lti wrote on 2026-07-07, 17:53:

Edit five hours later: It's Firefox, not my monitor. Why did it suddenly start in the middle of the day? I'm running a Linux distro with no automatic updates at all, and Firefox updates are handled by the package manager.

That cannot be. Everyone knows things only break on Windows, never on Linux. 😜

Incidentally, I am also dealing with something weird on my monitor. Completely opposite to your case - I first thought it was software, but it looks like it's hardware.
The Lenovo Y27qf-30 displays awful streaking artifacts at 60Hz, while at 144Hz and above it looks fine. I spent a couple of hours trying to debug what I thought were compatibility issues between the original GTA III, the 4070 GPU or Windows 11, only to discover that the problem is that the game forces 60Hz, and looks all messed up, but guess what - the desktop looks just as bad if you set it to 60Hz.

So I thought maybe it's a driver problem? A DisplayPort cable problem? Nope. The problem is still there when connecting via HDMI to a Nintendo Switch. And some older laptop I tried, with an Intel iGPU can't even negotiate a signal.

Fortunately, the monitor is under warranty, I think I might need to get it replaced. I just hope it's a unit defect, not a model defect.

I fixed it by plugging in a second monitor. I unplugged my second monitor to use with a different computer yesterday, but I thought I did that after the flickering started.

I also noticed that there was a big hang every time the cursor changed shape (such as hovering over a link or text), and that's gone after plugging in the second monitor. Having a single monitor must put the GPU in a low-power state that's bugged in the i915 driver. Idle power consumption for the full system is still in the 20-25W range, which is extremely low by current standards. I even measured power consumption of my desk by plugging the UPS into the power meter, and it's lower in that state than the "efficient" new desktop with a single monitor. That means that the big Ryzen is just a workstation to use on-demand at this point (at least until winter). I've thought about getting a KVM switch, but dual-monitor KVMs are expensive and even single-monitor ones have lots of issues.

I'm supposed to be on vacation right now, except that "vacation" was to fix stuff (including myself) and clean the basement.

I moved the Win11 EFI bootloader from the SATA SSD to the Gen4 NVMe drive on my main PC.

How did it end up on the SATA drive? Well, I had installed MX Linux there initially, which of course created an EFI partition. After that, I installed Win11 on the NVMe drive. Yet for some reason, Win11 decided that it wanted to share the existing EFI partition with Linux instead of creating its own. 🤦 Thankfully, there's a relatively simple fix for that, as described in this article. I wanted to repurpose that SATA drive for something else, so I needed to make sure that Win11 could boot without it.

dr_st wrote on 2026-07-08, 06:55:

The Lenovo Y27qf-30 displays awful streaking artifacts at 60Hz, while at 144Hz and above it looks fine. I spent a couple of hours trying to debug what I thought were compatibility issues between the original GTA III, the 4070 GPU or Windows 11, only to discover that the problem is that the game forces 60Hz, and looks all messed up, but guess what - the desktop looks just as bad if you set it to 60Hz.

I hacked Vice City and San Andreas in the past to go for 59 Hz because 60 causes delay when switching away / back to the game on my screen since 60 is just there for compatibility while the actual rate is supposed to be 59,934 Hz. It's possible that Win7 handles this better or maybe there was another factor since I don't remember 60 causing delay there, but it's been a long time.

There is this unique sequence of hex values in the EXE file:

83 F8 3C 72

3C is the refresh rate, which is 60 in decimal. So this byte can be changed with hex editor to change the refresh rate. Zero (00) might work as well for default rate.

GTA III's gta3.exe has the same sequence, so presumably it works there too.

UCyborg wrote on 2026-07-09, 21:36:

I hacked Vice City and San Andreas in the past to go for 59 Hz because 60 causes delay when switching away / back to the game on […]
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I hacked Vice City and San Andreas in the past to go for 59 Hz because 60 causes delay when switching away / back to the game on my screen since 60 is just there for compatibility while the actual rate is supposed to be 59,934 Hz. It's possible that Win7 handles this better or maybe there was another factor since I don't remember 60 causing delay there, but it's been a long time.

There is this unique sequence of hex values in the EXE file:

83 F8 3C 72

3C is the refresh rate, which is 60 in decimal. So this byte can be changed with hex editor to change the refresh rate. Zero (00) might work as well for default rate.

GTA III's gta3.exe has the same sequence, so presumably it works there too.

Cool hack, I'll keep that in mind.

In my case the borderless window mod for the 3D trilogy works great, since it can then take the desktop refresh rate, and as long as it's 100Hz+ - there are no artifacts. Nonetheless I opened a support ticket to see if there is a FW fix or whether the monitor is defective. There is no reason for a 240Hz monitor to have issues at 60Hz, and not every device/game will have a workaround.

^ Good call, this is definitely weird.

Speaking of weird, I borrowed a coworker's monitor at work to help me with testing and improving one WinForms application that until now lived in 96 DPI only world.

I don't remember the model, but it's some 4K monitor from ASUS. When it went to standby, it's like it disappeared from Windows and after waking it up and it coming back, Windows asked if I want it to try and fix blurry fonts of some applications. Some applications did show the usual signs when desktop layout changes like that.

So I wonder if it's a hardware bug on the monitor side. For my regular one and this one, I was using DisplayPort to HDMI cable (DP being on the laptop's side).

UGHH!! I can't believe it was this simple....

I have been dealing with crappy download speeds for ages on my main desktop, despite having a 500mbit connection. I had always chalked it up to some services\sites throttling my download speeds until recently when my daughter was able to download a Steam game on her laptop (wifi) in a fraction of the time it took me to download it on my desktop. I had assumed this was a Steam issue, because I have noticed this with Steam for a very very long time. I did a complete 100% reinstall of Steam and for whatever reason it seemed like it fixed it when I tested it immediately after that.

However, since then I have tried downloading some other things from Steam and noticed it was back to the crappy speeds (2-5MBytes\sec on a 500Mbit connection... should be 50-60MBytes+). I have tried several things and nothing seemed to fix it. Oddly enough, doing normal internet speed tests always reported that I was getting 500mbit download, so I just continued to assume it was a Steam issue.

Tonight though, it was especially bad. I was attempting to play a game online that frequently requires workshop levels to be downloaded as you join. I was consistently the LAST PERSON to download the level, oftentimes getting booted from the server long before the download would finish.

I don't even know how I got there now, but I stumbled upon this page that is intended to test bufferbloat (which I actually don't have issues with). The discussion I found that link in had an interesting reply that said "Hey! That test gives exactly the same result as my slow Steam download speed!" ... so I figured it'd be worth testing. Sure enough: THAT test showed I was only hitting a max of 120mbit\sec... usually barely breaking 100.

So, I now knew it was NOT Steam.

I proceeded to try a USB 3.0 ethernet adapter, a different cable, connecting straight to the modem... all had exactly the same result. The kicker though is that connecting my daughter's laptop to the same ethernet connection resulted in a whopping 508mbit\sec in that same test!

Ugh! All this time, it has been an issue with something in Windows. Not hardware related, not network related, not ISP, not Steam.

This also explains some oddly slow network file transfers I've had lately too (I don't do this often so it slipped my mind). I had googled the slow network transfer issue a while ago and couldn't really figure it out. I even asked over at smallnetbuilder and didn't really have any solid leads.

Now, I'm amazed this worked because I wasted a bunch of time with Claude the last time, running in circles checking stuff that wasn't even applicable. This time, within 5 minutes I had it fixed.

I explained the situation very briefly, highlighting that it seemed to be an OS issue and not anything external to my PC. Then Claude told me it was probably some incorrect or corrupted settings related to the TCP/IP stack (which is not something I know anything about). It told me to input these at an elevated command prompt:

netsh winsock reset
netsh int ip reset
netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal

(all of these look familiar to me, but it's nothing I've messed with in years... clearly.)

I did that, rebooted and now I am getting 508mbit\sec in the same test. Ughhh... I am embarassed to admit I have been dealing with slow Steam downloads for years and I just rarely download anything large enough anywhere else to notice that it wasn't just Steam. I'd be furious if I wasn't so relieved to have fixed this.

Finally. 😑

Fixed my mom's computer (Asus H110-I/M32CD4/DP_MB, i5-6400, Kingston HyperX Predator 8GBx2 DDR4-3200, MSI N750-1GD5/OC, 120GB SSD + 1TB HDD + DVDRW), again.

The build was "broken" two years ago with no apparent reason. Before I could return home and diagnose, I bought a tested used kit of MSI H110M PRO-VH + i3-7100 + 8GB DDR4 just in case the Asus died completely. Turned out the single 8GB DDR4 module had a capacitor/resistor burned out so I simply moved the working 8GB DDR4 to her Asus MB. A month later I brought my HyperX Predator kit and GTX 750 to upgrade her build from Asus GT720-2GD3-V2/DP that came from the system so streaming video playback and some lightweight games could run smoother; the working single DDR4 went back to the MSI MB and replaced Asus P5G41T-M LX + Q8300 as the "backup" system.

Everything was fine until last week: she told me the computer powered up for only two seconds before turning itself off. I brought a PSU, two video cards (the "original" GT720 and an MSI N750TI-2GD5/OCV1), an SSD, SATA-USB3 connector in case of backup operations were needed, spare screws, thermal paste, etc. The worst scenario would be another dead DDR4 strip, as I didn't have any spare DDR4 and the price of new DDR4 strips skyrocketed to 2.5 times of that 8 years ago.

Fortunately, the culprit was that GTX 750; replacing it with GTX 750 Ti fixed the problem completely. Still had no idea why the GTX 750 suddenly stopped working.

Bought Rise of the Tomb Raider from the Microsoft Store since it was on sale, and because Impulse Trigger Vibration only works on that particular version.

You can test this right from the start, when Lara uses her climbing axe to grab onto the ice during the prologue. It's weird that this feature is exclusive to the MS version of the game, but if you have an Xbox controller, it does add to the immersion.

I'm planning my next PC builds, as I need a new Windows 11 PC and I want to also build a new Linux PC as well, with specific hardware that works well on Linux, as a lot of "new stuff" isn't working well or at all on the wireless networking side of things, so I have to research what the best options are.

While buying a game on the Microsoft Store, I was offered two weeks of Game Pass for 1 EUR. This got me curious, so I decided to give it a try, though I don't intend to keep the subscription past that duration.

The reason I got this was because it allowed me to test a bunch of games, see how they run on my PC, and play them for a few hours to determine if they are to my taste. Basically, I treated Game Pass as a sort of demo experience for certain games that I was interested in. In that regard, I did find it useful. For example, I tried Forza Horizon 6, tweaked its settings to my liking, and ended up enjoying the gameplay. Same thing with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. I will likely buy both of these games at some later point.

On the flip side, I learned that the Modern Warfare remakes need an Activision account and online connectivity even for playing the single-player campaign, which was an instant no buy for me. Likewise, I found that Doom: The Dark Ages is kinda similar to Eternal, so it's not really my cup of tea. And while Death Stranding was super well optimized and had great support for the DualSense controller, I didn't particularly enjoy its gameplay. So yeah, good stuff for demoing games, but not worth continuing to pay a monthly subscription, at least for me.