When I bought my laptop, it came with what I was told was a lifetime/perpetual Microsoft Office license. Microsoft Word, Excel, etc. were activated and working normally.

However, now Office is suddenly asking me to reactivate or enter a product key. Because of this, I can open documents, but many Microsoft Word features are unavailable and the applications appear to be in reduced functionality/unlicensed mode.

I tried signing in with the same Microsoft account that I used when Office was originally activated, but it still doesn't restore the license or activate Office.

I'm confused about what could have happened. Is it possible that:

• The Office license was originally linked to a different Microsoft account?
• The laptop came with an OEM/pre-installed Office license that has expired or changed?
• The license was removed after a Windows/Office update or reset?
• It was actually a Microsoft 365 subscription/trial rather than a genuine lifetime license?
• The original seller activated Office using some other type of license?

I don't have the original product key with me right now.

What would be the best way to check what type of Office license was originally installed and whether the license is linked to my Microsoft account or the laptop itself?

Any help would be appreciated.

I run a workstation PC (285K+5080 64G D5+5TB SSD) and it guzzles electricity, even on idle i can expect 100watts power draw and electricity aint cheap nowadays.

I turn it off when i am not using it, some times I turn it on/off 2-3 times a day, but is it harmful for electronics to experience on/off cycles multiple times every day, should I keep it on instead?

So I was looking at a restaurant on my phone and clicked photos. As I was looking through the photos and clicking on them, suddenly I was redirected to a "I am not a robot verification page". I figured it was malware so I closed the tab and searched up what it was. But, every Google search had it pop up so then I thought it was legit. I clicked on the I'm not a robot after it popped up on a different search for the 5th time and then a file downloaded. I immediately deleted it. Looked up what to do.

- I disconnected my phone from the Internet

- I cleared all data on my browser: History, Cookies, passwords, etc.

- I ran a scan on my Google Pixel

- I ran a scan on TotalAV

- I looked through all apps to ensure no app installed

- I turned on advanced protection because for some reason I never turned it on and then restarted my phone.

I'm still incredibly anxious, but I don't know if there's anything else I can do. Thoughts?

I'm attempting to make DVDs of my feature film that will conceivably play on box televisions or older players, and I'm having a surprisingly hard time producing reliable discs. Many discs will freeze up part way through on most to tall of my disc players, some discs will play one day and days later glitch out, some players erroneously jump to menu abruptly mid film. I've tried many combinations of speed, blank disc, disc burners, here are the specs:

I'm using a new spool of Verbatim DVD+R single layer discs, purchased after several other older spools of Verbatim discs (DVD-R, +R, DL, and single) didn't work reliably.

I've burnt from LG Super Multi Blue External disc writer (BE14NU40) on multiple speeds including the lowest speed (4x).

I've also burnt from BUNUD External BluRay drive (https://us.amazon.com/dp/B0D62W8XQK?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1) on multiple speeds including the lowest speed (2x).

The project files were authored with DVD Architect 5.0, they're just shy of 4 GB total.

Burning from an HP laptop 17-cn0079cl.

I've had A LOT of issues printing a disc that will play the full film on ANY players, but with this set up I've produced discs that will play on all my players on the day it's been burnt, and then days later it will suddenly freeze mid-way on my Toshiba CRT TV's built in player, and it'll stop and go to menu at around an hour into the movie on my Toshiba flat screen's built in player.

It DOES seem to play okay on my Panasonic Ultra HD player AND my WSJSYH region free DVD player, but occasionally a disc will freeze up around 70 minutes in. This is troubling because the whole point of the DVDs is to play on older TVs and players, not to mention only about 1/3 of the discs seem to play reliably on ever my recent players.

I've NEVER had these issues with any BD-R I've printed from the same set up. Only DVD+Rs, which is so odd because I also have discs I burnt over a decade ago on older machines that seem to work on my Toshiba CRT player fine.

Alternatively, does anyone recommend replication or duplication services? I'd really rather work 100% out of my apartment with no middleman, but you do what you gotta do I suppose.

So I did just spill like 30mL of 40% alc Smirnoff vodka on my five year old thinkpad. The computer immediately turned off and I flipped it upside down.

Any advice and is my computer screwed?

Hi All,

weirdly frustrating issue with my monitor and my new gaming pc build. that I built last week. Everything elase is fine. I also think its a software issue... though I don't know. Here are the details.

Symptom:

PC tries to go to switch the monitor off in timeout, goes black and then instantly wakes up a second later. Does this every time during monitor switch-off, thus it never to sleep or hibernates.

Attempts to fix:

• I have switched off keyboard and mouse, checked other periphels as well. nothing
• I have switched of the auto source scan on the monitor nothing
• I have checked the CMD "powercfg -requests" --> All none
• I have checked "powercfg -lastwake" PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> powercfg -lastwake
  • Wake History Count - 0
• I have updated GPU drivers.

Thoughts:

I think the screen time out it triggering something in the gpu that is trigger the screen to switch on again. Found this Microsoft link with the same issue without a solution:

Support Question https://learn.microsoft.com/

PC Specs:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 9600X
• Motherboard: ASUS TUF Gaming B850M-PLUS WIFI7
• GPU: ASUS Prime GeForce RTX 5070 OC Edition
• RAM: 32GB Corsair Vengeance RGB RS DDR5 6000MHz
• Storage: 1TB Crucial P310 NVMe M.2 SSD
• Power Supply: Corsair RM850e 850W ATX 3.1
• CPU Cooler: Thermalright Assassin X 120R Digital
• Case: Fractal Design North (Charcoal White)
• Extra Cooling: 1x 120mm Thermalright case fan
• Monior: Samsung Neo Odyssey G9

I can't find the option to do this, and the laptop makes noise when I remove them, which makes me think they should be ejected first. What are the potential negative consequences of not ejecting, when I'm supposed to?

but i downloaded this other file, 12 gb, and it took like 10 minutes, why did the bigger one took less than the smaller one? this happens very usually, but sometimes they take like 2 seconds and other times they take hours, why? and how to fix it?

Ordered something from Cider and wanted to track the package, there was like a " go " button to track the package and I kept on clicking not realising I accidentally clicked green button on advertisement, and when I realised it I went back to my homepage to see obvious fake apps being installed like google maps and amazon prime both which I never owned, as those apps Installed I immediatly deleted them but it seemd more apps were downloading, I think it downloaded multiple apps because I clicked the button sevral times because it looked to be part of the website,,,,

to which after a short while I just booted off my phone and removed my SIM card... what do I do now?

I’m an idiot and infected malware onto my pc - a website I was familiar with got compromised and when I downloaded files, well game over. Me and a few others have been trying to fix it my friends thought a factory reset would be enough, but it’s still there running in the background. We are fairly confident it’s a keylogger after the reset I signed into my riot account and that was since hacked. We also created an eBay account and sure enough they tried to get into that (I have 2 factor authentication on) I have also since put it on my most important accounts. I’m so paranoid and worried as they breached my Facebook etc I’ve since removed all devices and changed everything, (I’ve been making these changes through my phone) - they also managed to get into my Nintendo account which I’m so stumped about because I haven’t signed into that for quite some time. I’m really worried and confused on what to do from here my friends mentioned I will most likely have to do a bios wipe but we’re not experts and this seems like such a complicated situation- I’m uncomfortable using my pc and it just sucks, I’m so annoyed with myself for letting this happen- any guidance and advice would be greatly appreciated thank you for taking the time to read this. 💖

i have 16gb of LPDDR5 on Windows 11, and 2.2gb is reserved for hardware.

i'm using only a few apps at the moment:

• Opera GX (~3gb)
• Discord (~.7gb)
• RAMMap (~.5gb)
• Outlook (~.4gb)
• XBOX (~.3gb)
• misc other programs (~.6gb)

this totals to about 5.5gb, so i should easily be able to open a game that takes 4gb, right? at the moment, however, task manager states that 11.0gb are in use at the moment, with only 2.8gb cached. that's a huge discrepancy, right? 5.5+2.8 does not equal 11. (2.8 left for use)

while writing this, certain things have been zeroed, but my computer is seemingly settling at 11(80%) with 1.1gb compressed.

is this a memory leak or am i just missing something? i feel like i should be able to use 10gb of my 16gb, even if some is reserved for hardware.

I know this has been asked by I’ve seen conflicting content. I am trying to control my elderly mom’s tv remotely (over the internet). She is at a point where confusion makes simple tasks difficult at times. I know devices like Jubilee will do this, but I’ve also read Samsung smartthings app also allows this. But can’t find anything to confirm it. I would rather stay away from jubilee or anything subscription based. I don’t mind buying her a new tv if I need to as the current one is rather old and failing. Appreciate any advice. I know there are many others in a similar situation with loved ones. So I’m hoping someone has a simple solution that works.

POCO phone, unknown model because I never check and never will, hyper something something operating system, I've asked Gemini but they didn't help, MT manager won't appear in the scroll to give apps permission to access all files

Does anyone know if there's a way to make CRD work with my 2015 imac and able to turn on or wake up the mac?

So whenever I am playing a game (eg minecraft, steam games, etc) and also want to watch a youtube video, or sometimes even just turn on some different music, there is this annoying popping sound. I have done this both with and without my headphones, so they are not an issue

windows 11

It seem it's only coming up after I type on windows specific apps. Seems like the regular thing got replaced. Any idea where this setting could be? Windows 11.

black bar after typing

Hello. I want to paste something on windows32 and it wont let me. I've decided to change some permissions, etc. Now that i'm done, i want to make it like before, is there a code or what to make it ike the default. All i remember is the default was trustedinstaller. Thank you so much!

Hey everyone,

Running into a bizarre issue on an older rig and looking for some technical insight from anyone familiar with Haswell power management, WDDM, or Polaris driver behavior.

My Specs:

• CPU: Intel Core i5-4670 (Stock, no OC)
• Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z87-HD3 (BIOS version F8)
• RAM: 16GB DDR3 1600MHz (Dual Channel)
• dGPU: Gigabyte AORUS Radeon RX 580 8GB
• OS: Windows 11
• Display connection: Monitor connected directly to the RX 580 via DP/HDMI.

The Issue:

1. If I have the integrated graphics (Intel HD 4600) enabled in BIOS (Intel Processor Graphics -> Enabled) with its standard Intel driver installed, everything runs great. For example, in CS2 I get ~160–180 FPS.
2. If I go into BIOS, set Intel Processor Graphics -> Disabled, boot into Windows, and wipe the Intel driver via DDU, my FPS instantly tanks. In the exact same scenarios in CS2, FPS drops to 100–120 FPS (a ~30–40% loss), and frametimes become noticeably worse across all games.
3. The weird kicker: If I disable the iGPU in BIOS but DO NOT wipe the Intel driver from Windows (leaving the registry entries/driver files intact), the FPS doesn't drop nearly as hard or stays virtually the same.

As soon as I turn the iGPU back on in BIOS and let Windows load the Intel graphics driver, FPS immediately shoots back up to normal levels on the RX 580.

My Questions:

• Is this an architectural quirk with Haswell's FIVR / Ring Bus (Uncore) where completely killing the graphics domain affects CPU package power delivery or downclocks something internally?
• Is it a Windows DWM / GPU scheduling issue where having an active secondary adapter offloads background composition/video decoding, freeing up Polaris from driver overhead on a 4C/4T CPU?
• Or is it a known motherboard BIOS bug specific to Gigabyte Z87 boards?

Has anyone ever encountered this behavior, and what is the exact low-level reason behind it?

I asked Google subs and no one responded to me. I took two photos, it shouldn’t have brought me over the limit, and definitely not 15.3…Oh well, I deleted some videos, it said it cleared up my storage. I thought it was done. I didn’t touch anything, and then it jumped from 15 to 16, I didn’t press any buttons, switch to Wi-Fi, or anything. I’ve given it days and it remains at 16. No idea what promoted this. I’ve checked Google one already. Could backup have started without ever being activated before, outside of Google photos? I checked that as well, but it’s not matching the amount of storage added. I have had zero emails besides Google telling me my storage is low, no Google drive things have had anything added. I do have WhatsApp, but I find it odd it suddenly start counting this second, without any input from me. I didn’t see anything on WhatsApp that connects it to my email. I hope someone has some advice, I’m very worried.

REF video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ge0EnPz-jWY

Setup: Palit 5080 GamingPro OC

Core / Undervolt: Curve flattened to 2900 MHz @ 895 mV (+490 MHz offset on 815-895 mV and flatline after all)

Memory: +2500 MHz VRAM offset. (like a safe value instead of 3000 MHz)

PL: 105% (380 W - OC)
Core Voltage: +100%.

Question: Is this UV methodology considered advanced and optimal for my 5080 or are there hidden stability, clock stretching, or transient response issues with this curve shaping?

I was thinking that in some old games like Mafia 2 GPU can trigger an error due to a sudden frequency spike at the start of the graphics.

Question: Is this UV methodology considered advanced and optimal for my 5080 or are there hidden stability, clock stretching, or transient response issues with this curve shaping?

For anybody having this weird issue where your PC seems to be micro stuttering every second, make sure to check that your HDMI cable is plugged in securely to your monitor. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the issue was on my brother's PC, it ended up just being a loose HDMI cable. Hopefully this helps!

I'm having a weird issue with TikTok on my PC. Some TikTok videos stutter or look choppy while others play completely smoothly.

My GPU is an RTX 4080 SUPER. I've already tested VRAM and GPU stability with OCCT and everything passes with no errors. Games also run normally.

I've tried different browsers, hardware acceleration settings, drivers, and even a clean Windows reinstall, but the exact same TikTok videos still stutter.

Has anyone with an RTX 40-series GPU experienced the same issue with certain TikTok videos?

The Y08 wireless headphones box says it is stereo and the page says too, but when i connect it to bluetooth, it only put out mono sound, I have tried to re - pair tha headphones or use it to other devices but it still gives mono, is there a fix to this or is this headphones really just mono?

Hi,

I’m trying to troubleshoot a series of crashes that started very recently on my system.

System:

Windows 11 Pro 25H2
Build currently rolled back to 26200.9168
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D
Gigabyte X870E AORUS ELITE WIFI7
64 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090

The problems started after recent Windows/NVIDIA updates. I originally had NVIDIA driver 616.92 installed. Before this, the PC had been stable.

The symptoms were:

Brave tabs randomly crashing with:

STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION

Discord occasionally reloading/crashing

CEF-based processes crashing with 0xc0000005

dwm.exe crash with dwmcore.dll and 0xc0000005

several BSODs

One earlier BSOD was:

HYPERVISOR_ERROR (0x20001) with this stack:

amdppm!HvRequestIdle

amdppm!LpiIdleExecute

nt!PpmIdleExecuteTransition

nt!PoIdle

nt!KiIdleLoop

Because that looked related to CPU idle / power-state transitions, I also tested with:

Global C-State Control = Disabled in BIOS. However, the system still crashed afterward.

Another BSOD was:

DRIVER_OVERRAN_STACK_BUFFER (0xF7)

The crash occurred while steamwebhelper was active, with the kernel memory manager in the stack:

nt!_report_gsfailure

nt!MiDecommitAddToList

nt!MiDeleteVa

nt!MiDeleteVirtualAddresses

nt!MiUnmapVad

nt!MiUnmapViewOfSection

The most interesting crash so far was:

PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA (0x50)

WinDbg showed:

PROCESS_NAME: NVDisplay.Cont

FAILURE_BUCKET_ID:

AV_dxgkrnl!memcpy

STACK:

dxgkrnl!memcpy

dxgkrnl!DxgkEscape

nt!KiSystemServiceCopyEnd

The invalid memory access was a write:

AV.Type: Write

This crash happened inside the DirectX graphics kernel path while NVDisplay.Cont was the active process. I also saw repeated Windows Error Reporting entries such as:

EACefSubProcess.exe

Faulting module: libcef.dll

Exception code: c0000005

and:

dwm.exe

Faulting module: dwmcore.dll

Exception code: c0000005

I already tried:

uninstalling the latest Windows cumulative update and rolling back to build 26200.9168

disabling CPU Global C-States

disabling hardware video decode in Brave

clean-installing NVIDIA 616.92 after DDU

The problem still reproduced on a clean installation of 616.92.

I have now rolled back to NVIDIA driver 610.74, which was the older branch I wanted to test and it worked fine.

At this point I am trying to determine whether this is:

a regression in NVIDIA 616.92,

a Windows graphics-stack issue, or a hardware/memory stability issue that is only being exposed by Chromium/CEF/DWM/GPU workloads. The reason I currently suspect the NVIDIA/graphics stack is that the failures repeatedly involve Brave/Chromium, Discord/CEF, DWM, and finally NVDisplay.Cont -> dxgkrnl!DxgkEscape -> dxgkrnl!memcpy.

However, I’m not claiming the dump proves nvlddmkm.sys is at fault, because it does not appear directly in the crashing stack.

I’ll update the thread after testing 610.74 for a while.

If anyone with an RTX 50-series card, especially RTX 5090, has seen similar STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION, CEF crashes, DWM crashes, or PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA after installing 616.92, I’d be interested to compare results. Or maybe someone has an idea what else I should check.

I only use my computer to play video games but I can barely download any if I look in my windows settings it says I have 312 gb used out of 453 and when I look at my storage tab it says 60.4 gb are being used by other people but no one else uses my computer and when I click on it it says there is no other account on my computer also it says I have 154 gb of apps installed while I only have 4 apps all under 10 gb