memory - Maximum RAM restrictions

I have a eMachines ET1862 with an Intel i3-550 and 2GB DDR3 RAM. Since 2GB is wayyy too slow (quick look at task manger shows it's been running at ~80% RAM since boot) I want to upgrade the RAM.

Concerning the maximum amount of memory I can fit, I looked up the model of PC and found it could handle up to 4GB. The websites I looked at also said it had 2 RAM slots.

Then I opened up the case and found 1 stick of 2GB DDR3, along with three empty RAM slots. After looking up the motherboard (IT It said H57H-AM2 in a load of places so I figured that was the name) and it came up with four slots and 16GB max.

So now I'm confused: what limits the amount of RAM you can have on a motherboard? I know the OS is fine as I've got win7-64bit. Is there anything more than the motherboard and the OS influences this limit?

Answer

The Maximum amount of memory is also determined by OS, in your case depending of your Windows 7 Version:

Home Basic     : 8GB
Home Premium   : 16GB
Professional   : 192GB
Ultimate       : 192GB

Corporate      : 192GB

Comparison Chart Windows 7

Also is good to check what the brand says.

About ET1862 Here is the datasheet it says:

Maximum 4 GB

And is determined also for CPU:

Here is the datasheet of your CPU it says:

Maximum 16 GB

for your Motherboard Specifications too it says:

Maximum 16 GB

Here is a link for yours:

display - Monitor with different power supply

I want to power a monitor using a 12V car battery.

My monitor uses 19V and 1,5A of power and it includes an AC power supply. However, I don't want to transform my 12V into 110 or 220V and then let the power supply transform it back to 19V again, because that would be stupid I think. So I found a power supply which converts 12V into 19V and it has the proper connector, but says it can output 4A. Therefore I wonder: will this power supply burn my monitor, because it supplies 4A, or will the monitor make sure it will only draw as much as it needs (1,5A)? So is it safe to use a different power supply with a monitor?

Answer

Yes, as long as it supplies the 1.5Amps at the 19Volts plus a bit more (surge) current (Amps) for any startup, charging caps and all, and it will work fine. As long as the voltage is correct, the device will only draw the amount of power (current) it needs.

With notes that some DC-DC circuits might not be as clean as the monitor's own power supply would be. Some DC-DC "adjustable" voltage circuits will only supply their theoretical maximums at specific voltages, not the whole voltage range, so if it is adjustable voltage it might not be 4A real, but 4A maximums.

It is (actually) a good idea to have a higher current converter (of the correct voltage) that would be able to cope easily with the smaller current draw, without overheating and being even less clean power (versus maxing out the capabilities of the design).

It is a good idea to have less conversion like you are trying to accomplish, less losses, but you may have more to learn about power driving a specific device beyond some few specs, and the nuances of a particular curcuit.
Sometimes a curcuit requires an additional heatsinking of the mosfet for the high output, an added output capacitor would make the output cleaner.

hard drive - Windows ssd upgrade with old hdd

I want to use Windows 10 with a Samsung ssd and a secondary internal hard drive. I just added the new ssd, but now the hdd can't be initialized and the ssd boot is so slow. I installed Windows 10 in the ssd without the internal hdd first, and added it after.

I noticed that If I remove the HDD from the Bios the laptop booted in seconds from the SSD, if I add the HDD it boots in minutes.

I think there is a recovery partition in this hdd that is making this happen. I thought linux would help me, so I want to format the hdd from an ubuntu live usb to fix it. I used gparted but It didn't work as expected.

In gparted, I selected my HDD and deleted all partitions, then formated it in NTFS. When I started Windows thinking the problem was solved, the HDD was recognized but the device can't be initialized, and Windows can't access the Hdd. It cannot be formated from Disk Management in Windows neither.

The hdd was fine before the ssd upgrade. What can I do?

EDIT: After unallocating space in my HDD from Ubuntu, I got this

http://imgur.com/a/Or19w

Right click, New simple Volumne, now shows an I/O error message and it does nothing...

Thanks

Answer

I answer myself.

I reconnected my internal hdd physically, in case it was disconnected.

Then, things went better. I cannot create the partition from Disk Management, but I used the following commands to create the partition

diskpart
list disk
select disk 0
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
format fs=ntfs quick

Then I used a Disk Partition tool like Active Partition Manager to rename my device.

Thanks

Windows 10 Child account problems

I have a laptop that was running Windows 8.1 that I've recently upgraded to Windows 10 Pro. I had to delete my six year old son's local account because Child Accounts now have to be Microsoft accounts. That means changing his password to something that's going to be difficult for a six year old to remember, oh well.

I've got a couple problems now. The main thing my son used to do in his account was to watch YouTube videos. We did bing video searches for kid-friendly terms and would then pin them to the start screen. I'm able to do pretty much the same thing now, but he can't watch any of them. We can see the preview of the videos in a bing video search if we hover over them, but when we actually try to view them we just see a blank white square. Also, if I try to visit youtube.com by typing that in the address bar in Edge or IE it seems to run forever, almost like a DNS problem. This was with "block inappropriate sites" set to off in family settings. I've turned it on, but it didn't help.

With 8.1, it would filter some YouTube videos, but it would see a message on the screen to that effect. My recollection with 8.1 is that you could set various levels of blocking set, this seems to be gone now. In general the family settings in 8.1 offered much more control, but there's no message on the page. I'm afraid that if I add youtube to the allowed list, it won't block ANY youtube videos, which would be BAD.

Another problem I'm having is that Windows 10 seems to have lost the ability to ask a grownup for more time. I've allowed my son 1 hour per day (previously 45 minutes, but the new Family Settings time limits aren't as granular as before.) When he ran out of time in 8.1 it would offer me the chance to log in and give him more time. I've been eating up my son's computer time trying to troubleshoot these problems, but I haven't found any way to give him more time. The message that's displayed on the screen when he's running low on time implies that this is possible, but I don't see how.

power supply - Cable from laptop brick to wall

I've seen plenty of questions asked about the power output of laptop bricks to the laptop - however my question is does the plug and cable that runs from the laptop brick to the wall need to match up?

My laptop brick has the following spec:

Input: 100-240v
Output: 19v, 2.1A

The only cable I can find anywhere that will fit this has the following spec:

Voltage: 10A 250V

Is this likely to cause any damage?

Would be most grateful for any advice.

Cheers.

macos - Why does my MacBook Pro (8,2, running Yosemite) get so hot?

This may look like a duplicate, but I've done research and noticed that everyone else is asking why their MacBook Pro Early 2011 (8,2) gets so hot- while they're using it. I constantly have activity monitor open to see if it's working hard and I never get more than 1/4 full- yet my fans are going off like it's a race to see which can spin faster. I also have a Mac Mini that CONSTANTLY hits 100%CPU usage - and I can NEVER hear it's fan. I've tried dusting the fans off, only to find that they were already clean. I've tried looking up possible causes, but it seems that everyone else with this problem is working their mac hard. While typing this, my CPU is at 80% idle and the temp is 163F, with fans at 6192rpm.

windows 10 - Usb stick in system devices but not in drives after re-partitioning with BootIce

I had usb stick that was formatted as iso.

Today i tried to recover it's original size (by using Bootice) and it worked ok, but now I can only see stick in System -> Disk Drives but not in Windows Explorer

Disk is formatted

How do I make usb stick appear in drives?