Random Tech Questions you want answered.

Wink_and_the_Gun wrote:

My son has his own laptop, now. Good for him He also has poor impulse control; this gets him into trouble. I've set myself up as the Admin, and him as a User.

Is there anything way I can set up a "will only work between these hours" setting? I've busted him on YT, Minecraft, or Skyrim at times he should be sleeping, but he is allowed on it before school, but after I've left for work. I'd rather not have to hide/lock up the laptop every night...

Anything else y'all'd recommend?

How to Use the Parental Controls in Windows 10

Your router probably has settings that would cut off wifi (tied to the MAC address of his machine) outside appropriate hours. (e.g., here's the instructions for a Linksys router).

He could still use the PC for anything not requiring the Internet, but depending what he's doing, that might be enough.

Both of these are good. Windows parental controls are definitely the first line of defense.

And make damn sure your admin password is strong.

following up on water cooling for a gpu;
I have a gigabyte g1 gaming gtx1080 ; what are the odds something like this or this will fit? I guess it comes down to whether the card counts as reference? Would that mean FE?

krev82 wrote:

following up on water cooling for a gpu;
I have a gigabyte g1 gaming gtx1080 ; what are the odds something like this or this will fit? I guess it comes down to whether the card counts as reference? Would that mean FE?

The EVGA cooler is for EVGA cards mostly. While it might work with what you have I would say look for something third party. The Kraken that you posted won't, the compatibility is in the product description.

I'm looking to grab a DOCSIS 3.0 modem to avoid rental fees. I'd the general consensus that 8x4 vs 25x8 connection rates will matter little for my connection capped at 100 down/ 10 up? Would anyone have suggestions on a modem to purchase? Netgear is recommended on Amazon and was my leading choice, but wanted to check here first.

Are the connector sizes for power adapters for electronic devices standard?

I have a device that I'm missing a power adapter for and want to buy a replacement. If I buy this 5VDC 3A adapter, will it automatically fit? This one looks like it will, but I'd like to be sure.

There are a few different connector types for power. You can buy universal adapters like this: http://amzn.to/2kSvOZg that comes with a few changeable connectors and also lets you adjust the voltage to match the device you want to connect it to.

astralplaydoh wrote:

There are a few different connector types for power. You can buy universal adapters like this: http://amzn.to/2kSvOZg that comes with a few changeable connectors and also lets you adjust the voltage to match the device you want to connect it to.

Fantastic! Thanks!!!

Kronen wrote:

I'm looking to grab a DOCSIS 3.0 modem to avoid rental fees. I'd the general consensus that 8x4 vs 25x8 connection rates will matter little for my connection capped at 100 down/ 10 up? Would anyone have suggestions on a modem to purchase? Netgear is recommended on Amazon and was my leading choice, but wanted to check here first.

Until I got on fiber I had one of the Motorola/ARRIS SURFboard modems. I never had any issues with it and I think they go for around $50-70 now(for the ones that match your up/down speeds). If the netgear is cheaper and has better reviews I would go with that. But generally you should be fine with the 8x4 channel as it should be good for up to 200 down.

Careful! The AC adapter you linked can't switch polarity. Some AC adapters are tip-positive, some are ring-positive. You have to match what your device expects, or at the very least it won't work, and you'll probably break it.

A good universal adapter will have switchable polarity.

Good tip! I didn't even remember that.

Malor wrote:

Careful! The AC adapter you linked can't switch polarity. Some AC adapters are tip-positive, some are ring-positive. You have to match what your device expects, or at the very least it won't work, and you'll probably break it.

A good universal adapter will have switchable polarity.

This is how I learned the importance of reading the amperage, voltage, and polarity listed next to the power plug on a device when I was in high school. Just because the tip fits doesn't mean it'll work with the device.

My friend and I went to the computer store that day to buy a new external hard drive.

Malor wrote:

Careful! The AC adapter you linked can't switch polarity. Some AC adapters are tip-positive, some are ring-positive. You have to match what your device expects, or at the very least it won't work, and you'll probably break it.

A good universal adapter will have switchable polarity.

Whew. Checked the device and it is center-positive and outer-negative so this adapter should work.

Thanks Malor! I learned something today.

Does anyone have any experience with and can recommend a good hard drive data recovery service?

I have an iPad, and my kids have their own iPods. We use the same Apple ID for all three so that any apps can be bought once and used on all three devices.

In older iOS versions, we all set up our own Game Center accounts to store game saves, etc. With iOS 10, Apple got rid of Game Center as an app, but the service is still there. However, now it appears to be tied directly to the Apple ID. There no longer appears to be a way to log into Game Center directly - you log into your Apple ID, and you're logged into Game Center automatically.

This means that when one of them got a new iPod for Christmas, he no longer has the ability to log into his old Game Center account. We log into the one Apple ID, and my Game Center account shows up. No way to change it without changing Apple IDs, and we never used a different one. Is his Game Center account and all of its associated game data gone? I can't figure out any way around this.

Boudreaux wrote:

I have an iPad, and my kids have their own iPods. We use the same Apple ID for all three so that any apps can be bought once and used on all three devices.

In older iOS versions, we all set up our own Game Center accounts to store game saves, etc. With iOS 10, Apple got rid of Game Center as an app, but the service is still there. However, now it appears to be tied directly to the Apple ID. There no longer appears to be a way to log into Game Center directly - you log into your Apple ID, and you're logged into Game Center automatically.

This means that when one of them got a new iPod for Christmas, he no longer has the ability to log into his old Game Center account. We log into the one Apple ID, and my Game Center account shows up. No way to change it without changing Apple IDs, and we never used a different one. Is his Game Center account and all of its associated game data gone? I can't figure out any way around this.

You can set up family accounts. That way, your kids can still have access to their game center ids, but you can still share app purchases as a family.

I bought a SSD and I want to do a fresh install of windows on it. Can i just make my current system the 2nd hard drive without much effort or do I need to do file transfers and wipe the drive in time? Do I just copy steam whole over to the new system once completed and just not all game files? Current HDD is 1 TB, SSD is 480 GB. I tried getting everything under the disc requirements and do an image which never worked.

If you've got the space somewhere on your network before doing the reinstall, I suggest doing a full backup of everything, just in case, before touching or doing anything else. Windows Backup works fine for this.

From there, what I always do with a new drive is to unplug the old one completely, and do a fresh install of Windows with only the new one attached. This ensures that all the boot files end up on that one drive. If both are connected, you can end up with very weird situations where the computer starts booting on one drive and then transfers control to the other, and you can't always tell which files go on what drive. When that happens, if you ever disconnect either drive (or if either drive breaks), the machine won't boot anymore. Sometimes, even changing which drives are on which connectors can render it unbootable.

Once you've got the system up and running with the single drive, then power it down and reconnect the old one. Boot back up, possibly adjust in the BIOS so that the new drive is the only one in the boot order, launch the OS, and reassign drive letters however you wish. (putting the old drive on D, and then DVDs and flash drives on higher letters, is what I normally do.) Then, reinstall programs you use, and copy data files from your old profile and Steam dirs (on D) into the new ones on C. Don't change anything on the old drive for at least a month, until you're really sure everything's running correctly. That gives you a fallback position if you need it, and helps to ensure that you've transferred all your files.

Your network backup is your final safety net; I'd suggest not deleting that for at least a year. On modern systems, with hundreds of thousands of files on a disk, It's really easy to forget something important somewhere.

So, Avast has been throwing me craploads of "Threat Blocked" popups all day. The thing is, I'm browsing the same sites I do normally for the most part... Amazon, GWJ, etc. Nothing was popping up YESTERDAY, but today it's popping up constantly. I haven't installed anything new, and doing a scan with Avast and Malwarebytes comes up with nothing. Any thoughts? Is this a false positive? It stopped popping up for a bit even when trying to force it for the picture below... then when going to Photobucket to upload it, the popup came up at least a half dozen times or more.

IMAGE(http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/dhelor/threatcap.png)

A bunch of people are reporting getting the same thing from the Twitch front page.

My guess is some bad ad Javascript or something is triggering positives. Maybe a shared Javascript library. Avast seems to be the most common complainer, but not exclusively so.

I don't get anything triggering from those sites, but I run both an ad blocker and Privacy Badger, so a lot of third-party Javascript doesn't get loaded.

EDIT: More complaints on the Avast forums. You're definitely in plentiful company.

Well that's good to know. Hopefully it's fixed soon, it is extremely annoying. If it were only Avast doing it I'd just switch to a different service, but they're reporting AVG and Norton doing the same thing...

Thanks Malor!

One more question unrelated. I bought the Wife a new laptop, HP, and at setup now. Should I just do a cold install of Windows 10 to eliminate bloatware or is all pretty well these days?

I opened the Network view in Explorer, and there's a Samsung TV shown. We don't have any Samsung TVs in the house.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/9ucE1KN.png)

My router doesn't show a Samsung TV connected at all and I recognize all the devices currently connected. Doing a search for the MAC address didn't return anything useful.

I have 2.4 and 5GHz networks, with standard WPA2 security. The only other variable I can think of is that I enabled a password-free guest network over the weekend while family was in town, and promptly shut it down when they left.

Any thoughts to what this is or where it's coming from?

If you are worried, you can just block the MAC address in your router setting. Do you have any smart TVs at all?

Possibly similar to this?
Basically it suggests that it's showing up because it tried (at some point) to connect to your network, creating an entry for itself. It didn't get past the password prompt though so it's not actually connected to your network. If you turn off broadcasting your network's SSID, then manually adding everything you want back on might get rid of it.

I can no longer log into my router dashboard, an ASUS R-N66 through IP address 192.168.1.1. I know I never changed the IP address, so that's not it. I'm using my desktop connected through a cable.

Or could it be because I set my router as a wifi access point at some point in the past?

Did you double check that the ip address hasn't changed?

How could I check this?

astralplaydoh wrote:

If you are worried, you can just block the MAC address in your router setting. Do you have any smart TVs at all?

No smart TVs in the home at all, I'm still rocking a 1080p TV circa 2009. I'll probably do the MAC address filter once I figure out how. Currently it looks like I can only block MAC addresses for devices that are actively connected, I can't "pre-emptively" enter a MAC address ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Stengah wrote:

Possibly similar to this?
Basically it suggests that it's showing up because it tried (at some point) to connect to your network, creating an entry for itself. It didn't get past the password prompt though so it's not actually connected to your network. If you turn off broadcasting your network's SSID, then manually adding everything you want back on might get rid of it.

It doesn't make a lick of sense, but this is probably what's going on.