As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’ve always been a fan of the wide variety of mini-PCs from different manufacturers and generations available on the (refurbished) market. Whether as an energy-efficient server, a relatively powerful office computer, a “streaming box,” or an emulation device, there are plenty of uses for them. Spare parts are generally easy to find and the prices for used units are reasonable.

No comparison to the cheap, new “no-name” mini-PCs from the Far East, which lack real software support. Something not working in the UEFI? Usually, you’re out of luck. In contrast, business devices from well-known manufacturers receive updates for everything relevant for many years. At the same time, fans, coolers, and other components are often designed to be far more durable, ensuring they last for many years without issues.

On top of that, in many new mini-PCs, upgradeability is limited due to the use of soldered mobile processors – which is personally unacceptable to me. Add to that the additionally occasional soldered RAM and it’s a no-go.

Until now, we’ve been using other, surplus hardware to serve as our energy-efficient Proxmox hosts. Of course, this comes with some trade-offs – but letting relatively modern, energy-efficient hardware sit unused when it’s practically free wouldn’t be a better use for it either. Over time, however, more and more minor issues cropped up, which – combined with an acceptable deal (there aren’t any great prices right now; CPUs, RAM, and storage have seen a sharp rise in price. Whether things will ever really get better again is questionable; one can only hope) – have now prompted us to rebuild and expand our always-on Proxmox environment.

Problems with the current setup

As I mentioned in this post, we have two energy-efficient Proxmox servers, a high-performance, power-hungry one and a backup server. The high-performance server runs only when needed; the others runs 24/7.

In reality, the TR server is hardly ever used, for various reasons. For one thing, its power consumption is quite high, and for another, due to time constraints, the VMs are typically run locally instead and are therefore rarely accessed over the network. On top of that, the vGPU system keeps causing incompatibilities (e.g., the GPU stops working within Windows 11 VMs due to updates, things don’t work properly on the server side, Proxmox updates break functionality, etc.), and the constant need for repairs eats up time I don’t have right now, for little to no use afterward. Sure, vGPU is technically really good and interesting, but right now it’s completely unnecessary for us.

The host from which media is streamed locally is the HP notebook equipped with an Intel Core i5-10210U (4 cores, 8 threads) with a TDP of just 15 watts. The problem: Especially during indexing, the fan frequently runs at full speed for hours on end (single-core load, boost up to 4.2 GHz!). Since the computer is located in the living room, the noise pollution cannot be ignored. On top of that, dust is sucked into the device for hours every day, and I’d rather not test how long such an inexpensive, slim fan can withstand the constantly high RPMs without sustaining damage. So the primary goal is to replace it as sensibly as possible.

At the same time, the number of running services is constantly growing, so this upgrade won’t replace either of the two existing servers, it will simply expand the infrastructure.

Solution?

We plan to purchase at least one mini PC as an addition to our setup. I’ll explain the details – how, what, and why – in my next post.

Der Beitrag <h5>Mini-PC Server #1: </h5><h3><b>Prolog</b></h3> erschien zuerst auf flohs blog.

This issue comes up particularly often with devices that come with Windows 11 preinstalled (as was the case before, for example, with Windows 10): The Home edition is installed, but you want a different edition, usually Professional. If you have a product key for the Professional edition, it’s no problem – just enter the key like so:

The target edition is identified using the key and the feature installation or removal begins once the process is running:

The system will restart and you should be switched to the target edition. If the process fails, try it several times. A “clean” restart can also help; for me, it doesn’t always work right away either. After the switch, Windows 11 Professional will run successfully in this case:

But what if you want to switch to a different edition but don’t have a key for it (yet) or if the PC has already been digitally activated in the past?

There is a solution for this: generic product keys, officially provided by Microsoft. They aren’t suitable for activation, but they’re very useful for installation and migration. I’ve summarized the most important ones in the table below:

Usage

Just paste the correct product key for the version of Windows 11 you want into the product key change dialog shown above (use the right-click menu to copy and paste -> CTRL+C / CTRL+V never worked for me there) and it’ll be updated right away!

Deskmodder has a few more, including some for rare editions and server versions.

Der Beitrag Windows 11: Change the installed edition erschien zuerst auf flohs blog.

There are many reasons to use the desktop versions of popular messaging apps. For us, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal are standard on all our computers. The desktop versions make it much easier to work with, format, and send PC setups, graphics or simply large amounts of data.

For several weeks or months now, however, WhatsApp Desktop has stopped working on all the Windows 11 computers we use. It couldn’t be due to firewall settings, as we have PCs in use both with and without firewalls. The logs also show nothing unusual.

After some research, it turns out that Meta switched the desktop version to Microsoft Edge WebView2 in one of the updates rolled out recently and this is now causing problems.

Symptoms

In all problematic instances, the behavior was the same: The app launches, but nothing appears except the tray icon – no window. When I click the tray icon, a window opens with a splash screen (a small, gray WhatsApp logo) and nothing happens. No error message, no attempt to access the network, nothing.

All computers were running the latest version of Windows 11 Professional, 25H2 (x64), at the time of the issue.

The solution

In our case, installing the standalone version of the Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime (“Evergreen Standalone Installer”) with administrator privileges solved the problem.

You can download the version for x86, x64 or ARM systems here.
It is important to install it with administrator privileges – without them, the setup will not work and will report that the runtime is already installed (see screenshots below).

Once the setup is complete, the wizard closes automatically. After installation, you should restart your computer. And lo and behold: WhatsApp Desktop works again!

Der Beitrag WhatsApp Desktop for Windows – Troubleshooting startup issues erschien zuerst auf flohs blog.

A few weeks ago, a friend asked me what the problem might be when all browsers stop working. More specifically: Whenever they tried to launch either Microsoft Edge or Mozilla Firefox, they only got an error message saying they didn’t have sufficient permissions. It was a strange error – why would permissions suddenly be missing after years of trouble-free operation?

After some back-and-forth, we managed to install a new version of Mozilla Firefox with step-by-step phone instructions and finally installed AnyDesk using a working browser, which allowed me to take a look at the problem myself. That’s when a surprise came to light: The PC has been running Windows 8.1 Home, 64-bit, just as it always has!

Having gone without any updates for quite some time (end of life was on January 10, 2023!), the problem ultimately came down to expired root certificates. Continuing to run 8.1 wasn’t a viable option anyway, so I performed an in-place upgrade to Windows 10 22H2 remotely via AnyDesk. That took hours because the factory-installed 3.5″ WD hard drive with 1 TB capacity* is still the boot drive. The already very underpowered fourth-generation dual-core i3 is further severely hampered by the now very limited 4 GB of DDR3 RAM in the form of a single memory module. All in all, a significantly outdated system, but one with the potential to be upgraded very cost-effectively. That’s exactly what I did today, a few days later.

After a deep clean, everything looks so much brighter:

Upgrades

The PC is used solely for viewing photos and occasional web browsing. So there’s no reason to switch to the very latest and most expensive hardware. For a reasonable price, you can still get a lot out of this 2014 Acer Aspire, here’s a comparison of the current components and the planned upgrade:

The UEFI was already up to date; I checked that before taking anything apart. The reason is that newer processors within the same generation are usually only supported by updated microcode in the form of a newer BIOS or UEFI version. The planned i7-4790 is actually a refresh within Haswell-DT, so it’s even newer than the original i7 release models and incompatibilities cannot be ruled out.

Here are the components; everything except the CPU is from my own stash:

Processor replacement

This is incredibly easy thanks to the FC-LGA 1150 socket:

For thermal paste, I used the tried-and-true MX-4 from Arctic* and 99.9% isopropyl alcohol* to clean the components. I added the two new RAM modules, and lo and behold: POST was successful, and it’s running. Everything is recognized correctly in the UEFI. Now I just need to shrink the partitions, clone the hard drive to the SSD, and put everything back together.

Success?

For comparison purposes, I ran Cinebench R23 and the PassMark Performance Test v11.1 on the original hardware at the beginning and then again after the upgrade. Both tests were run on the same Windows 10 Home 64-bit system. This makes it easy to see the performance gains:

The performance gains are consistently very substantial and extremely noticeable. In particular, the integrated graphics unit – which is slightly more powerful in the i7 than in the i3 – benefits further from dual-channel operation with two memory modules (instead of just one as before). However, due to the patches addressing Spectre and Meltdown as well as other factors, the results do not quite match the reference scores. Here are the Cinebench screenshots:

Next, the PassMark results – though, due to a lack of internet connection at the time of testing, these are only available offline:

Last but not least, here is the HWiNFO overview of the respective configuration:

Der Beitrag Acer Aspire XC-605: A Late Upgrade in Times of Skyrocketing Storage Prices erschien zuerst auf flohs blog.

I wonder how many hours people spent playing this simple yet incredibly fun pinball classic from Cinematronics / Maxis back in the Windows XP days?

But let’s start from the beginning – this stripped-down pinball game has a history:
Originally, Space Cadet was just one of three tables in the full-fledged game “Full Tilt! Pinball (1995)” by the American developer Cinematronics, which was acquired by Maxis shortly thereafter. Maxis is best known today for “The Sims” and “SimCity” and was acquired by Electronic Arts as early as 1997.

How did Space Cadet end up in Windows?

First and foremost, this version – which was limited to a single table and otherwise technically stripped-down – appeared on the market as part of the “Windows 95 Plus!” bundle, just as we still know it today. Later, it was re-licensed by Microsoft and included with Windows ME, NT 4.0, 2000 and XP. Personally, I remember it as one of several games included in Windows XP.

Since then, this game has not been included in subsequent versions of Windows – which is a shame, i liked it.

Does it run on modern Windows?

Yes, the game still runs unchanged today on the original systems as well as on Windows Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10, and 11 – on both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the operating system. A port to SDL has also been implemented, so since 2020 you can play this game on many platforms or even in a browser!

You can download the game for example from archive.org in various languages; the “WaveFiles” must also be downloaded separately to get the sound effects. Or you can simply copy the entire game folder from a Windows XP installation to a newer version of Windows, that works too.

Here is the overview page on archive.org: 3D Pinball: Space Cadet (EN/DEU/PL/CS/JP/DA)
Here’s how to combine the files to play Space Cadet in all its former glory:

Step 1: Download the files

Download the two neccessary 7-Zip archives from the link above or from the following direct links:

PINBALL_ENGLISH.7z
WaveFiles.7z

Step 2: Unpacking

WinRAR or 7-Zip is necessary to unpack the archives.
Extract both archives to separate folders using the context menu.

Step 3: Merge sound effects

Copy or cut the entire contents of the “WaveFiles” folder from the extracted archive and paste or move them into the “PINBALL_ENGLISH” folder, which has also been extracted.

There should be 60 wave sounds.

Step 4: Play

Double-click “pinball.exe” to start playing this classic game.
First, the familiar full-screen splash screen appears, and after a few seconds of initialization, the game begins!

Cheats!

Something that used to be relatively unknown: There’s a hidden test mode in this game. To access it, simply type “hidden test” (including the space) into the fully initialized, running game. This unlocks new possibilities:

In addition, instead of “hidden test” you can enter “1max” during the game (as many times as you like) to get an extra ball each time!

Der Beitrag 3D Pinball for Windows – Space Cadet: The favorite among the included games erschien zuerst auf flohs blog.

FAT32 is essentially the “standard file system” for many devices, especially embedded and older ones. The Nintendo Wii, for example, only supports FAT32-formatted SD cards, just as many media players (car radios) can only read USB sticks with the FAT32 file system. It has been supported by Microsoft operating systems since Windows 95, but with some limitations – Wikipedia lists these very nicely.

One of these limitations is that Windows only allows formatting with the FAT32 file system for drives with a storage capacity of up to and including 32 GB when formatting via the GUI (context menu in Explorer). Above this, only NTFS or exFAT are offered, both of which are incompatible file systems for many devices.

This is incomprehensible, as significantly larger volumes are supported depending on the selected sector size (up to 2 TiB with the universally compatible standard sector size of 512 bytes!). However, the limitation of individual files to a maximum of 4 GiB cannot be circumvented.

There are several ways…

…to format a drive as FAT32 in Windows anyway. For example, using the command line, where there is no 32 GB limitation:

format S: /FS:FAT32 /Q

format S: /FS:FAT32 /Q

The most convenient way for me so far has been to use a small program from “Ridgecrop Consultants Ltd“: small, free, standalone, and available with or without a GUI.

A description of the application can be found here, and you can download it directly from the developer as a console version here (archive.org). My preferred GUI version is described here (direct download of the EXE, archive.org).

Usage

The application is very easy to use – connect the drive to the computer, ensure that there is only one main partition (Control Panel -> Administration -> Disk Management) and run “guiformat.exe” (as administrator, like requested).

Select the appropriate letter from the drop-down list, set the sector size (for a total size of less than 2 TiB, select 512 bytes to ensure maximum compatibility) and format.
Done!

The file explorer also displays everything correctly as expected:

Der Beitrag Format drives with a capacity of over 32 GB as FAT32 under Windows erschien zuerst auf flohs blog.

For the purpose of significantly improving comparability, sp00n, who is active on GitHub and Hardwareluxx, among others, has compiled many benchmark results for different Cinebench versions.

More results are available there for Cinebench R15, R20, R23, and 2024. He makes these available for download on his GitHub repository:

https://github.com/sp00n/cinebench_scores (ZIP-Archive)

To use the downloaded text files, copy the ones that match your version to the “cb_ranking” subfolder in the respective program directory. Then simply start Cinebench and the list of comparison results should be considerably longer.

Der Beitrag Additional results for Cinebench erschien zuerst auf flohs blog.

The underlying product is Cinema 4D from the German company Maxon – a performance-hungry rendering software.
Its development history is really interesting; the first version was released back in 1993 for the Commodore Amiga.

This software was used in several movies, for example:

• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
• Beowulf (2007)
• The Golden Compass (2007)
• Surf’s Up (2007)
• Spider-Man 3 (2007)
• Chronicles of Narnia (Part 1: 2005 / Part 2: 2008 / Part 3: 2010)
• Serenity (2005)
• Inception (2010)
• Van Helsing (2004)
• The Polarexpress (2004)
• He Was a Quiet Man (2007)
• Iron Man 3 (2013)
• Pacific Rim (2013)
• Furious 7 (2015)
• Avengers: Endgame (2019)

…Bleeding edge rendering technology, you might say. Cinebench was then created to test the performance of hardware for use with Cinema 4D: The first version was released at the end of 1999 and was called “Cinebench 2000”. Since then, there have been regular new releases of this benchmark and annual releases of the actual Cinema 4D software, available for Windows and macOS (newer versions for x86, x86-64, and ARM64).

Cinebench is mainly used to test processors; either all threads or a single thread can be fully loaded and measured. Many versions also offer GPU testing. Here is an overview of the different versions in the form of screenshots:

CineBench 2000

CINEBENCH 2003

CINEBENCH 9.5

CINEBENCH R10

CINEBENCH R11.5

CINEBENCH R15

CINEBENCH R20

CINEBENCH R23

Cinebench 2024

Cinebench 2026

Compatibility and more detailed information

Here, I have compiled a table of all versions known to me, including relevant information:

I myself always use version R23 wherever possible, including additional results for better comparability (more on this in the next post). In terms of load and the hardware period I’m dealing with, this is a good compromise between load and compatibility: After all, I work a lot with older systems (Windows 10 and older) – so it’s helpful when two slower cores and relatively little RAM are still able to run in order to compare the existing hardware or test the effects of settings.

Regardless of this, R23 is also my standard version for overclocking processors and the version used in this blog to test and measure almost all CPUs that appear in “Hardware Setups”.

Even the first version, “CineBench 2000,” is still executable under Windows 11 (64-bit) today!

Download

All versions can be conveniently downloaded from TechPowerUp, among other places.

Der Beitrag Cinebench: The long history of a benchmark erschien zuerst auf flohs blog.

While sorting through my old games, I stumbled across this classic mini-game once again. I can’t say why, but this game has popped into my mind every now and then over the years. Entertaining, challenging, and yet still fun.

All you need to control it is the left or right mouse button to determine the direction of the barrier creation. However, you need good nerves to play it. After a very long time, the developer Matthew Miller (https://mattdm.org/icebreaker/) has even released newer versions and there is now also a GitHub repository. The game is programmed in C.

I’ve been running v1.9.5 since the beginning, currently on Windows 11 and I still enjoy it just as much as I did “back then” on Windows XP when I first encountered this little game (was it perhaps once part of a CBS CD/DVD?).

Der Beitrag IceBreaker: An open source classic erschien zuerst auf flohs blog.