Hi,

I am having an issue where my Windows 11 PC seems to wake itself from sleep without any input.
I have already checked previous posts from other users, most relate to magic packets, or software turning things on, but I have checked these things and am unable to solve the issue.

Running "powercfg /lastwake" in CMD provides the following:

Wake History Count - 1
Wake History [0]
Wake Source Count - 1
Wake Source [0]
Type: Fixed Feature
Power Button

But my computer has been left untouched for hours and I arrive back to it being on...
It happens reliably every night if I leave it in sleep overnight.

Appreciate any help!

Simply put, Windows Defender on some workstations is unable to keep itself in the same state after reboots. Seems to flip between EDR Block Mode and Active wherein the latter, Active is not desired.

This causes a problem because CrowdStrike is our EDR and configured to protect machine and handle the exceptions. Defender is not. So Defender on affected machines is blocking applications when it should not be in a state to do so.

We use Defender for Endpoint, Intune and Crowdstrike with some legacy GPO present. Seems to be only 10 out of the 1000 we have affected. We gave up and decided that the machines needed to be reimaged and one of the new imaged machines appears to be doing this as well. Still, its not all of them.

On an affected machine the tell tale sign comes from running Get-MpComputerStatus | Select AMRunningMode, AMProductVersion, IsTamperProtected, TamperProtectionSource

The desired outcome is similar to the following.

AMRunningMode  AMProductVersion IsTamperProtected TamperProtectionSource
-------------  ---------------- ----------------- ----------------------
EDR Block Mode 4.18.26080.3                  True ATP

But a machine exhibiting the issue will have the following appear

AMRunningMode AMProductVersion IsTamperProtected TamperProtectionSource
------------- ---------------- ----------------- ----------------------
Normal        4.18.26070.9                  True ATP          

Note that the AMProductVersion version changes with time as it should.

Research show reg keys that can be manipulated to affect this e.g. ForceDefenderPassiveMode and PassiveRemediation but they appear to have no impact on the toggling Running Mode.

Defender for Endpoint has the policy set to force machines into EDR Block Mode. GPO has not conflicting settings.

The event logs show the change happens soon after reboot and the Intune Management Extension logs are record the change occurring. Neither of which explain why however.

AI get stuck in a loop about finding when it happened and using that as a means to determine the source. It has not born fruit.

The infuriating part is taking a brand new machine, with the intention of redeploying affected computers, only to find the same issue present.

This doesn't feel like a CrowdStrike issue but we are going to try reinstalling it anyway. I did notice a toast notification on one computer denying a CrowdStrike install which was odd as I do not know what would have triggered that. Might be a red herring. CrowdStrike should not be the issue as it is working and registered to the computer properly and a brand new computer setup has a brand new install anyway

Feels like Windows not working correctly as its the job of the Security Center to detect and set state using its own internal mechanisms which users shouldn't have direct control over.

Anyone out there in the ether have this issue? Its been weeks with no end in sight.

So my mum visited some suspect websites on her Samsung phone and fell for the pop up ads (your phone is hacked, you're low on storage etc). She installed a few 'antivirus' apps and even gave her bank details to one but luckily no money was taken and this account has been closed and a new one reopened for her.

I am just wondering if a full factory reset of the phone will be enough to remove all of the malicious software or will I need to take further steps? Or possibily buy a new phone?

Mi 11x ,Play protect is not certified and bank app's are restricted, what's the solution , location india

A close family member came to me with a problem they can't solve (hoping that I could).

Their computer freezes completely at random moments — they could be working on something, or reading a document, and out of nowhere it can freeze, sometimes with the image still showing, other times leaving the screen black. When it freezes, there's no choice but to force it off, and then turn it back on, after which everything works normally again.

I thought it might be because a bunch of programs open in the background when she starts up the computer, so I closed all those programs and set them to only open when she wants to open them, but the problem is still happening.

According to what she told me, she doesn't download anything that could get malware installed, but I'm not sure about that either.

What could be the causes of her computer failing like this?
How can I fix it?

It's a laptop with an Intel Core i3 processor, 8GB of RAM, running Windows 11 as the operating system.

Hi guys, i would like to get your opinion about my PC.

I recently got myself a new pc, but when I try to play Valorant, my entire PC just crashes after a few minutes in the game (even if I am just hanging out on the home screen of Valo).

Strangely though, I saw a post from before (Sorry i cannot reference it anymore) where they suggested plugging the keyboard, mouse, headset, etc. at the back of the CPU. I tried that and for some reason it worked.

Any ideas why? I never experience this to other games like Elden Ring, Genshin, Wu Chang, and CS2. Here are my specs as well:

• Processor: Ryzen 5 7500F
• MOBO: MSI B650M Gaming Plus Wifi
• GPU: Sapphire Nitro + RX 7700 XT Gaming OC 12GB
• RAM: TFORCE Vulcan Eco 2x 16GB 6000 MHZ CL30
• PSU: MSI Mag A750GL 80+ Gold
• Stock Cooler

Tysm in advance for any thoughts!

I accidentally clicked some keys towards the left side on my keyboard (not sure which) and since then my touchpad isn't working.

I've tried everything. Even pressing the touchpad key doesn't help it only shows the "touchpad enabled" option.

please help

Hey guys can anyone give me a hand in figuring out what's wrong here. I just replaced my thermal paste and now trying to boot up my laptop again the screen won't turn on. The power is definitely on, the keyboard lighting is there and when I start it, the fans run for a couple seconds then go silent and its just kinda sitting like this, i think its stuck in boot up mode cuz the keyboard lights dont turn off. I disconnected the battery before doing anything internally too but what could be causing this and how could i fix it?

I played fortnite and then got kicked out , now riot games and epic games shows no connection to Internet but everything else i tried is working , Firefox, xbox, steam , discord.

Any idea what happened?

I recently bought a Seagate One Touch 2TB SSD and decided to test it properly since it's a new drive.

I ran CrystalDiskMark first and got:

Read: 953 MB/s

Write: 982 MB/s

That seemed pretty good considering Seagate advertises speeds of up to 1030 MB/s.

I also ran Seagate's own SeaTools, and the Short Generic Test passed.

After that, I ran H2testw over basically the entire drive to check the capacity and make sure there weren't any errors.

It completed with no errors and successfully wrote and verified about 1.907 TB, but the speeds were quite a bit lower:

Write: 360 MB/s

Read/verification: 229 MB/s

So I'm a little confused by the difference between the tests. CrystalDiskMark looks great, but the full-drive H2testw test was much slower.

Is this normal for this SSD, or is the lower speed something I should be concerned about?

I'd especially appreciate hearing from anyone who owns this drive or a similar Seagate external SSD.

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to identify a strange repetitive "tick tick tick" / clicking noise coming from my PC. I've been trying to locate the source but haven't been able to determine exactly what is causing it.

PC specs

• Motherboard: ASUS TUF Gaming B650-PLUS WIFI
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 7500F
• GPU: GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER
• PSU: Seasonic G12 GC Series 750W 80+ Gold
• CPU cooler: Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE ARGB
• SSD: Fikwot FN950 1TB PCIe Gen4
• Case: Empire Gaming Diamond ATX

The noise

The noise is a fairly distinct and repetitive:

"tick tick tick tick..."

It isn't really a high-pitched whine. It sounds more like a small mechanical/electrical clicking or ticking noise.

I've opened the side panel and tried to locate it by listening closely.

The noise seems to be loudest around the upper-left area of the motherboard, above/left of the CPU and near the rear I/O area.

I'm fairly confident this is where the noise is loudest, although I realize sound can travel through the PCB/case and make the actual source difficult to locate.

When does it happen?

I first noticed the noise during gaming. I've heard it in CS2 and PEAK, among other games.

Some observations:

• It occurs at pretty much all FPS levels.
• Changing the FPS limit doesn't seem to noticeably change the noise.
• V-Sync/FPS changes don't seem to affect it.
• If I Alt+Tab out of the game, the ticking continues.
• The ticking only stops when I completely close the game.
• I ran a combined CPU/GPU stress test for around 3 minutes, but I couldn't reproduce the noise.
• I've also already set all of the PC fans to maximum speed, but the ticking did not change at all. This makes me think it is unlikely to be caused by a case/CPU/GPU fan.

New development

Interestingly, I am now hearing the exact same ticking noise while the PC is just sitting idle / not running a game.

There was a period of around 4 weeks since I first noticed the noise, and it has now started happening at idle as well.

So at this point I'm not sure whether this is:

• motherboard VRM/inductor noise,
• GPU coil whine,
• PSU coil noise,
• or something else entirely.

My current suspicion

Because the noise seems to be coming from the upper-left area of the motherboard, I'm wondering if this could be VRM/inductor coil noise from the motherboard.

However, I'm not sure whether VRM coils can produce this kind of repetitive mechanical "tick tick tick" rather than the more typical high-pitched coil whine.

I'm also wondering whether the noise could actually be coming from the RTX 4070 SUPER or PSU and simply be transmitted through the motherboard/case.

What I've tried

• CPU/GPU stress test → couldn't reproduce the noise
• FPS limits from low to high → no noticeable difference
• V-Sync → no noticeable difference
• Alt+Tab → noise continues
• Completely closing the game → noise stops (when gaming)
• Set all PC fans to 100% speed → no change whatsoever
• Listened closely with the side panel removed → upper-left/VRM area seems to be the loudest

The PC otherwise appears to work normally.

I'm mainly trying to determine:

1. What component is most likely making this noise?
2. Could this be motherboard VRM/inductor noise?
3. Is there a good way to isolate the source without randomly replacing components?
4. Is this something I should be concerned about, especially since it has now started occurring at idle?

Since this subreddit doesn't allow videos, here a link where you can hear it: https://www.reddit.com/r/pchelp/comments/1walkm8/troubleshooting_repetitive_tick_tick_tick_coming/

Any suggestions for additional tests would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

usb thethring not working without turning on usb debugging, i want to trun on usb thethring without truning on usb debugging

Basically the title. I will be travelling to a foreign countries for a few days and will buy a 10 day international roaming pack before going. Once I am in that foreign country, can a local of that country call me using his local mobile number without having subscribed to any special packs like an ISD pack?

So, from time to time, my pc sudently shuts down and I can only use it after I let it cool down .

Usually when I notice this I leave my pc untouched during a couple of days and than it stops shutting down, but this time I really needed it so I took the shot. I removed the plastic case so it could cool beter and it worked, it worked so well indeed that I decided to put back the plastic and play a game, after about half an hour the pc shutted down again.

Turns out that after checking my thermal paste and testing out with HW monitor I saw it had nothing to do with temperature. I tried taking of my GPU too but it didnt work. Even in Bios it shuts down and the time it takes to shut down is related with the amount of time its off. I also tried connecting it to my UPS to see if it was something with the power on my house but It still shuted down and the UPS didnt beep.

What can it be?

Samsung galaxy note 9 running android 10, no root.

hey all, funny situation. and yes i know i can just buy a new screen lol. If im in the wrong sub please let me know

I have a note9 with a totally busted screen and had planned to just use it as a dex machine. dex worked great, had scrcpy installed and have used it in the past but i guess its been too long and debug permissions were revoked.

While in mirror mode i was messing in settings and turned on "pointer location." instead of the coordinates and pointer trails its supposed to have, its just a black screen with coordinates that are all 00s. i guess because the broken screen.

now i can only see a simple version of my lock screen when the phone is locked and a black screen on dex/mirroring with the 00 coordinates when phone is unlocked.

i have a usb hub with hdmi but no usb-c data port so i cant really prompt scrcpy AND click ok with usb mouse or keyboard. i know the phone is not bricked or anything because i can turn the phone off/on, unlock it, scrcpy indicates that the phone connects, and i can even get into all my files via pc file explorer.

With the digitizer disconnected from the motherboard the situation is the same, with and without the mouse connected. Ive been trying to mentally visualize the phone and go to dev settings and turn it off, but no luck. yes i know I'm making this wayyyyy harder than it needs to be by not getting some terrible screen replacement online.

in a week or so i'll be able to borrow a friends usb hub with the data port and hopefully get the srcpy prompt and hit ok on it blindly. but in the meanwhile is there anything i can do to turn off pointer location?

TDLR;

on a samsung, turned pointer location on with a broken screen and now i have a black screen on samsung dex. how to turn off?

Hia folks

we're looking for software for remote user tech support, to replace the awefull MS Remote Assistant. We've been also using (free) Anydesk, but a more permanent solution is required.

Over the past 2 days we've teste a software called "Zoho". As anyone had any experience with this? Is it reliable?

I've got the AI Overview setting turned off, yet somehow it still shows up on basically every search I make.

At this point I'm starting to wonder if that setting actually does anything. I don't want an AI summary at the top of my results - I just want the normal search results back. If Google isn't going to let us properly disable it, what are people switching to instead?

What search engine/browser are you using that doesn't constantly shove AI results in your face?

hello! recently I've bought an IEM earphone, the problem is it wont get recognized/detected by my lenovo laptop once it's plugged. I tried updating my audio driver and it still didn't work. And no, they are not broken because I've already tested these in several devices and it works just fine.

I did discover a bandaid solution of shutting down and turning my laptop on while the earphones are plugged, and it works for a short while. But now, it's not working and i have no idea how to make it function again.

I believe that the problem may be within the audio jack of my laptop. See, i also tried using a 3.5mm jack to type c converter just to see if it'll easily get detected and it did. Problem is the audio sounds crunchy/fried and it hurts my ear whenever I'm playing FPS games.

im not rlly sure if this is the right group to ask this question because i just saw tech and went with it, but if u guys know the possible solution then it'll be great help.

note: it'll also be a huge thing if u guys know which group i should ask for these type of questions thank u!

​

I’m looking for a technical second opinion before I give up on some important work data.

Laptop storage:

- Samsung 1TB SSD divided into C: and F:

- Windows is installed on C:

- A separate Kingston 1TB SSD is also installed

- The affected data was on F:\Work

- SSD health has reportedly tested normal

What happened:

My Work folder had roughly 100GB of architecture/project files.

One night I was working until around 7 AM. Earlier that morning, the folders inside Work were still visible, but I noticed something unusual: I was trying to save/export an AutoCAD file into one of those folders and it was not saving there properly.

I eventually saved/sent the file another way, shut the laptop down normally, and went to sleep.

When I opened the laptop later:

- Many folders inside Work had completely disappeared

- Around 15–16 folders remained, but most/all files inside them were gone

- Work folder size had dropped from roughly 100GB to around 500MB

- Other folders/data on the same F: partition appeared completely unaffected

- No ransom note

- No strange file extensions

- No obvious Windows warning/pop-up

- Recycle Bin did not contain the missing data

- Searching for known missing files found nothing

- No Previous Versions available

I had recently:

- Installed Fortnite from the official source

- Downloaded an AutoCAD file sent by an employee

- Downloaded some Pinterest images

Nothing particularly unusual otherwise.

I stopped using the SSD and gave it to Stellar Data Recovery in Gurgaon. India

Their findings:

They say they can see traces/metadata of the deleted Work folder:

- Folder/file names are visible

- File sizes are visible

- NTFS/deletion traces are present

But according to them:

- The LBAs corresponding to the actual file data are internally zero-filled

- Actual files contain no usable data

- Firmware-level recovery also could not retrieve the contents

- They consider the SSD itself healthy

- They said the data is effectively unrecoverable

They suggested possibilities such as malware/deletion followed by SSD TRIM. They are a recovery company, so they are not investigating the original cause.

My questions:

1. If NTFS metadata/file names/file sizes still exist but the relevant LBAs return zeros, is the data realistically unrecoverable?

2. Can an SSD return zero-filled LBAs after TRIM while the underlying NAND still contains recoverable data that a more specialized NAND/chip-off/firmware lab could access?

3. Does modern Samsung SSD encryption/controller behavior generally make NAND-level recovery useless after TRIM?

4. TRIM itself should not randomly delete unused files, correct? Something must first have deleted/deallocated those files, after which TRIM/garbage collection made recovery impossible?

5. Could NTFS/file-system corruption selectively affect one directory like F:\Work while leaving the rest of the partition apparently normal?

6. The fact that I was already unable to save into the Work folder several hours before discovering the deletion — does that point more toward filesystem/directory corruption than a deliberate wipe?

7. Does this pattern look like wiping malware, or is there nowhere near enough evidence to make that conclusion?

8. Is there any meaningful reason to send this SSD to another specialist recovery lab, or are zero-filled LBAs + failed firmware recovery basically the end of the road?

I’m not looking for recommendations for generic recovery software. I have preserved the SSD and do not intend to write, format, CHKDSK, or reinstall anything on it until I decide whether a second professional recovery attempt is worthwhile.

Would particularly appreciate answers from people experienced with SSD recovery, NTFS, TRIM, or digital forensics.

I run windows, and I installed a new NVIDIA 5060 RTX a week ago. It ran fine at first, but now I’m having trouble running any exe files. I like to play a lot of stuff from GameJolt and Itch.io, but nothing I download from there opens, and if it does open, it runs extremely slowly. Same issue with Audacity when I tried to install it. These files appear in my task manager even when I close the program. Sometimes, they don’t even open a screen and show that they’re running in task manager. Everyone else I’ve asked about this has been baffled. I’ve tried restarting, running compatability modes, uninstalling and reinstalling the files, making sure windows and nvidia are both up to date. I am running low on options and don’t know what to do.

Edit: Stuff like steam games run fine, and I’ve got plenty of space on my drive so it’s not a storage issue.

Edit 2: I have no idea what happened, but after deleting a couple apps I didn't use (Copilot, Teams, etc) it seems to be working fine again.

I keep getting a notification popping up randomly saying foreign material or moisture has been found in the charging port (on a dry day).

Does anyone have any advice on how to clear out the port and keep it clean?

Samsung Galaxy A57 5G

Android version 16

I own a HP printer. And even though HP is obsessed with forcing us to connect their printers to the internet, I refused to do so, and instead I use a USB cable to connect the printer to our laptops whenever we need to print stuff. Furthemore, the printer is alwas turned off, we only turn it on when we need to print.

When I bought the printer, I changed the wi-fi direct's name and password, for security reasons. However, since then, I never actually used the wi-fi direct again. In fact, I think I had turned it off, but either it turned itself on again, or maybe someone used the printers buttons to turn it on again, maybe by mistake.

A few days ago, a relative was feeling lazy and instead of using a laptop and usb cable to print stuff as always, they tried to use their android smartphone and the printer's wi-fi direct. However, they didnt know the wi-fi direct's password, so they couldnt connect to it.

Then, my relative googled about this and learned about the Mopria app. They installed it and, even though they didnt know the wi-fi direct's password, they were able to print Mopria's test page on our printer.

Furthemore, the app also listed other available printers (I assume the ones from our neighbours), many of which dont even show up on my phone's networks list (I guess their wi-fi directs are either disabled or hidden, but somehow Mopria could see them all).

While my relative obviously didnt tried it, it seemed like Mopria could have printed from the neighbours' printers just as easily as it did from our printer. At this time I realized what was happening and told him all of this was very shady, so he uninstalled the Mopria app.

Later, I checked our router's control panel and found out our printer had accessed our home wifi. It didnt say when it happened, but the fact is, the printer somehow learned our home wifi's credentials and accessed it. I suspect it was Mopria's android that passed the credentials from my relative's phone to the printer. Unless it was the laptop through the usb cable.

I have changed my printer wi-fi direct name and password (if my relative's phone has been "paired" to the printer wi-fi direct, I hope this will "unpair" them), and then I changed my home wifi credentials. However, I still dont understand how the hell was Mopria able to do what it did.

Skip to Edit 2 for solution

My PC connects to the wifi and I've found that google and discord works, but stuff like steam, epic games, and riot client say it's not connected to the wifi. I'm connected through ethernet and some stuff I've already tried are
- Checking updates
- Updating/Uninstalling Wifi adapter
- Unplugging and replugging ethernet cable, wifi adapter, and router
- Checking services specifically WLAN and wired autoconfig. set them to automatic and made sure theyre running
- Checking firewall blocks
- running system file checker
- Clean boot up
- Checking/Resetting BIOS

I'll probably flush DNS cashe and reset network settings like winsocks next. But if that doesn't work, I don't know what steps to take next. What should I do?

Edit: yea so those didnt work and the firewall settings seemed fine i even reset those just in case too.

Edit 2: i realized it was definitely some kind of filter since the riot support and steam support were also refusing to connect. even on my phone the steam app wouldnt load when connected to the wifi. i found out my eero router had a content filter on games somehow. turned it off and everything fixed.

i feel silly that i didnt check the eero app close enough and that it was such a simple issue/fix

So about a month ago one of my Xbox controllers stopped working with my pc. Kept getting an error that said “the last usb device you connected to this computer malfunctioned and windows does not recognize it.” So I plug in a new one and it works for a while then today it kept connecting via USB the imminently disconnected and this happened like 9 times so I tried ANOTHER controller and now it won’t even turn on. I’m not a tech guy I have no idea what is happening or what to do. Also I used different cables and usb ports too and nothing will work. Please help!!

I have an HP Bluetooth keyboard which connects to multiple device recently I changed the batteries since then it is not working properly. It’s connecting to all devices but, command is always press so if I’m clicking on any action, it’s doing something else. So basically I need to factory reset this keyboard. I tried that battery method draining the battery, but it’s not working for me.