Random Tech Questions you want answered.

Bubs14 wrote:

So I've recently noticed a buzzing noise coming from my PC when "under load". I did some tests, I think it's the GPU fan (Nvidia GTX 760). It's quiet under low load, but when I play GW2 or run the 3DMark graphics tests (not the physics test), I hear the buzzing, and it stops immediately after the heavy load has passed. I don't think the fan is hitting anything, I imagine in that case the sound would be louder and noticeable even when idle. I'm not sure if it's always been doing this and I'm just now hearing it (I wear over-ear headphones and it used to sit farther away from me), or if this is a sign that the card has an issue. Thoughts, comments, suggestions welcomed and appreciated.

could it be coil whine? If so it's probably been happening since you got it.

Asterith wrote:

I did actually build it myself. The power supply and the drive are good brands and well reviewed. However, I suspect the adapter (which is the 4 pin molex to SATA) may have been less than quality. I'm going to check to see if I have any other spare 15 pins directly from the power supply, but I believe I ran out. Everything else has been running fine, but I'm definitely keeping an eye on the power supply, just in case this incident may be the first sign of its death.

Just poked my head in -- I'd recognize that cable anywhere. There was a large run of possibly defective SATA cables. I've had four different vendors who sold custom servers (typically in SuperMicro and Chenbro cases) that randomly sent either notices, or replacement cables, or both. All with the notice that they could short and burn.

I was skeptical, but during check/replacement we've found two optical drives burnt pretty much exactly like your picture. The "faulty" cables look exactly like the one you have.

Chairman_Mao wrote:
Bubs14 wrote:

So I've recently noticed a buzzing noise coming from my PC when "under load". I did some tests, I think it's the GPU fan (Nvidia GTX 760). It's quiet under low load, but when I play GW2 or run the 3DMark graphics tests (not the physics test), I hear the buzzing, and it stops immediately after the heavy load has passed. I don't think the fan is hitting anything, I imagine in that case the sound would be louder and noticeable even when idle. I'm not sure if it's always been doing this and I'm just now hearing it (I wear over-ear headphones and it used to sit farther away from me), or if this is a sign that the card has an issue. Thoughts, comments, suggestions welcomed and appreciated.

could it be coil whine? If so it's probably been happening since you got it.

I have coil whine on my GTX 970 and only with certain games or during certain scenes(the Dev/Pubisher splash screens when I load Far Cry 3 oddly enough). To fix it you can get a third party cooler. But I haven't because I haven't actually noticed any difference in my performance.

If videos aren't starting at all all I can think of is something going wrong with the advertising on the site. Any ad/popup blockers? Ever messed with your hosts file or router/firewall settings? Try turning your software firewall off. If none of that works it could be malware related, you might want to try Hijackthis and post your results in their forum. Good luck.

My TV and desk are pretty close together in my apartment. I'd like to run games off both my monitor and TV. Mouse and keyboard for the former, controller for the latter. Connecting HDMI to the TV is easy enough for sound and video. For the monitor, I could run DVI to it and a separate audio cable to the speakers. If I ran HDMI to the monitor, though, what would I have to do for audio? Output it somehow from the monitor? Or still just run a separate audio cable for speakers?

Note: this is for a future setup. Current monitor doesn't have HDMI but I'm upgrading soon and just trying to form a plan.

I have my speakers connected to my TV. My PC and consoles all hookup to the tv . So no matter what I use TV or monitor I get sound from the speakers. I'm not sure what you mean by close but my tv and monitor are touching each other.

If you need sound to come from two different sources that won't work for you. You should note though that If you ran a hdmi cable to the monitor you wouldn't get sound from it unless it also had speakers. So regardless you will probably be running separate audio cable to the speakers because most monitors don't have built in speakers.

stupidhaiku wrote:

If videos aren't starting at all all I can think of is something going wrong with the advertising on the site. Any ad/popup blockers? Ever messed with your hosts file or router/firewall settings? Try turning your software firewall off. If none of that works it could be malware related, you might want to try Hijackthis and post your results in their forum. Good luck. :)

This is good advice, but I haven't changed any settings in my firewall recently. I am running adblocker, but I tried turning it off, no luck. Would removing it altogether make any difference?

I worked with my brother last night and checked my system with a fine-toothed comb for malware and viruses, 13 PUPs were found and removed, but that did not improve the situation any.

Thanks for the feedback, y'all! I'll let you know how it goes whenever I have the cash to do this.

Dakuna wrote:

This is good advice, but I haven't changed any settings in my firewall recently. I am running adblocker, but I tried turning it off, no luck. Would removing it altogether make any difference?

Wish I could be more help but I'm kindof stumped by this if it's not isp and not adware/advertisements failing to resolve. You might try plugging your computer directly into your cable/dsl modem and seeing if it continues. At least then you'll know there's definitely something wrong with that pc and it's not a network issue.

In cases like this I'll often boot from a linux live cd as well to see if it continues, though that would likely only rule out hardware issues (which would be unlikely given the symptoms) but at least you can isolate the problem to "it's something with browsers on this OS install."

Yeah, there are a few things I haven't tried, like hooking up to another port, or another router, or directly to the modem, so thanks for reminding me.

I'm really discouraged. I can't stream my Dark Souls level 1 run, and I can barely watch videos

There is a bug with a Nvidia right now that if you are running your monitor at 120-144hz your GPU(s) will run at about 80% power even when idle. Nvidia is aware of it and are working on a fix.

I run at 144hz usually and noticed my brightness was suddenly very off(maybe unrelated) and switched back to 60. Will check back in after an update or two. Thanks guru

So if I have Comcast Xfinity and I want to move my computer and router and wifi to a different room.... can I just throw a splitter on the coax cable currently bringing in a tv signal to get my internet as well, or is the system too overly complicated to do that? I really don't want to have to call a technician over to fix everything and wait 4 hours for them to not show up 3 times in a row, but Fallout 4 will be out this week and I have very limited play time... messing with it myself for hours would also suck.

manta173 wrote:

So if I have Comcast Xfinity and I want to move my computer and router and wifi to a different room.... can I just throw a splitter on the coax cable currently bringing in a tv signal to get my internet as well, or is the system too overly complicated to do that? I really don't want to have to call a technician over to fix everything and wait 4 hours for them to not show up 3 times in a row, but Fallout 4 will be out this week and I have very limited play time... messing with it myself for hours would also suck.

that should work just fine, but is that not how your internet is already hooked up? You'd have to be splitting off the cable at some point to separate TV from the modem.

Chairman_Mao wrote:
manta173 wrote:

So if I have Comcast Xfinity and I want to move my computer and router and wifi to a different room.... can I just throw a splitter on the coax cable currently bringing in a tv signal to get my internet as well, or is the system too overly complicated to do that? I really don't want to have to call a technician over to fix everything and wait 4 hours for them to not show up 3 times in a row, but Fallout 4 will be out this week and I have very limited play time... messing with it myself for hours would also suck.

that should work just fine, but is that not how your internet is already hooked up? You'd have to be splitting off the cable at some point to separate TV from the modem.

Yeah but I have had the cable guy tell me something about the signal was different.... I had a spiltter to get TV signal into my computer a few years back and it didn't work at all even though it had worked at my previous place. It made me worried about moving my computer and potentially screwing up my connection the day Fallout releases.

manta173 wrote:
Chairman_Mao wrote:
manta173 wrote:

So if I have Comcast Xfinity and I want to move my computer and router and wifi to a different room.... can I just throw a splitter on the coax cable currently bringing in a tv signal to get my internet as well, or is the system too overly complicated to do that? I really don't want to have to call a technician over to fix everything and wait 4 hours for them to not show up 3 times in a row, but Fallout 4 will be out this week and I have very limited play time... messing with it myself for hours would also suck.

that should work just fine, but is that not how your internet is already hooked up? You'd have to be splitting off the cable at some point to separate TV from the modem.

Yeah but I have had the cable guy tell me something about the signal was different.... I had a spiltter to get TV signal into my computer a few years back and it didn't work at all even though it had worked at my previous place. It made me worried about moving my computer and potentially screwing up my connection the day Fallout releases.

Ok. I would maybe just wait to make any changes until you've got FO4 installed? Then give it a try. I have Comcast and ran my own splitter without any issue, but why take the risk...

Chairman_Mao wrote:
manta173 wrote:
Chairman_Mao wrote:
manta173 wrote:

So if I have Comcast Xfinity and I want to move my computer and router and wifi to a different room.... can I just throw a splitter on the coax cable currently bringing in a tv signal to get my internet as well, or is the system too overly complicated to do that? I really don't want to have to call a technician over to fix everything and wait 4 hours for them to not show up 3 times in a row, but Fallout 4 will be out this week and I have very limited play time... messing with it myself for hours would also suck.

that should work just fine, but is that not how your internet is already hooked up? You'd have to be splitting off the cable at some point to separate TV from the modem.

Yeah but I have had the cable guy tell me something about the signal was different.... I had a spiltter to get TV signal into my computer a few years back and it didn't work at all even though it had worked at my previous place. It made me worried about moving my computer and potentially screwing up my connection the day Fallout releases.

Ok. I would maybe just wait to make any changes until you've got FO4 installed? Then give it a try. I have Comcast and ran my own splitter without any issue, but why take the risk...

Well, I feel better about doing it myself now that I know you also have Comcast. I will wait until after I get a chance to play FO4 though I think.

I've recently upgraded my Windows 7 desktop's video card from an AMD Radeon to an NVidia GTX 750 ti, and I've started having a strange issue. Whenever I put my computer into sleep mode, after about 10-15 minutes it just wakes itself up. I've unplugged most of the unnecessary USB connections, thinking an idle joystick or printer command might be doing it, but nothing has helped.

Even though it's set to put itself back to sleep after an hour of inactivity, it never does.

Thoughts?

Alz wrote:

I've recently upgraded my Windows 7 desktop's video card from an AMD Radeon to an NVidia GTX 750 ti, and I've started having a strange issue. Whenever I put my computer into sleep mode, after about 10-15 minutes it just wakes itself up. I've unplugged most of the unnecessary USB connections, thinking an idle joystick or printer command might be doing it, but nothing has helped.

Even though it's set to put itself back to sleep after an hour of inactivity, it never does.

Thoughts?

http://lifehacker.com/5924010/how-to...

This has worked for me, and many others. Run the command after the system is woken up by whatever it is.

LouZiffer wrote:

http://lifehacker.com/5924010/how-to...

This has worked for me, and many others. Run the command after the system is woken up by whatever it is.

Cool trick, I'll try it out tonight. Thanks!

Is there a reasonably convenient way to restore deleted cell phone files? Some app, or a program I could run on a PC with the cell phone connected?

Any good backup software? I want to backup about 2TB of stuff to another drive. One of my NAS drives failed after a power outage. I want to backup the other drive before replacing the bad drive. I'm pretty sure I can do the swap without backing up but who knows maybe something crazy might happen.

Dakuna wrote:

Is there a reasonably convenient way to restore deleted cell phone files? Some app, or a program I could run on a PC with the cell phone connected?

I think you're going to have to tell us what OS the phone's running to get any kind of an answer.

Baron Of Hell wrote:

Any good backup software? I want to backup about 2TB of stuff to another drive. One of my NAS drives failed after a power outage. I want to backup the other drive before replacing the bad drive. I'm pretty sure I can do the swap without backing up but who knows maybe something crazy might happen.

Don't know if this is the best plan but I will use the free version of Crashplan to backup my drive to a 2TB external drive.

Crashplan works very well. Might take some time to get the first backup done (but, can't you make it back up to a local disk? Not sure).

Robear wrote:

Crashplan works very well. Might take some time to get the first backup done (but, can't you make it back up to a local disk? Not sure).

Yeah you can back up to an attached drive with Crashplan.

Yep. You can even have them send you a drive, back up to it locally, and then send the drive back as a way to get that initial backup sorted.

Oh... during the initial backup period, at times when you aren't gaming (when crashplan should probably be paused altogether) you can change the settings so it uses 80% CPU all the time, instead of just when idle. The backup will complete /much/ faster this way, though it will still be limited by your upload speed of course.

Travel router on sale on amazon today... using the code YVZT6QGO

I want one and have read the reviews, but am a little concerned about the security... I already don't like having to sign into services though hotel wifi but a few of the comments in the reviews seem to indicate this thing is not something that is easy to work with.

I was thinking about just getting it and trying it out this weekend on a trip... but I need someone to empower me.

The top 1 star review is pretty concerning. I'd give it a pass.

complexmath wrote:

The top 1 star review is pretty concerning. I'd give it a pass.

Yeah... that's what got me concerned.