The Technology Help Corner.

[Rosiv]

TLDR: In picture with the circled yellow, JAUDI, JUSB2, JFP1 and JFP2 are the cables that I want extended, could someone link me to an item that has those extensions, i am not very computer-savvy.

This is an extension of my question from a recent post in the advice forum, but i was a bit illiterate in what the person described to me.

For the picture with the circled yellow, JAUDI, JUSB2, JFP1 and JFP2 are the cables that i have connected and working so far.

I want those to be extended, so i can throw in a new Gpu, but the suggestions given to me, i am not sure if the ports that are shown on the picture are the same as the ones described in the item description. I tried to read my manual for more information, but was confused.


http://www.amazon.com/CB-FRPAN-Individually-Sleeved-Connections-Premium/dp/B003ZDNXZI/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1416850050&sr=8-3&keywords=front+panel+connector+extension

'
'
and
'
'

http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-18-Inch-Internal-Motherboard-USBINT5PINMF/dp/B005G306UK/ref=sr_1_18?ie=UTF8&qid=1416850254&sr=8-18&keywords=front+panel+extension
were suggested to me.

So do i need both or just the first one?

 

[TheMann]

Hey guys, looking for an opinion on something:

So I want to upgrade my GPU as it's horribly outdated by now (Nvidia GTX 285, 1GB) and I have 2 in mind. I've been very happy with Nvidia what with PhysX support and such but I'm on a tight budget, so I was looking at either a GTX 680 or GTX 770 with 2GB. The 770 is newer, but I've heard that there are certain things that the 680 still does better and I can get one on eBay for cheaper. They have almost identical specs and architecture so it's a bit hard to tell. Does anybody have experience with these two cards and can offer some advice?

Trust me I'd love to get a 780 or TITAN, but my budget just won't allow for it.

 

[Rosiv]

TLDR: Can anyone link me to a site where there is a "9 pin internal usb header M/F" OR tell me if i can use a 10 pin one in replacement of a 9pin one, by "removing" one of the pins?
'
'
'
'

This is an extension to my previous question,

Spoiler

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/538.865776-Mobo-Question#21641471

so im not sure if i should edit it or make this new one, since it technically is a different question.I am trying to find a 9 pin internal usb header M/F, but after googling over and over again i cant find anything. Im not sure if its due to my inexperiences or lack of abundance of these parts. So, if on a motherboard, there are pins for 9 "connections" for a internal usb "wire", could i substitute that with a cable that has not 9 holes, but 10? If my question sounds confusing, i am not very computer literate.

The picture below details my problem in more depth. The one on the left of the black line being the connector in my motherboard at the moment, and the one of the right being one that could suit my needs, athough it has 10 slots, where as my connector has 9 pins.

 

[Albino Boo]

TLDR: Can anyone link me to a site where there is a "9 pin internal usb header M/F" OR tell me if i can use a 10 pin one in replacement of a 9pin one, by "removing" one of the pins?
'
'
'
'

This is an extension to my previous question,

Spoiler

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/538.865776-Mobo-Question#21641471

so im not sure if i should edit it or make this new one, since it technically is a different question.I am trying to find a 9 pin internal usb header M/F, but after googling over and over again i cant find anything. Im not sure if its due to my inexperiences or lack of abundance of these parts. So, if on a motherboard, there are pins for 9 "connections" for a internal usb "wire", could i substitute that with a cable that has not 9 holes, but 10? If my question sounds confusing, i am not very computer literate.

The picture below details my problem in more depth. The one on the left of the black line being the connector in my motherboard at the moment, and the one of the right being one that could suit my needs, athough it has 10 slots, where as my connector has 9 pins.

Off the top of my head the missing pin is another ground which isn't actually needed, it should work.

 

[Professor James]

For a few days, my computer has been a bit choppy. Today, I checked on Ccleaner and on system properties and it says that my cpu is an amd engineering sample with only 1.6 ghz. I have done no hardware modification of my computer of any sort. I don't know what is happening or what to do.

Edit: my processor was an AMD Athlon II X2 255 Dual Core 3.1 Ghz Processor

 

[Twintix]

For whatever reason, my computer decided that my printer was offline. I don't understand how to set it back online, and the advice I found online wasn't very helpful.

I solved the problem temporarily by uninstalling and re-installing the printer, but doing that every time my computer does this might be a bit of a hassle. I wonder what I should do if the Offline status appears again.

My computer is a Windows 7 (I think).

This is my "Units and printers" menu:

Spoiler: Text in Swedish, but I don't think that matters.

And this is what it looks like when I double-click the printer in question:

Spoiler: By the way, something's wrong with my graphics card. Can you tell?

As I said, right now the status is Ready because I re-installed the printer, but what should I do if the printer goes offline again?

 

[Zontar]

My inbox is notifying me of a message/quote I got but for some reason isn't showing anything in my inbox. I know it's not a bug because I found the quotation which flagged the notification in the first place, so it's my inbox that has the issue.

Edit: never mind, problem sorted itself out.

 

[Professor James]

My computer will no longer eject the CD drive. It hasn't been working for over a week now and I have Daemon's tools if that could potentially affect it. I've already tried restarting the computer and I'm pretty sure nothing is inside the disk drive. My computer only has one CD drive and is a Cybertron PC.

 

[Twinrehz]

For a few days, my computer has been a bit choppy. Today, I checked on Ccleaner and on system properties and it says that my cpu is an amd engineering sample with only 1.6 ghz. I have done no hardware modification of my computer of any sort. I don't know what is happening or what to do.

Edit: my processor was an AMD Athlon II X2 255 Dual Core 3.1 Ghz Processor

My computer will no longer eject the CD drive. It hasn't been working for over a week now and I have Daemon's tools if that could potentially affect it. I've already tried restarting the computer and I'm pretty sure nothing is inside the disk drive. My computer only has one CD drive and is a Cybertron PC.

It is possible that your computer might actually be dying, given the processor-issue and that it won't eject the CD tray any more.

To be a little bit more specific, it sounds like your CD drive and processor might be headed towards the grave, the other components might still be all right (you said you have a Cybertron, I'm assuming that's a prebuilt machine). It sounds like your computer is a fairly old one too, it might be time to replace it, if you can afford it.

Daemon Tools shouldn't affect existing drives in any way, and since you've already tried turning it off&on again (the very FIRST thing to do when a computer is acting up), I can't say much more without being able to take a look at the computer itself.

One thing you can try, if you can be bothered to, is re-installing Windows, but like I said, it sounds more like your computer is about to die, and it'd be a potential waste of time trying to re-install.

 

[Laughing Man]

For a few days, my computer has been a bit choppy. Today, I checked on Ccleaner and on system properties and it says that my cpu is an amd engineering sample with only 1.6 ghz. I have done no hardware modification of my computer of any sort. I don't know what is happening or what to do.

I would ignore the info CCleaner is giving you, most hardware scanning tools use databases to look up the hardware info, so any errors in the database and you get the info shown incorrectly, even then they aren't always perfect but you can double check by downloading something like CPUz, it will give you more info about what's going on with your CPU than CCleaner can.

I've never seen a CPU fail in such a way that if the scanner is 100% accurate that the CPU itself could be misrepresented as something other than it actually is. When CPUs fail they usually either cause the system to hard lock, shut down without warning or BSOD, if the CPU can self throttle then it will drop the core speed due to overheating issues which could lead to 'choppyness' you describe.

The other issue with the DVD drive not ejecting, is the DVD drive being detected at all? Check Windows Explorer if the drive is working then you'll have an icon for it.

If you do can you right click and get the drive to eject from there? If so then your eject button is broken (new drive or use the right click eject in future.)

If you don't have a drive icon in Windows Explorer then the drive isn't being powered this means

1). The drive is toast
2). The cables are toast (or loose, easy to check this)
3). The connectors on the motherboard is toast (again easy to check just swap the drive connector to another slot on the board.)(You can do this if the Drive and Board use Sata if they are IDE then you won't be able to check this.)

 

[runic knight]

Ok, no sure if this is really "tech"help, but it relates so might as well post it.

Currently am unable to quote any other user, click open any spoiler tag, or see any videos within tag. Also dealing with an over-abundance of Bieber but that may not be related.

Now I am using the most updated firefox browser, so I would hope that is not the cause, but I would wager a guess I am in the minority dealing with this issue. As such, does anyone have any idea of what I can do to help fix this? Tried restarting and running a CCleaner to clean out the catch (thought something there might have saved a setting that was altered after the April first forum changes) but no such luck.

-----

Of course, soon as I post this and keep tinkering, I figure out what was wrong...

For anyone in a similar situation, here is what it was. Currently required to have a script-blocker on the computer to prevent possible malicious code auto-run. Whitelisting the escapist used to work to bypass that. As it is, needed to add jquery.com to the whitelist. If anything here is inappropriate to share, please edit the post or let me know and I will.

 

[runic knight]

Currently suffering through day 18 of the Beiberpocolypse.

Around the first my account randomly turned the beiber pictures on and switched my background to the running puppies one. Since then nothing I can do will get rid of beiber. I've cleared my catche, waited over 24 hours without doing anything on the site, nothing works. What is worse is that I know the effect is bound to my account itself somehow (I can see avatars just fine when not logged in).

I was relatively content to wait out the usual day or so the gag gives as I assumed it was part of april fools. It's been over two weeks, I am tired of waiting on this to fix itself, does anyone have any advice on something I might have missed to remove this thing? Or a possible explanation as to why it wont go away like it was suppose to? is there some hidden option I just don't know about?

 

[Qvar]

Hi. Simple question: How do I identify a GPU card without plugging it in? There doesn't seem to be any reconogizable number pattern printed on them or anything, and I have 3 of them which would probable a lot of work until I find the specs of each (assuming they work, because some are very likely incompatible with my motherboard).

 

[PinkiePyro]

so my laptop is pretty much getting ready to die and I need a new one my dad has promised to buy one but i need to pick it out..

so my current one is a g74sx Asus running windows 7 purchased from best buy...
I kinda want to stick with a Asus but my parents say a need a smaller laptop as this one is a monster in size and weight (their words not mine i like the heft and don't know how my mom works with that flimsy macbook air of hers)

(edit had some info wrong I am not that great about hardware)

 

[Twinrehz]

Currently suffering through day 18 of the Beiberpocolypse.

You should contact staff (assuming you haven't already).

so my laptop is pretty much getting ready to die and I need a new one my dad has promised to buy one but i need to pick it out..

What do you use your laptop for? If you answer is "everything", that includes gaming and school work, you'd want a laptop with a large screen, preferably 15" or larger (for games it might be a good idea to get a 17").

(I don't know how much you know about hardware, so for some clarification: Intel and AMD are two separate manufacturers of processors. nVidia and Radeon are separate graphics cards manufacturers).

For gaming, you will need a somewhat capable graphics circuit, for example nVidia GTX950M or higher (higher means that the second number is larger i.e GTX960M). I recommend getting a laptop with Intel i7 processor, to get that extra oomph for games that might need it (i7 can be a bit expensive, so if budget doesn't allow that, you can go down to i5). I do not recommend an AMD processor (or Radeon graphics), as they get insanely hot and will require a whole lot more fan activity (their heat tolerance is higher, but other components in the laptop might not appreciate the higher temperature).
The number of cores on the processor (dual core, quad core and all those fancy words) is getting more important for games, an i5 or i7 will normally come with 4 cores, but make sure to check what the details say!! If the name of the processor ends with U (assuming it's an Intel processor, not AMD), it's a low-power processor and not ideal for gaming (and it has two cores, not four).

If you're NOT going to use if for games, then the make of processor isn't terribly important, you can go for an i3 processor, or possibly an i5 processor if you want a bit more power. You also won't need a separate graphics circuit, as processors today are capable of doing regular graphical tasks within the OS.

Regardless of what you're going to use your computer for, get a minimum of 8GB of work memory. (Memory is not the same as storage space).

I see that the laptop you mentioned is quite a beast. If you're satisfied with it, get a new Asus, they make quite decent systems. As for specific models, it's hard to recommend, since I don't know what is available in your area. Lastly, your parents shouldn't dictate what kind of laptop you get; you're the user, you should get to decide what you need (an exception would be economic restrictions).

I realize this might be a lot of information to process; if anything's unclear, just quote me here and I'll reply again, or PM me if you're more comfortable with that. I'm a total nerd and can make sense of most numbers and letters in computers.

Hi. Simple question: How do I identify a GPU card without plugging it in? There doesn't seem to be any reconogizable number pattern printed on them or anything, and I have 3 of them which would probable a lot of work until I find the specs of each (assuming they work, because some are very likely incompatible with my motherboard).

If you're feeling brave and adventurous, you could try taking off the heatsink and check what is inscribed on the actual graphics chip itself (might require a bit of cleaning to see the numbers). I haven't had to identify GPU cards without markings before, have you tried googling the different part numbers printed on the circuitry?

 

[Twintix]

Is anybody else having trouble with Steam?

I just installed it on my new computer, and while I could log on for a little while yesterday, I can't log on today. At least not in online mode, which I kinda need to access a program that I got. (Thank you, Armadox!) I have followed all of the advice on the Steam help page, and none of it has worked. And I know that nothing is up with my router, because I can access web pages just fine. Hell, I'm even sitting in the same room as my router, and it still won't connect to the Steam network. I've tried shutting the router off and back on, and it still won't work.

Is the Steam network just down right now or is something up with my computer?

EDIT: Well, it got worse. Now my computer refuses to run the program for some reason. I click on it repeatedly, and nothing happens. I see the little "loading wheel" next to the mouse pinter, but nothing else happens.

I also forgot to mention that my computer is a Windows 8.

 

[Felix the Human]

I've got a problem with my PC. Just recently I've noticed there's computer with a weird name connected to mine under network. I can't remove it either, because apparently the only option is connecting. have i been hacked? please tell me how to get rid of it.

 

[Twinrehz]

I've got a problem with my PC. Just recently I've noticed there's computer with a weird name connected to mine under network. I can't remove it either, because apparently the only option is connecting. have i been hacked? please tell me how to get rid of it.

That list doesn't show what computers are connected to you, it shows what computers are available on the network. If you don't recognize it, change the wifi-password and see if it goes away. (If you have administrative access to the router, you can kick it off the network, but you might still have to change the password).

 

[WindKnight]

ok, I've disabled flash in chrome, and for the last couple of days I've noticed I have a floating button over my browser on the escapist with 'get adobe flash player' on it... and it seems to have an invisible barrier extend below it and to the right thats blocking me from clicking links unless I scroll them above the button

 

[Ninja-Jordan]

Hey guys. I've recently been experimenting with increasing the audio pitch for a cartoony voice I'm trying to give to a character for a video I'm making. But every time I increase the pitch it gives the voice a sort of robotic crackling in the audio. I've tried applying DeClickers to the audio and adjusting the cents but it always sounds poppy and doesn't sound natural (as far as cartoon voices go).
Can anyone tell me how to fix this?