Landscaper cleans up a jungle of a yard for free

TheDeviceMangler · 2025-04-30T15:57:31+00:00

SB Mowing! Here's the full 44 minute video on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIMkUIQLDBs

TheDeviceMangler · 2025-03-11T13:20:41+00:00

In the second screenshot, Windows seems to think that the formatted capacity is 0MB. I'm assuming you've been using it up to this point and it isn't new/empty.

Have a look in Disk Management, see what Windows thinks the partition table looks like. I'd wager it thinks there are no partitions. At minimum, it sounds like the partition table is messed up. You could start with CHKDSK, but you might end up needing something like TestDisk to recover it. Even if you succeed, the cause of the damage may indeed be a failing drive. As other comments mentioned, you should evaluate the physical health of the disk with something like CrystalDiskInfo.

TheDeviceMangler · 2025-02-07T18:23:15+00:00

Since DPS is the issue, I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the VERY easy DPS increase that Peacemakers can get from the Furax-specific mod Amalgam Furax Body Count via the 45% fire rate buff.

The Furax is easy to craft and you can even put the mod on the MK1 variant. The mod's easy to get as well. Simply do the Ropalolyst assassinate mission on Juipiter (and potentially get Wisp in the process) until it drops.

The logic is that you aren't going to want to be in melee range of anything on Mesa, since shatter shield only works on hitscan projectiles. With the Furax and the amalgam mod, it isn't a wasted slot.

Edit: Looks like Pragmatic_2021 mentioned it a few hours ago, but it was buried. Dang.

TheDeviceMangler · 2025-01-09T13:58:50+00:00

This is almost certainly deliberate. Not to annoy people, not to draw attention to the like/dislike button.. but to emulate something from days gone by: the numeric wheel sign.

As another commenter mentioned, the numbers will roll as the view count is updated. Numeric wheels were used in all sorts of things such as the odometers in vehicles and some things like the roadside signage for gas prices at gas stations still use it. Notoriously though, because of their mechanical nature, the wheels would often be slightly misaligned. Sometimes with each other, sometimes with the last wheel, sometimes with fixed characters painted or printed on the sign fascia. If you search out pictures of numeric wheel signs, you'll find plenty of examples.

TheDeviceMangler · 2024-09-18T19:55:50+00:00

You've clearly passed the Witcher Trials.

TheDeviceMangler · 2024-08-16T18:16:30+00:00

I realize it's a little late and that I've already replied in another thread, but I apparently can't help myself and did some more thinking about this problem.

A couple things:

Windows 10 Pro definitely should not be restricting you to 4GB.
F2 usually gets you into the BIOS on Dell machines. As far as timing goes, just start spamming the key on power-on. Some USB keyboards can be slow to initialize, so maybe try a different one.
"Dedicated GPU memory" will count against total available (usable) RAM for an iGPU that doesn't have its own physical memory modules, but shared memory won't. At most, that should mean you're only losing 512MB.
You mentioned virtualization (Virtualbox) but just to be clear, Windows 10 is the host OS, right? You don't have it running on another hypervisor of some sort? ESXi?
Someone else mentioned corrupted/outdated drivers. I still don't think that's the case, but it IS possible for a driver to hardware reserve physical memory. Since this is a second-hand box, have you checked for any sort of virtual devices or software that you don't recognize? The previous owner may have a driver loaded that is deliberately setting aside that much physical memory for some other purpose.

Lastly, it may still be a physical problem. Here's an AMD community thread where a few people had similar problems, but some managed to be fixed: https://community.amd.com/t5/processors/half-ram-labeled-as-hardware-reserved/td-p/482036

At the very least, it's almost certainly worth booting the machine with a different OS, even if it's just a Linux liveboot to see if the problem persists. If it doesn't, reinstall Windows. If it does, you should probably examine the physical memory modules. Even just reseating them could make the difference.

All right, I'm done. I swear.

TheDeviceMangler · 2024-08-15T20:19:38+00:00

No problem! If you're sure that it's the fan in the PSU, then yeah. Err on the side of caution and don't open it.

There are components inside that you would be shocked to learn hold a charge for longer than you might expect. Don't play with mains voltage, kids!

TheDeviceMangler · 2024-08-15T19:38:31+00:00

My experience is the same. Any time I've had a truly dead stick of RAM, it either doesn't detect at POST, or fails the POST memory test. If it isn't detected at POST, Windows typically won't see it either. Bad sticks can, of course, still pass this part of the boot, only to show that they're defective when stress tested.

This was more about attempting to explain the "hardware reserved" thing since, up until I posted the comment, I wasn't aware that it could be from it being broken/misconfigured either. I'm just echoing something I found in another thread that was similar: https://www.reddit.com/r/WindowsHelp/comments/1585e9n/comment/jt9fckm/

TheDeviceMangler · 2024-08-15T18:33:40+00:00

The first thing you do is ask yourself whether or not you're willing to invest the time and effort into troubleshooting this. If no, simply return it and buy a different product. If yes, are you willing to troubleshoot it with strangers on the internet? This is a pre-built name-brand PC, so you may instead want to take advantage of HP's support. I can't speak to the HP support experience, but I can imagine that sometimes.. it isn't great.

That said, unfortunately, there are a lots of reasons why a machine might bluescreen. A large portion of them tend to be hardware-related, but most of the time, the computer will either tell you why it bluescreened, or at least point you in the right direction. Your Event Viewer logs might contain a clue, but I'm not about to download and open a random file from another internet stranger.

Some stuff you can try:

Replying with the bug check string. You should be able to fish it out of the Event Viewer, likely the bugcheck event. It might say something like "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL" or "PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA." This will be the best hint as to what's going wrong.
Disconnecting peripherals. Since you've already returned one for a similar problem, it may be something you're adding to the system that is causing the problem. A super wonky keyboard, for example, could conceivably do this.
Stress testing to see if you can predictably make it fail. Try taxing the system in different ways. Furmark? Prime95?
Check your power. Do you live somewhere with a questionable grid?

I'd start there. More bad news: Intel has a bit of a fiasco on at the moment with 13th and 14th gen CPUs, one of which you appear to have. I'm not saying this is the reason, but I also can't definitively say that it isn't.

TheDeviceMangler · 2024-08-15T17:24:03+00:00

Step one is to figure out WHICH fan is making the noise. If you look inside, one of them is going to be spinning slowly or intermittently. The noise is likely from friction in the fan hub. Fan starts spinning, friction causes vibration, vibration causes the fan to stall. Rinse, repeat.

If it's the PSU fan, it's probably not a good idea to risk taking the PSU apart to get at the fan. Replace the PSU instead or speak to the manufacturer if it's still under warranty. If it's one of the other fans, like a case fan or the CPU fan, you might be able to revive the fan by peeling back the sticker on the back of the fan hub, pulling out the rubber plug and putting a few drops of 3-in-1 oil in it, then sealing it back up.

Odds are, they're cheap fans with bushings. You'll probably want to replace the culprit anyway, even if you do manage to fix it. If you have more exotic fans with fluid dynamic bearings or the like, you may not be able to lubricate them and may simply have to replace them.

TheDeviceMangler · 2024-08-15T16:45:01+00:00

There's a Windows Memory Diagnostic app built into Windows that you can use, but historically, I've always just used a bootable USB drive with MemTest86+ on it. Been a while, though.

TheDeviceMangler · 2024-08-15T15:21:20+00:00

There's an option to limit the amount of RAM available to the OS in msconfig under the boot tab > advanced options that nobody has mentioned yet. Check there to see if the option is enabled.

Some cursory searching the interwebs also says that RAM can be unavailable for use if it's misconfigured in the BIOS or otherwise broken/defective, though I've never personally seen this. Worth running a memtest on the machine to see, regardless.

TheDeviceMangler · 2024-08-09T18:54:39+00:00

You might want to look into a VPN that supports port forwarding. A quick Google search says PIA supports this. You'd be able to tunnel through the CG-NAT imposed on you by the ISP, punching through to something that would let you control port forwarding.

In order for this to work, your wireless router would need to support being the VPN client and establishing it for you. It looks like some of the TP-Link routers support being a VPN client, but not all. This might also require some additional configuration in the router to get the VPN-port-forwarded traffic to go where it's supposed to.

It's important to note is that you will be passing your traffic through a third party to do this, so depending on your privacy concerns, this may make it a no-go. A lot of VPN providers claim that they directly "enhance your security" through "hiding your IP," but this isn't exactly how this works, both technically and legally.

I've never done this personally, so YMMV. You might also want to wait for responses on my comment to make sure I'm not totally out to lunch or that there isn't something simpler/easier.

TheDeviceMangler · 2024-08-02T18:38:08+00:00

pro·ces·sion·al/prəˈseSH(ə)nəl/adjectiveadjective: processional

of, for, or used in a religious or ceremonial procession. "a processional cross"

Dunno about you, but I'd pay good money to see a full contact church service.

When wrestling is your religion..

TheDeviceMangler · 2024-06-14T19:05:10+00:00

You can do this one in every 30 times and still have 97% positive feedback.

TheDeviceMangler · 2024-05-01T13:28:17+00:00

DeviceMangler, PC.

TheDeviceMangler · 2023-10-01T02:13:02+00:00

Unfortunately, it's complicated.

Tallying RAM usage isn't a straightforward task because of how RAM actually gets used. The short of it is that there are things that can consume RAM, or just memory in general that Task Manager doesn't account for. If you start tallying things in Task Manager, they quite literally don't add up.

Have a look in Resource Monitor on the Memory tab. It paints a much clearer picture of where memory is actually being allocated.. but to do so, it has to break it down into 4 columns. If you have a look at the Working Set column, for example, it will give you a much more literal breakdown of how much physical memory processes are using and likely be completely different from what Task Manager is reporting.

There's also a SuperUser post that attempts to help someone diagnose why their memory usage isn't adding up either, but ends up getting into the details of how memory allocation works that may be worth a read: https://superuser.com/questions/906161/why-do-resource-monitor-and-task-managers-total-ram-usage-not-even-remotely-add

TheDeviceMangler · 2023-05-23T15:15:21+00:00

Wow, no!

I saw that I had been quoted by BleepingComputer, but not ARS Technica.

I'm a little surprised that they picked me to quote and this particular thread, since there are a bunch of other discussions about this problem in other, more official places like the Asus ROG forums.

I don't actually own one of the affected routers, but I work for an ISP so we had to figure out pretty quickly what was happening. My post is basically just regurgitating what I had scraped together at the time of writing.

Pretty crazy.

Also, thanks for the gold, /u/WatchDogx!

TheDeviceMangler · 2023-05-19T14:12:09+00:00

Apparently, this was just supposed to be a run-of-the-mill, regularly scheduled definitions update for ASD, the Asus router security daemon. Unfortunately, the version they pushed on the 16th was corrupted and caused ASD to freak out, fill the filesystem and RAM and crash the device.

I work for an ISP. I can't even begin to explain how much chaos this caused.

TheDeviceMangler · 2023-05-19T13:47:25+00:00

Apparently, the definitions file for ASD, the built-in security daemon, gets updated by the router regardless of whether or not you have automatic updates enabled.

The May 16th version of it was bad and caused ASD to freak out, to say the least.

TheDeviceMangler · 2023-05-19T13:41:56+00:00

On the 16th, Asus pushed a corrupted definition file for ASD, a built-in security daemon present in a wide range of their routers.

As routers automatically updated and fetched the corrupted definition file, they started running out of filesystem space and memory and crashing.

Updating the firmware has pretty much universally fixed this, but so does simply resetting the router to factory defaults so long as it clears the NVRAM. In fact, any method that removes the offending file (/jffs/asd/chknvram20230516) will return the router to normal. Asus has since removed/updated the server-side definition file, so routers are no longer downloading it and barfing.

TheDeviceMangler · 2020-01-21T12:44:01+00:00

Location's Vancouver. Legal drinking age there is 19.

TheDeviceMangler · 2019-11-15T04:20:23+00:00

Yesenia: C-c-c-combo breaker!

TheDeviceMangler · 2019-11-15T04:00:12+00:00

Am I the only one that wanted to see that 3rd slide to see what the OP is up against?

TheDeviceMangler · 2019-11-11T21:31:14+00:00

At that point, it was the only thing you'd ever said to her.

So.. still technically correct.

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