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Last post Author Topic: how should I roll back java?  (Read 14344 times)

holt

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Re: how should I roll back java?
« Reply #25 on: September 16, 2016, 10:54 PM »
^'gift'; yes. :) sherman and mr. peabody cartoon wayback machine time.
I apologize for going off-topic. The power supply is only 250w, but it can do several vitally important basic functions for me, including emails, web news, and web shopping.
« Last Edit: September 20, 2016, 11:58 AM by holt »

holt

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Re: how should I roll back java?
« Reply #26 on: September 20, 2016, 12:01 PM »
In Windows XP on a Pentium 4 with 2gb ram, I keep getting a pop-up mssg 'Windows - the virtual memory minimum is set too low'. How would I determine a better setting, and is there an online guide for resetting this?

Shades

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Re: how should I roll back java?
« Reply #27 on: September 20, 2016, 08:42 PM »
In 'Advanced System Settings' you can set the minimum and maximum of storage space you want to reserve for paging. That is usually meant by 'Virtual memory'. This Microsoft kb article explains exactly what you must do to get rid of this error message.

A general tip, in case you didn't know: When you see a window appear with an error or warning message, make sure you have that window "active" and press key combination: CTRL + C. This copies the complete content from that window into the Windows clipboard. This works with any error message window. Use that content with google/bing/duckduckgo/whatever and chances are you'll find the answer for your error in the first 5 links of the search engine results.

holt

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Re: how should I roll back java?
« Reply #28 on: September 21, 2016, 09:58 AM »
In 'Advanced System Settings' you can set the minimum and maximum of storage space you want to reserve for paging. That is usually meant by 'Virtual memory'. This Microsoft kb article explains exactly what you must do to get rid of this error message.

A general tip, in case you didn't know: When you see a window appear with an error or warning message, make sure you have that window "active" and press key combination: CTRL + C. This copies the complete content from that window into the Windows clipboard. This works with any error message window. Use that content with google/bing/duckduckgo/whatever and chances are you'll find the answer for your error in the first 5 links of the search engine results.
Tnx, I set it to 'system managed size'; hope that's alright.

holt

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Re: how should I roll back java?
« Reply #29 on: September 21, 2016, 10:03 AM »
My ethernet card is 10/100 (I forget where I saw that).
Using TOR, my video is barely adequate on youtube at the 240 setting.
I see ethernet cards on amazon that are rated 10/100/1000, and wonder if I should upgrade?
I would want a good economical choice, and there are so many to choose from;
https://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Aethernet%20card

Shades

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Re: how should I roll back java?
« Reply #30 on: September 21, 2016, 11:59 AM »
Intel is by far the best brand. And a network card (NIC) is something you should buy and forget about it. Intel cards are very well supported on Windows, Linux, OSX and BSD. If you need to buy a new NIC, seriously, get one from Intel.

Here in Paraguay, the only brand you can get easily is TP-Link. Any other brand you must import yourself. While decent enough for Windows use, it does show some less than stable behavior under BSD. Which I use for my router. Which was previously used (for 8 years) as a Windows PC. I mean to say that it is never certain what the PC you have will be used for over it's total functional life span. You are far better prepared for whatever you want to do with it, using an Intel NIC. TP-Link is the only brand you can get here easily.

TOR is the main cause of your slow surfing speeds. Generally speaking, your traffic is being diverted over several TOR nodes to mask its comings and goings. There are much less nodes available to TOR than for standard traffic. The most optimum route TOR traffic can take to your traffic is therefore much(!) less optimal than with a standard connection. Not only that, the type and connection speeds of TOR nodes that are available to you will vary a lot. The creation and re-assembling of your anonymized traffic will also put an extra load on your CPU too. Privacy/anonymity comes at a price.

From previ8ous post I understand you are dead set on using TOR, so in your case I would use add-blockers/script blockers when surfing. These prevent a lot of ads/scripts to be loaded and reduce the amount of traffic that has to pass through your TOR nodes. Less traffic also means your CPU has less work to do. This will affect the functionality of most of the sites you wish to visit and you will need to spend time honing those blockers to give you the best compromise between functionality and speed of the websites you visit.

If you can, use TOR only when you absolutely need it, that is the biggest speed increase you will ever get. Buying a new NIC for a TOR speed increase won't do you any good. Getting a much bigger plan for your internet connection will help much(!) more with TOR.

For example: say that you currently have a plan that gives you 2MBit/sec download speed and 1MBit/sec upload speed. If you would subscribe to a new internet plan that gives you 10MBit/sec download speed and 5MBit/sec download speed, your TOR setup has now 5 times the amount of bandwidth for the TOR traffic. This has serious impact. Your current NIC can handle 100MBit/sec speeds for up- and download. Even with the new plan almost 90% from the capacity from your current NIC isn't used. As said previously, privacy/anonymity comes at a price.

Consider buying this new/faster NIC only if:
- you have a computer network at home and often transfer GigaByte sized files from one system to the other. In this case you must buy a switch that can handle those faster speeds as well. Else the NIC won't be able to use the extra speed anyway. And that is with the assumption that each of the computers in your network has a 1000MBit/sec NIC in it and you have used the correct (CAT5E or better) network cables (UTP).
- you want to make sure to have better network capabilities support with non-Windows operating systems.

For your current computer setup, your current NIC is more than adequate.

See the amount of hardware on Intel NIC and NICs from other brands? That extra hardware makes sure that the NIC itself doing all the work. All the others need Windows and the CPU in your computer to do the same job.

holt

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Re: how should I roll back java?
« Reply #31 on: September 23, 2016, 11:33 AM »
Can't buy it yet, but I looked at your ethernet card link, and bookmarked it for future reference as the ideal choice.

With a PaleMoon YT downloader add-on, and the patience to wait for a full download to be completed first, I am getting good playback using my VLC player.
« Last Edit: September 23, 2016, 01:27 PM by holt »

holt

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Re: how should I roll back java?
« Reply #32 on: September 23, 2016, 07:36 PM »
According to my device manager, my HD drive is a wd400bb-22jhc0.
Looks like it's a EIDE non-SSD (not sure).
My dead laptop should have a good 100gb EIDE SSD HD in 2.5" size; I think all I need is two 2.5" HD bay adapters; it should speed things up a little, keeping the original as backup.

Shades

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Re: how should I roll back java?
« Reply #33 on: September 24, 2016, 11:42 AM »
EIDE hard disks do not come with a SATA interface.

Your desktop may or may not have SATA connectors on it. In case you have a SATA hard disk in your laptop, but no SATA connector on your motherboard...then you can forget about using your laptop hard disk inside your desktop.

This is a real possibility, the SiS chipset is more often than not of low quality and low in features. And as you have a close to 10 year old PC, you might just be out of luck. Without the name/model of the motherboard in your PC I can't tell. Or it might be the same misery as I had here with such old motherboards (based on the Via chipset, one small step up from SiS). I couldn't install Windows XP on it's SATA ports without a floppy disk. Yes, I actually needed a working floppy, a floppy drive a cable to connect it to the motherboard, a CD/DVD player and a cable to connect it to the motherboard as well. Yes, those boards didn't have an option to boot from USB at all. Then I needed to start the installation procedure from the install CD and after a while it would ask for the floppy with a special driver on it that would make Windows recognize the SATA interface and when all went OK the installation continued.

SATA can be real "fun" on old computers. They gave the PC to you, perhaps not from the kindness of their hearts, but to prevent paying for this crap to throw it in a landfill. This is common in the Netherlands, You'll need to pay for throwing away electronics, you'll need to unload it into a special container where later on someone comes and takes those old consumer electronics apart, removes as much of the toxics as he/she can, throws the remainder into the landfill and recycles the toxics. I assume that there is something similar going on at municipalities in the UK too.

In the municipality where I lived that was actually quite expensive.

Anyway, if the same is true for your motherboard, good luck finding that special driver, a working floppy drive and a working floppy. You can't buy those new anymore, even here in Paraguay. Paraguay is a rather poor country, especially when you leave the cities. About 5 to 6 years ago I was asked to help someone out with preparing written off "clunkers" to be donated to charities for children. The amount of child mothers and single moms is very high, especially outside the cities. There are tribes of indians (Guarani) here where the boss of its elders makes any 11 or 12 year old girl a woman, because of their traditions. It's unprotected, so you can see those girls begging for money at traffic lights, baby in hand. It is also not unheard of that those girls get STDs and associated health problems from this tradition too.

Back to the topic: while I still had a lot of those laying around, it took hours before I had found a working combination of floppy drive and floppy to be able to install an operating system onto such systems. And, mind you, I had all of that hardware and the required software driver still in storage. If you don't...good luck.

10 to 11 years ago the transition to SATA started and not all motherboards were created equal around that time. Your PC is from that era and it uses a chipset that has a bad reputation. Now I'm hoping that your PC isn't plagued by all of this crap, but I am expecting it will be. Hardly worth spending any more time or money on than you already did.

You'd better start saving for a newer "clunker" that is based on a Intel Core 2 Duo CPU. These are much better equipped to handle the extra load that TOR requires and have no problem with Windows 7. And have motherboards that work much better with SATA devices and usually come with a 100/1000 MBit/sec onboard NIC. Those shouldn't be that expensive, as these are 9 to 10 years old.

For reference: I have a 8year old Core2 Duo CPU (2.6GHz) based motherboards (Asus) myself, it has 4GByte of RAM, 4 SATA2 connectors and about 1.5 years ago I put in a Samsung 840 EVO SSD hard disk in it. Even watching 1080p video that is encoded using the x265 video encoder works flawlessly. I also have a 1 year old PC with AMD APU 10 (APU stands for CPU and GPU combined and this one works at 4GHz). It has 8GByte of RAM and I can tell you that it is seriously faster than my old Core2 Duo PC.

I bought the PC case and all other parts for the Core2 Duo PC for 500 USD. Not including a mouse, keyboard and monitor, I easily spent 200 USD on a high quality mouse, keyboard and about 100 USD on a 19 inch monitor. After 5 years I did spent 50 USD on a good new power supply. Last year I bought a much better PC case and all other parts for the AMD APU 10 for 350 USD. Then I spent 150 USD on a 28 inch 1080p monitor and spent 50 USD on a decent enough mouse and keyboard. There was a power supply included with both PC cases, so there was no immediate need to buy separate ones. 750 USD for the old Core2 Duo PC in total, 550 USD for my new PC.

So if you are able to save 350 USD you can buy similar parts and have a much better PC (that won't even blink at the extra load of TOR). I think you can shave 75 to 100 USD off, if you go for a less powerful AMD APU (APU 8 or APU 6), buy a cheaper brand motherboard, less and/or slower RAM, smaller hard disk and PC case. Whatever you do, that new box will work fine with the monitor, mouse and keyboard you are using right now. There are many videos on the internet that show you how to build your own PC, step by step ('Linus tech tips' is a site with lots of videos on how to build PCs). The story above should make it clear that I can/do/want/need to build my own PC's.

As you already have a "zombie" PC (it should be dead, yet it lives) you have time to hunt for computer parts within your means. The reference above is just to indicate that you really don't need to spend that much on brand new PC hardware. People tend to charge a lot for second hand computer parts and if you keep score of what you have spent on those old computer parts to make your old clunker barely usable and what you would spend on brand new parts, the balance tips very quickly to getting brand new parts.

Keeping a modern PC up-to-date is also not that expensive. heck, a 60 USD SSD hard disk made my not-so-modern Core2 Duo PC practically a joy to use again.