Do you believe in fairy's ?

[Umpa_PC]

I do, I was visited by one last night !

So I I decided to buy a second hand GTX1070 OC and stick it in my Trident 3, fitting was very hard as the dimensions make it a very tight squeeze.  Its a total strip-down job.  Anyway I shoe horned it in, and turned it on.  Ok so it worked tested it out, not bad same FPS in games, but with everything on high or ultra.

I plug in Oculus Link, Oculus home fires up, still stutters a bit (but nothing new there), I go to fire up a game, it gets stuck on loading!  I hear the sound but the game does not load.  On the monitor there is a frozen picture of the game, but its all corrupt - I try steamVR but as the game starts it shows on the screen then it reports no headset. 

I am convinced it must be a driver issue, so rather than use the Ge-force Experience like I just did when it installed the very latest drivers (you can see where this is going) I decided to download and install them manually.  Did that - reboot and bugger all changed.

Swapped USB ports, no change - Oculus home always starts - no problems but games don't.... I fire up that Afterburner thing to under-clock the card in case its a power draw issue, again no change.  I hit the bottle as its Saturday night, and soon my head goes fuzzy, and I think bugger it.

Get up this morning with the bright idea of trying the Rift S on this machine - BOOM! (as the younger ones say) it works first time, so I decided to try Link, and again a big BOOM! it worked first time.

In the night the Computer Fairy came to visit and fixed my poorly PC, must have been her because I was totally clueless as to what the issue was.

I am a believer lol..

[Anonymous]

Sometimes the PC just needs a reboot.
😉

[Umpa_PC]

dburne said:

Sometimes the PC just needs a reboot.
😉

I did - even a total power off. (I have been around quite a long time) been messing with computers since 1980 thanks to Mr Sinclair- lol
I can't explain why it went wrong or why it fixed it's self.  I suppose it could have taken a windows update, because I did leave it switched on while I ate breakfast this morning, or a prolonged off time? but I am glad its working.

It took ages to fit the card, so was not looking forward to having to tear it apart again.

[Umpa_PC]

Turns out its Afterburner thats the problem.  I need to stop it, and switch the power off - a reboot does nothing, even if its not running as a service. As in when it reboots, without AB running Oculus still does not work correctly.

That will be why when I had another go in the morning it worked first time - power off did the trick.  It turns out originally it was running as a service (the window icon), I stopped it and rebooted, it still gave problems even though it it was not running, power off and it then works.

FWIW after oculus has started, I can then start it up. as its useful for fan control - but a reboot will result in it not working again, it needs a power off after AfterBurner.   

I wonder how many link users are having problems as a result of AB - even if only used for Fan Control.

[DaftnDirect]

There have been reports of problems with Afterburner and Oculus for some time (although not often)… maybe just some versions but it happens. I've mentioned in other threads I really recommend not installing graphics accelerator/utility programs. Nvidia experience is another app I'd avoid as it caused problems for me in the past. 

[Umpa_PC]

I am inclined to agree with you.  Do you know of another fan control utility that can be user adjusted similar to what AB does, coz thats all I'm interested in - cooling. 

[RuneSR2]

My office PC (not the VR rig) lost connection to the c drive last evening (yup, it got some sort of ... corona :#  ). Have one 500GB (c) and a 3TB in that PC. I do have backup, but still this was really bad - it's my primary workstation in these corona times. It has 8GB, an Intel 2,4 GHz quad-core (Q6600) and an Asus GTX 680 (DirectCU II TOP), so it works fine for many (older/simple) games too (runs Doom 2016 perfectly, also Dark Souls 3). Had to take out the drives, unplug the video card etc - totally vacuum cleaned everything. Didn't help, then found a new SATA cable (one did seem loose), and changed from SATA 1-2 og 3-4 for the drives. Windows still wouldn't work correctly, but suddenly Windows correctly initiated the start-up repair program and I just let it run for like 30 min - thought it was caught in an endless loop, but suddenly it restarted and now everything works again! Was so close to order a new drive (Plan A) which I also would be able to use if I really needed to buy a new PC (Plan B ) - Plan B only if the mainboard was faulty.  

Well, I bet some fairy just helped me B) 

[DaftnDirect]

Umpa_PC said:

I am inclined to agree with you.  Do you know of another fan control utility that can be user adjusted similar to what AB does, coz thats all I'm interested in - cooling. 

I'm using Corsair LINK to control fans, pump and pump LED colour. It can be configures to trigger events, programs or bat files for example so getting remote alarms via text is even possible.

I got it with my Corsair AIO cooler so not sure if it's compatible with non corsair pumps but I assume it'll work with any fans. 

[Umpa_PC]

I have just found some software called FireStorm from Zotec, it seems to be very similar to Afterburner and it seems it works with the Oculus software. Even has the same fan setting system.  I have tried one or two this morning, but they either don't support my GPU or mainboard, or they say they do - but don't work - lol.

So if anyone else is having link issues, I recommend uninstalling AfterBurner, shut down your computer, turn the quest off.  Start the computer, start the quest, wait for full system start up, plug in quest - say no to using link - say no to connect to computer, then click the enable link from the Quest dash.  If it works for you, then try Firestorm (if you have a Nvidia GPU) or another cooling solution if you have one.

For the people who find AfterBurner works for them - great ! - carry on !!