'No Stupid Questions' (NSQ) Internet & Technology Edition

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

How odd. Wonder if someone at the VA has a deal with ASUS to direct people to their brand. Well, now that you've got it, you might as well become a gamer, I guess…

I realize I forgot to address your question about changing the keyboard to French. See this page: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4496404/windows-10-manage-the-input-and-display-language - Start with the "Add a keyboard" section, then read the "Change your keyboard layout" section right above it.

Then either delete the secondary keyboard layout or unbind the often accidentally pressed key-combo that sneakily switches between layouts. That one can get really annoying, especially as programs might default to the wrong layout and if it's a fullscreen game windows might suddenly ignore your pleas to change the fucking keyboard so keybindings makes sense.
For switching between layouts the alternative win+space is a perfectly fine key-combo that won't get pressed by accident all the time.

 

[Spedestrian]

I do already have a pair of buds (the type with a neckband so I can't lose them because otherwise I frickin' will) and they're fine but I don't find them comfortable for long periods.

If your earbuds aren't comfortable for long periods then that's a hardware issue. Most people just assume this is a problem with earbuds in general, but if you know what you're doing you can find earbuds that fit well and are comfortable enough to wear all day.

This guide to selecting earbud tips covers a lot of important stuff. It might seem like a lot of work for some damn earbuds, but once you figure out what style(s) fit you it'll be much easier to find comfortable earbuds in the future. The first time you find a good fit you'll feel like a retard for just putting up with sore ear canals your whole life.

 

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Need to know what mouse and cam are best, need to buy tomorrow.

If you're going to a big box store, I would try whatever Logitech stuff they have first.

 

[Least Concern]

Sometimes there are stupid questions tho

 

[The Notorious RGB]

Since Firefox is going woke and broke, what's the best non-googled win+mac crossplatform browser?

 

[Boris Blank's glass eye]

Since Firefox is going woke and broke, what's the best non-googled win+mac crossplatform browser?

Define "best". I like Vivaldi because it's a successor to the old, pre-Chromium Opera.

 

[Never Scored]

Since Firefox is going woke and broke, what's the best non-googled win+mac crossplatform browser?

Pale Moon or Ungoogled Chrominum.

 

[Pissmaster]

What's the most active forum out there that's still running on phpBB? Like are there any out there akin to Something Awful, where the forum software is ancient and held together with the code equivalent to duct tape?

(Something Awful is, to this day, running on vBulletin 2.2.9, from fucking 2002)

 

[Never Scored]

There are a few old forums left around that I know of that used it back in the day, but they've actually all switched to Simple Machines Forums over the years.

 

[Stilgar of Troon]

. . .

(Something Awful is, to this day, running on vBulletin 2.2.9, from fucking 2002)

Amazingly, that's not even the worst thing about that cesspit full of retards.

 

[JektheDumbass]

I have a weird question.

I have finally assembled my computer. I do have an old as fuck computer that has data on the drive I'd like to keep. Is it possible to install that drive into my new computer and use it in addition to my primary drive? It's still running xp lol.

Or would it just be easier to manually transfer the files via usb drive? I'd have to find an old monitor to even see what I was doing...

 

[glow]

You can certainly do that. Just plug in data and power and make sure that your boot order is set right so you don't try to boot off that disk instead. When you next boot up, you'll see a new disk in My Computer.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

I have a weird question.

I have finally assembled my computer. I do have an old as fuck computer that has data on the drive I'd like to keep. Is it possible to install that drive into my new computer and use it in addition to my primary drive? It's still running xp lol.

Or would it just be easier to manually transfer the files via usb drive? I'd have to find an old monitor to even see what I was doing...

Like Glow said, just plug it in but make sure to use a port with a priority lower than your current boot drive(they're numbered, google the manual for your current motherboard and it will list which one is which). Have fun deleting the old Windows folder by the way.

Unless the disk comes from a really ancient computer using IDE, then you will probably have to buy a sketchy card from China.

 

[Kosher Dill]

I do have an old as fuck computer that has data on the drive I'd like to keep. Is it possible to install that drive into my new computer and use it in addition to my primary drive?

If it's an old spinning hard drive (that is, not an SSD of any kind) I'd recommend backing up your data off of there and migrating it to a new drive. They do tend to go bad over time. Storage being as cheap as it is these days, it's worth it.

 

[The Penultimate Warrior]

If I were to spent around £700/$900 on a desktop to at least play current games in reasonable quality, what sort of spec should I be looking for?

 

[Boris Blank's glass eye]

If I were to spent around £700/$900 on a desktop to at least play current games in reasonable quality, what sort of spec should I be looking for?

I'm kind of in the same shoes. Depends on the exact tax rate, but I'm thinking Ryzen 5 and Nvidia 1650.
You haven't specified if your budget includes a new display or not either.

Speaking of which, the last time I built a new desktop was more than a decade ago, and I'd like to ask if there's anything new gimmick to pay special attention to.

 

[Least Concern]

If I were to spent around £700/$900 on a desktop to at least play current games in reasonable quality, what sort of spec should I be looking for?

Head to the "Completed Builds" page on PCPartPicker and set the "Price" filter to your range, and that will give you some ideas on what's possible. I don't think this thing automatically adjusts total build costs based on time so keep the sort options on "Date Posted (newest)" and keep in mind prices will be less accurate the more you go back in time. Also keep in mind the higher-rated builds on there tend to have more eye candy and you'll often be able to save a few bucks by not splurging for RAM sticks with RGB lighting and other nonsense.

 

[Green Room]

I made a .VHD of my Windows HardDrive using Disk2VHD, and can successfully boot a VirtualBox Windows VM which will mount and use that .VHD normally. Viewing "Disk Management" in the VM, shows identical sections to what "Disk Management" when booting physically from the phsyical drive does: 100mb EFI section, C: NTFS section, D: NTFS extra section.

Since everything seems to be the same, I was hoping someone could help me understand: Why can I not boot the VM using this disk? I get a "No Bootable Medium Found" error. Even if I press F12 the correct drive manually.

I'm not sure how to explain this well, so I hope that made sense.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

If I were to spent around £700/$900 on a desktop to at least play current games in reasonable quality, what sort of spec should I be looking for?

I'm kind of in the same shoes. Depends on the exact tax rate, but I'm thinking Ryzen 5 and Nvidia 1650.
You haven't specified if your budget includes a new display or not either.

Speaking of which, the last time I built a new desktop was more than a decade ago, and I'd like to ask if there's anything new gimmick to pay special attention to.

With a total of $900 you should aim higher than the 1650 for a GPU. Go for at least a xx60 or a Radeon 5600XT, for gaming the CPU shouldn't cost more than the GPU so balance the spending accordingly. You might also be able to pick up used 1080's on the cheap pretty soon so there's always that.

Before I built my current stationary the last one I built was using the Core2Duo, so it was a while ago, and if you ask me things are way easier now. Didn't even get the bomb defusal sweats.

 

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I have a weird question.

I have finally assembled my computer. I do have an old as fuck computer that has data on the drive I'd like to keep. Is it possible to install that drive into my new computer and use it in addition to my primary drive? It's still running xp lol.

Or would it just be easier to manually transfer the files via usb drive? I'd have to find an old monitor to even see what I was doing...

As others have said, as long as it's SATA rather than parallel IDE it should just be a matter of plugging it in (at which point it would make sense to back it up to somewhere else anyway, which obviously you should also be doing with your current set of files).

Alternatively, if you have software on there that you might want to access at some point, and a spare external USB harddrive with sufficient space, there are tools for creating a virtual machine image directly from a physical machine. I've used VMware vCenter Converter (which, at least at the time was free) in the past to create a VM image and then run it under VirtualBox without too much messing around.