Best posts made by Phat200

Practically speaking, I think the highest paying savings a/c, for those w/ $25K, is Ally Bank’s 11-month No Penalty CD, currently @ 1.75%. 7 days after you open this CD, you can close it – with no loss of interest. If the rate increases, you can close this CD, and open a new 11-mo No Penalty CD at the higher rate, w/ no loss of interest. If the rate declines (not likely in this environment), the rate is good for 11 months. A win win situation.

@fmb1 said in No sound on my PC:

…That aside, I’ll assume you are talking about plugging into a
3.5mm headphone jack and if that is the case, one of your
Playback devices should be Headphones and it should NOT
say Not plugged in. If it says Not plugged in, then that is
gonna be the problem because the headphone jack is also
a speaker jack…

Short version. Good news. Sound problem solved.

How I got there:

I have no headphone and no microphone. I plugged my external speakers into the jack on the back. In fiddling around to answer your question, I notice that when I put my cursor on the speaker icon in the PlayBack Device tab, there is a Configure button. So I click on it.; and a Speaker Setup pops up with a test button. The only Audio Channel available in the box is Stereo. I click on the Test button; and I get an error “Fail to play test tone” Or if I click on the left/right speaker icon on the right diagram, I get the same error.

So I google the error message and found an article @ https://appuals.com/how-to-fix-failed-to-play-test-tone-error-on-windows-7-8-and-10/

The last Method fix my situation.

Thank you for persisting. Otherwise, I would be re-setting my PC to some degree.

It used to be that I can set certain preferences – like showing 3 hours of programing, the start time of the 3-hrs regardless of when I went to that site, etc. Now, I don’t see that preference link/button at all.

I have tried FF v 53 & 56 and Chrome.

Anyone knows?

TIA

Since my laptop is very old, I guess the cheapest way to get around a non-working Wi-Fi is get a USB wireless adapter.

Thank you to all responders for your input.

@rick505 said in Problem with my Desktop internet:

Easiest to check is change the port on the switch, I presume more than two ports, and see what happens. Also, swap laptop and desktop ports and see if the problem follows the port or device. I presume you’ve rebooted the desktop (just in case).

The problem is something with the VPN.

After some sleep, I noticed that my VPN shows it is connected to the VPN server. So it would indicate that there is internet on my desktop. So I disconnect the VPN and the internet is working fine. It was working fine with the VPN all along. I don’t know what I accidentally changed – the laptop is working fine with the VPN on. It happened after I updated the VPN software on the laptop; but I didn’t touch anything on the desktop VPN. I’ll have to compare the settings on the 2 computers.

I did a factory reinstall and the network works fine now.

@zerenia said in Can't boot up my Win7 Pro PC:

@phat200 Hard drive may have died.

Press CTRL + P on the 2nd screen and look around the menus that come up for hard disks. If none are detected then you have a drive or drive cable or drive controller problem, most likely. Get professional help, but it’s likely less expensive to get a new computer than to fix that one.

I believe that by the time your computer was manufactured hard drives were auto detected by the computer and you didn’t have to enter a bunch of hard drive info by hand.

—. Z. —

Z, thanks a million.You pinpoint the problem and I fixed it. It is a loose drive cable.

A week ago, while I was cleaning the inside of my PC, I dropped it (18" to the floor). There is not much I can do after the fact. So I just plug in the power cord and it boots up fine. Now that you mention drive cable, I open up the PC and the cables seem to be connected. But just to be sure, I push in on all the drive connectors (power and date cables). Now it boots up again with no problem.

Thanks again.

Can’t boot up my Win7 Pro PC

It was working fine yesterday. But this morning, when I power on my PC, the “Screen1” ! (see attached image) stays on for about 10 minutes before it ask me for the power-on Password (PW). Usually, it just flashes by.

After I entered the PW, I see “Screen2” which says Press Ctrl+P to enter MEBX Setup Screen on top. At the bottom of the screen, it states, Press the ESC key for the Startup Menu. I press ESC.

It took a while for the Screen3 to appears on screen. I also tried Ctrl+P; but I get the same Screen3. Then it just sit there doing nothing. I waited for 2 hours.

I tried pressing F11 to get to Recovery when I turn op the Power-on button; and again after I enter the PW – to no avail.

What happened? and how do I get it working again?

@atikovi
I called them and was informed that the promo rate is for their MM account and the 1.25% rate is for up to $250K. Over that, the rate is 0.1%. The regular savings rate is 0.4%. And the CS doesn’t know how long the 1.25% will last – that is for people who get in on the promo rate.

It is interesting that I can’t find any of their interest rates on their web site.

Also, their electronic transfer out of the account is limited to $50K/month and can be approved on a case by case basis for an add’l $50K for a total of $100K/mo.

This is slightly off topic.

For those living in states with income tax, Vanguard Treasury MMF may be an equally attractive alternative. Its current 7-day yield is over 4.7% with no state tax. The duration is currently less than 30 days; and the yield will move up/down if interest rate goes up/down. So you don’t have to keep moving money around to get the best yield.

You can get in and out anytime just like the savings a/c with no 6 withdrawals/mo. limit. It also have check writing privilege. And you can set it up to send money to any financial institution you want; and it arrives at the destination the next day. You can also buy that fund through some discount brokerage firms.

The only possible negative for some is the $10K min. to open; but there is no minimum maintenance requirement.

Am I missing any thing?

In Windows’ Task Manager > Performance, it shows how much of the Physical memory is being used for Cache. When Windows is Restarted (or Power on/off) the Cache is cleared out. Is there a way to clear out the Cache without restarting Windows?

TIA

I have 2 domains with a total of 5 email accounts. I don’t maintain websites for my domains. They are just for emails. Light email traffic. I download all my email to my PC, so size of storage is not an issue. They need to support POP and SMTP protocals with encryption (TLS?).

Do I need web hosting if I don’t maintain any web sites? Or do I need it just for the email?

Does anyone know of any good email hosting companies at reasonable rates?

I am currently with TMDHosting.com. I have all kinds of problems with them. They sometimes bounce my emails to a total of 3 recieptiants – “exceeded 5 maximum”. They never explain how that can be the reason. At one point, they bounce certain email addressed to me to the system’s mailbox (which I didn’t know existed). The sender is on my white list. I have no idea how those emails can go to the system’s mailbox!! I was waiting for the response; and those responses “went into a black hole” – leading to minunderstandings.

Right now, the domain2 is an addon domain; and is generally treated as 2 domains for pricing purpose. To cut down on the cost, can I make the domains a subdomain of domain1? I was told I can forward domain2’s email to domain1. Does that involve complicated processes? [The only thing I know is changing the name servers when changing hosting company; and some elementary knowledge in using cPanel related to email setups.]

Any suggestions/help would be appreciated.