Aaron44126

Internet: AT&T gigabit 1000 (fiber to the home) — it's symmetric, I can hit a speed test with 930 Mbps both ways. Gateway: Using the AT&T-provided gateway box. I know there are some tricks to get this out of the picture but I have not bothered with that. It's in passthrough mode, and I was suspicious about it but it has not given me any trouble. Router: I have three Asus RT-AX92U routers that I bought to try in a Wi-Fi mesh configuration. I ended up being very disappointed with AiMesh performance. Right now they are set up independently, with one acting as a router and the other two as access points (+ switches), and that has been working pretty well. The Internet, gateway, and primary Asus router all live in an unfinished room in my basement along with a 16-port Cisco gigabit switch. That switch feeds the rest of the house. About 18 months ago, I took on a project to get Ethernet into every room in the house — one jack in each bedroom, two in the living room, and two in the loft/office. (This was right after AT&T fiber became available and, working from home, I was unsatisfied with just using it over Wi-Fi.) I did this just by cutting holes in the drywall the size needed to mount an Ethernet jack, and then through the hole, I used a long drill bit with a 90-degree adapter to drill down through the baseboard. From there I was able to run fish tape to an unfinished room and pull the Ethernet cable back. Because I only cut holes where I wanted to put an Ethernet jack, I didn't have to do any drywall patching. My house has a basement, main floor, and upper floor. Running cables from the main floor to unfinished space in the basement was pretty easy. For the upper floor, I was able to run cables either to the garage or to a utility room on the main floor and then from there down to the basement. There was one jack on the upper floor that I had to run behind a wall on the main floor all the way down to the basement. I put the upper floor jack directly above a main floor jack and used some long drill bit extensions to drill holes through the upper floor baseboard and the main floor ceiling board (all behind the wall) and then I was able to run the cable down to the basement through the same hole I made for the main floor jack. In the end, you can only an "exposed" Ethernet cable in the garage and in the basement, everywhere else I managed to hide them in the walls, ceiling, or unfinished spaces; I am really pleased with how it turned out. So, the other two Asus routers are placed in different parts of the house for maximum 5 GHz Wi-Fi coverage with an Ethernet backhaul. I have a switch in the living room for stuff connected to the TV, and a switch in the office which has a couple of laptops and printers connected to it. Because there is Ethernet everywhere, I don't actually use the Wi-Fi that much; just for a pair of phones and a pair of iPads, and occasionally a laptop if someone is using it in a spot that is not near an Ethernet jack. (And visitors, I guess.) My "server" lives with network equipment in the basement and it is just a spare laptop with a 512GB NVMe system drive and 8TB SATA SSD data drive, and a 6TB USB HDD which holds backup images of other systems in the house. Backups run at night and can take a few hours even with a gigabit wired between client and server. I'm abusing Carbonite's "unlimited backup" service to keep backups of everything on my "server" in the cloud. (Thankful that AT&T doesn't have a data cap for this plan. I hit 3-4 TB of data transferred per month.) I don't have any 10-gigabit connections yet. None of my switches or PCs can accommodate it. I think the cabling can handle it so I can look into upgrading down the line.

News — Multiple reports over the past day or two about new features coming to Windows 11, discovered in preview builds (but not actually announced by Microsoft), including: A new notice in Settings when your PC does not meet the Windows 11 base requirements Giving your PC a "sustainability rating" (having to do with power use) New taskbar overflow button (Again, I don't want to "bash for sport", but I'd like to see them address things that people are actually complaining about first...)

Dell does have pretty good documentation on how to remove and install various components in all of their laptops. See: https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-us/g-series-17-7790-laptop/g7-17-service-manual/before-working-inside-your-computer?guid=guid-5d3b1051-9384-409a-8d5b-9b53bd496de8&lang=en-us

As a VMware guy, I can't speak to VirtualBox but I can say that I've used various versions of Ubuntu and Linux Mint in VMware Workstation and never had an issue with "snappiness". VMware Workstation has supported GPU acceleration in Linux guests for a while now, and I remember noticing when they added it that it definitely helps with desktop responsiveness. The code (kernel modules, etc.) is open source so many major distros include it in-box. If they do not, you can look for an "open VM tools" package for said distro and install that. (This package should also provide things you'd expect like copy/paste synchronization between host and guest. You should not have to run the script that VMware provides that tries to compile VMware Tools.) As you probably know, VMware Workstation has a paid "pro" version, and also a "free" version ("VMware Workstation Player"). I do have the pro version so I'm not that familiar with the limitations of the free "Player" version — does it still not allow you to create/edit VMs, only run them? If that's the case, I can let you in on a "trick". Grab a trial version of VMware Workstation Pro and it will install both "Pro" and "Player" (as separate apps on the Start Menu). Even after the trial expires, you can use "Pro" to create and manage VMs. It doesn't actually give you an error about needing a license until you try to run a VM. You can just run the VMs in "Player".

Once I have it mostly cleaned up (fixed up links and such), I will make an archive available to NBR regulars who would like to keep an offline copy. If something happens that prevents me from hosting NBRCHIVE, someone else could take that over.

I came to the same conclusion as @Mr. Fox, but more recently... I hopped on the LTSC train about three months ago. At least LTSC 2021 is current so you can play any game on there (for now). And the situation might be better for this cycle as there will be a lot of people sticking with Windows 10 — Microsoft saw to that by only allowing PCs from 2018 and up to upgrade to 11. Anyway, if there is a game that requires a newer version than the current LTSC that I am particularly interested in then it will just go to my backlog and I'll get to it after the next upgrade is out. Really, it was a small number of games that couldn't run on LTSC 2019 so I'm not expecting this to be much of an issue.

Also working with Precision 7560 (confirmed by @Ionising_Radiation). It will probably work with most Dell systems with the undervolt block. https://www.nbrchive.net/forum.notebookreview.com/threads/precision-7560-7760-owners-thread.836381/page-80.html#post-11114871 — Points back to the same guide that you have here. (Apologies for broken images, haven't gotten to cleaning up attachments in the archive yet.)

See: https://efgxt.net/topic/121-and-nbr-is-dead/?do=findComment&comment=1339

In that case it does not appear to have gone through yet, or if it has, GoDaddy has not yet released the domain. (It does not appear to have changed hands since January 26.) I'll keep an eye on this for the next few days and see if it opens up — but it may well be snapped up by a bot if it does. [Edit] After reading some I do not think that GoDaddy will release it back for anyone to purchase without being prompted to do so by its previous owner, at least not for a while. They might auction it off with a big pile of domains 😕

Unless Spartan has already handed it off to someone else, then he still owns it until January 26, 2024... Someone would have to reach out to him to have it transferred. (whois data shows that it was purchased January 26, 2022 for a two-year term.)

With the "Inverted" theme, I can't see text in a "code" block. It is black text against a dark gray background. Example: The block at the top of @Vasudev's post here. https://efgxt.net/topic/171-which-thermal-paste-to-buy-and-apply-traditional-and-liquid-metal/ The offending CSS seems to be this, the ".pln" class which sets the text to black. Maybe just change it to #fff?

Windows 11 is "good enough"... most people who use it will be just fine. There aren't really any issues with backwards compatibility so apps and devices that work with Windows 10 should by and large also work fine with Windows 11. It's actually quite good on the stability front as well, despite some snafus early on. I have very real issues with it that have prevented me from moving over. It's less an issue with "Windows 11 is unsuitable for daily use", and more an issue with how Microsoft is just handling the release — by rushing it out with bugs, power user feature regressions, unnecessary system requirements hike, their desperation to get users on Edge, working to monetize Windows end users through data collection tied up in their Start Menu "recommendations system" and Edge eCommerce "features", and failing to deliver on promised features which has them now introducing post-launch behavior/UI changes in the required monthly patches (a "no-no" for the business environment). I'm not bashing for sport. I wanted to like it. I've been among the first to hop up to each new version of Windows since XP, and have helped many other users with upgrades as well over the years, but this just goes too far for me. Maybe my "ideals" of what an OS should be (and not be) are too high for the way that the PC ecosystem has shifted. Anyway. I'm working on an in-depth post/article further expanding on my "short version" linked above in which I will explain my position more clearly, and which I will share here in a few days. (I've been getting a lot of "should I upgrade to Windows 11?" questions over the last days/weeks, from people both online and IRL, and I need something to point to without having to explain myself over and over 😀.) [Edit] In-depth post here.

Finished cleaning up "dead links" in the XFA-downloaded threads. Everything might not be "done" yet but at least clicking different things like the date, permalink, user posts count, etc. won't throw you to a 404 page. Submitted to Google for indexing; might start seeing results tomorrow. Next goal is adding "View this thread at archive.org" links to each thread, which probably can be done tomorrow. Then I will take a stab at adding pagination to the XFA-downloaded threads so that very long threads won't kill the browser. That will be later in the week.

1.7.0 on Precision 7560 for a few weeks now, and no issues. I think going direct would be fine as well.

+1. I'll be the first one to say that Microsoft is taking a bit of a "shady" direction with Windows lately, but they've never reneged on their support timeline commitment for Windows and I do not expect them to in the future. Aside from the business considerations as @Sandy Bridge mentioned, there's also the fact that there are a number of systems out there that are running Windows 10 but don't meet the "requirements" to upgrade to Windows 11. Support for those systems will be dead after 2025 and cutting support off early would make things even more sour than they already are on this point. Windows 11 hasn't really seen slow adoption. They have a 16% install base (counting just Windows 10+11 PCs) and I think that's pretty decent, given that it's only been out for a few months and are still in a phase where they aren't "forcing" it on users yet. (That'd be when they start doing popups and stuff with not-so-obvious "No thanks" buttons.)

Dell has some packages hosted in an archive at dell.archive.canonical.com that aren't included in a standard Ubuntu install. Some of them provide hardware-specific support for Dell laptops (fingerprint reader, etc.). Nothing stopping you from adding that package source to apt and pulling stuff down. I'm not sure if there is anything else "different" between a stock Ubuntu install and a Dell one — I haven't messed with Linux much outside of VMs in quite some time. But it looks like they have a fair amount of documentation, and from here you can download the image to reinstall Ubuntu for a system that came with it installed.

Windows 10 LTSC 2021 (IoT Enterprise, 21H2) is supported until January 2032. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/release-health/release-information I'm curious what a LTSC version of Windows 11 will look like, but that's what I'm waiting for before considering an upgrade.

Yes, not really sure how beneficial all of that drilling was but it didn't hurt anything at least. I didn't find it to be that difficult but it was time consuming and my back hurt a bit after bending over for so long 😕.

I always make an image of the drive when I get a new system, before I boot up the OS for the first time. (Never have used it for anything, but seems worthwhile to have "just in case".) Macrium Reflect is a piece of free software that you can use to do the initial partition backup. You can create bootable media (USB or DVD), and just boot that and create an image of the system drive from there. You'll need a place to store it (external hard drive or something). Clean Windows 10 install is pretty easy on these guys, if you are comfortable doing that sort of thing, there is nothing really surprising. You can get all of the drivers from Dell (dell.com/support), but really, if you get a Wi-Fi or Ethernet driver and then connect it to the Internet, it will pull down nearly everything automatically via Windows Update.

I wrote this software exactly because I hated the default fan behavior on the M6700. I’ve been running some version of it since early 2019. I don’t take credit for actually figuring out the fan control. That’s been known for some time. I just took bits and pieces for other people and combined them into an app…. I hope to keep working on it and “finish it up” but it is hard to find the time these days.

(Quick support status snapshot) LTSC 2024: Released 2024-10-01 • Supported until 2029-10-09 • IoT supported until 2034-10-10 LTSC 2021: Released 2021-11-16 • Supported until 2027-01-12 • IoT supported until 2032-01-13 LTSC 2019: Released 2018-11-13 • Supported until 2029-01-09 LTSB 2016: Released 2016-08-02 • Supported until 2026-10-13 LTSB 2015: Released 2015-07-29 • Supported until 2025-10-14 After the disappointment that is Windows 11, I migrated my systems over to Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC. I appreciate the long-term feature stability and general lack of monetization "features" that have been plaguing later versions of Windows 10/11. I think that this is the way to go for many of us tech type folks, especially for business systems, so I wanted to write up some information about it. (I have much to say specifically about my problems with Windows 11... over here.) What is Windows LTSC The Windows long-term service channel is a version of Windows that is updated much less often than the general consumer version of Windows. The idea is to maintain feature stability for fixed-function devices. It was previously known as LTSB (long-term service branch). Windows 10 was given a major "feature upgrade" once every six months. Starting with Windows 11, Microsoft is settling into a once-per-year pattern with feature upgrades. Windows LTSC is refreshed only once every three years. Since 2016, the schedule has been roughly aligned with Windows Server releases, and Windows LTSC often shares the same base as the corresponding version of Windows Server (same binaries, updates, etc.). Windows LTSC omits features that are likely to change over the course of its lifecycle. There is no Microsoft Store. There are no bundled "modern apps". (Even the calculator app is replaced with a Win32 version, instead of the UWP version that ships with ordinary Windows 10/11.) Cortana is not included. Microsoft Edge was omitted until the 2021 release. Monthly updates do not contain new features — for example, the "News and Interests" feature that dropped in Windows 10 in the middle of 2021 did not make it into Windows 10 LTSC. Otherwise, it is a fully functional version of Windows. Some omitted features can be added back if you like (see below). In the end, this comes off as a version of Windows that is a lot like what Windows used to be like, before Windows 10 — basically, unchanging except for bug fixes, until you went out of your way to upgrade to a new version. Windows LTSC versions There have been four LTSC releases to date: Mid 2015: Windows 10 LTSB 2015, released alongside the original RTM release of Windows 10 (retroactively named "Windows 10, version 1507") Mid 2016: Windows 10 LTSB 2016, released alongside Windows 10 "Anniversary Update" (Windows 10, version 1607) and Windows Server 2016 Late 2018: Windows 10 LTSC 2019, released alongside Windows 10, version 1809 and Windows Server 2019 Late 2021: Windows 10 LTSC 2021, released alongside Windows 10, version 21H2 (Starting with the 2021 release, Windows LTSC no longer shares binaries with Windows Server.) Late 2024: Windows 11 LTSC 2024, released alongside Windows 11, version 24H2 Microsoft is settling into a three-year cycle for LTSC releases, so the next release is due in late 2027. Windows 12 might be out by then? (Note that even though LTSC 2019 and LTSC 2021 are "named" two years apart, they were actually released three years apart.) Windows LTSC editions Windows LTSC is currently available in two editions: "Enterprise" and "IoT Enterprise". The two editions are functionally equivalent, and in fact you can switch between the two just by changing the product key. They differ in terms of how you obtain a license for them, and in how long they are supported. Windows LTSC support lifecycle Ordinary Windows 10 releases were only supported for 18 months (or 30 months for Enterprise/Education editions, for fall releases). Windows 11 releases are supported for 24 months (36 months for Enterprise/Education editions). This means you are expected to be moving forward to the newer versions regularly. Windows LTSC releases are supported for five years (Enterprise, 2021 and later) or ten years (IoT Enterprise, and Enterprise releases prior to 2021). You can see the current status for each version on this page (just scroll down). Windows 10 LTSC: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/release-health/release-information Windows 11 LTSC: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/release-health/windows11-release-information Windows LTSC licensing Unlike ordinary Windows 10/11, Windows LTSC licenses are good only for a particular version of Windows LTSC. To upgrade to a newer version, you will need to obtain a new license for that version. On the possible positive side, you will never be pressured by Windows alerts to upgrade to a newer version. Windows Enterprise LTSC can be obtained via a Microsoft volume licensing agreement. If your business has a software licensing agreement with Microsoft, then you can probably get a license through there. Windows IoT Enterprise LTSC is licensed to OEMs that sell fixed-function devices (POS terminals, ATMs, etc.). Both types of licenses can sometimes be found through resellers. Licenses can be purchased from resellers like CDW, Provantage, or Connection. "Upgrade" licenses available from resellers like this can be installed on systems that shipped with an OEM version of Windows — you are "upgrading" from base Windows to Windows Enterprise LTSC. (You may still do a clean install rather than an actual in-place upgrade if you so choose; the "upgrade" is to the license for your system, not the actual Windows install.) IoT licenses are generally cheaper. Here is a Reddit thread that I found, where the OP describes the process of purchasing a license from Provantage. Purchasing volume license licenses through a Microsoft "partner", you may have to buy five licenses of "something" because that is the minimum to qualify as a volume license customer. You could purchase one Windows LTSC license and then four cheap "Microsoft Identity Manager" licenses. You can also find license keys on eBay. Product keys for either edition are available through a Visual Studio subscription (yearly, not monthly). Also, Microsoft Action Pack includes licenses to run Windows Enterprise LTSC on up to ten PCs. These are licenses for a specific use; Visual Studio keys are supposed to be used for application development and testing purposes only, and this page describes how Microsoft Action Pack works. A 90-day evaluation version is available if you just want to try it out. (There are probably other places to get licenses; let me know and I will include them here.) You can also just search online for "Microsoft Activation Scripts" and go from there. Upgrading from "ordinary" Windows to Windows LTSC Users of Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 can upgrade in-place to Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2015. From there, they can upgrade in-place to a later Windows LTSC release. (A license is not technically needed for LTSC 2015 if you are just using it as a stepping stone, but you will need the install media.) To upgrade from Windows (Home/Pro/Enterprise/Education) to Windows LTSC, all you need to do is: Open regedit and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion Find the value "EditionID" and change the data to "EnterpriseS" Run setup.exe from Windows LTSC install media and perform an in-place upgrade (If you upgrade in-place from non-LTSC to LTSC, Microsoft Store and the built-in "modern apps" will be carried over, even though they are not included in a LTSC base install.) Note that you can upgrade to the same version of Windows that you are currently on (ex: Windows 10, version 21H2 to Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2021), or to a later version (ex: Windows 10, version 1909 to Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2021), but you cannot upgrade to an "earlier" version (ex: Windows 10, version 1909 to Windows 10 Enterprise 2019). See the list of Windows LTSC versions above to see which LTSC version matches up with which Windows version. So, to spell it out, the upgrade matrix looks like: Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 may upgrade to Windows 10 LTSB 2015 (and then, from there, to a later version). Windows 10, version 1507 may upgrade to Windows 10 LTSB 2015 or later. Windows 10, versions 1511 and 1607 may upgrade to Windows 10 LTSB 2016 or later. Windows 10, versions 1703, 1709, 1803, and 1809 may upgrade to Windows 10 LTSC 2019 or later. Windows 10, versions 1903 and higher may upgrade to Windows 10 LTSC 2021 or later. Windows 11, versions 21H2, 22H2, 23H2, and 24H2 may upgrade to Windows 11 LTSC 2024. Also, you can upgrade in-place from LTSC to non-LTSC. (To switch to an edition other than Enterprise or Education, you'll have to adjust the "EditionId" value to match the target edition before kicking off the upgrade.) Similar rules — you can't upgrade to an older version but you can go to an equivalent or newer version. It may or may not be possible to do "distant" upgrades, like Windows 10, version 1507 to Windows 11 Enterprise LTSC 2024; I haven't tested myself to see how far back the upgrade installer will let you go. I would speculate that for LTSC-to-LTSC upgrades, they follow a similar rule to what they have for Windows Server in-place upgrades, which is that they will let you "skip" over one version when upgrading (i.e. Windows Server 2016 to 2022 is allowed, skipping 2019), but they will not let you skip over two or more (i.e. Windows Server 2016 to 2025 is not allowed). Installing Microsoft Store on Windows LTSC Just open command prompt or PowerShell as admin and run: wsreset -i ...And then wait a bit; the install can take a few minutes and there is no visual feedback. Once the Microsoft Store is installed, you can install "modern apps" (UWP, etc.) without issue. Windows LTSC downsides What I can think of is basically: If a new feature lands in "ordinary" Windows, you will have to wait for a new version of Windows LTSC to make use of it, and that could be up to three years depending on the timing. Some software may require a certain version of Windows in order to run and could present issues in the later part of a 3-year LTSC cycle. Games in particular can be an issue here. Forza Horizon 5, for example, requires Windows 10, version 1909 or better, so LTSC users could not play it until LTSC 2021 was released. (Some games and apps advertise a requirement for a certain version of Windows but will still work on older versions. It's a case-by-case investigation.) ...Obtaining a license can be tricky and you have to pay up to upgrade every three years, if you want to stay on the latest version. ...That's it for now. I'll probably update this post with more information as I think of it.

1070 would be a downgrade! In therms of CUDA core counts, Quadro P5000 ≈ GeForce GTX 1070 Quadro P5200 ≈ GeForce GTX 1080 (...Comparing specs only of "laptop" versions of these GPUs.) Not to mention that the Quadro GPUs have 16 GB vRAM, but the GeForce only have 8 GB.

There will be a slight hit to memory performance as a trade off for increased reliability. (ECC modules tend to have a higher CL value than non-ECC modules.) However, I doubt that you'll be able to notice the difference in anything other than synthetic benchmarks. Myself, I had occasional memory BSOD's with my Precision 7530 so I decided that I'm only getting ECC memory from now on, whenever it can possibly be helped. I'm reminded of this article, which is interesting for many reasons, but includes the statement "Research from 2010 estimated that a computer with 4GB of commodity RAM has a 96 percent chance of experiencing a bitflip within three days". I don't know if that estimate is still valid with today's memory but it seems like the chance of an error would only go up as RAM capacity goes up. I'll also note that upcoming DDR5 modules include ECC, all of them, it's part of the spec. (They don't require ECC lines running to the CPU though, in which case they will be able to correct single-bit errors in storage on the modules themselves, but they will not be able to correct errors in transmission between the memory and the CPU. That capability will probably still require a Xeon CPU.)

There is a note here about the emojis. https://efgxt.net/topic/52-suggestion-box/?do=findComment&comment=487 If you are on Windows you can also hit "Win+." and use the system emojis. 😁

I'm running a job right now to add the banner to any pages that it was missed from. Right now there is only one page per thread, so if you're seeing threads that didn't run to completion, that's all that we have. There was an issue with earlier versions of the archiver that caused it to give up on a thread if certain errors happened, which caused issues with a number of very long threads. @Sandy Bridge worked hard in the final hours to go through logs and recapture broken threads, but I believe that he was working off of a list from the logs of forums that he originally downloaded (and not forums downloaded by the rest of us). We just didn't have time to loop back around to all of these before NBR shut down. I am planning to add a link to the archive.org version of the thread at the top of each page so that might help if they got a better capture than we did.