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Tech Help (Beyond This Forum)

Slight diversion. I recently had an issue with Windows 10 not staying in sleep mode. It would go into sleep and then almost immediately re-awaken. Annoying. There was much googling.

I pinned one problem down to 'some sh1t that chrome does', which is fine, I don't mind shutting chrome down to get the machine into sleep as it's only used for three sites.

…the problem persisted, but nearing sleep t'other night it popped into my head it might be hardware.

I came across a command I didn't know about "powercfg -lastwake". If run in a command window, it tells you what the last wake event was...it was a USB driver...some swapping of USB peripherals around proved the keyboard was waking my PC. It was broke in some weird way, so one spare keyboard later, all sorted.

*sound of original keyboard landing in dustbin*

Thought I'd share the fix. :)
 
Slight diversion. I recently had an issue with Windows 10 not staying in sleep mode. It would go into sleep and then almost immediately re-awaken. Annoying. There was much googling.

I pinned one problem down to 'some sh1t that chrome does', which is fine, I don't mind shutting chrome down to get the machine into sleep as it's only used for three sites.

…the problem persisted, but nearing sleep t'other night it popped into my head it might be hardware.

I came across a command I didn't know about "powercfg -lastwake". If run in a command window, it tells you what the last wake event was...it was a USB driver...some swapping of USB peripherals around proved the keyboard was waking my PC. It was broke in some weird way, so one spare keyboard later, all sorted.

*sound of original keyboard landing in dustbin*

Thought I'd share the fix. :)
Surely the correct response nowadays is *sound of keyboard being taken for a little stroll to recycling centre* . Although not as satisfactory.
 
Surely the correct response nowadays is *sound of keyboard being taken for a little stroll to recycling centre* . Although not as satisfactory.
Nope, not at current fuel prices. :)
 
Does anyone here know what a pair of socks emoji means please? .. in the context of a work group chat on messenger the Mrs is involved with. (Someone there has asked someone else to cover another person's shift and that bloke doesn't want to) .. thanks.
 
Hard to say.

From https://emojiguide.com/objects/socks/

Socks
Level up your sock game, talk about all types of socks with the Socks emoji! This emoji shows a pair of socks. Different platforms depict the pair of socks in various colors and designs. Most socks have a striped design near the ankles, more commonly seen in school socks.

This emoji shows up in talks related to shoes, feet, and different foot activities. It may also be used to symbolize ankle socks, football socks, and other types of socks. Since a stocking emoji isn’t out in the market yet, users pick this emoji sock to represent their stockings, making it kind of like a stocking emoji, too.

Along those lines, since this emoji is the only sock emoji around, if you want to talk about one sock, without the other pair, the Socks emoji is your best bet. Aside from being very flexible, netizens enjoy sharing this symbol because it is mostly positive in nature, it evokes a feeling of warmth, comfort and protection, from the weather, or from outer sources, like smelly shoes.

During the holiday season, the Socks emoji becomes increasingly more common. One big reason is because socks and stockings are used to hold the gifts Santa Claus gives on Christmas Eve. When it is discussed, in that context, the Socks emoji is frequently shared along with popular Christmas emojis, to add to the holiday feel.

Socks is a fully-qualified emoji as part of Unicode 10.0 which was introduced in 2017
 
Does anyone here know what a pair of socks emoji means please? .. in the context of a work group chat on messenger the Mrs is involved with. (Someone there has asked someone else to cover another person's shift and that bloke doesn't want to) .. thanks.

'Cold feet'?
 
How would I (not having a smart phone) be able to track down and identify a piece of instrumental music ie no lyrics ? Just solved one puzzle rattling in my head for last 15 years by fortuitously hearing it on a Youtube clip that gave acknowledgment to the music used.
 
How would I (not having a smart phone) be able to track down and identify a piece of instrumental music ie no lyrics ? Just solved one puzzle rattling in my head for last 15 years by fortuitously hearing it on a Youtube clip that gave acknowledgment to the music used.

Did the YouTube presentation give any clues to the origin of the visual material for which the instrumental music was a soundtrack? Or was the music peculiar to someone's random YouTube posting?
 
How would I (not having a smart phone) be able to track down and identify a piece of instrumental music ie no lyrics ?
If you have any idea of where & when you first heard it (eg a TV program) you could check the credits online and see what the source was.
Some pieces that sound classical or 'pop' are often used on TV as 'royalty free' music that is a generic form of a type of music that is almost the same as something you know, but slightly different enough to avoid paying 'rights' to the original.
 
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Slight diversion. I recently had an issue with Windows 10 not staying in sleep mode. It would go into sleep and then almost immediately re-awaken. Annoying. There was much googling.

I pinned one problem down to 'some sh1t that chrome does', which is fine, I don't mind shutting chrome down to get the machine into sleep as it's only used for three sites.

…the problem persisted, but nearing sleep t'other night it popped into my head it might be hardware.

I came across a command I didn't know about "powercfg -lastwake". If run in a command window, it tells you what the last wake event was...it was a USB driver...some swapping of USB peripherals around proved the keyboard was waking my PC. It was broke in some weird way, so one spare keyboard later, all sorted.

*sound of original keyboard landing in dustbin*

Thought I'd share the fix. :)

I know this was a few weeks ago now... but, if your old keyboard is still in the dustbin, you can actually prevent your peripherals from waking the computer by finding them in Device Manager, right-clicking, selecting Properties, going to the 'Power Management' tab, and unchecking the relevant box.
 
Okay, this is a pretty simple question and I need a pretty simple answer, cos I'm a pretty simple person (well, I'm not pretty, but you know what I mean).

Here is the nub of my problem.

My new phone does not recognise 'WMA' files.
My 'Windows Media Player' on my PC, onto which I have recorded every CD I ever owned, had mostly recorded (or 'ripped') the music as WMA files up until earlier this year when I changed the options to MP3, so I have about 10% of the tracks in the more compressed MP3 file type.
When I got this new phone and copied over all the stuff from my old phone, it only understood the MP3 tracks. The WMA tracks were there but it would not play them.
So, using the very good 'Samsung Dex' system that kicks in when you connect the phone to the PC with a USB cable, I have deleted the WMA files from the phone (much easier than doing it one file at a time just using the phone itself - with the PC I can interrogate the filing system and block delete hundreds of WMA files at a time.....but I digress).

So I now have my phone sorted with the music that it can recognise in MP3, but of course I now want to get all the other music in WMA onto the phone, so what I need to do is convert the WMA files in my 'Windows Media Player' into MP3 so that I can then 'synchronise' them onto the blower.

Can somebody recommend a bit of software that a simple person like me can easily use to do that task ?
When I search online I see plenty of recommendations for various 'free' things that can do that for me, but they all appear to be either over-complicated, or possibly contain 'mal-ware' sort-of stuff with multiple advert pop-ups etc.
I don't mind if I have to pay for a bit of software if it simplifies things.
I also don't mind if it is something that seems complicated, but is actually just following a set of simple A-B-C instructions just the once and 'bob's your uncle'.
 
Okay, this is a pretty simple question and I need a pretty simple answer, cos I'm a pretty simple person (well, I'm not pretty, but you know what I mean).

Here is the nub of my problem.

My new phone does not recognise 'WMA' files.
My 'Windows Media Player' on my PC, onto which I have recorded every CD I ever owned, had mostly recorded (or 'ripped') the music as WMA files up until earlier this year when I changed the options to MP3, so I have about 10% of the tracks in the more compressed MP3 file type.
When I got this new phone and copied over all the stuff from my old phone, it only understood the MP3 tracks. The WMA tracks were there but it would not play them.
So, using the very good 'Samsung Dex' system that kicks in when you connect the phone to the PC with a USB cable, I have deleted the WMA files from the phone (much easier than doing it one file at a time just using the phone itself - with the PC I can interrogate the filing system and block delete hundreds of WMA files at a time.....but I digress).

So I now have my phone sorted with the music that it can recognise in MP3, but of course I now want to get all the other music in WMA onto the phone, so what I need to do is convert the WMA files in my 'Windows Media Player' into MP3 so that I can then 'synchronise' them onto the blower.

Can somebody recommend a bit of software that a simple person like me can easily use to do that task ?
When I search online I see plenty of recommendations for various 'free' things that can do that for me, but they all appear to be either over-complicated, or possibly contain 'mal-ware' sort-of stuff with multiple advert pop-ups etc.
I don't mind if I have to pay for a bit of software if it simplifies things.
I also don't mind if it is something that seems complicated, but is actually just following a set of simple A-B-C instructions just the once and 'bob's your uncle'.
Rather than convert you could get a player which will play all your files, mp3 or wma. I would recommend vlc, it's free, easy to use and plays most things. It can also convert things using the save as function but if you have a lot of music that will be time consuming.
 
No I like the set-up that I have. The Samsung player on the phone is excellent (apart from not recognising the WMA files) and I like the functionality of the Windows Media Player - it's very easy to use and clear.
For me, the best thing would be to convert my existing files in Windows Media Player.
 
No I like the set-up that I have. The Samsung player on the phone is excellent (apart from not recognising the WMA files) and I like the functionality of the Windows Media Player - it's very easy to use and clear.
For me, the best thing would be to convert my existing files in Windows Media Player.
You can do that with vlc. There may be other programmes you can use which might do it as a batch, in fact vlc might, will have a look next time I'm on my PC.
 
For me, the best thing would be to convert my existing files in Windows Media Player.
It's been years since I've used Windows Media Player (I only use VLC nowadays). I will say that it looks like VLC can batch convert WMA's to MP3's. I haven't done this meself, but I hope it points you in the right direction....

Here's one set of instructions: https://www.alphr.com/batch-convert-vlc/
 
Rather than convert you could get a player which will play all your files, mp3 or wma. I would recommend vlc, it's free, easy to use and plays most things. It can also convert things using the save as function but if you have a lot of music that will be time consuming.

Listen to Gordon, VLC is the business. I've been using it for years as my default media player & there's very little that it can't do.
 
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How can I get something larger than A3 scanned? I've been to see copy shops and printers, and they all just kind of look at me blankly.
 
How can I get something larger than A3 scanned? I've been to see copy shops and printers, and they all just kind of look at me blankly.
First thought would be professional photographers who specialize in art prints. It'll cost ya, but if you get a good one, they'll be able to set up everything and take proper photos that are better than scans.

I guess it depends on how important this is....
 
How can I get something larger than A3 scanned? I've been to see copy shops and printers, and they all just kind of look at me blankly.
If you have a good camera - I would suggest the simplest way might be to take a high-res photograph of the whole document, giving it a good distance between camera and object to take the photograph, then it will not give any severe distortions of the image.
 
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How can I get something larger than A3 scanned? I've been to see copy shops and printers, and they all just kind of look at me blankly.
If you can lift it onto the A3 scanner, scan a bit at a time, then stitch all the scans together in Photoshop (or similar editing software).
I've done that myself.
 
I'm using an 11 year old HP desktop that has to be linked up to my broad band provider etc.
It still gets its 'insides 'checked monthly by HP, who give it a clean bill of health.
I pay (through the nose !) for Norton to keep me virus free.

BUT Chrome says it can no longer up date things because I'm running Windows 7 Home Premium, and I know my hotmail doesn't like me using Chrome.

My daughter says to me "Get a chrome book".

I don't know. I'm so USED to what I've got!
I'm an OAP , not technically minded at all.
I've got a smart phone, but I prefer a decent sized screen.

What have other (older) folk found reliable and easy to use?

Thanks for all ideas.
 
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I'm using an 11 year old HP desktop that has to be linked up to my broad band provider etc.
It still gets its 'insides 'checked monthly by HP, who give it a clean bill of health.
I pay (through the nose !) for Norton to keep me virus free.

BUT Chrome says it can no longer up date things because I'm running Windows 7 Home Premium, and I know my hotmail doesn't like me using Chrome.

My daughter says to me "Get a chrome book".

I don't know. I'm so USED to what I've got!
I'm an OAP , not technically minded at all.
I've got a smart phone, but I prefer a decent sized screen.

What have other (older) folk found relianle and easy to use?

Thanks for all ideas.

lf you like your hardware, it’s still working fine and you’re used to it, why not try changing from Chrome to a different browser?

l currently use Brave on my Windows 8.1 laptop.

maximus otter
 
Or you could just stick your hand in your pocket, buy a middle-of-the-road, average PC that is as modern as possible so that it has the latest version of windows etc on it.
There isn't much about the tech that has moved on so much that you would struggle to catch up TBH. It's a bit like buying a modern car - it'll have more flashing lights on it, and be a bit faster and more comfortable, but it still does all the things it's supposed to.
And you'll probably discover that there are a whole load of little improvements that you quite like actually.
Your chrome browser on a current, new PC will look and operate exactly the same, and will update when necessary.
 
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