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The Tech Help Thread

Discussion in 'Technical Board' started by rei, Oct 19, 2009.

  1. $100T2

    $100T2
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    I have a Lenovo Yoga 8" tablet. It comes with Lenovo's heavily modified Android system, which kinda blows goats. Is there a way to get rid of their system and start with a fresh Android install?
     
  2. Binary

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    My internet here is horrible (think mid-90s dial-up speed) so I haven't checked, but your best bet is to look for a version of Cyanogenmod for your tablet, or to visit the applicable forum on xda-developers.com and see what's available.

    Basically, there's no way like on a Windows machine where you can just "format & reinstall." The tablet must be unlock-able (not all of them are) and someone must have built an Android version for it.

    Whether this is all a lot of effort varies a lot by tablet. Check XDA Developers, there's frequently a sticky thread listing things like available builds, instructions to unlock the tablet, etc.
     
  3. wexton

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  4. Nettdata

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    I've used a lot of SSD's over the years, and my most recent is a 1TB 850 Evo Pro.

    It's worth every penny.

    If you can, buy the EVO Pro... it's quite different (better) than the plain EVO. It uses different memory chips, not the cheap ones, which is why they give the crazy long warranty.
     
  5. Dcc001

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  6. Binary

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  7. Dcc001

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  8. Binary

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    Sorry, should have specified, the right click > properties is the way to do it in IE.
     
  9. jdoogie

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    So for the past couple of days my laptop screen has started to intermittently stop working. I can hear the system booting up and then the Windows start-up sound will play, but the whole time the screen is just black. Then later on it will work just fine, no problems. Then again, later yet, back to nothing. So, am I pretty much fucked and in need of a new laptop at this point? FWIW, it's a 5(?) year old Dell Inspiron.
     
  10. Binary

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    Something to check - the screen might appear black, but next time it goes black, you should look very carefully at it, maybe bring it into a well lit area. If you can juuuust make out a ghost of an image, then it's the backlight or side light that has gone out, and not the screen itself. It's uncommon for those to fail intermittently but not impossible.

    The most common laptop screen failure is at the ribbon cable that connects through the hinge. It's possible to replace it but depends very much on your willingness to take the thing apart and maybe break it in the process.

    Laptops are not super hard to disassemble, but they're delicate and often require tons of tiny little screws or pressure clips or other things that are easy to break. So if you're willing to be patient and keep track of the parts, you can fairly easily take everything apart and try to diagnose the bad cable (if one exists). I've taken apart a lot of laptops and many really aren't that hard. If you're a gorilla who breaks everything you work on, though, it's probably not for you.

    The biggest issue is that taking it to a shop is going to result in probably a minimum of $150 in labor and then whatever part you need. I don't know what you paid for the laptop but it probably puts you a chunk of the way towards a new one, and if it's the screen, it's probably not worth doing at all. Back your stuff up next time it boots normally.
     
  11. jdoogie

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    Good news everybody! The ribbon cable had just jarred loose. Reconnected and everything is working fine again.
     
  12. Binary

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    [​IMG]
     
  13. voltronman

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    I have an old single core AMD machine (2.8 ghz, 2 gigs ram, 400 gb hd) that is lying around. It has a very unstable hacked WIN XP install on it-the primary hd might be corrupt. Is this machine worth holding on to for any reason? Could I make it a small media server? Or is this thing not worth the time/effort of doing so?
     
  14. Flat_Rate

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    Put Linux On it and then install XBMC, it'll play anything you through at it.
     
  15. Nettdata

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    A file/media server doesn't need to be fast, and doesn't take much RAM. If you update or add a bigger hard drive (that are stupid cheap these days), you should be able to make a very reasonable media server out of it.

    Depending on what it will serve media to, I'd just wipe the drive clean and dump some free Linux OS onto it.

    The first real Google result I found was this: http://www.havetheknowhow.com/

    Can't speak for those instructions (just using them as an example), but there are thousands of "step-by-step" guides on doing this out there.

    The only concern might be if you're planning on running 4k output off of it and it turns out to have a shit video card... if you're hooking a TV/monitor up to it directly, that may be the only real upgrade you might have to do. If you're just serving media files to other devices on your local home network, it'll be more than OK at it.

    Your mileage may vary.
     
  16. wexton

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    I have a 10Mbps internet connection. My shitty little ISP offers a 10/20/50 Mbps connections. I can routinely max out the connection, sometimes even a little more. Sometimes i can pull up to 11. But today i was downloading at 90, I downloaded a 11,000Mb file in under 2 minutes. how is this even possible?
     
  17. Binary

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    So, your 10 Mbps connection is 10 megabits per second (Mbps), not 10 megabytes per second (MBps). 8 bits in a byte, meaning your 10 Mbps connection is really 1.25 MBps.

    That means your 90 megabyte per second download is really 728 Mbps, or almost 15 times the maximum package they offer. You're sure the file is 11 gigabytes? And it's completely intact, nothing missing? What kind of file?

    It's not impossible, it may be that your service simply became uncapped for a while. The service provider has to have a ton of bandwidth on the road to handle all the houses, and especially if it's a cable provider with a recent modem, your internet speed is basically only governed by your provider capping it rather than by any technological limitation.
     
  18. Parker

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    Random ass question here, but what browsers does everyone use? I used to be a huge fan of Firefox, but for at least the last 6 months (maybe year) it has been utter shit on my home computer with Windows 7 and my work computer Macbook Pro. On certain busy sites it just locks up both computers, freezing and not responding. Certain emails also have problems popping up and adobe plugins are crashing left and right. I have Chrome, but only being able to customize options by being logged in annoys me.
     
  19. Nettdata

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    I have no problems with Firefox on my OSX or Linux box... I'm thinking it might be the plugins you're using.

    Especially any Adobe plugins you may be running.

    Might want to try and reduce or temporarily disable any plugins you have and give it a shot.
     
  20. jdoogie

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    I too have a random question: My laptop all of a sudden will not take a charge to my battery. When it's plugged in it just says plugged in, not charging. I've tried two different chargers and both are having the same issue. I don't think it's the battery since I just bought a new one less than 6 months ago. Any thoughts?