As the title says, my computer got hacked. As soon as I found out, the computer has been isolated and wiped, that part has been taken care of already.

Last friday, someone from russia (got this from the firewall log) was able to connect to my computer despite having region blocking enabled. For some obscure reason, my computer had not automatically logged me out that day like it usually does after 5 mins of inactivity. Now, I happen to have a camera on the ceiling behind my desk which has full view of my monitors.

At 2AM sharp, I can see my cursor start to move and chrome open. They opened gmail (was already logged in) and scrolled thru my emails. I exclusively use my gmail for garbage and subscriptions, they found nothing but ads and newsletters. They then opened a second tab and opened the Microsoft Azure login page. They then tried to log in using my gmail address, unsuccessfully, as there is no Azure account tied to it. And that was it, they left my computer alone. This took place over the course of about 2 minutes. I don't even use Azure...

I had saved credit cards and a bunch of business files on this computer which they had seemingly no interest into... So now I am wondering what were they after? Azure is a cloud computing plateforme, as far as I am aware? What were they hoping to find? Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I’ve been troubleshooting an issue with my PC for weeks now and I’m genuinely running out of ideas. I’ve tried pretty much everything I can think of, and I’m hoping someone here might have experienced something similar.

PC Specifications

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
GPU: NVIDIA RTX 4060
Motherboard: ASUS ROG Strix B450-F
RAM: 32GB (2x16GB) Kingston FURY Renegade DDR4 3600MHz CL16
PSU: ADX 750W
SSD: Lexar THOR PRO 1TB NVMe
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1TB
CPU Cooler: Arctic Freezer 34 eSports DUO
OS: Windows 11 Home
The Problem
My PC works completely fine when doing normal tasks like browsing, watching videos, using Windows, etc.
However, when I launch games (particularly Counter-Strike 2, but I’ve experienced issues with Valorant and Delta Force as well), my PC will randomly freeze completely.
Sometimes it happens shortly after launching a game, other times I can play for a little while before it happens.
When it freezes:
The entire screen becomes completely unresponsive.
Sometimes game audio continues playing in the background despite the screen being frozen.
Other times everything locks up completely.
After a while, the screen goes black.
Eventually, the computer restarts or ends up in the ASUS BIOS.
Most recently, I launched CS2 immediately after a completely fresh Windows installation. The game froze, remained frozen for approximately two minutes, the screen went black, and after another couple of minutes the PC booted directly into the ASUS BIOS settings.

What I’ve Already Tried

Completely wiped the PC and performed a fresh Windows 11 installation.
Installed only Steam, CS2 and Google Chrome after reinstalling Windows.
Issue happened immediately again on the fresh installation.
Ran multiple CPU, GPU and system stress tests, which passed without reproducing the crashes.
Investigated Windows Event Viewer extensively.
Previously encountered volmgr Event ID 161.
Attempted to analyse crash dumps using multiple tools, but couldn’t obtain a conclusive cause.
Changed RAM BIOS settings from DOCP/3600MHz to Auto.
Physically reseated/moved the graphics card.
Tried troubleshooting RAM configurations previously.
Investigated possible anti-cheat conflicts, but the issue persists without FACEIT or other separately installed anti-cheat software.
I have not manually installed an NVIDIA GPU driver following the latest Windows reinstall, although Windows may have automatically installed one.

What’s Confusing Me

The PC can pass demanding stress tests, including tests that put the CPU and GPU under significant load, without any issues.
But as soon as I try gaming, the system becomes unstable.
I would have expected a faulty GPU, CPU, RAM or PSU to show some problems during stress testing, but nothing has consistently identified the problem.
The fact that the issue remains after a completely clean Windows installation makes me think it could be hardware-related.
What I’m Looking For
Has anyone experienced similar symptoms where a PC passes stress tests but freezes completely during gaming?
Could this be caused by a faulty GPU, PSU, motherboard, RAM or even the SSD?
I’m willing to test or replace components if necessary, but I really don’t want to spend money randomly replacing parts without knowing what’s causing the issue.
Any advice on how to isolate the faulty component would be massively appreciated.
Thanks!

So the screen is completely busted, just about. Don’t ask how, I came home to it like this one day but I do have two cats so I can only assume it was somehow them. I’ll provide an image in the comments. However, when I plug my Wacom tablet it, it’s been working perfectly fine and I can see everything I need to on my Wacom screen.

However, last night, it shut off on its own, before going into “Recovery Mode”, which I can only see from the corner of the screen.

Is there any salvaging this, or is it time for me to search eBay? I would love to be able to fix it if even for a day so I can finish my project, but it’s difficult not being able to see what’s going on on the screen, and my Wacom tablet won’t display most of what is there, just the “Recovery” part in the corner, and it won’t show me interacting with it.

I was just notified that I had basically hit my wifi plan's limit for the month, which confused me because I haven't been doing much on it. I checked my laptop's data usage and it showed 70 gb from chrome, 5 gb of which were in the past day (where I was just typing on docs and playing random games). What is causing this and how can I prevent it?

Just found this sub reddit, will help others if i can too!

My own monitors work fine but im a guest right now and i use my partners monitors that sometimes lose connection repeatedly, she has two and they both do the same thing, they both have same kind of power supply so would that be the problem?

Oh, no pictures cant be added? :/

The power supply is square and monitors are from samsung and asus.

I need to run 2 bluetooth adapters at the same time, 1 on my mother board and a bluetooth dongle in my living room with a usb extension. I keep getting error code 31 when I try to run them because windows can't handle 2 adapters at the same time.

Is there any fix or software that allows 2 adapters to run at the same time?

Hello everyone! Few weeks ago, I had a problem where my PC restarted while I was playing a game, but I brushed it off and thought that it did so because the game is quite demanding and heavy on both GPU and CPU (it's Baldur's Gate 3, for anyone wondering). However, the problem persisted and computer would restart at random times, under no load whatsoever, sometimes multiple times before even getting to Windows. I thought that PSU may have been faulty, but still decided to take it to a professional. They looked at it and told me that it was a software problem afterall. Anyways, PC was running fine for almost two weeks after it - in the meantime, PC restarted again while I was playing the same game, so I have decided to also buy a new PSU (the old one was on cheaper side) so I won't have to worry about it in the future. PC restarted again while playing the game, so I decided to give it a rest. Unfortunately, PC started restarting again, under no load whatsoever. I went to View Advanced System Settings to toggle off the option Automatically restart under system failure so I could try to pinpoint the problem myself. However, PC restarted again and now, upon booting, it only takes me to BIOS... In there, CSM is already enabled, and now, it feels like I made even bigger of a problem and don't know what to do. Can anyone help me? My PC specs are: RTX 4060 AMD Ryzen 5 5600X GIGABYTE A520M K V2 rev 1.1 RAM DDR4 GEIL 16GB SSD Kingston 1TB M.2 NVMe ASUS TUF GAMING 650W EVO Windows 11 (came pre-built with the PC)

I have a laptop with one 512GB ssd (partitioed into C and D drives). I am a developer btw. I am running short of storage on my C disk drive. but I have some space to spare on the D drive. I tried using the windows disk partition option to reallocate some space from D -> C, but I couldn't it only allows around 1GB to be reallocated.
I am unable to find what's taking up so much space, mostly app data ig there's nothing in the C drive that can be identified and moved. No downloads, no videos picture Is of anykind or even recently downloaded programs go to my D drive and in this current situation I really cannot buy a new SSD for extending the storage .

I need help with:
1. A tool / tips to help me clear out C drive
2. Any way to re allocate some space from D drive to C.

[Windows 11] My laptop won't connect to my phone's hotspot unless I use the 5 GHz band. When its on 2.4 GHz band, it won't even show up on the available networks list in settings. I have tried using the "forget network", restarting the laptop and my phone but nothing seems to work.

Hi everyone,

I installed NVIDIA driver 621.01 WHQL on its release date (October 21), and today, October 28, I experienced a strange issue.

My monitor suddenly went black for a few seconds, then the display returned to normal. At the same time, the audio output switched from my headset to my monitor before switching back to my headset.

I was not gaming at the time. I was simply on the Windows desktop with Google Chrome open.

My system

• GPU: MSI RTX 5080 Suprim SOC
• Driver: NVIDIA 621.01 WHQL
• OS: Windows 11, build 26300
• Monitor: ASUS TUF VG27AQ, 165 Hz, G-SYNC enabled

Errors found in Windows

In Event Viewer, I found multiple nvlddmkm events, including Event ID 153, with these messages:

• Restarting TDR occurred on GPUID:100
• Reset TDR occurred on GPUID:100
• Resetting TDR occurred on GPUID:100
• UCodeReset TDR occurred on GPUID:100

The Reliability Monitor also recorded two LiveKernelEvent 117 hardware error reports at 12:06 and 12:08.

Both reports generated WATCHDOG dump files. I also noticed that the Antec iUnityService service terminated unexpectedly around the same time, although I don't know whether it is related.

My questions

• Has anyone else experienced temporary black screens or TDR errors with driver 621.01, particularly on an RTX 50-series GPU?
• Could this be a driver regression, or should I investigate other possible causes?
• Has anyone found a reliable workaround?

The display recovered on its own, and everything is currently working normally. I haven't changed any BIOS or GPU settings.

Thanks in advance for any feedback!

Idk what the flair means, but i an on an a16. I was trying to share a gaming clip earlier here on reddit, and for some reason the video just wasn't showing up? I thought it was jist that video, but turns out its ALL of them?? Like I can only share videos. Wtf?? And from i have discovered, I am having this problem on both reddit and the ps app. (But the ps app is ass so)

[Problem Summary]
The following file in Windows 11 has grown to approximately 500 MB and continues to increase in size.
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\CapabilityAccessManager\CapabilityAccessManager.db-wal

<PowerShell Command to check size>

   1..12 | ForEach-Object {
     $l = robocopy 'C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\CapabilityAccessManager' "$env:TEMP\CAMCheck" /L /B /R:0 /W:0 /BYTES /NP /NJH /NJS /NDL | Select-String 'CapabilityAccessManager\.db-wal'
     '{0}  {1}' -f (Get-Date -f HH:mm), (($l | Out-String).Trim())
     Start-Sleep 600
   }

[Occurrence Details]
As of October 20, 2026, at 7:53 PM, the file size was 512,824,672 bytes; as of October 28, at 11:30 AM, it was 514,962,952 bytes. This represents an increase of 2,138,280 bytes over approximately 7 days and 16 hours.
File size logs show a steady increase over several days. Although the PC is started up and shut down daily, the file size does not decrease even after a reboot, and the massive file remains.

[Comparison]
On another PC (ThinkPad E14 Gen 6) running the same version of Windows, the size of the same file was 8,772 bytes even after about a year and a half of use. In contrast, on the PC experiencing the issue (ThinkPad E495), the file has reached approximately 500 MB after 6 years and 2 months of use.

[Additional Information]
The size of CapabilityAccessManager.db is approximately 30 MB. We have not been able to determine why the WAL file is so large or what is causing it to continue growing.

(*)When the WAL file in question was deleted via the Safe Mode command prompt, the file was regenerated; however, subsequently, the app crashed whenever the “Location,” “Microphone,” or “Camera” pages under “Privacy & Security” in Windows “Settings” were opened. After restoring from a partition backup, the settings pages returned to normal. Therefore, manually deleting the WAL file is not a viable solution.

[Questions]
Why are the Capability Access Manager database and WAL files abnormally bloated and continuing to grow? Even though we have applied all Windows Updates—including the one from around June of this year that contained a fix to suppress the growth of CapabilityAccessManager.db-wal—up through this month’s updates, and the OS is up to date, the file size continues to increase.

[PC Specifications]
Lenovo ThinkPad E495
SSD: 512 GB, Memory: 16 GB
Windows 11 Professional 26H2 (26300.9711)

Please keep responses simple, I understand basics but I'm lost when it comes to RAM.

Few months ago I installed the MW4 beta and it required me to update my BIOS and change to TPM 2.0. Since then I've had random blue screens or game crashes. I haven't managed to picture exact crash codes as they dissappear instantly but from what I've remembered it's Kernal errors and access errors. Because this has been going on for a few months I've noticed a few strange reasons why it crashes.

If I leave my PC idle on the desktop or chrome it will blue screen and restart.

Wow Forever Beta will crash with an access error, this could happen anytime from instantly to hours later. Sometimes not at all.

Ive been playing a browser game "Azeroth Survivors" which crashes in a similar fashion, I assume as it's the same client.

However if I play games such as Marvel Rivals there is no crashing at all. I can leave my PC idle for hours with the game running and there is no crashing. I even played the browser game with Rivals running in the background and had no crashes.

Tried to run a scan but system crashed, taken out my RAM and ran on each individual stick and no difference. Is it strange that both RAM sticks would suddenly be corrupt? Could it be my motherboard? Will wiping the PC resolve the issue?

EDIT: Dump file link not sure if it will help. https://www.mediafire.com/file/m06nxsj0umgv5si/Minidumps.zip/file

Hi everyone I'm using Asus vivobook win 11. Please don't mind my English...I once installed a euro truck simulator after that my PC refused to open other Microsoft so I decided to restart my PC but during the restart, many problems appeared. I took a decision to download new Windows 11 from other PC and install it to my broken PC. After that it worked perfectly BUT VOLUME and TOUCHPAD DOESN'T WORK , any quick help I'm a student the exams are about to begin.

Today, while shutting down my Windows 11 PC, I suddenly got a Citrix.exe – Application Error (0xc0000142) message.

The strange thing is that I've never knowingly installed Citrix, and I can't find it in Installed Apps.

I installed UltraViewer a few weeks ago but have since uninstalled it. I'm not sure if that has anything to do with this error.

This is the first and only time I've seen this message. My PC seems to be working normally otherwise.

My questions:

Why would Citrix.exe appear if I never installed Citrix?

Could this be related to UltraViewer or something else?

Could it be malware, or is it more likely a temporary Windows error?

Should I do anything to investigate or fix it?

Has anyone experienced something similar? Any advice would be appreciated!

My computer's storage keeps going up for no reason. I played the new Jujutsu Shenanigans update a bit which brought my 12gbs to 10. Later I played more which brought it to 7.03. I deleted copilot, bringing it to 7.5. I went to the delete temporary files and when I deleted it it brought my storage up to 6.25. Last I checked it it was 6.03.
Let it be known as well that my largest tab on the storage settings page is "Installed Apps", I have a 400gb hard drive with about 95% taken up by apps I cannot delete because they are part of running the system. The largest app I have is Microsoft Edge (2gb).

Hi everyone, I need help troubleshooting my PC.

My PC specs:

• Motherboard: Gigabyte B450M DS3H-CF
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5500
• GPU: AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT 8GB
• RAM: 16GB
• PSU: Gigabyte 650W, Silver-rated
• Storage: 1.59TB total

What happened:

I was using a Vention grounded USB hub with my Bluetooth dongle connected to it. My Bluetooth kept disconnecting, and after troubleshooting, a tech-savvy friend confirmed that the USB hub itself was faulty. The Bluetooth dongle is not broken.

After using the hub, two of my rear motherboard USB ports stopped working. The other USB ports still work.

More recently, I noticed that my rear motherboard audio jack started producing static. I unplugged and replugged my earphones a few times, but eventually the audio stopped working through that jack.

I'm worried that the faulty hub might have caused electrical damage to my motherboard, but I'm not sure whether the audio issue is related or a separate problem.

My questions:

1. Could a faulty USB hub damage multiple USB ports or other parts of the motherboard?
2. Is it possible that the rear audio jack issue is related to the hub, or could it be a driver/software problem?
3. Are there any safe troubleshooting steps I can try before taking the PC to a technician?
4. Is there a way to test whether the motherboard is damaged without replacing it?
5. If the rear USB ports and audio jack are damaged, can I work around this with a PCIe USB expansion card or an external USB sound adapter?

I have stopped using the faulty hub. I haven't confirmed whether the audio issue is hardware-related yet, and I don't want to spend money replacing parts unnecessarily.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you!

I have the Asus router AX1800 dual band, my SFR router is old and doesn’t work anymore therefore I can’t use the DMZ method, how could I bypass the ONT box verification?
It’s an old model specifically I-010G-Q ONT

I tried some things but still doesn’t work

Guys u did something when i got the pc and the monitor colour were odd so i did some change in setting (not sure ) then i reset all pc cuz the window as fake. Now after resetting all my pc . Idk how the oversaturated and black are too black colours are default.Now i caliberate the colour and just do next without any changes and it goes to the first time monitor colour, but it resets everytime after starting my pc and even when i switch from fullscreen game.
I did colour management setting, reset my monitor. Plzz help

whenever i press uninstall, a popup from windows installer comes up and says “the feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailable” and once i go off the pop up it says “the installation source for this product isn’t available. verify the source exists and that you can access it”. i have tried redownloading it and deleting it but nothing works. can anybody help?

I recently build my pc, its mainly for gaming and has been working fine in general, although there are still a few issues (https://nl.pcpartpicker.com/list/j22tLy).

1. Whenever It boots after pressing the power button, for a brief moment my monitor ( Benq EX2710S - HDMI) displays a static white underscore in the top left corner before showing the MSI MAG splash screen and booting normally into windows.
2. Whenever I open Spotify for the first time after booting, whether its the app or a tab in Brave Browser, my monitor loses signal for a brief moment before functioning completely fine again.
3. There is a pending windows update that is completely outdated but yet still in the list in settings (Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Driver Update 32.0.21030.2001)
4. Whenever I use the Litematica Mod with complementary Reimagined shaders, my FPS is way worse while without Litematica its just fine. It only seems to occur when playing on servers.

I have absolutely no idea why any of this is happening. I already ran the AMD Clean Up Utility Tool, reinstalled the drivers and ran DDU after and installed the WHQL after and yet nothing was fixed.
Does anybody have any idea how to fix any of these problems? All help is appreciated.

If you need additional context / information just ask.

Specs: - AMD Athlon II X4 630 - GeForce GT340 1GB - Motherboard M2N68-L (from HP Pavilion p6311ru) - 16GB RAM, DDR3 1333 mHz.

Worked before great, now doesnt boot at all, videocard starting spin, then speed goes down, again up, again down and so on without stopping. Monitor doesnt show up anything.

I'm having a really annoying problem with my Yankee Mirage wireless mouse and I'm looking for help fixing it.

The left mouse button sometimes acts as if I'm holding it down even when I'm not. After that, the left-click stops working completely until I turn the mouse off and on again.

Here are the details:

• The mouse is wireless and uses a USB receiver.
• The cursor continues moving normally when the problem happens.
• Right-click still works normally, even when left-click is broken.
• Turning the mouse off and on temporarily fixes the problem.
• At first, the mouse worked normally for a few days after I started using it again, but then the issue returned and gradually got worse.
• Today, it happened 3 times within just 5 minutes of using my PC.

I've already tried some troubleshooting steps, but none of the previous solutions have fixed it. Unfortunately, I don't have another computer to test the mouse on.

Does anyone know what could cause this? Could it be a faulty left-button switch, firmware issue, or something else? Is there anything else I can try before replacing the mouse?

Hey, looking for ideas on a PC that keeps crashing and I'm running out of things to try.

Specs: Ryzen 7 3700X, MSI B450 Carbon, 2x8GB Corsair, ASUS 2070 super RTX card, Kingston 500 gb SSD, Seasonic PSU, Windows 11.

What happens: Since late September it blue screens or just reboots, mostly when it's idle. The last couple of times, a YouTube/Twitch tab died first and the PC rebooted a bit later. One crash also left Windows unable to boot after an update, which is how I found out it's been going on for weeks. Reliability Monitor shows errors almost daily since September.

Also after the last Windows update, it would freeze at the loading spinner before entering windows. I had to do a system restore checkpoint before the update.

Dumps: I've read 7 minidumps. Stop codes are 0xBE, 0x1E (three times), 0x3B, 0x9F and 0xA. All of them fault inside ntoskrnl, with no third-party driver standing out. One had win32kbase in the stack.

What I've tried:

SFC found and fixed one corrupt driver file, now clean. DISM keeps hanging at ~63%

XMP off, RAM at 2400

BIOS update, plus Power Supply Idle Control set to Typical Current Idle

High performance power plan

Cleaned the RAM and dusted the case

A repair shop already redid the thermal paste and BIOS before this, no parts changed (crashes dropped for a while, then came back)

SSD health looks fine in the manufacturer tool, no errors.

Here's are minidump files: https://files.catbox.moe/n05u0z.zip

Next on my list: MemTest86, running on one RAM stick at a time, GPU stress test, then borrowing a different PSU.

Any ideas, or things I missed?