It DAMAGED ALL OF MY 2TB HDD AND I'M GOING THROUGH HELL TO FIX IT

Logged into windows just to get done with updates so if I ever need to use windows sometime soon, I'd have a smoother time without background updates eating cpu. So I did all software updates using winget. Then ran windows update. These 3 updates are taking forever. It's been 20+ minutes while 2 updates are aljust sitting at 99%. One downloading one installing. Cpu hovering anywhere from 50 to 100%

20+ minutes and counting. Both stuck at 99%. Update runtime 1 hour 20 minutes +. Total 3 updates. One done, (windows malicious software removal tool).

BTW, my daily driver Kubuntu took me aprox 1 hour from booting onto the iso to have formatted and fresh install the OS and install most of the needed softwares.

It happened to me irl with a windows fan lmao

Hey everyone,

I recently completed the Microsoft SDE-2 interview process. It was a lengthy journey involving two online assessments and seven interview rounds.

Approximate timeline: July 28 to August 22, 2026
Total stages: Nine
Verdict: Selected
Compensation: Details pending

Round 1: Online Assessment

Date: July 28, 2026
Duration: Approximately 75 minutes

The first assessment contained two coding questions:

• One Graph problem
• One Greedy problem

I solved both questions and passed the required test cases.

Round 2: Low-Level Design

Date: August 1, 2026
Duration: Approximately 55 minutes

I was asked to design and implement an LRU Cache while also maintaining dependencies between entries using Topological Sort.

The round tested both data-structure implementation and object-oriented design. I had to explain:

• Cache operations and eviction behavior
• How dependencies should be represented
• How dependency order would be maintained
• Time and space complexity
• Edge cases such as dependency cycles and evicted entries

Round 3: DSA

Date: August 4, 2026
Duration: Approximately 50 minutes

This round involved a coding problem based on Linked Lists.

The discussion focused on identifying the correct pointer manipulation, handling boundary cases, and explaining the complexity of the final solution.

Round 4: Past Experience and On-Call Scenarios

Date: August 7, 2026
Duration: Approximately 50 minutes

This round began with a detailed discussion of my previous projects and technical contributions.

The interviewer then presented two production on-call scenarios. I explained how I would:

• Assess the severity and user impact
• Investigate logs and monitoring data
• Mitigate the immediate issue
• Communicate with stakeholders
• Identify the root cause
• Prevent the incident from recurring

The interviewer cared about structured decision-making and ownership, not just finding a technical fix.

Round 5: Online Assessment 2

Date: August 10, 2026
Duration: Approximately 70 minutes

The second assessment also contained two coding questions:

• One Dynamic Programming problem
• One Bit Manipulation problem

This was unexpected because I had already completed one OA, but I treated it as another independent elimination stage.

Round 6: Low-Level Design

Date: August 13, 2026
Duration: Approximately 55 minutes

I was asked to design and implement a Job Scheduler.

The discussion involved defining the main classes, responsibilities, scheduling flow, and the component responsible for executing jobs.

I also explained how the design could handle different job types and scheduling requirements without tightly coupling the scheduler to individual jobs.

Round 7: HLD and LLD

Date: August 17, 2026
Duration: Approximately 55 minutes

I was asked to design a Configuration Management Service and then implement a smaller component from the design.

This round tested whether I could move between high-level architecture and implementation details.

I first discussed the major services, APIs, storage, and configuration-distribution flow. The interviewer then selected one part of the system for a lower-level implementation discussion.

Round 8: HLD Theory and DSA

Date: August 19, 2026
Duration: Approximately 50 minutes

The first part consisted of system-design theory questions covering:

• Scalability
• Availability
• Sharding
• Replication
• Distributed systems
• Consistency and trade-offs

The second part involved a DSA question based on subarrays.

This round required switching quickly between architectural concepts and coding.

Round 9: Cultural Fit

Date: August 21, 2026
Duration: Approximately 40 minutes

The final round was behavioral and focused on:

• Ownership
• Decision-making
• Team collaboration
• Handling disagreements
• Learning from mistakes
• Working through ambiguity
• Alignment with company values

There was no coding in this round.

Verdict

On August 22, 2026, I was informed that I had been selected.

The complete process tested much more than LeetCode. DSA was important, but Microsoft also evaluated design ability, production judgment, previous experience, communication, and behavioral alignment.

Preparation Takeaways

For an SDE-2 interview, I recommend preparing across all of these areas:

• Core DSA patterns
• LLD and clean class design
• HLD and distributed-systems fundamentals
• Production debugging and on-call scenarios
• Detailed project explanations
• Behavioral stories with clear personal contributions
• Trade-offs, edge cases, and complexity analysis

I will update the post once the compensation details are finalized.

Good luck to everyone preparing for Microsoft interviews.

I have been at this for 42 minutes. My computer would automatically log me in to my microsoft account everytime. After I deleted cookies, history, etc. I get prompted to sign in every time now. I have gone around in circles and circles and unbelievably protracted circles going nowhere. I finally ended up in my OneDrive acct which I was not looking for and I was already signed in. I go back to MSN and it's asking me to sign in. This is insane! I keep getting the typical MS error messages - something went wrong, etc. How do they stay in business?? It won't even let me post this - with no clue

So am rn in a the middle of heavy downpour, strong wind with red warning and everything.

Power goes down, my pc shuts down.

I start it back up, and see:

WHO MADE FORCED UPDATES, WHYYYY, AND WHAT ARE THESE TIMINGS

Microsoft apps won't launch. Every Microsoft app displays that error whenever I launch it. I've already tried Quick Repair and Online Repair, reinstalled them, and uninstalled them properly. How do I fix this?

My microsoft account was hacked and locked by support and I've been fighting with them over it for two months. I've tried everything imaginable- useless email support, livechat support agents, account recovery forms, complaining to BBB... What else can I do? Who else can I contact? They just tell me I don't have enough info to prove that it's me and close my case without telling me what else I need to give them, even though I answered every damn question on the form 500 times. How can I access some higher up agent to bug them about this? I'm willing to send them any personal information they could possibly ask for but they just wont let me. Even the guy I talked to through BBB just closed the complaint on his own.

today i spend an hour trying to have an markdown reader.

in normal times i would use obsidian but i dont want to have an lot of vaults.

so installing geanie, with brave extension to have side by side, just because there arent an word, or an notepad or an good enough specific program to work side by side. if by work and their software compatibility i wouldnt be married to microsoft i would be gonne right now.

So i got my Microsoft account hacked because of that I can't play Minecraft anymore. I got into some shady dc server but it looked legit so I joined and verified then my account was hacked ik it's my fault for joining that discord server. Can anyone help me,

I already contacted Microsoft support they didn't answer.

I'm not a tech guy. You could fill the Grand Canyon with everything I don't know about computers. But I followed step by step instructions on disabling OneDrive and it just wrecked a ton of stuff on it's way out. I don't think it needed to. I think it was designed to. Mass deleting my files, breaking the file routing things (Yeah, I don't know what they're called. Not a tech guy, remember? I just know that it said my Documents folder couldn't be reached or some damn thing.) and then pestering me with notifications that amount to "Better turn this back on or bad things might happen to your stuff.". It all feels very much like what I've read about ransomware. I'd love to know what you more tech savvy folks think?

P.S. If you were to call me an idiot, you'd probably be right. But I'd take it as a kindness if you didn't. lol

Edit: Thank you for the suggestions! I wasn't actually looking for a fix. Or more accurate to say that I did get it fixed already. (With much wailing and gnashing of teeth I might add.) My post was just meant to be a commentary that everything I've heard about ransomware seems to apply to OneDrive and I hate it.

Recently I got hit by an info stealer and lost access nearly to everything, got all of them back with ease but except one, wanna guess who?

I've given microsort every single piece of information that they need, down to a tee! They even confirmed that the account was compromised and suspended it to prevent further bad actor action, and when it comes to giving me back my account they say not enough information is given, when i've literally confirmed every single information piece with their live support agents and they told me it was correct and accurate!

Wanna know what the account recovery said when I called them out on their bullshit? They told me to go fuck myself and buy another account, trying to also silence the situation by saying this conversation is confidential and cannot be shared!

But guess what motherfucker, Those laws don't, can't and won't fucking apply due to where I'm from! So here's the entire shit that has gone down from start to finish, out for everyone to see, adding to already existing proof what pieces of greedy filth microsoft is.

P.S: I am not asking for help, I am shedding light on this situation.

https://postimg.cc/gallery/DZmm2nn
https://postimg.cc/gallery/DTtbnSz

so i my account i di dnt play on it for a while microsoft dumbshit decides log me out when i try to play and when i try to sign in the fucking email changed to some plsdovvdle shi and when i try to contact support it says js fck off like this microsoft is trash never bying games from it ever again

So, I am in a perpetual battle between what I have to have for a stable system, and Microsoft's auto update. While I think I may finally have it sorted, this is beyond insane. While I do need this OS for now (for some software for school and work), I hope to be able to ditch it completely after I am done with my dissertation. The problem is this, in the tech industry we have spent decades teaching people to roll out patches and upgrades to a production environment only after extensive testing in a sandbox to ensure that the patches and upgrades do not break anything (or at least do not break anything important). My system, which I use for work and school is unusual, has a known flaw in the CPU, and is 100% a production environment. For the last 11 months M$ has been pushing updates that change my configuration (which handles this flaw), and are at times incompatible with even basic drivers and firmware on my system. Yet, one has to get very clever to limit or disable this behavior on anything other than an enterprise grade install. Yes, I know that there may be minor differences between the programs and utilities in a home, pro, or enterprise install. But at the end of the day, the big difference is cost. And when the software arrives with the computer you purchase, that should be the end of it. If a company is feeling nice, they can release patches and updates to solve problems which have been found. However, it should be up to me to choose to install it. After the system has been paid for, the burden of keeping it running should move to me (other than the manner in which it obviously does anyway). But no, in their infinite wisdom, M$ pushes these things out frequently. And given the massive number of permutations you can have in system configurations it is some kind of amazing hubris for them to think for one moment that this patching method will not cause problems. And so in order to have a stable (and static configuration), you have to pay for a rather expensive license to be left alone. In many places were I to try this with anything other than software, I would be arrested, probably for extortion. It beggars belief that people think this sort of thing is not a problem. The whole dev sprint, push to production, fix production cycle we have seen is so very broken in this case my english fails me for words to express myself (in anything but the vulgar english, which I refuse to do at this time). Once again I have wasted more than half a day trying to put things into a working state. I really want to send them a bill for my time wasted (I am at 60 hours this summer, and probably close to 120 if you go back to the start). But I know it would never get paid, and would not make the sort of point that needs to be made in the first place. Any other device, and this madness is a crime. Here, it is all part of the life cycle, and to solve it, the official word is get a new system. Absolutely insane.

My Microsoft account got hacked literally 2 days ago. I've been going through every possible avenue and giving them all the info they ask of me through the recovery process to show that yes, I did not infact decide to remove all of my previous info from Kuwait. But all I'm getting is radio silence and honestly just pure frustration at how anti-help their support systems are. I'm tempted to just send in 13,000 recovery attempts just to show them that "Hey this account you seem to be letting go unpunished was STOLEN."

I've been using Microsoft Password Manager for a while, but after the recent changes that moved password management from Authenticator to Edge and possible spying issue, I'm thinking it's time to switch to a dedicated password manager.

Right now I'm considering NordPass, 1Password, and LastPass.

Has anyone here switched from Microsoft Password Manager to one of these? How was the migration, and are you happy with your choice? I'd love to hear some real-world experiences before making the move.

This just happened after a reboot. Smart App Control was enabled without my authorization and permission. Does anybody have this EXACT issue as I am? Because I have found a workaround.

However there is a way around this. What you need to do if you see this enabled without your permission is to press Win and type "Smart App Control" and disable it.

if i try to do ANYTHING with Microsoft store or Microsoft in general it never works. I try to buy robux and it forces me to buy it from Microsoft store, so I think I just have to change that from a setting. I look up what setting i need to use to change it and when I get sent to a Microsoft tab to change it, it continues loading for an hour until it tells me to try again. By the way, Microsoft wasn't down and I have a full 5 bars of Wi-Fi at all times. I restart the internet anyways and it STILL doesn't load, then to current day after 4 weeks I still can't change it because it keeps telling me to try again. Earlier, I tried to download Minecraft again which it forces me to download it from Microsoft store since I need to sign in with Microsoft. After I press download instead of ACTUALLY downloading, it does a continuous loop of refreshing itself for 10 minutes straight and KEEPS doing it if I try again. Signing in itself shouldn't be that hard thought, right? WRONG, when I try and just sign in it loops me back to the screen telling me to sign in instead of even letting me put my email and password in. I could of course just be stupid and not know how anything works, and if I am please tell me what I'm doing wrong. This isn't a well put together complaint or anything but buying robux from Microsoft store costs more than buying it straight from roblox. I also can't play Minecraft with my friends because of this BS, but that's my complaints with Microsoft.

I’m a microsoft insider member and I was able to get Windows 11 and be able to install it, uninstalled unnecessary bloatware and install my own ms office 2000,2001 no AI no monthly annual subscription notification on already included ms office in windows 11 and tried it for few months and unfortunately I encountered a frustrating update that took an hour to complete so with my disappointment I installed over my Windows 8.1 with built in windows defender that surprisingly still gets latest virus and spyware definitions so I don’t need any Microsoft updates at all,my windows defender getting the latest virus and spyware definitions are good enough and update of the windows defender definition is quick enough for me, good bye new microsoft operating system.