Tech Corner

[MattW35 151]

I had an OS update not too long ago, and I keep getting GPU crashes, especially when playing Forza H6. I reinstalled AMD drivers twice, yet still the game crashes.. Hopefully, a future Microsoft update can fix the issue.

 

[jaylach34 151]

I had an OS update not too long ago, and I keep getting GPU crashes, especially when playing Forza H6. I reinstalled AMD drivers twice, yet still the game crashes.. Hopefully, a future Microsoft update can fix the issue.

Ya, quite a while back I had a similar issue but not really the same. As you say that your issue was game related it would tend to indicate a video driver issue that was later fixed.

 

[jaylach34 151]

I figure the first thing that I will do is get to safe mode. I'll have to be quick as I only have a few minutes before the thing goes comatose. For such tweaks I use WinAero Tweaker. I'll download on my main and save to a flash drive. Then I will port to the Surface system and install. Restart to give me more minutes and use the tweaker to add safe mode options to the the desktop right click context options. I will also enable the option to install software in safe mode which would include the ability to do driver updates in safe mode.

Oh, I THINK that getting to safe mode includes the ability to use system restore. system restore would likely cure an update issue but I'm not sure if system restore is enabled on the system.

 

[jaylach34 151]

Thought of another thing I need to try with my Surface. Need to go to the BIOS and reset to default. Some months ago an update messed up my main system to where it would go into a boot loop. Reset the BIOS to default and all was good.

Haven't done anything yet. Well, actually, I just powered it up and logged in. Just out of curiosity I want to see if it will come out of its coma if I let it sit for a while.

 

[jaylach34 151]

Surface seems to be back up and has been running for over an hour without locking.

Don't ask why but I decided to disable TPM and Secure Boot in the BIOS and it worked. I'll go back to the BIOS eventually and turn back on one at a time to see which was the actual cause.

 

[MattW35 151]

If it works it works

I’m having issues with parents pc at the moment. Blackscreens and chrome keeps messing up. Reinstalled chrome but had to remove avast as they didn’t comply with each other. As for the black screens I’ve done a number of troubleshoots and it looks to be a memory issue. Currently running WMDT and it seems one of the sticks may be on its last legs, bit of a pain as its 2 sticks of 8gb 3200.. DDR4 prices are still ridiculous, even 2nd hand especially when on a budget.

 

[jaylach34 151]

If it works it works

I’m having issues with parents pc at the moment. Blackscreens and chrome keeps messing up. Reinstalled chrome but had to remove avast as they didn’t comply with each other. As for the black screens I’ve done a number of troubleshoots and it looks to be a memory issue. Currently running WMDT and it seems one of the sticks may be on its last legs, bit of a pain as its 2 sticks of 8gb 3200.. DDR4 prices are still ridiculous, even 2nd hand especially when on a budget.

Ya, I suspected that it might be a resource issue so removed a micro SD card I use for data and disabled TPM and Secure Boot. SD card is back in and it still seems OK.

I'd pull one stick at a time to isolate which may be bad and run on just one stick if necessary. I'd also lose Chrome and switch to Firefox

 

[MattW35 151]

Doing 3 tests and currently on no.3. Two tests with 1 of each stick and 1 with both. Both so far have been a fail. And the unknown stick is under test now. Really hoping it passes! Hopefully a single stick is all I need to replace.

 

[jaylach34 151]

8 GB RAM should do unless you do a LOT of multi tasking. 4 GB is the minimum for Win 11 with 8 GB recommended. With one stick you may see some performance loss due to the loss of dual channel mode but you may not even notice.

 

[jaylach34 151]

Ya know... MS ticks me off. My Surface is compliant with Win 11 but my main isn't due to the CPU. Keep in mind that the Surface runs a lowly 4-core X7 series Atom CPU while my main runs an AMD Ryzen 7 8-core/16 thread CPU. Also the clock speed on the Atom is 1.6 GHz while the Ryzen in my main has a speed of 3.6 GHz. Just makes no sense to me.

 

[MattW35 151]

They do know how to push customers towards Linux It is a strange rule they've made. The funny thing is, my NUC keeps saying I need to upgrade to W11, but the CPU is also not compatible.. Maybe Microsoft wants to become the biggest company for creating e-waste

Also, one stick was the issue with the RAM. The PC can easily run on 8GB, but it's at just 45% on idle, so I'll look for another 8GB soon.

 

[jaylach34 151]

If you look at services and processes in Windows many are nor really needed. I fully admit that I'm not what I used to be when I shut down my business in 2009 but I'd bet dollars to donuts that I could drop your resource usage from the current 45% to 20%. Just don't use the automated bloat removers as they can often cause more harm than good. Wasn't you that quite a while back used one of these and lost your snipping tool and some other stuff? The problem with these apps is that you allow a removal but it will also remove a related .DLL file. Say that you allow and the snipping tool also needs the removed .DLL file. Snipping no longer works as the needed .DLL file is no longer there.

When I need to do such as the above I'll look at any service or process and see if it can safely be disabled. Ya, my way is tedious but MUCH safer for your system.

 

[seangee8 1]

Ha ha. It seems that Moore's law has not done with us yet.
We can't really blame MS as customer expectations increase and customers are not techies (and have no interest in learning, they just want stuff to work). When I set up my wife's business PCs she complained because I turned off the desktop widgets and she did not get force fed with the daily tabloid and weather feeds. My neighbours in their 80s just got a new (budget) Windows 11 laptop and love it. 8G is probably plenty for most home users.

After my hols I finally upgraded my laptop. Mostly because the old one struggled with the latest version of lightroom - I really don't need all the AI bells and whistles but users expect them. Also I changed my approach to my diving photos. I now turn my gopro on when I start blowing bubbles and leave it recording at 5.3k. I often get much better stills this way because I don't have to deal with shutter lag or the camera putting itself into power save mode, and save the still camera for macro work. But when you are reviewing 2-3 hours of 5k footage a day the old Dell just couldn't hack it.

I wanted to stick with small and light and find a decent balance between performance and price. So for a grand I got this
Computer: ASUS ASUS Zenbook 14 UX3405CA_UX3405CA
CPU: Intel Core Ultra 9 285H (Arrow Lake-H, A1)
3700 MHz (37.00x100.0) @ 1197 MHz (12.00x99.8)
- I was actually looking for Ryzen, but this was pretty much the best value for money deal going at the time!
Motherboard: ASUS UX3405CA
BIOS: UX3405CA.314, 11/20/2025
Chipset: Intel Arrow Lake-H PCH
Memory: 32768 MBytes LPDDR5 SDRAM @ 1596 MHz, 36-32-32-68
Graphics: Intel Arrow Lake-H - Integrated Graphics [ASUS]
Intel Arc 140T, 18881855 KB SDRAM
NPU: Intel Meteor Lake/Arrow Lake-U/H Neural Processing Unit (NPU2.7) [ASUS]
Intel NPU, 18750783 KB SDRAM
Drive: MTFDKBA1T0QGN-1BN1AABGA, 1000.2 GB, NVMe
Sound: Intel Arrow Lake-U/H PCH - cAVS (Audio, Voice, Speech)
Network: Intel Wi-Fi 7 BE201 320MHz
OS: Microsoft Windows 11 Professional (x64) Build 26200.8457 (25H2) (I upgraded this from home becasue I had a spare retail licence kicking around)

Perfomance difference is unbelievable and just 5ish years ago I paid twice as much for the Dell. As a trial I created a batch job to transcode 30 hours of video footage and it didn't even break into a sweat. (Ok if you know what that is , you will know that that's an all nighter so I did add lots of rest / cooling cycles into my batch.) I would not have dared to even try that on the Dell because at worst I would have cooked it, at best it would have been out of action, for any other use, for several days. I slimmed WIndows down enough that I never lost anything I need and typical RAM usage is about 6GB.

Interestingly yesterday I installed XUbuntu (minimal) onto an external sata SSD. Just a different approach - install the absolute minimum and add what you need, instead of install everything that consumers may want and then try to debloat the fat. That one ticks over at around 2GB of RAM.

 

[MattW35 151]

Well well well.. Microsoft or now Micro has broken drivers for thousands of AMD users. No GPU drivers are running correctly, and my OLED monitor is stuck at 60hz from 280hz. The only known workaround, according to Reddit, is a fresh install of Windows with no internet connection and running a 3rd party software to disable auto updates. I reckon it will take Microsoft a good few weeks before they wake up and fix it..

* Also, no games will launch, so my gaming PC has been relegated to a regular PC

 

[jaylach34 151]

No problem with my AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT GPU.

Right click on the Start button and select Device Manager. Uninstall the GPU drivers. Also look under Programs and Features for any video software such as AMD Adrenalin or likely just AMD software and uninstall. Reboot. Under display in Device Manager it SHOULD now show something like Generic SVGA. Download and install the proper drivers/software directly from AMD.com.

It is always best to get device drivers/software directly from the manufacturer. I'll be back after I do a fresh clone and install a preview update that shows. I'll let you know if anything changes.