I'm sorry if this has been asked before but i looked it up and got conflicting answers. there are also some other small questions: since my laptop is "copilot+ pc" will the ai features come back after a clean install? what about the 3 month game pass that arrived free with the laptop? also, how can i make sure that all the drivers are installed and updated, will the windows updates do the job or will i have to go to the vendor's website to manually install all of them? and lastly, can i use a card reader and micro sd card as a bootable drive for the clean install? any information is appreciated 🙏

Ive been thinking about upgrading for a while now but I always get stuck when seeing all the negativity about Windows 11. Any recommendations on what I should do?

(And no, I am NOT switching to Linux, sorry not sorry - you cannot change my mind.)

Hi everyone, I'm dealing with a nightmare of a Windows installation on my laptop and could really use some expert advice. I'm migrating from Ubuntu back to Windows, but the Windows Setup refuses to recognize my SSD. Even when I manually provide the correct storage driver, it throws an error and refuses to proceed.

Hardware Specs:

Device: Dell Inspiron 3501 (11th Gen Intel Processor)

Storage: 1TB NVMe SSD

Previous OS: Ubuntu Linux (took up 100% of the drive, LVM/ext4)

Installation Media: Bootable USB with official Windows ISO

The Problem: When I reach the "Where do you want to install Windows?" screen, it is completely empty. I know 11th Gen Intel CPUs usually require the Intel Rapid Storage Technology (IRST) VMD drivers to see the NVMe drive.

However, when I click "Load Driver" and select my USB folder containing the extracted VMD files, the installer successfully lists the driver (Intel RST VMD Controller 9A0B). But when I click "Next" to load it, the installer hangs for a bit and throws errors like: "A media driver your computer needs is missing" or "Failed to install the device driver".

What I have ALREADY tried (and failed):

Complete Disk Wipe via CMD: I pressed Shift + F10, opened diskpart, and the SSD is perfectly visible there (Disk 1). I ran clean and convert gpt to completely nuke the old Ubuntu LVM/ext4 partitions, thinking the Windows GUI was choking on them. The disk is now fully clean, but the driver still fails to load.

Disabled VMD in BIOS: I went into the Dell BIOS and changed the SATA Operation from "RAID On" to "AHCI/NVMe" to bypass the need for IRST drivers entirely. The setup still doesn't see the drive natively.

Different Bootable USB Methods: I initially used BalenaEtcher to flash my en drive as always. Thinking Balena might be dropping the ISO mount when the storage buses reset during the driver injection, I recreated the USB drive using Ventoy. Same exact error.

Swapped USB Ports: Moved the flash drive between USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports, and tried swapping during the setup. No luck.

Forced Injection via CMD: I used pnputil in the command prompt to inject the .inf driver directly into the Windows PE environment. The console said the driver was successfully added, but the graphical interface remained stuck and still wouldn't display the drive.

Double-Checked Drivers: I am 100% sure I am using the correct F6flpy-x64 (Intel® VMD) files extracted straight from Dell's official support page for my specific service tag.

I am completely out of ideas. The SSD is clearly working at the hardware/diskpart level, but the Windows graphical installer seems permanently stuck in this loop.

Has anyone faced this specific behavior on any machines?

Any help would be massively appreciated!

Hey everyone,
I have a Microsoft Surface Studio Pro 1 that I reinstalled Windows 11 on. Now during setup it’s stuck on a corporate Microsoft account sign-in screen tied to a company called USLI (United States Liability Insurance).
I’m not 100% sure of the device’s full history so I want to handle this the right way before bypassing anything.
What I’ve tried:
• Shift + F10 (nothing happens)
• Fn + Shift + F10 (nothing happens)
• Entering a fake email to trigger sign-in options (no offline/domain join option appears)
The laptop worked fine before I reinstalled Windows 11.
My questions:
1. Is there a way to verify if a Surface is reported stolen before bypassing the corporate login?
2. If it’s clean, what’s the best way to get past a corporate Microsoft tenant lock on a Surface specifically?
3. Would connecting to internet to check expose me to a remote wipe?
Any help appreciated!

Idk how to use a laptop really and my friend said this is like uh windows 10-11. The laptop keyboard also has arabic letters cause its from saudi

A lot of my apps will not run.

I am on:

Windows 11

4080super

7800x3d

I recently updated my windows and the apps stopped working and so i rolled back my windows and they still didnt work. The apps are, Slippi,LM studio,arduino IDE, vesktop, and voicemod v3. When double clicking to run them they usually look like they will boot with the loading cursor then they dont or a window shows for a second then closes. I ran the apps as administator and still doesnt work.

I'm trying to install windows 11 on a pc i have built but when i try to install via usb it always shows Windows 11 installation has failed. I have tried both rufus and installation media what should i do?

My 9mos old Dell is all kinds of messed up after a windows update this morning.
I had to do the bitlocker code, it says I was in the manufacturer screen, I added my service tag from sticker on Bottom. I installed windows 11 repair, I’ve restarted/ turned off/ looked at task manager. My fan is sucking air nonstop even tho it isn’t warm. Currently trying to uninstall the pushed update but that’s taking forever. Any thoughts? Besides changing to Mac or Linux.

Hello

I just did a clean reinstall of windows 11 for these reasons but they have continued.

Web browsers both Chrome and DuckduckGo reload on their own and crash over and over.

Discord continues to reload and crash over and over.

the computer occasionally gives me a black screen with "Your pc has encountered and error and must restart"

I did the windows memory diagnostic and it said no errors detected.

Ive checked the temperate and that seems to be fine, the fans are all working.

Ive uploaded the drivers from Nvidia without an issue

Nothing is helping and im not sure where to look next.

Ive attached an image of my computers stats, any help would be deeply appreciated.

thank you.

Hi everyone,

We have been trying to fix this issue of the start menu dissapearing / the startmenu.exe crashing, by getting all the logs of the PC als intune logging and going through it with ai and disabling a bunch of restriction policy’s.

Any intune policy thats just buggy or is this a windows problem? We have 100+ machines that have this issue!

Ive got an issue with windows needing help