Left mouse button doesn’t work after playing a game in Windowed Fullscreen mode

I’ve had a weird issue recently when playing some games in Windowed fullscreen mode under Windows 10 Professional. Specifically the Epic Games Store version of The Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice Edition and also Robocop: Rogue City, although I’m sure it’s not limited to those. The issue is that after Alt-tabbing to… Continue reading

Building another dual Xeon workstation from a Supermicro server

In a previous post I detailed building a dual Xeon workstation using a Supermicro X8DTL-3F salvaged from a used 1U server, and dual Xeon X5680 CPUs. That was 6 years ago now, and it’s time for some upgrades. I was finding that, with air cooling, CPU#1 was ingesting hot exhaust… Continue reading

Building a Xeon E5645 TrueNAS server with a Supermicro X8DTL-6F & SAS2008

In a previous post I detailed building a NAS from a Supermicro 1U server, using a X8DTL-3F motherboard and a Xeon E5645 CPU. I’ve made some big changes since then, so I decided that this warranted a new post rather than just an update to that post. Obviously, one change… Continue reading

Flashing the SAS 2008 on a Supermicro X8DTL-6F to IT mode

I recently updated the motherboard on my NAS server from a Supermicro X8DTL-3F to a X8DTL-6F, which is a pretty much identical motherboard only with an onboard LSI SAS 2008 controller on it. During the course of that update, I needed to flash the SAS 2008 to IT mode, and… Continue reading

Mouse freezes on Ubuntu and Windows with Supermicro X8DTL

I have been regularly encountering an issue with a USB keyboard and mouse, where the mouse pointer freezes, and the keyboard experiences missed or delayed keystrokes. After approximately two seconds, it would unfreeze again, but the problem would reoccur almost immediately. Having now found a solution, I thought I would… Continue reading

Building a dual Xeon X5680 workstation

In a previous post I detailed how I built a NAS server from a Supermicro X8DTL-3F motherboard with Xeon E5645 CPU and DDR3 ECC Registered memory. It set me thinking on my spare PC. This PC used to be my main PC before an upgrade and is not really appropriate… Continue reading

Getting a Dell U2713HM to run 2560×1440@60Hz in Ubuntu

Just a quick post. I recently did a fresh install of Ubuntu 17.04 on my Ubuntu PC which has an nVidia GTX 1050, and on the fresh install I no longer had 2560×1440 as a display option for my Dell U2713HM monitor. In fact, I was limited to a maximum… Continue reading

After-market coolers for LGA1366/1356 Xeon CPUs

This is based on a previous post I made on building a NAS server from a SuperMicro X8DTL-3F, and cuts to the chase for people who are googling for the relevant information on how to mount an after-market cooler to a LGA1366 server motherboard (a.k.a. serverboard). It covers the Cooler… Continue reading

Building a Xeon E5645 FreeNAS server with a SuperMicro X8DTL-3F

I’ve been running a small NAS server for several years using the excellent HP MicroServer N40L upgraded to 8GB RAM (officially its max, although I know some people have got it to work with 16GB), and with five WD Red 2TB drives, running FreeNAS v9. The N40L only has 4… Continue reading

ASUS X99 Deluxe-II motherboard fails to boot with code “AE”

Symptoms: When you reboot your computer which has an ASUS X99 Deluxe-II motherboard, it goes through the POST fine, but when it hands over to the OS, you get a black screen with a flashing text cursor in the top left corner. Examining the Q-code display on the motherboard shows… Continue reading

Outlook 2003 “Reduced Functionality” mode workaround.

I stopped using Microsoft Office years ago, having switched to LibreOffice instead. LibreOffice does everything I need, and can open all my old Word and Excel documents, so I haven’t really missed Microsoft Office. However, I still have Outlook 2003 installed in order to read archived emails residing in a… Continue reading