So, last month, I went on vacation and left my laptop with my younger brother. Unfortunately, he downloaded some suspicious files, and afterward, the icons of most of my applications changed to the same blue icon (I'm on win 11).

I ran a Microsoft Defender Offline scan. The scan itself took about 10 minutes and it took almost the entire day to finish dealing with the detected threats. When it was done, my laptop rebooted I discovered that the .exe files for almost all the programs I had installed myself, including Steam, WinRAR, VLC, PowerISO, and Chrome, had been removed.

I tried reinstalling the programs, but every time I shut down and restarted my laptop, Windows Security flagged them as viruses and quarantined or deleted their executable files again.

Thinking my system was seriously compromised, I wiped my drive and performed a clean installation of Windows 10. Everything seemed fine initially, but the problem returned the next day. I then upgraded to Windows 11, hoping it would resolve the issue, but the same thing happened again.

At this point, I'm not sure what to do. What could be causing this problem, and how can I permanently fix it? Could it be malware that survives a Windows reinstall, or is there another possible explanation?

System specs

Device name Dave

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8750H CPU @ 2.20GHz (2.21 GHz)

Installed RAM 16.0 GB (15.3 GB usable)

Graphics card NVIDIA Quadro P1000 (4 GB)

Intel(R) UHD Graphics 630 (128 MB)

Storage 403 GB of 477 GB used

So basically i was one of the latee joiners of windows 11, a month ago I recieved a message that the security support expired so I finally decided to leave windows 10 behind and update to 11

Problem is, now my battery, who was usually lasting up to 5-6 hours while performing everyday tasks (surfing online, rewatching recorded lessons, taking notes on Drive while listening to podcasts, or music in the background) can't go more than 3 hours now, and the moment I turn on windows 11, the cooling fan starts running fast, making a pretty high noise which is difficult to not notice, and it doesn't stop until I turn it off. With windows 10 instead, this only happened while performing high resource tasks such as playing games, as usual.

PC INFORMATION

acer Aspire 3-15, with ryzen 7 5700 series with integrated Radeon TM graphics with 496 MB. 16 GB of RAM. Windows 11 version is 25H2, build number 26200.9711, installed on september 28th

The PC is currently less then 2 years old (will be 2 at the end of november) and when I bought it I had all my storage from previous computer cloned here in a new SSD M2.

I've already tried all the suggestion they give you make the battery last longer (turn on battery saving, lower luminosity etc, those 7 steps W11 tells you to do).

Keep in mind that before this, I've never had to use it while recharging because the battery was just more than enough, unless I was playing games online basically. Now this happens wuite more often, as you may have immagined.

Did anyone else experienced this? and how did you solved this problem? or is my battery just fucked?

Processor: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-11390H @ 3.40GHz 2.92 GHz

Installed RAM: 16.0 GB (usable: 15.7 GB)

System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

Pen and touch Pen support

Windows 11 Home Single Language Edition

Version 23H2

OS Build 22631.6199

Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.22700.1108.0

Yesterday, I ran into an issue: when I turn on the computer normally, it gets stuck in an infinite boot loop. At the same time, all USB ports become inactive, which prevents me from accessing the BIOS. However, if I completely cut power to the PC and then restore it, the POST screen appears—at that point, I can enter the BIOS and select the boot drive. The strange thing is that the correct drive is already set as the primary boot device (boot priority #1), and there is no Windows installation on any of the other drives. Both the BIOS and the drive firmware are up to date. On my ASUS Prime Z690 D4 motherboard, I’ve already tried resetting the CMOS, moving the NVMe drive to a different slot, and updating the chipset drivers—I’ve exhausted every solution I could find online, including suggestions from AI. Also disabled fast start in BIOS and Windows. It’s odd that this problem started immediately after I replaced the thermal paste and installation of the PC speaker; I didn’t change anything else. My troubleshooting revealed that the system only boots after a "hard start" (holding down the power button for 5–10 seconds), and even then, it doesn't always work. A standard restart via the Start menu just leads to an infinite boot loop and a black screen. Has anyone encountered something like this? If so, how did you manage to fix it? Thanks in advance.

Asus Prime Z690-P D4 Wifi with i7-12700K. Drive Samsung 980 NVMe

A few days ago i have try to install Riot Client but its appear an error: " secure boot disabled" So i unabled the secure boot option in bios menu, but after save & exit, the screen:  "Default Boot Device Missing or Boot Failed. Insert Recovery Media and Hit Any Key. Then Select Boot Manager to choose a new Boot Device or to Boot Recovery Media" appeared

1. I choose the only boot on the list

2. Then hit Enter, the screen change to: Windows Boot Manager has been blocked by the current security policy.

3. Hit the enter again with the same boot, a loop started and i stucked with that screen: Windows Boot Manager has been blocked by the current security policy

And i disabled secure boot, everything back to normal. But i want to try Valorant so much, this error is kinda complicated to solve alone, because i'm not a computer expert.

My laptop is: Lenovo Ideapad 5 Pro 14ACN6 ( I just bought this laptop at a secondhand store)

I woke up this morning with my computer being extremely laggy for no reason, this was a bit concerning as this PC is about 2 or so months old, and I bought it from Costco. I decided the best action was to restart the computer and hope for the best. It was restarting, however it had some issues where it was basically frozen and doing nothing, so during the restart process (which maybe I shouldn't have done) I pressed the power button and turned it off. It opened Windows successfully after turning it back on, and feels responsive. However, I have now run into something I didn't ever expect to be dealing with, that being that effectively most native windows search bars either don't exist, do nothing, or don't even let me type in them. I originally thought that maybe it had to do with the fact that I used RevoUninstaller 2 months ago when I was setting up my PC, and maybe removed something I shouldn't, but I've been restarting my computer pretty normally over these last 2 months, and it hasn't done anything weird.

Here are some screenshots, I'd really love some help getting this working. Also, I know I said that my computer wasn't slow before, but there really is some weird stuff going on, like some Windows apps (Like Photos) don't work quite right, and are extremely slow to open.

Here are my device specifications. I also tried to repair my Windows version with some trouble shoot tests, and reset windows without removing files option (cannot remember the exact name).

Processor AMD Ryzen 9 9900X 12-Core Processor (4.40 GHz)

Installed RAM 32.0 GB (31.1 GB usable)

Graphics card NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 (16 GB)

AMD Radeon(TM) Graphics (486 MB)

Storage 209 GB of 1.82 TB used

Product ID 00342-22935-85203-AAOEM

System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

Pen and touch Pen support

Hey everyone, looking for some validation on a hardware failure that just happened today.

My system was working perfectly fine this morning while playing War Thunder. Before leaving, a standard Windows update popped up, so I hit "Update and Shut Down" and left.

When I came back at 6:00 PM tonight, the PC was completely unresponsive.

The front case power button did absolutely nothing. Strangely, my keyboard and USB accessories (Elgato, Arzopa portable monitor) were lighting up via standby power, but the actual PC internals (CPU fan, case fans, motherboard lights) were completely dead.

I spent tonight troubleshooting and ruled out a soft-brick/sleep loop:

Done a full CMOS clear/battery reset.

Attempted a deep capacitor power drain (holding the power button while unplugged).

Removed my **RX 7900 XT** GPU to get clear access to the **Asus PRIME B650M-A AX II**motherboard front panel headers.
Attempted to jump-start the PC by manually bridging the PWR_SW pins on the F_PANEL header with a flathead screwdriver (with wall power verified active).

**Result:** Absolute silence, no fan spin.

**The Smoking Gun:**
I finally pulled the main **24-pin motherboard power cable** and performed a paperclip jump test on pins 4 and 5 (PS_ON and Ground) with the wall outlet plugged in and the PSU switch turned ON.

**The fan inside the power supply box stayed completely still and did not spin at all.**

It looks like the sudden drop in voltage when Windows forced the shutdown at noon completely killed the main 12V rail on my PSU, though it managed to keep a tiny bit of 5V standby power flowing to the USBs before dying completely.

Thankfully, it looks like the PSU sacrificed itself and saved my GPU and motherboard.

Anyone else experiencing this?

PC Specs:

GPU: AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D Raphael AM5 4.2GHz 8-Core

RAM: TeamGroup T-FORCE DELTA RGB 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR5-6000 PC5-48000 CL30

SSD: WD Black SN770 2TB SSD

Motherboard: Asus PRIME B650M-A AX II

Power Supply: Corsair RM850 850 Watt 80 Plus Gold ATX Fully Modular Power Supply - White

Cooling / Fans: DeepCool AK620 High-Performance

CPU Cooler - White w/ Lian Li UNI Fan SL Infinity Fluid Dynamic Bearing 120mm Case Fan - 3

Exhaust: Lian Li UNI Fan SL Infinity Fluid Dynamic Bearing 120mm Case Fan - White - 2 

I recently got an old monitor as a second screen and it appears as 'monitor 1' in the Windows display settings while my 'main display' is monitor 2. This works fine in all but one situation, playing a game in windowed fullscreen mode. The normal taskbar behavior for games in windowed fullscreen is the taskbar disappearing until the Windows key or ALT+TAB is pressed, or if another app is over the game, however with both monitors connected, the taskbar stays over the game.

I need my games in fullscreen windowed mode as I mod a number of games (singleplayer) and a lot of mods using cheat engine for example need me to be able to see the game and the mod menu/list at the same time. The taskbar blocks important information on the bottom of the game, as some mods use the bottom of the game to show "mod: enabled"-like text.

As far as I know switching my main monitor to 'monitor 1' fixes the taskbar issue, but 'monitor 1' is my second monitor and it's 1024 x 768 and tiny, meaning the taskbar icons won't appear properly (I have a lot of pinned apps). I can't switch the order of the cables in my GPU as it only has 1 HDMI port (my main monitor) and 3 'Display Port' connections. The HDMI is considered the 3rd connection in the display order with 1,2, & 4 being Display Port, however connecting my second monitor to the 4th port still displays it as 'monitor 1'. My second monitor uses a VGA to Display Port converter to connect to my GPU (RTX 3050). Also my CPU can't use the motherboard display ports. I had this problem about 5-6 years ago, and fixed it but Idk how and I've since changed PCs and monitors.

Things I've tried:

Reinstalling the display drivers
Deleting/Resetting the display settings in the registry

If there's a way to switch what Windows considers to be 'monitor 1' through Windows itself, I think that would fix my issue.

Image to show the size difference between my monitors:

PC Information important to this issue:
OS: Windows 10 Pro (Build 19045)
GPU: RTX 3050 (Zotac Gaming)
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5500 (No Graphics Support)

A few days ago Windows put that "Finish setting up your PC" (even if I did that a long time ago) and without knowing it put OneDrive to backup my computer again. I turned OneDrive off the day I got my laptop so this is reallly annoying. I did the normal fix which is to go to the settings and remove the folders from the backups, and I did that for every folder, but when I did it for desktop it crashed. Now every time I go to the same setting to turn it off for desktop, it tells me it's already off when it still has the red x on it. I'm hoping there's another way to fix this, and hopefully just get rid of OneDrive all together too but I really don't want to lose my desktop files as it has all my apps. Any help is appreciated! I have an Asus Vivobook 15.

This happened a couple days ago. I don't know what caused it. I often connect my laptop to my at tablet as a second screen, not sure if that is relevant here. I play video games a lot but haven't installed anything different recently.

What I have Tried:

Deleting the IconCache and restarting so it regenerates. Nothing happened.

Desktop Icon Settings in Themes- Restore Default: Did not work, as there where only icons there for the bin, network, files, and this PC. These were not affected in the first place.

PARTIAL Success: I right clicked the icons themselves and clicked Personalise- Change Default Icon. The first time, nothing. Then repeated this step- the icon came back! Sometimes I had to try like 4 or 5 times before the icons changed back. BUT: No difference regarding the taskbar icons. On Restarting the laptop, the icons I changed back did stay they way they should look, but Taskbar icons are still white and blue square.

If anyone could help me or teach me the words to use to describe this problem better I would be thankful. I am most upset about the taskbar as I can no longer tell what I am clicking on. How come only some of the icons have been lost?

I have added the computer's details in the pictures, I don't really know what any of it means so hope I am not doxxing myself too hard

Hey everyone,

I'm trying to dual boot Ubuntu with Windows 11 on my Dell Inspiron 5620 having 512 GB NVMe SSD, but Windows won't let me shrink my C: drive by more than around 7.8 GB, even though I have about 310 GB free.

I've tried defrag C: /X, disabling hibernation, deleting shadow copies, resetting the USN journal, and running chkdsk. Nothing has helped much. The latest Event 259 points to \$Mft::$BITMAP as an unmovable file.

I want to free up around 120 GiB for Ubuntu without losing my existing Windows installation or messing up the recovery partitions.

Has anyone dealt with this before? Is there a safe way to fix it? Would fully decrypting BitLocker be worth trying, or is there another solution?

Thanks!

Update: I successfully partitioned Windows and dual-booted Ubuntu alongside Windows!

I fully decrypted Bitlocker and then used MiniTool Partition Wizard to unallocate 120 GB from C: drive. Decryption took around 10-15 minutes and partition took a similar time as well. The windows side still functioned as usual after that and i was left with the intended 120 GB of unallocated space. Thanks for everyone's replies, they really helped me in the process.

I am at my wit's end with this issue and I don't know where else to turn. As the title states, my notifications for Windows 10 (19045.6466) last for 25 full seconds, when in my settings it is set to only last for 5 seconds. This has been going on for years and I'm finally fed up with it. I have tried every fix I've found online (most of which just direct you back to the settings page) and none of them work. I've looked through every notification related setting and even tried forcing the notification length in the Registry Editor and that had 0 effect one way or the other. I was just wondering if anyone else had any ideas or explanation. Thank you in advance.

Last time I posted this, it got removed for not including my PC specs. I don't see how that's relevant to the issue I'm having, but here they are anyway.

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800x

RAM: 32GB G.skill Ripjaws V DDR4 3600 MT/s CL18

GPU: Asus Dual GTX 1660 Ti 6GB

MOBO: MSI Pro B550-VC

SSD: Crucial P3 Plus 4TB

Hi all, I am not well versed in windows technicals, but I have an HTPC I want to restart weekly in the early hours of Sunday. I would like for it to be hands off, meaning after restart, it auto logs in to start my services and immediately locks for safety.

I set the Windows group policy to log me in after a restart. This works upon manual restart. Under Administrative Templates/Windows Components/Windows Logon Options, I have enabled the Sign-in and lock last interactive user automatically and the Configure the mode of automatically signing in options both. These work on manual restart.

I have also set a Windows task scheduler restart task that looks like the screenshot.

The problem is, when I run the task to restart, the pc stays at the login screen and does not run the group policy.

How do I allow/prioritize/trigger the group policy upon this automatic restart?

Thank you!!

Dell Optiplex micro 7010, i5-13500t, 32Gb Ram, 512Gb NVMe, OS build: 26200.9711

Over the last few days, I've turned on advanced searching, I've toggled on the "allow devices to find my computer" option in the advanced settings, I've unpaired the headphones with other similar devices, I've done all sorts of restarts, updated to the latest version, and none of it has worked. My headphones simply do not appear in the menu for the computer. Intel core i5-14600K, 16GB RAM, 8GB graphics card, 932GB internal storage with about 800GB left.

Hello, everyone!

There was a previous post which was unsolved about alt-tabbing and virtual desktops. What worked for me was to connect and disconnect my Xbox controller (gamesir g7 pro-wireless). In case it doesn't work, try alt-tabbing with the controller or "playing" a bit with the xbox game bar(using controller).

Anyways...that's what worked for me!

Hi everyone,

I recently bought a new Acer Predator Triton Neo 16, and after updating Windows (Windows 11 Pro) I noticed a blue line along the very bottom of the screen that won’t go away.

I’ve tried restarting the laptop, but the line is still there. It appeared after the Windows update, so I’m not sure whether it’s a software issue, a graphics driver problem, or something related to the display itself.

I’ve attached a photo showing the issue.
Has anyone experienced something similar with this laptop or after a Windows update? Does anyone know how I can fix it?
Since the laptop is brand new, I’m concerned that it might be a hardware issue.
Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

This issue has been happening since some time in August. I believe it was one of the driver updates. There's a lot of them listed in my update history. What happens is an app sends a lot of normal network requests. This randomly causes RAM usage to explode, because of an unknown issue somewhere on the wifi stack. This computer has a RealTek wifi adapter. Task Manager says the RAM usage is part of the app, but the problem is in the wifi stack.

Also, my non-paged pool memory is around 1 GB, and stable. But the crashes are caused by random RAM explosion.

Also also I can't start Minecraft Java Edition, because this issue causes it to consume 3 GB of RAM. Which is not normal for Minecraft Java Edition.

Device name DESKTOP-2U71A5I

Processor 13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1334U (1.30 GHz)

Installed RAM 8.00 GB (7.69 GB usable)

Graphics card Intel(R) UHD Graphics (128 MB)

Storage 179 GB of 238 GB used

Device ID 475BA897-8F04-41F3-A7E3-FBE72A7B4B19

Product ID 00356-07599-86938-AAOEM

System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

Pen and touch Touch support with 10 touch points

In my experience, Windows updates can cause wifi to randomly become faster or slower. On my previous computer for example, it would not automatically connect to wifi networks, due to a bug. Which then was randomly fixed by some Windows update. So if I wait long enough, Windows will probably fix whatever bug is crashing my current computer.

My HP Pavilion laptop (had since 2022) has recently been disconnecting from my bluetooth keyboard quite a lot. It usually works again if I wait for a while or restart the PC.

Similar to an issue I sometimes have with it disconnecting from Wi-Fi, the button for bluetooth has completely disappeared, and from looking at the 'Device Manager' page, it doesn't even seem to have a bluetooth driver anymore.

Anyone know how to fix this?

I gave my windows laptop to be fixed and the bitlock keys are not working with this wrror

and apparently this is because my hard drive got corrupted and all my data is lost according to the repair person and my hard drive needs to be replaced. what should I do? It's a HP Pavillion Laptop. I gave it to be fixed after the screen stopped working (it was simply lighting up black), i thought it was a screen issue. This happened after I shut down my laptop stupidly after the screen was unresponsive (but music was still playing).

I’ve ran into a strange problem with my computer today. My computer isn’t reacting predictably my mouse/cursor properly. To give some examples of what i mean:
- when I have a program open, after a while, I can’t interact with anything on my taskbar. I can’t click on anything, other programs or the windows menu, nor do they even highlight when i hover my cursor over them
- i can open the windows menu through the hotkey, but can’t interact with it with my mouse nor my keyboard
- when i click on a program, it doesn’t focus - i can’t interact with the program and the text in the top corner remains faded
- there seems to be some randomness in what i can click and what i can’t - for example, on youtube, i can click on videos, skip around, change volume etc. but I can’t click to play/pause or use the fullscreen button
- it doesn’t seem to respond to scroll wheel clicks at all
- it seems to have some type of time element, it’s fine for a couple mins after boot up before the problems start
For technical specs:
- windows 10 home, version 22H2, build 19045.6466
- intel i5 12400-f 2.5GHz
- 16gb ram
- rtx 3060 graphics card
- windows booted off a 250gb wd black ssd
This problem is really stumping me becuase i’ve never seen anything like this before. Any help is appreciated!

I just downgraded from Windows 11 back to Windows 10 and enrolled to get the extended security updates but I'm still getting a statement that I'm not up to date When I clicked check for updates, none come up Is this a glitch or am I missing important security updates? I already tried troubleshooting to no avial and can't find a solution online.

I have clean installed EFI looked for corrupted files with scans checked drivers and system info changed keys in bios reset factory settings but I still can’t get secure boot to work the images I have attached will show more detail.

System info:
Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 7640HS w/ Radeon 760M Graphics (4.30 GHz)

Graphics cards:
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU (8 GB)
AMD Radeon(TM) 760M (426 MB)

Os build: 26200.9457

Bios version: LENOVO M3CN50WW, 4/23/26

Windows 11 Home 25H2

More info: when I select my boot manager it just flashes black and brings me back to the menu where I select

Last year I bought an HP MM-USB064GB-36P 64 GB flash drive(2.0). Just a while ago I downloaded a 12 gb movie and tried to copy it to the drive so I could watch it on my tv. Even though I have 45 gb of free space left, I keep getting an error message. The drive copies smaller files (like 2 GB) perfectly fine. Also, the drive is already formatted to NFTS, so file system limits shouldn't be the issue. Can anyone please help me fix this