What are some good PC-help sites?

killdozzer

killdozzer

Audioholic Samurai
(1st I'm sorry if this is the wrong thread. This is the only one that had PC in the title)

(2nd I wish you all the Happiest New Year possible! I wish you health, love, love and love! I hope that at least one major, global solution needed for our civilization is found in 2022!)
1641036240293.png


There are many sites that offer help with PC. But not all are that good. I did try many, of course.

As always, I only come here to ask AFTER I've tried many of the recommendations from some of those software sites.

"Windows 10 Home" seems to be very successfully locked for the very user using them and the help you read around the Internet is not specific enough. Meaning, following closely the steps described on some of them simply don't do anything, but that's not covered. When you achieve no results, there is no explanation what and why is that nor is there an advice what to do if steps fail.

That's why I'm looking for a place like a forum where you can open a specific topic/thread and get specific help. Do you know of such sites?

Don't worry. It's nothing illegal I want to do. I'm trying to make my PC accessible from the Internet for all sorts of reasons (but mainly to stream my music data base in my car over my smart phone). My friend set this up in his car and it's great. But my first step is to forward my IP address which I can do only if it's static. Although static IP is not at all difficult and steps are quite simple, no changes take place.

Since I've noticed some other features you can't change as well, I'm guessing it's because "Home" prevents you to do this (probably for safety reasons) although it's not prohibited.
 
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
(1st I'm sorry if this is the wrong thread. This is the only one that had PC in the title)

(2nd I wish you all the Happiest New Year possible! I wish you health, love, love and love! I hope that at least one major, global solution needed for our civilization is found in 2022!)
View attachment 52766

There are many sites that offer help with PC. But not all are that good. I did try many, of course.

As always, I only come here to ask AFTER I've tried many of the recommendations from some of those software sites.

"Windows 10 Home" seems to be very successfully locked for the very user using them and the help you read around the Internet is not specific enough. Meaning, following closely the steps described on some of them simply don't do anything, but that's not covered. When you achieve no results, there is no explanation what and why is that nor is there an advice what to do if steps fail.

That's why I'm looking for a place like a forum where you can open a specific topic/thread and get specific help. Do you know of such sites?

Don't worry. It's nothing illegal I want to do. I'm trying to make my PC accessible from the Internet for all sorts of reasons (but mainly to stream my music data base in my car over my smart phone). My friend set this up in his car and it's great. But my first step is to forward my IP address which I can do only if it's static. Although static IP is not at all difficult and steps are quite simple, no changes take place.

Since I've noticed some other features you can't change as well, I'm guessing it's because "Home" prevents you to do this (probably for safety reasons) although it's not prohibited.
I know just about enough to tell you that you are entering dangerous territory. If you have to ask this question, then don't do it!

What I do know is that making your home network accessible from outside the home, is very dangerous.

What you need to do is have a very secure custom VPN created that is hyper secure. This requires advanced software writing skills.

The biggest risks are from security systems that can be accessed from outside the home via your portable phone.

My eldest son is an advanced programmer and security expert. He was appalled by the lack of security that was installed in our new home. So he wrote a hyper secure VPN program for us to access the security system from outside our home.
 
Eppie

Eppie

Audioholic Ninja
It's easy enough to use a static IP on your home network and I often prefer that so that when sharing files or devices the IP doesn't change and break things. Internal IPs are typically in the 192.168.1.x range. Your internal IP doesn't matter though because your router will handle any address translation between your internal network and the internet. What you need is for your router to have a static IP and that is not so straight forward. All ISPs assign the external IP address dynamically. Only if you are hosting a web site, for example, will they assign a static IP and it will cost extra. There are ways around this, though, like using a dynamic IP service like DynDNS. They provide you a web address which remains static and connect to your home network which can be dynamic. There is an IP updater that runs on your PC which updates the service when your routers IP address changes. You could then use the router's port forwarding rules to forward specific ports to your PC (and this is when fixed internal IPs are handy). The router would still provide security, but those specific ports would be exposed to the internet unless you used an encrypted connection over a VPN like TLS Guy mentioned.

OpenVPN is an open source product that can be used privately, although use of the commercial OpenVPN server features cost money. It's been years since I played with OpenVPN but it is very secure. Here's a primer on it:
https://www.allthingssecured.com/vpn/faq/what-is-openvpn/
I have only used it on PCs so I have no idea on mobile support but it's a starting point. I believe it does have Android support though.

Windows 10 does allow static IPs on your LAN, probably easiest via Control Panel.
https://pureinfotech.com/set-static-ip-address-windows-10/
 
VoidX

VoidX

Audioholic Intern
Don't worry. It's nothing illegal I want to do. I'm trying to make my PC accessible from the Internet for all sorts of reasons (but mainly to stream my music data base in my car over my smart phone).
I simply store my music on Google Drive, which is legal if you don't share it. It's accessible everywhere, and you don't even need to keep your PC on all the time.

But my first step is to forward my IP address which I can do only if it's static.
You don't need a static IP, a static host is enough. No-IP DUC will do the job.
 
Eppie

Eppie

Audioholic Ninja
I simply store my music on Google Drive, which is legal if you don't share it. It's accessible everywhere, and you don't even need to keep your PC on all the time.
Are you able to stream music from Drive on your mobile? I use JetAudio+ on Android and it asks for a specific folder on my phone. I hope killdozzer has unlimited data. ;)
 
VoidX

VoidX

Audioholic Intern
Are you able to stream music from Drive on your mobile?
Yes, even codecs like Opus, which is near lossless, but in less than 200 kbit/s. Drive is caching very aggressively, and files can be marked for offline storage. My monthly data use is around 1 GB.
 
killdozzer

killdozzer

Audioholic Samurai
Thank you all! Some fair warnings and advice.

But, can you recommend a good tech advice site for Windows based PC? I'm really grateful for your concern and I love to see that you care for others and that you would try to stop me making mistakes, but I'm not going to simply implement any random solution (this is why I asked for a reliable site, I used one years ago but can't find it anymore, I forgot what it was).

I'll tell them exactly what I need and ask how to do it the easiest way. I'll be careful.

@TLS Guy I actually think you're right about the need to secure myself, but since this can be easily done in higher versions of win10, I don't think it is universally wrong (or prohibited for that matter). I just think that MS treats you and think of you as knowing less about PC if you're going for the Home edition of Windows. And this is not the case. I only went for the Home edition because my budget was low.

I did have a static IP long time ago on Win7, it just seems to be locked for Home edition of Win10.

@VoidX and @Eppie Thank you for your advice as well. It's just not exactly what I'm looking for. I simply didn't want to bother people here with all the details since I wasn't looking for a solution, just a site recomm.

I have a soft spot in my heart for my nephew and I want to make it possible for him to set up his Xbox the way he wants when he visits me. Again, the word is that you need a static IP.

Google Drive would solve half of the problem and not in a way I'd like (and I dread public clouds, the only reason I went for a NAS was to avoid Google Drive). I spend a lot of time at my family house, but bringing my NAS with me and then setting it up is just not the way to go.

Thanks again! You have to trust me that I will be extra careful so you can feel free to tell me if you know any good PC help sites
 
killdozzer

killdozzer

Audioholic Samurai
Are you able to stream music from Drive on your mobile? I use JetAudio+ on Android and it asks for a specific folder on my phone. I hope killdozzer has unlimited data. ;)
I don't have it. I just never use my mobile for Internet and this would be the first time. My unused traffic is added to the next month, so I should have enough. I rarely use a car so I don't think I would use up my data, but when I do use my car, I would really love to have my music data base accessible. I think it would be great.
 
Last edited:
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
Does your car not have a usb port where you could just use a thumb drive instead?
 
killdozzer

killdozzer

Audioholic Samurai
In my experience, thumb drive is the worst way to listen to digital files. Every time I turn off the car it goes back to track one. You mostly don't go past first 4-6 songs depending on distance, but mostly you listen to the first song over and over again. At least this is the way in my car where no interface is available for USB stick.

Smartphone doubles as a rather easy interface to control a rather vast database of music.
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
In my experience, thumb drive is the worst way to listen to digital files. Every time I turn off the car it goes back to track one. You mostly don't go past first 4-6 songs depending on distance, but mostly you listen to the first song over and over again. At least this is the way in my car where no interface is available for USB stick.

Smartphone doubles as a rather easy interface to control a rather vast database of music.
My head unit remembers where it left off, I use thumb drives in the truck for a while now and can put enough on one these days where I'm set for quite a while before I need to change out the selection. Around the house in various systems I use them inserted into receivers/disc players, it does not remember what I last played, but that's fine in those cases as I generally am looking for a specific album to play anyways. Hope you figure out a nice secure way of doing that....accessing my home network from outside the house I have no need for but definitely would take precautions....
 
Eppie

Eppie

Audioholic Ninja
@killdozzer I don't frequent a lot of computer forums as I tend to do the research myself by reading articles & forum posts and checking YoutTube videos. There is a lot of information on Microsoft's web site regarding Windows but anything not related to the operating system would be elsewhere.

For general information written in simple terms sites like cnet.com and pcmag.com are good for beginners. For more technical sites that are frequented by hobbyists, tomshardware.com and afterdawn.com have been around for many years. Tomshardware, as suggested by the name, is good for system building but the forums have members with a lot of knowledge. Afterdawn is good for information on various codecs but it's geared more towards video. For computer help, besides Tomshardware I have visited forums.techguy.org and forums.majorgeeks.com. These sites have been around for a while and still appear to be active. Linustechtips has a big following on YouTube and I would imagine that his forums are pretty active as well. Certainly appears to have a big volume of posts.
 
davidscott

davidscott

Audioholic Ninja
Like Eppie said Toms Hardware has been my go-to for everything PC related.
 
killdozzer

killdozzer

Audioholic Samurai
@killdozzer I don't frequent a lot of computer forums as I tend to do the research myself by reading articles & forum posts and checking YoutTube videos. There is a lot of information on Microsoft's web site regarding Windows but anything not related to the operating system would be elsewhere.

For general information written in simple terms sites like cnet.com and pcmag.com are good for beginners. For more technical sites that are frequented by hobbyists, tomshardware.com and afterdawn.com have been around for many years. Tomshardware, as suggested by the name, is good for system building but the forums have members with a lot of knowledge. Afterdawn is good for information on various codecs but it's geared more towards video. For computer help, besides Tomshardware I have visited forums.techguy.org and forums.majorgeeks.com. These sites have been around for a while and still appear to be active. Linustechtips has a big following on YouTube and I would imagine that his forums are pretty active as well. Certainly appears to have a big volume of posts.
Yes! Tomshardware, I'll check Tomshardware.

Thank you Mr. @Eppie That's very kind of you.
 

Latest posts

newsletter

  • RBHsound.com
  • BlueJeansCable.com
  • SVS Sound Subwoofers
  • Experience the Martin Logan Montis
Top