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[Reelya]

I was confused before, he's in the boot menu. You have to pick safe mode from the boot menu options.

Well perhaps I haven't been clear enough. Here's what's happening...

When I press F8 it takes me to a black screen with white text that show info about my PC and a thing reading Press Esc For Startup Menu. Well, I press ESC but can't seem to find any way to make the PC go into safe mode from there.

That doesn't sound right. There shouldn't be ANY info about your PC in the F8 boot menu. Are you sure you're not just looking at the boot screen there? Does Esc give you the BIOS screen where you see stuff about your CPU and Hard-drives? If so, you're in the wrong place totally.

You need to click F8 after the hardware tests but just before the OS loads. It's in that split second between the hardware information on screen, but just before the windows logo appears. Do not hit ESC, just tap F8 every half a second or so. If it gets to the graphical windows loading screen, then you missed the moment where you need to click F8.

This will give you the Windows 7 boot loader where you can choose how to start windows.

You can also deliberately cause the machine to reboot/crash during windows loading (just nuke it with the power button/reset button or CTRL-ALT-DEL while windows is trying to start up). If you do that, then windows will detect that it failed to boot, and take you to the recovery screen by itself.

[Audioworm333]

Where windows startup settings should be, instead there's something called UEFI Firmware Settings. Am I doing something wrong?

[Aklyon]

UEFI is more or less the BIOS screen, so you're probably in the wrong place.

[Audioworm333]

God dammit... I've wasted the entire day on this. I have no idea what UEFI or BIOS or any of that means. I'm really far from an expert on stuff like this and I am incredibly confused... Am I just doomed or what??

[MaximumZero]

BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) is the thing that happens before your operating system starts. (Your "Black screen with white text.") It actually tells all the parts of the computer, "Okay, it's time to work now!"

Win8+, Mac and Linux/Unix (all for a long time now) use UEFI instead of BIOS, because UEFI is more refined and can do more with hardware.

[Reelya]

the BIOS is stuff the hardware manufacturer puts in that you can change. It has nothing to do with Windows or Drivers.

It's simple. If you have windows 7

1) turn on computer

2) keep tapping F8. don't fucking touch any other key. This is probably where you are screwing up. Don't hit Esc. That is to get into the low-level hardware settings, it's not a Windows thing. The hardware menu comes up first no matter what you do, it gives you time to access it by hitting Esc. after that Windows boots, and Windows gives you a short time to click F8 and get into the Windows loader screen. but you have to NOT enter the hardware manufacturers setting screen to get to that point.

3) assuming you only clicked F8, and didn't click any other key, you will end up on windows boot loader screen.

4) if you didn't see a boot loader screen, and windows 7 graphical logo appears, you didn't press F8 at the right time. reboot the computer and go back
to step 1.

5) Pick Safe Mode option from Windows 7 boot menu.

6) Windows will load but there will be "safe mode" written in the corners.

7) go to device manager, completely delete entries for mouse and keyboard (don't "disable" just remove them).

8 ) reboot normally. Windows should detect the mouse and keyboard.

[Lord Shonus]

I keep getting emails from my ISP about a possible malware infection, but the email doesn't give enough details to track it down (although the site it appears to be linking to is consistent with an infection), and Malwarebytes doesn't find anything on any of my computers. Is there a trace tool to figure out what devices on my LAN tried to access a given IP, or some other effective detector that might help?

[Thief^]

Your router should be able to give you a list of all the devices on your network (e.g. DHCP Lease Table), check that matches the devices you think are on your network. If you have WiFi consider changing the password, it could be it's not one of your computers at all!

Most routers don't have the ability to check what computers on the network are accessing, unfortunately.

[wierd]

wireshark may be helpful.  If you know what kind of traffic is involved (HTTP, etc..), then put a device into promiscuous mode on your end, and start sniffing traffic. That should let you know which device is producing traffic.

[i2amroy]

wireshark may be helpful.  If you know what kind of traffic is involved (HTTP, etc..), then put a device into promiscuous mode on your end, and start sniffing traffic. That should let you know which device is producing traffic.

Yeah, if you can't track it down any other way this is generally the way to go, though be warned that there's quite a lot of options and things you can do in wireshark that won't make sense unless you know exactly what you are doing, so don't be afraid to check for a tutorial on how to capture stuff.

[My Name is Immaterial]

My (Windows 8, Lenovo) laptop cannot read the charge on my battery. When plugged in, it says that it is 'Plugged in, but not charging'. When unplugged, it says that there is 'Unknown [amount] remaining'.
I've tried reinstalling the charging drivers, but to no avail.
Anyone have any ideas?

[Reelya]

I keep getting emails from my ISP about a possible malware infection, but the email doesn't give enough details to track it down (although the site it appears to be linking to is consistent with an infection), and Malwarebytes doesn't find anything on any of my computers. Is there a trace tool to figure out what devices on my LAN tried to access a given IP, or some other effective detector that might help?

If you know the IP address, you can also try redirecting that address to 127.0.0.1 in your windows "Hosts" file, which is in C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc. The "Hosts" file was the precursor to DNS servers in general, and it's sort of a legacy thing that's stuck around in Windows. It converts IP addresses before they get sent out.

[Aklyon]

My (Windows 8, Lenovo) laptop cannot read the charge on my battery. When plugged in, it says that it is 'Plugged in, but not charging'. When unplugged, it says that there is 'Unknown [amount] remaining'.
I've tried reinstalling the charging drivers, but to no avail.
Anyone have any ideas?

How old is the battery? The last time I'd seen 'Plugged in, not charging' my battery was soon not charging at all, as it was dead.

[My Name is Immaterial]

My (Windows 8, Lenovo) laptop cannot read the charge on my battery. When plugged in, it says that it is 'Plugged in, but not charging'. When unplugged, it says that there is 'Unknown [amount] remaining'.
I've tried reinstalling the charging drivers, but to no avail.
Anyone have any ideas?

How old is the battery? The last time I'd seen 'Plugged in, not charging' my battery was soon not charging at all, as it was dead.

It's ~7 months old.

[Aklyon]

Probably not dead then, I'd hope.