PC Clock Runs Fast

[Foxbat]

So I decided, now that W10 sound still working for now, I thought I'd remove the graphics card (less than 6 months old) from the old XP machine and stick it into my old Vista machine (I've already downloaded the Vista drivers for this card). Took five minutes to do the swap and another 15 to install the drivers. Restarted the machine and presto! Black screen of death. Windows strikes again.

It boots up, Vista logo appears and then monitor goes to sleep saying no video. It hangs when started in safemode and now I'm busy going through all the various options. Right now, I'm telling it to repair itself and it's telling me that it will take over an hour just to check out the disk. Good job this is a surplus machine nowadys.

 

[.matthew.]

I had kind of the same problem when I struggled with Windows 10 to have it run by my rules and not Microsoft's. I failed miserably.
Anyway, it turned out that I, by my rigorously settings concerning Privacy, not only had cut off access to the mic but by doing so also to the speakers.

Ha, I experienced that when trying to get the mic working. Struggled for ages until I realised what I'd done.

So I decided, now that W10 sound still working for now, I thought I'd remove the graphics card (less than 6 months old) from the old XP machine and stick it into my old Vista machine (I've already downloaded the Vista drivers for this card). Took five minutes to do the swap and another 15 to install the drivers. Restarted the machine and presto! Black screen of death. Windows strikes again.

It boots up, Vista logo appears and then monitor goes to sleep saying no video. It hangs when started in safemode and now I'm busy going through all the various options. Right now, I'm telling it to repair itself and it's telling me that it will take over an hour just to check out the disk. Good job this is a surplus machine nowadys.

Yup, different architectures are awkward and never work right together. On the plus side, Linux is coming along quite nicely of late, so by Windows 11 BUYONLYFROMUS edition, you should be able to migrate over fairly easily

 

[Foxbat]

Victory!
Had to do a repair before able to boot up in safe mode, only to be met with the same problem again. But then I remembered that I'd gone back to the original, older video card. So I thought, put the one in that's caused the problem, go to control panel and uninstall its drivers. I had to do another repair before getting back into safemode and was about to uninstall but thought, sod it, one last try. I rebooted with the new video card and drivers still installed and it came back working fine.

As Toyah Wilcox said a long time ago..it's a mystery

Edit: yes, Linux is looking more attractive by the day.

 

[.matthew.]

May I suggest installing it either on one of your older machines or as a dual boot system somewhere (that's what I've done). That way you can play around with it and see what's what (as you seem to understand how to work on computers it wouldn't be hard for you to manage). You can also have it run from a USB stick either as a full system or in a nice little plug and play demo mode (which is basically the full system).

 

[Brian G Turner]

For a very short time I was running Ubuntu through VMware, but then the install stopped working. I figured it was a problem with the VMware software itself, though.

 

[Elckerlyc]

Yep, that's how I started with Linux too. First had it run from an USB stick, later as a second OS. Dual boot works fine, as long as you install Windows first and Linux as second. It won't work the other way round, because narcissistic Windows will blindly erase any previous OS or data it encounters on your harddisk.
Right now I have a dual trio boot with several versions of Linux, with Windows7 running (when needed) in VM VirtualBox, next to DOSBox (for when I feel nostalgic.)
Which, I admit, has little to do with PC clocks running fast.

For a very short time I was running Ubuntu through VMware, but then the install stopped working. I figured it was a problem with the VMware software itself, though.

I have Win7 and WinXP running through VMWare. I regularly make a backup, but it is running nicely for 3 years now.

 

[Foxbat]

May I suggest installing it either on one of your older machines or as a dual boot system somewhere (that's what I've done). That way you can play around with it and see what's what (as you seem to understand how to work on computers it wouldn't be hard for you to manage). You can also have it run from a USB stick either as a full system or in a nice little plug and play demo mode (which is basically the full system).

A good idea. I can put the older video card into my XP machine and then either do a wipe or set up a dual boot system.

I didn’t realise you could run it from USB...I’ll have to check the BIOS because I think a lot of older machines aren’t capable of booting from USB. But if it is capable, that’s something I’d like to try

 

[.matthew.]

A good idea. I can put the older video card into my XP machine and then either do a wipe or set up a dual boot system.

I have mine running full time on a cheapo random brand laptop so it should work on pretty much everything. I use Ubuntu myself but been meaning to try Mint (meant to be much closer to a Windows experience). There are also less resource-hungry builds but I doubt you'd need to bother with them.

If you end up doing a full install (which you can do directly from the 'demo' with just a few clicks to set up a partition dual boot) you can also install Wine which will let you run most Windows programs through a sort of shell - PlayOnLinux is a simple frontloader for Wine to make the whole install process for new software painless as well. Since this is a writing forum, I've tried both Quoll and Scrivener through this and both work perfectly - with a little oddity to the file management. Things like GIMP have Linux versions that work right out the box too.