AWKWARD ZOMBIE

I haven't responded to this until now 'cause I gave up with the Cintiq and went back to my regular tablet for a while, but I've tried the Cintiq again and it's still happening. I deleted the drivers, restarted, reinstalled the drivers and restarted again but the gradual lag is still happening. It only seems to happen in Paint Tool SAI and not Photoshop, which is annoying since I don't like drawing in Photoshop. :'1 It also only happens when I draw with the Cintiq. When I use my regular tablet, SAI works fine.

EDIT: Turns out it's some weird problem with the latest driver. I tried installing an older one and so far everything seems to be back to normal.

Ohhh boy.
I might have screwed myself pretty bad.

Apparently FLAC files don't work in iTunes so I had to download third-party software to convert it. I chose something called "WinMPG Video Converter", which allegedly converts a multitude of different file types.

It wasn't available to download on its own website (which should have been Red Flag #1), so I downloaded it via CNet from a link provided by the website.
I ran what I assumed to be the program's installer, and all that came up was it trying to change my search provider to Yahoo and a brief window that seemed to contain the files. I told it no, I would not like you changing my search provider, and the window seemed to change to the Temporary Internet Files folder. I saw a zip folder with the program's name for a second, but payed it no heed as I wanted to run the program and get it over with. I couldn't find it. I went to open the browser and found that it had changed my home page by adding Yahoo's main search page to the list of home pages. Now no matter how many times I remove it in the Internet Options, the Yahoo home page won't go away. I'm running a full scan in Symantec right now. I need help.

EDIT: Symantec found nothing.
I've remedied the home page situation by turning on Protected mode and blocking Yahoo altogether, but that doesn't remove whatever is causing it to change. And I'm still not sure about the program itself.

Check your installed programs for starters, to see if there's anything you don't recognize. (Control Panel -> Add Or Remove Programs)

Check your browser for unwanted extensions the program may have installed. Maybe check your proxy settings, both for the browser and system-wide, but that's less likely to be the culprit here.

And my two cents, though this is debatable: you'd be best off just wiping your computer and starting fresh. Back up your documents and erase reinstall Windows. Virus and Malware removal can be easy, but it usually isn't. Under no circumstances should you enter sensitive passwords, credit card information, etc. etc. until you've taken the necessary steps to clean your system.

And for your file conversion, just use Audacity. It's as easy as opening the .FLAC file and exporting it to in the format you want, but the program is reputable so there's no risk.


Had to help my friend's girlfriend with this sort of thing just last week, but she had just bought the computer the day before so wiping it wasn't as big an issue.

Or VLC, which has more uses than Audacity unless you do sound editing.

I've found foobar2000 to be all around the best tool for conversion. It scales excellently with CPU speed too.

alright az i gots another computer question

i upgraded to windows 10 recently and ever since my screens will randomly flash black for about a second then back whenever i scroll my volume wheel on my keyboard. there'll be a boop noise, though i can't tell if it's from the monitor's onboard speakers or my externals.

it used to only be if i was doing a major volume change, but this morning it's decided to black out multiple times whenever i even barely touch the wheel. and it's just that - nothing else so far does this.

Well for starters I'd say to try a different keyboard, but I doubt you have another on hand that also has a volume wheel?

Next easiest step is to plug it into a different USB port in case there's some kind of weird short going on. If that doesn't work, may be a driver issue?

What kind of graphics are you running on your computer? Manually updating the drivers for that can't hurt, and your keyboard may have drivers to update too.

If anyone here is good with the beeps and the boops I would like some mechanical computer advice


I think my graphics card is too old and too weak to sustain Fallout 4, because my video drivers periodically crash when I play--it's a geforce GT 635
This is what my game starts to look like when my driver starts crashing. It gets worse too.

I don't think the 635 is supported for new driver updates because my machine says my drivers are up to date (version 311.47)

SO I'm looking into buying a new graphics card. I'm thinking that a GTX 960 would fit the bill without being too expensive, but I'm not at all familiar with the mechanical aspect of computers


so I guess my question is: is there anything I should take into consideration when shopping for a new graphics card?

I want to play Fallout 4 in glorious HIGH QUALITY

- does it physically fit in your case
- does your PSU supply enough power to support it
- does your motherboard support it, which should be the case considering it's recent enough to have a 600-series
- is there adequate airflow in your case to cool the card

Also, whether the PSU has the required 6-pin power connector. If it's a prebuilt, that's unlikely.

Also, you should be aware that if you're buying it for Fallout 4, even with a 960, you might get frame dips in some areas because the game is pretty badly optimized for CPUs. I'm running the game with an i5 4590 and an R9 280, and in some of the bigger cities my fps drops into the mid 20s. The only graphical setting that makes a big difference to it is dropping the fade distance down really low, so it's definitely a problem with CPU optimization.

So depending on what cpu you have and the resolution/settings you're going to be playing at, you may want to upgrade your cpu as well.

I believe she has an i5 so she'll be just fine.

Need some advice on what to do with my external hard drive. I use it to boot off through other computers since I don't have my own desktop and my school laptop's specs aren't particularly amazing, but now when I use it it's even slower than usual (laptop's got an SSD in it so I've gotten used to that kind of speed), it's noisy, and I can't update Windows or any games, can't uninstall anything, can't launch any games and can't run any kind of scan. I've attempted to use CHKDSK.exe, but the window only comes up for a fraction of a second before immediately closing and nothing else happens. For other background it runs Windows 8.1 (absolute shit I know, but at least I can sync a whole lot of things that way since my laptop has the same OS) and is only one and a half to two years old at most. I'm also extremely careful not to knock it when I'm handling it or using it.

I've asked one of my most experienced friends in this field about it and he says it sounds like it's damaged just like what I expect, but also that it's failing and I should get a new one. It's the second newest drive in our whole house, though, and the two PCs in the study get parts of them upgraded semi-often to keep up with the requirements of games as they get more demanding.

Dad seems convinced there's something I can do to save it, though. He thinks it's a problem with Windows, though I don't know how that's the case. Any ideas?

I've been hearing whispers from my speakers for a while. I cannot hear them when I turn the speakers up high or turn them off, only when they're at a low volume. Plugging headphones into them I have now identified the sounds to be the KLove Contemporary Christian music station. In the hardware and sound the speakers report no output, while the microphone goes up and down like one of those things in videos with music. When I unplug the microphone, it still plays. I am only connected to one Internet source via Internet, and I can still hear the music when I unplug the cable. I have also gone on KLove's website, and the song playing was the exact same as the one currently playing at the exact same point. There are no open items in task manager that should be playing music, and I can close everything and still am able to hear it. So my computer is able to listen to KLove broadcasts without any source of Internet or any report of sound being played, or any seemingly reported applications. This persists through restarts. Anyone have any idea what's going on? Running Windows 10 if that's anything.

Fun issue, sometimes. The wires in your speakers are actually picking up the radio station, as silly as it sounds. Does setting your phone near them ever trigger noise? I get it pretty bad whenever my phone is near my preamp/receiver.

You could look for some shielded speakers/cables, but aside from that there's not much else you can do. Moving to another part of the house could help, if it's feasible.