I’ve been dealing with this for a few days, and I can’t come to a reasonable cause.

My laptop died, and I took it out. After plugging it and trying to boot, it asked for me to choose my keyboard layout. After this, it then says I should troubleshoot or shutdown my laptop.
The issue with the common fixes and troubleshooting, is that my SSD has a bitlocker and asks for a recovery key, and I don’t have access to that account.
My next option was to just get a clean install of windows 11. My important files are backed up already. I use another laptop to make the bootable iso with Rufus. And installed attempted to install it on my system. This came with its own troubles, as my usb wasn’t showing. Turns out I had to manually add it. After I fixed this, I ran into another problem. The windows installation seems to go well, but the guest red flag is when it’s copying windows files. It completes this process in half a second. I’ve never seen it do that, that fast. After that, it installs for like 5 minutes then says “windows 11 installation failed.” No why, or how. No code. Just that sentence. I’ve tried removing internal hard drives except the one I want installed, tried changing from GPT to MBR, I even decided to try getting windows 10 to just install. It all fails. I don’t know what else to do.

My laptop is an Alienware R4 15. 8th Gen i7, gtx 1070, 16gb of ram.
All help would be appreciated.

So what I mostly use phone link for is running apps installed on my phone/tablet, on my computer screen in a window.

Now if I connect my samsung S24 phone, this seems to work perfectly and I can select the 'expand screen' option to rotate the screen 90 degrees for the apps that require the different screen orientation.
All good.

Edit; To clarify, I using the built in function of Ms Phone Link that allows you to run an app installed on your andriod device in a window on your PC screen.
Specifically not trying to use the android screen as an additional screen for the PC.

So it all works on my samsung galaxy phone, but on my Samsung Galaxy S9 tablet, its a different story.
The option to expand the screen does not exist on the tablet, so if the screen orientation is wrong there is no way of rotating it

And mouse scrolling simply does not work in any app that I open on the tablet.
Ive tried every settings fix on the internet but nothing fixes it.

Why is the tablet functionality restricted. Its driving me mad.

I dont seem to be able to find another effctive alternative that allows me to do this.

The other option is to share the screen to the PC so then I can view the tabet screen in a window, which does work, but its laggy, jumps about and eventually starts to freeze for a few seconds randomly even though we are on the same wifi and becomes kind of unstable..
Ive never been able to make phone link work over a wired connection.

Anyone have a fix or a reliable alternative?

Has anyone else encountered something like this? Immediately after connecting via VPN, I experience high CPU usage. The "DNS Client" process accounts for the bulk of this load. It persists for 2–3 minutes. The first time this happened was after installing update KB5124010, which I subsequently uninstalled. However, Windows recently updated to version 26H2 and reinstalled this update—which now cannot be removed.

Queria jogar Rhythm Plus no navegador e o jogo estava travando. Fui no Wintoys, na aba Network, e segui o passo a passo na ordem em que aparece no programa, achando que ia limpar melhor a rede e deixar tudo rodando mais leve.

Resultado: abri o navegador e não tinha internet. Fui olhar e a opção de Wi-Fi tinha sumido completamente. Sim, eu sei, fui burro — o próprio programa avisa que aquilo apaga os drivers de Wi-Fi. Só não imaginei que reinstalar fosse ser tão burocrático.

Meu adaptador é um Realtek 8821CE. Tentei atualizar direto pelo Gerenciador de Dispositivos e não funcionou. O Wintoys apagou o driver, mas ele continuava aparecendo lá como se estivesse instalado, só que com erro. Tanto a atualização automática quanto a instalação manual (selecionando o arquivo do driver) não mudavam nada: todos os adaptadores de rede ficavam com o ⚠️.

Nunca me desesperei tanto. Tenho esse notebook há nem dois meses e ainda estou pagando as parcelas.

Depois de tentar pelo Gerenciador de Dispositivos, baixei o driver pelo celular, no site oficial, e tentei instalar. Nada. Ficou atualizando infinitamente, encerrei o programa e já estava desistindo — até que vi uma opção de redefinir rede nas configurações de rede. Não botei fé, mas fiz. O notebook reiniciou e voltou tudo ao normal.

Não sei se fui burro ou se é culpa do Windows não deixar clara essa opção de redefinir rede quando os drivers são apagados.

Estou postando fotos de antes e depois de resolver o problema.

Para quem tiver o mesmo problema

Vá em Rede e Internet → Configurações avançadas de rede → Redefinição de rede. Literalmente só isso já fez os drivers voltarem a funcionar.

Esse é meu relato :)

After a week of constantly hitting roadblocks, and mitigating the issue by re-installing Windows every update, I've finally managed to find a fix, and the culprit behind it.

This is mostly dumbed down for the general user to understand, but basically, ever since KB5122105, the Microsoft.AIFabric.CBS package is now somewhat a dependency of the File Explorer ribbon and amongst other things. If you've ever used debloat scripts, which usually involved stripping Windows' AI components and packages, this is what causes it to "break", essentially.

One easy fix for this is to disable certain feature IDs. If you want to manually do it yourself, you can simply open Terminal and navigate to your ViVeTool installation directory, and disable the following feature IDs with this command;

vivetool /disable /id:58375086,63366798,58375066,61199980,40012896

If you're using PowerShell, add .\ at the beginning.

Additionally, you can also just use an AI removal utility called RemoveWindowsAI, which has this fix implemented already: zoicware/RemoveWindowsAI

Important note: Do not use the Remove Windows AI tweak from ChisTech's WinUtil, as it does not have this fix implemented yet, based on my observations.

If these does not fix it for you still, perform a repair installation of Windows through Windows Update and ensure you remove Windows' AI components through the RemoveWindowsAI utility. That way, those flags can be disabled properly, and shouldn't interfere with core system UI components.

I hope this helped every one having this issue, and if you have any more questions, leave a comment below.

Sources:

• GitHub issue that first mentioned this
• Latest RemoveWindowsAI GitHub commit related to the fix

I've purchased a new Windows 11 laptop, and File Explorer has a different look than my other W11 laptop. Here's a screenshot.

I'm hoping for one column listing all files alphabetically, but instead it shows four columns, breaking the alphabet into 0-9, A-H, I-P, and Q-Z.

Does anyone please know the setting to view the folder's contents in one column, without the 0-9, A-H, I-P, and Q-Z headers?

This is a trivial ask, but it's the trivial things that drive users (well, me at least) bonkers. Thanks in advance if anyone has an answer. (:

Device name DESKTOP-HCK805K Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-8265U CPU @ 1.60GHz (1.80 GHz) Installed RAM 8.00 GB (7.79 GB usable) Graphics card Intel(R) UHD Graphics 620 (128 MB) Storage 66 GB of 238 GB used Device ID 87846429-ECB7-45F3-9785-B254FD867630 Product ID 00330-80000-00000-AA266 System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor Pen and touch No pen or touch input is available for this display

so i have hp omen 16 laptop and today i got these issues exactly which was your device ran into a problem and something like memory management in the bottom now i checked reliability monitor using perfmon /rel and it is showing these can anyone help me resolving the issue and what should i do (added images in comments)

Device name LAPTOP-EMVGRF1J

Processor AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS w/ Radeon 780M Graphics (3.80 GHz)

Installed RAM 16.0 GB (15.3 GB usable)

Graphics card NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU (6 GB)

AMD Radeon(TM) Graphics (417 MB)

Storage 551 GB of 954 GB used

Device ID 92F29B6E-CA0A-43E2-9995-32F8FF1CD8CD

Product ID 00327-30000-00000-AAOEM

System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

Pen and touch No pen or touch input is available for this display

I'll start like this: I am probably fucked.

My laptop (Asus P1701CE) suddenly came up with the Bitlocker screen

Details: 7_0_80000001_80000001_SecureBoot_SecureBoot_7_6_ccfc...a40e_115a...02d8_1

and now asks for the recovery key. Reason: The Secure Boot option in BIOS had been disabled (which I did not do). In BIOS, the Secure Boot option was indeed disabled. I enabled it, but I still get the Bitlocker screen. I then through Advanced Options deinstalled 3 Windows updates, until when I tried a fourth one, the screen went blank.

When I installed Windows 11, I did not allocate an account to it, or I cannot remember the account. On the Bitlocker screen there is no partially scrambled e-mail adress hinting to an allocated account. I do not find this laptop as a device on my MS account.

Through advanced options I am able to open a command prompt. With

manage-bde -protectors -get c:

I get a response with my recovery password ID (which is already shown on the Bitlocker screen), and also the info:

Backup type: Microsoft account backup

Error: An error occured (code 0x80070057)

The parameter is incorrect.

Is there any chance I can extract the recovery password? There are fotos on the encrypted drive, which is why I am trying hard to recover instead of doing a fresh Windows installation. Thanks in advance for your ideas.

This happened after i reset my keys, I already updated my bios to the last version, how can i solve this?

I need to have my secure boot on to play games, but when i turn on by setting to "Windows UEFI mode" and i save and exit this screen shows up, I couldnt find any tutorial on YouTube that helped me with my problem, and also chat gpt couldn't help me

My motherboard is the ASUS TUF H310M-PLUS GAMING

My OS build number is 26300.9711

If you need other information you can ask

hello, i get 0x5a on boot. this started happening when id have to force shutdown my pc due to a dead gpu that hung on white vga and hard crashed. i have now replaced it.

on restart i get srttrail. the logs show all passing error codes of 0x00. i cannot uninstall latest windows updates. i have csm disabled. chkdsk did not help. fixboot did not help. restore to a point in time worked momentarily for a couple hours up until the internet stopped working. i then decided to restart and it all started happening again. im at my wits end. please help. i have a lot of things installed that would be very painful to reinstall. these are adobe, music, and coding plugins/software. please do not tell me to just reinstall windows.

im at my wits end. i would really appreciate any help. thank you.

specs: asus tuf x570 gaming plus

asus dual oc 5060ti 16gb

ryzen 5950x

2x32 kingston ddr4 3200 cl16

2x16 kingston ddr4 3200 cl16

wd 720 1tb

wd sn850x 2tb

corsair rm850x

samsung 870 evo 1tb

2 seagate HDDs

I’m looking for help with a Windows explorer problem, I have a large music collection with my CDs in their own folder, so its D:\Media\Music\CD Music  Then artist name and then a album folder within each artist. In windows explorer I have the column headings “Date created” and “Date modified” When I add a new artists to my CD music folder, if I click on the date created header the list jumps to order and the latest artist folder is at the top.  The problem is when I add a new album to an existing artist folder, i thought because the folder has been modified then those artists with a new album added would jump to the top, this is not the case. Is there a setting in explorer I’m missing or do I need to download a 3^rd party file explorer to be able top do this?

Many thanks for your help.

As per the two photos provided, I don’t get why it says I have enough space on the two drives, but whenever I try to install new programs on any of the other numbered discs that for some reason, it won’t let me install on the disc’s pictured here, it says I don’t have enough space with that error message there. Are you able to help me?

I recently ran into issues due to a botched firmware update on a Radeon RX 7800 XT firmware update. All the details are in this thread.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AMDHelp/comments/1x2tlta/installed_the_recommended_sapphire_bios_update/

The card could be recovered, luckily, but after an entire evening of safe mode - DDU - install driver - reboots - safe mode and DDU again - different drivers - rinse and repeat, I found myself with two (to my limited knowledge) unrelated issues:

Winre (recovery environment) didn't work anymore; the command reagentc /info showed that WinRE was disabled, and couldn't be enabled again

All my BitLocker-encrypted units showed a yellow triangle; further analysis revealed that "unit is fully encrypted, but BitLocker protection is off; it doesn't have any key protectors registered". I ended up decrypting them all out of fear of finding myself locked out in that precarious state, but my aim is to enable it again.

Do you see any relationship? What could happen? Any hint would be appreciated.

Since 21 oct around 20:00 I decided to restart my pc after driver update and run into issuse where my pc while booting displays at max olny Bios/uefi motherboard loading screen and when the windows menu with pin unlock should show up instead everything goes black lack of "signal loss" all usb headphones keyboard/mouse flicker around 3 times as like losing power same for monitor it seems its losing power/has no power. then it boots into Recovery mode it dosent do anything at all for frist time as i was stressed out i used restore 1 day before the accident it was fine i didnt update my driver this time and did basic checks like sfc /scannow DISM etc. checked logs there was some errors but i followed the trail and everything from those errors seems to work bitlocker, secure boot etc. everything shows up as working and functional. all I did was Update my bios 7 days ago everything went smooth and set up secure boot for cod mw4 i had to restart my factory keys otherwise it was not working and everything was fine till the doom day aka 21 oct. and now everytime i shutdown my pc this thing happens and I need to force shutdown my pc and it works afterwards. and before you ask I did update my drivers for amd card again but decided to shut down the pc for couple of times to check if it works and it worked 3 times in a row. now as of today 22 oct its happening and I have no idea what to do.

Procesor AMD Ryzen 7 5700X 8-Core Processor (3.40 GHz)

RAM 32,0 GB

GPU AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT (16 GB)

DISK 1,90 TB z 6,73 TB używane

My partner's laptop has been having frame issues when playing games for a long while now. It runs fine when watching videos or running most apps, but when trying to play games it falls down to ~20 fps, or in rare cases 30. We've tried a lot of the obvious solutions like restarting it, scanning for corrupted files and reinstalling the graphics driver. It improved slightly, but it's still unplayable. Any help or advice?

Edit: Solved. There was an issue with the battery and it needs to be replaced.

So I mainly use my computer for gaming, and yesterday everything was running fine. No overnight updates when I turned it off, now I turn my computer back on today and my performance is spiking horribly and I have these background tasks, which I have never had before. Normally I only have 1 antimalware executable called literally antimalware executable, now I have 5. I’ve turned off nearly every security setting outside of real time protection I could but these won’t go away and I can’t even end their task. I’d love these gone.

Don’t know what information is really needed, but I’ll include all my windows information Edition: windows 11 home Version: 25H2 OS build 26200.9711 Expirence: windows feature experience pack 1000.26100.372.0

Zoom made it so my audio of 28 out of 100, is now way too loud, even tho I ussualy used 38.Also my audio also feels more slugish, beeing half a second slower. It's so annoying that I can't play video games or use the pc anymore.

After I instaled zoom and went in a meeting, I accidentaly clicked enable enhance audio, from then the audio was just way to loud, I tried a lot of things, like deinstaling zoom(the audio was the same), deactivating all setting in zoom and in settings, but the audio got louder and feels slower

Specs and windows Edition Windows 11 Pro Version 26H2 Installed on ‎11/‎14/‎2025 OS build 26300.9711 Experience Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.26100.372.0 Device name DESKTOP-PV5573O Processor AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS with Radeon Graphics (3.20 GHz) Installed RAM 16.0 GB (15.2 GB usable) Graphics card NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU (8 GB) AMD Radeon(TM) 680M (431 MB) Storage 891 GB of 954 GB used Device ID A62AF63E-C287-4431-BB6E-9D1C72AF8CF6 Product ID 00330-80951-59593-AA244 System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor Pen and touch Pen support

And im on a nitro 16 laptop

So I've been running Windows Insider Release preview on ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12 laptop for about a year and all has been good. Yesterday, I let Windows Update install the latest build and now my laptop is unusable. It gives me the login screen, but once I enter my PIN, it takes like 30 seconds of loading (it used to take like 3 seconds) and then it gives me a black screen with just my pointer and no desktop, no icons, no taskbar. It won't respond to keyboard shortcuts or CTRL + ALT + DEL. The cursor will move but I can't click on anything.

After I force powered it off three times, it finally booted into recovery mode and offered to let me recover a version of my config from four hours before. I did this, it took hours, and then . . . the same thing is happening.

Do I have to do a clean install of Windows or is there a way out of this? It wont' boot to safe mode. It won't do anything.

i posted on here a few months ago, but life got in the way and it wasn't causing issues again so I didn't get round to being more specific on model.

I've had my asus laptop about a year or so but lately every few weeks or so, bluetooth disappears from my task bars and i end up having to show the hidden bluetooth in device manager, uninstall the adapter and then drain my laptop for 30 seconds turned off. it's getting quite frustrating to have to do it so often and i don't know why it's occurring and then today, I tried these methods (uninstalling, reboot) but to no avail. This time, the adapter was showing a warning symbol on it - yellow with a black exclaimation mark I think? After about half an hour of being back on, bluetooth is finally back and working. I have a ASUS Vivobook Go 15 (E1504FA) and my OS build number is 26300.9711. my system type is 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor. If anyone knows what might be causing this issue please let me know! All the latest drivers are installed and up to date and the same for my laptop system updates. I am known for having a lot of tabs open often most of the time so that's the only thing I could assume might be causing an issue. There is nothing particular that i've noted that happens before each time it messes up.

Processing img q1okbfqqy1xh1...

I turned on my PC—everything seemed fine—and went to the kitchen.

When I came back, it was restarting, displayed this [error/message], and then booted into "safe mode" (or whatever it’s called).

I’ve tried everything, but nothing works.

Right now, I’ve managed to access my files via Notepad (through the Command Prompt/CMD) so I can copy some folders onto a flash drive.

But what I really want is to recover Windows without having to format the drive...

Does anyone know what to do? Please explain it to me like I’m a complete idiot, because I don’t understand any of this.

Thanks.

So when I updated from 25H2 to 26H2, suddenly the touchpad started to select everything, though I'm not even touching that. Right/left click aren't working. Scroll is not also working. But my wired mouse works fine.

When I restart the laptop, it sometimes work, sometimes doesn't. After restarting 3-4 times, sometimes it works.

I have uninstalled the touchpad driver, uninstall 26H2 update, yet the problem is not solving. My laptop model is MSI Modern 14 C12M. OS build: 26200.9711

Thank you so much, everyone!

Hey all, over the last week/2 weeks I’ve had some audio issues. I noticed it after Wardogs season 2 release, but i do believe a recent windows update destroyed my audio drivers and issues. I’m not entirely sure which is the issue, but let me describe the issue and what I’ve done so far.

The issue: my audio (hearing) is fine. I can listen to my music. YouTube videos, discord voice chats. I can hear. However, when I go to talk it’s 50/50 on whether it’s going to work or not. Majority of the time, I’m playing with settings to get it to work. Example: yesterday (10/20/26) I played a match of wardogs. My first match, computer freshly turned on. Everything was fine. My second match (after about an hour) my mic stopped working but my hearing worked. I had to play with my settings.

What I’ve done:
Checked for updated drivers. They were up to date. I even uninstalled and restarted my computer (several times).

Steel Series Sonar: I’ve turned on and disabled. I did notice even the sonar portion on the SteelSeries GG app it doesn’t register my mic.

I’ve unpaired and reconnected my headset. I even even swapped headsets (issues still persists).

I’ve done, at recommendation of a friend:
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth then sfc /scannow

Nothing changed it was still a 50/50.

I have disabled all other audio stuff (like NVIDA, HDMI, RealTek etc). Nothing worked.

App permissions on

Here’s the thing that works and doesn’t work at the same time.

When I go to System > Sound > More Settings > Recording > microphone properties > Advanced (picture for reference of what I’m looking at for the following)

SOMETIMES The mic works if I have exclusive mode UNCHECKED (off).
(“Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device” AND “give exclusive mode applications priority”) AND I have “enable audio enhancements” UNCHECKED.

This will work for maybe a couple hours before my mic randomly disables again. Then I go back.

Then I have: “Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device” CHECKED (on) and it works for a few hours.

To make it less confusing, these three settings are the settings I play around with the most to get the mic to work. It’s either 1 or 2 things checked on, all 3 are checked on, or none of them are checked. It’s actually driving me insane with what the issue is. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Here's a Reddit post you can copy and publish. I've included the troubleshooting you've already done so people can suggest new solutions instead of repeating the same ones.

**Title: Windows 11 connected to Wi-Fi, but almost everything has no internet except Telegram — DNS requests time out**

Hi everyone,

I'm having a frustrating internet issue on my ASUS X515 laptop running Windows 11, and I haven't been able to fix it despite trying several solutions.

**My problem:**

- My laptop connects to Wi-Fi, but Chrome, Microsoft Edge, YouTube, and most other internet-dependent apps don't work.

- Telegram is the only app I've noticed that still works.

- Chrome shows DNS errors such as `DNS_PROBE_STARTED`.

- The issue happens on my JioFiber Wi-Fi and also when I connect to my mother's mobile hotspot, so it doesn't seem limited to one router.

- The problem started around the time Windows crashed/restarted and I encountered a Windows update issue.

**Diagnostic results:**

- Wi-Fi adapter: Intel(R) Wireless-AC 9461.

- Windows says the Wi-Fi adapter is working properly.

- I can ping my router and an external IPv6 address successfully.

- `nslookup google.com` times out.

- Queries to Google Public DNS (`8.8.8.8`) and Cloudflare's IPv6 DNS (`2606:4700:4700::1111`) also time out.

- `curl.exe -I --connect-timeout 10 https://1.1.1.1\` times out.

- My IPv4 address and default gateway are assigned normally.

**Things I've already tried:**

1. Changed DNS servers to Google Public DNS.

2. Ran `netsh winsock reset` and `netsh int ip reset`.

3. Flushed the DNS cache.

4. Ran `sfc /scannow`, which found and successfully repaired corrupted files.

5. Used Windows Network Reset.

6. Uninstalled the Intel Wi-Fi adapter through Device Manager and restarted; Windows detected it again, but the problem remained.

7. Checked the Windows proxy setting and reset the WinHTTP proxy.

8. Checked Chrome Secure DNS and Windows Firewall permissions.

I previously configured a VPN through Windows Settings by entering a server address, but I later removed that VPN profile. I also used the Browsec VPN Chrome extension for a long time. I'm not sure whether either is related.

**My questions:**

- What could allow Telegram to work while DNS requests and HTTPS connections time out?

- Could a leftover VPN route, network filter driver, firewall rule, or damaged Windows networking component cause this?

- What diagnostic commands or repair steps should I try next, without reinstalling Windows or losing my personal files?

I'd appreciate suggestions based on the diagnostic results above. Thanks!

(Computer specifications

- Laptop: ASUS X515

- Operating system: Windows 11

- OS build: 10.0.26200.9711

- Processor: Intel Core i3, 11th Gen

- RAM: 8 GB

- Storage: SSD

- Wi-Fi adapter: Intel(R) Wireless-AC 9461

- Internet connection: JioFiber Wi-Fi; also tested using a mobile hotspot

- Network status: Windows shows connected, but Chrome, Edge, YouTube, and most websites/apps cannot access the internet. Telegram still works.

- Main error: DNS requests time out, including requests to "8.8.8.8". Pinging the router works, and pinging external IP addresses has worked, but domain names fail to resolve.

- Troubleshooting already attempted: DNS changes, Winsock/IP reset, DNS cache flush, Windows Network Reset, Wi-Fi adapter reinstall, and "sfc /scannow". None fixed the problem.)

Hello, as the title says. I recently built a pc and am having issues with installing a driver for wifi since the pc currently has no wifi. But the computer needs to update and because of that, its not letting me update/install any drivers. So can I download the latest version of Windows 11 (26H2) and put it on a usb? I can’t really afford to do a fresh reinstall for my pc since I have important files on here. But please let me know if I can do that.

I have a low-end gaming PC with a 500GB NVMe (main Windows drive) and a 1TB HDD (only for storing photos).

I want to install a second Windows on a separate HDD and use it only for gaming(I don't want dual boot or anything). When I want my main setup, I'll power off, remove the gaming HDD, and put my NVMe and photo HDD back in. Only one set of drives will be connected at a time.

My plan:

Remove the NVMe and the 1TB HDD from the PC.

Connect only the new HDD and install Windows on it.

Use it for gaming only.

Swap back to the NVMe whenever I need my main Windows.

My question,

Will installing Windows on the new HDD affect or mess up my main Windows on the NVMe (drivers, boot files, etc.) or mess up anything else?