Note: this is not a request for troubleshooting help.
For the past few years my 10ish year old “smart” TV will maybe once a week or so completely lose the ability to play sound in the Youtube app, and only in the Youtube app. Sound works just fine everywhere else. Bizarrely this is always triggered by an ad and never a video. Restarting the app doesn’t fix it, and neither does clearing the cache. Fortunately doing a full restart of the TV fixes it, it’s just irritating to have to restart because an ad somehow broke the sound.
What technological gremlins haunt you?
Once a week or so, my right hearing aid stops giving me audio and starts blasting data into my ear. Like the old dial up modem sounds combined with R2D2. But only at home and only in a few rooms. I figure it’s picking up wifi or Bluetooth and trying to convert them to audio, and failing.
I kind of wish that I had a handheld gizmo – maybe an ADC that could attach to a cell phone – that could take into account location and direction and help me locate sources of radio interference.
I have a couple, as well as GNU Radio, but there isn’t a software package that I’m aware of that does some analog of something like what Kismet does for WiFi, which will let you move around and use GPS position data to identify the location of sources of radio energy.
I suspect that it’d also be more-effective to do something like have an antenna array and use a device with a common, synchronized clock to identify direction.
My PC just won’t turn on if he is cold. No, it is not “humidity is high” or too low temperature. It just doesn’t turn on if he cold start. A little of heat on the mb and he turns on like nothing ever happened. Already replaced PSU, CPU, GPU, HDD, fans. So surely it is just a feature of my mb.
It sounds like a defect.
I would vote (in this order)
- Bad solder joint
- Failing chip
- Bad capacitor
Bad capacitor moves up on the list if it wasn’t happening and is getting more profound or if you are having other stability issues.
While I bet you have had it for a while, thiswould be enough for me to try a warranty claim. The problem could lead to other issues.
I had a similar issue until I bought a different PSU that was slightly higher capacity. Not sure if it was some cold start GPU power draw quirk but that’s the only thing I changed and haven’t had a problem since.
Yea just sharing my anecdote since not a lot on google about it. My thought is it’s probably some combo of the CPU and Mobo not liking the level of cold. There was a Linus tech tips video on overclocking with liquid nitrogen and one of the quirks is computer won’t boot till you warm it up again.
My tinfoil hat theory is something in the mobo/cpu self shorts/disconnects when too cold and just depends on the silicone quality you get for that number of cold before it needs the hairdryer treatment.
That’s funny, same thing here. I’m very thankful to the stranger on a forum who suggested “blasting the motherboard with a blow-dryer.” Now sometimes I joke that my PC is diesel-powered.
Similar here: a boot from power off will ALWAYS mean there’s no network, but a warm boot will always work.
As a workaround, I always hit the reset button two seconds after turning the computer on.
I can tell there’s been a power outage if the computer is on and has no network.
Next time it happens unplug the front case connector and short the power pins. If it comes on, replace the power switch and wires.
My computer turns itself on when I walk through a certain spot nearby it.
“Ah, you must have your mouse or some other peripheral set to activate it and the vibrations from walking-” Nope, I know how to disable wakeup from peripherals. “Well, then the vibrations from walking must be disturbing a loose component inside-” Nope, problem existed through a near-complete teardown and OS reinstall. Also, putting the PC on vibration isolating foam did not help.
At this point, I’m down to two conclusions:
- The wire for the wall outlet runs under the floor, and vibrations are causing adequate power fluctuations to wake the machine up. Not sure how to test for this, though it does concern me about the state of the wiring.
- The PC is haunted.
Do you have wake-on-lan enabled? Any setting that would wake on network activity? Could be you’re interrupting or amplifying a signal - Ethernet or WiFi - that is causing the OS to think it’s getting traffic.
No Wifi, as it simply doesn’t have a wifi adaptor.
Ethernet is a possibility. I tested it right now and removing the Ethernet cable doesn’t cause a wake-up, but I suppose it’s possible that slight interference if the cable were just slightly moved might cause it to register traffic plus a continued connection, enough to cause a wakeup. I’ll try tinkering with that, thanks!
Ok this one is actually resolved kind of but it super freaks me out. I was working on something and had white noise in my bluetooth headphones coming from Spotify on my browser. At like 2 in the morning, over the white noise, and without making a noise like it connected to anything else, the headphones started playing this like chatter (like people chit chatting) and eventually the started singing what sounded like hymns, at the same time the headset kept cutting in and out and this went on for like 10 minutes. I turned off the Spotify, closed the browsers, confirmed my headset wasn’t connected to anything else and nothing else was playing sound that I could see.
A few days later I go back to my computer, open up some separate work I had been doing (transcribing interviews) and lo and behold at the end of the roll there’s the creepy fucking chatter and singing.
What it must’ve been was somehow my foot pedal getting triggered (though I maintain my foot was not on the pedal) and somehow, though I’m certain my app was closed, playing the end of that recording. But damn if I wasn’t sure I was haunted those few days.
Are you positive it was the exact same chatter and singing?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5567924/
ETA: white noise auditory hallucinations are common even in those without psychiatric disorders, even though that’s what the paper is based on, I just couldn’t find quick paper link about non-disordered hallucinations.
That sounds almost exactly like youre picking up radio signals. This exact thing has happened to me before, I even picked up a local religious station like I’m assuming you did. Some of the churches in my area have their own little radio broadcast antennas and thats why I think their signal was the one to cut through. Speakers and headphones have been been able to pick this stuff up for like as long as both technologies have existed. You’re not crazy and tons of people have been through this
If my desktop is sleeping, turning off my bathroom light will 2 out of 5 times wake up the pc.
It’s a fluorescent lamp, so it is likely that it makes considerable noise on the electrical circuit when being toggled (and it’s a small apartment so all lights and outlets are on the same circuit)
I believe I read a forum post from someone else experiencing the same thing, and they also had a Gigabyte motherboard. So it might be related to their bios/firmware implementation of wake-on-lan in some way.
Do you, by any chance, have network extenders that send ethernet via an electrical socket? They send the ethernet signals through your electrical wiring, and if for some reason your bathroom light is on the same circuit as your sockets, then you might be getting some kind of wake on lan packet. Or what it thinks is a wake on lan packet.
