Windows 7 to 10 Upgrade

[greg_is_not_a_bot]

DAW: Reaper
I've gone through 12 distros now without success. I think it's time, once more, to wait 5 years (for the 3rd time) for Linux to get its sh!t together.

Oops - I posted a reply, but forgot to quote. See my post above with Reaper / Linux. Does that distro not work for you?

 

[Philbo King]

Oops - I posted a reply, but forgot to quote. See my post above with Reaper / Linux. Does that distro not work for you?

I think it's my PC - it's 15 years old. But the dual head Radeon GPU is the stumbling point. While it works fine in Win7, all the Linux distros show random hash on both screens. Well, not random; it looks like the video is being mapped to system RAM. I can see it change, line by line, when I load large files.

 

[greg_is_not_a_bot]

I think it's my PC - it's 15 years old. But the dual head Radeon GPU is the stumbling point. While it works fine in Win7, all the Linux distros show random hash on both screens. Well, not random; it looks like the video is being mapped to system RAM. I can see it change, line by line, when I load large files.

That video issue is bizarre! I'm running my DAW on a 1st gen i7, so it's pretty old too. I needed to accommodate some legacy PCI hardware, hence the old MB. One of the beauties of Linux is how well it runs on old machines.


If you're not 100% committed to your Radeon, I think I have one or possibly two dual monitor Nvidia cards you'd be welcome to. I know I was using one of them in the DAW, and only upgraded when one plugin didn't like the old video driver.

 

[Philbo King]

That video issue is bizarre! I'm running my DAW on a 1st gen i7, so it's pretty old too. I needed to accommodate some legacy PCI hardware, hence the old MB. One of the beauties of Linux is how well it runs on old machines.


If you're not 100% committed to your Radeon, I think I have one or possibly two dual monitor Nvidia cards you'd be welcome to. I know I was using one of them in the DAW, and only upgraded when one plugin didn't like the old video driver.

That would be awesome! I think it is an AGP slot if I recall correctly.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerated_Graphics_PortI'll have to check...

 

[drtechno]

I think it's my PC - it's 15 years old. But the dual head Radeon GPU is the stumbling point. While it works fine in Win7, all the Linux distros show random hash on both screens. Well, not random; it looks like the video is being mapped to system RAM. I can see it change, line by line, when I load large files.

Random video garbage on a linux screen means a video ram issue. The desktop overlay is hardware accelerated.
15 Year old card. Probably has a cold solder joint or bad ram cell. Its most likely a PCIe 2.0 machine but all you do is look at what slot or look up its motherboard model number. Some even screen print what type of video slot it was.

On my older audio machines, I run 2019 Server with no issues. But on one machine I did have to upgrade its video card to a nicer CAD workstation card because widows servers don't like some gaming cards because of their crap drivers which that machine had in it and it was not running a DAW well in windows 10. I found out that windows server will refuse junk hardware connected to it. It runs better.

 

[Philbo King]

Random video garbage on a linux screen means a video ram issue. The desktop overlay is hardware accelerated.
15 Year old card. Probably has a cold solder joint or bad ram cell. Its most likely a PCIe 2.0 machine but all you do is look at what slot or look up its motherboard model number. Some even screen print what type of video slot it was.

On my older audio machines, I run 2019 Server with no issues. But on one machine I did have to upgrade its video card to a nicer CAD workstation card because widows servers don't like some gaming cards because of their crap drivers which that machine had in it and it was not running a DAW well in windows 10. I found out that windows server will refuse junk hardware connected to it. It runs better.

Oddly, it behaves perfectly in Win7, with all 3 monitors at various resolutions. Experience leads me towards thinking it's a crappy Linux kernel driver.

 

[drtechno]

Oddly, it behaves perfectly in Win7, with all 3 monitors at various resolutions. Experience leads me towards thinking it's a crappy Linux kernel driver.

Depending on which desktop, it uses 3d acceleration.

 

[Disco Volante]

Just did a quick search "linux radeon gpu" and found this on reddit.


My guess is you're running a truly vintage Radeon card and therefore not getting the benefits of the rewrite/updates to the code. A slightly newer graphics card would probably solve the problem.

My experience is that linux is rock solid. Chances are a given technical issue will have been experienced by someone else and the solution can be found online. That's my mileage after 25 years on old hardware running either Debian or Ubuntu...

Which specific card are you running?

Cheers, V

 

[Philbo King]

I have 2 monitors connected to a Radeon Geforce HD 5450. Here's the box:


The 3rd monitor is connected to the (built in) Nvidea Geoforce 7025, which does work ok under Linux.

 

[Disco Volante]

Hmm, that is indeed a vintage gpu. Before spending time troubleshooting your linux distro, I'd spend 20-30 bucks on a newer dual-screen (Radeon), do a fresh install of Ubuntu (easiest) or Debian Testing (takes a bit more effort, but way more configurable and rock-solid). See if that fixes it (and gives you a bit faster graphics as a side effect;-)

Cheers, V!

 

[Philbo King]

Hmm, that is indeed a vintage gpu. Before spending time troubleshooting your linux distro, I'd spend 20-30 bucks on a newer dual-screen (Radeon), do a fresh install of Ubuntu (easiest) or Debian Testing (takes a bit more effort, but way more configurable and rock-solid). See if that fixes it (and gives you a bit faster graphics as a side effect;-)

Cheers, V!

A good point. I'm actually considering a PC upgrade since my 2009 system is pretty, ahem, 'vintage'. Still quite reliable, good enough for DAW work, but relatively speaking a power hog. I might be able to get by with a new MB, power supply and graphics card. I already have all the other peripherals (SSDs, DVD-RW, plus 4 or 5 'spinner' hard drives for backup). Just have to sock away some cash...

 

[Disco Volante]

Getting parts that are just a few years old will save you a ton of cash. Computers running fruit and doze have a average lifetime of just a few years. The amount of perfectly useable hardware being junked from e.g. corporate duty is staggering. Seems like the gdiy crowd is pretty good at keeping their old hardware running though;-)
Good luck with it all, and Happy New Year, hopefully a more peaceful one...
Cheers, V

 

[greg_is_not_a_bot]

A good point. I'm actually considering a PC upgrade since my 2009 system is pretty, ahem, 'vintage'. Still quite reliable, good enough for DAW work, but relatively speaking a power hog. I might be able to get by with a new MB, power supply and graphics card. I already have all the other peripherals (SSDs, DVD-RW, plus 4 or 5 'spinner' hard drives for backup). Just have to sock away some cash...

For what it's worth, I'm running an old Asus P6T motherboard for my DAW, and even finding the highest-spec processor for it on ebay last year didn't break the bank. One thing about Linux DAW and / or other multimedia stuff that's nice is that it somehow doesn't need much RAM to be perfectly happy. Processor speed is way more important than RAM, and having multiple cores is really helpful (I have 6 cores with the "new" 1st gen i7 processor, for 12 threads.)

Your power supply, case, SSDs, DVD-RW, HDs, etc. are probably all fine so yeah - MB upgrade might be really cost effective. Really think about going Nvidia for graphics though. It can save a ton of headache. I personally went with this fanless (silent!) card - it's not super crazy expensive but it solved all my display troubles: ASUS GeForce® GT 730 | Graphics Card | ASUS Global AV Linux loves it.

 

[zzzzz]

Similar to what others have said, just about anything around $100 will be an upgrade to that HD 5450, just gotta make sure it’ll run on your system. For reference, I just sold an old GTX 770 I used from 2018 to 2023 for $40… those were extremely popular ten years ago and should work on your older system, I think? I skimmed some people saying Linux plays nice with Nvidia but I know nothing about Linux.

 

[Philbo King]

To OP - Sorry for hijacking your thread

To the ones who helped me dig into the AMD 5450 GPU issues - thanks!

 

[Tubetec]

I thought Id drop in a link to this ,
I gave it a try the last couple of days ,
Was a little tricky formating the drive and installing the iso , but once I got beyond that it works very nicely .
It contains a suite of great free tools , like drive imaging , data recovery, partition management and repair.

As was the case here I had a HDdrive from a laptop that had a hardware error and wasnt ever going to boot again , the disk wasnt readable in windows , even though it was a Windows OS on the drive .
with the Hiren's PE environment and the tools you can get back access to unreadable Windows GPT partitions , although its only Windows XP that correctly flagged the drive format , later windows continually nagging me to format the drive for use , which of course you never want to do in a data recovery situation .

I used Hiren's CD boot disk years ago ,it was a very handy set of tools ,
this new version is based on Win 10 , without all the microsoft in your face garbage the OS comes pre-loaded with . The drive image comes to just under 3GB total ,
It seems to have the capabillity to run many basic windows tasks without all the fuss ,

https://www.hirensbootcd.org/

 

[evil grill]

Be aware of any hardware that might not have drivers for win10.
2 nice USB soundcards of mine became useless with win10.

 

[Tubetec]

I got the SSL2 interface going with Win 11 , I did the firmware update but the loopback of the stereo bus didnt work according to plan , the driver timed out .

I just tried Reaper ,REW and the SSL Asio driver software in the Hirens Win10 PE , everything just worked right away ,
So far its only running via external USB drive ,with the onboard Win 11 drive disconnected .
The PE version looks very fast and responsive compared to the bloated out Windows ,
I'll try it on an internal drive next ,

 

[Tubetec]

Most of the hardware drivers are of course missing from the PE , including some important chipset drivers , I'll try applying the Win10 version of the drivers from the computer manufacturers website .
The benefit of this is I need only add drivers as there required ,as it is I have full functionality with the basic programs and audio interface I use .
The nice thing about WIN10 PE is no spyware smokescreen UI , anyone whos used to Win7 will instantly be able to navigate their way around no problem .

 

[Tubetec]

“Windows PE is not a general-purpose operating system. It may not be used for any purpose other than deployment and recovery. It should not be used as a thin client or an embedded operating system. There are other Microsoft products, such as Windows Embedded CE, which may be used for these purposes.

To prevent its use as a production operating system, Windows PE automatically stops running the shell and restarts after 72 hours of continuous use. This period is not configurable.”
Windows PE does not include any Windows license keys. Also Hiren’s BootCD PE does not violate Windows PE purposes and it does not change “72 hours of continuous use” limitation. So using Windows PE in Hiren’s BootCD PE is legal in the terms of Microsoft’s usage purposes.