Subj : Re: What to do with a gia To : Barry Martin From : Ky Moffet Date : Mon Sep 14 2020 16:49:00 BARRY MARTIN wrote: > KM> for the same net horsepower. And since it's a Xeon and I've > KM> already used Xorro as a name, it became Fireball, as in XL-5 > KM> (it's fast, it has an X, isn't logic wonderful? :) > > But Zorro on TV spelt his name with a 'Z'! Much fancier to go slash- > slash-slash than swoosh-swoosh!! Well do I remember the TV Zorro... Xorro is a Xeon. Now if they'd named the CPU Zeon instead..... > KM> And then we had a HUGE argument getting any Windows before Win10 > KM> to install. > > It hasn't learned 'new and improved' isn't always so. Evidently not!! > KM> The Lenovo board has an embedded Win10 license. (It shipped with > KM> Win7; how it acquired this is a mystery. Maybe that "free" > KM> upgrade.) It LOVES Win10. I do not. Win10 is what sent me > KM> screaming off to linux. Win10 ate my old external HD. Win10 is on > KM> my $#!+ List. > > Yes, that does seem a bit odd: has a license for Windows 10 though using > and running Windows 7. I'd probably wipe Windows all together and > install Linux (here Ubuntu), though probably try for dual booting as I am long cured of dual booting, especially outside one's species. Win7 maybe, and Win10 definitely rewrites the boot sector every time you switch OSs, and whether it'll respect GRUB and leave it alone... I have doubts, considering it won't even respect a cousin Windows. Only reason I have a couple multiboot Windows setups is cuz they were supposed to be experimental, and there's nothing so permanent as a temporary camp. But even then it's a nuisance, and a risk every time you switch OSs. (Also Windows no longer respects being told to stick to a given drive letter, but instead wishes to always be C:, which changes everyone else's drive letters every time one switches OSs.) Well, I might multiboot linux only, provided none of 'em was of the Ubuntu family... having learned that unstable GRUB is a feature there. (Or why there exists an Ubuntu-specific GRUB fixit disk. Which also works on Mint.) Not sure if the fault goes back further to Debian. It may be fixed, by what I've read, but it was a known problem a couple years ago. Which having run into it twice in short order, is why I no longer have a Mint setup. (And I could trigger it reproducibly: just LOOK in the video resolution settings. Look, don't touch. Next boot, GRUB reliably commits seppuku.) > some things do need Windows. (Wonder how one can keep Win 7 from > upgrading?) I dunno... none of mine has attempted it. Then again, I tend to make updating manual or turn it off entirely. BTW first thing XP64 on Silver did is download 1.2GB of updates!! and I was like, WTF. Didn't we get told that ended years ago? Win7 still gets updates too, mostly for Windows Defender but occasionally other stuff. > KM> Win8.1 Enterprise would not install. Win8 Embedded installs, but > KM> runs very poorly, and is very annoying. (Enterprise, which came > KM> to me on a freebie laptop, evidently has had considerable > KM> behavior modification, as it is much more polite than the > KM> consumer edition.) > > 8.1 may have been tweaked for business before being released -- "we can > piddle off the consumer but better not the business customer!". Evidently so. It's actually quite pleasant and well-mannered. (Except that it will completely hog any internet connection it sees. Unlike XP and Win7, which gracefully share with everyone else.) At least, once you install Classic Shell and a less eye-searing theme. I used it all summer while I was painting the rental house, as that laptop has very good wireless that could reach that far, and it was very stable. Wasn't going to keep it given how much I disliked Win8, but... it sat up and begged. Tho I still hate what they did with Explorer, starting in Vista and completely trashed by the time it reached Win10. Unfortunately NO alternative I've tried has quite done it for me, and I live in the file manager... > KM> Win7 would not install, tho a portable Win7 install runs fine. > KM> (Not sure why this Win7Ultimate of uncertain provenance is > KM> portable, but it is. Just stick it in anything, and it runs.) > > So a permanent Windows 7 won't work but a temporary one will! Wonder of > the 'permanent' version is designed for a specific brand such as HP and > so is missing anything Acer needs whereas the portable version has or > can get all manufacturers. Oh, I tried those too. No improvement. Could not find a Lenovo-specific ISO, it's no longer available for download from them, and so far no one has uploaded it to any of the Usual Suspects. Also tried "Black" (fan-generated Win7) and no joy. The problem is that the I/O controller is too newfangled (both its UEFI and having that additional SAS controller), and requires specific drivers slipstreamed into the install media, PLUS two different drivers tacked on during the install. Except only one works; the other download (from Lenovo) is corrupted. To be fair, the pile of i5/i7 laptops someone gift me are equally cranky about older Windows... Black will install but won't stay activated. Win10 thinks it's activated (no one did so) on some of 'em and not on others, which I take to be a flaw in its hardware hash mechanism. (They all came with it. Will only stay on the more agreeable specimens... two already have PCLOS instead. They need more RAM to be really useful, most having only 4GB. And right now RAM prices are pretty durn high.) > KM> Better than on Silver, actually, where it's decided NVMes are not > KM> in its future. > > I haven't played with them yet. SSDs, yes. This one is my first. It needs the Storport patch from Microsoft, and an OS-specific driver. Which worked fine on XP64, and not at all on Win7. Holy crap, I've never seen Windows do an autorevert like THAT before... cycled through a bunch of angry screens and finally did a full system restore... it was VERY unhappy... Well, we won't try THAT again!! http://doomgold.com/pcstuff/NVMe.rar Storport patch and the OpenFabrics drivers. (The one with no OS specified in the name is for XP.) ....tho Win7 also has trouble hanging onto the vidcard driver on that box (XP has no such problem, and neither does Win10). About half the time when Win7 wakes up from Sleep (or hibernation, haven't checked which it's doing), it has the resolution set down a notch, and you have to tell it "Detect Screen" to make it reset. I have a suspicion the mainboard, or at least the chipset, is just a fraction too new for Win7, tho that doesn't explain why XP64 likes it just fine. And why Win7 runs perfectly on the other i7 of about the same age. (Different chipset, not as fancy. But same era.) Speaking of hibernation -- on XP it does not work if you have more than 4GB RAM and it's using PAE. You can still Sleep, but not Hibernate. > Reminds be of the headaches I had with the install of Ubuntu 18.04 on > this system because of a faulty memory module! And didn't help this was > my first time trying to use UEFI so didn't know also needed a 'special' > partition. Ouch. Yeah, one of those things we learn by deleting it. > And speaking of NAS, probably going to build one here as the pre-built > device I'm using is no longer supported, plus was running short on The only prebuilt NAS I have is so old it maxes out at a pair of 120GB HDs. And tho the hardware appears to work, I could not get the software to work (browser-based). Oh well... > storage -- deleted some old-old stuff and took care of that problem! > FreeNAS, Amahi, etc. are considerations for the new NAS. ExplainingComputers lately demo'd building a NAS from a Pi, which was quite interesting. I forget which of the several options he used as the OS, but it wasn't real difficult. Or at least he explains well!! > It's just toying with your mind! Unfortunately I haven't played with > the NVMe's yet so I can't help there. > Very freakin' fast, that's for sure. But anything that requires an OS level driver just to be seen at all, I can't really trust -- how do you access the files if the OS is nowhere to hand? So its function will be basically very fast scratch space for crap that needs speed, like VM images and Mail files (and browser cache, far as it can be set -- when I can't set the location, I turn it off entirely because otherwise it fragments the disk way too much). And I should try moving the swapfile there (not that it should ever touch it with 32GB RAM, but some very dumb software, like anything Adobe, requires swapfile is present, or it won't run). > KM> Well, I guess I just swap their OSs. And get to use my preferred > KM> XP for everyday. > > When life gives you lemons.... .....find a lemon catapult and throw them back!! > KM> Unless someone can show me how to get linux to gracefully allow > KM> network access to its precious hard drives... PCLOS runs lovely > KM> on both of 'em, but it's very annoying to be stuck with only ONE > KM> network drive that it will access (I don't know how I did that, > KM> either) and refusing to let anyone else see its own naughty bits. > > I'm using VNC here but limited experience. Have been going from this > system to a couple of the Raspberry Pi's. Have been able to do > read/write of their SDcards, which I suppose is similar to a hard drive > over a network. I've been told it's easier to set up by using the device's IP address (192.168.x.x) BUT you still have to do each one manually. I must have 40 shares in Windows (counting stuff that's not usually running but has an ID on the network), so that's not really a satisfactory solution. I want to just be presented with a list of available shares and click to go, same as I do in Windows! > ..Right_click, Properties, Local Network Share tab. More for a > specific directory than the hard drive in total. Whereas I usually want to share the whole disk. Cuz they're my files, dammit, I will show them to anyone I like! > KM> Oh... and never ever not EVER change the "use optimized defaults" > KM> setting on a Lenovo. If it ain't broke, don't touch it. You Have > KM> Been Warned. If you change it (hoping to fool the desired OS into > KM> installing, because Lenovo Support suggested looking at this > KM> setting) and if your vidcard is not BRAND FREAKIN' NEW, you will > KM> experience an apparently-bricked system, until you try a BRAND > KM> FREAKIN' NEW vidcard out of sheer desperation. (Well, new enough > KM> to know newfangled BIOS stuff, anyway.) Per Lenovo Support, the > KM> function comes factory-preset to Do Certain Settings, and if it > KM> disagrees with any bit of hardware, the result Does Not Work. > > "Optimized" seems to mean "best results with the original way we shipped > it". Exactly!! and all that's left of the original is the motherboard... > KM> And how was YOUR day? :D > > Apparently better than yours! > You shoulda seen my day when I thought the damn thing had bricked itself... was just about to No More Lenovos Ever. > .. To be, or not to be. *BOOM!* Not to be. 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