DOCTOR LETTERS
HDMI Issues
I’ve had this problem for about seven years now, but I’ve managed to work around the issue until recently. In short, I am using a Palit GeForce GTX 460 graphics card that suffers from occasional screen flickers, followed by a message saying that the video driver crashed and recovered. Other times, Windows blue-screens and must be restarted. I have tried everything on the software side, including reinstalling drivers and cleaning out the previously installed drivers.
By pure luck and coincidence, I noticed that the issue was solved by connecting a second monitor, giving me one display attached via HDMI and another hooked up to the VGA output. So long as I keep both monitors plugged in, Windows doesn’t report any errors. The problem only resurfaces if I use the HDMI port exclusively.
Because of its age, I recently moved the video card to a spare PC, and I’d like to avoid having a second monitor hooked up due to space constraints. Do you have any other idea how to resolve what I’m seeing? I THE DOCTOR RESPONDS: The Doc has never encountered these exact symptoms, but he’d suggest some general troubleshooting steps to narrow down the cause of your unstable HDMI signal.
First, update any software elements that might yield quick and easy fixes. Is your motherboard’s BIOS current? Have you applied all the available patches for Windows? You mentioned removing your drivers and applying new ones, but if you only used Nvidia’s uninstall routine, try downloading Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU), start up in Safe Mode, and run the utility to completely clean out old remnants of previous drivers. Then, grab the latest build for your GeForce GTX 460, which appears to be 391.35.
If the problem persists, start eliminating hardware variables. Have you tried a different HDMI cable? How about the HDMI input on a different monitor, to eliminate that? Do you have access to a spare graphics card you could swap in temporarily? Does your existing display Intel’s i9-9900K is an eightcore beast, with 5GHz boost. have another input you could use aside from HDMI? If not, is an adapter viable? Also, make sure the GeForce isn’t overheating by monitoring its temperature with FurMark.
Given your GTX 460’s age, it might simply be damaged. Consider replacing it with an entry-level GeForce GT 1030, which would be even faster.
Long File Paths
I read your response to Tom Adams regarding removing the 260-character limit for a file’s path and name in your March 2019 edition. It’s about time! I even found a Microsoft article that explains this in detail. According to that, “Starting in Windows 10, version 1607, MAX_PATH limitations have been removed from common Win32 file and directory functions. However, you must opt in to the new behavior.”
So, why can’t I get it working? I have Windows 10 Pro 1803. I used GPEdit and enabled the proper setting. I assume that the hard drive needs to be formatted with an NTFS partition. I tried creating a path longer than 260 characters on my C: drive and an external drive, but I couldn't. I tried this on two computers. What am I doing wrong? –Leon Garfield THE DOCTOR RESPONDS: Enabling long path behavior in Windows doesn’t automatically make every Windows-based application aware of this new capability, unfortunately. In the Microsoft article you’re looking at, the company clarifies, “The shell and the file system have different requirements. It is possible to create a path with the Windows API that the shell user interface is not able to interpret properly.”
The Doc was able to confirm on multiple PCs in his lab that Microsoft’s own File Explorer won’t allow you to create a longer path, even after toggling on LongPathsEnabled in the registry. However, he was able to move and copy files
and folders with very long paths. And although renaming files didn’t work natively, a utility called Long Path Fixer allowed him to change files that File Explorer couldn’t.
Copying VHS Movies
Hi Doc. Our VCR died, and I realized that the time for VHS/ VCRs may be ending soon. Should I look for a used VCR and DVD recorder, or is there another direction you recommend?
–Mitch Stanley
THE DOCTOR RESPONDS: The Doc sees four viable options. One: Roll the dice on a used/ refurbished VCR and go back to watching VHS cassettes as before. Two: Buy a VCR and an analog-to-digital capture device, enabling you to convert old home videos into a format you can burn to a DVD. Three: Track down a combination VCR/DVD recorder that can be used to archive your VHS tapes using a single device. Four: Send your cassettes to a service like Costco, Walmart, or Walgreens to digitize them for you. Simply replacing your VCR is only going to land you in the same spot at some point down the road, and those tapes aren’t getting any younger. So, let’s limit our discussion to the second, third, and fourth paths.
Doing it yourself makes sense if you have an appetite for risk, the patience to master old, unsupported technology, and time to babysit an analog process—one hour of footage takes one hour to convert. You can find used/refurbished VCRs between $60 and $80. Just be ready to accept that some work great and others are lemons. At least try to find a seller willing to guarantee your purchase for 30 days or more. Next, you need a capture device like Diamond’s $40 VC500, which converts the analog signal into an MPEG file. Bundled CyberLink PowerDirector software gives you the power to make edits before burning movies to DVD.
A VCR/DVD recorder integrates all the functionality you need for digitizing old videos without a PC, and you might even find an unused one. But they’re a lot more expensive. Unless you have a lot of content to convert, the cost might not be worthwhile.
If you only have a handful of cassettes worth preserving, paying a service might make the most sense. Costco charges $20 to digitize up to two tapes, for a maximum of two hours. Although the Doc is big on DIY, he sees little reason to gamble on a 20 or 30-year-old electromechanical device unless you’re archiving a substantial library of material.
Is AMD Vulnerable?
Hi, Doc. Could you please explain the security vulnerabilities of AMD CPUs, just like you did for Intel’s chips in the March 2019 issue on page 23? –Peter Sweeney THE DOCTOR RESPONDS: According to AMD, its architectures are affected by the Google Project Zero Variant 1 and Variant 2 vulnerabilities, referred to as Spectre, but not Variant 3, known as Meltdown. The company says mitigations take the form of operating system and microcode updates covering platforms as far back as the original Bulldozer.
Specifically, Variant 1 was addressed by Windows and Linux patches last year. AMD claims Variant 2 is especially difficult to exploit on its processors, but released recommended mitigations anyway. Unfortunately, the responsibility for implementing some of those updates falls on motherboard manufacturers with BIOS teams that are already spread too thin. In a random sample covering different vendors, boards, chipsets, and sockets, there were disturbingly few updates to platforms predating Socket AM4.
The Speculative Store Bypass vulnerability, aka Variant 4, was mitigated through operating system updates. Again, though, AMD insists this one is especially difficult to exploit. The L1 Terminal Fault vulnerability addressed by Intel through firmware purportedly does not affect AMD at all. Toward the end of last year, the company published a statement claiming that its hardware paging architecture protected against attack.
When the smoke cleared, AMD’s underlying CPU design appeared more resilient than Intel’s. At the same time, older AMD platforms seemed less likely to receive updates for the few vulnerabilities legitimately applicable to its architecture. On the bright side, upcoming Zen 2-based CPUs are expected to include in-silicon mitigations for Spectre and its derivatives, meaning performancedraining software patches won’t be necessary.
Give Me 5GHz!
Hi Doc. I’ve Googled and I’ve hit Reddit, but I can’t find a satisfactory answer to my question. Recently, I upgraded my Core i7-7700K to a Core i9-9900K for one reason: 5GHz. I figured it’d be easy to see that magical number in Windows using my Asus Z390 motherboard. However, it never happens. I get 3.6GHz if I don’t touch the BIOS at all. When I do what the Internet tells me to do, the CPU gets up to 4.65GHz. But why the hell did I upgrade if I never get to see my processor at 5GHz?
Yes, I know that using an all-core 50x multiplier technically overclocks the chip to 5GHz. But shouldn’t I be hitting this milestone without overclocking? I’m very confused by my expensive upgrade. Was I THE DOCTOR RESPONDS: Before getting too despondent, the Core i9-9900K is an absolute beast. Compared to your Core i7, it boasts two times the cores, two times the cache, a 500MHz-higher peak Turbo Boost, hardware-based mitigations for some of last year’s security vulnerabilities, and support for faster DDR4 data rates. That said, the Doc understands your frustration. Eight years have passed since he saw the first CPU with a 4GHz boost frequency, so 5GHz is a long time coming.
To start, make sure your motherboard’s BIOS is up to date. You may even want to restore the factory defaults. Check to see what Asus MultiCore Enhancement is set to. The “Auto” setting imposes Asus’s “optimized” ratios, often at the expense of power consumption, while “Disabled” falls back to Intel’s default Turbo Boost ratios. Play with both to see how they compare.
Once you boot into Windows, open HWiNFO64’s sensor status pane, which gives you current, minimum, maximum, and average values for each of the 9900K’s cores. Run a single-threaded Cinebench benchmark and see what the hardware monitor reports. So long as you keep your workload limited to one or two cores, 5GHz should be attainable. If you don’t see more than 3.6GHz, the 9900K’s base clock rate, check to make sure Turbo Boost is turned on, and that the processor isn’t getting too hot. Your issue sounds like something other than too many background processes running, eating into Turbo bins.