks like Framework may have found a solution for this. The GPU has a standard connection to the motherboard, but the physical size and power hookups are entirely independent, so there's no reason you couldn't slot in a next-gen GPU in a few years even if they had to make the enclosure a little bit bigger to house it. There are still some unanswered questions which will be addressed in the next few months. (What specific GPUs are they offering, what do power limits look like, what are the specs of the rest of the laptop like CPUs on offer and display resolution, etc...) Framework seems completely open to other manufacturers copying their approach. You don't even have to use GPUs from Framework. A GPU AIB like PNY or Gigabyte could offer GPU modules for Framework laptops — all of the necessary specs are already published. Whether Clevo thinks it makes business sense to use this in their laptops, we will find out. (I think some laptop manufacturers are fine with requiring users to buy a whole new laptop when they want to upgrade something.) I say, if you like the Framework approach, and Framework has a laptop that will suit your needs, then consider buying one of theirs; it's the best way to make sure that they stick around. They have something of a proven track record now, having offered 12th gen, 13th gen, and Ryzen 7000 upgrades for their original 11th gen Framework Laptop 13. Framework Laptop 13 never interested me (too small + no dGPU), but I'm keenly interested in the full reveal of Framework Laptop 16 and I'm sort of bummed that I just bought a laptop last year, otherwise I'd be very interested in getting this one (but for now I'll have to wait a while before upgrading again). (Framework Laptop discussion over on the Framework Laptop thread.)

I used some variation of this on my Precision M6700 and Precision 7530 for a bit over three years and never had any issue with freezes. I have heard users complain about it freezing briefly during an EC interaction (making a fan control change, reading the fan RPM, etc.) ... but those were always quick/temporary freezes and not something that you'd have to reboot from. I'm not using it anymore, neither of my "daily driver" systems supports manual fan control since Dell changed how everything works starting with their 2021 systems. What type of system do you have?

This was pretty cool. LTT got their hands on a Framework Laptop 16. No actual new information regarding specs or anything, but there's a good look at a GPU module, including the "GPU side" of the connector to the mainboard and direct confirmation that they've used Dell's DGFF connectors, the same used in Dell Precision and Alienware systems (with a different pinout). Also at around 7:14 you can see him swapping out the different input deck modules, pretty nifty how they seem to magnetically just snap in.

Steam is ending support for Windows 7/8/8.1 at the end of the year. https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/4784-4F2B-1321-800A

Yeah, I want to say this was added to Windows 10 in maybe 2017 or 2018. I haven't used PuTTY in years. For a while it was an optional feature that you had to go manually enable in Settings, but I guess at some point they started turning it on by default. (...You can run an SSH server as well, if you so care to.)