i'm not particularly familiar with email tracking software, browser extensions, or the technical side of Gmail

in short, i need to read an email without the sender knowing i've opened it. i know they use email tracking software, although i'm not sure which platform.. i'm pretty sure it's hubspot, and their company uses Gmail if that's any help

i've read that disabling external images in Gmail can prevent tracking pixels from loading, but is that actually reliable? are there other ways these tools can detect when an email has been opened?

my questions:

• is there a reliable way to read a Gmail message without triggering an open notification?
• would disabling external images or using a tracking-blocker extension be sufficient?
• is there a way to view the email's contents without loading any tracking elements?
• could a simple script or AI-generated tool help with this, or would that be unnecessary?

i'm looking for a technical solution, not just a way to mark the email as unread afterward. any advice from developers, IT professionals, or anyone familiar with email tracking would be appreciated.. thanks!!

Hi, I have just recently performed a clean install on my machine, but now my download speeds are so incredibly slow (avg around 18mbps) down from 500-650mpbs.

I have reinstalled my LAN and Wifi adapters, checked if I am on 5GHz band, enabled throughput booster, all that jazz and still not luck.

This is really starting to concern me/ get on my nerves as you may expect but I am really hoping one of you guys have a solution/ have had the same issue and fixed it.

Specs if they matter: ASUS TUF X570-Plus Wifi, Intel(R) Wireless-AC 9260 160MHz, Ryzen 9 5900x

Hello Gents,

https://ibb.co/sdNdS6XR

This little thing pops up in the middle of my screen now when I start my pc. Can't access anything unless I close it.

Has anyone come across it and found a solution to end this hostage situation?

Cheers!

L.E> I don;t know how to add an image here:

the link is an imagebb link to a photo of the error message:

"Give us a minute
We're updating ChatGPT. It should be ready to use again shortly
See in Store

Button: Copy to clipboard
Button: Close"

It's a Microsoft Store message that pops up in the middle of the screen and blocks any click anywhere else apart from the window itself. Also other functions do not work, like screenshot, windows key (only things I tried). I find this extremely abusive, literal hijacking of the PC.

I was just notified that I had basically hit my wifi plan's limit for the month, which confused me because I haven't been doing much on it. I checked my laptop's data usage and it showed 70 gb from chrome, 5 gb of which were in the past day (where I was just typing on docs and playing random games). What is causing this and how can I prevent it?

I accidentally installed this extension from the Microsoft Edge Add-ons store and removed it within a minute.

https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/ublock/nffknjpglkklphnibdiadeeeeailfnog?hl=en

I believe I granted it permission to read and change data on all websites. I did some ordinary web browsing during that time, but didn't visit sensitive pages or enter any passwords.

After removing the extension, I ran both AdwCleaner and a full Windows Defender scan. Neither detected anything.

Should I still be concerned about data theft or other security risks? Are there any additional precautions I should take?

Hey everyone!

I bought a new Seagate Portable 4TB external HDD about three weeks ago, and I've been copying files to it regularly without any noticeable issues so far.

Recently, though, I've started noticing an unusual sound coming from the drive. It happens intermittently, sometimes every 30 seconds and other times every couple of minutes. You can hear it at around the 24-second mark in the recording, and it's sometimes a bit noisier than heard here :

🔗 https://voca.ro/1fsosuArieus

I'm concerned that this might be the infamous “click of death,” but I'm not sure whether it's just normal HDD activity.

CrystalDiskInfo reports the drive's health status as good, and it passed the generic test as well. Here's a report of the CrystalDiskInfo: https://imgur.com/a/tCqEB6c

It seems to occur more frequently when copying large files, particularly those over 50GB.

Has anyone experienced something similar?

EDIT: Another recording where it can be heard around the 19-second mark and then at 1:15 mark:

🔗 https://voca.ro/18n3lLTIhVmJ

But it's otherwise silent for the rest four minutes while moving data.

Thanks so much!

So I just booted up my computer, and found that AVG had 'kindly' reinstalled its browser. I uninstalled it without any issues, thankfully, but I know that I've uninstalled it before, and I can't find any option to get AVG to not automatically reinstall it (and it also doesn't ALWAYS reinstall it on startup, so I'm not sure if it just happens when something updates or something). Either way, I don't want to have to uninstall that waste of drive space each time it decides I need it, so is there any way to permanently stop it from getting reinstalled without removing AVG (it's the only good free antivirus I know and semi-trust)

Edit: thank you guys for telling me I don't need that pos AVG. However, now my Windows Defender is saying it needs an update, and when I click on it to DO that update, it just says something like 'your IT administrator isn't allowing this' and I don't know if I even have an IT administrator or what that is, so I'm now mildly concerned. Any tips?

My Chromebook has a touchscreen and it is really easy for someone to reach over and tap the x to close the chrome app. Is there any way to disable this or the touchscreen entirely? I have tried looking it up and “chrome://flags/#ash-debug-shortcuts” is blocked

Did nvidia change this or is my application bugged? I remember a time when i could change settings around to my liking in the nvidia app. It would show current and preview/changed settings then allow me to save the changes. I cant do this anymore.

hello recently my phone screen broke and because I cant afford a new one I wanted to acces it on my pc to be able to copy my messages and to help me connect to apps like WhatsApp so do you have any solutions or idea to help me use my phone on my computer but without using the phone because I cant use it because half of the screen are dead pixels

Hey guys, I need some help with my 2.5" Toshiba hard drive.
MQ04ABF100

It started acting weird a while back and would randomly freeze my PC whenever it was connected. I ended up doing a hard reset on it, but right after that, things got worse. My PC and other laptops stopped recognizing it completely, and it started making a clicking sound.

I watched a few YouTube videos suggesting the head might be stuck, so I carefully opened it up. The head seemed to be resting normally, but when I plug it in, the platter spins, and the head just keeps moving back and forth to the center repeatedly while clicking.

I don't need any data off this drive at all I just want to know if there's any way to fix it and get it working again, or if it's completely dead at this point. Any advice would be appreciated!

As you can see the keys of my MSI katana 15 HX B14W have somehow been imprinted onto the screen. The laptop has not had anything placed onto it so I'm unsure if this is pressure related?

Its only visible when on.

Anyone had this before or have ideas what it is or how to fix it?

edit:

I will add photo in comments.

edit: solved thanks

i erased the chip without dumping it, yes im stupid, everyone point and laugh at me

or tell me how to remove the header on the .CAP file ??

CPU: i7-12700F

motherboard: ASUS PRIME H610M-A D4

so i've had this issue before and i solved it until it came back, now whenever i get onto my pc, my ram is rainbow - not in the color i had set it to. i've uninstalled icue and reinstalled it and restarted my pc, that did absolutely nothing and it *still* wont show up in icue.

i do have NZXT cam and wallpaper engine installed but i dont think wallpaper engine is the issue behind this as i've never had an issue relating it with this problem. it could maybe be NZXT cam but i dont know what to do with out it. i use NZXT cam to monitor my gpu and cpu and change the color of my aio cooler fans and cooler lcd screen..

what should i do?

Ive tried almost everything ive seen in other posts the ssd is a samsung ssd 860 evo 1tb. I have rapid intel turned off. My sata is ACHI. The ssd won't show up in anything but bios. Please help I was thinking of taking it to micro center to see what they can do since they orginally installed the ssd years ago. Ive tried turning off and on secure boot but I dont know if I did it right. Since my mother board is asus. Ive even tried unplugging the ssd and plugging it back in which I did at the beginning since it didnt even show up in bios until I did that. Please help any help would be appreciated.

Hi everyone,

Recently, my PC has started taking longer to boot than it used to. After the motherboard logo disappears, the Windows startup sound plays, but the screen stays black for about 15 seconds before the sign-in screen appears.

Once the sign-in screen appears and I log in, everything works completely normally. Games and videos run without any issues.

PC specs:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
• GPU: ASRock Radeon RX 9070 XT Steel Legend 16GB
• Motherboard: ASUS TUF GAMING B650E-PLUS WIFI
• RAM: 32GB DDR5-5600
• SSD: Crucial T500 2TB
• OS: Windows 11 Home

Things I've tried so far:

• Booting into Safe Mode (the black-screen delay does not occur)
• Using DDU to remove the AMD graphics driver, then reinstalling it
• Downgrading and uninstalling the AMD graphics driver
• Uninstalling a recent Windows cumulative update (KB5127648) (26300.9711)
• Updating the motherboard BIOS
• Trying different HDMI ports and switching from HDMI to DisplayPort
• Disconnecting all USB devices except the keyboard and mouse
• Performing a clean boot

My AMD chipset drivers, AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition, and Windows updates are all up to date.

None of these steps has permanently fixed the issue.

One particularly strange thing is that the first startup after performing a clean boot is always fast, but the second startup becomes slow again. This happens whether I restart the PC or shut it down and turn it back on.

Does anyone have any idea what might be causing this? Could it be a Windows service, a startup driver, a graphics driver issue, or something related to display initialization?

I'm Japanese and used AI to help write this post in English, so I apologize in advance for any mistakes or awkward phrasing. Thank you for your understanding.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Hey everyone,
Looking for advice on my Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 (14th gen Intel Core i7 HX + RTX 4050). The laptop is roughly one year old and out of warranty.
What happened:
It was working normally, then suddenly shut down.

After that: completely dead. No display, and the cooling fan does not spin at all when the charger is connected.

Diagnosis so far:
First technician said a MOSFET near the GPU is burnt, but claimed the GPU and CPU themselves are not damaged.

Another shop suggested possible GPU/CPU issues and talked about reflow/reballing.

Acer official support is quoting around ~$1000 for a full motherboard replacement.

I’ve attached a close-up photo of the area on the board (the MOSFET section near the GPU).
My questions:
Has anyone dealt with a burnt MOSFET near the GPU on Helios Neo 16 or similar Predator models? Is this usually a straightforward component-level fix?

If the GPU and CPU are truly undamaged, what’s a realistic cost range for proper board-level repair (MOSFET + related power components)?

Is Acer’s full motherboard replacement quote normal for this model, or is it heavily inflated?

Would you attempt component-level repair, or is full board replacement the safer long-term option at this point?

Any experience or advice would be really appreciated. Thanks.

So I am facing this issue where I can't connect my phone device IQOO NEO 10R with my laptop HP 15 s using USB for file transfer

So everything was going fine with same device , same usb cable , but one day it's only charging and not showing device Name

So i treid Chat GPT

USB Debugging

File transfer

Developer option all that

It didn't work

Then i opened The Device manager

Tried to update drivers , it showed best drivers already available

I uninstalled and installed it

But it's has no solution

If someone can help please comment

Thanks 🙏🏻

I wanted to upload a image but it doesn't allow it

So I will write what it shows when I connect to my laptop

[Windows Explorer

USB device not recognized

The last USB device you connected to

this computer malfunctioned, and Windows does not recognize it.]

Computer has been freezing and crashing for a while. I built it at the start of the year in January with the help of a friend who's done a lot of computer building (the building was mostly him). I've had problems with the computer before but I've usually been able to fix them, now I've got a problem I don't know what to do about. I've also been told my computer runs hotter than normal (~30c above room temp when idling), and once my ssd refused to be recognized, which was fixed by disconnecting and reconnecting it.

The problem used to be that the display would freeze for no apparent reason, however I could still move the cursor and hear sounds. It would fix itself by me restarting one of my monitors.

I "fixed" this by creating a thing in the registry, disabling mpo, updating drivers, and running CHKDSK C: /F /R in cmd.

Now the problem is the entire computer freezes and restarting my monitors doesn't fix it.

Specs:

CPU: Ryzen 5 9600X
GPU: AMD Saphire Pulse 9070xt
Motherboard: Asus TUF B650E-E Wifi
ssd: Kingston NV3 1TB NVME
Psu: MSI Mag A850GL 850w
Cpu cooler: Deepcool LE360 V2 75.89 360mm

All of these were bought at the start of the year.

Hey guys just looking for some advice from anyone, there was construction done in my house without my awareness and unfortunately my entire pc room was covered in a thin layer of this dust including a fin layer visible inside my pc. I’m talking a visible layer on the backplate, inside my pc fans, on top of my cooler etc. I would just appreciate some advice on what to do and how dangerous this is, I tried air dusting but it won’t even budge and it’s my first high end pc so I’m not used to cleaning them. I did have dust filters on the outside of the case (Corsair air 5400) which caught a lot of dust but unfortunately some got through. My pc is a 5090FE 9950x3d as well. Any advice from anyone is appreciated.

In regards to my room being covered in dust, I have already deep cleaned it with an appropriate vacuum cleaner, carpet cleaner, and air purifier. My only concern now is my technology as unfortunately I had a lot of expensive equipment in there.

Hi all. I have been having a recurring issue where on my Windows 11 PC, my screen will occasionally freeze for 1-3 minutes where I cannot move my mouse or do anything. Sometimes, the freezing will stop and I can continue using the PC as normal, but will receive an "AMD Driver Timeout" error message. Other times, my screen will go completely black and will never turn back on, to the point where I have to manually turn off my PC and turn it back on. This happens even when just browsing on the web, not even intense gaming. Here are the CPU and GPU I have:

CPU - AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D 8-Core

GPU - AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT

I brought my PC into Microcenter for assistance. They ran hardware diagnostic tests, ran Cyberpunk all night, and also reinstalled drivers and my AMD Adrenalin software, noting no issues whatsoever. The same day I got my PC back, within an hour of using it I had the same exact thing occur - black screen and had to manually turn off the PC and turn it back on to get the screen to return. This makes me think there's something wrong on my end. Could it possibly be a faulty Display port cable? Maybe my monitor is messed up somehow/is not compatible with the PC build I have? This is the monitor I have for reference.

I asked them about the monitor being an issue and they said that shouldn't be the problem. At this point I'm just completely stuck on what the issue is and not sure where else to go to get a fix. I'm not very PC/tech savvy either so that doesn't help things either. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Downloaded a malicious GitHub repo, got hacked within minutes, and now my Microsoft account is gone. What should I do?

I made a huge mistake today. While downloading something from GitHub, I accidentally downloaded and opened a malicious repo.

In literally five minutes since I run it, I started receiving account recovery and password reset emails for various accounts I own. After a second of thinking what happened, I quickly installed Malwarebytes to scan my PC.

It detected a couple of threats on my computer: Trojan.Crypt.MSIL, Malware.AI and something concerning Microsoft Defender exclusions.

Without wasting a second, I started changing my passwords via my phone, such as Google account, Discord, Steam, Epic Games, TikTok, almost every account I could

Unfortunately, in trying to recover my Microsoft account, it says that the account doesn’t exist anymore. I am afraid that some person has managed to gain unauthorized access to the account and change the email.

My main worry right now is whether the malware still operates in the background, stealing any data, and still lurking in the background

As for my computer, I have three drives (C:, D:, and E:) where there is about 300 GB of private recordings and clips with my friends which I definitely would like to keep. Most of them are stored on D: drive, although some are also saved on C: drive.

I’m considering doing a completely fresh Windows installation, but I’m worried the malware could have spread to my other drives.
My questions are:
1. Is a clean Windows installation enough to get rid of the malware?
2. Can I safely keep my D: and E: drives without wiping them?
3. Is there any way to tell what information the malware stole?
4. Is it possible that someone still has access to my accounts even after changing my passwords?
5. Is there anything I can do to recover my Microsoft account if the original email is no longer recognized?
My PC is currently being treated as compromised, and I’ve been securing my accounts from my phone.
Any advice would be appreciated. I’m honestly pretty stressed about the whole situation.
Also like what do I do?
I’m currently running Malwarebytes deep scan

As the title says, my computer got hacked. As soon as I found out, the computer has been isolated and wiped, that part has been taken care of already.

Last friday, someone from russia (got this from the firewall log) was able to connect to my computer despite having region blocking enabled. For some obscure reason, my computer had not automatically logged me out that day like it usually does after 5 mins of inactivity. Now, I happen to have a camera on the ceiling behind my desk which has full view of my monitors.

At 2AM sharp, I can see my cursor start to move and chrome open. They opened gmail (was already logged in) and scrolled thru my emails. I exclusively use my gmail for garbage and subscriptions, they found nothing but ads and newsletters. They then opened a second tab and opened the Microsoft Azure login page. They then tried to log in using my gmail address, unsuccessfully, as there is no Azure account tied to it. And that was it, they left my computer alone. This took place over the course of about 2 minutes. I don't even use Azure...

I had saved credit cards and a bunch of business files on this computer which they had seemingly no interest into... So now I am wondering what were they after? Azure is a cloud computing plateforme, as far as I am aware? What were they hoping to find? Thanks!

Hi, I have a short USB-A to USB-C cable that came with my wireless earbuds. Can I just use this cable to charge my iPhone 16e?
I don't mind if it charges slowly, I just want to know if it's safe and won't damage the phone or battery. Thanks!

I recently upgraded my RAM from 2x8 DDR4 cursair vengeance rgb ram to 2x16 of the same kind.
Ever since swapping them I ve been having random freezing when gaming. Sometimes when I have youtube open, if I click on the windows button and then on the power button, the menus freezes before showing me “restart now”/“power off” and such.
I have enabled XMP (currently disabled but nothing's changed), deleted every rgb program on my pc and reinstalled and updated iCue, which was previously not reading my ram.
Nothing seems to be helping and I don’t understand what the issue is.

My specs are:
Motherboard: ASUS TUF Gaming Z690-PLUS WIFI D4 LGA 1700 ATX Motherboard

GPU: GIGABYTE AORUS GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Elite 8G (REV2.0) Graphics Card, 3X WINDFORCE Fans, LHR, 8GB 256-bit GDDR6, GV-N306TAORUS E-8GD REV2.0

CPU: Intel Core i7-12700K, 8C+4c/20T, 3.60-5.00GHz

Cpu cooler: Noctua NH-U12S chromax.black, Quiet High-Performance Tower

Fans: Arctic p12 PMW A-rgb

Hard drive: ABRENT M.2 NVMe SSD 1TB Internal Solid State 3400MB/s Read, PCIe 3.0 X4 2280, M2

Power supply: Corsair RM750, RM Series, 80 Plus Gold Certified, 750 W Fully Modular ATX