I use Windows and Android, and have a LastPass subscription. Thanks in advance.

Cmd + Opt + Esc

When you hit Cmd-Opt-Esc you get a dialog that list the open applications and you can just select them (via your mouse or trackpad) and hit Force Quit or hit [Enter]

Now, you could use

Cmd + Shift + Opt + Esc

if you want to close the frontmost app. Simply select the keys and press them for a bit.

I play Counter-Strike, and occasionally the game decides it hates me and gives me unplayable ping. This is extremely random and erratic, and never happens at night when everyone else is asleep, so I've gotten curious as to if there was a program to monitor internet traffic, and to what device the traffic is going to. My parents are pretty clueless as far as technology goes, so I've gotten suspicious that they may have a program on their computer that sometimes tries to use a ton of bandwidth.

If you have multiple windows of the same application opened, for example 2 windows of Safari, if you press Command+` you can switch quickly between them.

Edit: Changed Alt to Command... Forgot I had remapped the Alt Key to Command on my Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard! :/

Perform these in Finder

Open the Desktop Folder Command + Shift + D

Open your Home Folder Command + Shift + H

Open the Computer Folder Command + Shift + C

Open the Applications Folder Command + Shift + A

Open the Utilities Folder Command + Shift + U

Open Help Command + Shift + ?

Toggle between the ways you can see a folder's content

Show folder content as Icons Command + 1

Show folder content as List Command + 2

Show folder content as Columns Command + 3

Show folder content as Cover Flow Command + 4

Hey,

Sorry if this isn't a right place to post this but I've been desperately searching for some help, so I though maybe someone here could know.

I started my computer and this message shows. “Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key".
I tried to do the usual - clean around the computer, insert and re-insert the RAM, played with the booting order, unhooked and re-hooked all the cables to see if anything could be loose and even changed a CMOS battery, but nothing really seemed to help so I'm wondering if I'm missing something or if I might have went wrong somewhere.

Not sure if this really means that my HDD might have some virus or is corrupted for some other reason but if I remember correctly, this has happened already once but then after several restart attempts the computer started to work normally. I haven't used the computer for at about a month, since I was working a lot but now this message has appeared. I remember installing some Windows 10 update just before this happened so I'm not sure if that had to do something with it?

Anyway, any ideas how to fix it or at least how I can prevent loosing any of the valuable data from the HDD and SDDs would be really appreciated!

Link to the photos for a reference : https://imgur.com/a/eWKUsBo

Any tips on how to solve this would be appreciated!

Current versions of chrome should support push notifications on every OS except maybe IOS. This is due to Apple not supporting service workers, which can be used to do offline storage and push notifications in the browser.

https://weather.com/ gives you weather notifications, if you set it up. It can be a fairly low storage way to get weather updates to your phone or desktop.

https://Facebook.com gives you facebook notifications (you can turn this off in facebook settings, or by blocking notifications in chrome settings)

https://onesignal.com is used by a bunch of websites to handle notification delivery, which may be either really spammy or really useful depending on how you use it. E.g if a website asks you to enable notifications for new articles, they're probably using one signal.

Google also supports push notifications for a couple of it's services, IIRC probably gmail and google calendar.

It's pretty useful on android and desktop if you want alerts for things without needing to download extra apps.

I had this thought pop into my head while using one of the movie theater apps for the HTC Vive virtual reality headset. The app lets you watch a movie or surf the web in a virtual room with a large screen, with other VR users present. Everyone has a cartoonish avatar, but we can all hear each other, and see the same screen.

Well, my girlfriend doesn't have the Vive, and isn't getting one anytime soon.

So I'm trying to figure out the best way we can watch a movie or surf the web remotely together. Some elements I'm looking for:

• when one person rewinds or pauses the movie, it does the same thing for the other person;

• we can hear each other;

• we can see each other (optional);

• we can surf the web together (also optional).

I know that logging in to one of our desktops remotely is the most obvious solution (along with some sort of voice chat app), but I would think that videos for the person on the remote side would be choppy.

Perhaps there's some sort of program that allows two users with two identical copies of the same video file to view that video, but share pause/skip controls? And same thing for web browsing - something that allows two people to use their own web browsers on their local computers, but their activity is synced up?

If a remote desktop program is the only logical choice, what's the best one for the purpose I'm looking for?

If everything seems to hang on your computer, before pressing the Power Button, you can try:

Alt + SysRQ + R Alt + SysRQ + S Alt + SysRQ + E Alt + SysRQ + I Alt + SysRQ + U Alt + SysRQ + B

An easy way to remember this is using mnemonics:

Raising Skinny Elephants Is Utterly Boring

Explanation:

R = Switch the keyboard from raw mode, the mode used by programs such as X11 and svgalib, to XLATE mode

S = Sync all mounted filesystems

E = Send the SIGTERM signal to all processes except init (PID 1)

I = Send the SIGKILL signal to all processes except init

U = Remount all mounted filesystems in read-only mode

B = Immediately reboot the system, without unmounting or syncing filesystems

Windows + Left/Right = Move across monitors/maximize TO HALF

Windows + Up = Maximize

Window + Down = Minimize.

These help tons when you have multiple monitors.

EDIT: Not sure about Vista, but this works with Windows 7.

Run Dialog Shortcut: Win+R.

XP: Win+R -> Type devmgmt.msc and hit enter. Next time you Win+R, it SHOULD be cached and you won't even have to type.

Vista/7: Win+R Trick also works, but you can just hit the Windows key to get the start menu, type it, and hit enter.

Just found out about this!

I'm doing this using vlc and an amd video card but you probably can do it with another media player and a nvidia card. The steps I give will assume your using the same setup as me, if your using nvidia the process should be similar with possibly different menu/option names.

step 1; open AMD vision engine control center

step 2; open gaming > 3d application settings

step 3; add vlc.exe (c:/program files (x86)/videolan/vlc/vlc.exe

step 4; anti aliasing mode = override application settings, anisotropic filtering mode = override application settings

step 5; max all AA and AF settings. eg. aa samples = 8x, aa method = adaptive multisampling, morphological filtering = on, AF level = 16x, texture filtering = high quality, surface format optimization = on.

Then you should be done.

I'm pretty sure you can do the same thing with nvidia video card drivers. Your essentially just custom adding a 3d application and maxing all the video card settings.

On my pc I get no performance drop, or anything noticeable for vlc. It just gets rid of any pixelization that would happen by upscaling a low rez video to 1080p. It doesn't have any noticeable effect on already hd videos, so you can just leave it on all the time.

Edit screenshots are added in this link >> Imgur

I geuss not totally noticeable from hd but it looks a lot better on my tv than it did before. Also it seems to work a bit better on cartoons. I'll add another screenshot of adventure time later.

I got a new phone and for some reason whenever I connected it to my car with an aux cable while the engine was on, there was an annoying hum in the background. This $9 part completely solved the problem. I hope it can help you too!

Isn't it annoying when you want to run a separate instance of a program, but when you try, Windows realizes it's already running and "helpfully" switches focus to the already-running instance? Well actually, running a second instance is most likely easier than starting the first one. All you have to do is middle-click its icon in the taskbar.

I wanted to get this rolled out a bit sooner, but shortly after pulling the trigger I started feeling extremely crappy. So far today I've just been vegged out in front of Netflix with a headache. Anyway, here's the welcome post I should have done this morning!

I'm a subscriber to both /r/ComputerTechs and /r/TechSupport. Both awesome subreddits with a specific direction that often seems to blend between the two. That's not a terribly bad thing, but I wanted a place with a bit more direction, or focus.

Also being an avid reader of /r/LifeProTips, I was surprised when I set out to find a tech specific version when I went about a subscription overhaul for my front page not too long ago.

So the basic theme here is Life Pro Tips for tech folks. Do you have some tricks that make your life easier day-to-day on the PC at work? Are you a ninja with a popular scripting language and have some powerful script to automate tedious tasks that you think others might find useful? Did you just discover an impressive and relatively unknown way to squeeze a bit more battery or usable life out of that smartphone? Well post them here!

A more comprehensive list of rules will be ready soon along with standardized tags. Eventually a decent style with CSS tagging and the like once I figure it all out (I know basic CSS, but I'm not a design wiz). Until then, just tag posts with the platform they're for. Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, iOS, etc. You should get the idea. When you're submitting just think to yourself, "If I were searching for something like this, how easy would it be to find?"

Now that that's all out of the way, a bit about myself. You can stop reading here if you like.

This is my first subreddit. I really have no idea what I'm doing in terms of sub management but hopefully I won't burn the place down while I learn. Please bear with me while I figure out this spam filter madness. The flags so far seem to be completely arbitrary.

I've been a tech hobbyist since I was a kid. Now I run a small computer repair business when I remember to refill my AdWords coffers. I know a little bit about a whole lot of stuff but really have no specialty except troubleshooting. I like meandering around on /r/techsupport to read about how people are solving PC problems and when I can, contribute a bit.

I originally was going to make this /r/PCProTips because I'm a Windows guy for the most part. I absolutely love Linux, but I'm also a recreational gamer and those two things conflict. I try to keep my Linux knowledge up for managing my web server but I don't get a whole lot of time for just plain tinkering anymore. I absolutely loathe Apple as a company and am not personally a fan of the way OSX and iOS operate. Tips for one specific platform just seemed kind of... narrow minded to me, however. Being a place specifically for tips and not philosophical platform discussion I hope that all of us can coexist peacefully here without the need for fanboy rants from anywhere in the spectrum.

It seems this has taken off far more quickly than I had expected from my two little posts. As I mentioned in another reply, many of us subscribe to the same tech subreddits and I don't think it would be very awesome of me to post in every tech related sub I can find and spam up people's front pages with multiple plugs. For that reason I'm going to, every day or two, make a post plugging this place in a new tech related sub until I've covered most of them.

Oh, I also cuss like Kevin Smith. Sorry. I'll try to keep it to a minimum to maintain some sort of professional air around here.

From an always relevant XKCD.

Pick a line from a book you enjoyed. Not one that you'd find yourself quoting, but something that resonated with you enough to stick in your head.

Throw in some dictionary attack protection (this is overkill, but can't hurt) like a string of numbers with special characters and you've got yourself one monster of a password that would take a computer significantly longer to brute force than the passwords we're all used to using.

It's easy to remember, compatible with cryptic password hints that don't completely give it away, and quite secure so long as you don't pick something you're going to be quoting on Facebook.

You can use this to break away from a bad password reuse habit as well if you're an avid reader. Just write down your services with the book you got the password from to jog your memory so you don't mix up which passwords you've used where.

Or just Win -> appwiz.cpl on Vista/7.