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June 26

Manually referencing a wiki article without Cite extension

I have installed MediaWiki on a webserver and I want to add some references to an article.
I don't have any extensions installed and I don't want to install any (from long-term maintenance reasons).

I can add after any sentence a <ref> tag with text inside it, but how could I make these refs appear in a list in the end of the article?
I don't care if I should do the sorting manually or automatically as of this moment, I just need to learn how I display these in a list in a "Footnotes" section. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.230.75.149 (talk) 08:17, 26 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I would add the Cite extension. Wikis are so much better with extensions added. If you don't have WP's performance constraints, you can have useful extensions like DPL too.

To work without it, you might find the easiest is to create the cites on a Wiki with the extension in place (such as en:WP) and subst: its results, then copy them off to your wiki. Andy Dingley (talk) 08:57, 26 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, I think that if a Wiki does better with or without extensions depends on the wiki itself and it's audience, but to the issue --- what about no-extension solutions that are being based only on Wiki syntax and maybe also some JavaScript, is there nothing for this particular need?... 49.230.75.149 (talk) 09:15, 26 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If I understand correctly, you just wish to directly link to the resource, or to an anchor on your own page. For that, see the MediaWiki syntax for linking: specifically, Link to an anchor on the same page.

Then, somewhere (at the bottom of your page, for example), you create your list of references, and following the same syntax guide, Setting an anchor for incoming link, tag each item in your list of references.

This procedure uses the built-in features of MediaWiki, and entails only slightly more manual effort than using the various reference extensions that are installed on the English Wikipedia.

Distinct from this procedure, you may (optionally) wish to clone your favorite Wikipedia MediaWiki templates that are commonly used to format reference links.

Nimur (talk) 16:28, 26 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki wraps all space-indented nested content in <pre> HTML tags

To reproduce go to a MediaWiki web site with the skin "Vector", go to an edit page, add some non <pre> HTML content, add some non <pre> space-indented nested HTML content inside it, and save the page.

How can one turn off this behavior in MediaWiki? Thanks, 49.230.75.149 (talk) 08:45, 26 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Don't indent with spaces? This is a pretty deeply embedded behaviour in Wikitext. You're not going to remove it easily with just a bit of CSS skinning. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:29, 26 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

User:Andy Dingley; okay, even if I don't indent with spaces; my keyboard doesn't have a key for tabulation-indentation and searching-finding-copying-pasting tabulation-characters feels bad to me to do repeatedly. Using an AHk approach to create a Windows keyboard shortcut is nice but not a solution for Linux users. Any another approach? 182.232.21.241 (talk) 14:57, 26 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki markup uses ":" as the indent character, just as we're doing in these threads. You can either work with that, or rail against it. I find doing what it wants me to is much easier. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:00, 26 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Andy I tried that but sadly the outcome is the same (maybe ":" is actually a space-indentation and not tabulation-indentation)... The original problem seems to be in how MediaWiki PHP creates HTML and not by type of indentation (i.e spaces or tabulations). Any other idea? 182.232.21.241 (talk) 16:30, 26 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Please see WP:CHEATSHEET and H:MARKUP. These techniques were laid down eighteen years ago, they're not going to change. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:40, 26 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, User:Redrose64, I read the <pre> section in the second link you provided but I miss why nested content (in the context I described above), appears in a few different <pre> tags instead just the parent tag (which is in my case <code> but could instead be <div> or <span> or whatever other tag), and most important of all for me - what can I do to prevent this situation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 182.232.21.241 (talk) 19:52, 26 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

For a start, please provide a link to the article that you are working on. Then describe where you want indentation to occur, and explain why this would be beneficial compared to the default behaviour of hard-left. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:10, 26 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

User:Redrose64; I prefer not to link for the site at this point but I will open a new thread with a better description of the problem.

Blackfin

where are operands stored in blackfin?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 103.42.74.18 (talk) 13:06, 26 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

While this question sounds suspiciously like WP:HOMEWORK, you might find the official processor reference manual linked from our article. All compute operands are stored in the register file in the Blackfin processor architecture.

Nimur (talk) 15:52, 26 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Database operation question

Here's a thing I have run into at work. We are using Microsoft SQL Server as the database. I have a table containing rows with IDs and some status flag columns.

There's an operation that calculates a list of row IDs and then performs a database update that sets a status flag column on these rows to a specific value. This is done with an SQL UPDATE clause with a WHERE condition that has a large IN () list with all the desired IDs.

However, some of the rows might already have the status flag column at the desired value.

So my question is, which is more efficient?

First fetch the IDs of the rows where the status flag is already at the desired value, and exclude them from the IN () list, or
Just do the operation with the large IN () list, allowing it to update even those rows with the flag already at the desired value?

JIP | Talk 21:17, 26 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Benchmark both. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:25, 26 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. It would be interesting to do it both ways and then try to explain why the winner is faster. Bearing in mind that we don't have all the facts about the database structure, or how many rows it has or how many "some" is. So trying to guess which one might be more efficient is a weak alternative to actually trying it! ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:56, 26 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Generally speaking, updating a record is more expensive than performing a query on it. However, it's possible the DB management system might be smart enough to see that the update will result in no change to that record, and skip it. If bench-marking shows that this is not the case, then I suggest a clause on the UPDATE something like AND STATUS_FLAG <> "Y". You want the DBMS to do the work for you, as opposed to returning a couple lists and you then filtering the one based on the other, and doing updates accordingly, which would certainly be slower. SinisterLefty (talk) 22:07, 26 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Or if there are only two possible values, Y and N, have it update where status_flag = "N". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:11, 26 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

That would work, but I don't believe there would be any performance difference, and we should also consider what happens if additional values are ever added, like "?". Of course, if it was a logical (T/F) value, then this isn't possible. SinisterLefty (talk) 13:07, 27 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Does SQL Server have an "explain plan" function as Oracle does? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:13, 27 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Of course. But even this isn't a guarantee of performance on its own, as we don't know the size of the tables, the distribution of data within them, and the indexing available. Many such factors will affect the performance of both queries and it's hard to choose without knowing the sizes.

Then again, whenever I hear "a list of row IDs" my teeth start to grate. Why isn't this list selected within the database? If it has to be imported from outside, then are "row IDs" really a dimension which the database model should be publishing to the outside world (it's hard to do this without them either being too constrained by the outside world to make a good table key, or else a good primary key within the DB is opaque, unwieldy or even unstable for use outside). Andy Dingley (talk) 16:42, 27 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe the OP will get back and offer some more details. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:48, 27 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. If they had in mind doing something like SELECT ROW_ID WHERE (condition X) followed by UPDATE STATUS_FLAG = "Y" WHERE ROW_ID = {...}, then it would be much better to just do UPDATE STATUS_FLAG = "Y" WHERE (condition = X). It's possible they also retrieve the ROW_ID's for some type of log they keep, but then it would still make sense to do the SELECT followed by the last UPDATE. That is, don't send the same list of ROW_ID's back in the UPDATE. (The SELECT and UPDATE should perhaps be handled within a single TRANSACTION, to eliminate the possibility of a DB change happening between the SELECT and UPDATE which alters which ROW_ID's match condition X.) SinisterLefty (talk) 17:19, 27 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

<code> tag bug in MediaWiki - undesired splitting of content into <pre> tags

If one nests content inside a <code> tag with spaces in MediaWiki, there is a disturbing problem that the indented code becomes splitted in different <pre> tags.

You the user never created these <pre> tags, they are being parsed by MediaWiki.

Using the SyntaxHighlight extension is something I don't want to do from personal reasons.
Indenting with colons (:) will cause the same problem.

One can consider indenting with tabulation-characters but generally all keyboards don't have a key for tabulation-character and searching-finding-copying and pasting tabulation-characters repeatedly, feels bad to me. Also, using an AHk approach to create a Windows keyboard-shortcut to add a tabulation-character is nice but not a solution for Linux users.

Exampling the problem

Source code and outcome (please see source code in edit mode)

<x>

   <y>
       <z></z>
   </y>

</x>

Explanation

The code itself is not one piece but splitted to five blocks
Also, the space-indented part of the code (y and z tags) appear in a <pre> tag that I never created; I don't want this <pre> tag to be created.

My question

I want just one block, not 2 or more, just as in example source code (this is why I asked to see the source code of the example).
What can be done to prevent MediaWiki from splitting my nested code to blocks?

Consider using a <syntaxhighlight> tag instead of <code>. The latter works fine with inline text, like here in my answer, the former works with mutliple-lines blocks (and it can colour syntax). See this example, with <syntaxhighlight>:

<x>
    <y>
        <z></z>
    </y>
</x>

and this one, with <syntaxhighlight lang="xml">:

<x>
    <y>
        <z></z>
    </y>
</x>

--CiaPan (talk) 08:05, 27 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

As of MediaWiki 1.32.0 using source tag properly requires SyntaxHighlight extension which to be honest - I don't want to use.

later edit: Nope, I was wrong, it doesn't require SyntaxHighlight but according to user:TheDJ's answer below, it is deprecated anyway.

Maybe another approach? 182.232.21.241 (talk) 08:57, 27 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe try <pre>...? --CiaPan (talk) 09:09, 27 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I thought about that but I am afraid it will cause a broad problem in the long run if I use it exclusively and also change the CSS of the tag itself a bit. I need a tag suitable for code but totally "neutral". Thanks. 182.232.21.241 (talk) 09:59, 27 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Or maybe I'm wrong and <pre> is netural enough, although because the site is of an RTL language and <pre> should be LTRized for LTR code, I do indeed need to avoid using it... That's a tough one... 182.232.21.241 (talk) 12:08, 27 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Let's try this again:

<code> is an inline html element (so shouldn't be used for multiline blocks)
starting a line with an space creates an html <pre> element
The character : doesn't indent, it creates a list element. Don't use it for indenting other than on MediaWiki's talk pages.
So what you were doing was generating the expected results.
<source> is the deprecated wikicode syntax for <syntaxhighlight> and does code highlighting
<source> for this purpose is deprecated (please take note CiaPan) because it is now a valid HTML5 element with a different purpose
What you want is likely indeed a simple pre wrapping I think:

Code

<pre>
<x>
    <y>
        <z></z>
    </y>
</x>
</pre>

Result:

<x>
    <y>
        <z></z>
    </y>
</x>

Hope this helps, —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:17, 27 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hello User:TheDJ, I thought about using <pre> but I am afraid it will cause a broad problem in the long run if I use it for codes all over the site and also change the CSS of the tag itself a bit (like changing margin, padding, etc).

Therefore, I need a tag suitable for code but totally "neutral". Thanks. 182.232.21.241 (talk) 10:04, 27 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral, as in you don't want any markup ? Eh.... use a div and apply your own classes and CSS styling (white-space: pre-wrap) ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:10, 27 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

User:TheDJ, I already tried that but sadly it's not helpful – Both the opener and the closure of the first non-HTML tag (x tag), appear as regular text in div, source, and actually any tag I tried which isn't pre. 182.232.21.241 (talk) 12:35, 27 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

For single tags and tag pairs, use {{tag}}:

{{tag|pre}} → <pre>...</pre>
{{tag|o|pre}} → <pre>
{{tag|c|pre}} → </pre>
{{tag|br|s}} → <br />

For more complex constructs, use <syntaxhighlight>...</syntaxhighlight>. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:26, 27 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I say again that I don't use SyntaxHighlight - at all...

Anyway, I decided to use <pre> in the end because it's the only one that works and seems to me there shouldn't be a problem using it (I consider using a category for pages including it just in case I'll have to replace it). 182.232.16.31 (talk) 07:32, 28 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

June 27

Erase a picture on Whatsapp

I'd like to erase for everyone (not just for me) a picture I posted yesterday on a Whatsapp group. Is there a way to do it? Thanks. --93.70.70.198 (talk) 18:28, 27 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You do a long press (if you have an iPhone, be careful not to trigger the "Force Touch action instead"). Then choose delete from the contextual menu. It will now be deleted on any other phone, when it connects to WhatsApp the next time. This normally only works for messages you posted yourself. See also: https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/android/26000068/ —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:32, 28 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

June 28

Rotating folders on a randomized music playlist

So I have songs from the 1960s and songs from the 1990s and songs from the 1940s etc. Is there a way on a randomized playlist to call up the 1960s folder then the 1990s folder then the 1940s folder etc. basically linerally play the folders with randomized songs in each decade folder and then repeat.

I would ideally like to do this in VLC media player so any VLC media experts much appreciation on any helpful hints. I also have some comedy stuff as well so I wish to play folder 1940s folder 1980s folder comedy folder 1950s folder 1990s folder comedy folder 2000s folder 1960s folder comedy and then repeat while the actual song or comedy bit is randomized each cycle through the folders. Many many thanks for any help! RetroVector (talk) 04:08, 28 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt if any media players natively provide this ability. They generally only have "all random" or "all in order" options. You would need some media player that allows you to write macros, or, if the "all in order" option plays files in alphabetical order, you could write an external program to randomize the names in a folder by prepending leading characters. For example, you could prepend AA - ZZ to give you 26² or 676 different orders. On subsequent runs, you would want the program to replace rather than prepend those characters. I suggest backing up all your media files before running the program on them. Do you have coding experience ? SinisterLefty (talk) 12:08, 28 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks so much SinisterLefty, you seem to have some great expertise on this. My coding skills ended in high school lol, I can still do some basic things. Any web based or freeware/shareware type off the shelf recommendations that might be helpful? Oh and yes I back everything up always. Also any other suggestions are appreciated, I find it hard to believe there isn't one music player out there that can't do this, there seem to be thousands of media players figures one developer would offer this to make their product more unique, any suggestions welcome! RetroVector (talk) 21:46, 28 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but I just don't think you're going to find an off-the-shelf product to do this, because it's not the type of feature that would get somebody to buy the product (maybe you're the only one). As far as writing your own program, it might be easiest to find some type of open-source program that already has code to copy files from one folder to another, written in a language you know. That way, instead of "reinventing the wheel", all you would need to do is prepend the randomized codes to the file names, and it would do all the reading and writing the same as before. What language(s) did you take in high school ? SinisterLefty (talk) 22:36, 28 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't personally think it needs to be as complicated as above. For starters I wouldn't use VLC for this sort of thing but software primarily designed for music playback. Anyway although I haven't tried it, it sounds like Poweramp for Android (not to be confused with dbPowerAmp should be able to do this via the 'Shuffle Songs, Lists In Order' option [1]. (You'd just need to get the lists in the right order first.) However Poweramp is for Android only and neither free nor free software although there is a trial version.

Since you didn't specify your OS I'll provide answers for Windows, if you have another OS apologies but I couldn't help anyway. Foobar2000 is freeware but not free software and highly extensible. Unfortunately the default only does the opposite of what you want. You can shuffle directories or albums but play in order within the album and directory [2]. I suspect that's much more in demand than what you want to do, so music players are more likely to have that as an option. I looked at plugins and it's possible foo_random_pools [3] [4] or facets [5] [6] could do what you want, but I didn't understand them well enough to say for sure. I suspect there is a simpler plugin that can just do it unfortunately this IMO isn't an easy thing to search for especially since you get a lot of results of people confused how to do the basics or unsure of the difference between shuffle and random despite the long time FAQ page as well as people convinced random isn't random because they heard the same track 3 times today etc.

If not foobar2000, I suspect there is probably some freeware probably even free software solution for Windows that can do what you want maybe even without plugins, unfortunately the earlier search comment applies to that as well.

Given what you said above, IMO a simpler solution would be semi manually by just using Foobar2000's sort - randomise function. Start by making separate playlists for each year in in Foobar2000. For simplicity make sure they are in the order you want i.e. 1940, 1990, 1960 etc. Then for each one, sort by randomise. Then just add each year to the playback queue. You will need to sort each year through each cycle of your entire collection or you will get the same order each time. It's unclear to me the number of songs, assuming it's a lot you won't have to do this too often. Note that once you have added a year to the playback queue you can resort so you could add multiple play throughs for each year if you want so you don't have to do this often. That said, given how easy it is to lose the playback queue, you may want something like foo_keep_queue [7] [8]. Maybe you will also want foo_queuecontents [9]. BTW if you still find the playback queue annoying an alternative would be to do what I suggest after for VLC and make a single large playlist.

If you're set on using VLC for this but don't mind using additional software, you can still use foobar2000 in part (again assuming Windows etc). Just save your randomly sorted play list. You can sort 10 times and save 10 times if you want. It will probably be simplest if you give your playlist a suitable filename so they can easily be sorted by the OS e.g. 00000 1940, 00001 1990, 00010 1940, 00011 1990 etc. (Remember you don't have to save them in order, provided you come up with a consistent naming structure. So you can save 00000 1940, 00010 1940 then move on to 1990.) VLC does at least support m3u so you can then just add the playlists in order to VLC. (If VLC did not support m3u, even more reason to not use it.)

Note that the way VLC handles playlists by default is it only loads them once it gets to them. So you will see all the tracks for the first play list, but only each playlist for the other play lists in the built in VLC playlist. (Likewise times etc.) If this doesn't work for you, then add each playlist in order to foobar2000 to a single playlist and save the big playlist. (Assuming the playlists are in order you should be able to just drag all of them into an empty playlist.) Alternatively you could use the earlier method of adding to playback queue and I think foo_queuecontents legacy mode will let you save the playback queue. I also suspect there's a way to save multiple play lists to one in foobar2000 perhaps with a plugin although assuming you are making multiple random sorts of each directory you will need to open each playlist anyway so this seems more complicated. Of course m3u is a very simple format anyway so you could also simply combine into one by just adding each file on top of each other e.g. with the cmd.exe copy command.

Anyway my final point is relevant to all OSes. If foobar2000 doesn't work for you I still see no reason to go around physically renaming stuff. It would surely be easy to find/make something that will generate a m3u with a random order for each track within a directory. (Remember on Windows you can generate a basic m3u just by doing a dir /b /s >>Playlist.m3u and similar for most other desktop OSes. Obviously sorting in a random order is more complicated but you need to deal with similar to rename anyway. Simply outputting the file and location rather than renaming is surely not that different.) I guess VLC should be able to handle a playlist of at least 10000 and probably even 100000. Once you have such a large playlist it probably doesn't matter it's repeating. But if you really don't want it to, you could make VLC not repeat and your program detect when playback ends and generate a new one and start that. I mean you will need to detect playback position in some form with the above solution anyway if I understood it correctly to be able to know when to rename the files.

Nil Einne (talk) 05:01, 29 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you again SinisterLiberal and Nil Einne, a lot of great information and Nil Einne thanks a ton for that very detailed response and focus on fitting it into VLC (for various reasons I would like to make it work in VLC if possible). I will read and follow up on everything you offered, this is very great info, much appreciation. If anyone has any other suggestions or thoughts please do share and thanks again!RetroVector (talk) 16:07, 29 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

How can one use the MediaWiki <code> tag for multiline codes?

When I try to use <code> for multiline codes I don't get a single block of code but code blocks for each line:

<x>

   <y></y>

</x>

I don't want to use the deprecated <source> tag instead.
I don't want to use <syntaxhighlight> tag instead.

How can one use the MediaWiki <code> tag for multiline codes? 182.232.16.31 (talk) 07:58, 28 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The fine manual is at WP:CODE. Assuming your issue with <syntaxhighlight> is that, well, it highlights syntax, you can use <pre> tags instead. Another option is to put a single space in front of every code line: (see the source)

this is some code
with two lines
   here is some indentation in the code

What you cannot do is use <code> tags which are not fit for the purpose you intend. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me}

Unless I change the MediaWiki PHP to parse <code> differently but yeah, I see what you meant. Thanks. 182.232.164.217 (talk) 10:39, 28 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

<syntaxhighlight>...</syntaxhighlight> without a lang=xx attribute doesn't highlight syntax, because without knowing which language is represented, it doesn't know which highlighting rules to apply. Or you can be explicit and use <syntaxhighlight lang=text>...</syntaxhighlight>. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:18, 28 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

<pre> tag seems best to me; please further help me by reading my next new question (and hopefully the last one on this topic). Thanks. 182.232.164.217 (talk) 15:41, 28 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Changing cursor keys on Windows 10

On my first laptop, there were four cursor keys, and, by them, four more keys marked Home Pg Up, Pg Dn and End.

On my second laptop, there were just the four cursor keys. The four other actions were acheived by also pressing the Fn key, over on the left hand side of the keyboard. Fortunately also on the right hand side of the keyboard was a Fn Lock button, so I could toggle between using the cursor keys for single steps and using them for browsing through a document, all just with the right hand.

My latest laptop has the same four keys, and the same alternative uses when Fn is also pressed - but it has no Fn Lock button. (Googling suggests that there is simply no way of getting this range from this manufacturer to Function Lock.)

However, next to the four cursor keys is a large Shift key, and it is possible, with just one hand, to hold down the shift key and also press a cursor keys. Currently there is no action connected to Shift+any of the cursor keys.

So my question is: is it possible on Windows 10 to copy the actions of Fn+the cursor keys to Shift+the cursor keys? xiij ~talk~ 08:46, 28 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

See here. It used to be possible to define any unused combination, or maybe even redefine an existing one. Jmar67 (talk) 12:51, 28 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I can see, which isn't necessarily that far, that page describing the preset shortcuts doesn't give any info as to whether unused combinations can be defined xiij ~talk~ 13:18, 28 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Should there be any long-term problem using <pre> tag in an RTL (opposed to LTR) MediaWiki website?

I have installed MediaWiki 1.32.0 on a personal webserver environment. From different personal preferences I need to present multiline code examples only inside <pre> tags, and not inside <source> tags or <syntaxhighlight> tags.

I might need to change the CSS of the <pre> tag directly; adding some different display, adding some margins, paddings, etc.

The site is in a certain RTL language so everything is written from right to left.

Should there be any long term problem working with CSS-modified <pre> in an RTL website?
Is there some Out-Of-Box MediaWiki feature that could at least aesthetically malfunction from this situation?

Thanks, 182.232.164.217 (talk) 10:46, 28 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

July 3

Laptop with a dock only forwards to external monitors sometimes?

Hello! My work computer is a laptop connected to a dock via USB-C that forwards the display to two monitors. 90% of the time there's no problem but on some days like today I'll show up and it simply will not forward no matter how much power cycling and unplugging and Windows+P I do. It's a Dell Latitude 7490 and the dock is a Dell WD15. This has been a hard problem to google since it generally does work, so there's not a compatibility issue. I know that sometimes I've gotten it to work by restarting with the lid open but sometimes that doesn't do it either. Thanks for any insight! NIRVANA2764 (talk) 14:51, 3 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It never hurts to reboot everything, in case it's a software issue.

What I can suggest is that you try, one by one, replacing items in the setup, such as the cords, monitors, and finally laptop. If you have extras handy, this is easy to try. If not, then maybe just buy new cords (connecting dock to laptop, monitors, etc.), as they are the least expensive, and you probably wouldn't mind have extras anyway. If you find a defective component, replace it permanently.

Another possibility is that some type of interference is causing the connection to be lost. Try the setup elsewhere to determine if it's an outside source. Or, perhaps the monitors or dock are the source.

And power supply issues are a potential problem, too. If power drops out or has the wrong voltage, the monitors may not boot. An uninterruptible power supply (UPS) would address this, but they are expensive and don't last many years. SinisterLefty (talk) 14:57, 3 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Another thing it never hurts to check is the connections. Maybe one of the plugs or sockets is slightly damaged so that the plug may shift out of its proper position, for example. --76.69.117.113 (talk) 02:49, 4 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]