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Liberty610

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Everything posted by Liberty610

  1. Yea, I am not sure what's causing it. This just started happening the other day. I will continue to keep an eye on it and see if it continues. I'll report back if I figure out what's causing it.
  2. I have used Malewarebytes, and nothing came back. I also ran Windows Defender and nothing came back there either.
  3. No there is nothing odd in the apps section. I know everything that is running there. I'll run a malware check and see if anything comes back.
  4. I did, but the only icon it has is the one in picture and there are several of these in task manager.
  5. Hi all, Recently I started getting a Windows icon in my task bar that I can not close. I was wonder if anyone knows how I could go about finding what is causing it. It's happened a couple times now, and I am not sure exactly when it starts, and I can't close it. When I left click it, nothing maximizes from it, and when I right click on it, all it says is "close all windows" (see attached picture). And when I I click on that, it doesn't do anything - it just stays there. Any ideas?
  6. Already updated to the latest version months ago. This sound isn't coming from the motherboard speaker. It's coming from the main audio speakers shortly after Windows loads me to the desktop. If I have the volume turned down, the beeps are also turned down.
  7. Hey all, I know what beep codes are for on a motherboard BEFORE Windows boots, but what would cause 2 quick beeps AFTER windows boots up? The last couple days, I have notice that when I boot up my Asus laptop (Model Asus ROG Strix GL704GW-PS74) once it loads into Windows and I am on my desktop, I hear two quick beeps. Any ideas on what causes this and what I can do to fix it? The only modifications I have done to this laptop is I switched out the M.2 drive from the stock 512gb to a 2tb WD Black drive, added a 2tb SATA WD Blue drive, and took out the single 16gb ram stick and added dual channel 32gb (16x2) of ram. But all these mods where done over a year ago. Any ideas? Thanks in advance.
  8. I practice some solid back up methods. I have a good amount of offline encrypted drives I use for backups. But I do need to be able to access passwords on the go a lot, and I just don't like the idea of using cloud based ordeals for security. Especially one that lands my entire online login profiles in one location. I don't care what type of encryption or security measures these places tout. I am not one to trust many in bog tech.
  9. I'm just not 100% sold on this idea just yet. Storing all your passwords on an external server that is controlled by unknown just seems absurd to me. However, I could get behind the idea if a physical hardware key is required for logins to go along with it. I know there is no 100% secured way to do thing in an online world, but I just can't fathom the idea of all my online accounts getting hacked on someone else's server who didn't have proper security or encryption involved in the process. I hardly trust people I know, let alone major corporations who are known for selling data for bottom lines.
  10. Hi all. I've recently been diving into the world of online security. A friend of mine who is somewhat tech savvy had a major breach occur along the way, which lead to a rabbit hole of his online accounts getting hacked. So I have been looking into more security options to not only help him out, but also expend on my own knowledge and practices. I am a NordVPN user, and they have their password manager offerings. And I have done a little bit of research and I am just not sure if I should expand on my Nord account and take on their PW manager or not. I currently do not use one, mostly because to me, the idea of putting all your passwords in one place and then shooting up to someone else's server just seems absurd. I know there is usually encryption involved, and Nord touts itself as one of the standard encryption methods being used, but again... I am not really cozy to the idea of putting my entire online identity in one place; encrypted or not. And a lot of videos I have watched online all seem to come from the same people, so that tells me they are being paid by Nord to sell the product. I have also just stumbled on passkeys devices such as yubikeys and what not, but they don't seem to be widly supported on everything yet. I have decent online practices. I never leave accounts logged in on any browser (even on my home desktops), I always clear out cache, history, and cookies, and I use NordVPM regularly. I have Bitlocker encryption on some hard drives as well, so I consider myself pretty solid digitally. But again, looking for ways top help out not only myself, but friends and relatives who are not very online savvy, Thoughts, suggestions? Thanks.
  11. I didn't think to try Crystaldiskinfo, but I'm not sure anything would pop up. The drive doesn't register at all. Nothing shows up for it in the WD diagnostic app or disk manager. When I drop any if the other 3 drives from the NAS into the external drive bay on my PC, all three of them show up in WD's apps and in disk manager. And I can clearly hear the drive heads working across the disks. The drive that gave me an error will spin up, but then nothing but silence. The drive head makes no noises. No ticking, no grinding. Total silence. So I'm assuming the head's moto is shot I have a new drive on order now. So I should be back up and running soon. Thank you for the replies. Appreciate it.
  12. Hello all! I have a WD PR4100 4 bay NAS unit. I have it set up in RAID5 with 4 of the WD Red 8TB drives in it. The drives in it are getting up there in age, so I am not surprised of my current possible dead drive. The other day, I had a red light come on drive bay 1 indicating that there was a failed drive in it. This has happened before, but it was always due to a bad firmware update and needing to reset some settings. This time is different, and I think the drive is done for, but I have never had a drive fail on me that didn't have auditable ticking in it. So, I took the drive out of the NAS unit and dropped it into my external drive bay that's connected to my PC via USB to run diagnostics on it, but Windows never sees it . When I power on the external drive bay unit, Windows makes the audio noise to indicate that there is a device connected. I hear the platters in the drive spin up, but I don't here the head moving across the platters at all, and windows doesn't 'see' that there is a drive connected. I then took one of the other drives out of the NAS unit that are still in working order and dropped it into the external drive reader, and I hear the platters and the head moving across. Windows sees it without issues. Is this a good indication that the drive is dead? A failed head motor perhaps? The warranty ran out in 2021, and the drives where bought new almost 5 years ago to the day. So I'll have to grab a new one for sure.
  13. I actually updated the bios to the karat version just prior to reading your reply. Seems to have fixed the issue up to this point. All the drivers I have installed related to the chipset are all from gigabytes website for the board. It appears the Bios update resolved the issue.
  14. Hey guys. I'm having an odd issue with a family members PC. I've narrowed it down to being caused by USB Wifi dongle causing the issue. I'm running windows 10 with all the latest updates. Recently, anytime the PC would attempt to communicate with the USB wifi adapter so I could go online, the wifi icon in the task bar went from showing the 4 to 5 bars of signal to the disconnected globe icon. It would then go back to showing 4 to 5 bars of signal, then the entire system would freeze, then BSOD with DPC WATCHDOG VIOLATION. I then was able to do everything with the PC as long as I was connected with a LAN cable. The second I put a USB wifi dongle into a USB port, it will then freeze up, and BSOD again. I bought a brand new wifi dongle from Netgear and tried that, and it still freezes and crashes when trying to access the internet with it. Every single time it crashes with a BSOD it says DPC WATCHDOG VIOLATION in the error. As soon as I disconnect the wifi dongle and run the computer, it works flawlessly. Offline or online with a LAN cable. The second I connect any USB wifi antenna to it, it BSOD crashes with DPC WATCHDOG VIOLATION error. I am running 16gb of ram on Windows 10 with Intel Core i7-6800K and GIGABYTE GA-X99-Ultra Gaming motherboard. Any ideas how I can remedy this? Thanks.
  15. Hello all. I have an odd issue with my laptop battery. My laptop model is Asus ROG Strix GL704GW-PS74. I have gone in and updated the ram to dual channel 32gb and I added a 2nd 2tb ssd to it. I am on windows 11 and I have all the latest drivers and BIOS from the Asus website. I have a couple odd issues with the battery. I can chalk this up to the laptop being a couple years old and maybe the battery needs replaced, but there is a couple things that make me think there is something else going on here. I have to have the laptop plugged in on bootup. No matter what. If I am on my laptop, and it is connected to the charger, and I shut down and unplug it, it will die/drain the battery to 0% if I try to boot it up without being plugged in. Even if I the battery was charged to a solid amount. However, if I am plugged in on boot up, and the battery icon shows a solid percentage, I can unplug the power supply and use the battery as normal. For example; the laptop has been on and plugged in for the last half hour or so. I unplugged the power supply when the battery read 60%, and it has been working fine on just the battery. Normal drain time. I am getting about 40 minuets of power after unplugging the power supply at 60% battery. If I try and boot the laptop without AC connected, it will boot up to the windows log on screen, and as soon as I enter my password, it will shut down and I'll need to connect the AC power to boot it back up. When it boots, the battery says 0%. Also, if I do a full shutdown after the AC has been plugged in and the battery is charged up to any solid amount, if the laptop is left turned off for a day or two, the battery will be drained to almost 0% when I boot back up. And again, I HAVE to be on the AC power supply to boot, or it dies instantly at the windows log in screen. Is this a faulty battery, or is something else going on? Do Asus batteries have firmware updates I should try?
  16. Just to follow up, my PC remained off all day yesterday after I disabled 'Wake on Lan' and enabled the ERP settings to tuen my USB ports off while it is in shutdown. So far, so good. I will continue to monitor this through out the weekend. If it doesn't boot back up by itself over the next few days, I am going to assume one of these two BIOS settings fixed the issue. Thanks for the reply!
  17. I have a lot of USB devices. A couple of hard drives, an audio interface, Corsair keyboard/mousepad/mouse that are all RGB enabled, ect. But in order for this to trigger a system on, it's my understanding it only happens if you hibernate or sleep the PC. These are full shut downs. I never use hibernate or sleep modes. I did check my bios, and 'Wake on Lan' was enabled. So I have disabled that as well. Hopefully between that and turning the USB ports off while it's in shut down will solve the issue. Thanks for the reply!
  18. Hi all. I hope someone can help me out on this one. I am running a custom built PC with Windows 11 Pro version 10.0.2261 Build 22621. As of 3 days ago, I have all the latest windows 11 updates. I have not made any major hardware updates to this build the last 3 years or so other than swapping out a couple HDDs for new SSDs. My entire parts list can be seen here at PC Parts Picker: https://pcpartpicker.com/b/BqHhP6 Other then a couple extra storage swap outs, the only changes recently have been Windows 11 updates. As of late, when I down a full system shut down, my PC will boot itself back up at random times. Mostly when I am not in the room to catch it doing so, but I have caught it booting itself back up a couple of times. Sometimes it stays off for hours, sometimes just a few minuets, but it does end up booting itself back up randomly. I have not had time up until recently to properly investigate, so I have been doing a full shut down, then hitting the kill switch on my PSU to prevent it from randomly booting back up. A couple of basics to cover; I would consider myself a Windows Power user. So it's not something simple like putting it into sleep or hibernate mode and something like my mouse or keyboard waking it up. These are full system shut downs. My power button is set to do a full shut down when I press it, and I also often click on the Windows start button, then the power icon, then 'shut down'. Both methods have lead to the system shutting down, and then booting itself back up at random times. Yesterday I hit up Google/Youtube to see if I could figure out what could be causing this. So in Windows 11's advanced power options, these are the current settings that I have that my searches said to use to try and prevent these random the boot ups: 1. Sleep settings -Sleep after: Never (I never use sleep options) -Allow hybrid sleeping: off -Hibernate after: never -Allow wake timers: Disabled 2. USB Selective suspend setting: Disabled 3. PCI Express: -Link State Power Management: Off In shutdown settings, I have fast start up turned off, as this was also mentioned as a possible culprit. But if I remember correctly, I have had this feature off for quite some time now, so I don't think this was the issue. Yesterday, after making sure these settings where saved, I did another full shutdown and left my house for the day. When I came home, my system was booted up and was at the Windows log-in screen. I logged in, hit up task manager, and it said my system uptime was 11 hours plus. Based on when I left my house, that means my system stayed shut down for MAYBE an hour before booting itself back up. My next setting attempt to prevent this has been applied in my BIOS, but I have not done a shut down yet to see if it worked. I'll be using my system for the next couple hours. I have almost all the USB ports on my board used for random peripherals and devices. So I thought maybe one of them could be triggering these random boot ups. So in my my BIOS settings for my Gigabyte X570 Xtreme board, there is a setting under the power tab called ERP. If it is disabled, the USB ports stay active after shut down. It was indeed disabled on my board, so I turned it on to shut the USB ports off when the system is shut down. Does anyone else have any suggestions I should try if the ERP option does not prevent this? I could just keep hitting the PSU kill switch after doing the shutdowns, but I would like to avoid doing so if possible. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.
  19. I decided to uninstall it. Don't feel cozy with it as an option, and it can NOT be turned off. This was also confirmed by Bitdefender staff.
  20. Hi everyone. I just bought a 2 year subscription to Bitdefender anti-virus. I had a scare with a re-occurring trojan that turned out to be nothing major, but I figured it was time to beef up the security to something other then the stock Windows defender. I now have a concern with one of the features. To get protection with Bitdefender, you need to log into an online account and assign your devices to the account. From within that online account, all of your 'protected' devices are listed inside that hub, and there is a feature in there called "Any Theft". I don't seen ANYWHERE that it can be turned off. The reason this is a concern to me is, the ani theft feature allows you to remotely wipe any one of the devices from inside your Bitdefener central hub. This means, if Bitdefender themselves gets breached some how, hackers can remotely wipe out any of your devices that is listed within the hub. Or anyone with your Bitdefender password can do it. Yes, I am aware not sure passwords,and I don't share passwords with anyone, but this is one of those hypothetical situations. Does anyone know if there is a way to turn off this feature at all? I have combed over both the Bitdefener central hub and their message forums. There are other people with these concerns as well, and do far I have seen nothing in response from Bitdefender other than "We will pass this feature request along to our development team'.
  21. Okay guys, UPDATE in case others have this same issue as I did. On the Tom's Hardware forum that was also me that was included in the reply here, someone found the cause of the issue. I have the Gadget8pack installed on my systems. It's the old school sidebar Windows gadgets that allows you to monitor things and have gadgets on your desktop. The network monitoring gadget was hitting an outdated site that was trying to pull a script with it. I have attached a screen shot of the person's reply that found the issue. There is an updated version of the gadgets app, and it apparently has solved the issue. You can also hit up the forum thread directly here at this link and read the full response: https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/windows-defender-keeps-finding-odd-trojan-after-bootup.3783184/#post-22841824
  22. I too am wondering how I got this. I don't visit dodgy sites, and I don't do pirated software. I don't click on links in emails ever, even if I pretty much know it's a legit email. I've always been super cautious, so I never really used anything outside windows defender with the accepting of Bitdefender. It was free forever, then they took the free option away, then brought it back apparently. But I went ahead abd grabbed the full security pack for 2 years/5 devices for $30 on best buy. The only thing I can think of that may have brought this weird thing into the fold is I went to one of those websites that allows you to page a YouTube link into it so you can download an offline MP4 version of the video. Other than that, I have no idea where this thing came from.
  23. So far, I cast fully say I was able to get rid of the problem for sure. On my laptop, the problem didn't come back, but on my desktop it did. Idid deferral this all at once to get age no this problem. I don't know what web browser(s) you use, but the first thing I did that was suggested on a couple websites, was to reset any of the browsers you use to default settings. This helped other people get rid of simular issues they where have. I use a mix of Firefox, Edge, and Chrome, depending on what tasks I'm doing, so I ended up resting all of them. After I did that, I installed Bitdefender (free version). I don't know if it would have seen this Trojan or not, as everytime deceiver found it, it would remove it. So now that Bitdefender is my main anti-virus, I'm not hoping it keeps this from happening again. From what I've read, this is browser based, as is getting stored in internet online type cache. I really don't know for sure where or came from, but I have not been able to find much about this exact issue online. I am however, getting other people replying to me on other forums about it, just like you have here, saying they have the same issue. Try resetting all your browsers to default settings. I would also try using BleachBit and clearing out the cookies, history, temp files, ect. But use it with caution. If you don't know what your doing with it, you can delete things you don't want to delete.
  24. Awesome. I have re-downloaded the free version and logged it into my account I had previously. I am US based, and I will def. check out the deals on it. I think the free will be enough for me, but after this whole ordeal, I may just got with a paid subscription for a while. Yes, that was me as well. I posted that the other day. Their siggestions was to wipe it out and reinstall windows, which I have done in the past when there was a reoccurring issue I couldn't get rid of, but as I stated in my original post, I do a lot of production work where I have license keys tied to my PCs, and it is a HUGE pain in the a$$ to log into my iLok (and other) accounts, un-register them all, re-install windows, then re-register them, ect. I have not tried this yet, but came across it as a suggestion a couple other times. I will give this a whirl as well. Thanks! Thank you for the replies. Much appreciated!
  25. I had Bitdefender free at one point, but then they got rid of the free edition I thought?
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