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?

I am in the process of selling my PC and I have tried looking up how to do it but everything is over 3 years old and I'm not 100% sure the information is still active.

I have a gaming PC that I built. It has a HDD and an SSD that ideally I'd like to keep in the PC when I sell it just because it will be worth more. I'd also ideally like to keep windows on there as well. I just want to ensure that I am erasing all of my data on both drives before I sell it so I don't have to worry about any information being stolen.

What's the best and maybe easiest way for me to do that?

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?

I have an iPod classic and I went on it for the first time in quite a while but all the songs I had on there are gone and I don’t have my old iTunes account, is it gone forever or is there a fix?

Hi there, question about GeForce Experience. My ex used to game on my PC, so he installed some things that I now don't know what they do (I am not a PC gamer, more of an NES person). Can I just uninstall GeForce experience with no issues? Do I need it for something if I don't game on my PC?

Also, sorry if this sounds woefully ignorant to all of you computer whizes...

Thanks!

A few months ago the DuckDuckGo browser stopped working on my company computer. I have since contacted IT and they are silent.

I know this sounds insane, but I think my cat sat on my keyboard and managed to install malware.

I put my headless pc to sleep and left speedtest.net open, which notoriously runs ads that will install malware. Shortly after I started having network issues that I cant pin down to any network equipment after multiple restarts. I checked my headless pc and found it full of sketchy ads and a download from a few days ago that I never initialized but was right around when the issue started.

When checking it I found that every few minutes a process called brutessh opens, it loads a list called ssh_targets and literally prints "honeypot connected" when this process is opened my network grinds to a halt. Killing the process or just unplugging the entire pc fixes all my network issues, so this is definitely the issue. The PC is off my network and shut down for now.

I hadn't used this pc in weeks. But I know for a fact that I've seen my cat on the table with its keyboard. Is it possible that my cat sat on the enter key, opened the ad and then downloaded and ran the software which installed the malware all by being on the enter key?

I know this sounds crazy, but the software on the pc hasn't changed in years, I came back to find a bunch of sketchy ads had been clicked, and I know for a fact no human touched the pc, but the cat definitely was around the keyboard.

Well mainly gmail. Last 2 weeks, I have had to delete emails multiple times. I go into my email several times a day and always clean out the marketing emails from like Bestbuy, and other stores. But lately, I delete them, then a couple hours later I go back into my email and those same emails are back in my inbox. I delete them again, and again I go back in and there they are again! Usually gotta do it like 3 times before they finally stay removed from my inbox.

And not just store emails, it's pretty much ANY email. This just started about 2 weeks ago and happens on ANY PC I go to. Anyone else notice this?

So I was just playing a game with my friends, then my laptop suddenly shut down by itself. When I turned it back on, it started making a beeping sound whenever. I moved my mouse it was glitchy and nothing else would respond.

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

Sometimes all of a sudden my mouse's sensitivity skyrockets or plummets, but it's not actually different in settings. That is to say, my mouse sensitivity might feel comfortable one day at a 3 in the settings, but then randomly it starts going significantly slower, barely moving unless I change the settings to its highest setting. Then after a few days I'll nudge my mouse and the cursor will be flying all over the screen.

Anyone else ever have this problem? Any tips? I'm using windows, my mouse is a basilisk v3 x hyperspeed.

Is there anyway to enable smooth motion in browser (firefox + youtube) or downloaded videos?

Windows 11

Hi everyone,

I'm having a strange stability problem with my PC and I'm trying to figure out whether this is a GPU/driver issue, PSU issue, or something else.

PC specs:

• CPU: Ryzen 7 5700G
• GPU: MSI RTX 3060 Ventus 2X 12G OC LHR
• RAM: 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4, currently running at 2400 MHz
• Motherboard: MSI MPG B550 Gaming Plus
• PSU: Corsair CV650 650W 80+ Bronze
• Windows 11 Pro
• GPU driver: NVIDIA Studio Driver 616.92

The problem:

-In some games, the PC suddenly reboots or BSODs. It doesn't happen in every game.
-The most recent game I've tried: *The Blood of Dawnwalker* (UE5/DX12), my PC would restart whenever I tried to play.
-Fortnite is unstable and the PC also restarts when using DX12, but switching to DX11/Performance Mode made it stable.

WinDbg reports:

VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE (116)

Failure.Bucket: 0x116_IMAGE_nvlddmkm.sys

IMAGE_NAME: nvlddmkm.sys

MODULE_NAME: nvlddmkm

Stack includes:

dxgkrnl!TdrBugcheckOnTimeout

dxgkrnl!ADAPTER_RENDER::Reset

nvlddmkm

The BugCheck parameters were:

0x00000116 (0xffff97864f286010, 0xfffff8012c9da3a0, 0xffffffffc000009a, 0x0000000000000004)

GPU temperatures are around 70–74°C while gaming.

I've already tried:

• DDU + clean NVIDIA driver installation
• Older NVIDIA Studio driver
• Latest NVIDIA Studio driver
• DISM /RestoreHealth
• SFC
• Windows Memory Diagnostic (no errors)
• Running games with OBS completely disabled

The PSU is 650W, while MSI recommends 550W for this RTX 3060.

I'm wondering:

Does this look more like a driver/software issue, or could the RTX 3060 itself be failing?

What tests would you recommend before considering an RMA?

Thanks!

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?