4194

MBR is ancient and basically for systems that still had legacy BIOS. No one should be running MBR anymore, not with modern CPUs and SSDs.

4195

Windows 10 & Nvidia anecdotes!!

I hadn’t seen this and was briefly confused/annoyed when I built my new Ryzen PC.

I used the 1903 build, and after chipset drivers, I began to install the latest Geforce drivers I’d downloaded. The install failed, telling me I required DCH drivers, and the app recommended I use Geforce Experience to obtain the latest drivers. My initial reaction was: WTF?! I’m not particularly bothered by Geforce Experience, nor logging in w/ an email address, but it did annoy me if that was the only way I could install drivers.

However once I had a grasp of the situation, I realized that Win 10 had automatically grabbed the latest DCH drivers during install. I could go to Nvidia and download drivers normally, as long as I specify they’re DCH. Or I could uninstall DCH and install standard drivers.

Anyway, the sky didn’t fall, and all is fine (although grabbing the Nvidia Control Panel from the Windows Store, instead of having it auto-install w/ the driver package was another eyebrow raiser), just a heads up if anyone else installs from scratch.

Then I experienced post-gaming mouse corruption on my multi display setup, which apparently is a thing with the 431.60 drivers. The mouse would disappear on secondary screens, and appear corrupted on the primary monitor. Installing the new 431.68 Hotfix addresses that annoying issue.

4196

I bought this PC maybe 2 years ago and did a fresh install of Win 10 through USB. It didn’t create a GPT partition at that time. I mean, I didn’t consciously choose to install a MBR (I think!) :(

4197

Wait until you get to deal with confusion of UAD sound drivers.

4198

So, I went ahead and spend the Sunday reinstalling. It seems that during a fresh install of Windows, I cannot format the SSD to GPT partition. I had to click “Back” all the way to the first Install screen and click on “Repair this Computer” and then do some command line” Diskpart” to convert MBR to GPT - definitely not for the faint hearted. But all is well.

4199

Success!

4200

So, my outlook account already have Win 10 Home and Pro - in fact I forgot I had Pro license and went and installed Home. Can I easily upgrade my current install to Pro? I’m not looking forward to another fresh install. I’ll stay with Home if it ends up being that way.

4201

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12384/windows-10-upgrading-home-to-pro

  • Select the Start button, then select Settings > Update & Security > Activation .
  • Select Change product key , and then enter the 25-character Windows 10 Pro product key.
  • Select Next to start the upgrade to Windows 10 Pro.
4202

For ASUS ROG/TUF/PRIME motherboards with ASUS “SonicSuite” software and onboard Realtek integrated sound, the latest versions (although not at feature parity in some regards with their Win32 versions) are UWP/MS Store only and need UAD (smaller to download but different) audio drivers instead of regular ones. There’s a Realtek Audio UWP app even instead of the system tray.

The difference I find is these 3 UWP (Sonic Stage, Sonic Studio, Realtek Audio Control) don’t start and run automatically in the system tray. You have to flag each to run automatically but they don’t run off the notification/system tray either.

The convoluted how-to:

https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?105341-DRIVERS-Realtek-HD-Audio-(UAD)

4203

Wait, what? If my sound is still working, do I need to bother with any of that? Sounds like a lot of faff for no real benefit.

4204

Only if your OCD twinges you to needing to have the latest version.

4205

I switched to GPT by accident a few years ago, and lost one of my partitions in the process.

:(

4206

Heads up

4207

If its the RDP Vulnerability it still requires you to have those ports available for them to be ‘wormed’.

4208

Anyone having NVme SSD issues with build 1903?

My brand new Ryzen build (2700) from June just hosed itself mid use and restoring a boot drive backup from yesterday and earlier didn’t even get it past the obscure BSOD. Windows won’t even start instead failing at the same BSOD and failing at automatic repair. Unfortunately I didn’t have drive images going to before last week’s big monthly Patch Tuesday updates for August.

My boot drive is a WD Black NVMe drive of only 1 month that I only just reinstalled Windows on (bare metal, wiping of C drive using a newly created 1904 USB installer using the media creation tool) from finding bad sectors (on a 1 month old drive ugh) so when it still didn’t get into windows after unplugging all USB and everything but mouse and keyboard I began to suspect the drive itself again today. Reinstalled and ran WD SSD dashboard tools which found SMART drive health to be good for both basic and extended tests.

There are reports of some updates failing to install on build 1903 this past patch Tuesday but mine all installed.

Friend with newish Dell XPS 13 has same issues (new 1903 install that has updates applied the died and stuck in reboot with failed automatic repair) but this is too anecdotal. I’d heard of some NVMe issues with Ryzen 3000 but didn’t look into it too carefully since I have a 2700.

So to monitor things I’ll reinstall a fourth time on the Intel 660P drive.

4209

Ouch, thanks for the warning. I just set Updates to “pause.”

4210

I’d just moved my not-synced-to-cloud Rebel Galaxy Outlaw saves from C last night too haha!

4211

Stop bragging!

4212

On the upside, I discovered this neat tool:

4213

I am using Samsung Evo NVME and no issue so far after I reinstalled (and that was due to my sound driver or something being screwed up (as above))… but so far, 1903 is behaving well.