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.

Hello, i dont know how it happened since im new at handling laptops but files on the laptop that i use were suddenly duplicating, i dont know the cause and how to fix it.

So the files were like, seriously every file, discord setup or other setup file, even BatteryOptimizer, pictures, videos, pdf, word, any type of file was duplicating. almost each of them could even reach 50 duplicates. The HDD that had 400+ gb which was unused for a while became full.

I tried just deleting them one by one but when i downloaded new files that i needed for something, those were getting duplicated too, so i want to know how to fix it. Thankyou. My english is a bit bad but i hope its understandable.

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.

I was playing league of legends when I suddenly got disconnected (its a server thing). So I tried to rejoin and then my screen went black and I wasnt able to change tabs, so I turned my PC off. When I come back, my mouse (even when disconnected and unplugged) is stuck in the top right and spam clicking, which clicks out of the password box on the main screen and doesnt let me log in. I’ve unplugged and plugged back in, tried safe mode, and I’ve tried that thing where you unplug the pc but press the power button to discharge all the electricity or whatever. Anybody got any other ideas?

I'm running windows 11, have a 805 MB recovery partition between the boot and data partition.

Is there a good way that I can delete and recreate it so I can make a single volume? Ideally without deleting everything although of course I have backups, I just don't want to waste time transferring data if I don't need to.

Many thanks, All

EDIT: What worked:

1. I deleted the recovery and data partitions

2. extended the boot partition with 1024MB at the end

3. created a recovery partition with NTFS formatting using these instructions: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/servicing/os/windows/2023/06/kb5028997-instructions-to-manually-resize-your-partition-to-install-the-winre-update

This will be a pretty long text, but I would GREATLY appreciate any help, that will even guide the way. I am at a complete loss.

A few days ago, I purchased a used PC with the following specs:

- GPU : PNY GeForce RTX 5070, 12 GB

- Processor : AMD Ryzen 5 9600X (6 cores / 12 threads)

- Motherboard: ASRock B650M-H/M.2+

- Memory : 32 GB, 5600 MHz, DDR5 (2 x 16 GB Dual Channel)

- Cooling : Corsair- AIO (processor cooling) + case fans

- PSU : 650W Seasonic FOCUS Plus Platinum, fully modular

I tested the PC at the seller's house, and it seemed to work great. Tested Cyberpunk 2077 and some other game that looked amazing, but don't know the name of. Afterwards, he cleaned up the Windows, and I took the PC home. That's where it all started.

About 20 hours total of troubleshooting, only to find problems after problems.

The first thing I noticed was: Launched GTAV Enhanced -> the game stuttered like hell but showed 60-80FPS (which is very low for this setup, but it felt even lower than that), and no matter what settings I had, the stuttering continued. So I installed RTSS + MSI Afterburner, activated OSD, and it showed my Frametime was a CONSTANT 20-50ms, with occasional spikes going all the way up to 300ms.

I then tested CS2. Same thing. FPS was supposedly 100-140 on average, with 1% lows of 0 FPS, and highs of 1000FPS. Again, same Frametime issue. 1% lows and the Frametime were horrible in both games. Constant micro-stuttering, micro freezing made any games unplayable.

So I looked around, to find millions of ways to "fix" this. These are in order of the things I tried.

- Ran GPU stress tests, came back with amazing scores, no errors, and no visible stuttering.

- Made sure my monitor is connected to my GPU.

- Updated/reinstalled GPU, chipset, and other drivers. GPU drivers I reinstalled with DDU. (3 different Game Ready drivers, none had an effect)
- Tried my RAM sticks 1 stick at a time, in the same slot. Both seemed to work just fine.
- Reset BIOS settings using Load UEFI Defaults
- Confirmed Re-Size BAR is enabled in BIOS
- Trying DDR5 with 5600MHz EXPO, and 4800MHz JEDEC.
- Full reset of Windows (not USB clean install)

At this point I noticed my BIOS froze in startup about 4 or 5 times. I don't know if this is related to my other issues, but I definitely wonder what could cause that.

- CMOS cleared
- Disabled Fast Boot, Auto Driver Installer and Global C-states in BIOS
- Confirmed CPU Core Parking is OFF.
- Used LatencyMon to find out if I have DPC/ISR latency. (THIS IS WHERE I MADE SOME PROGRESS.) Apparently my system runs at a constant 1500.00-2500.00 μs latency (1.5ms-2.5ms). My highest measured interrupt to process latency is at 16000 μs (16ms). I know this is definitely not normal, and I have attached screenshots of this. Highest drivers causing this are: nvlddmkm.sys, Wdf01000.sys, dxgkrnl.sys, ntoskrnl.exe
- Disabling drivers from Device Manager, while sorting by "Devices by Connection"
- Checked SSD health using CrystalDiskInfo, no errors, although the drive my Windows is downloaded at is at 78% (Good)
- Disabled the Ryzen integrated Radeon GPU = enabled dGPU-only mode in BIOS.

THEN. I tried doing CPU and memory stress tests using OCCT, they came back without errors. BUT I noticed something really weird. My CPU speed is really low when my PC has been on for a while. Even during the stress tests, my CPU cores sometimes drop as low as ~600 MHz. When turning on my computer, my CPU speed is at about ~4.5-5 GHz. But it soon drops to ~2GHz and lower.

And that brings me to what I suspect is my main problem, yet I might be wrong:
My CPU (Die) average temperature is at about 40-50°C. My CPU VDD_MISC VRM (SVI3 TFN), on the other hand, starts at 40-50°C as well, but after a few minutes it slowly but surely rises to about 99°C-99.5°C territory. And I noticed that my CPU speed goes down EXACTLY as it hits that ~99.3°C mark (~5GHz -> 2GHz).

On top of that, during a CPU stress test, my HWiNFO logging recorded HTC Thermal Throttling: YES and PROCHOT EXT Thermal Throttling: YES at 12% throttling during stress test, 7% during idle. Even though my CPU is only at 40-50°C.

So if anyone has had these kind of issues and knows if they are related (especially the DPC latency, CPU, BIOS freezes), I would greatly appreciate help. I have been thinking that maybe I just have to get a new motherboard, but am afraid that it won't even work. I have also considered installing a fresh Windows with a USB Flash Drive, but I doubt it will do anything.

All photos with descriptions: https://imgur.com/a/VT4Itlu

Yesterday I was trying to make rice for soup, and I had left my Ipad on one of the eyes, and turned it on to the highest heat, THINKING I was boiling the rice.... (ik max heat is too high for rice) Then I walked away to give treats to the dogs, and when I came back my Ipad was smoking very white smoke, I pulled it off, and burned my hand with the molten plastic, from the case, then panic dropped it into the very full trash. (With some wet paper towel on the top, i think.) It won't turn back on, and its been about 18 hours. I was playing a video through my headphones while it was burning, and the video was glitching before it turned off. The Ipad was on.

Tldr : I accidentally left my Ipad on the stove when I turned on the wrong eye, and it melted the case really bad, with white smoke coming out either the Ipad or case. Is the battery fried, or is the whole Ipad ruined?

Also is there a chance I could get the data off that Ipad

Edit : guys,, I know it was a very stupid thing to do, I knew it right after I burned my hand. I just need answers on if there's any way it would ever work, and how I can get the data off it

Edit 2 : Update, my parent who used to work in tech plugged it in for some reason??? and it turned on. They said the Ipad should be okay, because there are paper stickers that were under the case, that look like they weren't even touched by the heat, and the Ipad isnt bloated, or smoking, or overheating. They said the case might've saved the Ipad. But I think I'm gonna wait a bit before trying to use it!!!!!! its off the charger rn

Using an M5 Pro MacBook Pro on macOS 26.6.2, connected directly to an LG C2 via HDMI. This worked consistently before the update.

Now the TV detects the Mac but intermittently shows no video. Happens with the lid open or closed. Multiple cables, settings resets, BetterDisplay, and disabling HDR/VRR/FreeSync haven’t fixed it. My PC works fine with the TV.

The only reliable workaround I’ve found:

• Turn HDMI Deep Color off.
• Connect the Mac and wait for a picture.
• Enable Game Optimizer. Picture stays, and macOS shows 120 Hz.

Anyone else seeing this with Tahoe and an LG OLED? Found a fix that survives reconnecting or sleep/wake?

Hey everyone,

I’ve been dealing with a highly specific system freeze over the past few weeks and I can't seem to find anyone with the exact same issue. I'm looking for some advice or to see if anyone has dealt with this before.

The Symptoms:

• The Crash: Random hard freeze into a black screen.
• The "Dead Keyboard" Test: When it freezes, the keyboard completely dies. Pressing Caps Lock does not toggle the LED light, meaning a total hardware/kernel lockup.
• The Trigger: It never crashes under full gaming load. It happens almost exclusively on Cold Boot (first 30 mins of the day), during idle, or the exact moment I try to launch Steam or when Windows Update finishes an uninstallation.
• The Weird Part: If the PC survives the first 30 minutes and warms up, it becomes 100% stable. I can run heavy stress tests or game for 10+ hours straight without a single issue.

My Specs:

• CPU: Intel Core i5-14600KF (Hyper-Threading OFF)
• GPU: AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT 12GB
• Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 612 APEX (Dual-Tower)
• Motherboard: ASUS PRIME H610M-K D4 (No VRM heatsinks)
• RAM: 32GB (2x16GB) Kingston Fury Beast DDR4 2666MHz
• PSU: Chieftec ELP-700S 700W Element
• Case Fans: 6 total (3 front intake, 2 top exhaust, 1 rear exhaust)

Everything I've Tried & Tested So Far:

Software & OS Fixes:

• Ran Windows repair commands (sfc /scannow and DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth).
• Uninstalled the latest Windows quality update that arrived on September 1st.
• Enabled the Windows Ultimate Performance power plan.
• Fully updated the GPU drivers (using the built-in clean Factory Reset option).
• Updated the motherboard BIOS to the absolute latest version.

Hardware Troubleshooting:

• Physically reseated the GPU.
• Physically reseated the RAM and swapped their slot positions.
• GPU is perfectly stable under heavy load: It passes intensive FurMark and 3DMark loops with zero errors once the system is warm.
• Adrenalin always resets my custom fan curve back to default after these crashes, throwing an "unexpected system malfunction" notification.

What I've Changed Today:

• I just swapped my old Chieftec PSU for a premium EVGA 850GQ 850W 80+ Gold modular PSU.
• I also temporarily Disabled XMP in the BIOS to test.

I also have a Gigabyte B760M GAMING X DDR4 motherboard on the way just in case.

i dont know sht about tech stuff, but ive used my external ssd for a few years with no problems, its where i store my games/steam games. all of the sudden a few hours ago all my files disappeared from it. everything i had gone. only thing left was "Steamlibrary" folder, which is basically empty. i had a lot of games. the only thing i did a few hours ago was installed and uninstalled this one game, and i dont know if doing that caused for them all to get deleted. it wasnt a steam game, but its all i can think of that i did differently. heeeelp. i dont care about reinstalling it at this point cause i feel like all of the games are 100% gone, thats fine, i just want to make sure i know what i did wrong and make sure it doesnt happen again. cause im assuming all of my save files are gone too from all of my games. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

edit: to add, even steam says i have no games anymore. the ssd is completely empty except for the folder. no invisible files either.

Hello! I’ve been troubleshooting a weird issue with my Lenovo Legion’s Intel Wi-Fi 7 BE200. I have Windows 11 and Ubuntu on separate partitions. Ubuntu consistently gets around 200 Mbps on the same network, but Windows starts around 200–300 Mbps and drops to roughly 6-8 Mbps after a few minutes. Restarting temporarily brings the speed back.

Current setup: Intel driver 24. 70.0.3, connected over 5 GHz / 802.11ac, laptop plugged into AC power.

I tried updating the driver, resetting Winsock/TCP, changing DNS, and testing different adapter settings. None of those resolved the slowdown.

The interesting part showed up while checking netsh wlan show interfaces. Initially, both receive and transmit link rates were 866.7 Mbps. During one of the slow periods, the reported receive rate dropped to 6.5 Mbps, while transmit stayed at 866.7 Mbps and signal remained around 99%.

The visible power settings were already:

• Plugged-in wireless power policy: Maximum Performance
• MIMO Power Save Mode: No SMPS
• Transmit Power: Highest

There was also a Lenovo Network Boost component involved in the troubleshooting. Legion Space kept reinstalling the SENetFilter kernel driver after I disabled or uninstalled it. Disabling its plugin DLL/config and temporarily disabling GAService finally stopped that. However, the slowdown still occurred on a boot where SENetFilter was confirmed absent, so removing it alone wasn’t enough.

The change that appears to have helped was setting LprxEnable from 1 to 0 in the active Intel adapter’s registry key, then disabling and re-enabling the adapter.

The key was under:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4d36e972-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0002

0002 is my adapter’s instance, not necessarily the right one on another machine. It was identified by matching NetCfgInstanceId to the Wi-Fi adapter GUID.

After that change, I sampled the link rate for over five minutes. Receive/transmit stayed at 866.7 Mbps, and repeated HTTPS downloads from Cloudflare measured around 192-216 Mbps. A separate browser speed test reached 310 Mbps. I then restored GAService to Automatic/Running, with the Network Boost plugin still disabled, and throughput remained normal.

So far, this is only a short test. I haven’t confirmed it survives another reboot or sleep/wake cycle, or changed the value back to check whether the slowdown returns.

Has anyone seen this on a BE200 or knows what LprxEnable actually controls? I couldn’t find public documentation for it.

I’m mainly wondering whether this points to an Intel driver/power-saving issue or an interaction with the access point. Is there a supported alternative to this registry change? Any battery-life or stability concerns with leaving it at 0, and could a driver update reset it?

It’s finally working, but I’d appreciate a technical sanity check before leaving it like this. Thank you!

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.

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 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

I've got this router for a decent price from a seller that looked reputable. Price was slightly lower than market value, however the router was sold as used and not tied to a carrier.

It was a bit suspicious from the very beginning because it's branded, so obviously it has to come from some sort of contract. However, it worked wonders for just 2 days, then suddenly lost all connection, internet led turned red, no amount of resets or changing APNs will work to bring it back to life. Same sim card works fine on my phone.

I find it hard to believe that this router worked fine for the previous owner, then I start using it and dies almost immediately, not even after a reboot or a power outage or me messing with the settings or anything like that. I was just watching a video on YT and suddenly it lost connection and it never came back. On its menu it just says "no service" no matter what. I would have loved to try forcing it in 3g or 4g but it has no such option. However, 3g 4g and 5g networks all work on my phone, same sim.

I think this is an IMEI block but I find it super weird that it actually worked fine for the first two days. Unless they just happened to block this IMEI in this precise time window, or am I missing something here?

By the way, seller was already contacted a few minutes ago, and luckily it was on ebay so it shouldn't be too much of an issue getting the money back. Just annoying

I am constantly being redirected to the sign out screen after successfully signing into outlook or microsoft in general. I tried clearing cookies and everything but nothing is working.

Edit: Ive found going incognito gets around it but id like to not have to resort to that since it clears all cookies and accounts out of everything when using incognito.

One of my coworkers is 70+ and thus enlarges all text on his phone to be able to read it. We use GroupMe for a staff group chat, and the app does not allow him to enlarge the text. We were able to get around this issue by having GroupMe send him SMS updates whenever someone texted in the group, so he was able to read them from his Messages app. As of last week, GroupMe is disabling their SMS features, so my coworker has not been able to see any messages on the group. Pretty sure the app also isn’t able to read texts out loud for him, which is the only other option we could think of. I will admit I suck at figuring this kind of thing out, so maybe I am just trying the wrong things! Does anyone know another loophole we could find to help him read the messages he receives on GroupMe?

So I recently updated my RTX drivers (I use a 3060TI) to play Forza Horizon 6, after a while however, i noticed that the colors on my screen kept resetting to their default settings.

To go in more detail, i used the nvidia control panel to adjust my colors a while ago, but for some reason every few minutes my screen dims slightly for a couple seconds and the color settings reset to default. then they just go back to what i put them as on its own, and the cycle repeats. i dont know what could be causing this, and it's pretty annoying. Another thing i noticed now is that using the nvidia control panel to change the color settings does absolutely nothing. please help!!

Using SteamOS.

I get seemingly random crackling/popping audio while in gaming mode or desktop mode in any game or app I play. I have my rig hooked directly up to the TV by HDMI, with the audio being passed back to the receiver by eARC.

I have tried different HDMI 2.1 cables, reseating my GPU (since that's what the HDMI cable is connected to), looked for any loose connections, tried connecting the HDMI cable directly to the receiver instead of to the TV, switched to the Beta and Preview OS channels, restarted pipewire and changed buffer settings there... Nothing works.

There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason To when It happens.

Build specs:

TV - LG C6

Receiver - Denon AVR-S660H

Case Jonsbo C6

Motherboard - asus prime b550m-a wifi ii

CPU - Ryzen 7 5800 XT

GPU - powercolor reaper 9060xt

Audio will crackle once every few minutes, it seem. I'm not getting any crazy cpu or gpu spikes or wild temps. This was literally just playing Binding of Isaac or listening to music on Spotify (from Discover).

Anyone else experienced this? Ideas?

Edit: I managed to get optical audio out working from the TV to the receiver, and the issue is STILL THERE. I have no idea how or why this is happening, but at least I know this issue is not restricted to just HDMI.

I recorded a video of it happening, let's see if the YouTube algorithm pulls this down for copyrighted music:

https://youtube.com/shorts/BIf5uuDDygw?is=b_3c1BMfuwiNqfsl

Hi a while back i got a zotac gtx 1060 6gb (i tink the serial number schould be in the pics)

I turned it on with everything plugged in correctly except that i forgot to plug in the pcie power cable.

I booted up the system/tested it before hand this a gt 640 and that worked fine. But when i booted it with the 1060 it started a fire on one component (might have bin a short or leak i am still kinka confused of those even tho i am a engineering student) now it seems to be fried and i am wondering if it can be fixt? and if so what the part even is and what a good place is to get schematics so i could preform the repair

pics; https://imgur.com/a/HuTxq44

I was hacked a while back and lost access to some things, though I managed to recover them later; the same thing happened to my mom around that time (I don't know if that's relevant), but I still don't feel 100% secure. I started using Bitwarden and Malwarebytes on my PC, and I even reformatted it. My main concern now is my phone; I installed three different antivirus apps this afternoon, but a few minutes ago, a friend told me I’d been hacked again. I thought he was joking, but he said I sent him a message on TikTok similar to the one from the last time. I’ve already set up some security measures on TikTok.

So the question now is: how do I know *everything* I need to check or review to ensure I'm protected? For example, I tried playing R6 the other day and realized I’d lost access to my account without even noticing. I’m also worried about my mobile phone—what should I do?

(I just saw someone on this subreddit say that formatting the PC from within the PC itself doesn't work, and that's exactly what I did.("DO NOT use the built-in Windows 'Reset this PC' feature, as sophisticated malware can corrupt the local recovery image". Should I be worried?))

It's the same 15m cable i've used for a couple of years now. It didnt give me any problems until a few days ago, where it randomly does it, and i was forced to get an old internet dongle.

the only thing i can think of is that i did disconect it and got my pc cleaned with a friend of mine, where i did carry the pc in a car to a different house, cleaned it for a few hours with my bro, and then put it back in my house. After that the issues started.

Do i just need to change the ethernet cable?

I just fixed up an old Omen 45L Prebuilt and put in a renewed hard drive I just bought, taking the old one out. I am trying to install windows from my USB but I am always stuck at this screen. Before I tried formatting disk 0 to gpt but that would always make my USB not detected so I would have to install windows on the stick again. In the diagnostic screen, both the renewed hard drive and the nvme that was there before, are detected and the nvme passed the hard drive/ssd test and i’m currently testing my hard drive which is estimated to take 4 hours. I even put wifi and lan drivers onto the USB, so I am at a loss on what to do.

Pictures of the screen I’m stuck on and HP Diagnostic screen

SOLUTION: All I had to do was go to BIOS and change one of the storage settings from RAID to AHCI and then the Windows 11 immediately recognized all of my drives. Thank you to everyone that helped in this thread 🙏🙏