Aaron44126

@Prototime, Star Fox 64 is excellent, I have played it through many times. I do like that it can be completed in like 45 minutes. Doesn't take long to do beginning to end so I might just sit down and play it when I don't have much going on. (That's not very often anymore, though.) Single-player gamer here. I haven't been able to get into MMOs or online shooters. But as for favorites... Where to start... Too many to pick from, so I'll go be genre! (I started writing this post and it got too long, sorry.) 2D platformer — This is where it all started for me, playing Super Mario Bros. back in the day. I have to give it up for the classics, Super Mario World and Yoshi's Island. More recently, I really enjoyed Yoshi's Woolly World, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, and Celeste. (In the 3D space, I don't think that anything has topped Banjo-Kazooie.) Action — I enjoyed the Batman: Arkham series and the modern Tomb Raider series. I want to check out Horizon: Zero Dawn when I get a better PC later this year. Adventure — Being a Nintendo gamer growing up, I fell in with Zelda and I love A Link to the Past (which is run to play randomized), Ocarina of Time, and Breath of the Wild. I'm definitely looking forward to the unnamed BOTW sequel which should be landing later this year. I really enjoyed Ōkami which is a "Zelda-like" available on modern platforms. Metroidvania — Probably my favorite genre. The actual Metroid games are favorites of mine (2D + Prime). I enjoyed Metroid Dread this year. AM2R was also amazing. Ori and the Blind Forest was great. Hollow Knight is probably my favorite, though, — if there is one game on this list that I would suggest that people check out, it would be that one — and I'm also really looking forward to Silksong. Strategy — StarCraft (Brood War). I discovered this game by accident and really took to it. I also really got into StarCraft II and played on the ladder for a while when it was new. Disappointed that the series is probably dead now with the direction that Blizzard has been taking; but at least there are two spinoff studios with ex-Blizzard employees working on RTS games, so maybe they will come up with something cool. Puzzle — The Talos Principle stands out. Also, the Portal games. I wish they'd make another. JRPG – I've enjoyed these since I was into Final Fantasy (IV, VI, VII, and IX come to mind as favorites, I didn't really like the newer ones) and I have also enjoyed each of MonolithSoft's Xenoblade games. Narrative – I got Life is Strange cheap somehow and really enjoyed that. Haven't played any of the followup games though. I want to check out Detroit: Become Human (again, when I get a better PC). Random – ActRaiser is a crazy action platformer / world builder sim combo game and there has never been anything else like it. I like to play through it from time to time. (Talking about the SNES version, I haven't played the remake yet.)

I just updated the archive. All of the threads that we have downloaded are now in. You can check the top post of this thread. I added links for the sections that were not available before. Also, the post thresholds are gone. We were able to get "all" threads for each subforum that we hit. Other than that, a few of the subforums were pulled for a second time with added fixes from @Sandy Bridge to hopefully capture better copies of threads that got cut short in the initial pull. I know that there was an ask about the HP business laptops subforum and that one got re-pulled. As of the time of this post, those changes are still being merged in and they may not be visible for an hour or two. Also, some threads are making you locate and click on a .html file to view the thread after selecting the folder containing it. That'll be fixed up soon. ...At this point, once the merge is complete anyway, if you don't see a thread that you were interested in or if it is "damaged" in some way, obviously we are not going to be able to fix it with a pull from NBR. We could take a look at fixing up important threads with data from archive.org if they have a better copy than we do. I created a very basic index page at www.nbrchive.net and I'm going to try to get Google to start crawling the site. Looks like DuckDuckGo already noticed it. (I'll put a better index page there later. I saved a copy of the NBR forums front page to use for this.) Next on the list for me is some usability improvements. I want to tie these threads in to a "full thread list" pull that I made from NBR with HTTrack. (It will look a lot more like the Dell business laptops forum currently does when that is done.) I want to add pagination to the longer threads (probably 50 threads per page) so they don't cause the browser to choke. Some links in the pulled threads need to be fixed (post permalinks aren't functional, member profile links can point to archive.org...). I want to update the forum search feature to do a Google site search so at least you can search for things. And I want to do some general cleanup to anything pulled with HTTrack — removing the ad blocks, broken login links, and so forth. I won't be moving quite as fast with these updates. I need to make sure that IRL stuff gets some attention too 🙂

I haven't tried this but I'd assume that this behavior has been lost along with most other taskbar customization. Task Manager is the same. This still works... but you can also just press the "Windows" key (to pop up the Start Menu) and then start typing to search. It will take "run" commands from this screen as well. Alt+Tab still works. No more grouping pinned apps on the Start Menu. You can pin things but they cannot be grouped and arrangement is basically like it is on the iPhone. (It fills out rows from left to right; you can't "free place" items.) You can remove the search icon from the taskbar. Desktop is the same. Microsoft Store is not any more or less in-your-face than before. Browser situation is basically the same (but it's harder to switch default browsers now). Setting file associations is the same. You can jump through hoops to get a local account. Basically, set up a throwaway MS account, then once at the desktop, create a local account. (Might have to use command line if the GUI doesn't let you do it.) Log into the local account and then delete the online account. It shouldn't bother you about it anymore. There are no changes to this in Windows 11. However, there are changes to it in both Windows 10 and Windows 11 if the system supports "modern standby", and pretty much all new laptops do. Most of the advanced power options are gone in this case. You can get them back by disabling modern standby, which adds those options back, but then you won't be able to use the "Sleep" function on your system. (Hibernate still works.) This Reddit post explains how to do it. Just a registry change and reboot. If you paste a link and it makes that box, check the bottom of the post writing area. A popup appears with an option to change back to a regular link.

Just an update. Taking a bit longer than I thought to sift through everything. I finally got all of the files on the server and unpacked. Some stats — the archive is currently sitting at 295 GB and 6,226,158 individual files. There is some duplicate data in there so as I consolidate, it will shrink a bit. Today, I'm just going to try to get through basic consolidation and adding the info banner to the top of all of the threads. Once that is done, I'll post it and work on more improvements later. @Samir Yes, there was a whole Toshiba subforum so that will be included with the next update.

I noticed that giving a “sad” reaction to a post doesn’t seem to add a rep point. On your profile, you can see this – 60 rep points (current value) only adds up if “sad” and “confused” are excluded. Can the point values of the different types of reactions be adjusted? Could a certain reaction give more than 1 point? (Not saying we should do this, just wondering what the options are.)

A Windows 11 license is a Windows 10 license. Microsoft has always offered downgrade rights. However... to install Windows 10 on this XPS you will have to do it yourself, via clean install. There won't be a rollback option offered from Window 11 after you boot it up.

System-wide dark mode isn't exactly system-wide. For example, see "Task Manager" in the screen shot above; dark mode doesn't change its appearance at all.

I noticed that if you paste in a YouTube video URL it automatically embeds it. (A notice pops up at the bottom that you can click to turn it back to a regular link.) I'd love to see a table/cell editor as well.

I remember Taskix. Life saver back in the XP/Vista days when you couldn't rearrange the taskbar. I had a specific order that I liked, and I remember being upset when something would cause Explorer to crash and that would jumble up the order of items on the taskbar. I'd have to close and reopen everything to get the order back how I wanted. (Until I discovered Taskix.) I don't use any taskbar tweak programs right now, but I do have replacement for other parts of the Windows shell. I use Start11 (Start menu replacement) and Directory Opus (File Explorer replacement). If I could find a good taskbar replacement then I would check it out. I think that the taskbar could certainly be made more power user friendly. Windows 11 has lost most taskbar customization functionality. You can't "ungroup" windows anymore, show text next to the taskbar icons, or show it on any side of the screen other than the bottom. I'm a bit miffed that there is no way to show seconds on the clock (either on the taskbar or in the flyout that appears when you click on the clock). You can get functionality back by forcing it to use the Windows 10 taskbar, which is still present, but that's a bit hacky/broken.

So.... We ordered an additional Precision 7560 for the office, I dunno, about three weeks ago (early/mid-January). The ETA given was mid-April. The UHD display in particular was cited as the source of the long lead time. I never got the order number so I was not able to keep track of it. Got word from the IT dept today (February 1) that the system has arrived at the office. I was like, "Please go and double check". Once confirmed, I asked for the service tag so that I could make sure that they didn't just accidentally order one with the FHD display. Nope... Precision 7560, UHD display, received in less than a month. I wonder if the supply chain issues are getting cleared out, or if they just got a huge shipment of UHD panels all at once, or what?

I don't use any Bluetooth devices myself so I cannot comment. I do have a coworker who uses it for a headset and doesn't seem to have any issues. I have a couple of possible recommendations. Make sure you are using the latest Bluetooth driver from Dell; if that's no good, there's usually a newer one available from Intel that you could try. Link Workaround... Get a USB Bluetooth dongle, disable the built-in Bluetooth, and try using the USB Bluetooth instead. (Sad to have to resort to that but if you aren't using the USB ports for anything else, the Bluetooth dongles are very cheap and compact these days.)

I'm going to make sure that NBRCHIVE is crawlable on Google. The next update will include a (rather basic) index page at the root of the site as a starting point for this. Every page has a link to EFGXT in the top banner.

I do not believe 1520 or 1720 work with 8 GB. As I recall, you can install 4+4, and it seems to work at first but the BIOS gets hung up at the end of the memory check phase (very end of the boot progress bar) and the OS will not boot. Dell never tested this configuration (4GB modules were not available when the system launched) — they probably could have fixed it with a BIOS update, but never bothered. The fact that 6GB works (4+2) is a lucky happenstance.

I think Prime95 is the go-to program here. It's free.

Not saying it won't happen, but anything this far out for Intel falls squarely in "I'll believe it when I see it" territory. ...Just look at how long it took them to get 10nm off the ground. It was always a year or two away, but in the end it took them way longer than anticipated.

For Precision specifically I am going to try to keep a link to the NBRCHIVE thread near the front of any owner's thread that shows up. (I posted a link in the M4800 thread as soon as it opened, for example.) I also plan to (eventually) add links to both the old and new owner's threads for each system to the "key posts" post. I'll leave the discussion of whether we pin NBRCHIVE threads directly to this forum up to someone else, but I think that also muddies things up some and could be confusing for entirely new users coming across the site.

There were so many pieces that luckily fell into place at the right time to capture the archive that we have. I started out just wanting to grab the Precision section because that's where I am most active, and maybe the XPS section if there was time (because it is sort of related), and then I posted the HTTrack directions to help other users capture what is interesting to them. Without @Sandy Bridge's app, I would have been limited to HTTrack which took way longer to get through threads. Plus he really was a driving force in getting edge cases completed. I did leave downloads running overnight but I was not up all night checking on things 😛 @Reciever shouldn't sell himself short. He facilitated getting us all on VPNs which multiplied the amount of progress that we could make. (Something that totally hadn't occurred to me.) And he along with @Hiew were pulling stuff along with us, when they are already stretched to the limit just trying to get this new forum stood up (in addition to handling their own real-life stuff). Everyone was building off of each other's ambitions on how far we could take it, it was fun 🙂 Of course, we are tremendously lucky that we got the notice that we did, both in terms of being able to pull stuff for the archive, and also in terms of having time to get this new site up with so many users moving over. As @Custom90gt mentioned in a different thread, there was that forum downtime shortly before the announcement and TechTarget could have decided to throw in the towel right then.

Yeah, so careful with words/terms here, ha. I've spent quite a bit of time on both Windows 10 Pro and Windows 10 Enterprise (non-LTSC). Windows 10 Enterprise is exactly like Windows 10 Pro in terms of "feature stability" — i.e. cruft that they add to Pro, like the "News & Interests" widget thing, is also on Enterprise. Only Enterprise LTSC is free from that (for now). For the foreseeable future I would assume that Windows 11 is going to be "shifting sand" (new minor "features" dropping somewhat regularly + major "feature updates" once per year, in the fall). There won't be another LTSC release until late 2024 at which point hopefully Windows 11 has solidified somewhat. I do see gaming as a downside for LTSC but only somewhat. There weren't that many games that wouldn't work on Windows 10 LTSC 2019. Now, I only hopped on LTSC recently so maybe I missed some but the only ones I remember seeing being thrown around were Forza Horizon 5 and maybe the new Battlefield game? Some games like Ori and the Will of the Wisps claim to require a certain version of Windows 10 to run but actually still work even on Windows 7 and 8. Anyway, there is indeed a chance that some new games will not work at the tail end of a 3-year LTSC release cycle. I think the chance of that is pretty low this time around, since Windows 10 (non-LTSC) will be sticking around for a good while after Windows 11's release. Myself, my game backlog is large enough that I wouldn't mind putting off a new game for a while if I needed to. Don't want to turn this into the LTSC thread. Maybe we should spin up a new one if the conversation is going that way. 🙂

It did end up lowering the ETA somewhat but it is going to take until tomorrow. (This isn't exactly SSD-to-SSD. The F: drive is a remote network share.)

Getting into the weeds, but... With Windows 8.1 losing support next year, maybe you should give Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2021 a look. Since switching, I'm kind of seeing the LTSC version "as if you were in an alternate universe and this change of direction they took with Windows never happened" (or at least was rather less extreme). The LTSC version is a lot more like traditional Windows in terms of how it is supported. There are no user experience changes in the monthly updates (that is a "promise" of LTSC) — for example, LTSC did not get the "News & Interests" widget thing that landed on everyone else's taskbar without warning last year. You won't be hounded to upgrade to any newer version of Windows. It's built off of Windows 10, version 2004 (released April 2020) so it is mature enough. (Windows 10, versions 20H2, 21H1, and 21H2 are all built off of the 2004 base — same binaries/updates, as with Windows Server 2021 as well.) It is supported until January, 2032. Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC doesn't have some things that regular Windows 10 has. The Microsoft Store is missing and most of the bundled "modern"-style apps are as well. There are PowerShell scripts floating around to add them back if you like. (I have Microsoft Store loaded on mine and it works as intended.) Otherwise, it is basically the same. (It does have the new Edge browser pre-loaded... You can remove web search results from the Start menu search with a simple registry value though and then you basically never have to look at it.) The problem is getting a license. (They want you on the main release train so that they can force the new monetizing stuff on you, so they don't make LTSC easy to grab unless you are a business or OEM.) Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 is probably the way to go. You can get a license from resellers (i.e. CDW) or from eBay. "Enterprise LTSC" and "IoT Enterprise LTSC" are functionally identical, the difference is in how they are licensed. IoT is supposed to be bundled with some sort of single-function product. If you do buy it make sure you are getting the 2021 version. License keys are tied to a specific version, you can't upgrade without paying anything as you can with "regular" Windows 10. You can get an evaluation version here if you want to play with it before buying anything — https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-10-enterprise To upgrade in-place from 8.1 I think you would need to go through Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB version 2015 first. If you have interest in going this way, I can grab the ISO for you (you shouldn't need an actual license for it if you are just using it as an in-between point).

I'm sort of thinking that they haven't been paying attention to the goings-on at the forum for some time; it's been totally off their radar and they decided to kill it because they basically saw it as a money sink and didn't understand the value of what they had. This list is probably what an internal PR person came up with when doing a basic search for community tech sites. I do wonder what was going on with the downtime leading up to the announcement of the forum closure. As I recall it, the forums were down for the weekend and then the closure was announced within a day or two after it came back online? Seems odd. I could concoct a narrative but it'd be even more speculative than my statement above.

That's one that we did not grab but I can tell you that it had around 720,000 total posts (not counting the "Motorized vehicles" subforum, another 19,000 posts). archive.org should have most of it.

I discovered this by accident. Never saw it documented anywhere. I think that I will make a post about it in the "Windows" section here with some screen shots so that I can refer back to it when making the suggestion to other users. One thing that you can do though is open up Task Manager and go to the Performance tab where it shows the current CPU speed. Try changing the power slider and see how it changes the CPU speed in real time.

Ha, well it's going to take a while to move everything that I downloaded to the web server... I wonder if it would be faster to archive it, move the archive, and then unpack it again...

Oh, for the most part it is fine to stick on Windows 10 for a good long while, but here's wrinkle about Windows 10 vs Windows 11 that I can bring up. It's the process scheduler, and in particular, how it works with Intel's new Alder Lake hybrid architecture which features two types of CPU cores, "performance" and "efficiency". You (currently) need Windows 11 to make use of Intel's "Thread Director" hardware-assisted process scheduling with Intel's hybrid architecture Alder Lake CPUs. This helps Windows decide which threads to run on "performance cores" and which threads to run on "efficiency cores". Windows 10 is aware of the difference between the types of cores, but it doesn't support Intel's hardware-assist feature for scheduling. Benchmarks show that in most cases it doesn't matter if you are running Alder Lake on Windows 10 or Windows 11, but in some cases it totally does. For one, Windows 10 automatically runs "low priority" processes on E cores only. So, for example, if you do a Handbrake video encode, that job runs low priority and now performance is poop because it it locked to the E cores. Windows 11 will run such a process across all cores but still give first priority to the "active" application. (...Technically it seems like full Thread Director support wouldn't be required to "fix" this but this is how it stands on Windows 10 + Alder Lake right now in any case.) So part of the reason that i was torn up early on about whether to get on Windows 11 is, I'm planning to replace my nearly 10-year-old personal laptop with an Alder Lake one this spring. Do I have to decide between dealing with Windows 11 bloatware or not having Thread Director support? I think that there's a decent chance Windows 10 will be getting a new process scheduler within a few months. Windows Server 2022 and Windows 10, version 21H2 are pretty similar. Windows Server is only refreshed once every 3 years. Server 2022 just launched like three or four months ago, so a follow-up won't drop until late 2024. Hybrid architecture CPUs will surely show up in the server space before then. Will Microsoft refuse to give Thread Director support to Windows Server until late 2024? Rather doubt it. (If they push a process scheduler update to Server 2022 then it wouldn't be a big stretch to also push it to Windows 10.) Dell has zero Alder Lake business systems. All of the Alder Lake systems that they have announced so far ship with Windows 11 as the only option (probably because of the scheduler). On the laptop side, only Alienware and XPS Alder Lake models have been announced. On the desktop side, Alder Lake CPUs have been available for nearly three months but there are still no Alder Lake Vostro, OptiPlex, or Precision desktop systems. Dell knows that most businesses don't want Windows 11 yet. Does Dell know something that we don't about when Windows 10 and Alder Lake will get along? (I haven't checked the situation with other vendors' business systems.) Intel's Alder Lake Game Dev Guide states the following, emphasis added by me. (Kind of vague, but there you go.) With the release of Windows 11, you can automatically have your threads scheduled by the OS using hardware hints from Intel Thread Director. If your strategy is to allow the OS and ITD to do the heavy lifting for your thread scheduling, you will need to detect which version of Windows your application is running on. Without the updates for Windows 11, ITD will not be supported. Some ITD features will be backported, but it is essential to check for a minimum supported version of Windows. You can use VerifyVersionInfo API, which will allow you to include Service Pack Minor and Build Number in your version specification.