Use Android Phone as USB Wi-Fi Adapter or LTE Modem for Windows PC

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Android phone as USB Wi-Fi adapter

Sometimes friends ask me “Is it possible to use my Android instead of a USB Wi-Fi adapter/dongle?” Such question arises especially often when it goes about connecting your desktop PC which doesn’t have a wireless network card to the Internet. Another situation is when the Wi-Fi module inside your laptop is broken. In one of our previous posts we wrote about how to turn your Android device into a wireless router to share its mobile data over Wi-Fi. But what to do if your PC doesn’t have neither a Wireless card nor even a dongle?

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Add High Performance Plan on Windows 10 if It is Missing in Power Options

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High Performance Power Plan missing Windows 10

Our subscriber wrote: Some time ago after I upgraded my Windows 10 computer to the next OS version (as far as I remember it was spring Creators Update) I noticed some sound issues: There were pops and clicks when I listened to music and watched videos on YouTube. After 20 minutes of troubleshooting I found one-click workaround: I just switched to High Performance profile in Power Options and audio started to perform fine. Some days ago I decided to clean reinstall my Windows 10 pro due to some glitches. I created the USB stick with the latest version, formatted disk C: and installed OS from a scratch. After everything such as drivers and a few programs was ready I noticed the issue with audio card again and was eager to switch the Power plan the way I did before. How I was surprised when I saw that there is only one power plan in the settings. There are no High Performance plan any more. I see only Balanced (recommended) plan that is active of course. Tell me, please, can I manually create and activate high performance plan in power options on my Windows 10?  Continue reading

How to Change Google Assistant to Male or Female Voice

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change Google Assistant Voice

Google Assistant is built-in feature that helps you quickly get answers on your questions. You can just say “Ok Google” or long press the home button and start asking your phone or tablet to send email, call someone, find the nearest restaurant, or just learn what is the weather forecast for today.

By default Google Assistant uses a female synthesized voice. It is nice I should say. But you can make it talk to you using a male voice if you want something new on your smartphone. By the way it is cool to switch to a male voice just to surprise your friends and everybody around you. People will ask you “Wow! What app is this?” because they don’t know that you can actually change the voice. And here is a step-by-step instruction on how to do it in the voice settings.  Continue reading

How to Boot Your Galaxy S9, S9+ into Recovery Mode and Download Mode

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galaxy s9 recovery

You may need to boot your Galaxy S9/S9 plus into Recovery mode if you decide to factory reset your phone or for example wipe cache partition that is often a must when troubleshooting persisting issues. The key combination for entering Recovery may seem unfamiliar to you since there is no physical Home button anymore on Galaxy S devices starting with Galaxy S8. In this guide we will explain the easy steps to boot into recovery and download modes on Galaxy S9 and S9+ with images. So you will always be able to reset your device from the ‘brick” condition, fix all the issues in the case if it is glitching, install updates, boot to bootloader, etc. Continue reading

Samsung Galaxy S4, S5 Cannot Detect New Ringtone

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Galaxy S4 cannot detect ringtone

Today I will tell you about a strange glitch that happened to one of my Android devices this week. I decided to change the ringtone on my old Galaxy S4 (i9500) running Android 5 which I use now as my secondary cell phone. Thus, I prepared a small mp3 file that contained a short loop of a track and uploaded it to my Galaxy phone via USB cable. I stored the file into device’s memory because I don’t use a memory card on this phone. As far as I remembered it was necessary to store audio files in the \Ringtones\ or \media\audio\ringtones\ folders if you want your device to be able to detect it and show in the list of available ringtones. After I uploaded the mp3 file I disconnected the phone from my desktop PC, opened the Settings > My device > Sounds and notifications but I couldn’t find my new ringtone in the list. I remember that in the past I used to upload a new mp3, ogg or wav file to my Samsung Galaxy S4.  Continue reading

Fix ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED in Chrome on Android or Windows 10

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ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED

What is ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED or Error 102 in Chrome on Android and Windows 10

ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED This Site Can’t Be Reached is a common error code that is also called Error 102. It can occur in browser due to certain issues. Running ahead, I can say that not always the culprit is a piece of malware or damaged cookies. You need to take some time to troubleshoot what actually causes the error in your particular case.

In a nutshell, ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED basically means the following: you requested some web page, your browser sent a query to a remote server the website is hosted on and than something went wrong in connection. And instead of a proper reply from the remote host you received either nothing or some corrupted reply or incomplete data. Ultimately, you see the following message in the browser:

This site can't be reached. Tunecomp.net refused to connect. ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED

If you are reading you must have faced it while browsing in Chrome. Read the corresponding section depending on where you face the error ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED – on Android or Windows 10. Don’t skip any step if you really want to fix the issue and make your browser open all websites correctly. Actually, you can also face the same error on Windows 8.1, 7, Server 2016, 2012, etc. Continue reading