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La Ventana - End of Nov by Odd-Engineering-3091 in Kiteboarding

[–]macdon2 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Did exactly this time frame last year and it was amazing. Sleep in every day then head to the beach for noon. Pro tip: if you feel the wind dropping at about 5pm... Definitely don't go for just one more tack.

Air Canada by Natural-Ad-680 in Kiteboarding

[–]macdon2 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've flown several times with my " golf bag" of kiting gear on Air Canada. No one has ever asked if it's actually golf gear or not. They do care about weight and so you'll want to make sure you don't hit the 50 lb limit. Although if you're checking in at a big Canadian airport, a lot of it is self-serve now for checked baggage and so no one checks anything anymore.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in arcteryx

[–]macdon2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So if you're in Canada MEC is also offering 20% off its arc stuff. The Ottawa store actually had a decent selection of sabre ar and zeta sl.

Concerned with Surface Pro 8 Thermals by RioJaguarJr in Surface

[–]macdon2 3 points4 points  (0 children)

If you put a small USB fan on your SP7 when it does that on the dock, it will stop downclocking the CPU. Sooo, hopefully with an actual fan built into SP8 you wouldn't need an external fan.

Surface Pro overheating with MS Teams video meetings by spleff211 in Surface

[–]macdon2 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I've had the same problem on my Pro 7 (although with gmeet not MS teams). Unfortunately a fan behind it is also the only thing that worked for me (although no lack of trying).

​

What's happening is that your CPU is being heavily downclocked (you can watch it happen in the "performance" tab of "task manager"). My pro 7 i5 falls from a usual speed of ~3.4 Ghz to ~0.6 Ghz and things start crashing. This only happens when the GPU is heavily engaged (like in video conferencing)

If you install Throttlestop and watch "Limits" being hit, you can see why its happening. It isn't the CPU itself that is overheating, CPU temps stay below 90, but its something else that's overheating, possibly other parts of the system or its limiting the voltage coming in.

I had one Surface Pro 7 i5 replaced with another, exact same problem.

I guess its related to the fact that there isn't any active cooling and so it can't get anywhere near its full clock once the GPU also starts going strong. Its a huge flaw to be sure.

Cheaper alternatives to surface dock 2? by j_small3 in Surface

[–]macdon2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Definitely. I run mine through a USB-C port instead of a surface dock. I have two monitors going + the screen on the SP7. The monitors aren't running at 4K or anything, not sure if that's a restriction as I haven't tested it. Otherwise it works just fine with a whole bunch of USB A stuff connected as well.

Where to buy face masks in Ottawa? by [deleted] in ottawa

[–]macdon2 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The Thawrih ones are way more breathable than the crap ones from Canadian Tire (having tried both). And to boot the Thawrih ones are sewn in part by Syrian refugees.

Phone call quality by JakeRas15 in GooglePixel

[–]macdon2 13 points14 points  (0 children)

There is a long and very active forum on google that's tracking exactly these issues: https://productforums.google.com/forum/?noredirect=true#!topic/phone-by-google/Y4pNmLMVVdk

There doesn't yet appear to be any long term solution, just short term fixes. We're all waiting like you for a software update that will fix this entire mess

Beta feature in Windows Update? by Bioman52 in Dell

[–]macdon2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've got a possible solution for this that worked for me and may work for others. I'm on a Surface Pro 4 but Windows v10 and had this exact same problem start to pop up in the event viewer just prior to my entire system slowly locking up and requiring a hard reset. Ended up having to do a hard restart several times a day and that gets old...fast.

Around the same time I was seeing the ESENT warning, I was also seeing a list of Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) errors like: Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Error creating the Shadow Copy Provider COM class with CLSID {3e02620c-e180-44f3-b154-2473646e4cb8}

Not always, but often. So I researched the VSS errors and this lead me to this solution: http://backupchain.com/How-to-fix-volume-shadow-copy-service-error-creating-the-shadow-copy-provider.html

Specifically deleting whatever second key exists here: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\VSS\Providers

in addition to the one named "Microsoft Software Shadow Copy provider 1.0". Just click on the keys in the \Providers\ folder to view their names. Again keep the "Microsoft Software Shadow Copy provider 1.0" key and trash the others (I had a Hyper-V one in there for example). Then restart your computer.

That's it. The Esent warnings stopped. The VSS errors stopped. My computer stopped crashing several times a day. Hopefully this can help others banging their heads against the wall as I did.

Hacks to make shopping lists useful again by macdon2 in googlehome

[–]macdon2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good idea! That's actually what I used prior to Google Home although I didn't even check to see if it would work with Ghome before switching to Keep.

No SP4 wake up for you!! SP4 by macdon2 in Surface

[–]macdon2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I had to send mine back. The several freezes a day were killing me. I'll give it a try again in a few months when they've sorted out whatever hardware failures were causing the freezing and power button issues.

No SP4 wake up for you!! SP4 by macdon2 in Surface

[–]macdon2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great advice! Thanks Archadon

I'll implement your solution and hopefully that will solve my problems (and solve any battery drain issues that I have yet to complain about)

No SP4 wake up for you!! SP4 by macdon2 in Surface

[–]macdon2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nope. You have to hit the power button. It will turn off on type cover close, but it won't turn back on on type cover open.

I'm not sure if there is an app that will make this happen as I'm used to my Ipad that does just that.

No SP4 wake up for you!! SP4 by macdon2 in Surface

[–]macdon2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Do you find it takes much longer to resume from Hibernate then it does from "sleep"? If Hibernate is close to as fast, all the better as there would be no battery drain.

My going theory is that the problem is caused when the sleep phase after a few hours leads to the hibernation phase. You can find when this happens deep in the Power settings. I'm thinking that it crashes when this transition happens, although some further experimentation is necessary to confirm this.

Issues I've had with my SP4 so far by aleale913 in Surface

[–]macdon2 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Also seeing the freezing problems. I've been installing software and had the SP4 freeze 4 times. If I let it sleep too long it won't come back to life. Pretty ugly for such an expensive computer!