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

I forgot to mention... some weird with my sd card and my Smartphone (S8)

When I put the micro sd card into my S8's tray... I can read and play the files just fine...

But when I put the sd card into my new USB 3.0 Card reader and plug that into my S8.. the S8 can't read the files... nothing comes up.

So weird.
 
I've got a bit of a problem with getting surround sound out of my PC.

The PC running Windows10 creators edition is connected to an old av receiver by an opitcal cable from the internal soundcard (realtec). The problem is I'm only getting 2 channel output being received by the amp with test video files, eventhough when I test with the driver control panel the amp switches to dts/dolby no problem.

The funny thing is no matter what video player I've tried I get the same problem, except for the built in Windows Media Player which outputs multi-channel sound but there's rather nasty amount of chop in the playback.

I'm normally able to troubleshoot most problems by myself but this one's got me stumped.
 
So I'm unable to boot into my main BIOS due to some unfortunate overclocking. Still have my backup BIOS and everything appears to be fine, but I figured I should fix my primary one.

Downloaded the latest update to my mobo's BIOS, ran Qflash, and now I've been stuck on the following screen (at 39%) for a good 15 minutes already:

https://imgur.com/a/nOfGo

On a scale of fucked to extremely fucked, how fucked am I? Also, how do I get myself out of this hellhole?

Edit: rebooted, panicked when all I got was a black screen, cleared cmos, restored from backup, all is well in the world once again 🙏
 
I live with my parents and since my Dad pays for the internet connection and hardware, only he has access to it's inner workings currently. We have Spectrum in NE Ohio. Our connection has been going out intermittently for months now. Randomly throughout the day, it will go out sometimes for minutes at a time. This happens with all wired and wireless devices. A weird thing that I noticed is that when it goes out, Google sites (Google search, Gmail, Youtube) still work, but no other websites or services will load.

I've talked to my Dad about this, and he says he's tried resetting the network multiple times and changing the network's DNS server. He doesn't want to call Spectrum because he can't narrow down the issue, plus he's a pretty busy guy.

I've read online about the Google issue I described earlier, and viruses come up a lot in discussion. I'll talk to my Dad about the potential for viruses. Is there any information or advice you can give me or that I can relay to my Dad? I'm not sure if the router we have is provided by Spectrum or if my Dad bought it, but I'll find that out. I'll provide more information if needed.
 
Zoidberg Jesus said:
I live with my parents and since my Dad pays for the internet connection and hardware, only he has access to it's inner workings currently. We have Spectrum in NE Ohio. Our connection has been going out intermittently for months now. Randomly throughout the day, it will go out sometimes for minutes at a time. This happens with all wired and wireless devices. A weird thing that I noticed is that when it goes out, Google sites (Google search, Gmail, Youtube) still work, but no other websites or services will load.

I've talked to my Dad about this, and he says he's tried resetting the network multiple times and changing the network's DNS server. He doesn't want to call Spectrum because he can't narrow down the issue, plus he's a pretty busy guy.

I've read online about the Google issue I described earlier, and viruses come up a lot in discussion. I'll talk to my Dad about the potential for viruses. Is there any information or advice you can give me or that I can relay to my Dad? I'm not sure if the router we have is provided by Spectrum or if my Dad bought it, but I'll find that out. I'll provide more information if needed.
Click to expand...
I’d recommend connecting a different router and seeing if that works or changes anything.
 
Check to see if the model number of the modem has a recall notice out. Especially if it was provided by Spectrum.

I had a years-old Xfinity modem that started to go down every day, exchanged it for a newer model and it stays connected.
 
I'm having issues with two usb ports next to each other that can't recognize devices any more, but still send power through it. Any ideas on how to fix this?
 
An external hard drive I had connected to my Wii, which I didn't even think was powered on, has been making clicking noises over the past week. I touched it and it felt warm. I just had it plugged in and not in use. I'm going to check it later, but the clicking is bad, right? I can assume 1TB of random data is just gone for good?
 
megarockexe said:
An external hard drive I had connected to my Wii, which I didn't even think was powered on, has been making clicking noises over the past week. I touched it and it felt warm. I just had it plugged in and not in use. I'm going to check it later, but the clicking is bad, right? I can assume 1TB of random data is just gone for good?
Click to expand...

Yeah, clicking is bad although you might still have time to recover data. Just avoid using the drive til u wanna check
 
Painguy said:
Yeah, clicking is bad although you might still have time to recover data. Just avoid using the drive til u wanna check
Click to expand...
Don't wait to check, though, one of my drive failed, as long as it was "hot", I could reboot it and use it for some time, but the day after it wouldn't start. It's not the first time that I see that not using a disk make it fail quickly...
 
I did just check the drive. Nothing out of the ordinary. I think I'll keep it unplugged and maybe get a new external drive down the road to back up onto there and to continue using (since I'm running out of room on this one anyways).
 
My Samsung laptop (Windows 7) froze twice yesterday, both on Firefox I think. That's unusual, I have often months without a reboot.

Any way to check what's going wrong (some possible log to activate)?

Any guess? (Ram, hard drive, processor...)

I get Windows explorer crashes solution on right clicks in Windows explorer, but that's not new, not sure it's related.
 
Why are there always so many of these things?

Microsoft Visual C++

Can I delete some of them? Is it safe to delete them? DO they ALL serve a purpose?


1K1qcWg.png
 
lordfuzzybutt said:
To put it simply, yes those are necessary for various software to run so just leave them alone.
Click to expand...

Ok thanks, Upon a slightly closer inspection, I never realized all of these are unique and different versions/bits 64 vs 32/years etc. of the program. not one is the same as the other... I get it now, I just thought my PC was repeating a few, unnecessarily creating duplicates.
 
I have a question regarding networking/WiFi.

I have a smart device that can control an AC over Wifi (turn it on and off, set the temperature etc.). This is located at a camping site. The camping site has WiFi that uses a web portal as login. When you connect to the WiFi, the browser open, and i could either login with Facebook or just press skip. If i press skip, a new tab opens and i can use the internet.

Here is where the problem comes in:

The smart device doesnt understand the web portal login, therefor i cant connect it directly to the WiFi. I'm thinking maybe if theres a solution to get a router in between that can bypass (or understand) the web portal login. Basically like this:

Smart device <-> router <-> camping site WiFi

Does anyone know what i can do to make this work?
 
I’m having a concerning problem over my laptop. Very recently, as the computer is turned on or when I open programs, I can hear a loud whirring sound and I deduced that it must be one of the fans. I decide to check below as this happens, and it does seem to be one of the fans which I can see spinning constantly. The sound itself is annoying, but that’s not my main concern.

What I did notice after finding the fan was that it’s likely not letting out any hot air. As such, doing anything on my laptop that (normally) will automatically make the fans increase in speed will make the laptop heat up eventually. To ensure no damage is put on the laptop, I’ve kept it off since then.

As a background, this laptop is 2.5 years old, so my immediate guess is that I need to clean the fan since dust buildup could be to blame. However, I’ve been finding several varied answers as to how I should clean the fan. Some will say use compressed air while other say that it will only make it worse due to dust going farther in and use something else (a vacuum cleaner, which sounds like a terrible idea). Also, if asked, I have not opened up the back of my laptop yet.

If I do need to use compressed air, I would appreciate a recommendation as to what I should use.
 
Okay, nerds, I need your help. I’m after a decent laptop. It will be used for word processing and daily internet use, including setting up and maintaining websites. Budget £250-£300.
 
so. I am having issues with a windows 10 update. no matter how many times I try to install it it fails so it's every day trying to get me to restart to update which is putting my computer out of use for hours at a time.

I figure eventually I just need to do a clean install of windows 10 which I will do once I back up files (even though i shouldn't lose them) so for now I have just disabled updates as found

https://www.tenforums.com/windows-u...-permanently-turn-off-windows-10-updates.html

the issue being, that despite turning the updates off, selecting it that the service there doesn't start period. and not turning off or reseting my computer. about every 24 hours that gets turned back on and reset to the default setting despite my choices. Is there a way to stop windows from doing that. I don't want to be forced to try to update repeatedly and that is the only way to stop the prompt :/

I hate how windows 10 acts like a virus with a number of settings.
 
Anybody know how bad smoke damage is for a computer?

Had a small fire that left my computer untouched by the heat but covered in soot, also had the side panel off at the time but the power was off.

Been dealing with overheating problems for awhile anyway so i'm mostly looking to see if the hdd, ssd, psu, and gpu can be salvaged or would even be worth the effort.

The ssd and hdd didn't have too much on them so I think they're fine but the psu has the vent holes for all that soot to get in thru and the gpu is pretty thoroughly covered.
 
I have a Sony Xperia z3v that's a couple years old. The power button doesn't work so I cannot turn it on. The screen works and charges, just cannot boot.

Is it possible to extract some of the data inside of it? There are some pictures I wanted to get out of it.
 
I think this fits in here..

I came home after a week or so and noticed that all the electronics on my surge protector had no power. All except 1, my LG OLED. Turning the protector off and on fixed the rest of my electronics. Anyone know what happened? Should I get another protector and split the electronics?
 
I need help GAF. After switching my desktops resolution to my displays native 4k resolution I begun getting screen tearing in every game. I always play on Borderless Window mode which I always did cause it eliminated tearing. but since switching to 4k it tears really badly in BW, as well as Fullscreen and Windowed mode. It doesn't matter. It isn't because of stress either as I drastically lowered the settings on various games and still got the same screen tearing. I'm on Windows 10 so desktop composition isn't disabled. The only way I can remove the screen-tearing is by turning on V-Sync which I have always been told never to use.

Anyone knows what's up? GTX 1070 btw. Everything worked great when I had my desktop resolution set to 1080p. I even had my games set at 4k resolution, I merely kept my desktop resolution at 1080p because certain programs UI didn't scale up so they were unusable, but I found a workaround for them so didn't need to stay at 1080p anymore. I didn't change anything else.
 
Hi everyone,

I have a Startech USB print server PM1115U

https://www.startech.com/support/PM1115U

My printer is a non-network printer a Samsung ML-1860.

This combination is working well on my Windows PC's, however I have a Linux machine (XUbuntu) which just refuses to connect to the print server. It doesn't matter what protocol I use, the printer is added and then the computer can never send the data to it and the print job(s) fail.

Any advice for getting one of theses old print servers to work on non-windows systems? Or should I just throw in the towel and buy a new network/cloud printer? I used to have this working running from and old file server I had which doubled as a CUPS host... but it's boot drive died and TBH I was using it so little it just didn't seem worth it to keep paying for the electricity.
 
Having an issue with my laptop. Over the last month or so, I started having an issue with charging. Sometimes, it would charge; others,
It wouldn't even though it was plugged in, only to start charging after moving the cable around a bit or taking out/putting the plug back in the outlet

Last night, I couldn't get it to start charging again, and now my laptop is dead. Not even enough juice to get to the home screen.

Oddly, the connection between charger and laptop seems to still be working because the charging light comes on when I plug in the cable.

Any tips or options?
 
More_Badass said:
Having an issue with my laptop. Over the last month or so, I started having an issue with charging. Sometimes, it would charge; others,
It wouldn't even though it was plugged in, only to start charging after moving the cable around a bit or taking out/putting the plug back in the outlet

Last night, I couldn't get it to start charging again, and now my laptop is dead. Not even enough juice to get to the home screen.

Oddly, the connection between charger and laptop seems to still be working because the charging light comes on when I plug in the cable.

Any tips or options?
Click to expand...

Does the laptop turn on when it is plugged in? If so I'd guess that your battery is failing.
 
More_Badass said:
It does, and then shuts off

So would getting a new battery be the easiest fix? I've had my latop for almost 4 years
Click to expand...

if the battery is the issue it should still run fine while plugged in. I suppose the battery might be drawing enough power to make your computer shut down still, but remove the battery completely and then run the system. If it still runs and then shuts down you likely have a bigger issue than a battery.

or at least that is what my experience with laptops and dead batteries is.
 
zulux21 said:
if the battery is the issue it should still run fine while plugged in. I suppose the battery might be drawing enough power to make your computer shut down still, but remove the battery completely and then run the system. If it still runs and then shuts down you likely have a bigger issue than a battery.

or at least that is what my experience with laptops and dead batteries is.
Click to expand...
I never considered that. Removed the battery, and the laptop seems to starting fine
 
I have an odd Windows 10 wi-fi issue.

Computer: 6 year old Dell, i5, 8gb RAM, upgraded SSD. It is pretty quick for it's age.

Issue: When my wife is logged in the wifi drops every 20-30 minutes and she has to toggle airplane mode on/off for it to start working again.
The odd thing is when my daughter is logged in playing Minecraft online the wi-fi never drops.

It appears that this is specific to my wife's profile which is very odd. Suggestions on troubleshooting? I am thinking about deleting her profile and recreating it.
 
More_Badass said:
I never considered that. Removed the battery, and the laptop seems to starting fine
Click to expand...

if it runs fine without the battery then looking into a replacement battery is likely a good idea. it could still be some sort of connection issue, but at 4 years of use, especially if it was regular use. It's not uncommon for a battery to fail.
 
zulux21 said:
if it runs fine without the battery then looking into a replacement battery is likely a good idea. it could still be some sort of connection issue, but at 4 years of use, especially if it was regular use. It's not uncommon for a battery to fail.
Click to expand...

FYI to the OP: when buying a new battery, eBay models in my use have last one year. You need to decide if a genuine battery is worth the extra money or go cheap with an eBay model.
 
Yo, I got a PC hardware question, techsupportGAF. Didn't know if I should ask in the Build a new PC thread or here, but here seems more related to issues.

So my PSU seems to have died. PC turns on, then immediatly shuts off. It's not overheating (at least I don't think so, nothing is hot), and all the fans are running. Except for the power supply fan. Also the PC makes a clicking noise on startup.

Anyways, can't hurt to change the power supply. Problem is, the only PSU I have is a 485 watt one. The one inside my PC is 650.

Will the 485 watts be not enough/too weak? I don't want to damage my PC any further.

It's an old PC btw:

AMD Phenom X4 965
Radeon HD 7870
16GB DDR3
1TB HDD
 
Tarrin said:
Yo, I got a PC hardware question, techsupportGAF. Didn't know if I should ask in the Build a new PC thread or here, but here seems more related to issues.

So my PSU seems to have died. PC turns on, then immediatly shuts off. It's not overheating (at least I don't think so, nothing is hot), and all the fans are running. Except for the power supply fan. Also the PC makes a clicking noise on startup.

Anyways, can't hurt to change the power supply. Problem is, the only PSU I have is a 485 watt one. The one inside my PC is 650.

Will the 485 watts be not enough/too weak? I don't want to damage my PC any further.

It's an old PC btw:

AMD Phenom X4 965
Radeon HD 7870
16GB DDR3
1TB HDD
Click to expand...

I searched for your CPU and it is from 2009. If it works it works, right?

The AMD Phenom X4 965 pulls 180 watts at peak. Radeon HD 7870 is 100 watts at peak. Your 485 watt power supply will be fine.
 
kendrid said:
I searched for your CPU and it is from 2009. If it works it works, right?

The AMD Phenom X4 965 pulls 180 watts at peak. Radeon HD 7870 is 100 watts at peak. Your 485 watt power supply will be fine.
Click to expand...

Yea, it's old. Decent enough for the less demanding games, but the GPU and RAM prop it up. I have to upgrade/build a new system, I just need this one to last till Christmas and so I can play Cuphead.

Thanks for the info. Will install the power supply tomorrow.
 
One of my receiver's HDMI input (Pioneer 921) seems to be broken. The image is fine (hooked up the receiver to a tv) but the sound is messed up.
It's often quieter, then normal again, then quieter, then very quiet, then fully there..
I swaped the HDMI cable and the audio source (console). No success. I used another HDMI input and it works perfectly. So the HDMI input must be broken.
Sooo, how to fix it? The cable fits tightly, it doesnt wiggle around. Would cleaning with Q-tip and alcohol help? Bad idea?
 
Heard my SSD "working" for a while and now my main hard drive is almost completely filled up. I had roughly 20-40gb of free space before this.

Completely random and I wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary.

Windows 10
System Restore points are disabled
Avira Anti-Virus running at all times

How can I troubleshoot this? A guide or even just search terms to Google would help a lot.
 
So, while I'm browsing my computer, after sometime it will "freeze up". My mouse cursor will stop moving and I can no longer use the keyboard.

Any recommendations?
 
boybrushdRED said:
Speccy

Here's a screenshot

Click to expand...

Thank you.

Thoughts on these specs for a HDD I got ahead of Xbox One X's release? Are the speeds subpar here or are there better rpm and read speed alts at a competitive price?

This is for the steb3000100 seagate 3tb expansion hdd

Heads 16
Cylinders 364,801
Tracks 93,024,255
Sectors 5,860,528,065
SATA type SATA-III 6.0Gb/s
Device type Fixed
ATA Standard ACS3
Serial Number ZGY0FWG1
Firmware Version Number 0001
LBA Size 48-bit LBA
Power On Count 4 times
Power On Time 1.1 days
Speed 5980 RPM
Features S.M.A.R.T., APM, NCQ
Max. Transfer Mode SATA III 6.0Gb/s
Used Transfer Mode SATA II 3.0Gb/s
Interface USB (SATA)
Capacity 2794 GB
Real size 3,000,592,981,504 bytes
RAID Type None
 
I apologize if this isn't the right place but I couldn't find a better one. I'm having an odd issue with my internet connection. I just moved to a new place but I kept my old router and modem, same internet provider just had my service transferred over. So my internet works ok for the most part. However every so often it seems to hang and take forever loading a page. If I wait long enough it will occasionally give me a browser 500 error, other times it will slowly load the page but with major appearance issues (requiring a refresh) and then other times it will eventually load the page correctly but over the course of a minute or so. Usually if I hit 'stop' in my browser and/or just hit refresh it will reload the page normally and quickly.

What's odd is that I never seem to encounter any issues with videos or online games. I'll be talking to friends on discord and watching youtube on a second monitor while having pages hang or fail to load. For all intents and purposes I'm not losing my internet connection, it's just like little random hiccups in getting page information.

I plan on talking to my provider but I'm afraid that since it's working just most of the time that hey won't feel like they need to fix anything. So before I waste alot of time, I was curious if any of you have any ideas or suggestions? I need to experiment a bit but I'm not sure where to start. My PC has no wireless capabilities as I prefer Ethernet. I've yet to really see this happen on my phone or ps4's wifi connection but I find it unlikely that the ethernet cord is the issue as it was working fine prior to the move.

Any advice or direction is appreciated.
 
Gaffi said:
I apologize if this isn't the right place but I couldn't find a better one. I'm having an odd issue with my internet connection. I just moved to a new place but I kept my old router and modem, same internet provider just had my service transferred over. So my internet works ok for the most part. However every so often it seems to hang and take forever loading a page. If I wait long enough it will occasionally give me a browser 500 error, other times it will slowly load the page but with major appearance issues (requiring a refresh) and then other times it will eventually load the page correctly but over the course of a minute or so. Usually if I hit 'stop' in my browser and/or just hit refresh it will reload the page normally and quickly.

What's odd is that I never seem to encounter any issues with videos or online games. I'll be talking to friends on discord and watching youtube on a second monitor while having pages hang or fail to load. For all intents and purposes I'm not losing my internet connection, it's just like little random hiccups in getting page information.

I plan on talking to my provider but I'm afraid that since it's working just most of the time that hey won't feel like they need to fix anything. So before I waste alot of time, I was curious if any of you have any ideas or suggestions? I need to experiment a bit but I'm not sure where to start. My PC has no wireless capabilities as I prefer Ethernet. I've yet to really see this happen on my phone or ps4's wifi connection but I find it unlikely that the ethernet cord is the issue as it was working fine prior to the move.

Any advice or direction is appreciated.
Click to expand...
It could be the lines/infrastructure of your new place. Is this an apartment? There could be too many line splitters or the splitter is going bad on the cable line. I would flush your dns cache, etc. out. Just because you are using same equipment and same provider, doesn't mean it couldn't be old settings getting in way. Do you use your ISP's dns or use google or open dns? Are you familiar with trace route that is built into your PC? Try running that on some of the websites that you go to and seeing if the ms numbers show high latency or time out. There are so many different things that it could be. It's not impossible that it isn't your Ethernet cable. I would definitely try another Ethernet cable. Troubleshooting really can be process of elimination until you find root cause.
 
Had to set up my grandmas new computer and she has a subscription with mcafee for virus scan, so I figured I would put it on


Thing messes up during the installation process somehow and tells me I need to restart the computer in an admin account (already was in one), so I do

I try to log in again and I'm greeted with only a black screen and the mouse cursor. Safe mode the computer works fine but there is no way to uninstall this shit because it isn't actually installed

So I try to install mcafee in safe mode. It doesn't work, so I restart the computer and still the same shit

Now I'm waiting for the factory reset.


TLDR: is the Windows 10 virus scan good for casual web site/email usage or should I put something like Avast on it?
 
ey guys I need help. Is there any way to get rid of these black bars at the top and bottom? I see it every game I play on right now. I never had this problem before.
0ljJxIK.jpg
Click to expand...

I tried a clean graphic driver install, I checked my nvidia resolution settings, and regular display settings. Nothing I do seems to make it disappear.

I've never had this problem before. Every other time this has not happened.

edit: as it turns out, switching it to HDMI is the solution.
 
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