Wednesday, July 08, 2015

Cat surprised by cucumber

I don't think this is the original upload of this video but I've had an enormous amount of computer problems and just don't have the time to search for it.


YouTube link.

16 comments:

Elena said...

Hey np. The video is still great.

arbroath said...

Thanks, Elena!

lukus said...

Ahhh, the old cucumber surprise.

Ratz said...

Dare I ask what're the computer problems? This probably isn't the right medium to convey help, but I'm more than willing to listen then scratch my head.

arbroath said...

It's ageing and ailing, Ratz.

A bit like myself.

A lot of websites now make it whir like a low-flying aircraft and it's forever just jamming up.

Then sometimes I have to restart it many, many times because the screen goes all dark just after Windows has loaded.

I'm desperately trying to nurse it until Windows 10 is released as I purchased a Windows 8.1 laptop not so long ago and that's a useless pile of shite.

Incidentally, I wasted the best part of two hours yesterday trying to solve the problem of really struggling to scroll up and down my bookmarks. I ran all sorts of anti virus and anti malware programmes. Completely reset my browser - and all the associated putting it back as I like it. System restored, disk fragmented etc. etc. All to no avail.

Eventually, I sussed out the culprit. It was yesterday's f*cking Google doodle using up over 80% of the CPU.

Barbwire said...

May your computer keep working until Windows 10 arrives!

arbroath said...

Thank you, Barbwire!

Ratz said...

arbroath: If you think 8.1 is bad, you should have tried 8. I work in IT but actually had to google to find out how to shut the damned thing down without using the power switch. Oh, put your mouse in the bottom corner of the screen, where there isn't an icon or anything even hinting your mouse should go there, wait 'till something scrolls out from the side (where there also wasn't anything there). pick the cog, pick the power icon. FFS, it was like playing a Lucas Arts game written by a goldfish. Click on every pixel until something happens.

I don't suppose your PC is just hankering for more RAM? If it's the hard disk is thrashing whilst you're just looking at web pages it could just be running low on memory and hammering the pagefile instead. (If you've got a 32-bit OS though, it doesn't really matter how much RAM you've got, it'll only be able to use about 3.5GB of it).

arbroath said...

Yes, I heard about the original Windows 8.

I've added to relevant software to make Windows 8.1 appear like Windows 7, but that isn't the problem.

It's the incessant background 'maintenance'.

If I leave it idle for a couple of minutes, some form of apparently necessary 'maintenance' begins.

I keep switching this off at the Task Scheduler but it keeps turning itself back on and 'maintaining'. Even immediately after I've run a full maintenace 'thing'.

It makes it virtually unusable. I'll be reading something then as I try to scroll down the page it'll freeze, because it's 'maintaining' something or other.

As I said previously, it's a useless pile of shite.

My Windows 7 computer has 4GB of RAM and it's a 64-bit.

Ratz said...

Arbroath: I have a win8.1 computer from work that was absolutely crippled in a similar manner. A relatively decent spec, but it shat itself and was unusable several times a day. I'm afraid I didn't bookmark what I did to un-knacker it, but it's actually pretty usable now. I'll have a hoke and see if I can find what's I did.

On a different note, for your Win7 machine, do you have a particular model of machine (or motherboard type)? I can have a hoke through the pile of parts in work on the offchance I can send you some RAM.

arbroath said...

Cheers, Ratz!

To be honest, I think my Windows 7 computer is terminal. It's seven-years-old and it's probably time to get a new one.

One that isn't Windows 8.1!

Ratz said...

Arbroath: I also had to disable "superfetch" it's supposed to be able to predict what applications you're next going to want and loads them into memory based on the time of day and your past history of using them. In short, it just buggered around using 100% of my disk bandwidth leaving my computer unusable for minutes at a time. If you have a solid state drive, it's supposed to disable itself, but it didn't and took a fair amount of arsing about to make sure it stayed off: http://www.thewindowsclub.com/disable-superfetch-prefetch-ssd

arbroath said...

Many thanks for that, Ratz!

I'll have a play around with it later.

arbroath said...

I've just had a proper read of that article and it says it's not recommended for non-solid state drives.

I think my laptop just has a 'normal' hard drive, so it's probably best I don't mess with that.

Thanks again!

Ratz said...

Bother, that was the thing that actually gave me a usable Win 8.1 machine again :\

arbroath said...

Not to worry.

Thanks again for your help.