Tag: Windows 10

When Windows 10 (or AVG, or Hard Drive Errors, etc.) Let You down

So back in the day, you knew it was a bad day when the head of the hammer came flying off after using it for decades hitting nails, or, way back in the day when your favorite axe did the same thing or worse, have the handle break on you, the very axe that helped you clear the “back 40” and now decades later “let you down”.

Well welcome to the 21st century, where a 4 or 5 year old laptop can do the same. Ain’t technology great?

So yesterday was supposed to be a relaxing day off but when the laptop I had been using (Lenovo G510 originally equipped with Windows 8) started making disk read error sounds (yes, nerds have an ear for that) I was like “I better attach my external drive for one last backup”. So I did that and then started tinkering with this PC.

The history on this PC is interesting, it was my wife’s (to replace the laptop she had prior to that, a 2008 Dell Inspiron, that I am using right now but with Linux Mint 19.0 (Tara) Operating Sysytem (OS) on it) until earlier this year when it kept rebooting on her for no reason and she was forever losing documents, etc. By then I had already took her files she had on there when it was a new Windows 8.1 laptop, placed them on an external drive and installed Windows 10 on it from SCRATCH.

So I got her a new Dell laptop with Windows 10 and I took over using it daily and was able to get a more stable Windows OS on it (version 1803) so I could use it as my primary PC for personal use. After yesterday’s experience, I had my doubts as to how long I was going to be able to trust this Win10 (1803) PC. THEN, after checking three times that morning I finally got this:

OK, so maybe THAT was why it was behaving so badly. It was like it would not admit there was an update coming BUT it was doing all kinds of things to the PC that made it practically unusable. I also checked the event log thinking that the CPU or memory was at fault and found some 55 second delays caused by “firmware” as well as some disk related errors, but it was rather hard to tell even for this nerd.

But today took the cake. While crafting a post earlier today I suddenly got this full screen message:

No one wants to see this message. So when it hits 100% and Microsoft has all their details .. then you can hit the power button and reboot. Until then the CPU fan is blazing away .. not sure what all the PC was doing in the background behind this curtain. I trust MS like I trust the government 🙂

So now I am transitioning to Linux OS for all my personal computer work. I have another 7 year old HP laptop that is prime material for becoming yet another Linux PC. Then there is the 4-5 year old Lenovo, and the question remains, can it be a trusted PC with Linux as the OS?

So my final test was to run CHKDSK (a 30 year old program) on the Win10 PC’s hard drive:

Results:

Even before it scanned it, Windows 10 said in effect “you really don’t have to do this”, because it was checking it all along.

So I guess this winter I will be “recycling” PCs, running the Linux version of CHKDSK on the hard drives BEFORE I place the Linux OS on them.

1st world problems I guess, there are days I would almost rather work out in the woods with an axe and build stuff with a hammer and sit by the fire and read books, but then I would not have a chance to share life with y’all!

Thank you for sharing your time with me as I vent about life 🙂

Take care my friends.

-SF1

Linux vs. Windows: Hardware, Software and Performance

Just a quick post about my own experience with older laptops. So this is not a professional review (disclaimer), but it does point out some possibilities.

In my last post along these lines, I was able to utilize an almost 10-year old laptop that had not booted up in years and convert it to a Linux laptop following some very easy online guidelines. Well I never thought I would be writing again so soon on this topic but just this morning comparing “apples to apples” (not iOS mind you) I found the Linux operating system giving PC hardware performance it had never seen in it’s lifetime.

Above, you will see that using Speedtest site as the standard:

  • almost 10-year old Linux laptop, a Dell Inspiron 1545, on the right proudly displaying results of > 20Mbps WiFi speed
  • a 6+ – year old Windows 1o laptop, a HP Beats Special Edition Model 15 P030NR Pavillion on the left struggling to obtain a result of 5Mbps.

Thinking somehow, as a scientific engineer does, that this is only an “n of 1” I decided to compare this Linux laptop to another Windows laptop side by side:

 

  • On the left is the 10-year old Linux Mint 19.0 laptop again showing > 20Mbps (this time in the same room as the Xfinity Cable Modem/WiFi)
  • on the right is the 4-year old Lenovo G510 laptop running Windows 10 struggling to maintain (and it doesn’t really do that) an average of 10Mbps.

[NOTE: This 2nd test is in a different room and so the two Windows 10 laptops probably perform about the same in the WiFi department.]

Now all three of these PCs utilize the 2.4Ghz WiFi from Xfinity and are not capable of the 5.0Ghz comms. Newer laptops can connect to the 5.0Ghz WiFi which has shorter range BUT in my experience, but a faster connection (short of a direct Ethernet connection to the cable modem)

My Motorola Z2 Force Smartphone (using the 5.0Ghz as well) performs like this:

Just to compare, same Windows 10 Lenovo on direct Ethernet from cable modem gives this kind of performance:

So there you have it. Linux brings out the best in PC hardware performance, at least in the WiFi department. In the weeks and months to come I may have more experiences that show what Linux can do with old Windows PCs.

That said, I am seriously considering installing Linux Mint as the OS on the 6-year old HP laptop since the battery in that is still in good shape (unlike the 10-year old Dell’s battery which is long gone).

I do hope that this inspires you to re-purpose some of those old computers that could easily have a 2nd life ..

-SF1

Being Pragmatic with Personal Computers – From Windows to Linux

Maybe it is my heritage DNA, but in some areas I tend to be pragmatic (strong beliefs, loosely held) when it comes to PCs, as well as a bit frugal in that I am not fond of throwing away something that has potential value.

Above you will see my wife’s old (vintage 2010) Dell PC that had been running Windows 7 when it finally would not load the OS maybe 2 years ago. We bought a replacement Lenovo PC that had Windows 8 on it in 2016 and earlier this year due to some Windows 10 frustrations we bought yet another PC, this one a Dell with Windows 10 on it “out of the box”.

All this to say that just a few minutes ago, on the Lenovo PC, that since my wife’s frustrations with reboots happening with no warning, CPU fan running hot because some Microsoft process (that does not always show up in Process Manager) is busy, or MS Photos is making an album that NO ONE asked for .. was killing my Hewlett Packard scanning software every 30 minutes. Come to find out, it is an W10 update that MS wants to push to my PC so bad that instead of telling me, it just upsets my PC to the point that I have to look for the root issue:

OK. So this happened on a PC that I had earlier this year placed a FRESH W10 OS on from scratch. What good is an unstable OS that prioritizes its agenda over the user’s?

Back to the pragmatic part, just this week I finally took at look at my wife’s oldest laptop (Dell vintage 2010) and tried to “repair” the OS. After a few days of being able to clean up the hard disk drive (HDD) from bad disk areas (using “chkdsk”) ..

.. I still was not able to repair the Windows 7 operating system enough to have it boot successfully. I was however able to navigate through the hard drive contents with DOS to ensure that there was nothing on this HDD that I did not already have somewhere else.

SO I decided to try and install Linux on this old PC and use Linux tools to identify/repair/ignore the bad spots on this old HDD. Having a background in UNIX from the 1990s and Linux since 2005 helps, but as you will see below, there are Internet resources that make this pretty much plug and play. The decision to go Linux is:

  1. There is NO costs (other than ones time) to try this (Windows requires payment for the OS whether you can use it or not)
  2. There is MUCH more control over WHEN or IF your PC get OS updates!

Following the information at this page, one has all the step necessary to put Linux on any PC that has 2GB RAM, functioning HDD and preferably a good USB port (instead of loading the OS via a DVD drive which is much more prone to errors):

From here I downloaded a few pieces of software to my existing W10 PC so I could created a boot-able USB stick .. one of which was Etcher which does the job like a champ:

Following the instructions it was great to see the old PC come back to life!

While I did have to accomplish some post installation fixes due to my defective HDD using Linux’s “fsck” tool, reloading the Linux Mint 19.1 OS one last time was a great milestone in “redeeming” this old laptop for future value.

After test driving this Linux laptop for a few months, I have another, newer W10 PC laptop that might be in line for this process.

A side-note, for those that might be resistant to break totally from Windows, there is a Linux package called “Wine” that will give you a Windows experience on your Linux PC. How is THAT for open-source marketing?

Again, this all might be part of my Dutch DNA, according to this slideshow about startups and the Dutch culture:

Enjoy the rest of your weekend y’all and back to more normal posting to come in the next few days after a round of some PC distrations.

-SF1