obobski

I have a 2 ZS Platinum in my secondary machine - still a very competent card imho. Main system (built at Christmas-ish, so almost a year old by now): Core i5-4690S w/Thermalright HR-22 ASRock Z97x motherboard 2x8GB Kingston DDR3-1866 XFX Radeon 290X Black Edition Creative SB ZxR 2x500GB WD VelociRaptor in RAID0 1TB WD Green for additional storage (I will literally never fill this either) PC Power TurboCool 860W ("recycled" from previous Core 2 Quad rig since it still worked, is quiet, etc) Lian-Li PC-7 case (with 120mm intake and exhaust, and 80mm top exhaust; all SilverStone fans) Secondary system (since I mentioned it, I figured people might be curious): 2x Xeon 3.06GHz w/Cooler Master sinks Asus PC-DL Deluxe 2x1GB Kingston DDR-333 GeForce FX 5800 Ultra (w/ Zalman VF-700) + 2x Creative Voodoo II 12MB SLI Creative SB Audigy 2 ZS Platinum 500GB WD Green PC Power Silencer 610W Lian-Li PC-7 case (identical to above; they're identical from the outside except for the Audigy front-bay and different brand DVD drives) I've got another few gaming machines "in pieces" at various stages of completion too, but none are currently in use.

I'd be interested in thoughts on Forza - I know that's totally OT. :ninja: WRT Halo Combat Evolved, the MCC edition is absolutely perfect if you just want to go plod around in it on XB1 - the Cartographer levels look better than ever, and so do all of the levels on Covenant Ships. But if you're after the complete 1P play-through experience, it fall shorts imho. Also worth pointing out that MCC has all levels/campaigns in all four games unlocked from the beginning (at least for me it did), so if there's a section you really despise (or just want to get straight into) you can jump right to it. Very nice for "quick play" too. Another good "remake" for Xbox One is the Metro Redux collection - haven't gotten into the sequel yet, but the original looks and plays fantastically.

I've not tried the streaming (I'm actually currently waiting on a new Xbox One so I can't even test), but just speaking of Halo on Xbox One (I'm assuming you mean via MCC since 5 isn't out yet; again will be able to comment on 5 once it comes out), I think MCC is largely a success but not across the board. Having played every Halo game on every platform they exist on (except Halo 4 (seen it on 360, only beaten it on XB1) and Halo 2 PC (was very slow to upgrade to DX10)), I feel that Halo Combat Evolved ("Halo 1") is best on PC, and second best on original Xbox. The Xbox 360 remaster, and Xbox One port of that, incur too much input latency to make the final levels enjoyable (I finally gave up on XB1; on PC I beat the library/flood level in a single attempt, on XB1 after 4 hours of excruciating repeated attempts I gave up - that's all due to input lag), Halo 2 on Xbox One is very similar to the "original" experience, and Halo 3/4 are absolutely fantastic (imho best experience for 3/4 is on XB1). My point is, if you're going after the XB1 for Halo, make sure you know what you're getting into. If Combat Evolved is your primary focus, just pick it up for PC - it works fine in Windows 7x64 (and I would assume in 8 and 10 too), and Halo 2 is also available if you're interested. Halo 3 and 4 require a console, as will Halo 5 from what I understand. As far as re-binding controllers and such, you can directly plug the Xbox controller into the Xbox via USB, and it should otherwise automatically bind to the console on start-up (years ago when I lived with roommates, we had multiple 360s and could literally just drag 360 controllers into one room and they'd all automatically "work it out" with a single console, and then take everything back to its respective "home" and it'd also automatically figure it out - I'm assuming that still works on XB1 too). No idea about the headset - I have all of my equipment hard-wired and just flip switches as needed. :happy:

Isn't there a huge legal back-and-forth that precludes Bethesda from making Fallout a multiplayer/MMO experience? I thought that was part of the ultimate settlement with Interplay, that Fallout Online and related concepts are explicitly *not* Bethesda's. Anyways, I remember "Oblivion Multiplayer" from years ago, and it was clunky and unstable - not surprising it exists in newer games like Skyrim, or that it would be attempted with Fallout 4.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conficker It's a botnet - not surprising if it kills HID to further its goals. I'd take the machine offline, do a complete reformat and re-install of Windows, and load up anti-virus software and use it (and probably improve browsing practices) in the future. :blush:

There's a number of reasons you can't "use" all of the RAM in there, the quick'n'dirty is: - DX9 requires VRAM to be backed by system resources (MSDN devnet rule of thumb is system memory should be at least 2x VRAM). - Skyrim, as a Win32 application on a Win32 environment, cannot map and access 4GB of memory (it wouldn't leave anything for Windows or any other application). - The GPU drivers will do "stuff" wrt memory mapping for cards with >1.5GB VRAM on Win32 systems. It's also entirely possible the crash is unrelated to VRAM and could be due to some other factor. Because of that, I'm not saying run out and buy more RAM or something along those lines, because even if Skyrim is hitting its head on a memory cap, the bigger "limit" here will be 32-bit Windows. Under a 64-bit environment you could flag LAA and the process can go up to 4GB by itself (if the system can support it), which may or may not help what you're running into. If unloading mods and turning settings down gets you a more stable/playable game, I'd say go that route and if/when you decide to get a new computer, re-visit this. The other thing to keep in mind is that application reporting of VRAM usage is usually not very accurate because there is not a good mechanism within DirectX to specifically read physical VRAM usage (because the API doesn't make significant any distinction between on-card and off-card resources - they're abstracted and managed thru the driver and API). As a result, different applications, graphics cards, and drivers will report different things for the same game/workload and the differences can sometimes be dramatic.

Random guess since you said "lots of malware" - there's something naughty in there that's messing with the HID drivers (like, say, a keylogger) and that's what's causing you the problems. Whatever it is, it probably isn't loading right in Safe Mode (viruses can have glitches too) so that's why you don't "see" it. Once you get your replacement install media, you may try doing a "restore install" from the Windows installation wizard (boot hte disc and select repair/restore partition) - it may be able to replace damaged system files. However in a more general sense, if "lots of malware" is a reality for this machine, I'd probably opt for a total orbital strike and re-start with a fresh copy of Windows. It will probably take a bit longer than any "quick fix" but it should cut the head off of whatever nasties are in there - back your files up to some separate partition and then screen them very aggressively before you start dragging stuff back onto the machine.

Two reasons: 1. It deletes all my files and programs. 2. I need to buy an installation disc, because one didn't come with my computer. 1. This is why we have backups for important files. Re-installing applications is somewhat variable - some things are fairly portable (e.g. Steam games, like Skyrim), but others will require re-installation to function properly. 2. Contact the OEM that made your computer (e.g. Dell) - they will generally provide a disc if you've lost or did not receive one with the original purchase. Alternately your computer may have a recovery partition, which will speed-up the re-install process as it contains an OEM image that will have drivers and other things pre-loaded, so all you'll have to do is run updates.

We've gone back and forth on this before - and again we'll have to agree to disagree on Windows 10 being the Anti-Christ. As far as modding on the Xbox One, I see it as more of Microsoft trying to gain traction against Sony - they've presented a number of features recently that don't directly earn them money, but also don't likely cost them much (if anything) to implement, which they can hold over Sony/PS4 as "exclusives" (and I would guess their ultimate goal is to increase hardware sales, which does directly improve their bottom line).

I don't understand why a clean install wasn't done quite a while ago - like I said, this is a puzzler of an issue and it isn't worth the time and energy to troubleshoot if that time and energy will exceed how long a clean install will take.

You can't really directly compare the PS3/Xbox360 CPUs to an x86 CPU - they're both custom IBM parts derived from the POWER architecture (specifically ISA v2.03), which is a RISC paradigm ISA. PS3 uses Cell, which extends the POWER-based PPE with eight SPEs. The Xbox 360 uses Xenon (also from IBM), that is (essentially) comprised of 3 of Cell's PPE. The closest analog to this in the desktop segment would be the PowerPC 970 (found in a lot of Apple computers, branded as G5 - it is also ISA v2.03 compliant). Porting (efficiently) to and from an x86 CPU (like Pentium 4 or Core 2) with code optimized/written for PowerPC is not trivial, and bringing in the heavily multi-threaded Xenon or SPE-assisted Cell does not help the situation - they're very different machines. As far as the LAA configuration on Skyrim - I don't consider that a "lazy oversight" - it's not done for good reason. Specifically, compatibility. Running LAA on Win32 has no effect, but on Win64 it can cause stability problems if the system has less than 4GB of memory (and yes, there are retail configuration machines running 64-bit Windows with less than 4GB of memory, especially if we rewind back to 2011 when Skyrim came out). Developers don't target the top .5% of machines, so compatibility with the widest range of systems is their goal. As far as the "system requirements are lower than FONV" - my launch-day box says: - 2.0GHz Dual Core (does not specify type) - Windows 7/Vista/XP - 2GB RAM - 10GB Hard-Drive Space - nVidia GeForce 6 Series/Radeon X1300XT series Minimum Fallout 3 lists a Pentium 4, and you can find videos on YouTube of both games running on fantastic things like AthlonXP or Pentium 4 systems, as long as the GPU supports SM3.0 (Fallout 3 has a SM2.0 path that will run on Radeon X (and in theory Radeon 9 as a result); NV afaik requires 3.0 like Skyrim). VRAM requirements are not really that high (even for Skyrim, which lists 512MB as the minimum) - but again, we're not talking about the top .5% of configurations that demand full max ultra at 8K at 12,000 FPS in 3D with all 32K textures in 30-bit color with 128x SSAA and 7300 mods loaded. As far as "just a lazy port" - I'm guessing that era is (thankfully) largely behind us now, because the Xbox One and PS4 are extremely similar to a modern PC (both are x86-64 CPUs with eight cores and GCN graphics), so multi-platform development shouldn't be as problematic. Going off of using Xbox One and PS4 as a meter-stick for system requirements, their CPUs are going to be equivalent to some of AMD's mobile parts (they're AMD Jaguar based), and the GPUs are similar to Radeon HD 7700/7800 series graphics cards. Now that doesn't mean that becomes the "floor" for all games, but it also seems reasonable to say a PC that is similar to that should be able to run games that are running on XB1/PS4. The Core 2 Duo as the minimum requirement also makes sense in light of that, but the GT 240 seems misplaced. I did a bit of Googling and I suspect the 240 is a typo - here's what GameDebate has: http://www.game-debate.com/games/index.php?g_id=5013&game=Fallout%204 Same Core 2 Duo, but notice: GT 740. As far as requiring Windows 10 - that seems very unlikely. It doesn't have 100% market penetration and it wouldn't make sense to constrain yourself like that, from the developer's POV. If the game required DX12 it would require Win10 though, but I haven't seen anything that says DX12 is overtly required.

You fixed the larger issue with your system? What was ultimately the problem and solution? (I'm curious now)

Hrm. That's a head-scratcher then. If you're connected to the MB-mounted USB ports and Windows isn't recognizing the peripherals, but they work outside of Windows, that leads me to believe there's a problem with Windows start-up. If it isn't that drive causing the failure, it may be some other driver, but it's tough to say without hands-on. At this point I'd say call clean slate, nuke the thing from orbit, and go with a fresh Windows install. Back-up whatever important data via Safe Mode where possible. If it still doesn't work with a fresh Windows install ++ driver reload (which seems unlikely), there's likely a hardware problem, but that seems less likely due to the USB ports working outside of Windows.

You can also just add the "Take Ownership" regkey to your system - http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/add-take-ownership-to-explorer-right-click-menu-in-vista/ - it saves a lot of time and hassle when dealing with files that've been migrated from 2k/XP or installed in weird ways (usually by older game installers). I'm not certain this will fix the problem, but it'd be worth a try.

On the Skyrim question - yes you can transfer the whole thing over. For extra fun: you can actually transfer EVERYTHING in Steam over. Just pick up your entire Steam folder and drop it down on the new machine, install Steam on the new machine, and point it at the "old" Steam folder. It can take time to transfer everything, but even if you only have 100Mbit networking at home, it will probably be faster than re-downloading and re-installing everything. Especially modded games. OFC keep back-ups on your existing machine in the event something goes wrong. On the new machine, you've gotten great advice from Griede and LeddBate, the only bits I'd add: - Give a look at the Radeon R9 290/390 cards. They're great performers and cost somewhat less (at least last I looked they did) than the GTX 980. Either is a good choice. I have a 290X in my new main system (its almost a year old now, how time flies! :ohmy:), and have had no complaints; I had a GTX 660 (older nVidia card) before that, and also had no complaints. Basically I'd just get whatever represents a better deal in terms of price<->performance. - I can't overstate how important a quality PSU is. Don't mess around with this - get something high quality and it will last for a long time. JonnyGuru is a great place to find reviews of PSUs, and if you're even lazier than that ( :yes:), just go with a top-tier brand like PC Power & Cooling ( :thumbsup:), Corsair (their higher end models), Seasonic, etc. :dance: - On Skylake, I wouldn't get horribly fired up. I'm not saying "don't do it" but more "it doesn't make a huge difference" - you can find benchmarks from Anand, TPU, TR, etc if you like. Generally CPU performance hasn't improved much in terms of gaming in the last few iterations, especially for single-thread heavy games like Skyrim, so anything from the last 3 generations (Haswell, Broadwell, or Skylake) will be perfectly competent. If you need killer IGP performance ( :teehee:) go with Broadwell.

+1. Those two should be okay with old games at 1440 or 1600p (e.g. I ran Fallout 3 at 1600p on a 4870X2 back in '08 - that's slower than these cards, but Fallout 3 is older than these games; StarCraft II probably wouldn't be a problem though). If you wanted to upgrade a little, bump up to the R9 290/390 series. :happy:

Safe Mode generally won't allow h/w acceleration, so DirectX won't work properly, hence no gaming in SafeMode. Emulation isn't using h/w acceleration so that's why it works. Doing day-to-day stuff in Safe Mode is generally not a great idea, because it bypasses a lot of security features, among other things. I tried to untangle the various forums and posts you linked (this isn't a "you" problem per se - there's a lot of links and ideas from various other posters to unravel). Here's what I'm *guessing* is the problem, but if it sounds entirely off-base feel free to correct my understanding: - You bought a new DVD drive for your computer. - You tried to install this drive, and once loading the new drive, keyboard and mouse don't work. - You are having trouble getting a front-panel header re-connected. Random guess: the drive itself is dead/defective, and that's why the keyboard/mouse aren't working, because Windows is hanging up on boot and not loading the HID drivers. Safe Mode "fixes" that because it more selectively loads stuff and bypasses the hardware problem. Unplug the new drive entirely from the system and see if it returns to working, if not, then we're back to step 1, but I'm guessing that's the issue. Source: I've encountered this issue a total of ONE time in over 15 years of working on computers, and it was easily the most frustrating thing I've ever troubleshot. It's also why I'm no longer a huge fan of internal optical drives. I can fully understand why you're being told to replace the CMOS battery, re-install Windows, etc etc too - none of that would make a difference, but it's all very typical "I have no idea what's going on but here throw some nuclear option stuff at it" troubleshooting. Pulling the CMOS battery and/or clearing the CMOS is what reset the clock - that's expected behavior (the battery backs-up the clock and other BIOS settings when the machine has no other power). CMOS batteries rarely ever die though IME - I've got some that are still alive and kicking after 10 years. If/when they fail the machine will throw an error that CMOS/BIOS defaults have been loaded (some BIOSes will prompt you to enter BIOS to confirm, some will let you just F1 to dismiss), and this will happen on *every* boot after the machine loses power, because there's no battery to back-up the settings. Some really slick systems will throw an error that the CMOS battery voltage is low (prior to the battery dying), but I've rarely encountered those. On anything reasonably modern (like post-ISA, post-LPT, post-manual IRQs, post-fully unlocked CPUs, etc) the defaults will auto-configure everything, so the only real "buggabos" about a dead battery are boot order and the clock (and Windows will reset the clock as it syncs to NTP servers, as long as the machine is connected to the Internet). On older machines it can cause more problems (e.g. if you had to manually setup IRQs, non-plug'n'play hardware, etc) because those settings also aren't preserved, and it won't just "auto" them. A modern Dell should have no such problems. On the FP header being disconnected, it would have no bearing on anything but the ports it correspond to, so if you don't need them, you can probably just ignore that, or figure out where it came from and/or what it needs to connect to (might help to use a flashlight if you've got an all-black motherboard with all-black ports lol).

That article's title reads a lot like clickbait (which unfortunately seems to be an ever-growing "feature" at ArsTechnica) - the actual article indicates nearly everything being complained about was successfully disabled, excepting a bit of innocuous telemetry data at the bottom that may be sending a random machine ID to a Microsoft server. This is a far cry from "it always tracks you and invades your privacy no matter what." I agree with you that yes it does affect everyone, and it is good to have stuff like this documented in some way. I'm curious though - they mention setting a proxy on the local machine and that not being entirely effective, but what about a proxy set at an edge router or firewall component? This has been an effective means of securing or restricting various Windows things in the past at least.

Savegames are separate from the Steam folder, and can be easily backed up (they're located in My Documents). As long as the game has the same mods installed, savegames should work machine-to-machine or install-to-install, so if that's your primary concern then I would just backup your saves and you should be set (assuming you're going to re-install all the same mods and so forth).

Introductory note: I had originally prepared a relatively long (~page) response to the original question, but as I got near the end, I realized it could be significantly simplified. This is what remains; As I read it, literally none of the original post/question is discussing whether or not [username] thinks homosexuality is right or wrong. Instead, I interpret it as a practice in logic - can we use objective evidence/logic to resolve a moral/subjective proposition? Here is the original question, as asked: "What do you think can we objectively prove that being gay is wrong (in the same way you can prove rape/pedophilia is wrong)?" To which I would respond: No. I do not think we can objectively prove/support/conclude that [something] is right or wrong, regardless of what that thing is. I say this because "right" and "wrong" are moral questions, to which an objective answer cannot be given. We can, however, provide objective evidence to support conclusions and interpretations of [something], for example homosexual behavior between people, but those interpretations and the resulting value-weighted judgments and beliefs that they mediate are inherently subjective (and likely at an individual level). The closest we could come to this would be building consensus - "the majority holds a certain opinion about [something]." While that can be objectively documented (it can be counted and verified, and that count will/should not change depending on who is doing the count), that does not make the majority's opinion itself objective (because they can change their minds). I also think, pragmatically speaking, even if there were some capacity to objectively resolve a moral/subjective proposition (like "is homosexuality right or wrong") you would still have people resisting the outcome for whatever irrational reason(s) - for example there's plenty of research that shows texting while driving to be a very dangerous/unwise/etc thing (e.g. it causes accidents), yet there's still plenty of people who do it. That isn't the result of a logical or objective decision making process on the part of those people - it's an irrational choice made because of some external value-weighted conclusion. So even if we *could* answer a big moral/philosophical question with objective evidence/logic, would it actually matter in the grand scheme of things, when human beings can (and do) act in irrational and illogical ways on a regular basis? Note that I'm not providing any opinion one way or another as to how I personally feel or interpret types human sexual behavior, nor do I have an interest in *that* debate because it IS inherently subjective, and for many people at a deeply personal level.

Yeah exactly - I tried to uninstall new "windows 10" nvidia drivers and install some older version, but it was the same garbage - so I figured that nvidia and windows 10 simply can't work together! So, the only way for everything to work would be to go back to windows 8.1! And that is very upsetting! You know, you give your money (lots of money) for something and then they screw it up and you can't get what you paid for?!?! That is very much upsetting, and I know I am not the only one.... people should be much more aggressive and we should ask our money back, then, maybe they will do something right! You know, payed almost 3.000 damn USD for this damn computer so I could have a good experience playing games and doing some graphical stuff (for my work) and then I get for that money crap in games which I didn't have with much older and cheaper computers before.... I am sooooo pissed off !!! Not to fuel the fire anymore, but this is unfortunately not an uncommon complaint I've seen with nVidia GPUs over the years. Espeically for people who play "old" games. Unfortunately this is also in a laptop, so there's no upgrade options, and you're held to whatever drivers support it and work properly, which can amplify the above. I would say if Windows 8.1 lets everything work as it should, just go with that and enjoy the system, and when it comes time to upgrade in a few years look at A) a desktop and B) potentially not going with nVidia (Intel and AMD both have pretty good options for graphics controllers these days).

No experience whatsoever with MO, but yes you can drag'and'drop Steam folders from machine to machine. Just re-install Steam on the new machine (you can't "clone" the installation as far as I know), and then point that install at the "old" folder and it should work. I would guess MO would just need to be re-installed and pointed at the folder too, just as NMM, Wrye, FOMM, etc have worked for years.

nVidia does not support (care about?) end users - don't hold your breath waiting for that to change. Rolling back to Windows 8.1 may "fix" this but I'm guessing this is *not* a Microsoft problem (afaik Windows 10 does not change DDI9/DX9 support), but an nVidia driver problem. Which, in and of itself, is not at all surprising - they have a fantastic knack for trashing backwards compatibility, and rarely do they go back and clean up their mess. If there are older versions of ForceWare that will work for your hardware in Windows 10, you may try that first, but otherwise you'll likely need to run an older version of Windows to use significantly older (working) drivers.

Just to comment, since Linux and especially Ubuntu has now come up: Ubuntu has its own share of people complaining about "massive privacy concerns" and so forth (it has been called/labeled spyware by security experts, like Richard Stallman). Like I said earlier - pros and cons to anything you use, and there is no magic bullet. If the goal is to not have an operating system or OS components that "phone home" than Ubuntu will likely fail that goal, however if the goal is simply to trot out "Microsoft bad, Microsoft evil" then Ubuntu will certainly satisfy that. LadyMilla: I have found, over the years, that VLC does look/work better on Linux as well. I'm not sure why this is so.

.sorry i didn't get what u said .. im just new here in skyrim modding :blush: .... ->: archive invalidation incorrectly/not applied? NMM has an automatic archive invalidation tick-box; I'm not familiar with MO though. You also will probably want to run a LOOT sort if you've never done that before.