Recent Discussions
Trying to MSIX package LOB application that needs TWAIN access
So I think this isn't possible but I just wanted to ask. I've a LOB application that needs to access TWAIN scanning devices. How this works in a normal environment is that the TWAINDSM.dll (TWAIN Data source manager) is loaded from c:\windows\system32 This then scans the C:\Windows\twain_32 or C:\Windows\twain_64 depending on if the app is x86 or x64 The scanning manufacturers will have their TWAIN drivers installed to c:\windows\twain_32 (or 64) as subfolders and the TWAIN Data source manager scans these subfolders for available TWAIN devices that can be connected to. All this breaks down in an MSIX environment because the container doesn't have access to C:\windows\twain_32\ManfactureDriverN folder It can see the folders and when the TWAINDSM tries to initialize the driver it fails, most likely due to sandbox limitations. Does anyone know of a solution to this, or apps like this will always need to stick to MSI packaging because of this limiation. Thanks.
Personal Microsoft Account stuck to old Teams‑Free Azure AD tenant - identity corruption
I have a personal Microsoft Account that was automatically linked to a Teams‑Free Azure AD tenant years ago. The tenant still appears in the Azure portal, but it is inaccessible and cannot be deleted. I cannot leave the tenant, and the admin account for the tenant no longer exists. Because of this, my personal Microsoft Account now has a corrupted work/school identity object attached to it. The symptoms include: Office.com rejects login and says I must use a work/school account OneDrive.com “Recent” fails to load (“Unknown render failure”) Azure portal shows the old Teams‑Free tenant but any action triggers errors I cannot leave or delete the tenant I cannot remove the directory object from my MSA I have opened 4 support requests, each of which turn into callback from supervisor after I repeatedly confirm I am not a commercial customer and I do not have a commercial account. All 4 times the supervisor says they are transfers me to the commercial team, but I just get transferred to a message saying, "We are closed", call back during business hours. Most recently this happened at 1:30 PM Central Time on a Monday. It's unlikely Microsoft is closed in the middle of the day. This is not a commercial tenant and not a business account. It is a personal Microsoft Account with a corrupted identity object caused by the old Teams‑Free provisioning. I need escalation to the Microsoft Account Identity Team, who can remove the corrupted directory object from my personal account. Has anyone seen this before or had it resolved?
windows 11 update+keyboard not working
Hi, I finally updated my laptop to Window11, after my computer stubbornly suggested it for a long time and at the same time I thought that the worst bugs would be bypassed. My update went well, but the only problem is that the laptop keyboard does not work. When I connect an external keyboard to the laptop, it works fine and of course the mouse and touchpad work. At first I figured it out on my own and downloaded the latest available drivers, but nothing made the keyboard work. Finally I ended up asking the artificial intelligence and got good answers and recommendations from there, but it turned out that Asus did not offer all the drivers that the AI recommended. At the moment the situation is open, I use the computer with an external keyboard, but the idea is also to update back to windows 10, if nothing works. So I would like some advice on how to solve the problem? Thanks in advance. My laptop is ASUS M433IA-HM493T Laptop.Can I Spoof GPS Location on iPhone ( No Jailbreak Needed)
I'm looking for a reliable way to spoof my iPhone GPS location without jailbreaking. I’ve heard about several tools but I'm not sure which one actually works well. Has anyone tried these recently? Any free methods? Do they work with apps like Pokémon GO, Find My, or dating apps? Risk of getting banned? Also, if there is a way to spoof location on iPhone with a PC/Mac or just the iPhone itself, I’d love to know. Thanks in advance!
Windows 11 Iso
Hey does anybody know what changed with the windows 11 iso media installation? two new folders with the new release, "_manifest" and "Provenance" Just with the latest version which was released directly from Microsoft but have done this many times before and now im unsure to trust it or not. Wondering if its an issue or a bug with it?MS Supervisor said Find my Device only works with Surface devices and not desktops
Good morning. I have been having an issue with location settings on my Microsoft account for Find my Device. I am using a Windows 11 Desktop. After a repair install of Windows my location in devices worked briefly. Now the account and devices links on my dashboard bring up a screen with empty gray boxes. When trying to switch to them from a working link I get this screen very quickly pop up: After 4 chats with Microsoft support a Supervisor came online and said that you could not find your PC with a Desktop, only a surface device. What? Then they said I should reach out to HP and then asked if I was all set. I have never had someone with no idea what to do next just make something up and ask if they can go.Why? Too many startup applications!
My computer has become very slow to start, and I believe it’s because there are too many applications launching automatically when I turn on my device. I want to understand why this is happening and how I can manage or reduce the number of startup programs to improve my computer's performance.BIOS corruption is bricking, how to fix?
The serious issue where my BIOS appears to be corrupted, causing my computer to become unbootable and effectively bricking the device. I need guidance on how to repair or recover a corrupted BIOS to restore my system's functionality without causing further damage.Explorer crash - ucrtbase.dll
Haven't seen this happen in a while. Every once in a while explorer crashes, then comes back on. So far no one has gotten injured, but it is annoying. ----------------------------------------------- NOTE: Please DO NOT post genaric suggestions such as run DISM (Deployment Image Servicing and Management) run Check Disk (CHKDSK) Make sure drivers are up to date etc... ------------------------------------------- I am posting the log below. If anyone has an idea what might cause this please post, thanks in advance: ------------------------------------------ Faulting application name: sihost.exe, version: 10.0.26100.8328, time stamp: 0x15de642d Faulting module name: ucrtbase.dll, version: 10.0.26100.8875, time stamp: 0x303b538a Exception code: 0xc0000409 Fault offset: 0x00000000000a527e Faulting process id: 0xFC8 Faulting application start time: 0x1DD194880CC39EF Faulting application path: C:\WINDOWS\system32\sihost.exe Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\System32\ucrtbase.dll Report Id: 5a13a22b-712b-4d57-b396-9f24f69c1843 Faulting package full name: Faulting package-relative application ID: ---------------------------------------------------------------- System Info Lenovo Laptop Processor 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-1115G4 @ 3.00GHz (3.00 GHz) Installed RAM 8.00 GB (7.79 GB usable) Graphics card Intel(R) UHD Graphics (128 MB) Storage 135 GB of 238 GB used Device ID 86E9A61B-7099-4C7A-8470-CF4FA9CCBA17 Product ID 00356-07357-63666-AAOEM System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
Extremely strange behavior - wicked virus?
Hi my pc is doing all sorts of strange things. I constantly feel as if I'm chasing my tail when trying to accomplish anything...I know technology doesn't always do what we want but this seems to be something else. I have this idea that there are AI virus nowadays (and that's what I have) that screw with your computer as you click through things so that there is no boundaries to how it can cause frustration and pain. These are just a few of the things I'm experiencing...taken one at a time it's not the end of the world of course by patience is running thin. Firefox - customization doesn't work properly...I try to change font size and it just doesn't work. It has a great feature that other browsers don't to override the site's native font but it's all screwed up. Firefox shows a whole ton of things in the bottom left status bar once in a while and moves to a crawl. On Substack, I click a comment icon which shows 7 commments, and only one shows up with the text box for me to comment...if I go and jump through hoops by clicking here and then there and scrolling down to the bottom of a complete post, then I can view all the comments... Also on substack, after scrolling for a while and finding something of interest...I'll click to pull 'it' up and then hit the browser 'back' button. It doesn't return me to where I was on the previous screen... EVERY browser does this...so I can't pick up where I left off. I just sent an email to them to see if this is normal behavior. I ran a virus scan with defender and after it took hours...in the recent scans it shows scan took merely minutes to complete...which it didn't My pointer flickers the time sand capsule icon quite a bit for no reason...like 5 times at a clip I have to click buttons 2 and 3 times to function. I get like three dos-like type windows that kind of show up randomly for .5 seconds in a cascading type view...very hard to explain this one. Of course defender and malwarebytes aren't finding anything. Best of all, I just did a complete system reset to fix the issues I was having. Much appreciated if someone can help me out. -TravisIt is recommended that the Send To option be included by default in the right-click menu.
Currently, the default right-click menu in Windows 11 does not include a Send to option. To find this option, you need to hold down the Shift key and right-click, or select Show more options. We recommend adding this feature directly to the right-click menu for files and folders so you can access it quickly and easily.Windows 11 25H2 "Point in time restore" seems to reset System Protection to 2%
TL;DR: On Windows 11 25H2, the new "Point in time restore" feature (Settings > System > Recovery) shares a single VSS shadow-storage allocation with classic System Restore. It periodically re-applies its own default of ~2% of the volume, which overrides the System Protection "Max Usage" I set and purges existing restore points - and it does this even when the feature is turned off. I'd like to confirm whether others see this and whether it is by design. Environment Windows 11 Pro, 25H2 (build 26200.8875) Single internal SSD, C: ~488 GB, NTFS "Point in time restore" was enabled by a recent update without my action; I had since turned it off. Symptom I set System Protection (System Protection > Configure > "Max Usage") for C: to 6%. Within a day or two it silently reverts to exactly 2% of the volume (9.76 GB on my 488 GB drive). When it drops, VSS deletes older restore points to fit the smaller cap - visible in Event Viewer, System log, source volsnap, Event ID 33 ("The oldest shadow copy of volume C: was deleted to keep disk space usage ... below the user defined limit"). So I lose restore history I was relying on. It resets to exactly 2% every time - a computed default, not a random value. What I found: the two features share ONE allocation (reproducible) There is a single VSS shadow-copy storage association for C: with one Maximum. Classic System Restore and "Point in time restore" are two front-ends to that same number: Elevated prompt: vssadmin list shadowstorage - note "Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space" for C:. Settings > System > Recovery > Point in time restore - set its size (I used 15 GB). Re-run vssadmin list shadowstorage - the Maximum is now 15 GB, and the classic System Protection "Max Usage" now also shows 15 GB. So setting Point-in-time's allocation writes the same maximum System Restore uses. The reset to 2% is therefore Point-in-time re-applying its own default to that shared allocation - which is why my System Protection setting keeps getting overridden and restore points get purged. Two details that stand out It resets even with the feature OFF. Point-in-time had been disabled for about two weeks (its stored allocation left at the 2% default) and the reset still happened. So a background component re-applies the 2% regardless of the on/off toggle. The coupling is one-way. Setting the value via Point-in-time updates both; setting it via classic System Protection updates the live maximum but does not update Point-in-time's stored value. Point-in-time keeps its own independent allocation, and that stored value is what gets re-applied. What it is NOT Not a Windows Update / servicing event - no quality or feature update installed on the days it reset (only Microsoft Defender definition updates, which do not touch System Protection). No reboot, crash, or third-party backup software involved. Mechanism, as I understand it "Point in time restore" appears to be a whole-volume revert - it reboots into WinRE (the Recovery partition) and rolls the entire C: volume back to a snapshot - whereas classic System Restore is a selective restore of the registry and system files that runs from the live OS. Both use the same VSS shadow copies of C:, which is why they share one storage allocation. (I am confident about the shared-allocation and reset behaviour, which is reproducible above; the internal revert mechanism is my inference.) Questions Is Point-in-time overriding the user's System Protection allocation, and purging restore points to fit, by design? How can the System Protection "Max Usage" be made to persist - i.e. stop Point-in-time re-applying its 2% default? Can Point-in-time's allocation be raised, or its re-assertion disabled, without disabling classic System Restore? Is there a supported registry or policy setting for this? I could find no honored DiskPercent / percentage value on 25H2. If you want to check your own machine Run vssadmin list shadowstorage (elevated) before and after setting Point-in-time's size, and watch whether your System Protection "Max Usage" holds over a few days or reverts to ~2%. I'd appreciate confirmation - or contradiction - as I'm trying to establish whether this is universal 25H2 behaviour or specific to my setup. Thanks!backlight failure (screen goes dark but still works)
the computer is still running and the screen remains on. This happens intermittently and seems to occur randomly, making it difficult to use my device consistently. I've tried adjusting brightness settings and updating display drivers, but the problem persists. I'm seeking advice on how to diagnose and fix the backlight failure to restore normal screen visibility.When I click on the Tasks view, the virtual desktop thumbnails appear blank.
When I click the Task View button on the taskbar, the virtual desktop thumbnail area appears blank, and I cannot preview the contents of the desktops. Even after creating a new virtual desktop, the thumbnails still do not display properly. Restarting File Explorer provides a temporary fix, but the problem recurs.Failure of LED Backlights
My monitor's screen still shows a faint image when viewed at an angle or with a bright flashlight, but the display remains completely dark during normal use, indicating the LED backlight has failed while the LCD panel itself is still functional. I have already tried reseating the video cables, testing the monitor on another computer, and adjusting the brightness settings in the monitor's OSD menu, but none of these steps have restored the backlight, so I'm hoping someone here can suggest a potential fix or confirm whether this is a known issue with this particular model.Firmware bugs for Windows 10 computer
These firmware-related problems lead to unexpected crashes, device malfunctions, and sometimes prevent the system from booting properly, significantly affecting my workflow and device performance. Despite attempts to update system drivers and BIOS, the issues persist, indicating possible firmware corruption or incompatibility that needs urgent attention to restore stability and proper hardware functioning.
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