hardware testing

Running a thorough computer performance test on a Windows PC is the fastest way to find what’s slowing you down — whether it’s CPU throttling, flaky RAM, a slow SSD, or background services hogging resources — and this guide walks through the built‑in tools and trusted third‑party benchmarks to...

Phison has publicly acknowledged and replicated a key finding first raised by the PCDIY community: a wave of disappearing and allegedly “bricked” NVMe SSDs linked in timing to Windows 11’s August cumulative update (KB5063878) appears to have been driven, in at least some test cases, by...

Windows 95 engineers walked away from a simple CPU instruction — the x86 HLT (halt) — not because the idea was exotic or useless, but because using it risked turning customers’ laptops into permanent bricks. What looks, in hindsight, like a small compatibility choice was in fact a high-stakes...

Microsoft and Phison have now all but closed the book on the late‑August panic: after weeks of community reports, lab reproductions and headlines warning that Windows 11 24H2’s August cumulative (KB5063878) was “bricking” SSDs, thorough vendor and Microsoft testing found no reproducible link...

Microsoft’s follow-up on the August 2025 Windows 11 update controversy closes one public chapter: after an industry-wide probe, Redmond says it found no evidence that the August cumulative update (commonly tracked as KB5063878) caused the cluster of SSD disappearances and failures reported by...

A wave of community test results and vendor confirmations this week has put the latest Windows 11 cumulative update under a harsh spotlight: several SSDs can disappear from Windows during sustained, large write operations after installing the August 12, 2025 update (KB5063878), with a...

The USB Type-C (USB-C) connector has revolutionized device connectivity with its reversible design and versatile capabilities, including charging, data transfer, and video output. However, the inconsistent implementation of USB-C features across Windows devices has led to user confusion and...

The evolution of Windows operating systems often brings not only new features for end users but also significant changes behind the scenes, particularly impacting hardware compatibility and driver certification processes. Microsoft's most recent announcements regarding Windows 11 version 24H2...

Here's the short version: when I attempt to power up (using the power switch on the power supply) the computer powers up for only an instance and then powers off. Here's the long version: on Friday I attempted to upgrade to Windows 11. I got an error message early in the installation, so I...

Lenovo ideapad 330 Windows 10 Vers 21H2 Asus USB external DVD-RW My laptop has recently stopped being able to access the USB DVD drive through File Explorer. The drive shows up in explorer but I cannot write to, or read from, it. I cannot transfer data files to it as I used to or Format it...

ok, so i have a Z87M MSI board with 16gb of gddr 3 ram with a 4690k cpu. i also have tested with different cpu, ram and gpu with exact same results. Anytime i hit restart via the windows menu, it never restarts. it goes black and just sits there. the onboard troubleshot number says 00 and there...

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Hi my pc: 108500K stock 4800mhz 2x16 GB DDR4 GSKILL 3200mhz XMP Seasonic Tx-850 Ultra Titanium Gigabyte Rtx 3090 Gaming OC Aorus Z490 Pro Gaming 1 TB SSD I have updated Windows 10 to H20,the newest version. I installed windows 10 month ago with new pc. So far so good,games not crashing all...

Hey, all. I need some help. I just got a new hard drive for my laptop to replace an old one that went bad. Unfortunately, Windows will not install to the laptop (or work, on the one occasion I've succeeded). Every time I've tried to install Windows 7 (32-bit or 64-bit), it tells me that it...

Background... a few days ago I shutdown and disconnected my Desktop PC (running valid upgrade to Pro) and cleaned the inside (compressed air). Upon reconnecting it to all of the cords it decided to go into a BSOD loop. Long story short I did a repair and then did a hardware test (all was OK)...

so i was playing tw atilla when my pc freeze and a buzz noise started then it went over to a bluescreen. i checked temps,tried furmark,auda64 stresstest and prime95 with no crashes.

Hi, so yesterday my computer has been BSOD'ing quite frequently. The first dump file is 120714-12464-01.zip and the 2nd file is the last one that would let me zip it. The 2 .dmp files since then say "File not found or no read permission" when I try to zip them. Anyway I downloaded windbg.exe...

Hi, I have been getting BSOD at random for the past 2 months. Sometimes with an interval of days sometimes with an interval of seconds rendering my PC useless. Please find the BSOD Error log towards the end of this post. My OS us up to date with Automatic Windows update. I have removed the...

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL: Got this problem after building a new computer (from scratch) and finished installing all the drivers, programs and related stuff. Began to play around with it (overclocking, overvolting, etc.) and found stables for everything. After this: Ran it through Prime95...

One of the reasons that I decided to do a clean installation of Windows is that sometimes it seems that activity on boot sometimes simply ceases for a prolonged period of time, like a minute or two with a black screen after login. So far I haven't experienced that on the new installation, but...