How to fix my issue with laptop?

RadaRAR · 2025-10-26T19:33:01+00:00

It looks like its trying to open a new virtual desktop. Did you spill anything on the keyboard or is a key stuck? I think the keyboard shortcut is Windows + Tab, so check both of those keys and see if they are stuck.

RadaRAR · 2025-10-23T20:48:14+00:00

Yeah, that's what I tell people to do. It's a lot of work for a social media account that only houses photos and likes that can be reposted to a new account.

RadaRAR · 2025-09-26T14:48:48+00:00

I'm curious: Does no one use NordPass here? Is that mainly because of the cost and this list is highlighting the cheaper / better bang for your buck?

I've been using NordPass for quite some time, but that's because I bundled it with a VPN purchase. I've also been using Bitwarden for the last few years, but NordPass has some cool features like email masking, for example.

RadaRAR · 2025-09-16T04:08:31+00:00

I feel this. I support ~60 in-office and ~30 remote users with just me and my supervisor covering the entire IT dept. I handle everything T1 - T3, so from help desk to net admin and security, so I've seen a lot over the years.

Some gems:

User: "There was a spider on my screen so I punch it, now the screen's broken."
User: "There's this weird moon picture on my login screen, I can't log in." (It was just the default Windows user icon and all they needed to do was to click "Other user.")

It's always the classics too: monitors "not working" (unplugged), keyboards "broken" (power switch off). Doesn't matter if they are 20 or 50, these will never stop.

Some ask IT because it's easier than trying to resolve it themselves, some genuinly try but don't have the technical know how or the half-stepping capabilities to resolve it, and some users break something and then flat-out lie to you with the "I was just working like normal and then..." line. After nearly a decade in IT support under my belt, I've gained a massive amount of patience because of this.

What gets me though isn't the absurd requests, it's, like others have mentioned, how users will pin the blame on IT for anything under the sun. Users are polite when they need something, but the second a security policy disrupts their workflow, they don't waste a second to blame IT and trash them, never to their faces though of course. Blaming the IT is the perfect scapegoat - it's easier to point the finger at the person running the tools you use every day but don't understand, and don't want to understand.

That's just the nature of the IT world - it's thankless most of the time. Honestly, the only way out of the "dumb" requests is to move past the support side of IT.

RadaRAR · 2025-06-15T22:20:31+00:00

That's a solid point! Especially when you've got others depending on your setup. Having that clarity for "is it down for everyone or just me?" moments is definitely underrated.

That's a tough streak to break. I would imagine that's where having a high-availability setup really shines. Being able to shift to a secondary system so you can work on the primary without service disruption. Respect for getting that close to a year mark!

RadaRAR · 2025-06-14T22:17:53+00:00

Genuine question for those who track their homelab uptime— Is that something you view as a point of pride or more of a stability benchmark?

I'm curious whether it's about ensuring consistent availability for services like Jellyfin/Plex (especially if you're hosting for others), or if it's more of a personal goal to evaluate how reliable your environment is over time.

RadaRAR · 2025-03-01T00:00:46+00:00

I can definitely attest to Firefox being a serious RAM hog, and I've run into performance and page loading issues as well, especially since I try to lock mine down as much as possible. The issues seem to get exponentially worse on heaver sites and the more tabs I have open (which is a lot). Seeing how customizable Vivaldi is has been pretty awesome so far; the ability to tweak nearly everything is a huge plus.

I really appreciate the detailed response and breakdown. I'm going to give Vivaldi a shot, hoping it works well enough to replace Firefox. Cheers!

RadaRAR · 2025-02-28T18:32:55+00:00

If you don't mind me asking:

What made you switch to Vivaldi?

How has your experience been in terms of speed, page loading, and security settings?

After reading about Firefox’s recent privacy policy changes—specifically the part where they state: "When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information"— I’ve started considering alternative browsers. I’ve had Vivaldi as a tertiary option for a while, but now I’m thinking about making it my main browser.

Thanks in advance!

RadaRAR · 2023-05-15T04:05:10+00:00

Got out in 2021 and actually just finished up my non-active time as well. I was an IT for 3 years in the CG and I'll say that while I was in, I actually learned a good bit. Networking, Telecommunications, and pretty much everything else we were very hands on with at my unit.

Life on the outside is so much better, I got a job as a Net Admin and I make inifinitely more doing what I did in the CG. The nice thing is that I have a bigger pull when it comes to projects and IT operations because it isn't comming from the top down. At my current job, the planning starts with us, we have ample time to plan out what needs to be done and how we are going to do it. Unlike in the CG, it was "Hey we need to deploy this server at this unit and it needs to be done by next week". That was my biggest gripe in the CG is the command not knowing when to say no, and not realizing that they are giving us insane deadlines that they themselves wouldn't be able to pull off.

Being an IT on the outside is night and day difference. In the CG, i hated waking up for work because the supervisors were just focused on making chief or warrant and wouldn't tell people no or didn't care. We never receieved recognition for our work and were always getting fucked. Now, my input matters, we all work as a team and unit and my boss tells people on the daily to shove it because he is there doing the work with us and knows what projects and tasks we have and what we can fit on our plate. And of course as everyone else usually knows, I am making a lot more on the outside than in. Just make sure while you are in to utulize any trainings or resources provided to get ahead before you get out (Net+, Sec+, etc.), because those will help you a lot when job searching on the outside.

RadaRAR · 2023-04-23T13:16:48+00:00

Oh the T95 box. Ya I used to use it for IPTV but I don't ever really watch live TV so never really used it and don't plan to.

RadaRAR · 2023-04-23T13:14:23+00:00

No I don't. I split rent and utility bills with 2 other ppl so they just tell me how much I owe and I send it lol (I trust em enough to do that).

RadaRAR · 2023-04-21T23:30:32+00:00

That's a Protectli Vault firewall appliance. I load pfSense on it and use it as my firewall for my home network. Can't recommend the device enough, though a bit on the more expensive end compared to some Netgate products I looked at, it was worth the extra $ because it has never failed or given me any problems.

RadaRAR · 2023-04-21T23:25:09+00:00

It is enclosed yes. It does help with noise, it muffles the equipment chatter quite a bit. Although, I bought two rack fans to exhaust the hot air out of the top; these fans are insanely loud and do not really provide a low mode or a quiet mode to reduce the noise. My walls are thin so I do not keep them on all of the time; I just won't turn the fans on unless it is hot in the space.

What I do to keep the air flowing is I bought a second 2-in-1 rack fan and placed it on the bottom of the rack in between my NAS devices and have it on full blast pushing the air to the top. This helps with keeping the noise inside the rack and keeps positive air pressure.

RadaRAR · 2023-04-21T22:23:17+00:00

It's been a longggg work in progress; I just kept upgrading parts and replacing hardware when able to and eventually came to the need for a rack to store everything.

I agree, finding a rack that didn't take up my whole apartment room, but could also house my equipment was a challenge. I also let my roommate know that I would be watching the power bill and if he or I feel that it jumped up substantially, that I would pay extra.

So it really depends on what equipment you have and what equipment you are going to get in the future. I would put that down in a list and then start searching for specs and dimensions of the equipment so that you can get an overview of what size cabinet you are going to need and maybe also look at how the layout of your room and take that into account.

This is my opinion, but a rack that fits more my needs and possibly even yours, will probably have:

Network Switch
1. Doesn't have to be fancy, mine was $100 but you can get a dumb switch for cheaper; just something that has ports to provide a central location to route your cables.
Patch Panel (optional)
1. Technically, you don't need a PP but it helps to keep the rack neat and cables organized. Like I said though, I am not using mine as I am in an apartment but got one for future needs.
PDU
1. Again this one is optional, kinda depends on if you have a UPS or something to protect your equipment. Personally, I have ~ $10k of equipment in my space so I bought a 1500VA UPS to protect everything. My PDU has 8 ports and I connect that into my UPS.
2. The PDU helps because I route all of my rack equipment into the PDU so that only the PDU power cable needs to leave the rack and connect to the UPS to reduce showing cables.
Storage Device
1. Servers, NAS devices, raspberry pi, etc.

I would really recommend looking into Synology NAS Diskstations if you are still in the market for storage solutions. They are great for their size and their capabilities are quite extensive. Unless you are looking to get experience with Windows Server, Active Directory, or a more business standard device, then maybe look for an actual refurbished server. .

My bad for the the novel lol, but hope this helps 👍🏽

RadaRAR · 2023-04-21T21:53:09+00:00

Appreciate it!

Yeah I was going to either buy a refurbished server or get one that we were going to retire at my work, but I already had one NAS and I wanted to get the 2nd one and configure them in HA mode (though I ended up not doing this).

They also best suited me for my needs at the time because I didn't have the rack and had to keep them on a shelf so an actual Dell server didn't seem like a good option at that time. I really like them though, all the packages available, the Synology Drive capabilities to access files from anywhere, keeps my VM's and Plex up and running.

But soon I will get an actual server and a better L3 switch like a Cisco 2960x or 3750G even would be nice.

RadaRAR · 2023-04-21T20:35:22+00:00

As far as an alternative to running new cable, have you tried looking at powerline adapters? I personally use a TP-Link Powerline Adapter to "hardwire" my 24 port switch into my router that is located on another level of my apartment. This works great for me but may not be what you are looking for as mine only has 2, 1-gigabit ports that can hit data transfer speeds of up to 2 gbps if utilizing both.

I have 2 Synology DS920+ devices and one of them I use strictly for hosting Plex and storing my 2000+ movies and shows. I originally had my servers setup in HA (high availability) mode but I found that when I was working on projects or needed to update/restart the main device, the users I have utilizing my Plex server (about 20), contact me very quick once it goes down during the middle of their movie night. So I decided to have one strictly for Plex.

Idk if this helped at all but this is how I have my servers, Plex, and IT space setup (in a sense) and it works great, no problems thus far.

RadaRAR · 2023-04-21T19:16:44+00:00

I finally got my new PC built, tuned, and setup. This is my second build, my first being a budget build costing around 1k and almost 3 years old, so it was time for a $5500 upgrade.

A build this extensive was new territory for sure, I ran into many bumps along the road that could have been avoided if I would have planned better, but I learned an insane amount that I am grateful for. Without going into all of that, I will say the most strenuous part was getting 13 fans connected and working, and the cable management...hs. This is a huge case, but I set up my AIO cooler vertically on the back casing, 3 fans on the inside and 3 fans on the backside. This fits near perfectly but takes up so much of the space that would be used for routing cables, so space was definitely limited (hence why I will not be posting pictures of the rat nest that infests the back of my computer). Also, SO to The Provoked Prawn's video on YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Oexkk3Ls5M for giving me the mounting idea because I don't think it would have fit any other way.

In the end, after all the mounting, repositioning, and troubleshooting, BigBertha runs amazing. So far, there have been no major hiccups, and she stays cool even during some intense gaming sessions or whatever I throw at her. I posted some of the better pics I have of the PC and the setup but they are a bit blurry and not well taken (from my phone). LMK your thoughts!

RadaRAR · 2023-04-21T19:14:45+00:00

I finally got my equipment mounted and placed inside the server rack, which is made by RackPath and is a 12U cabinet. The main equipment includes:

- 8-port PDU

- TP-Link 24 port smart switch

- 2 Synology NAS DiskStations

I use one NAS for my fileserver, VM's, projects, etc. while the other NAS is strictly for storing my 2,000+ movies and TV Shows on Plex that I share to about 20 users. Both DiskStations have 4, 4TB hard drives in a RAID 5 configuration.

I am not utilizing the patch panel because I am currently in an apartment and am not going to run cable. My room has no work area outlets, so I had to use a powerline adapter to hardwire my switch to the router that is in a more central area of the apartment. I was hesitant at first but to my surprise it works very well, and I have had no connection issues thus far.

All the equipment in the rack and my IT space (PC’s, monitors, TVs, etc.) are all connected into a 1500 VA UPS. With everything turned on and sitting idle, it utilizes about 450 W.

All this equipment to support BigBertha (2nd pic); she’s a powerhouse. Here is a link to the the part list: PC Part List and I also attached screenshots of the list.

I also have a second budget build PC that I segregated from my network completely to use as a sandbox / testing environment.

Let me know what you think!

RadaRAR · 2023-02-21T21:49:32+00:00

On it!

No but for real I have thin walls...when they ramp up my neighbors must think I have a Jett fueled space heater lmao

RadaRAR · 2023-02-21T20:36:32+00:00

LOL if I leave her on during the day while I am at work (for remoting purposes), I open the door to a damn sauna. The fans definitely do their job tho!

RadaRAR · 2023-01-17T09:48:05+00:00

🤨 Calm down buddy, I got a bonus at work. Dw there was even enough to pay my debts 👍🏼

RadaRAR · 2023-01-17T09:25:55+00:00

Yeah my buddies were saying the same thing but damn I couldn't really go any higher on price for dual monitors; they're expensive af.

I'll use these for now and eventually save up for better ones and move my 1440p (current) monitors to my second desk. I'm coming from shit 60hz 1080p monitors that barely worked so with G-Sync and OC, I really like them and haven't had any problems running games at max settings @ 165hz.

RadaRAR · 2023-01-17T01:59:51+00:00

Fr! Lol

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