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Tech Support GAF Thread: No Case Too Big, No Case Too Small

F

FeedMeAStrayCat

Member
Current situation:

Desktop PC with no wireless card. Have an extra router, though. Would like to use this router in conjunction with the current router. Can connect desktop to 2nd router via ethernet cable. 2nd router connected to 1st router strictly via wifi, though.

I'm kinda lost on this one, I've never dealt with adding a 2nd router to a network.
 
N

nan0

Member
FeedMeAStrayCat said:
Current situation:

Desktop PC with no wireless card. Have an extra router, though. Would like to use this router in conjunction with the current router. Can connect desktop to 2nd router via ethernet cable. 2nd router connected to 1st router strictly via wifi, though.

I'm kinda lost on this one, I've never dealt with adding a 2nd router to a network.
Click to expand...

It could work if you use the extra router as a repeater. Depends on the routers' capabilities though.
 
S

Subaru

Member
Hi GAFers!

I'm gonna buy a new VGA in NY next month (i'm from brazil, they're pretty expensive here) and I'm thinking about a MSI Lightning GTX 680. I know that this vga is very good, but there's another NVIDIA recommendation for the same price?

Thank you so much!
 
B

BroggieDoge

Member
Never had this issue before I'm on wired connection. Turn on my ps3 which I hadn't played in about 1 week, I got to download avatars off psn and I get a dns error. I tried turning off my router for a few, turning console off/on and now pretty much when I do a connection test I get the DNS error or a connection error. Same if I sync trophies. But I can access the psn store fine. My laptop, 360 and Wii u all work fine with the same Ethernet connected.
 
R

Robso

Member
Recently got myself a gaming PC and I know games have one time activations nowadays. I was just wondering whether older games ever had this?

Was looking at trying to pick up the likes of Just Cause 1, Gears of War 1 and Bionic Commando (The retail one that released in 2009 I think it was) etc and would I be able to use these for free and be able to activate them for free.

Sorry if this is a nub question.

Edit: Also, is there a website where you can check what games will run on Windows 7 and other OS?
 
B

Banglish

Member
Hey guys my mouse loading animation (the blue circle) keeps randomly appearing at 5-10 second intervals for no reason. I just updated to SP 1 (W7). It's not slowing anything down but it's really annoying.
 
0

06nbarnhill

Member
So I downloaded an update for windows 7/security essentials the other day. Since then I have not been able to view ANY imaged uploaded to Tumblr. Doesn't matter whether its on the site itself or hotlinked elsewhere.

It was kind of the tip of the ice berg so last night I did a full windows reinstall. Everything was peachy until I updated/installed security essentials & windows 7 and now I have the same problem again.

I tried uninstalling MSE with no effect. Also turned OFF firewall completely and no change.

Any advice?
 
S

SonofdonCD

Member
Okay, so I have a REALLY WEIRD problem. It only just now started to happen, as well.

I have a wired Xbox 360 controller. Works fine. But randomly, after using it with my 360, I plug it into my PC, which I have been doing for years. It connects, but says that it is the second player and not the first. I have no other controllers connected, so for it to think it is the second is bizarre. But it is preventing me from playing almost any game I try. My PC must think that the first player must be using another controller or something to that effect. So weird.

Any help would be appreciated.
 
O

opticalmace

Member
Any recommended backup programs?

I would like one that can do incremental backups. Thanks.

edit: On a related note, does anyone know of a program that can find duplicate files? I found some random ones on Google but frankly don't trust them to not delete all my shit, would rather have a recommendation.
 
R

Ryaaan14

Banned
I don't know if this is the right place to ask this, but for a long time my laptop has been dropping its wireless signal and it's getting progressively worse. It happens when I literally sit 5 feet away from my router so I know it's not a signal issue.

Is there a way I can fix this? If not, is it worth the expense to replace the part? I have never fucked with laptops. Plus it's a $600 Vaio I bought about 3 years ago or so.
 
T

Trin

Member
For the past month or so, the display on my laptop keeps sporadically dimming or flashing between bright and dim regardless if it's on battery or plugged in. Adjusting the brightness and changing the power plan doesn't seem to have any effect.

Any ideas what could be causing the problem?
 
Z

zero shift

Banned
So my computer screen started to flicker on and off slowly. I got a message saying "Display Drive not working" or something of that sort. It started getting a bit more noticable throughout the day until my computer froze. I then restarted it and it got to a black screen and then reseted. After another reset it worked fine but then the screen turned black. I then went to Safe Mode with Networking and things worked fine. I tried to reinstall my AMD Catalyst driver but it didn't work as a pop message saying "Display Driver not detected" popped up. After looking online I saw that you can't update the driver in safe mode. So I managed to get into Normal mode and do it, only for the screen to turn completely black through it. I restarted the computer after a few minutes and now the screen is ALWAYS black in normal mode.

So its likely not a hardware issue but a software one. I also REALLY don't want to reinstall Windows as I have a lot of installed programs on here and have a RAID 0 drive which always is a pain for me to reinstall.

Some info:
- This has just started today. Absolutely none of this or even its systems were happening prior to today.
- I haven't added any new hardware to my computer nor have I installed anything major recently.
- Used Malwarebytes, didn't detect anything.
- Performed a system restore, no effect.
- When I try to uninstall AMD Catalyst under Safe Mode with Networking it says "AMD Catalyst already uninstalled or drivers not working correctly"
- Prior to trying to reinstall AMD drivers when Windows started in normal mode some weird static would appear prior to it either deciding to start up or not.

Computer Specs: Windows 7 64bit, AMD HD 6850, i5-2500k, 8GB of RAM, OCZ 120GB Agility3, Two Raid 0 Samsung HDDs.

UPDATE - I used drive sweeper to delete everything AMD Display related. It works fine now. But when I install the newest AMD Catalyst via express, it doesn't work. I normally just wouldn't install it, but Windows doesn't display up to 1080p which my TV is and I want to install AMD drivers to improve my video card.

UPDATE 2 - So now I have used express install with the previous version. The same. However when I did custom installed and installed everything but AMD Display Drive my computer was able to reboot but Catalyst Control Center wouldn't open. Once I installed AMD Display Drive nothing worked again.
 
E

evlcookie

but ever so delicious
Ryaaan14 said:
I don't know if this is the right place to ask this, but for a long time my laptop has been dropping its wireless signal and it's getting progressively worse. It happens when I literally sit 5 feet away from my router so I know it's not a signal issue.

Is there a way I can fix this? If not, is it worth the expense to replace the part? I have never fucked with laptops. Plus it's a $600 Vaio I bought about 3 years ago or so.
Click to expand...

You might be able to replace the part. The only way to really find out would be to look it up on Sonys website. See if you can see the part listed somewhere buried deep in the bowels of their support pages.

The only other thing I could suggest would be to try a different wireless network. Maybe even set your phone if you had an iPhone as a wireless point and see if it holds the connection. If it's constantly dropping out then for sure it's the laptop. You could try a format to really rule out an OS issue or simply boot from say a ubuntu disc and try connect to a wireless network from that (i'm pretty sure something like that should work). If it stays strong under something like ubuntu well then .... back to software issues!

Trin said:
For the past month or so, the display on my laptop keeps sporadically dimming or flashing between bright and dim regardless if it's on battery or plugged in. Adjusting the brightness and changing the power plan doesn't seem to have any effect.

Any ideas what could be causing the problem?
Click to expand...

Probably the LCD or backlight within the LCD .. So probably the LCD anyway. You could check by plugging an external monitor into the laptop and seeing if that ends up dimming and flashing or if it's stable. If it also dims and freaks out then it could actually be the GPU.

Robso said:
Sorry for the dumb question incoming. To connect my tower to a monitor using DVI, both ends need to be male right?
Click to expand...

Yep. Just google search DVI cable and you can see how pretty they are! If you're using a mac then it could get a little different but since you mentioned a tower, I assume it's just as PC.

@Zero Shift
Have you tried installing the latest catalyst beta drivers from the AMD website? You can grab them here - http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalyst1211betadriver.aspx - I'm running them and have no issues. It sounds like you've done the right things, Used driver sweeper to ditch everything it's found, It's worth trying that in safe mode BTW. The only random thing you could try would be to throw the card into another PCI-E slot and see what the heck that does.
 
T

Trin

Member
evlcookie said:
Probably the LCD or backlight within the LCD .. So probably the LCD anyway. You could check by plugging an external monitor into the laptop and seeing if that ends up dimming and flashing or if it's stable. If it also dims and freaks out then it could actually be the GPU.
Click to expand...

Great idea :) I happen to have an extra monitor, so I'll try that now. Thanks!
 
R

Robso

Member
evlcookie said:
You might be able to replace the part. The only way to really find out would be to look it up on Sonys website. See if you can see the part listed somewhere buried deep in the bowels of their support pages.

The only other thing I could suggest would be to try a different wireless network. Maybe even set your phone if you had an iPhone as a wireless point and see if it holds the connection. If it's constantly dropping out then for sure it's the laptop. You could try a format to really rule out an OS issue or simply boot from say a ubuntu disc and try connect to a wireless network from that (i'm pretty sure something like that should work). If it stays strong under something like ubuntu well then .... back to software issues!



Probably the LCD or backlight within the LCD .. So probably the LCD anyway. You could check by plugging an external monitor into the laptop and seeing if that ends up dimming and flashing or if it's stable. If it also dims and freaks out then it could actually be the GPU.



Yep. Just google search DVI cable and you can see how pretty they are! If you're using a mac then it could get a little different but since you mentioned a tower, I assume it's just as PC.

@Zero Shift
Have you tried installing the latest catalyst beta drivers from the AMD website? You can grab them here - http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalyst1211betadriver.aspx - I'm running them and have no issues. It sounds like you've done the right things, Used driver sweeper to ditch everything it's found, It's worth trying that in safe mode BTW. The only random thing you could try would be to throw the card into another PCI-E slot and see what the heck that does.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's just a PC. Thanks.
 
C

carlo6529

Member
I was having issue's where my display would just cut out and go to a blue screen. This went on for a while until thing's got worse. Now everytime I go to boot my computer in normal mode, it restarts before actually loading and gives me the options to start it in safe mode.

I was hoping it was just an issue with windows so I decided to clean format but the computer is still doing the same thing, so it has got to be something with hardware right? I think it is the graphic's card on the fritz only because of the display issues I was having before things turned for the worse but I am really not sure.

Anyone experience similar problems before and have any suggestions or know what the problem is? I realize it could be a number of things.

I'm currently trying to get a hold of another gpu to swap it and see if the problem still occurs.
 
P

PhoenixDark

Banned
I have been unable to install security updates for Windows 7 Ultimate (32bit) over the last few days. I have successfully used update for most optional updates but the "important" ones keep failing
techq1.png


techq2.png


So far I have tried a variety of steps I read online, such as disabling my firewall/spyware protection (temporarily of course), using WindowsFixIt, using the troubleshooting tool for Windows Update, and used the System Update Readiness. I have SP1 on my computer already. It doesn't seem like I can chose a system restore point that goes back further than this problem, either.

(I am also unable to download IE 9 using Windows Update; I don't use IE though)
(most of those optional updates are language packages I don't plan on downloading)
 
L

LuffyZoro

Member
My YouTube looks like this now after running a system cleaning.

Yvx3d.png


Also, I just realized while posting this that I apparently can't click on the little buttons to add formatting to a post anymore. They may be connected.

EDIT: On firefox. Also, many images aren't working, and my Live Thread extensions isn't either.

EDIT2: Only a problem on firefox, it seems. Switched back to Chrome for the time being.
 
L

lingiii

Banned
Ok. There's no way anybody's going to be able to help me but:

I can't find my iPad mini ('cuz its so small yeah yeah good joke). It could be: at home, at office, at buddy's, stolen.

I'm scratching my head totally confused. Find My iPhone(Pad) says it's not currently connected to the internet (battery might be dead?).

To narrow the search, I was wondering: is there any way to see where/when the last iCloud backup happened? That much would at least let me know which zone to tear apart looking.
 
R

Robso

Member
Do I have to reinstall Steam and redownload all my games if I want to move my data to another HDD? Or can I just copy and paste? (Guessing I can't. :()
 
G

gblues

Banned
Laocoon said:
Ok. There's no way anybody's going to be able to help me but:

I can't find my iPad mini ('cuz its so small yeah yeah good joke). It could be: at home, at office, at buddy's, stolen.

I'm scratching my head totally confused. Find My iPhone(Pad) says it's not currently connected to the internet (battery might be dead?).

To narrow the search, I was wondering: is there any way to see where/when the last iCloud backup happened? That much would at least let me know which zone to tear apart looking.
Click to expand...

Do you have another iOS device? Go to Settings > iCloud > Storage & Backup > Manage Storage and it will give you stats of all your device backups, including date & time.
 
G

gblues

Banned
carlo6529 said:
I was having issue's where my display would just cut out and go to a blue screen. This went on for a while until thing's got worse. Now everytime I go to boot my computer in normal mode, it restarts before actually loading and gives me the options to start it in safe mode.

I was hoping it was just an issue with windows so I decided to clean format but the computer is still doing the same thing, so it has got to be something with hardware right? I think it is the graphic's card on the fritz only because of the display issues I was having before things turned for the worse but I am really not sure.

Anyone experience similar problems before and have any suggestions or know what the problem is? I realize it could be a number of things.

I'm currently trying to get a hold of another gpu to swap it and see if the problem still occurs.
Click to expand...

One of the last items on the Startup menu should be something like "Disable automatic restart on STOP error." If you choose that, it will attempt to start again but this time it won't auto-reboot when the blue screen happens. That should let you write down the ENTIRE STOP error and let you figure out what might be causing it.

Depending on the STOP error, it may also display the filename of the driver where the error occurred. Write that down because it'll help you determine what driver is failing. If it's nv_ or ati_ something, you're looking at the video card.
 
S

Swig_

Member
Not sure if this is the right palce to post this, but I wasn't sure where else..

I have two PS3s that I use for gaming/movies/tv.. specifically Netflix/Hulu.

One them attached to a 60" LED, the other to a smaller 32".

For some reason when streaming to the smaller TV, it kills my internet which is CenturyLink (supposedly 12mbps). When I'm streaming to the other, bigger TV I have no problems.

I haven't made any major changes to settings in either PS3.

Can anyone help me figure out why it would be doing this? Both are the Slim versions (after the fat versions.. not the newest "ugly" slims). The PS3 that slows down the internet is a couple of years older than the other one, but shows no sign of any other problems.
 
M

mohsinkhan

Member
GAF,
I am not too good with computers so I was hoping someone could help me out here, my laptop seemed to turn off by itself, I then booted it back up and after the "Welcome" my screen went blank for about 30 seconds. Once my computer finally booted to my desktop, a dialogue popped up that said "Windows has experienced an unexpected shut down", it then said no solution was available, and windows will notify me if one does.

Can someone help me out?
 
P

Professor Renegade

Banned
Hey guys,
I had something weird happen when I started up my laptop recently, I turned it on and got several messages like this:

Click to expand...

After closing most of them I left one open so I could grab a screenshot of it, but I have no idea what this message means. If I had to make head or tail of it, then I would guess that it looks like I was hacked or something?

If anyone knows what this is and can provide a solution, I would greatly appreciate it.
 
Jzero

Jzero

Member
Renagade said:
Hey guys,
I had something weird happen when I started up my laptop recently, I turned it on and got several messages like this:

After closing most of them I left one open so I could grab a screenshot of it, but I have no idea what this message means. If I had to make head or tail of it, then I would guess that it looks like I was hacked or something?

If anyone knows what this is and can provide a solution, I would greatly appreciate it.
Click to expand...
If you didn't download the software then it could of been put there by the OEM.
Is the computer a Dell?
If so all you need to do is uninstall the 'Dell DataSafe' which is listed in Conrol Panel then look in MSConfig in the Startup tab for the Hstart item that opens the Hidden Start utility and disable that.
 
D

Deadly Cyclone

Pride of Iowa State
So I have an internet issue. It's very odd. My provider came out and "fixed" my web a while back, and for my issues gave me a bump in speed.

My specs are 50MB down, 20MB up, with a ping of 5.

I'm still seeing lag in XBL. When I host others lag, and there are weird connection issues. Any idea why?
 
R

RdN

Member
Deadly Cyclone said:
So I have an internet issue. It's very odd. My provider came out and "fixed" my web a while back, and for my issues gave me a bump in speed.

My specs are 50MB down, 20MB up, with a ping of 5.

I'm still seeing lag in XBL. When I host others lag, and there are weird connection issues. Any idea why?
Click to expand...

Restricted or closed Nat, maybe? Look into putting your X box on the Dmz or forwarding ports.
 
P

Professor Renegade

Banned
Jzero said:
If you didn't download the software then it could of been put there by the OEM.
Is the computer a Dell?
If so all you need to do is uninstall the 'Dell DataSafe' which is listed in Conrol Panel then look in MSConfig in the Startup tab for the Hstart item that opens the Hidden Start utility and disable that.
Click to expand...

Yeah I'm using a Dell, but I'm just not sure if this message means something bad for my computer or if it's completely benign. I'll still go through those steps but I just need to know if my computer is fine/safe. Thanks for the help :)
 
N

nan0

Member
Renagade said:
Hey guys,
I had something weird happen when I started up my laptop recently, I turned it on and got several messages like this:



After closing most of them I left one open so I could grab a screenshot of it, but I have no idea what this message means. If I had to make head or tail of it, then I would guess that it looks like I was hacked or something?

If anyone knows what this is and can provide a solution, I would greatly appreciate it.
Click to expand...

hstart is an application that forces programs to run in the background, without showing any windows etc. The message appears because it has incorrect start parameters. It's strange that you have hstart without your knowledge, while it can be used for legit reasons, one could also use it for hiding malware. Do a search in which directory the executable is located, and check your startup programs. If you suspect that it's something malicious, do a full AV scan, install Windows updates (if any) etc.
 
Jzero

Jzero

Member
Renagade said:
Yeah I'm using a Dell, but I'm just not sure if this message means something bad for my computer or if it's completely benign. I'll still go through those steps but I just need to know if my computer is fine/safe. Thanks for the help :)
Click to expand...

Yes, your computer should be fine. When you get that message it just means that your backup file that dell installs for you is full. If you're still paranoid and you want to make sure your computer is clean then just download Malwarebytes and do a quick scan.
 
S

subversus

I've done nothing with my life except eat and fap
can somebody explain me why Speccy shows my RAM running at 668mhz (1333 in BIOS) and my CPU running at 3,2 (4,1 in BIOS)?
 
S

systemfehler

Member
subversus said:
can somebody explain me why Speccy shows my RAM running at 668mhz (1333 in BIOS) and my CPU running at 3,2 (4,1 in BIOS)?
Click to expand...

Because 668MHz are the actual frequency but the effective clock (double-data-rate stuff) is 1333Mhz (2 x 668MHz).

For the CPU I assume it differs what you are doing - idle time the CPU clocks back and up during load depending on your CPU. Furthermore there are CPUs with turbo-boost so if the thermal situation is good cores can clock even higher than normal.

You could try CPU-Z - it shows all values for CPU/Memory speeds.
 
L

Lucky Forward

Member
Stupid PC question: I recently bought a Puget Systems Deluge A2 (i5 3570K, GTX 680, liquid cooled) with an Antec P183 case. Is it necessary or desirable to have the front door open when the PC is on to improve airflow, or does it receive sufficient airflow from the vents around the front door when it is closed?

Case photos here, door closed:
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.p...sk=view&id=314&Itemid=61&limit=1&limitstart=2

...and door open:
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.p...sk=view&id=314&Itemid=61&limit=1&limitstart=3
 
Jzero

Jzero

Member
Lucky Forward said:
Stupid PC question: I recently bought a Puget Systems Deluge A2 (i5 3570K, GTX 680, liquid cooled) with an Antec P183 case. Is it necessary or desirable to have the front door open when the PC is on to improve airflow, or does it receive sufficient airflow from the vents around the front door when it is closed?

Case photos here, door closed:
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.ph...1&limitstart=2

...and door open:
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.ph...1&limitstart=3
Click to expand...
It should be fine. It wouldn't have a door in the first place if it were to cause problems.
 
H

Hypatia

Member
GAF my PC wont boot ):

Yesterday while playing the Pokemon TCG my computer blue screened. I figured this was because the game's in beta so I restarted and everything seemed fine. I ran 'WhoCrashed' and didn't specify anything except to say it was an issue with something in Windows and probably not a hardware issue.

And then today while playing it my PC crashed again.

This time though it wouldn't restart. Would get as far as the boot screen but then the screen would go black and the mobo would beep now and again.

So I figured it was a problem with the actual HDD and unplugged all my HDDs to see how far it would get. With all three unplugged it would go to post and even boot off of DVDs.

I plugged in a old IDE drive and booted off of a disc to try installing Windows on it. Again it went past post, Windows started installing but at some point during the installation (when it restarted?) the screen went black and it refused to boot again. Just kept beeping.

So I turned it off and unplugged the HDD but it still kept beeping (I think it was trying to continue the installation). So then I took out the mobo battery to reset it and finally it would post again.


So I tried plugging back in the primary SATA HDD and... incessant beeping/black screen again.

Any ideas?

Systems never been overclocked or anything. Had it almost 26 months now and it's blue screened twice before but both of those times were related to drivers and were fixed easily. It's been fine for over a year, though I did have my fourth HDD die about a month ago or so (Western Digital 1TB WD10EADS). It would show up in Windows for a few minutes after boot but then stop being accessible after a while (not even showing up in the device manager). I don't know if that's related though...

Any help would be really, really appreciated. I don't want to buy another HDD just to have the mobo break it or something.

Specs:
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R
GPU: MSI HD 6950 Twin Frozor
Ram: Corsair Vengeance 12GB DDR3
CPU: Intel Core i7-950
PSU: Corsair HX 750

The boot HDD was a Hitachi 500GB SATA drive running Windows 7 64bit Home Premium.
 
P

Professor Renegade

Banned
Jzero said:
Yes, your computer should be fine. When you get that message it just means that your backup file that dell installs for you is full. If you're still paranoid and you want to make sure your computer is clean then just download Malwarebytes and do a quick scan.
Click to expand...

A little late on the reply here, but thanks a bundle good sir, you have been very helpful :)
 
Jzero

Jzero

Member
Hypatia said:
GAF my PC wont boot ):
Click to expand...
I'm pretty sure it's not a software problem or a Hard Drive problem. What you can do right now is to remove some of the ram and put as little physical ram as you can and see if your computer doesn't re-start that way. If it does restart, change it to the next stick of ram and see if it shuts down. If that still doesn't work then it could be your motherboard that's faulty.

Renagade said:
A little late on the reply here, but thanks a bundle good sir, you have been very helpful :)
Click to expand...
No problem.
 
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