Random Tech Questions you want answered.

I used a Java app years ago to do something like this with iPhoto Libraries but I can remember the name. It was nice because it did checksum comparison of just the actual file data skipping all the metadata (iPhoto was horrible about creating multiple copies of the same picture with slightly different metadata). It was called something like jdff.jar but I can't find it. Lots of options on Google though.

I usually trust The HowToGeek who recommends Duplicate Cleaner Pro as of March 2018. I have not used this app though.

I have used CCleaner (way) in the past, but I think there was some controversy a while back about it being spammy or unsafe so I'd probably avoid that app.

Edit: Yup, definitely don't use CCleaner.

Last time I used CCleaner I ended up spending another two hours getting rid of the malware it put on my machine. Such a shame, it was a really good tool at one time.

So, what do you use for CCleaner like functionality?

mwdowns wrote:

So, what do you use for CCleaner like functionality?

I haven't done any preventative maintenance on any of my systems in years. I never get close to running out of hard drive space and haven't seen the need to defrag anymore. I keep all of my data on separate drives so if I ever have an issue I just wipe and re-install Windows.

PaladinTom wrote:

I usually trust The HowToGeek who recommends Duplicate Cleaner Pro as of March 2018. I have not used this app though.

I have used CCleaner (way) in the past, but I think there was some controversy a while back about it being spammy or unsafe so I'd probably avoid that app.

Edit: Yup, definitely don't use CCleaner.

Duplicate Cleaner Free has been great for my needs. Haven't used the latest version but I have been using a 3.* version for quite a while. I'm not really sure what the pro offers as the free one lets you limit by file size, compare as many directories as you want, and do CRC checks.

PaladinTom wrote:
mwdowns wrote:

So, what do you use for CCleaner like functionality?

I haven't done any preventative maintenance on any of my systems in years. I never get close to running out of hard drive space and haven't seen the need to defrag anymore. I keep all of my data on separate drives so if I ever have an issue I just wipe and re-install Windows.

Ditto. I have Windows 10 installed on a 128GB M.2 SSD, and I have literally everything else on other drives, along with a backup of all the installations I need to get everything back up and running. And then I have important data (documents, resume, pictures, etc) backed up in other ways (cloud and external drives). Basically, even a crypto-locker virus would only be a mild annoyance.

I just wiped my drive to get rid of a weird USB bug I was encountering that was causing long boot times and some weird audio cut-outs. I would never have done that years ago, because I kept everything installed on a single drive. Took about 40 minutes for Windows, another 10 to install drivers/apps and import settings, and maybe another 2 minutes to tell Steam where my games were installed.

Audio problems:

So I noticed over the last few weeks that audio through my speaker system on my computer has been very quiet. My headphones were set to about 35% volume and I had to max out the speakers to get close to the same audio level. Tried a number of things the internet suggested, including adjusting the volume mixer and updating drivers, but nothing fixed it. Was just watching a Youtube video and mid video the audio level just jumped drastically. I'm assuming this may be a sign my speaker system is going but figured I'd check and see if there was anything out there people were aware of.

Sounds to me like you may have a kinked cable or a short. Start playing something and then flex your cable up and down the length of it to see if that causes any issues. If you find a issue and have speakers with detachable cables then just replace the cable, otherwise if it is an old style audio cable it is pretty simple to cut out the bad part and splice the ends back together if you are comfortable doing that sort of thing.

I was playing a game with my wired 360 controller on my PC and thought I'd just untangle the cables which have become bent over the years. As I did this, I sudden lost sound (my headphones plugged into the USB port next to it) and the controller died. A message came up saying there was a usb power surge and that the device couldn't get enough power.

I've removed the controller and tried a different device (my PS4 controller) in that slot, and it doesn't seem there was any problem with that in a short test. Is it safe to assume it's just my 360 controller that is dead and there's no lasting damage to the PC?

Update: My PS4 controller did do a few disconnects while playing (the game it happened on what Madden 19), but these all happened during cut scenes. I've put my headset into the same USB port and so far no disconnects. I'm a bit worried about plugging the 360 controller into one of the back motherboard USB ports to test it.

If it was the controller or cable (which sounds likely), the system is probably okay. It sounds to me like the controller or cable developed a short. If it's the cable it could be triggered by flexing it in a particular spot.

Though it looks like the console has decent protection circuitry I wouldn't risk it without further testing. There's a Ruideng USB tester on Banggood which sells for around $20 with shipping. I would plug that into a USB charger that has some protection circuitry (nearly all decent ones do - especially fast charging ones), and then test the controller and cable through it to see if either has a short.

https://m.banggood.com/RUIDENG-UM24U...

I'm really hoping someone can shine some light on this...

So last year my dad's computer died, and he bought a Dell Inspiron 3662. His PC needs are not very high, but even than he quickly regretted it. Slow to boot, lots of disk swapping, and even a crash once (had to reset to factory settings once).

So for Christmas I gave him an 'old' Samsung Evo 850 SSD drive, to replace the 5400rpm drive that came with the PC. Unfortunately, I underestimated how barebones the Inspiron would be. There were no spare SATA slots (1x 6Gb & 1x 1,5Gb for the DVD drive), no PCIe slots, not a spare power cord, heck not even a 2,5" drive slot!

As the power cable didn't reach to the side of the case where I could place the SSD, I ordered one and used that. Downloaded the latest Windows 10 ISO on a USB stick, got into the BIOS... and there's no way to directly boot from USB without entering the file and path to be opened - and I didn't know what to enter.

As the SSD was previously used in a now-defunct laptop of mine I decided to try and boot Windows and start the setup from there. Not ideal, but lo and behold... it worked. Lots of unknown devices in the control panel of course, but it worked with much faster boot times already.

So than I start the setup process from the USB drive within Windows, and picked the 'keep nothing' option. All goes well with the install, until the PC reboots and the screen stays on 'Windows is being configured - don't turn off the system' thingie for about two hours. I go grab a coffee and when I come back upstairs the screen is off. I figured the PC would be on standby or something, and tried to wake it up.

It's dead. No output from HDMI or D-Sub, no POST beeps, the keyboard only flashes for a second and than even the numlock stays frozen. Unplugging the power for over a minute: nothing. Holding down the power button for five seconds turns it off, but it immediately turns back on again. I also tried removing the SATA power cord extension and reconnecting the 5400RPM HDD again, to no avail.

I'm at loss here. This would be the point where one would unplug one card/device at a time and check, but with this PC there are no things to unplug. All cables are connected fine.

Anyone have anything I could try? Or a suggestion as to what could have went wrong?

So you swapped the hard drives back and tried to boot and got those symptoms?

dejanzie wrote:

Anyone have anything I could try? Or a suggestion as to what could have went wrong?

The numlock light may be an error code. But I'm not sure. I've seen some pages like this one, but nothing which covers that model.

Here are Dell's diagnostic LED codes for the 3662: https://www.dell.com/support/article...

Does it have a BIOS battery you can disconnect (along with power)? If so, disconnect the battery and power, then hold the power button down for about 15 seconds. Then reconnect everything and see if it boots.

LeapingGnome wrote:

So you swapped the hard drives back and tried to boot and got those symptoms?

Yes. Removed the extension cord as well.

LouZiffer wrote:
dejanzie wrote:

Anyone have anything I could try? Or a suggestion as to what could have went wrong?

The numlock light may be an error code. But I'm not sure. I've seen some pages like this one, but nothing which covers that model.

Here are Dell's diagnostic LED codes for the 3662: https://www.dell.com/support/article...

Does it have a BIOS battery you can disconnect (along with power)? If so, disconnect the battery and power, then hold the power button down for about 15 seconds. Then reconnect everything and see if it boots.

Thanks will try that.

If he purchased it last year, is it still under warranty?

So I checked with your list LouZiffer, and:
- no beeps
- LED is steady white, which should mean it's all okay
- Keyboard lights: NumLock flashes on then off, no other lights. That code isn't in there.

the CMOS battery is rather fixed, and we didn't want to...

astralplaydoh wrote:

If he purchased it last year, is it still under warranty?

... void the warranty Within the European Union, two year warranty for consumer electronics is compulsory.

I got the feeling my dad really wants an excuse to replace this piece of junk with a new PC though. He's not mad at me at all, but although I can't think of anything I actually did wrong I still feel horrible about it all. Like the guilt for not showing up for work, until the doctor actually diagnoses me as being sick

So chances are that you'll find me in the Build a New PC Thread shortly, with a build centered around the AMD Ryzen 2200G But if you have any theories around why this PC suddenly keeled over, I would love your input.

From everything you described you did nothing wrong, dejanzie.

Blinking NumLock on Dell laptops can mean bad or not well seated RAM, but that isn't so on your father's Desktop (at least not that I can find).

Other than the stuff you've tried already, my scientific wild ass guess is there was a flaw in the motherboard, such as a spot of delamination, which the absolutely normal forces of plugging/unplugging cables exacerbated. The system warmed up during the Windows install and poof - it shorted in that spot and died.

For a few years there Dell was using super cheap capacitors that would sometimes pop in less than two years.

Basically looking for something like this:

IMAGE(https://cdn.instructables.com/FEA/9ZMY/GE05CTLG/FEA9ZMYGE05CTLG.LARGE.jpg)

What's a easy to use non-subscription based PDF editor? Specifically I'm looking for the ability to extract to excel and minor editing.

I crossed off the ones below:

So far I downloaded the trial for Foxit: The interface was overly complicated and cluttered as hell.

Nitro PDF: The download link for the trial didn't show up for me firefox or chrome. Guessing something to do with cookies. Unfortunately their support form didn't load either. If your website doesn't work and I can't ask why without paying that's a full stop no.

Affinity Designer - $50 (typically on sale for $25)
I don't know how well it extracts to excel but it certainly is a very competent Illustrator clone.

Thanks but that looks like it's for drawing? Specifically I'm looking for an Adobe Acrobat Editor clone as it appears they went the subscription model.

EvilDead wrote:

What's a easy to use non-subscription based PDF editor? Specifically I'm looking for the ability to extract to excel and minor editing.

I crossed off the ones below:

So far I downloaded the trial for Foxit: The interface was overly complicated and cluttered as hell.

Nitro PDF: The download link for the trial didn't show up for me firefox or chrome. Guessing something to do with cookies. Unfortunately their support form didn't load either. If your website doesn't work and I can't ask why without paying that's a full stop no.

Maybe gauche of me, but why do you want to edit PDF files? In my experience, folks issue PDF files specifically because they are difficult to edit. I'm not suggesting you have bad motives, but I am curious.

My work does afford me the option to have that functionality, so far I have declined a license because I prefer not to be involved in editing files others intend me to be unable to modify.

I really don't want that to sound preachy, I really am just curious.

Well for one when you are creating financial or other summary PDF’s you are typically stiching them together from several sources making a PDF editor crucial.

There are many reasons people need to edit PDF files hence the market to support all these PDF editing programs / services. Specifically I work with very old database software that is difficult to extract data from but very easy to print reports to PDFs. I have tested with adobe trial software and the convert to excel actually worked surprisingly well. Other common uses that I've had for editing PDF files was stamping with company information or redacting sensitive information from a file I'm sending out.

FYI, Word can convert PDF files to docx for editing but it just doesn't work for my particular needs.

Edit: I think I can get my company to budget <$150 for one but unfortunately Adobe went to a subscription model.

TheGameguru wrote:

Well for one when you are creating financial or other summary PDF’s you are typically stiching them together from several sources making a PDF editor crucial.

I see! I don't work in finance

I’ve had good luck extracting tables using Tabula but it’s not perfect. That’s a totally separate problem from actually editing the pdf though.

I will have to test that out. I'm not sure if it will work though because I believe the files are just printouts without containing underlying structure data like tables.

You can still buy Adobe Acrobat as a one time purchase, non-subscription. It is $300 though.

They also have a product called Export PDF dedicated to just extracting PDFs to Word and Excel. It is a subscription but only $24 a year.

I don't know how you managed to find that! They really hid that on the website. I had dug around a for a while but every buy option led me to the subscription page. $300 though....

Unfortunately I think subscription stuff is probably off the table. Seems kind of silly to have a subscription for a single task.