Random Tech Questions you want answered.

ibdoomed wrote:

Anyone know what this is? There's no writing on it except for the numbers labeling the ports. It's seriously just that box attached to that DB-something (25? I didn't count the pins). It's not very old, maybe 8 years tops.

Did some digging. Is it is similar to coaxial bnc connectiors in the old token ring networks, only that IBM decided on twinaxial, which is what you got there. The other end is a db16 d-sub that. It's actually more of a relic tech, pre 2000 (initially 1988), part of IBM's AS400 series of "mini-computers" (think small mainframe). You'd hook up terminals to the twinaxial, which could daisy chain up to 5000 feet, while the d-sub would connect to the mini. Do you know of the fictional corp called "ENCOM"? Think of a business at a fourth of the size and this would fit right into that size network. I've lived through the eighties, but hadn't had my hands on such tech.

*Legion* wrote:
Jonman wrote:

Hence getting a pre-built.

Split the difference. Buy a prebuilt machine that has sufficient CPU/RAM, and buy a video card separately and install that yourself.

That's what I do. Find a friend that can get you things at wholesale cost. I like the HP z series (currently z230) and add ram/video as needed. The full size towers have room for even massive cards like the, now ancient, 6990. But I like next business day onsite support too...

Tekman wrote:
ibdoomed wrote:

Anyone know what this is? There's no writing on it except for the numbers labeling the ports. It's seriously just that box attached to that DB-something (25? I didn't count the pins). It's not very old, maybe 8 years tops.

Did some digging. Is it is similar to coaxial bnc connectiors in the old token ring networks, only that IBM decided on twinaxial, which is what you got there. The other end is a db16 d-sub that. It's actually more of a relic tech, pre 2000 (initially 1988), part of IBM's AS400 series of "mini-computers" (think small mainframe). You'd hook up terminals to the twinaxial, which could daisy chain up to 5000 feet, while the d-sub would connect to the mini. Do you know of the fictional corp called "ENCOM"? Think of a business at a fourth of the size and this would fit right into that size network. I've lived through the eighties, but hadn't had my hands on such tech.

Wow, good job. Thanks!

Lately, I find myself having to flush my DNS frequently.

I am in the process of running Malware and anti-virus scans. Is there anything else i should be doing or looking into?

Solved my problem by rebooting my modem.

I have yet another question to ask the GWJ tech brain trust on behalf of my technologically challenged mother. From her description, it sounds like she's trying to set up call forwarding, so that she can give out a number for her organization that isn't her personal number, but that she can answer from her own phone. She believes there's a way to do this freely; I believe you need at least another phone line, because how else are you going to get a phone number to give out? I've told her that I think the best solution is some kind of VoIP service, since you get a number and you can take calls on your cell phone if you have a VoIP client and an Internet connection, and it doesn't require any forwarding. I was thinking a Skype number, which appears to be the cheapest option ($6/mo) and then multiple people can have access to the account if necessary. My mom plans to ask her friend who set up a similar service how they did it, but in the meantime I figured I should do some legwork of my own. Any advice, suggestions, etc. are appreciated.

Get her a Google Voice number? It can forward to whatever phone(s) you want. I use one for everything, myself.

I set one up for my mom since she lives abroad... she has an Android tablet and phone she uses on wifi, but didn't have a good arrangement for actually calling people or doing phone chores like calling the bank or whatnot. It took me an entire Sunday to get her all set up (our moms are bizarrely similar on all fronts) but now she's mostly self-sufficient with it.

For what she's doing a Skype number might be better (if they have any budget), or (for a free solution) tying the GV to a separate Gmail account for the org. That way if she steps down or takes a break it's not tied to her personal stuff, and the next person can take over the account without any weirdness. Either way, then she wouldn't be publishing her personal number everywhere.

I have no idea how well GV/Hangouts dovetails with iOS (which is why a Skype number may be worth it just to keep you from being perma-tech-support for it), but I'm sure another mind in the hive has some experience with that part.

Every Youtube video I go on right now with this laptop loads the page, but the video itself just hangs on the loading circle and won't ever load up. It's only started happening since yesterday. Running Windows 7 on this computer and after a quick Google search, all I could find was to update system files and clear Firefox cache, but it doesn't seem to have worked. Any ideas?

Clusks wrote:

Every Youtube video I go on right now with this laptop loads the page, but the video itself just hangs on the loading circle and won't ever load up. It's only started happening since yesterday. Running Windows 7 on this computer and after a quick Google search, all I could find was to update system files and clear Firefox cache, but it doesn't seem to have worked. Any ideas?

Have you tested other browsers? One thing to try is changing your DNS server.

Chairman_Mao wrote:
Clusks wrote:

Every Youtube video I go on right now with this laptop loads the page, but the video itself just hangs on the loading circle and won't ever load up. It's only started happening since yesterday. Running Windows 7 on this computer and after a quick Google search, all I could find was to update system files and clear Firefox cache, but it doesn't seem to have worked. Any ideas?

Have you tested other browsers? One thing to try is changing your DNS server.

Yup, works in Internet Explorer. Would prefer not to have to set up Chrome on this thing, as I have all my add ons and plug ins perfect for Firefox.

I tried turning off hardware acceleration as well and disabled plug ins one by one.

I think I've solved it now, it's a HTML5 issue. I've downloaded the add on below which converts all Youtube to flash. This laptop is quite old (I need a new one) and is slowly degrading anyway. I'm still determined to get plenty juice out of it though. It does a lot of weird things, like recently all the icons for things such as sound and brightness disappeared when you alter them. I still wouldn't mind knowing if it is an easily fixable issue though.

When Googling, I think my favourite help item was the Youtube video regarding how to fix Firefox not loading up YouTube videos. Probably should've thought that one through a bit

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-flash-video-player/

Okay, a few questions to ask for myself for once, pertaining to multiple drives, Windows, and Steam. I have two old HDDs with Windows installations that I want to hook up so I can take advantage of the previously-installed Steam games, save some download/install time and SSD space.

Question one: Will having multiple Windows installations confuse the "master installation" and/or the BIOS? I know at least one of the HDDs won't even boot because it's from a previous build, but my second HDD was the drive in this machine for a while.

Question two: Do I need to do anything special to get my "master installation" to see the file systems on the other drives?

Question three: When I add my old Steam folders to the "master installation", do I need to do anything for games which are installed across multiple drives? Most of the games in this category are probably cloud-based, but I want to make sure I've covered all of my bases before I start plugging things in.

I'm not used to multiple hard drives in Windows, so if there's any additional tips/tricks/advice/recommendations, I'm all ears. Thanks in advance!

My only experience was having two windows installations on the same HDD, it conflicted until I deleted one of the copies of winsock.DLL, because that was the file it didn't like having two of. This was way back with windows XP, and it was because one installation was borked because I may have corrupted a sector on the hard drive lalala...

Well, I got impatient and went ahead with connecting my old hard drives. Here's how it went:

BIOS - No issues. It still prioritized the SSD, and I think as long as the connections stay the same, it shouldn't disrupt anything.

Windows - It rebooted itself a few times, might have been some updates to process, but otherwise, didn't seem to mess anything up. The filesystems from the old disks were available with no extra effort required. There is a strange "System Restricted" E: drive, which is Windows' boot partition, probably from one of the older drives. Not sure which of the drives it's coming from, but I'm not about to start mucking with Windows partitions, lest I really screw something up. Also, Windows Update seemed sad: it insisted I install some updates from February after an update process had just finished, and after that, failed to check for updates with an "unknown error". Typical Windows problem and error message, typical Windows solution: reboot the machine, seems to be running fine now. Again, as long as I don't change any of the connections, I think we'll be okay. Boot time seems to be about the same, the HDDs don't appear to slow it down.

Steam - Smooth sailing. I added my Steam folders from the other drives, it picked up the games that were installed and they lit up in my library. I fired up one or two of them, they seem to work fine. I foolishly picked a game based on the Unreal engine, and I ended up going through the first-time Unreal installation, which also suggests that it's still treating my SSD as the master drive, not trying to pull things from the old installations. Save data from non-cloud games is accessible too, so that part of the plan went off without a hitch.

In short, was a lot smoother than I was expecting. I frankly didn't expect it to work at all, and even feared it would brick my current installation. But things seem to be okay for now. I bet once I finish the games on these old hard drives, I'll either wipe the installation and make a clean partition or just unplug them and not worry about this multiple drive crap.

For the last five years, I've been using a Buffalo LinkStation Pro for backups and miscellaneous file storage — things I don’t use often but still want to be able to get to from multiple computers.

Then its hard drive died. Fortunately, it gave me enough warning that I was able to get everything off of it. Unfortunately, I’m on a shoestring budget for replacing it.

The options I’m considering thus far are:

1) I already had a toy Linux server running on an antique Mac Mini. It doesn’t have much hard drive space, but I do have a 2TB USB drive (a La Cie Minimus) I could connect to it. But I am concerned that whatever drive is in that enclosure isn’t designed to run 24/7 and attaching it to a server will kill it prematurely.

2) A replacement NAS. Amazon has a number of possibilities under $300.

3) Cloud storage. I’ve been happy with my free Dropbox account, and a Pro account would give me plenty of space for a lower up-front cost than new hardware.

Any advice and/or recommendations?

I see a lot of 5TB WD red drives for $150 on newegg from the buildapcsales reddit.

Seems like there was a 2tb deal recently for $80 on tigerdirect but keep an eye out. It seems like once every other week I see a deal on a 5tb red.

fangblackbone wrote:

I see a lot of 5TB WD red drives for $150 on newegg from the buildapcsales reddit.

Seems like there was a 2tb deal recently for $80 on tigerdirect but keep an eye out. It seems like once every other week I see a deal on a 5tb red.

Thanks!

I've seen conflicting reports about how difficult it is to replace the HD in a Linkstation, but if I can't make that work, then putting a WD Red into an external enclosure would be easy.

More questions for the Goodjer tech brain trust on behalf of my mom and her organization. Fussy little details which nag me and might cause undesired behavior.

They have a Gmail account for the organization, and they want to set up forwarding to multiple addresses. Gmail admits you can only forward all emails to one address, but you can use filters to forward to other addresses. So I set up a simple filter, (to:@gmail.com) to forward to my mom's address. Is this as good as forwarding all emails to multiple addresses?

Part two: reply threads. My mom was asking me today where a reply would "come from" if it was answered through a forward. She wants all emails sent to her organization's Gmail to be replied from the same Gmail, not from their personal addresses (which feels like a contradiction when we have forwarding but also that Gmail can be accessed from so many places, but I'm nit-picking here, this is such a hack job). We just did an experiment and I was right, replying to a forwarded address comes from her personal address, not Gmail. Is there any way to effectively send replies from your personal email masquerading as the Gmail? My mom usually does her email from her iPhone and Apple Mail on her Mac, and the account in question is a Comcast account, so I really don't know what we can and can't tune (or where to tune it).

I'm doing the best I can here, but I'm not very clear on what they want when it's all said and done. I may need to ask her to give me "use cases" or something to get a better idea of their desired end product (then again, I'm doing all of this pro bono in my spare time, I'm not a professional). Thanks again at any rate.

Bubs14 wrote:

They have a Gmail account for the organization, and they want to set up forwarding to multiple addresses. Gmail admits you can only forward all emails to one address, but you can use filters to forward to other addresses. So I set up a simple filter, (to:@gmail.com) to forward to my mom's address. Is this as good as forwarding all emails to multiple addresses?

Yes, should be no different.

Part two: reply threads. My mom was asking me today where a reply would "come from" if it was answered through a forward. She wants all emails sent to her organization's Gmail to be replied from the same Gmail, not from their personal addresses (which feels like a contradiction when we have forwarding but also that Gmail can be accessed from so many places, but I'm nit-picking here, this is such a hack job). We just did an experiment and I was right, replying to a forwarded address comes from her personal address, not Gmail. Is there any way to effectively send replies from your personal email masquerading as the Gmail? My mom usually does her email from her iPhone and Apple Mail on her Mac, and the account in question is a Comcast account, so I really don't know what we can and can't tune (or where to tune it).

If you want to "send as" the organization Gmail, then you have to configure the email client to send as the organization email (ie. using the org email's credentials and SMTP server to send). How and if you can accomplish this in a nice way depends on your email client (since obviously you want her mail to "send as" herself when responding to everything other than forwarded org messages). Gmail has some native support for this (Accounts > Send Mail As), but you've stated that the personal account is a Comcast one, not Gmail.

It seems like the best idea is to not do it this way at all. Two ideas come to mind, and they both involve using more than one email account:
1. Just use the org account directly (which may be undesirable in a multi-user situation)
2. Set up a secondary email account which exists only as a target for the forwarded org email, and configure it to always send using the org's SMTP

iPhone Mail.app and Apple Mail both support multiple accounts. Learning to use multiple accounts may be an uphill battle depending on your mom's technical level, but juggling SMTP servers and making sure you're sending as the right user is likely to be a lot more painful, unless there is some client support for this use case that I am not aware of.

I'm only semi-confident in the above answers, so I possibly stand to be corrected by someone else.

It sounds like setting up e-mail delegation for the shared account might accomplish what you're trying to do.
https://support.google.com/mail/answ...
Up to 10 delegates on a regular Gmail. 25 for a Google Apps for Business/Education domain.
If I remember correctly you will get a dropdown on the reply screen to specify which account should be the sender when replying.

Running Avira and Malwarebytes simultaneously - Good idea, or bad?

Good (provided malwarebytes isn't active scanning)
I always consider malwarebytes and another virus program a good 1, 2, punch.

I still prefer hitman pro though.

How would I know if it's actively scanning? Why would that be bad?

Should I set Malware Protection and Malicious Website Protection in MWB to disabled?

Malwarebytes Premium has an active scan feature. If you only have free then you don't need to worry about it running at the same time as Avira.

Edit: Oh, if you have those features then you're on Premium. Turn off Real Time Protection as I don't see Avira on the approved list: http://static-cdn.malwarebytes.org/a...

is there a fairly easy free way to back up iphone sms messages to a windows machine in a readable format?

I just scored an HP Officejet Pro 8600 Plus at a church rummage sale, and suspect that the previous owners decided to get a new printer rather than new ink. Does anyone have experience with third-party ink and this particular model?

From Amazon reviews, it looks like the successor models will refuse "unofficial" cartridges, but this one merely complains. But if anyone here can confirm or correct that impression, that'd be awesome.

Update: I got these ink cartridges. The printer did complain when I installed them (oh, and the printhead had become impressively clogged -- but hot water and rubbing alcohol took care of that), but they work.

My phone has started misbehaving. It froze on me a few times, and it started rebooting itself very frequently. I tried a factory reset, it rebooted itself during the post-reset process and I got a "Failed to Boot" message, so now it's bricked. I could try to salvage it by connecting it to my computer and running a recovery program, but if it keeps rebooting itself, I don't know if that will matter. Is this rebooting something that I can try to fix on my own, or I am I doomed to take it in for warranty repairs?

Forgot to mention: phone's a Samsung Galaxy S5. Had a local Verizon guy take a look, he couldn't help me, said I should submit tech support/warranty request. So that's the plan.

Is there a sekrit way, or a handy tool, to easily switch between audio output devices in Windows 8.1?

In OS X, it's option-click volume icon, click device.

In Windows it seems to be right-click volume icon, click Playback Devices, right-click device, click Set as Default Device, click OK.

I found this tool, Soundswitch, for W7, but there must be a simpler way within Windows itself. Maybe something to look forward to in 10?

Gravey wrote:

In Windows it seems to be right-click volume icon, click Playback Devices, right-click device, click Set as Default Device, click OK.

Wait, you want simpler than that? Third party tool or roll-your-own.

https://www.raymond.cc/blog/easily-change-or-switch-the-default-audio-sound-output-in-windows-vista-and-xp/

#4 in their list appears to give you a Mac-like experience.

Gravey wrote:

Is there a sekrit way, or a handy tool, to easily switch between audio output devices in Windows 8.1?

In OS X, it's option-click volume icon, click device.

In Windows it seems to be right-click volume icon, click Playback Devices, right-click device, click Set as Default Device, click OK.

I found this tool, Soundswitch, for W7, but there must be a simpler way within Windows itself. Maybe something to look forward to in 10?

Search for "Manage Audio Devices" and create a shortcut to it.

Here's the link for the latest version of #4 on that list: https://github.com/sirWest/AudioSwitch

Hyetal wrote:

Here's the link for the latest version of #4 on that list: https://github.com/sirWest/AudioSwitch

Perfect, thanks, Hyetal and Mr Crinkle.

Maybe my grandchildren will be able to enjoy a version of Windows that has finally caught up to OS X.