techsupport

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The Lemmy community will help you with your tech problems and questions about anything here. Do not be shy, we will try to help you.

If something works or if you find a solution to your problem let us know it will be greatly apreciated.

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1
 
 

I have an SSD that stopped working on my PC 3 weeks ago, and have become confused after various attempts at troubleshooting.

I have two M.2 SSD slots with a drive in each, and when I swapped them around the faulty drive would not show up but my functional drive would still work fine. In both configurations the drive is not visible in windows via Disk Management or the Device Manager. Having just the faulty drive plugged into my PC simply lead to it booting into BIOS, where it was still undetected. I have attempted both SATA configuration settings from the BIOS, neither of which yield results. There is no visible damage to the drive or my M.2 SSD ports.

However, despite all this, the drive still functions when plugged into my friend's computer.

Would it be possible that the drive or my motherboard somehow received a driver update that made them incompatible? All of my drivers are currently considered up-to date by windows (afaik). I'm not sure what to do given that the drive works on another computer but not my own, but I don't want to risk losing my data.

It is a Western Digital SN580 2TB Solid State Drive, model WDS200T3B0E. My motherboard is a B450 Steel Legend, and the BIOS Version/Date is listed as "P3.40, 2020-06-04"

Any help would be appreciated, and thank you for your time

2
 
 

Hello fellow lemmings!

This is cross posted from pcmasterrace.

I am in need of some advice on how to expand my workstation.

I currently have 2 monitors and 2 laptops with 1 docking station that I switch back and forth between (I do have a second Bluetooth mouse that I connect to the laptop that is not currently connected to the docking station, if I need to).

I would like to have 4 monitors by the upcoming tax season. Also, I would like the option to expand to a total of 3 laptops within a couple years.

I have looked into KVM switches and the only one that I can find for 4 monitors and 2 computers is upwards of $800. Is there a KVM switch out there for 4 monitors and 3 computers, or is this just a pipedream?

What other solutions should I consider? When I expand to 3 computers in the upcoming years, would having 2 workstations be cheaper/more efficient?

3
 
 

I'm trying to use Virtual Desktop with a Quest 3 and want to skip Steam VR wherever humanly possible. Problem is, this isn't possible most of the time because I can't install the Oculus app, which is supposedly required to use the xr runtime and avoid going through Steam.

The oculusSetup.exe installer crashers before showing any UI on my system (Win10 Home x64), making installation impossible. This occurred both before and after upgrading my motherboard, Intel CPU, and ram kit. I've gone through a laundry list of advanced troubleshooting over the past month or so, and I won't get into that here.

Instead, I'm really hoping there is a way to run PCVR games/apps through VD with openxr runtimes that DON'T rely on running SteamVR (for performance/latency reasons), WITHOUT needing to install the actual Oculus app on my PC.

4
 
 

Hi there, I was posting on [email protected] for a while, and I'd post links to youtube videos, and it'd automatically make thumbnails so that was cool.

But then "something changed" and it no longer made thumbnails, at least when seen on the web interface. But sometimes it does? The following image shows an example. In the first post, it has no thumbnail but in the second case it does:

MY QUESTION: how do make a Lemmy post to a video (especially on youtube) such that the post includes a thumbnail?

  • Either automatically-generated, or custom-made by me.
  • Preferrably via a computer client rather than phone.
5
 
 

I don't know the problem, but my laptop consistently displays the wrong time. Right now it is telling me that the time in UTC is 2315 when it's actually 1815. The only way for me to get the correct time to show on my laptop is to set my time zone to Hawaii (I live in the central).

Anybody know what the hell is going on?

SOLVED!

I was setting up an alternate NTP client as suggested by @[email protected] in their response, after trying their other suggestions in order, and the command kept rejecting because the Windows Time Service wasn't running.

So I opened services.msc and sure enough windows time services is set to manual and not running. So I said it to automatic and ran it, restarted the computer for good measure.

And voila, the correct UTC time, the correct local time, everything fixed.

6
 
 

found about this app recently and decided to install it. Not sure what this means but I'm worried because its the SSD my OS is installed on. (all my files are already backed up to backblaze)

EDIT: turns out its my old external hard drive with issues not my ssd. All good! thanks for the help!

7
8
 
 

Hope this is okay to post here? Not sure which instance i should post it to.

Are these good pcs for classroom use? Basically teachers would just use them for presentations (PowerPoint, Google slides, libreoffice, etc), web browsing, YouTube videos, etc.

Considerations are, speed, ease of use, and future profing.

Anyone have any experience with these machines? Looking at this kind of spec:

https://www.refurbed.ie/p/lenovo-thinkcentre-m920q-tiny/115732/

9
 
 

I'm running Docker on a Linux Mint installation, and I'm able to use mlmym to view various Lemmy instances, but I can't login to my Lemmy account using mlmym. I've entered my credentials, but then it just takes me back to the homepage without logging me in. What am I missing?

10
 
 

Not much else to say. At the least I want the ability to cut one cell and then CTRL+"+" it elsewhere in the column. I used to be able to reorder items in a column like this without leaving a blank cell where I cut from, but Calc doesn't do this.

11
 
 

There was a meme of dale from King of the Hill wearing a balaclava and a hat with a cat on it saying "someone is"

How would I go about finding this?

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask, let me know and i'll delete it.

12
 
 

So I'm at the start of the game, part when some guards catch Bayek and his son and game crashes, I'm on windows 11 and these are my specs: Intel i5 3470, rx 470 4gb and 8gb ram, I'm pretty sure my pc is good enough for this game since I played it at very high settings and aboht 45 fps average. If someone had same problem please help because I really love this game

13
 
 

CPU: 3700X

Motherboard: Aorus B550 Elite

RAM: 8GBx4 Corsair Vengence LPX 3200

GPU: PowerColor 5700XT

PSU: Cooler Master MWE 1050 V2

Built in 2020.

Since last month, my PC started having random reboots and giving 'Machine Check Exception' error, similar to these:

https://old.reddit.com/r/AMDHelp/comments/190mkn0/5950x_whea_error_18_machine_check_exception/

https://old.reddit.com/r/AMDHelp/comments/qia2e7/whea_18_critical_error_computer_goes_black_restart/

https://old.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/150m14n/pc_randomly_restarts_whealogger_id_18/

And now from the last 3 days the system doesn't boot. When I power on the computer, all fans start spinning but keyboard and mouse LEDs don't light up. Pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL doesn't reboot system neither does pressing the power button for few seconds.

I suspect that motherboard has gone kaput and isn't completing or even starting the boot process, which is why keyboard and mouse aren't getting any signal or power from motherboard or why restart or power down functionality is working.

Before the system stopped booting, I was trying to solve the machine check exception error by updating BIOS, updating chipset drivers, changing BIOS settings etc. But now I'm thinking none of it could've helped because the board itself was deteriorating.

Also during that time, I would randomly get display glitches (pic below) which could only be solved by restarting the machine so I was suspecting it might be GPU that was causing the problems.

Sometimes it would show chessboard like pattern. I guess this was also because of some issue with mobo-GPU connection?

Anyway before changing the board is there anything else I can try? Changing it is a pain so I'm trying to avoid that. ๐Ÿ˜‚

14
 
 

Years ago I purchased a Google home hub. It is almost exclusively used to play music while I am cooking. First I used Google music or YouTube music (I forget which) then Spotify. I now have left Android and Spotify behind. In the Google home app I do not see an option to use tidal music. And when I try and share audio from my iPhone the hub does not appear on Bluetooth or WiFi devices.

Even when using Spotify I would have to start the music on the hub then open the app on my phone to put on the music I wanted.

Is there a way to keep using the hub? Or should I get another HomePod?

15
 
 

I had cloned my original hard disk installation to SSD using Macrium Reflect. But it caused confusion because they had the same UUID.

My plan is to regularly image the Windows partition to the spare hard disk as a backup in case of SSD failure.

16
27
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 
 

Ok I was copying a bunch of games from one of my Windows drives over to my phone while booted into Linux. And I got this error that says "libmtp error: Could not open source file". Thankfully I was able to copy the files when I was booted into Windows but it would be nice if I could Transfer files from my Windows drives without having to reboot into Windows. Is there a way I can fix this problem.

I think it might have to do with the ntfs file system because I copied one of the files from the phone back to my Desktop which is ext4 and then back to the phone without any issues. I already tried installing ntfs-3g which was already installed on my distro.

17
 
 

I have an old hp pavilion dv6 and I installed windows 7. Then i tried installing Ubuntu 24.04 and the USB wouldn't boot, it just showed "GRUB" in the top left of the screen. I tried with another USB and the same issue emerged. Is this a BIOS issue?

18
 
 

First off, if there is a better place or forum to ask this, I will take suggestions. I haven't gone to any Linux forums because most of the ones I looked at did not want to support anything specifically Windows related, and this is primarily an issue in Windows.

I am using a GPD Win Max 2, a handheld laptop, with a docking station + external graphics card setup. The GPD has 2 USB C ports, one 3.2 and one 4.0. The 4.0 is used by the external graphics card, while the 3.2 is used by the dock. The dock has a 1Gb ethernet port on it, but it does not work in Windows 10 under normal use. All the other ports on the dock are recognized, but the ethernet port never shows up in device manager. But if I boot into Linux and then restart back into Windows, the ethernet port will work then. I don't even have to have the USB dock connected while running Linux. After a hard power cycle and plugging the dock within 5-10 minutes of starting, the ethernet port will be working in Windows.

Other observations and information: -I have a 100Mb USB A ethernet adapter that works in Windows when connected to the dock. I have also tested a 1Gb USB A adapter, and that did not work. It seems 1Gb or higher does not get recognized without going through Linux first. -The ethernet port does work if I use the dock on the 4.0 port instead, but this isn't viable in my use case. I would have assumed it was a limitation of USB C 3.2 until... -I was distro hopping when I discovered this; I had originally written off the ethernet port until I started trying out Linux. This behavior has happened in Pop OS, Garuda, and Fedora. I have not tested to see if this issue exists in Windows 11, nor do I care to. -I already tried contacting GPD's support email about it. They were less than helpful. Left it at "compatibility issue" and would not explain further. I highly recommend not buying any GPD products. This is not the first time I have had hardware issues that went unresolved with them.

Frankly, I would love just to hear an explanation for why this workaround works. I think I would have been a lot less frustrated if it really was just a "compatibility issue" and there was nothing to do besides buy new hardware. The fact that it runs without issue in Linux gives me hope that its something that can be resolved in Windows.

19
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submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 
 

I migrated my wife's PC after a forceful Windows 11 update to Linux. I made a backup of her files by doing an rsync of almost the complete C: drive onto an external drive formatted with exFAT. This was a grave mistake.

After the Linux installation we noticed that several files were missing and older files were back. My current guess is that I was somehow copying from an old snapshot instead of the current state.

I rsynced everything except for the Windows folder. Does anyone know if there is any chance of getting our filea back? Amd what actually happened?

Edit: After several weeks I finally found the answer. There are two drives in the laptop. But Linux didn't see the NVME drive because it does not support "RST with Optane". As soon as I switched the SATA mode over to AHCI I could see the system drive with the lost files.

20
 
 

Long story short I was messing around in the terminal and messed up my Linux Mint Installation and now when I boot into Linux I only get a CLI and don't even see the Linux mint logo. I tried to restore to a previous state using Timeshift but it did not work so I ended up taking a live usb and backing up all my important documents to an external drive. I want to just do a fresh installation but unfortunally for me the boot drive is also the same drive I use to boot into Windows (which I am still able to boot into from GRUB). Is there a way I can reinstall the OS without affecting my ability to boot into Windows?

21
 
 

The laptop I'll be recording them with is running Windows 11 Pro.

Not loving the 'Camera' app that comes stock with Windows.

Tried recording just with my cellphone, but ran into issues with audio quality and battery life. I have an old webcam, and just ordered a tiny bluetooth microphone that I'm hoping to either plant near or literally pin onto the prof if they're cool with it.

Not looking for anything fancy... ability to choose both video and audio device, record/pause, and save so that I can upload to YouTube and forward it to the class. (side question... best video format for this?).

Not really familiar with this kind of software... I recall one of my gaming buddies being a fan of OBS Studio, but unsure if that's just on-screen capture for gaming/streaming or if it can do webcam-only too - DL'ing right now to experiment. In the mean time, taking all suggestions!

Thanks, all!

Edit -

Took about 5 mins to get all the shit on my wishlist figured out in OBS (https://obsproject.com/), and if my dumb ass can figure it out that quick, that is some GOOD software!! Kinda wish I'd have tried first before asking, but was not expecting it to be that easy. I'll leave the thread up just incase its helpful for someone else later.

22
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submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 
 

I'm looking to sell my laptop. I've used stuff like DBAN before but that nukes the whole drive obviously. Is there any good way to leave the OS intact after a reset but also make sure that there's no recoverable data?

Any ideas are appreciated. Thanks!

Edit to add: I don't have the product key for the pre installed Windows 10 OS. Maybe there's a way to recover that and reinstall after a full wipe?

23
 
 

Follow-up to this thread - this is way more specific, so hopefully worthy of its own thread. I think wildcards are the best option for my skill level (basically none), and have gotten a good chunk of what I wanted to accomplish done with those.

An issue I've run into and can't seem to google my way out is making TTS pronounce acronyms in a sensible way. For example "PACU" (post-anesthesia care unit) is usually vocalized as "pack-you" but my TTS software likes to say things like "pace-uh". Or "PO" (latin abbreviation for 'by mouth') is vocalized by just saying the letters, but TTS says "Poe". Stuff like that.

When the TTS comes across a capitol letter with a space on either side, it just pronounces the letter, so I'd still lose things like "pack-you" but at least hearing it spell out "pee ay see you" would make sense, vs "pace-uh" which is gibberish and confusing at high playback speeds.

Best I've come up with so far is <([A-Z]{2})> on the Find side, but that's only spotting the two character terms like PO, and ignoring the longer ones... I'd hoped it would see PACU and detect PA, AC, and CU as three distinct sets of two that could cobbled into "P A C U".

Nothing I've done on the Replace side comes close to working. It either does nothing at all, or it'll do something like turn "PO" into <([A- Z]{2})>. Not sure if preserving the original characters is something A-Z is actually capable of - seems not, but I'm kind of an idiot with stuff like this, so any tips would be appreciated!

Thank you!

24
 
 

Nursing student here!

So we get a shit load of reading assignments, and since everything's digital nowadays, I've been leaning a lot on text-to-speech software that effectively converts reading assignments to listening assignments.

The problem is textbooks have a LOT of just... noise. Every image has something like "FIGURE 13.5 SURGICAL DISASTERS!" "FIGURE 13.6 YOU GOT SUMMONED TO COURT!" etc. In-text citations are EVERYWHERE, copyright info is EVERYWHERE... reading the content, you just skip over all that crap, but pasting it into a TTS service, all that trash gets spoken aloud and adds up to a huge time sink every chapter, and distracts from the actual lesson.

Googling it, the best I've been able to come up with is doing a find and replace in MS word for things like FIGURE **.*^13 with wildcards on and the replace field blank... but it's not very consistent - sometimes it works, sometimes not. Same with nuking parenthesis and the text within with \(*\)

All that said, I'm wondering if I'm approaching this wrong by using MS word in the first place. Would be absolutely amazing if I could save all the commands on standby, then run them at the same time. By end of the school program, we're talking like 100 chapters from multiple books, so anything that lets me just nuke huge batches of BS as quickly as possible and dive right into the listening would be a godsend.

Thanks all!!

25
 
 

Hello there,

First of all; I am sorry if I am using the wrong community - and sorry for any n00bshow regarding this post since I have not done this before.

Background: To my utter delight, I found a podcast on archive.org that I have been searching for. I have succesfully downloaded all audio files listed under "VBR MP3 FILES" as a .zip file (and as a torrent), and they will download as .mp3-files. I am on Windows 10 (sorry, I will change) and using Firefox as browser.

Very long story short, a lot of files had parse errors in an ID3 editor (Mp3tag), and I incidently found out that most of the files actually seem to be .m4a-files instead of .mp3.

Nonetheless, all URLs on the podcast's main page show as .mp3-files and will download so if downloaded as a .zip or through torrent. (Or if using Edge, apparantly, which I just tested).

Issue: What is REALLY weird (at least to me) is that if I am right clicking a single link to an episode in Firefox > save link as > my dialog box shows it will save as .m4a-file - which seems to be the correct file type (with no parse errors in Mp3tag) which I naturally would prefer. Screenshot attached.

If been trying to search for an answer my self what is happening, but evidently failed to do so. Does anyone have an answer? And for a bonus; is it possible to batch "save link as"? wget on a Linux machine? downthemall on FF likewise download files as .mp3.

To hopefully reproduce:

  1. Downloading first episode "2015.11.01 - #1 โ€“ 1. Mosebog, kap. 1, vers 1..mp3" for instance as torrent
  2. Download the same episode by manually browsing the episodes with Firefox > click "VBR MP3" under "download options" > right click โ€œ2015.11.01 - #1 โ€“ 1. Mosebog, kap. 1, vers 1โ€ฆmp3โ€ > save link as... > it will hopefully download as .m4a.

THANK you very much in advance! Have a good one.

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