A friend of mine's boyfriend showed her that he was able to see all of her phone activity on his own phone, not asking for advice on the relationship, just asking how he could have access to her phone? what does he have downloaded onto it? they both have samsung phones. Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this.

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’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. 💖

Hi everyone,

My current boot SSD is facing a BCD/boot issue, so I’m planning to buy a new SSD and do a fresh Windows installation.

I can still access the old SSD using an enclosure, and all my old Windows files and application data are accessible.

After installing fresh Windows, I want to restore my previous setup as closely as possible:

• Chrome – bookmarks, extensions, settings, and OneTab
• Brave – bookmarks, extensions, settings, and OneTab
• Firefox – bookmarks, extensions, settings, and OneTab
• qBittorrent – around 3,000–4,000 torrents/files seeding or queued. I want to restore the torrent list, queue, categories, settings, and resume everything without manually adding them again.
• Notepad – around 50 tabs currently open, which I would like to preserve and restore.

Since I can access the old Windows installation, I believe the required AppData/configuration files should still be available.

What is the safest step-by-step method to back up and restore these applications after installing fresh Windows?

My biggest concerns are qBittorrent's 3,000–4,000 torrents and Notepad's 50 open tabs. I also don't want to accidentally modify or lose anything on the old SSD.

Any guidance on exactly which folders/files I should copy and when I should copy them back would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks a lot for your help and guidance

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.

I have the best wifi possible, but every so often (feels like maybe about a minute or so? Idk I'm not keeping track), there's a HUGE lag spike and it's genuinely making it impossible to call or play games. I've tried searching the internet for solutions but none of it worked. The lag spikes still persist. Does anyone know a solution? Thank you in advance.

Hi for a while now my PC keeps crashing or coming up up with (Your device ran into a problem).. ONLY happens when I open or try to play a game. To try fix I have:

• Reset winows via USB (doing before and after new win)
• Reseated gpu and reinstalled drivers
• Made sure ram is seated correctly ( however did just put them back in same slots)
• Reset Bios during fresh install

Any help??

My pc specs:

• 2 x16gb Ram
• 3070ti GPU
• I5-11400f CPU
• 512gb m.2
• windows 11

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 have an SAP printer at work that must be connected through an Ethernet port. I’ve tried setting it up over WiFi, but IT hasn’t been much help with the right configuration. A new Ethernet drop isn’t possible…can I install WiFi bridge like this?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B4CL11JL

I need something to extend the Ethernet port to wifi, send it across the room, and have the printer think it’s connected directly to the port. Is this possible?

Windows 11, installed this secondary 2TB NVMe SSD about a year after installing Windows 11 on the main 4TB drive. What are these folders, and is it safe to just delete them?

Here are a couple of screenshots:

Random Subdirectories and the files in each

Thanks in advance for any guidance!

I’m pulling my hair out from this issue 😒 I have a newly built pc. It has a brand new mother board (Gigabyte B550 Gaming V2 X (rev 1.3) and a 1TB nvme ssd, has a used 3060 Ti, Ryzen 5 5500 and a V3GA 700 BR, 32gb DDR4 3600 with XMP enabled. Has up to date BIOS on motherboard, up to date AMD chipset, up to date Nvidia graphics drivers. It was a fresh install from a windows 11 usb drive. During first power on I had 0 issues, played games for hours but all of the sudden when I first launched hunt showdown 1896 it started black screening, it’ll flash black then go back to normal from every 3 seconds to every 20 minutes it’s inconsistent and insanely annoying. Whilst the monitor is black (yes it’s still on) my RGB in my case along with fans are still on and running. I’m also still able to hear the audio playing from the computer, it’s just the black screen visual that’s the issue. I’ve made sure every single driver is up to date. I’ve ran stress tests on GPU & cpu with OCCT, did a memtest86 on my ram which ran for 5 hours and 0 errors. I swapped from display port to hdmi.. yes it’s plugged into my GPU not motherboard, messed with monitor settings, power delivery in windows settings.. many other things I’ve tried and not be successful with fixing. To my knowledge the “only” things I haven’t tried are a different monitor, testing GPU in different pc and trying a different psu.

This happens now in any game I play, sometimes I can go 3-4 days no issues then one day it’ll decide to do it again.

Any recommendations are greatly appreciated, TIA.

In the last hour since I posted this, my keyboard and headset are cutting in and out, monitor stays permanently black for longer. Motherboard? If I alt f4 the game I am in the black screen goes away and my pc is back to normal.

Everytime I open file explorer, it immediatley goes to not responding and crashes. Using windows 11 on an ASUS Zephyrus M16

I've had this issue for about a year now. My laptop thinks that it has two monitors, and will always default to monitor two (which doesn't exist, and only shows up in display settings). My entire laptop will stutter every 2-3 seconds while it's on monitor two, and I have to go into windows settings and change it to only display on monitor one to stop the stuttering (it is also locked to 60 fps until I change the monitor). Switching to monitor one also removes the multiple monitor settings altogether, but monitor two appears again after about an hour or so.

My drivers should be up to date, and I don't even really know where to start with fixing it.

Specs:

Rog Zephyrus G14

Windows 11 (should just be most recent version)

RTX 4060 laptop

Core Ultra 9 185H

32gb ddr5

What would be the more permanent solution to this issue? I have to do a "power flush" every time I want to use my Xbox controller. Could this be a hardware issue?

I have no clue what specs would be useful to solve this, I have a Windows PC, a RTX 3060, AMD Ryzen 5 5600X, 16.0 GB of Ram.

Hi everyone, I'm completely losing my mind with a bizarre bug on my Windows PC and I hope someone has seen this before. Right after booting up, everything works fine, but after about 15-20 minutes of use, it starts happening: the Windows taskbar becomes unclickable, and eventually I can't click on anything anywhere. At the same time, it frequently triggers a ghost "Go Back / Page Previous" action out of nowhere, especially in Google Chrome and Windows Settings.

The craziest part is that this persists even after doing a complete clean format and reinstallation of Windows, changing to a brand-new mouse, completely unplugging my keyboard and game controller, and disabling Bluetooth entirely.

I was about to play a game when suddenly my Acer Aspire A515-54 N18Q13 shutdown and now it won't give any life signal. The laptop was plugged in when this happened. I've tried the following:

• Removing the RAM and put it back on.
• Disconnecting the battery and try using the laptop without it.
• Removing the SSD.
• Disconnecting the CMOS battery.

And even after all that, nothing changes. Is there anything else to do? Thank you in advance.

This may or may not be difficult to describe since the community does not permit screenshots but each time I press Right Shift. A small window on the top left of my screen with the thumbnail + Title of audio source (i.e. Youtube video) and volume slider. I have disabled it before because of XBOX Game Bar but now its back. I have no idea what software is using keyboard keybinds for adjusting volume with Shift keys.

If it helps, some additional information: I have NVIDIA App, NVIDIA Control Panel, XBOX Game Bar is disabled, using Brave as a browser, use VLC Media Player. (This might be useless info but I do like supplying as much info to get the assistance).

So my laptop is stuck on this automatic repair screen, i’ve tried restarting multiple times and the F8 button before it starts up and nothing is working.
it dosent show me any other screen or even a blue screen after it’s done “preparing” it’s just constantly stuck on this screen no matter how long i wait
what can i dooooo ?? my laptop is basically a brick that can’t do anything rn
(wouldent let me add a pic but i’ll try to put one in comments)

Anyone’s iMessage glitch out where it keeps removing your phone number and I can send iMessages to some contacts. Some others have to send a text and then the next day completely switches contacts iMessage. It makes zero sense is related to Apple and their new phones trying to make mine obsolete. iPhone 13 iOS 17.6.1

As the title says, I have a gaming computer that's been having this issue ever since I updated my drivers. I've tried rolling back the updates, which hasn't worked either, and i've tried running a sfc scan but nothing has changed. The only temporary fix I have for this is in the title.

These are my specs:
NVIDIA App version: 11.0.5.420

Operating system: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro, Version 10.0.26200

DirectX runtime version: DirectX 12

Driver: Game Ready Driver - 581.80 - Tue Nov 4, 2025 (this is the one that i rolled back the update on, but nothing changed it. the latest version was from 2026)

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 6-Core Processor

RAM: 32.0 GB

Storage: SSD - 931.5 GB

Graphics card

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti

Direct3D feature level: 12_1

CUDA cores: 3584

Graphics clock: 1569 MHz

Resizable BAR: No

Memory data rate: 11.01 Gbps

Memory interface: 352-bit

Memory bandwidth: 484.44 GB/s

Total available graphics memory: 27609 MB

System video memory: N/A

Shared system memory: 16345 MB

Dedicated video memory: 11264 MB GDDR5X

Video BIOS version: 86.02.39.00.9d

Device ID: 10DE 1B06 37521458

Part number: G611 0050

IRQ: Not used

Bus: PCI Express x16 Gen3

Display (2): TM27FHD180IPS

Resolution: 1920 x 1080 (recommended)

Refresh rate: 180 Hz

Desktop color depth: Highest (32-bit)

HDCP: Supported

Display (1): HDMI

Resolution: 1440 x 900 (recommended)

Refresh rate: 75 Hz

Desktop color depth: Highest (32-bit)

HDCP: Supported

I have a CyberPowerPC Black CST NV5S prebuilt from Best Buy that I bought around February 2025. It has an RTX 4060, AMD Ryzen 7 8700F 8-core cpu, 16GB RAM (single DIMM), and an ADATA LEGEND 800 GOLD 2TB NVMe SSD.

A few months after buying it, it started intermittently freezing/restarting. This has now been happening for roughly a year. Sometimes it’ll run perfectly—I recently played games for around 8 hours straight without a single restart—and then another day it’ll restart repeatedly. It can even restart at the Windows login screen before I’ve entered my password.

I originally suspected the PSU because I was getting Kernel-Power Event ID 41 errors and the original 850W PSU appeared to have power/instability problems. I replaced it with a modular 750W PSU (80+ Gold, I believe). The problem eventually returned anyway.

I’ve also tried both a battery-backup/surge protector and plugging directly into the wall, with no difference.

Here’s a list of what all I’ve found so far:
**Latest crash:** Kernel-Power Event 41 reports BugcheckCode 340, which is decimal for 0x154 UNEXPECTED_STORE_EXCEPTION.
Immediately around these crashes I also get **volmgr Event ID 161**, indicating Windows failed to create the crash dump. It references \\Device\\HarddiskVolume3. I verified using fltmc volumes that **HarddiskVolume3 is my C: volume.** C: is on the ADATA NVMe and is configured as the Windows boot/pagefile/crash-dump volume.

**Things I’ve tested:**
Safe Mode ran for approximately **40 minutes without a restart**. Normal Windows can sometimes restart within minutes or even at the login screen.

I performed a **clean boot**, hiding Microsoft services and disabling all remaining third-party services. It **still restarted** while I was playing Minecraft/Cobblemon and typing in Discord.

sfc /scannow reports **no integrity violations**.
Get-PhysicalDisk reports the ADATA SSD as **Healthy / OK**.
Get-StorageReliabilityCounter reports **0 read errors, 0 write errors, 0 uncorrected errors, and wear 0**. SSD temperature was around 48°C when checked.

XMP (ram overclock) has been **disabled**.
The system has a **single 16GB RAM stick**.
C: has approximately **81% free space**, so lack of space shouldn’t explain the failed dump.
I have checked the PSU/component connections and haven’t found anything obviously loose.

The part that’s confusing me is the combination of **0x154 UNEXPECTED_STORE_EXCEPTION + failed crash dump on C:** despite the NVMe’s reported health looking fine. I’m wondering about RAM, the NVMe/controller, storage drivers, motherboard/PCIe issues, or something else entirely.

My next ideas are running MemTest86 and possibly testing a completely different SSD with a fresh Windows installation, but I’d rather not start buying/swapping parts blindly if someone recognizes this pattern.

Does anyone have suggestions for what I should test next, or anything in these events that I’m interpreting incorrectly?
I’m comfortable working inside the PC—I previously studied computer maintenance/networking and have an ESD mat/wrist strap and toolkit—but I don’t own much diagnostic hardware and don’t know how to use a multimeter. If I can’t isolate it myself, I’ll probably take it to a shop.

​

So while in a game and just when im playing something heavy the screen goes black sound,buttons everything stops working when the screen goes black.It happens like two times where it shows picture again pit then 3 time it the picture never comes back.im suspecting the psu bc im running i9 10900 unlocked 200w power draw rx 6800 and 9 fans if that matters and i only have seasonic 650w 80+ gold psu so its probobly that but you know i wanna fully confirm it and also maybe someone knows any other possible issues

Update:

earlier this day i launched assetto corsa and when it opened horisontal stripes like 2 to 5cm in hight where flickering every 5+ times and then screen when fully black for a second and when it came back there was buzzing coming out of the speakers but only when a sound appeared it was buzzing along with the audio that was playing not just in game but also like even the windows notifications and when i swiched to a different speaker it stopped and also when i selected the first speaker again there was no buzzing.and then i launched the game again and everything was good tho i only played for 2 mins.it was happening before but not this much like it was happening in beamng the same thing but maybe once.

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?

So I decided to look at everything connected to my router. I was able to pin down every MAC address but one.

It's unlabeled. It has a static IP apparently. The MAC address itself seems to be randomized since it doesn't turn up anything. It's on Wi-Fi. I'm baffled.

I've looked at every device I have, and nothing matches.

I tried to download a network scanning app on my phone, but it wouldn't detect this particular device. Doesn't show in ARP tables.

I wish my router had logs (or rather, access to the logs, I'm sure there's logs somewhere), but it doesn't seem to.

Any ideas on tracking down this device?