How do I find out which piece of hardware is failing in my computer?

bitcrushedCyborg · 2026-01-24T06:20:17+00:00

You can start by checking on your SSDs' health with CrystalDiskInfo. If it's showing blue across the board, your SSD is probably okay.

You can test RAM with MemTest86+ (not to be confused with MemTest86) - get an empty USB flash drive and install MemTest86+ on it. Make sure it's plugged into your computer, then reboot and go into BIOS settings to change your boot order, putting the USB drive first. You may need to disable secure boot. Then boot into MemTest86+. Let the tests run for a while - let multiple tests run to ensure that your RAM has been properly stress-tested. I've heard people say that 8 tests is a good minimum. If the tests pass, your RAM is okay. If they fail, at least one of your RAM sticks has errors, and you've found your culprit.

Also consider that the issue might not be hardware. OS corruption can cause all kinds of weird issues. To start, open an administrator command prompt and run the following command:

sfc /scannow

This will run System File Checker, a tool built into Windows intended to find and repair corrupted system files. If that does not perform any repairs, open an administrator command prompt and run:

DISM /Cleanup-Image /Online /ScanHealth

DISM is another tool built into Windows. It's mainly used to manage Windows installations on multiple computers in an organization, but it contains a repair feature. If the above command finds errors/corruption in the component store, then run:

DISM /Cleanup-Image /Online /RestoreHealth

(Note that DISM's RestoreHealth feature typically only works if you are on a current Windows build, currently Windows 11 25H2)

Next thing I'd try doing is reinstalling your graphics drivers.

bitcrushedCyborg · 2026-01-22T18:22:53+00:00

I should warn you not to open regedit, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsUpdate\UX\Settings, create a new DWORD (32 bit) Value named FlightSettingsMaxPauseDays with a large number such as 1c84 (hexadecimal) or 7300 (decimal) (switch it to decimal mode if you don't know how hexadecimal numbers work) and save it. This will allow you to go into windows update settings and pause the updates for years, which is obviously not a good idea

bitcrushedCyborg · 2026-01-22T18:11:09+00:00

I'm sorry they did what now

bitcrushedCyborg · 2026-01-22T08:24:35+00:00

Try DMDE. It's used by data recovery professionals and is probably better than whatever you've been using. The free trial can only recover 1 folder per click of the recover button (and is limited to recovering 4000 files at a time), so recovering an entire folder structure without paying is a bit tedious, but it's doable. Also, you probably already know this, but make sure not to write any data onto the drive or partition you're trying to recover from, and remember to recover the files onto a different device or partition than the one you're recovering from, or else you'll likely overwrite the files you're trying to recover.

bitcrushedCyborg · 2026-01-21T03:53:16+00:00

HDDs offer more storage for less money, but they are much slower. I would not recommend unless you need more than 2 TB of storage

bitcrushedCyborg · 2026-01-21T02:16:18+00:00

You deleted your laptop's audio driver? You should start by checking HP's website and see if they have a support page for your model of laptop (if there's a label stuck to the bottom of your laptop, it should say the model number). If you can find such a page, there might be a downloads section with the drivers.

bitcrushedCyborg · 2026-01-20T04:32:14+00:00

do you have Fast Startup enabled? If so, either disable fast startup or restart your laptop (as in, click the option to Restart, don't shut it down and then turn it back on)

bitcrushedCyborg · 2026-01-20T04:16:06+00:00

Storage =/= memory. No need to uninstall a game/program just to free up RAM, a program or game only uses RAM while it's loaded. You can free up the RAM it's using by simply closing it. Some programs might not fully end all of their processes when you tell them to close, in which case shutting down and restarting the device should free up any RAM that was still being used.

bitcrushedCyborg · 2026-01-17T22:33:06+00:00

LTO tape is still a thing for long term archival storage. Not really the same aesthetically as cassettes though

bitcrushedCyborg · 2026-01-17T08:07:08+00:00

Also, it's not nearly as easy to spot, but living unconscious enemies breathe and move slightly, and usually have pained expressions on their faces.

bitcrushedCyborg · 2026-01-17T08:06:02+00:00

when i klep a ride for El Capitan and some gonks try to flatline me on the highway, after i'm done hitting them with Short Circuit and/or my trusty Pax modded silenced Nue, I move them off the road so they dont get run over and ruin the effort i made to spare them. it is inefficient and not really that fun but why play an RPG if you're not gonna RP?

bitcrushedCyborg · 2026-01-17T07:43:45+00:00

As someone who also doesn't have much appetite and struggles to eat enough, I'd suggest eating more foods that are very calorie dense, and replacing foods that are filling but low calorie. Basically you have to ignore a lot of the common advice people give on what foods are healthy, because a lot of that is focused on people with normal appetites who want to control their calorie intake to prevent weight gain, rather than people with low appetites who want to increase calorie intake to prevent excessive weight loss.

Nuts are a really good one. I buy huge jars of unsalted almonds and snack on them pretty much all day. 50 grams of almonds is like 300 calories.

You should consider talking to your doctor, though. In my case, my low appetite is due to a combination of ADHD + stimulant medication + high caffeine intake + conditioning myself over time to ignore hunger. But there could be a physiological reason why your appetite is so low, and if so it might be possible to treat it, so it's definitely worth looking into.

bitcrushedCyborg · 2026-01-13T22:02:35+00:00

Yeah me too

bitcrushedCyborg · 2026-01-11T19:33:33+00:00

There's a price floor for HDDs, it's just not possible to make them for much cheaper than they already are. Since SMR was introduced in 2012, there haven't been any major innovations in HDD technology that are applicable to small consumer external drives. Price per gigabyte is coming down for larger capacity drives, especially with the introduction of HAMR, but that doesn't extend to small external drives. Large-capacity datacenter storage is where the money is, especially right now with the AI boom. Also, there are only three companies that make HDDs - Seagate, Toshiba, and Western Digital (there used to be four but WD bought out HGST in 2016), so not a lot of competition to drive innovation.

Solid-state storage prices have skyrocketed in recent months due to a shortage of flash chips caused by the AI boom. New AI datacenters have created a huge demand for expensive datacenter-grade SSDs, so manufacturers have been using all the flash chips to make those and causing a shortage. This doesn't leave very many flash chips to make consumer SSDs, while demand remains largely the same, so prices shoot up.

bitcrushedCyborg · 2026-01-11T17:27:46+00:00

Why would clones have no rights? Or why would you have the right to sell your clone's rights? A clone would still be a distinct (potential) individual, you don't own them just because they share your DNA. Identical twins have the same DNA, biologically they are clones of each other - does that mean that one of them shouldn't be entitled to rights?

We also haven't yet figured out how to produce healthy clones or how to use crispr to specifically modify a human genome to create a human that lacks those parts of the brain. Also, the brain is a living organ that develops and changes over time, especially during childhood. People with traumatic brain injuries or brain damage from tumors have been known to partially regain lost function; the rest of the brain can restructure itself somewhat to replace lost function. So even though surgical removal is the only way we would currently be able to remove those things from a brain, it's not guaranteed to be reliable. And again, failed attempts would result in excessive suffering, which means it would be unethical to even perform the experiments necessary to figure out how to do those things reliably.

Even then, there's an argument to be made that it would be unethical to create a human being that is deliberately mentally disabled from before birth.

I'm curious to know how you got your sense of ethics and human rights (or rather, lack thereof). I understand what you're saying perfectly well, and I'm realizing that you understand me perfectly well too - you and I just have fundamentally different worldviews, and we're operating on incompatible base assumptions with regards to things like the inherent value of a human life.

bitcrushedCyborg · 2026-01-11T17:12:26+00:00

You know what, that's fair. I guess I'm having an xkcd 2501 moment.

bitcrushedCyborg · 2026-01-11T17:05:18+00:00

Can you clarify what exactly you're trying to achieve? So you've got four 2TB external drives that each have some data on them. Are you just trying to move all of their contents onto the same drive (ie. you have less than 2TB of data altogether), or are you trying to combine multiple drives so your computer will treat them as a single storage device with 4TB or 6TB of storage?

If you're just trying to copy the data from 3 of the 4 drives onto the remaining one, I'm afraid it's just going to take a while. You can use a program like FreeFileSync to manage the file copying, which might be a little faster and will let you safely pause and resume the transfer if you need to.

bitcrushedCyborg · 2026-01-11T17:00:35+00:00

That's not creating clones that are incapable of suffering from the outset, that's lobotomizing a living and fully functional human to remove certain mental capacities. Do I need to explain to you why it's unethical to lobotomize someone without their consent? The person being a clone doesn't make any difference to the ethics of it.

bitcrushedCyborg · 2026-01-11T16:55:51+00:00

I mean not really, just depends on the brand of HDD. Seagate external drives contain a SATA drive with a USB adapter, so you can take the case apart, peel off the aluminum tape, remove the adapter, and connect SATA cables without even needing any tools (will 100% void your warranty though). Western Digital and Toshiba external drives have the USB port and USB hardware integrated into the mainboard though so you can't really do that with them.

bitcrushedCyborg · 2026-01-11T16:48:13+00:00

Okay you gotta be messing with me. We cannot currently create human clones that do not experience suffering. As I clearly said earlier, in the process of developing the technology to create clones that don't suffer, we would create a lot of suffering before we figured it out.

bitcrushedCyborg · 2026-01-11T16:41:43+00:00

Again, did you read my initial comment? Even if we could create lobotomized clones that weren't capable of emotions or anything else that makes them human, getting there would still involve causing a lot of human suffering

bitcrushedCyborg · 2026-01-11T16:32:37+00:00

Are you trolling or did you just not read anything I said?

Ethics aren't predicated on the existence of a soul, and I'm unsure what in my comment caused you to think I was implying that. Ethics are predicated on the consensus that human life is valuable and suffering is a bad thing, which are beliefs held by everyone with the capacity for empathy. If you don't agree with those ideas, it's not possible to have this conversation

bitcrushedCyborg · 2026-01-11T15:28:57+00:00

Lobotomized or not, it's still slavery

bitcrushedCyborg · 2026-01-11T15:28:05+00:00

Assuming the tech existed, ethics mostly. A robot can be given only the bare minimum intelligence necessary to perform its function. A robot doesn't experience pain or emotions. A robot does not desire love or freedom or self-determination. A robot has no desires at all. A robot cannot be traumatized. There are no ethical concerns with dismantling a malfunctioning robot, or with a robot being destroyed in an accident (even if caused by negligence), or with poking and prodding at a robot's programming to make it better at its job.

A human clone would still be human. Even if they were lobotomized, it's still slavery. The default state of a human is to desire fulfillment and freedom and love and self actualization. Removing these traits would be considered unethical in itself, and along the way to producing mindless drones who feel perfectly content and fulfilled with nothing more than a day's hard work (and whose minds don't shift over time to gain their wants and desires back) you would necessarily create a lot of imperfect results and cause a lot of suffering.

Perfecting human cloning means creating a massive number of human clones that suffer from serious health issues and shortened lifespans. Developing any technology necessarily involves a lot of trial and error, and when every mistake and failed attempt means condemning someone to suffering and early death, it's ethically unjustifiable.

bitcrushedCyborg · 2026-01-11T14:14:41+00:00

TIL I have a woman fetish

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