What is the strangest tech related bug you can't resolve?
What is the strangest tech related bug you can't resolve?
Note: this is not a request for troubleshooting help.
For the past few years my 10ish year old “smart” TV will maybe once a week or so completely lose the ability to play sound in the Youtube app, and only in the Youtube app. Sound works just fine everywhere else. Bizarrely this is always triggered by an ad and never a video. Restarting the app doesn’t fix it, and neither does clearing the cache. Fortunately doing a full restart of the TV fixes it, it’s just irritating to have to restart because an ad somehow broke the sound.
What technological gremlins haunt you?
Once a week or so, my right hearing aid stops giving me audio and starts blasting data into my ear. Like the old dial up modem sounds combined with R2D2. But only at home and only in a few rooms. I figure it’s picking up wifi or Bluetooth and trying to convert them to audio, and failing.
My PC just won't turn on if he is cold. No, it is not "humidity is high" or too low temperature. It just doesn't turn on if he cold start. A little of heat on the mb and he turns on like nothing ever happened. Already replaced PSU, CPU, GPU, HDD, fans. So surely it is just a feature of my mb.
It sounds like a defect.
I would vote (in this order)
- Bad solder joint
- Failing chip
- Bad capacitor
Bad capacitor moves up on the list if it wasn't happening and is getting more profound or if you are having other stability issues.
While I bet you have had it for a while, thiswould be enough for me to try a warranty claim. The problem could lead to other issues.
That's funny, same thing here. I'm very thankful to the stranger on a forum who suggested "blasting the motherboard with a blow-dryer." Now sometimes I joke that my PC is diesel-powered.
Mine is solar powered. If I move my PC a little it warms under the Sun and turns on
Similar here: a boot from power off will ALWAYS mean there's no network, but a warm boot will always work.
As a workaround, I always hit the reset button two seconds after turning the computer on.
I can tell there's been a power outage if the computer is on and has no network.
Next time it happens unplug the front case connector and short the power pins. If it comes on, replace the power switch and wires.
Already tried, not even a spark of life. I am afraid of trying the MB's cable short pin and burning something
My computer turns itself on when I walk through a certain spot nearby it.
"Ah, you must have your mouse or some other peripheral set to activate it and the vibrations from walking-" Nope, I know how to disable wakeup from peripherals. "Well, then the vibrations from walking must be disturbing a loose component inside-" Nope, problem existed through a near-complete teardown and OS reinstall. Also, putting the PC on vibration isolating foam did not help.
At this point, I'm down to two conclusions:
- The wire for the wall outlet runs under the floor, and vibrations are causing adequate power fluctuations to wake the machine up. Not sure how to test for this, though it does concern me about the state of the wiring.
- The PC is haunted.
Do you have wake-on-lan enabled? Any setting that would wake on network activity? Could be you're interrupting or amplifying a signal - Ethernet or WiFi - that is causing the OS to think it's getting traffic.
No Wifi, as it simply doesn't have a wifi adaptor.
Ethernet is a possibility. I tested it right now and removing the Ethernet cable doesn't cause a wake-up, but I suppose it's possible that slight interference if the cable were just slightly moved might cause it to register traffic plus a continued connection, enough to cause a wakeup. I'll try tinkering with that, thanks!
You know it’s 2! Everything you do. It’s haunted for you!
Ok this one is actually resolved kind of but it super freaks me out. I was working on something and had white noise in my bluetooth headphones coming from Spotify on my browser. At like 2 in the morning, over the white noise, and without making a noise like it connected to anything else, the headphones started playing this like chatter (like people chit chatting) and eventually the started singing what sounded like hymns, at the same time the headset kept cutting in and out and this went on for like 10 minutes. I turned off the Spotify, closed the browsers, confirmed my headset wasn't connected to anything else and nothing else was playing sound that I could see.
A few days later I go back to my computer, open up some separate work I had been doing (transcribing interviews) and lo and behold at the end of the roll there's the creepy fucking chatter and singing.
What it must've been was somehow my foot pedal getting triggered (though I maintain my foot was not on the pedal) and somehow, though I'm certain my app was closed, playing the end of that recording. But damn if I wasn't sure I was haunted those few days.
That sounds almost exactly like youre picking up radio signals. This exact thing has happened to me before, I even picked up a local religious station like I'm assuming you did. Some of the churches in my area have their own little radio broadcast antennas and thats why I think their signal was the one to cut through. Speakers and headphones have been been able to pick this stuff up for like as long as both technologies have existed. You're not crazy and tons of people have been through this
Are you positive it was the exact same chatter and singing?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5567924/
ETA: white noise auditory hallucinations are common even in those without psychiatric disorders, even though that's what the paper is based on, I just couldn't find quick paper link about non-disordered hallucinations.
If my desktop is sleeping, turning off my bathroom light will 2 out of 5 times wake up the pc.
It's a fluorescent lamp, so it is likely that it makes considerable noise on the electrical circuit when being toggled (and it's a small apartment so all lights and outlets are on the same circuit)
I believe I read a forum post from someone else experiencing the same thing, and they also had a Gigabyte motherboard. So it might be related to their bios/firmware implementation of wake-on-lan in some way.
Do you, by any chance, have network extenders that send ethernet via an electrical socket? They send the ethernet signals through your electrical wiring, and if for some reason your bathroom light is on the same circuit as your sockets, then you might be getting some kind of wake on lan packet. Or what it thinks is a wake on lan packet.
My 9 year old LG smart TV (WebOS, but never connected to the network) will occasionally "overlay" RGB colour artifacts over the entire screen. There's no pattern of time, day, on duration, HDMI source, etc.
It just occasionally happens, probably once every month or two. Putting it into standby and back on again fixes it every time. 🤷🏻♂️
Small world. My 47LM8600 LG TV (which is 3D, from 2015!) occasionally fails to pop up its pop up menu when asked, the one that has the input list and so forth in it. Instead it shows a vague error about "memory problem" and prompts the user to factory reset the TV.
Turning it fully off and back on again fixes it, and the issue won't reoccur for usually several months.
My partner streams my Plex to their whole house by way of some sort of coax input device. I’m not really sure how it works but it uses the house’s cable lines to stream whatever from an hdmi device (in this case an rpi) to a unique channel.
Works great everywhere and for every device plugged into it, except a 9-ish year old Samsung tv. On that, the audio cuts out for a half second every 30 seconds or so. Without fail. No change to the picture, and an older Samsung tv handles it fine. We’ve tried everything we could find - including heavily tweaking Plex, and rebuilding the rpi entirely - short of replacing the tv, no dice.
Interestingly, no other stuff through that rpi on that same configuration has problems on that tv, so like we can load the retropi and play games and the sound works fine. It’s really just that one app, through that one method, on that one tv. So weirdly specific.
2017 Audi Q7. Keeps alerting that the "Front side marker lights" are defective. Right and Left.
Both lights work fine. Alert comes back every time the headlights are on.
Apparently a super common problem.
Not sure about this specific model, but in older cars things like this are almost always caused by either too high or too low resistance in the wiring harness or headlight assembly itself because that's how the car detects when a light is out.
Hmm... so in theory I could diagnose that with an Ohm meter... if I knew the resistance it was looking for...
Check the fluid level. Wife had the same issue and the guys at the shop just said needed a top off on the fluid.
The headlight fluid? ;)
2016 ish asus vivobook, the bluetooth module will just randomly start spewing garbage into the USB controller, turning it and whatever is in the left port off. The wifi part of the card works great, restarting doesn't fix it, the duration it does this is random, disconnecting the laptops battery doesn't fix it. The only thing that fixes it is taking the card out and putting it back in place, probably a broke solder joint or something but this laptop is hot garbage so I'll get a new one before trying to take the whole mobo out.
Also my phone the other day shut itself off for 30 minutes, when it turned back on it was stuck on the Motorola Blue and Yellow boot screen for another 15 minutes, until it finally booted and was just fine. Still dont know what that's about.
On my car, a 99 subaru forester, When changing the battery or disconnecting the terminal, the Transmission controller will scream that the fluid is too hot and reaching like over 200 degrees, even though the transmission hasn't been engaged for a month. You have to just keep reconnecting the terminal until it correctly communicates with the ECU and stops freaking.
Technology is fun.
My phone (Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra) will only partially pair with my car's (2018 Camery) Bluetooth.
It pairs for media just fine, so I can listen to music and podcasts no problem, but it refuses to sync phone calls and texts. It just goes into a loop of pairing/connected/disconnected/pairing.
I've reset the phone and cleared the cache on both ends.
It's something I've been meaning to do a deeper dive into for literal years at this point and just haven't. Need to check other devices to see if it's specific to my phone, and I should see if I can't do some monitoring on the Bluetooth comms directly. It's just low enough priority that I haven't gotten around to it.
When turning off my Samsung TV, every once in a while it decides to turn itself back on about 5 minutes later. This has been going on for several years now.
It doesn't happen every time, and seems to happen randomly as I can't replicate the conditions in which it happens. It didn't happen when I bought the TV, so I suspect it started after Samsung pushed a firmware update. It's a bug others are experiencing with the same model TV and I've tried every fix people suggested online, factory reset the TV, and updated the firmware. My conclusion is that it's a bug that Samsung needs to fix, but I'm confident they won't given the TV is about 5 years old now.
I will never buy another Samsung anything ever again. Their hardware is fine, but they're so bad at software. I had a Samsung TV until recently that was just unbelievably slow to turn on, switch inputs, and move through settings on.
Samsung is crap overall.
I bought a brand new Lenovo Yoga laptop, and when connecting to my TV via HDMI, the TV occasionally goes black for a second or 2 then comes back. It doesn't happen at all when streaming video full screen, only when doing something simple like browsing the Internet. Happens with Windows and Linux, although it's more frequent on Linux.
My Denon soundbar has the same thing, HDMI related disconnecting periodically.
Back in the day, like 10 years ago, I used to have a Samsung tablet and a phone. Sometimes, when I took either of them out of the standby (and the devices would renegotiate their Wi-Fi), my router would just jam up horribly. No access to the admin interface. No logs. Nothing to do but reboot.
Now, the only Samsung device I have is my TV. Sometimes, thankfully very rarely, when I fire it up, it, um, my router just jams up horribly. No access to the admin interface. No logs. Nothing to do but reboot. And it's a different router from a completely different manufacturer. Also it's connected via ethernet.
Is Samsung just cursed?
My 15 year old Sony TV with a PC attached to it wil quickly lose and regain signal as soon as I start some streaming sites for the first time. It only happens once every boot. Pc has been replaced a few times. Prolly a DRM thing.
My Pixel 4a thinks I double press the power button every time I press it. So instead of locking the phone I shove it in my pocket with the camera on and the phone unlocked.
It might be the pc polling or switching GPUs? My Toshiba laptop does it once per boot.
I don't know if this counts, but when hold my kindle and phone together and I click the unlock button on my phone the kindle turns on too. Doesn't happen the other way around, I have no clue how it happens
This is very interesting , if anyone ever figures out why, I'd love to know
I'd love to know too, I tried googling it a few times, no results.
My monitor currently loses signal every now and then in some (not particularly demanding) fullscreen games in Linux (e.g. Axiom Verge did it several times the other day). It uses the same refresh rate and resolution as my regular desktop. Switching to a console (which uses a different refresh rate, and I assume re-establishes the connection) and then back to Wayland resolves it.
No kernel log errors.
I first noticed it shortly after moving an external antenna with a cable that had been sitting next to the DisplayPort cable; I don't know whether it's just used by my motherboard for WiFi (which I don't use) or for Bluetooth (which I do) as well. Could maybe try repositioning that.
I don't believe that it used to do it, so it's a new issue, but I haven't cared enough to really dig into it. If I did, I suppose I'd probably go back and try to find a reasonably-reliable repro case, then go back and try installing older versions of drivers. On the hardware end, maybe try putting a bigger PSU in the system, on the off chance that it has anything to do with power limitations (but I'd guess that it's software).
Hmm. Now that I think about it, I really only use Bluetooth for game controllers, and I think that in all the games that I've seen this in, I'm using my controller. If the antenna is used for Bluetooth transmission, in games, that might actually be a good explanation.
I work in IT and right now it's a group of CCTV IP cameras that have a patterned flicker at certain times of the day but on random days. I'm pretty sure I've boiled it down to either a heavy power draw from other equipment or the shitty segregated network they're on. I'm in the middle of desegregation and network uplift and the pool is shrinking so I might have it figured out finally but it's been months still hella random.
Sounds like my Sony Bravia
I'm stuck in an Amazon prime- Sony TV black hole.
Switched to Windows from Linux for a bit because I was having a few problems with Linux, but the main one is that seemingly, spotty 5Ghz connections cause iwlwifi to panic, which means no wifi. Windows does not have this problem. (relevant chip is the Intel AX210)
It's annoying because the UX on KDE is objectively better than Windows and I don't want to have to deal with slower connections because the wifi driver has a dumb bug, and reporting the bug to the LKML is something I do not have the knowledge to do.
My old computer that was build about 6 years ago started not getting powered since about 2 years ago, when I unplug it and took it to computer shops, that computer gets powered instantly when plugged in, but I needed to wait at least 12 hours before I attempt to plug it in again in order to make it boot (if I am lucky).
I changed the PSU, didn't work, bought a UPS as stop gap fix, I saved money to buy a new PC instead.
I had something like this one. It was the ram. If I powered off, shut off the PSU and unplugged, then reseated the ram and tried again it would come on. Upgraded the ram and the issue went away.
Also, if you encounter this with a Dell laptop, same thing (just make sure to disconnect the battery before touching the ram).
My digital tv reciever cannot receive a large range of channels when a mini pc, in off state, is plugged in on the same switch. It works fine when the UTP cable is not connected, it works fine when the mini pc is on, also fine when the pc had no power at all. Distance between pc and receiver does not matter, neither does the configuration of cables in the switch. I've given up on it, but sometimes the issue disappears for months, and then comes back for a while.
My fiancee's car doesn't like my phone. Sometimes it pairs just fine and gives no issues, other times it will disconnect every 30 seconds. Literally will be working fine, playing music, and then bam, no connection, and sometimes it will be a struggle getting it to reconnect. Doesn't happen with anyone else's phone. My phone also never has issues connecting to my car.
Our smart TV (Vizio) sometimes randomly has the video apps crash. In the middle of an episode it will just randomly kick us back to the main menu screen. Seen it happen with multiple apps, so it's not just a problem with one app's coding. Happens rarely enough that it's not a big issue, but still weird.
My 3rd party Switch dock needs some strange ritual to actually work, but still not sure what the correct steps and orders.
It's a fairly early 3rd party dock, from the times when there were articles about 3rd party docks blowing the Nintendo Switch's charging IC or something like that.
Tho this dock works, but only if I plug in the charger, the HDMI cable and the Switch itself in the correct order. Otherwise no video, only just charging.
IIRC, the order is HDMI, charger and Switch, but I may be wrong, it was a while ago I used that dock.
Probably some funky device detection or bug in the dock's code, but it's amusing. Especially after others see me trying and trying and they are like that was the moment when I blew my Switch, but no.
Unbound dns. It worked perfectly and all that jazz. But one day it didn’t. No one could answer why. Every solution in book was tried. Got support from high up but nope. Gave up for the day then two days later it just worked.
For three years then same problem and no way to fix it. And I gave up. Really liked it and one day I will try again but rebuilding my network every time really sucks.
Reddit chat, need I say more?
Arlec smart socket with Bluetooth hub. Sometimes turns on again just after the turn off request from the door sensor automation.
Also when wireguard is on, all http requests for external sites on any client machines redirect back to my own Web server. All other traffic (https etc) is unaffected.
Reconnecting ARC on my sound system. I literally unplugged the HDMI from my receiver once with all components turned off completely and cannot for the life of me get it back.