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SSD Failure
Yeah, so, my main SSD up and died earlier tonight. You know, the one with Windows installed on it. And the one with the extra Windows partition, to make reinstalling easier. Just a quick BSOD followed by the BIOS no longer recognizing the drive. No other warning whatsoever.
While I did manage to make a frantic trip out to Best Buy to get another SSD in some insane fantasy that’d I’d be able to play videogames tonight, I was instead presented with the cruelest of ironies: you can reinstall Windows from the disk, but not the driver necessary to get on the Internet. I can’t even begin to imagine how that makes sense. Nor why it’s so goddamn difficult to have single, centralized place to download said driver (from another computer, if course). “Check your computer manufacturer.” Uh, it was custom-built; not like I can go to Dell or Apple’s website here. I did manage to figure it out, inexplicably, and shall henceforth seed my house with USB sticks with said drivers upon them.
The silver lining here is that the original SSD was only 64gb, mainly used for the OS, and thus my 500gb data drive remained intact. The new SSD is 480gb because why the fuck not, so once I preform the necessary blood rituals getting evening reinstalled, I might just migrate my Steam folder over.
In any case, here is your monthly reminder to back up your files. And your drivers.
In An Age 
When In Doubt, Update Drivers
Dec 11
Posted by Azuriel
As I mentioned in the last post, I was extremely nervous about my computer “investment” considering the choppy performance in Deus Ex: Human Revolution thus far. When I re-downloaded Fraps, I finally saw the full scope of the depravity: ~15 fps standing still in the outdoor environments, single digits walking around. Keep in mind, that was with the lowest texture settings, AA set to one notch above “none,” and a 1440×900 resolution. As is often the case in these things, Google was fairly useless other than letting me know that people with lesser machines were miraculously getting better performance.
Then, in my darkest… half-hour, I fell back on my most basic of training: when in doubt, update drivers.
The Nvidia driver update did not actually solve anything. But in the process of updating it, I noticed a Virtu Control Panel button in the System Tray. Screwing around with the settings there did nothing. That was when I chose the “check for updates button,” navigating to their website for the latest driver. Which said:
From what I gather, the Virtu program basically creates a virtual GPU that combines the power of your processors + your normal graphics card. Or, in my case, prevent my computer from using the goddamn graphics card. No, seriously. Once the driver was updated, I loaded up Deus Ex and had a maximum settings, 105 fps orgasm. We’re talking Perpetual Motion Machine lubricant smooth. This feels like an entirely different game than I was playing for the last 15 hours. I almost feel like starting the game over entirely.
So, when in doubt, update drivers. Including the drivers for shit you didn’t even know was installed on the machine.
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Tags: Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Drivers, PC Shopping