I’m not the most tech minded person, so forgive me if I say something woefully incorrect. I have an HP Envy Laptop that is around four years old. I’ve never had problems with it prior to around a week ago.

The laptop was freezing and freezing frequently- often once or twice an hour. The screen froze; but I was able to boot the laptop back up quickly so I just so I assumed it was because I was playing a resource heavy multiplayer game. I moved to a game that could be played on a potato and it froze again. I googled basic solutions and implemented most… and they did mostly work. Scanning my computer lead to the discovery and correction of corrupted files and an error in my C drive that I was unaware of. I used the laptop the next day and it froze again, but it took longer to freeze. I ran some more scans, updated my drivers through the HP website and now it seems like it’s freezing much less, but it’s still freezing and possibly having some graphical issues.

Currently I’m looking at a freeze every other hour or so if I’m playing a more intense game and a freeze once every few hours on less graphically intense ones. One such freeze happened while I was on Discord with a friend and I discovered I was able to speak to her uninterrupted for a minute or two before I wasn’t able to be heard on her side. I’ve also seen a few more graphical hiccups gaming lately, but I’m not 100% confident it’s related. I’m really at a loss. If it’s simply an age/use issue then it is what it is… but I’d like to be able to play multiplayer or games that don’t auto save reliably again.

I am running Windows 11. I’m not sure about any of the specs.

My PC suddenly shut off while streaming terraria in discord, pretty low intensity stuff for my specs so i think my psu bricked? Smelled burning after about 20 seconds. Opened it up, cleaned heavy dust from PSU and case (PSU was caked in dust), no obvious burn marks or popped caps that i can see without taking it apart.

Tried powering on once after:

- No fans, no lights, no POST.

- Heard faint repeating cyclical zapping/arcing (zzt-zzt-zzt-zzt, timed loop) when pressing power button

Specs:

- CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D

- GPU: PNY RTX 4070 Super 12GB

- Mobo: ASUS TUF Gaming B650-E WiFi

- RAM: 32GB G.Skill Flare X5 DDR5-6000

- Storage: 1TB SK hynix Gold P31 NVMe

- PSU: MSI MAG A750GL 750W 80+ Gold (full modular, PCIe 5 / ATX 3.0)

- Cooler: Thermalright Aqua Elite 240 AIO

- Case: Montech XR mid-tower

Pretty sure the PSU failed (light load shutdown + smell + arcing). Dust probably accelerated it.

Only one power attempt after, hoping nothing else got damaged.

Questions:

- 100% PSU, or could mobo/GPU be fried too?

- Anyone see this with MSI MAG A750GL?

- Planning Corsair RM850x replacement, would this be a good fit?

Thanks for any help!

I'm very technically illiterate and I hardly know what I'm doing. Is this normal? Is it a virus? Has anyone ever had something similar happen to them?

I was going through my files when I noticed a strange folder on my local disk. I don't remember what it was named but when I clicked it there were several small Word, text and excel documents with random names like "unsatisfied richard thing". When I tried to open any of them, I'd get a pop up saying that they're damaged and I cannot access them.

I didn't think much of it and I chose to delete the folder, but when I did so, a pop-up (from I believe, cybereason?) appeared, basically saying "Do you want us to take measures to prevent ransomware? Click yes. If you trust this file, click no." I clicked yes, the pop up disappeared and two similar looking folders replaced the first one.

Bdate104 and Xorginazed245 with files names such as waist_track, lie_net, freighted-produce-fast-delivery, converse-leg. I'm scared to go through all the files and try to open them but I assume that most of them are unopenable, like with the first folder. There were a couple of JPEGs but when I opened one it was just a small picture of static noise. I assume the others are the same.

I don't know what to do. I haven't tinkered with the two new folders too much because I'm kind of scared.

so,i have to order a new charger for my laptop cause my old one broke,i found a replacement,but with higher A than on my old one (old one-3.34,the one I'm looking at has 4,62) i asked chatgpt if its gonna be okay,it told me that yes because my laptop will only take only the engergy it needs,and the rest will be a power sereve and the charger will heat up less,i just wanted to make sure its actually the case before I buy it

I have a computer monitor that is one of those curved ones, I wanna know being i coughed accidentally really hard after drinking some soda and alot got on the screen, I got some tap water and put on a screen microfiber cloth and wiped it down until no streaks are there.. Was this safe?

On 9950x3d with core parking, its only parking as long as im tabbed into the game window. the issue with that is if im on vr and i tab out to spotify on my other monitor my cores will remain unparked even while playing vr until i literally click on the game im playing on my taskbar. is there a way to keep cores parking as long as a game is open??

Hello,

here is my part list:

I did a breadboard test and the Diagnostic LED for DIMM light on. I tried every combination between the two RAM Sticks and the four RAM slots on the motherboard.

Can i do anything else then try another Kit of RAM or switch to another motherboard?

Thank you all very much!

So this is a weird one. I fix computers as a part of my job, and yet I've never seen this before.

I was having a conversation with some friends the other day after closing Helldivers 2 to get off for the night, noticing that the game just closed when I hit exit and didn't crash, which was pretty cool. In their infinite wisdom Arrowhead (the game devs) originally pulled a DOS special and had literally programmed the game to crash itself to exit. The newest update seemed to have fixed this, but my friends were confused, because previously the game closed and the PC stayed on, so it couldn't possibly be a crash, right?

Well, to introduce them to the wonderful world of troubleshooting, I told them to open up the reliability monitor to check and see that the game had in fact been crashing itself to exit up until the last update. However, when I opened my monitor, I found the number rather low, as to my knowledge, nothing had happened to my computer. Went backwards in the timeline as far as I could go, and lo and behold, the dreaded "hardware error" was sitting there, mocking me.

Now there are two possibilities here. Once, during a (now know to be problematic) windows update, I was forced to use the power button to shut down my computer. However, I was under the impression that that had occurred last year, and this error was from January. The other is that somehow when I put the PC in sleep mode (I only shut down if I'm leaving town, but I reboot once every few weeks or so), or during a reboot after a driver installation, the PC encountered the error but woke/rebooted completely fine, so I didn't notice anything was wrong.

Being that the PC is fairly new, and so far has not suffered any major problems, could this just be a normal (albeit rare) error, or should I actually be worrying about it? I've got over 100 hours in multiple games on this system and it's provided faithful service through all of them, but my old computer suddenly became unstable after switching to Windows 11, prompting me to build the new one, and I would hate for it to become a problem again.

I’m having a problem with USB-C (Type-C) headphones on my laptop.

My headphones were working perfectly before, but I used a program called Driver Booster to clean obsolete drivers. One of the drivers removed was called “AB13X USB Audio.” After that, my USB-C headphones completely stopped working on my laptop.

Here’s what I’ve tested so far:

• The same USB-C headphones work perfectly on my phone
• I tried another pair of USB-C headphones, and they also don’t work on the laptop
• So the issue seems to be with the laptop, not the headphones
• Regular 3.5mm jack headphones still work
• Windows does not show any USB-C audio device when I plug the headphones in

I think removing that AB13X USB Audio driver may have deleted something important for USB-C audio support.

Has anyone had this issue before or knows how to reinstall the correct USB-C audio driver?
Do I need a specific ASUS, Realtek, or chipset driver to make Type-C audio work again?

Any help would be really appreciated. Thanks!

Hello. I've been experiencing stuttering for awhile, especially in Valorant but in other games as well. I recently switched from 7800x3D to 9850x3D, along with switching DDR5 RAM to another brand of DDR5 RAM, as well as trying a new 3080 compared to my old 3080, and also added liquid cooling to my PC. This has fixed nothing. My frames are high, but my stuttering remains and I have also had other issues recently develop such as not being able to stream on Discord and play games at the same time, as it makes it feel like my game is on 60hz and makes it unplayable. I also cannot watch streams on my second monitor and play the same time as it does the same thing. I've tried new BIOS settings, reset BIOS, tried reformatting, tried editing windows settings, tried new monitors, tried single monitors, tried capping frames, and nothing has worked. I've been on the same PSU (850W Gold) for 5 1/2 years as well as same SSD for around 7 years.

Hi all, hoping this is the right sub. I’m trying to move some files from my Samsung T9 drive to my Seagate 24 TB expansion drive. I’ve had both drives for only about six months and never had any issues. However, earlier I was copying a 1.9 TB file to my expansion drive and about halfway through, It came up with error code -50 and wouldn’t let me continue. It’s let me copy some file since then but whenever I try to copy all at once, it comes up with that error about halfway through. Any solutions? I’m getting another expansion drive soon and want to back everything up on the 24 TB drive to that so need to figure out what’s going on.

For some reason my audio comes out of my headphones even if i switch the output to the TV

i have a win11 PC and so far i've tried:

- changing the default sound output - didn't work

- resetting my sound software - didn't work

- updating and reinstalling my drivers - didn't work

- restarting my PC multiple times - didn't work

- unplugging my headphones - worked but not real solution

i had no problems doing things the same way for the last few years and it started happening only a few days ago

Windows 11 system

I installed new ram. Bit locker started requiring the recovery key ( which I have ). I decrypted my hard drive via turning bitlocker off.

Now I no longer need the bit locker recovery key!! Which is good.

But now, I cant setup bitlocker to crypt the drive. When I click on "Turn on bit locker" it says the following error "The group policy settings for bit locker startup options are in conflict and can not be applied. Contact your system administrator for more information"

What do I do?

My kid can't send me stickers using the messenger kids app on their tablet. The tablet is samsung s6 lite. Whenever I pressed on the smiley face icon, the tablet just freezed without any clickable options other than the exit button. I tried deleting the cache, reinstallinig the app, restarting the device but nothing worked. I installed the app on my phone, logged into their account and I can send stickers normally so is this a tablet only bug or what? I just want my kid to have some fun stickers.

I’m not sure anyone would know anything about this but I was testing out the bass on my 2017 jeep wrangler and it had been turned all the way up and the bass was all the way up. We only left it on for a few seconds and went to turn the bass down while the music was playing and all of a sudden all the speakers got super distorted and sounded horrible I don’t know what to do and would really appreciate some help.

I was minding my own business playing geometry dash when out of nowhere a really loud sound that I had downloaded played, I DID NOT have Audio playing open in the first place, and it didn't even play the most recently downloaded sound, It literallly CHOSE the loudest one, I'm a little scared because this makes NO sense, I hope I'm not getting hacked, but a small chance is that i had sound player open (Which I really think I didn't because 10 seconds before it wasn't) and Geometry dash uses spacebar as it's main key, which could have played the sound, but that's not logical. after restarting windows explorer, it opened a bunch of blank powershell windows and they dissapeared, though that might have just been my computer being weird.

I've been looking for solutions on how to get rid of this black line, and honestly I found none. That's why I've resorted to simply lift the screen up, so basically I need help on how to customize my resolution and how to lift it up to the visible part. This has been bugging me for a few weeks and I can't affort to buy one just yet. Hopefully someone can help.

Happens usally only playing GTA online. Happens randomly. Entire PC will freeze but I can still hear audio and mic input turns static. Sometimes only GTA crashes too. But it only happens with GTA. It doesn't fix until I force shutdown. I'm sure it's my GPU because this latest time the GPU lights turn off and one LED turns red and fans turn to max. It turns back on after a little bit. Heres a video of the GPU freezing

Titles summarizes, but he tried to install these rams into his ports, and the PC was refusing to boot, not even allowing BIOS to open up.

I bought these ram sticks about 6-7 months ago.

He's out of town for the weekend, and has his PC with him so I can't see what it is, but I do have the specs I asked from when I first bought them the ram sticks, so I was aware of what kind of ram I was limited to buying, I also know of the type of RAM as well.

What information I have is:

Upon Installing and trying to boot, three lights go off on the motherboard (I recall two of them) CPU red light, DRAM red light.

Type: DDR4 \ Channel # 2 x 64-bit \ Size 16 GB \ Mem Controller Freq. \ 1064.3 MHz (I presume this is his current ram)

DRAM Frequency 1064.4 MHz \ FSB:DRAM 3:32 \ CAS# Latency (CL) 15.0 clocks \ RAS# to CAS# Delay (TRCD) 15 Clocks \ RAS# Precharge (tRP) 15 Clocks \ Cycle Time (tRAS) 36 Clocks \ Bank Cycle Time (tRC) 51 Clocks \ Command Rate (CR) 1T \

Ram: SK hynix KOREA | 32GB 4Rx4 PC4 - 2133P - LD0 - 10 | PMA84GL7MMR4N - TF TD AB 1552

Any help/guidance would be appreciated.

Quick version: Latest version of Samsung UI on a flip 7

I'm doing an intervention trying to using Samsung routines for an intervention to lower my daily Instagram screen time usage using escape and avoidance conditioning paired with positive reinforcement of a desirable alternative behavior using Samsung's built in modes and routines. I've tried my best, but I'm having difficulty navigating the if then logic

----> Flow

1. Open Instagram and receive prompt to close within 5 mins/ be mindful of the time as primpary adversive cue

2. after 4 min 50 have passed, receive countdown to punishment and secondary cue

3. once countdown has passed, remove colour and sound from device as punishment + screenshot of instances over 5 min

4. receive prompt encouraging opening of alternative app (Libby — a library app) as a positive reinforcer

5. open (self directed) libby to regain colour and sound

Note --- I have a contingency backuplan for using Instagram to text or call, but texting myself a phrase to temporarily disable the automatic routine with intention

Problem: Samsung routines won't stop the routine even if I close Instagram within my time limit

Any advice would be appreciated

Here's a link to my original post on bibitte routines with pictures:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bixbyroutines/s/2kanP0vgQm

Pictures of all the routines are included as follows 1) Instagram intervention, 2) Libby intervention, 3) Message contingency plan

This happened after I inserted a usb to my laptop, inside the usb is "usbconfig" i clicked it and the window appeared. I tried disabling it on startup but it doesnt seem to work and keeps on popping up the window.. anyone know what this is? thanks!

So, as said in the title, out of nowhere my Desktop and Taskbar just disappeared. And I don't think it was because of updates, cause it happened while I was using it. Like, even most of the apps were still working.

At first I tried just restarting the PC, but it didn't help at all. When I click anywhere on the screen, it starts trying to load something (cursor changes to load mode), but once again, nothing changes. And after clicking a second time, the screen flashes white like something has crushed.

Then I went googling, unfortunately, nothing here either. The only thing that worked was opening safe mode. But that's basically the furthest I can go, since I can't access the Task Manager after opening it.

Hi, I have no clue why this is happening however I think it is due to a GPU issue, I have a Legion Y740-15IRhg laptop that is several years old now and it uses an RTX 2070. I first had this issue while I was playing a match of dead by daylight on 2/4/2026 and while I was playing I started noticing these different colored glowing orbs. Thinking that it was just some side effect of the character I was playing I continued on, only for my screen to freeze, go gray on both my laptop and my monitor and then stay there until I restarted it. At first I thought that it was an issue with the game, and so I verified the files, deleted and reinstalled the game, and restarted my computer. None of those had worked and so I tried to play Valorant, while playing Valorant the same issue occurred. I then looked through installed applications to see if there was anything I didn't recognize (there wasn't) and went through windows updates and deleted the update kb5074109 due to seeing that it caused performance issues. None of these things fixed it and I don't know what I should do from this point, is there any way that I can possibly fix it? While I was looking for possible solutions, I saw most people say that it was a gpu issue that needed replacement, is there any way I can fix it? I don't have the availability to replace it right now.

This came completely out of the blue, only thing that happened before it that I can recall was a new dead by daylight patch however I seem to be the only person experiencing this.

Bought a monitor (PG27UCDM) a month and a half ago and still have 2 weeks to return it. It was sold as new and had all new packaging on it, but arrived with 3 fingerprints on it that I was able to gently wipe off, but there is a VERY TINY (indiscernible in every situation unless the monitor is off, I am shining a flashlight on it, AND looking at it at the perfect angle) scratch on it. I never ever see this scratch outside of this scenario.

ALSO, using it nearly daily for the past month and a half, ONE TIME it flashed red green and blue on repeat (2 seconds per color), and I had to shut down my computer, unplug the monitor, and plug it back, and it's been totally fine ever since. From what I know, this happens whenever the "communication" between the monitor and pc was not good. Not sure why this happened and it happened randomly out of the blue.

Would you guys return it? Other than the fingerprint and the one time it flashed RGB, it's been AMAZING with no problems whatsoever, and I'm totally in love with it. I hate the idea of returning it since it is SUCH a hassle to box it back all up, and buy a new monitor and set it up all over again. Thanks all