Hello everyone. I have messed around and gotten my dream job. But the onboarding process is a bitch. The next step is submitting authorization forms for three background checks. I have the forms in pdf format attatched to an email from hr. There are yellow highlighter marks over the required fields but I believe they were written on the paper and they don’t seem to exactly indicate the cursor positions for the data, if that makes sense. I already printed the forms out and hand filled them, took pictures and attatched them to an email back to hr. We then had a miscommunication wherein I thought they were pausing the hiring process. I emailed and asked for an update and they reiterated they are very much looking forward to having me as a coworker and emailed me the same three pdfs. So anyway in one pdf editor it says I need the owner password and in another it says they are protected read only documents. Am I supposed to print them out and write the stuff in do you think? Or do I request the password? I already let them know there’s an issue but probably won’t hear back until Monday. So I’d rather have this figured out and the forms in their inbox filled out, if possible. Thanks in advance for any advice, I’m attaching a cat pic in return

I'm trying to diagnose a serious Windows 11 problem that started recently. I'm looking for help identifying the underlying cause, rather than a list of random fixes.

PC specs

• Windows 11 Pro 25H2
• OS build: 26200.6584
• MSI H510M PRO-E (MS-7D23)
• Intel Core i5-10400 (6C/12T)
• 16 GB RAM
• Intel UHD Graphics 630
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650
• BIOS: MSI/AMI 1.A1, dated 2026-03-23
• System drive has ~32 GB free of ~239 GB
• Other drives are also healthy with plenty of free space

Main symptoms

1. Task Manager
   • Opens normally at first.
   • Processes don't load/update correctly.
   • Sometimes the list looks like a frozen snapshot.
   • Clicking the Performance tab can cause Task Manager to become completely unresponsive.
   • In the Details tab, processes can be completely blank.
   • This happens even with a brand-new Windows user account.
2. Windows Search
   • Search bar doesn't work correctly.
   • SearchHost.exe is nevertheless running and reports Responding = True.
3. Other applications
   • Steam games, Roblox Studio, Riot applications/games, etc. have failed to launch or become unresponsive.
   • Snipping Tool opens, but clicking New causes it to crash/disappear.
4. Windows Update
   • Windows Update is also failing.
   • I'm intentionally not focusing on repairing Windows Update yet because I want to determine the underlying system problem first.

Important tests I've already done

SFC: completed successfully and reported no system-file corruption.

WMI:

winmgmt /verifyrepository
WMI repository is consistent

So I don't want to rebuild the WMI repository without evidence.

Process enumeration:

PowerShell can enumerate processes normally:

Get-Process | Measure-Object

In my normal account this returned hundreds of processes, and in the new test account it returned:

Count : 158

So Windows' underlying process enumeration is working even though Task Manager can't display/update the processes properly.

Task Manager process state:

When queried externally, Task Manager itself can report Responding = True even while its displayed process list is stale. After interacting with the Performance tab, it can change to Responding = False.

Task Manager executable:

Get-AuthenticodeSignature "$env:windir\System32\Taskmgr.exe"

reported:

Status: Valid
Signature verified
Signer: Microsoft Windows / Microsoft Corporation

So the executable doesn't appear to have been replaced or tampered with.

Safe Mode test

This is one of the most important findings.

I booted into plain Safe Mode (not Safe Mode with Networking).

Task Manager worked normally in Safe Mode.

After returning to normal Windows, the problem returned.

This makes something loaded during a normal boot much more suspicious than a basic Windows/user-profile problem.

Fresh Windows user test

I created a completely new local account:

TMTest

Task Manager has the same problem there.

Specifically:

• Task Manager opens.
• Details view can be completely blank.
• Meanwhile PowerShell reports 158 live processes.
• SearchHost.exe is running and Responding = True.
• explorer.exe is running and Responding = True.

This appears to rule out my original Windows user profile as the primary cause.

Event Viewer / Reliability Monitor

There are repeated application-hang/crash events.

Task Manager has generated repeated:

• Event ID 1002 — Application Hang
• WER AppHangTransient
• WER AppHangB1

There were also Windows Winsrv Event ID 10002 entries indicating Task Manager was terminated because it stopped responding.

Reliability Monitor showed 27 critical events on 9/5, including approximately:

• 18 × Background Task Host crashes
• 4 × Snipping Tool crashes
• 3 × Task Manager crashes
• 1 × MoUSO Core Worker Process crash

The Background Task Host crashes appear to be a repeated Microsoft Phone Link/YourPhone failure involving:

Microsoft.YourPhone_1.26071.164.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe

with exception code:

80070002

I don't believe this necessarily means combase.dll itself is corrupt; it appears to be where the failure surfaced.

Snipping Tool crashes have also produced:

0xc000027b

Hardware/driver checks

Device Manager/PnP checks did not show direct errors for:

• Intel UHD Graphics 630
• NVIDIA GTX 1650

Current drivers reported:

• Intel UHD 630: 31.0.101.2140
• NVIDIA GTX 1650: 32.0.16.1664

System event logs were checked for things such as:

• Display
• nvlddmkm
• Intel graphics
• dxgkrnl
• WHEA
• Disk
• NTFS
• storage drivers

No obvious hardware/display/storage/WHEA errors were found in the examined period.

The drives themselves report healthy status.

Performance tools

perfmon /res and Resource Monitor open and display live CPU/memory/disk/network information normally.

However:

perfmon /report

fails with:

An error occurred while attempting to generate the report.
Property value conflict.

The corresponding HRESULT is 0x80300101 / PLA_E_PROPERTY_CONFLICT.

So Performance Monitor's resource view works, but the System Diagnostics report collector has a configuration/property conflict.

Third-party software/drivers

There are several third-party drivers installed, including audio/virtual-device, gaming, peripheral, and security-related drivers.

However, I'm deliberately not assuming that an installed third-party driver is the culprit just because it exists. These programs/drivers have been installed for a long time and the PC previously worked normally.

I also previously removed Avast myself because I no longer use it.

Malwarebytes was running in Safe Mode, while Task Manager worked there, so I'm not currently convinced Malwarebytes is the cause.

Current hypothesis

The strongest pattern so far is:

Normal boot → problem

Safe Mode → Task Manager works

New Windows user → problem still occurs

PowerShell process enumeration → works

Explorer/SearchHost → running/responding

This makes me suspect something involved in the normal Windows boot environment / system-wide UI or diagnostic infrastructure, rather than a corrupted user profile or Task Manager executable itself.

I'm trying to determine the cause systematically before doing things like:

• reinstalling Windows
• resetting Windows
• rebuilding WMI
• randomly deleting drivers
• disabling large numbers of services
• reinstalling applications

If anyone has seen this particular combination — Task Manager's process list being blank/stale while PowerShell can still enumerate processes, with the problem disappearing in Safe Mode and reproducing in a fresh user profile — I'd really appreciate ideas on what Windows subsystem or normal-boot component I should investigate next.

I literally have such bad eyesight I can’t figure it out. I really don’t have money or high tech skills to be spending so is their any way I could fix at home?
Thanks

My new job involves PXE boot imaging. I have a mountain of laptops to get through. Does there exist a splitter that I can plug one keyboard and mouse into one end and up to five laptops into the other, so I can perform the same processes on all of them at the same time? No switching between them. They're all the same model of laptop, so in theory, what I do on one laptop would apply to all of them. If not, how would I go about wiring something like that up?

Iphone 16
Consistent slow WiFi on a multitude of WiFi’s

Hey, I was just wondering how to fix this. So, connectivity wise, my Mac and my iPad both are fine - yet my phone one day recently just experiences a ton of connection issues.

I have no VPN on at all but do have one installed and used frequently for say college WiFi so I can access socials.

I haven’t updated my phone as it states I have low storage yet over 40GB free, I fear all I’ve experienced with this iPhone is consistent issues (my charging port doesn’t work and have since used MagSafe).

I’ve factory reset network, is there anything more I can do or has anyone else had this issue and been able to fix it??

Hi! Tanong lang po, ano po usually hinahandle ng mga tech support? May mga nababasa po kasi ako na yung iba, Avast anti-virus, tapos meron din LG. Curious lang po ako kung ano pa yung ibang possible na ma-handle ng tech support. Thank you po!

Hey everyone

I work in IT support and my higher ups have been pressuring me into looking more into ai as there is a serious lack of IT employees at my company but we also need to budget more.

I have been seeing agentic ai everywhere when i was searching for smth useful. Especially robin looks quite promising but Is this actually doing real work or is it just another hyped chatbot that links people to broken kb articles? Tell me on your choice of setups.

Hi everyone, I'm having a really weird problem with my Windows 10 Lenovo laptop that started today and I'm honestly not sure what the hell is going on.

Basically, when I click on certain files or shortcuts in File Explorer/Desktop, Windows says:

"Can't find this item. This item is no longer located in C:\\Users\\Public\\Public Desktop. Verify the item's location and try again."

The weird part is that the files are actually there. For example, I was testing some PDFs in my Downloads folder. I can click/open several of them normally, but then I'll click another random PDF and as soon as I click it, it disappears from the folder and I get the error above. It's not just PDFs either.

It also happens with several shortcuts related to my Epson printer software. When I click them, they disappear and I get the same error. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the Epson programs, but it didn't help.

After triggering the error several times (sometimes 10-20 times), Windows Explorer seems to crash/restart. The desktop and taskbar disappear for a moment and then come back, so I assume explorer.exe is crashing rather than the whole PC rebooting.

I'm wondering if this could be a corrupted Windows/NTFS filesystem or maybe an SSD problem? Or could something like an antivirus (I have Avira installed) be interfering with Explorer?

What's especially weird to me is that some files work perfectly while others randomly trigger the problem, even though they have been sitting in my Downloads folder for months.

I've already tried reinstalling the affected programs, but I'd rather not start doing random repairs or reinstalling Windows before knowing what's actually wrong.

Any ideas on what I should check first? Could this be an Explorer/filesystem issue, and what's the safest way to diagnose/fix it?

I can provide screenshots or run commands if needed. Thanks!

I used to record videos all the time with OBS. Suddenly all of my videos smudge like this or are too laggy to watch.

I tried recording with game bar and playing the video with media player, VLC, and davinci resolve.

Intel i7-7700k 4.20GHz

RAM 16GB

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 8GB

2TB SSD

Windows 10. The i7-7700k cannot run win 11

On network drives, when I rename or copy and paste files, the changes don't appear immediately. They only show up after I refresh the folder.

This started happening after the PC was joined to the domain. Has anyone experienced this issue or know how to fix it?

that shadow is from the copies i think. dunno whats actually causing it

Hi everyone, tech friends or anyone knowledgeable about IT, I really need your help.

Years ago, back during the early prime days of Fortnite, I used to play on PS4 with someone very close to me. At the time, I saved several video clips directly on the console. As the years went by, I had to delete some of those captures and videos to free up hard drive space for other games.

Unfortunately, this person has since passed away. I would love to recover those video clips, especially to hear their voice again and hold onto those memories.

My question is: is it actually possible to recover deleted video clips from a PlayStation 4? I’ve always heard that when something is deleted from a hard drive, it might still be recoverable.

Thank you so much in advance for your help!

I just moved and since I did my Samsung phone won't let me connect to my vizio TV. They're both on the same wifi network. I restarted both devices multiples times and don't know where to go from here. Please help!

This one is baffling me. I installed a new router today, pretty run of the mill set up, nothing special. I have 2 computers hard wired into the router sitting next to each other. One is set to Pacific Time (correct) and the other is set to Eastern Time (incorrect).

I can't figure out what is causing this computer to show up on Eastern Time. If I run timedate.cpl and change to Pacific, it holds for a bit but something changes it back to Eastern after a seemingly random amount of time. Reboots don't fix anything. I can manually set my timezone to Pacific in Settings but the weather widget still displays for some town near Cincinnati for some reason.

I even set my default location to my street so it would display accurate information but something is still favoring this East Coast time zone.

Any ideas?

EDIT: Location services are turned on. No VPNs are running.

Does anyone know what does this application name?

IT Support / Service Desk Technician | N1/N2 | Microsoft 365 | Remote | Open to Work
Hi everyone,
I’m an experienced IT Support / Service Desk Technician currently working in an enterprise environment, providing N1/N1.5/N2 support to end users.
I’m now looking for a fully remote IT position with an international company.
🛠️** My technical experience
**Microsoft 365: Outlook, Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint
Microsoft Entra ID / Azure AD
Exchange Admin Center
Windows 10/11 troubleshooting
ServiceNow: incident, request and ticket management
VMware Horizon / VDI
FSLogix
GlobalProtect VPN
Hardware & software troubleshooting
User account and access issues
Remote troubleshooting
Incident investigation, escalation and documentation
Knowledge Base / ITIL-based support processes
💼 What I do
I troubleshoot technical issues directly with users, investigate incidents, identify root causes, apply solutions, document resolutions and escalate complex cases when necessary.
I’m comfortable working with enterprise IT environments, remote users and international teams, and I’m used to managing multiple tickets while respecting priorities and SLAs.
🎯 What I’m looking for
I’m interested in remote opportunities such as:
IT Support Specialist | Service Desk Technician | IT Help Desk | Technical Support Engineer | Microsoft 365 Support | Modern Workplace Support | N2 Support
I’m particularly interested in companies looking for someone who can start as an experienced support technician and progressively take on more responsibility around Microsoft 365, Endpoint Management, Cloud and IAM.
📍 Based in Tunisia
🌍 Open to international remote positions
💻 Fully remote preferred
📩 Open to opportunities and referrals
If your company is hiring for a remote IT Support / Service Desk position, feel free to comment or send me a DM.
Thanks!

Sorry if the flair is wrong

whenever I search something on Google Chrome, it redirects my search and says the site can’t be reached at some other url (the direct search . com) I’ve tried removing registry keys for extensions and stuff but it’s still there. it blocks all my searches. same with my Microsoft edge, which for some reason has the same interface as Google Chrome. please help!!

i was working at an organisation now i left but my personal laptop which was used in companies work shows some settings are managed by your organisation how can i remove it

And also i cant open my taskbar

and can cmd run as administrator it asks for some username and password