Tech Support

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Rush2112
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Re: Tech Support

Post by Rush2112 »

brian wrote: Wed Jun 06, 2018 4:06 pm
Rush2112 wrote: Wed Jun 06, 2018 4:00 pm Imgur/vreddit is probably easier to post and doesn't include creating an account.
If you can post here directly from Imgur absolutely. I'm not sure that's possible either though.

Half the posts in the images threads are from Imgur, so very much possible.
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Re: Tech Support

Post by Pruitt »

A while ago, my wife got a printer from work - replacing my piece of garbage printer.

Toner is now low - any of you guys order cartridges from a company called "V4ink"? They are on Amazon, so sounds semi-legit? 2 for $28 much better than $62 for one.

Recommended, or should I stick with the Brother cartridge?
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Re: Tech Support

Post by A_B »

They’ll probably work fine but not last as long.
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Re: Tech Support

Post by Pruitt »

A_B wrote: Sun Jun 24, 2018 1:05 pm They’ll probably work fine but not last as long.
If they last 1/4 as long, it's a trade off.

Generic it is!
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Re: Tech Support

Post by Pruitt »

All of a sudden, my computer speakers stopped working. Not the speakers in the computer, but the external speakers.

There's a steady clicking noise coming out of the woofer. Could be a frayed cord... any ideas of possible resets before I order new speakers.

And any recommendations for good, cheap speakers? My office is maybe 12 x 12 feet.
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Re: Tech Support

Post by A_B »

Did you check to see if there is a nut loose behind the keyboard?
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mister d
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Re: Tech Support

Post by mister d »

Hope RSmith's idea worked and you don't have to get new speakers.
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Re: Tech Support

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I have no idea what is going on...
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Re: Tech Support

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I got it, D!
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Re: Tech Support

Post by tennbengal »

I got it too! Also, don’t new speakers nowadays cost about four cents?
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Re: Tech Support

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I was about to be very confused, but that's clever. ;-)
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DaveInSeattle
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Re: Tech Support

Post by DaveInSeattle »

So....I'm thinking that I need to get a desktop Windows computer for home. I've got an older Mac laptop, which is fine for email/internet/iTunes, but I'd like something that runs Windows that I can do programming (Visual Studio) on. With a big monitor....or maybe two video outputs for doing dual monitors.

Any suggestions?
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Re: Tech Support

Post by wlu_lax6 »

DaveInSeattle wrote: Wed Aug 22, 2018 11:35 pm So....I'm thinking that I need to get a desktop Windows computer for home. I've got an older Mac laptop, which is fine for email/internet/iTunes, but I'd like something that runs Windows that I can do programming (Visual Studio) on. With a big monitor....or maybe two video outputs for doing dual monitors.

Any suggestions?
Build your own. It is easy and you can build a really powerful desktop at any price point you want. Plus easy to update a part when you want. It is a less then 4 hour project once you pick the parts. I went to micro center, but am guessing Fryes would do the trick too.

Plenty of videos on how to do it are out there and I liked using https://pcpartpicker.com/ as a starter for figuring out what you want for the type of machine you are thinking about.
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Re: Tech Support

Post by A_B »

I, for one, love it when i call tech support and they tell me to go learn how to fix computers to fix my problem.
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Re: Tech Support

Post by wlu_lax6 »

+ if you are lazy...go to Micro center and buy a machine there. You are basically skipping the build step.
Forgot the best part of building your own.....no pile of crapware preinstalled. The pleasure of not having to deal with Lenovo, Dell, etc that thinks you need their half installed/preview versions of software equals the time of connecting some things inside of a case.
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Re: Tech Support

Post by DaveInSeattle »

wlu_lax6 wrote: Thu Aug 23, 2018 7:01 am
DaveInSeattle wrote: Wed Aug 22, 2018 11:35 pm So....I'm thinking that I need to get a desktop Windows computer for home. I've got an older Mac laptop, which is fine for email/internet/iTunes, but I'd like something that runs Windows that I can do programming (Visual Studio) on. With a big monitor....or maybe two video outputs for doing dual monitors.

Any suggestions?
Build your own. It is easy and you can build a really powerful desktop at any price point you want. Plus easy to update a part when you want. It is a less then 4 hour project once you pick the parts. I went to micro center, but am guessing Fryes would do the trick too.

Plenty of videos on how to do it are out there and I liked using https://pcpartpicker.com/ as a starter for figuring out what you want for the type of machine you are thinking about.
Yeah...not building my own. I'm sure I could do it, but I don't have time for that....
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Re: Tech Support

Post by Sabo »

wlu_lax6 wrote: Thu Aug 23, 2018 7:06 am + if you are lazy...go to Micro center and buy a machine there. You are basically skipping the build step.
Forgot the best part of building your own.....no pile of crapware preinstalled. The pleasure of not having to deal with Lenovo, Dell, etc that thinks you need their half installed/preview versions of software equals the time of connecting some things inside of a case.
This is really great advice, by the way.
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Re: Tech Support

Post by Rush2112 »

I can't believe that there's not a MicroCentre in Seattle!

I'd totally recommend building your own, but you can buy bloatware free machines from NewEgg, etc. You're just paying a lot extra for the convenience.

I shopped around and built a pretty kick ass machine for like 800 that would probably be 3K or so if I had bought it already put together. This was like 5-6 years ago and I just upgraded my GPU and it still runs everything fantastically.

ETA: if you're ever interested in building your own, or upgrading what you have this is a great resource: https://old.reddit.com/r/buildapcsales/
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Re: Tech Support

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Rush2112 wrote: Thu Aug 23, 2018 10:53 am I can't believe that there's not a MicroCentre in Seattle!

I'd totally recommend building your own, but you can buy bloatware free machines from NewEgg, etc. You're just paying a lot extra for the convenience.

I shopped around and built a pretty kick ass machine for like 800 that would probably be 3K or so if I had bought it already put together. This was like 5-6 years ago and I just upgraded my GPU and it still runs everything fantastically.

ETA: if you're ever interested in building your own, or upgrading what you have this is a great resource: https://old.reddit.com/r/buildapcsales/
I'm so out of it on the latest PC tech, I'm not even sure what I should be looking for...like which processor? Is nvidia still the best graphics card? All of that kind of stuff...

And I'm not going to be doing any gaming...this will be just a Windows box for me to do some development at home.
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Re: Tech Support

Post by brian »

From the sounds of it, no need to worry about the best graphics card. Probably just need to make sure you've got a lot of processing power and RAM. I used to keep up on hardware, but not so much any more (and my least favorite hardware development of the last few years has been the move to flash memory instead of hard drives since it requires having some kind of external drive as well to store any kind of serious amount of data (like if you like to access music or video, etc.)
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Re: Tech Support

Post by wlu_lax6 »

I liked PC Parts Picker but there are a bunch of sites that will do the work for you in terms of picking the specifics. Lots of this is geared toward gaming but they all have non-gaming sets and all have convenient "buy all the parts" links.
https://www.custompcreview.com/pc-compu ... pc-builds/

As for the build or buy:
Current best practice is a Solid state drive for the OS and a big standard optical drive for the apps. I went with lots of memory, powerful processor, and no frills everywhere else (power supply, fans, network card, case, etc).I have since added a graphics card (which have been hard to get a good deal on because of the crypto miners). I would probably buy some bluetooth capability at this point.
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Re: Tech Support

Post by Sabo »

Personally, I'd avoid Bluetooth, unless you plan to update the drivers regularly. It seems like every week there's a new Bluetooth vulnerability being reported, and a lot of Bluetooth devices have no way to get updates.
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Re: Tech Support

Post by Shirley »

There's no easier or more effective way to make your computer faster than getting an SSD for your OS disk. It can be stunning to switch from standard HDD to SSD in a desktop.

If you buy a Dell, HP, etc. from somewhere and it's loaded with extra shit (it will be), just to go get the PC Decrapifier. That's an easy way to clean all that extra shit off. https://www.pcdecrapifier.com/
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Re: Tech Support

Post by blundercrush »

Can't really recommend building your own. The price difference for what you care about is almost non existant. Just be super sure you are buying a unit that can upgrade memory (usually you can tell by pictures of the motherboard and the specs), and spring for at least a 256GB SSD. get an external drive if you need extra space or if you are up to it an internal drive and plug it in.
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Re: Tech Support

Post by sancarlos »

wlu_lax6 wrote: Thu Aug 23, 2018 7:06 am + if you are lazy...go to Micro center and buy a machine there. You are basically skipping the build step.
Forgot the best part of building your own.....no pile of crapware preinstalled. The pleasure of not having to deal with Lenovo, Dell, etc that thinks you need their half installed/preview versions of software equals the time of connecting some things inside of a case.
Damn, I just bought my daughter a new Dell laptop a couple days ago. There's a Microsoft store in Palo Alto. Mebbe I should have gone there, instead.
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Re: Tech Support

Post by DaveInSeattle »

I went to Fry's today, and bought a PC/Monitor. Everything is good, except for the built-in WiFi/Network seems goofy. The room where I set it up is not too far from where my cable modem lives, and when I have my Mac Laptop there I get fine connection speeds, but the desktop WiFi connection is really slow.

Any hints on what I can do to remedy this?
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Re: Tech Support

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DaveInSeattle wrote: Sat Aug 25, 2018 6:35 pm I went to Fry's today, and bought a PC/Monitor. Everything is good, except for the built-in WiFi/Network seems goofy. The room where I set it up is not too far from where my cable modem lives, and when I have my Mac Laptop there I get fine connection speeds, but the desktop WiFi connection is really slow.

Any hints on what I can do to remedy this?
Answering myself....the easiest fix? Move the router to the office with the new desktop, and plug in the ethernet cable! Huzzah...
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Re: Tech Support

Post by Johnnie »

Ok, Google isn't helping.

Sometimes if I go to a website on mobile, like Mediaite just now, I'll get this "Warning to view video on this site update your video player" and it automatically opens the Google play store to a generic video player with lots of reviews of it being spam.

Does my phone have a virus or something? Seems like it's only on certain sites.

Anyone know?
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Re: Tech Support

Post by Brontoburglar »

speaking from experience it's a site issue and not a phone issue
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Re: Tech Support

Post by Johnnie »

Thanks. I sure hope so.

I have all my settings so that video is muted and only haptic feedback is on my phone when using it.

So when this digitized female voice gets all loud and redirects to the play store I nearly panic.
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Re: Tech Support

Post by Johnny Carwash »

Johnnie wrote: Sun Sep 23, 2018 7:35 pm So when this digitized female voice gets all loud and redirects to the play store I nearly panic.
I'm sure that's the first time you've had an issue with a loud woman's voice coming from your mobile device.
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Re: Tech Support

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Chris Carson has given me reason to replace our almost dead laptop (missing a battery so only functions plugged in + memory is full). Went with a MacBook Air with an external hard drive that I plan to store all music and photos on. Currently backing everything up now with the thought of wiping the old laptop of everything but pictures then adding more pics on and storing it offsite. Anything I should be thinking of that I’m not? Any risk in running all music/pics off an external? Should that technically primary “backup” hard drive also have a backup?
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Re: Tech Support

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mister d wrote: Fri Dec 28, 2018 5:37 pm Chris Carson has given me reason to replace our almost dead laptop (missing a battery so only functions plugged in + memory is full). Went with a MacBook Air with an external hard drive that I plan to store all music and photos on. Currently backing everything up now with the thought of wiping the old laptop of everything but pictures then adding more pics on and storing it offsite. Anything I should be thinking of that I’m not? Any risk in running all music/pics off an external? Should that backup hard drive also have a backup?
I do pretty much the same. Any modern laptop is going to have an SSD hard drive which is faster, but reduces capacity.

I've never had too many issues with that setup, but my iTunes app does sometimes lose the path to the music folder on the external HD. Fixing it is pretty easy and quick but I don't know why it loses the path in the iTunes preferences occasionally.

As for backup of a backup, only if you're worried about losing your backup, dawg. (Seriously, I just copy important backup stuff to the cloud and figure if my external with all of my music gets lost I still have it stored on my phone and on a separate iPad classic and can probably end up getting it from one of those back to an external even if it's a pain.
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Re: Tech Support

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Yeah, my concern is if I wipe my music to hold all pics on the old laptop, I’ve now only got the majority of our music (and any 2019 on pics) in a single spot. I don’t trust the cloud because I assume everything like that will eventually fail without recourse.
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Re: Tech Support

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mister d wrote: Fri Dec 28, 2018 5:43 pm Yeah, my concern is if I wipe my music to hold all pics on the old laptop, I’ve now only got the majority of our music (and any 2019 on pics) in a single spot. I don’t trust the cloud because I assume everything like that will eventually fail without recourse.
Storage is so cheap, just get another drive, back it all up and stick it someplace safe. Probably worth $60 or thereabouts it would cost for piece of mind.
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Re: Tech Support

Post by EnochRoot »

mister d wrote: Fri Dec 28, 2018 5:43 pm Yeah, my concern is if I wipe my music to hold all pics on the old laptop, I’ve now only got the majority of our music (and any 2019 on pics) in a single spot. I don’t trust the cloud because I assume everything like that will eventually fail without recourse.
System redundancy tends to be a good thing. Personally I’ve got a WD NAS that I use to store backups of photos, documents, music and website development work archives and then I have a far more portable WD that requires a USB connection to my iMac for access to my music (activate Home Sharing so that it’s accessible anywhere). I use iCloud for primary access to photos and documents. Again, the NAS is just backups.

That was a little convoluted:

WD NAS: backup for everything.
WD Passport: primary access to my music.
iCloud: primary access to photos, docs.

I wouldn’t worry about the cloud infrastructure going poof. It’s the future.
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Re: Tech Support

Post by Pruitt »

Recently I have been getting messages on my imac that the computer has run out of application memory.

Can't figure it out - there is tons of unused memory.

What is going on here?
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Re: Tech Support

Post by A_B »

Application memory is RAM, not hard drive space right?

So it could be some program is hogging it all for one reason or another. Could check the system monitor when you get the message to see what program is using the most of your resources.
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Re: Tech Support

Post by Pruitt »

A_B wrote: Mon Dec 31, 2018 7:31 am Application memory is RAM, not hard drive space right?

So it could be some program is hogging it all for one reason or another. Could check the system monitor when you get the message to see what program is using the most of your resources.
Thanks - I'll do that.

But when the warning came up yesterday, I only had Spotify, Chrome and a screenwriting program open. Ran a virus scan and found nothing...

Will keep you posted.
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Re: Tech Support

Post by Brontoburglar »

a RAM chip may have also gone bad too
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