There’s really no reason to panic here; you haven't been hacked. There could be a dozen different reasons why you're seeing that message, but I won't bore you with a long-winded explanation right now. Instead, I'll just drop a link here that breaks everything down quite clearly (it is in English): https://www.lifewire.com/unusual-tra...errors-3968165
Larry Wilson25 said:It looks like my post just got wiped out. Apparently, because someone else already asked a similar question, the system decided to scrub mine entirely. Typical.
It looks like the agitprop comments are being allowed to fly free while anything remotely critical gets scrubbed—or at least silenced via bans, if my observations are correct (I’m actually relieved about that part, so thanks to the mods). It feels like everything else is just being flattened out.
Fraer might not have any background in the private sector, but I’m still casting my vote for him, and honestly, no amount of nitpicking from anyone else is going to sway me. We’ve got someone actually running this country, and yet people act like it’s a crime that he hasn't spent his career in corporate America.
Let’s try to inject a little more pluralism into his thread. You've all got a few hours left.
Honestly, I have to wonder: why on earth is private sector experience a prerequisite for becoming Mayor? If that were actually a hard rule, half the politicians currently holding office wouldn't even be in the running, let alone sitting in those seats.
driftingcanyon2 said:Honestly, I’d rather just ditch that clunky version of Ubuntu and move to something else entirely. I jump between openSUSE, Fedora, and MX Linux, and my laptop with 8 GB of RAM and no swap partition handles everything just fine.
I'm struggling to see why Mint is being labeled as junk, and more importantly, what does swap have to do with any of this?
Look, there are a hundred different things that could be causing this. If you’ve got everything backed up, honestly, a fresh reinstall doesn't hurt. I'd suggest trying it with the default settings first—don't go installing any extra drivers unless they're absolutely essential.
Does the host machine actually slow down when you aren't running a VM? What kind of drives are we talking about here—standard HDDs or an SSD? How much RAM did you allocate to the virtual machine? When things start dragging, what does System Monitor show? Which specific processes are hogging the resources? Are you using VMware, VirtualBox, or something else entirely? Also, how much VRAM did you assign, and how many CPU cores are dedicated to the VM? Does the slowdown happen immediately, or does it build up after running the VM for a while?
That should be enough to get us started. Once I have those details, I might actually be able to make sense of this.
Do you actually need a local installation for some specific reason? I ask because if your goal is application development, you should look into Salesforce Lightning. It’s a remarkably solid tool, and if you have a decent grasp of the fundamentals, you'll pick it up in no time. There's really no need to deal with the headache of a local database setup since everything happens online. However, if you're strictly studying database administration, then having a local installation is probably your best bet.
If I were in your shoes, I’d just set up a virtual machine. That way, if things inevitably go sideways, you can just reinstall the OS in the VM or take a snapshot before you start. If you break something, you just roll the machine back to its previous, functional state.
If you’re asking for my two cents, I’d probably strip half of that list away. For instance, I don't really see the point of having both WinZip and WinRAR cluttering things up. Or why anyone would need both BS Player and VLC sitting there. I’m looking at this from the perspective of an average user—unless, of course, you’re dabbling in some niche technical stuff that falls way outside the scope of what we discuss here 😁
Honestly, if everything is running smoothly, there’s no reason to go poking around and breaking things 🙂
Grab a screenshot of your Control Panel and send it over so we can figure out what’s actually going on here. 🙂 There has to be a way to uninstall this thing (I really hope 🙂 )
rustywalker1 said:I ended up just downloading Foxit Reader, so honestly, it doesn't even matter anymore.
I should probably just wipe the drive and reinstall Windows. It hasn't been that long since the last clean install, but honestly, enough digital junk has piled up that it’s starting to feel heavy. A fresh start might be the only way to clear out all this clutter.
Give this one a shot: I’ve been spending quite a bit of time looking into the Tracker Software PDF-XChange Editor lately, and I feel like it’s one of those tools that flies completely under the radar despite being an absolute workhorse. If you’re like me and have grown weary of the bloatware associated with the big names—looking at you, Adobe—this is a refreshing change of pace. It isn't flashy, and it doesn't try to sell you on some "AI-driven" nonsense that nobody actually asked for. Instead, it just works. It handles heavy lifting like editing text, managing pages, and converting files without making my laptop sound like it's about to take off from JFK. The interface has that classic, slightly utilitarian feel that I personally find comforting. It’s organized, predictable, and doesn't jump around on you every time there's a forced update. For anyone who spends their workday wrestling with PDFs and just wants a tool that stays out of the way while getting the job done efficiently, it’s worth a serious look. It’s a solid, reliable option for those of us who prefer substance over marketing hype.
In my honest opinion, this is easily the best in its class. There’s even a portable version available if you need to move around. Highly recommended.
I honestly don't see the issue here. You've got 8 gigs of RAM and you're only using half of it. That's just standard operating procedure for any modern OS.
Hey everyone. I usually log into my Windows account using a picture instead of a password—my kid was messing around with the settings a while back and changed it, so I just rolled with it. That setup worked fine for over a year, but recently I powered up the PC and the picture login didn't show up; it just gave me a password prompt. Of course, the kid has no clue what he changed the password to, so now I’m stuck trying to get back into the account because I have a lot of important files in there.
It shouldn't be much of an issue. You can boot the computer from a disc that has a password reset tool built in. It should only take a few minutes, assuming nothing goes sideways.
One more thing... about a year ago, my laptop had a close encounter with a cup of coffee, so I just swapped the hard drive into a different machine. Ever since then, I've been getting that "Activate Windows" notification, which makes no sense because the software is genuine; I just switched the hardware. Now I'm wondering if the picture login disappeared because the system thinks the OS isn't legitimate. I tried running RemoveWAT, but now whenever I try to do anything or install something, it asks for an administrator password that I don't have.
So you moved the hard drive to a different laptop? Windows has built-in mechanisms designed to detect hardware changes, which is why it's asking for reactivation. Since you're using genuine software, it shouldn't be a problem. You can just call the Microsoft support line here in the US, and they'll walk you through the activation code over the phone.
In any case, these aren't massive hurdles. Everything can be sorted out pretty quickly.
quietorca24 said:Don't let them turn you into their profit margin. ☕ Honestly, I can't see any flaws in Brave compared to standard Chrome—at least from where I’m sitting. It comes with a built-in adblocker that nukes every single advertisement and saves a ton of mobile data in the process. To be perfectly blunt, you'd have to be a complete idiot to stick with Chrome when Brave is right there. ☕
Just popping in here to let you all know that one idiot has arrived. 😁 It’s interesting that nobody has brought up Mozilla Firefox yet. It actually supports all the same extensions you get on the desktop version, which is a huge plus. Personally, I run uBlock Origin on mine, and it handles ads so effectively that I don't see a single one. But honestly, that isn't even the best part. If you want something more streamlined, there's also Firefox Focus, which comes with all those privacy protections—ad blocking, tracker prevention, the whole works—already baked right in.
If I recall correctly, you won't actually see "trackpad" listed in the Device Manager; it'll probably just show up as Mouse. You can just right-click it and hit Disable. Alternatively, check your Windows settings—there might be an option somewhere like "Disable trackpad when typing." Honestly, I'm curious, why is this bothering you so much in the first place?
Timothy Cook28 said:So, a little while back, Chromium just showed up on my PC out of nowhere. It was a nightmare trying to get rid of it—deleting, scrubbing, uninstalling... everything.
But now Google Chrome is being a total pain. It mostly just freezes up, and then it keeps running in the background without any way to kill it, even though there isn't a single trace of it in the Task Manager.
I tried the whole uninstall and reinstall routine, but I'm still stuck with the exact same issue.
I exported my bookmarks and tried importing them into Vivaldi, but it automatically detects the path for the bookmarks, which makes it impossible to perform a manual file import...
And it won't let me do an automatic import by selecting the exported file from Google Chrome because it claims Google Chrome is currently running—even though, again, it’s definitely not open and isn't showing up anywhere in the Task Manager.
Has anyone else run into these kinds of issues with CHROME? Those bookmarks are vital to me, and I need to move them to another browser somehow. Ideally, I'd love to just get Google Chrome working again or fix whatever is broken, since I rely on certain extensions...
Any advice?
How can I properly wipe it and reinstall?
I just can't seem to close those background processes...
Could you elaborate a bit on how Chromium appeared on its own? What were you doing right before that happened (or are you sharing this computer with someone else?) Also, when you try to shut down Google Chrome, could you send over a screenshot of your Task Manager so we can see what's actually happening?
As for Vivaldi, it handles HTML bookmark imports without any trouble. You just have to select the correct file type from the dropdown menu. Here is a picture of what that looks like.
For a clean uninstallation, I'd suggest using the free Geek Uninstaller; it does a decent job of scrubbing all those leftover files. You can grab it at geekuninstaller.com.
There aren't actually any issues here. Data cloning isn't just a raw transfer from one medium to another; there are several underlying factors and hardware components involved in the process that can influence the overall speed. While SSDs have certainly helped bridge the gap, it's still a complex operation.
To keep it brief: what you're seeing is perfectly normal behavior, so there’s really no reason to worry. This doesn't just happen on Windows; it's a universal reality across all operating systems. It's particularly noticeable with traditional hard drives because they're inherently slow, creating a bottleneck when all the other high-speed components involved in the process are moving significantly faster.