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Hello thread. I'd appreciate some advice on which direction to go with my new laptop. For the last five years I've been running dual boot Windows/Ubuntu on a cheap Costco Acer netbook. A couple of weeks ago an apparent hardware issue killed it. I ended up replacing it with a refurbished Thinkpad T540p running Windows 10. It's been quite a while since I spent time poking the guts of computers - long enough for this UEFI thing to gain prominence. The old netbook had UEFI but it was transparent to Ubuntu and I had no issues installing and dual booting on it. Not so much the Thinkpad. GRUB refused to install, the Windows system is invisible as a bootable partition to the Ubuntu install software and and likewise Linux is invisible to the UEFI boot loader. While poking around with BCDedit and EasyBCD I accidentally deleted the single entry for the Windows partition and had to re-attach it. Apparently the save didn't take and I've lost access to the new copy of Windows. On the bright side Linux is now accessible so I guess UEFI is rolling over to Legacy when it doesn't find its bootable partition. I have the old hard drive in a USB carrier and can also boot from it to either of the old Windows and Linux partitions through the old GRUB. The only thing fouled up is the new Windows system. I'm thinking that I might need to re-format the new drive. I could clone the old one to it, but not sure what would happen if the new UEFI partition is replaced by one from a different machine, or if there is some magic protection to keep the UEFI from being formatted. Maybe there's a way to nuke UEFI and replace it with GRUB? Formatting and fresh Windows installs are problematic. I made a recovery disk set for Windows but unfortunately it looks like you need a key for a fresh install and while I'm pretty sure I have a set of media somewhere it isn't with the other backup material and will probably take until the heat death of the universe to find.
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Jun 6, 2020 22:31
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| # ¿ Apr 24, 2024 06:57 |
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I booted up Windows, checked it out and made a recovery disk & disk image as soon as I opened the package. I assume it came fully patched from the refurbishing shop - it didn't seem to download anything when I was checking it out. I might try downloading installation media from Microsoft and see what it does. I understood from the Knowledge Base articles I read that a key was required but it would be good if that was obsolete now. That might explain why the Thinkpad booted Windows from the old hard drive when I attached it through a USB carrier. I expected it to see a foreign CPU ID and refuse to run. I assumed from its behaviour it was updated drivers but maybe it was re-registering the OS as well. Amazingly enough the old Windows runs better on the Thinkpad through a USB 2.0 port than it did when the hard drive was plugged directly in to the old netbook.
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Jun 7, 2020 07:30
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I'm thinking about adding a sound card to my gaming/media box to try to fix some sound quality issues with the built in board and my sound system. Any issues I need to be aware of with Linux and lower end boards by Asus, Creative, or Sedna? Currently running Pop!_OS but will probably have switched to Fedora by the time anything arrives. I'm getting tired of the way Pop!_OS keeps breaking the Nvidia driver installs for me this spring.
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Aug 21, 2022 19:54
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Computer viking posted:Depending on what the problem is, you may also be able to get an SPDIF to (analog) line out converter; a lot of motherboards seem to include optical out. Won't fix any driver issues, but sometimes just getting a digital stream over a non-conductive cable is all you need to fix your sound quality issues. v1ld posted:A sound card or more expensive external DAC is good if you don't like the one in your current path, but if you have a sound system it probably has a good DAC in it already and staying digital all the way to it is a good idea. Thanks, I think this is the approach I'll take. I think part of the problem is a ground loop so optical would be good. I've got one of the inexpensive USB converters on order now so we'll see how that goes. Klyith posted:I can give a nod to Schiit USB DACs if you want something with audiophile quality that works with linux. Oooh... Shiny!
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Aug 22, 2022 06:15
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