Forum Widgets
Latest Discussions
Drive LED flashes once then nothing happens
I have a PC with Gigabyte B550M DS3H AC motherboard running Windows 11, version 24H2, with Samsung SSD 980 1TB. It suddenly wouldn't boot up today. Symptom is, from power up, one flash of drive LED then a black screen with a cursor in top legt corner. The boot sequence doesn't proceed from there. After 4 power up cycles, it booted normally. What should I check first of all, please? I've run chkdsk on c: and no problems were found.Many unauthorized sign-in attempts to Microsoft account
When I look at my Microsoft account page that shows sign-in attempts, it show 6-10 every day from all over the world. They are all unsuccessful since I have a strong password and change it a couple times a year. I'm curious as to why this happens. I wonder if it's because I have used the same primary email address for almost 30 years and it's been used on literally hundreds of websites. Anyone else see this?Why is Windows Notepad getting 'active development'?
Let's wind the clock back to ~2008. Microsoft's solutions for "word processing" were: Microsoft Word (you had to pay at least ~£80 for this generally speaking) Microsoft Works (often bundled free with big-name PCs or could be bought absurdly cheaply, e.g. £5) WordPad (came with Windows) Notepad (came with Windows) Word was what Microsoft wanted you to buy. Works was purposefully hobbled to try and encourage people to buy Word (for example, Works could read and write Word <2007 documents, however if you saved a doc in Word format and then immediately closed Works, it would ask you if you wanted to save the document despite no changes being made since the last save). However, Works's hobbling wasn't enough as many users with basic needs got along with it just fine so Microsoft turned the screws and ended Works development / availability. Microsoft also briefly flirted with Office 2010 Starter Edition (free with big-name PCs) being cut-down versions of Word and Excel 2010 but encountered the same problem as they did with users being satisfied with it, so they killed that too. WordPad was more or less another Microsoft stillbirth. According to wiki the first release was with Windows 95 and apart from the fact that WordPad since can "kinda" handle Word =>2007 documents (to a similar extent as Works with pre Word 2007 docs), WordPad received very little love (e.g. no spell checker), and is due to be removed in Win11 24H2 apparently. Notepad historically has been very much like WordPad but I don't think MS ever intended for it to be more than a very basic plain text editor for things like editing ini files. However, in the last ~3 years it's received various updates like spell check, tabs, and now some kind of AI plugin?
Porting Program Data to New Computer (Alternatives?)
I usually run the OS (windows) on the "C" drive and keep the bulk of my data on a "D", "E", "F" etc. drives. Some third party software allows one to designate where data is located during install, BUT other third party software does NOT offer this ability. When moving to a new computer (or now M$ forced move to Win-11), what is the best alternative to get data ported. As I see it (re program data keep in a propriety format -- or-- unable to specify where data will reside): 1) If this data is already kept on a data drive, it is readily available after upgrade. 2) For data that resides on the "C" drive along with the program, try and identify the directory (files) where that data is kept and copy to another drive. 3) If one can't id the directory (files), then maybe registry splunking may help. Otherwise ??
Issues resuming Win10 from sleep
Recently my Win10 machine has not been resuming its sleep state back to the main login screen for windows. It does not display anything on my computer screen, then reverts to auto rebooting after a couple of mins. Not sure what the reason behind this is. On a rare occasion, my system will awake from sleep and go straight to the windows login screen. But this is very rare now. Any ideas or steps to diagnose the problem?
Audio Enhancements, where did it go?
Every time there is a cumulative update I have to go into my sounds settings and disable "Audio Enhancements" so I can use my microphone they way I want to use it, however after the latest update, that setting seems to be missing. Where did it go? It disappeared again today right after I finished installing "2025-05 Cumulative Update Preview for Windows 10"Microstuttering in whole PC ?
It started to happen since some time and i can't remember changing something in pc.. tried reinstalling windows,chipset drivers..used ddu in safe mode and reinstalled latest version of gpu drivers. bought new dp cable just in case.reseated gpu.. i can play games on 60fps with no problem and i don't have frame drops but it just stutters when i move camera in game or watch video..basically everything that moves on the screen..PC runs fine but taskbar sometimes loads slowly
In all other ways, this PC still runs like a dream. Games load fine, startup is at full average speed, and even this problem in particular isn't 100% of the time, but I've been dealing with it on and off for a year now. Sometimes I will start my PC like normal, and everything goes as expected, except when I sign in, the "signing in..." Screen takes a little while, maybe 20-30 seconds longer than usual, and then my taskbar icons won't load for a full minute or so. I can't reliably replicate this issue, but I can reliably fix it by waiting or by restarting or shutting down my PC and turning it right back on. This problem only seems to happen if my PC was off overnight, and like I said, not consistently so. It also seems to happen four or five days in a row when it does happen, then stops happening for weeks. No noticable performance loss during or after. When I try to open windows settings, I noticed that that, too, takes a while to load when this is happening, and One Drive doesn't start until after the fact. Despite this, things like my start menu work fine, and I can launch software manually without any taskbar icon I'm able to click. My two leading theories are my One Drive messing something up, or my Nvidia 1060 being too old and buggy to properly load things consistently. It could also be a weird windows process that slows it down. I suspected a dying CMOS or profile corruption, but I'm suspecting that's not the case because no other symptoms have shown up in this year. Any help would be appreciated!
