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Perhaps you could use the following line which should drop the problem driver details to a desktop problems.txt file, and post that? (it works with 10 but 11.. don’t know) – do this under elevated command prompt..

pnputil /enum-devices /problem /ids >> %userprofile%\desktop\problem.txt

You could also get a whole list and pull some older unused drivers off a,d potentially add new ones with pnputil but I wouldn’t recommend you try that without guidance from someone running WIndows 11, and a good backup to go back to as a minimum.. better to uninstall where you can.

As for the Brother, I doubt you use the fax so I’d suggest you might (post backup, of course) get by by removing the “whole package” software for it and just installing the manual install separate printer driver (usually marked as “for administrators” or such) and maybe that’ll get enough functionality without issues.. The scanner driver on the other hand might well be more of a problem.. perhaps a search for issues by it’s model number might help?

I throttled the speed with the cable to be sure, active hours was used to stop the machine from rebooting should it feel the need (at which point the traffic would be “zero” and the router would likely get to updating, dropping the connection as I find it on boot occasionally).

I needed to leave something running and generating enough traffic to keep the router occupied so it didn’t go for an update check. Windows updates was just something I guessed would generate more traffic than the machine sat at a login that I could manipulate to prevent Windows updates from rebooting the machine when I didn’t want that to happen so it fitted two aims.

I’m not bothering to discuss it further here as the guy wants help with his PVR connection.. I probably need help with explaining things clearly but to be honest I think the “check what the router is up to when it fails” message probably got through.. or maybe he’ll find the problem didn’t happen on days when he left his PC on..

Unrelated to the thread, but just for info, B

It works if you throttle the update so it takes a while. The fudge wasn’t used for weeks or anything.. I just needed to stop the router deciding it was idle and checking for firmware updates happening for a few hours while an obscure freesat box downloaded its firmware from distant shores from a server which seemed to be connected at bytes per minute (as firmware is seldom that large!).

I was out while this was going on, so a lag cable didn’t affect me any.. that’s made by the abuse of two “noise reducing” chokes (adding a wire loop inside running in opposing directions through the chokes effectively introduces network cancelling noise) and you can force the connection speed down significantly without breaking the connection- the chokes just clip on, and I had them to hand anyway. (A capped contract means downloading something large to get the same effect costs.. and broadband is fairly recent here so your assumption Windows updates download in less than a week is flawed for some “out of town” though from experience it’s the phone which stops first, the broad band works with just the tip line connected..).

Sorry it’s not all computer science with me.  I’ve also seen a desk fan cause that at 90 when the wire is at 90 degrees to the cable but that was with CAT5 cable not CAT5E (which I hope is what the router came with) and I haven’t got a desk fan here..

I was merely indicating oldtimer might need to check his router isn’t checking for firmware updates and maybe see if he can stop that temporarily if it is, to see if matters improve.. after all it could be a very old router which is being attacked by a mirai botnet (https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new-enemybot-ddos-botnet-recruits-routers-and-iots-into-its-army/) or such (but why then is it active when his PVR connects, is something actually trying to compromise the PVR? )  but first off you need to characterise the problem as PVR or network related..

Oldtimer hasn’t indicated if he has any hardware to hand suitable to cast a stream for him to record on the PVR (and I have no idea how that might be achieved..) so start by ruling out the problem I experience on a regular basis.. I boot up to no Internet, and connect to the router home screen to see it “connecting” quite often (it gives a last check date and time on the home page, so It’s obvious what it was doing….).. but on the plus point at least my router firmware is up to date!

Sorry to drop it mid post – I had to deal with something elsewhere… Looking at the properties it indicates something large is hidden in the current partition. Unfortunately you don’t tell us anything about the drive (mainly, the make and model of the drive would be good so we can work out if this is likely an OS partition [most of the drive], a data partition (as Acer etc often implement [typically the same size as the potentially absent Windows partition, which could show as unallocated space]) or a large recovery partition [some are way too large.. basically enough to hold a full install image]), so that could actually be a recovery partition with a recovery image hidden away and the Windows partition has gone.

Dropping a command prompt and doing the folllowing should show several chunky files if that’s the case.. by convention the OEM folders in the recovery drive are hidden though its common to see a “windows boot” folder layout (with a sources folder) on a PE boot drive.

dir g:\*.wim /s

dir g:\*.wim /s /ah

dir g:\*.swm /s

dir g:\*.swm /s /ah

of course while you’re there you can check for hidden folders easily – maybe let us know what you see.. if you see Windows / Users / Documents and settings / Program files then its likely a Windows partition but again you have to question what’s happened.

dir g: /ah

dir g: /ah /as

Beyond that we don’t want to do too much with the original drive – DIR just reads data from the MFTs (which store file locations on the disk) – we want to avoid any data being written to the drive as that could overwrite the file information data recovery software could work with, which is why I suggested going straight for a clone, just be CERTAIN the destination drive is larger, and that’s where your copying data TO.

I’d also wonder if its some sort of crazy ransomware misfire, in which case Dr web boot  should find a cause (again, try this on a clone of the drive!) and also illuminate the paths which are there even if they’re hidden.

If you just find chunky recovery files then unfortunately I’d be down to digging out an old Hirens disk (9) to use the diskgenius on a COPY of the problem drive (I used clonedisk.exe), which should sort out the partition table. Just fire it up, right click drive and click recover lost files recovery (deleted etc doesn’t matter) and it’ll work out if the problem is in the partition table and offer to fix.. that done commit the fix and reboot… but that was  a very OLD Hirens version – I can’t vouch for the current version or either program / product at all..

Finally I see the term laptop, which makes me think of various Lenovo’s and Acers which had “one button recovery” – basically you could hold the Lenovo (latterly “novo”) button (or acer recovery key, though ALT and F10 was more common by far..) down on some and it would enter a recovery program – if your machine had that function it could be the water ingress triggered it and it crashed, damaging the drive data in which case you might as well go straight for clone and data recovery as early on the scripts removed and recreated the Windows partition (so you’ll find no folders..), set up a recovery system and rebooted to start that system loading the data from the recovery partition… the only question would be how did it get past the confirmation stages but if that’s where the drive is, that’s not a problem you can fix to get your data back..

Probably better to get a (larger) new drive, sector to sector clone very carefully, and use data recovery on that drive as a damaged drive could just stop, anytime.

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wavy

I’d go for installing the latest SSU and try again. Unfortunately the latest is included in the monthly update (so you might as well get the rather large package and extract and install the SSU first as per the instructions

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/august-9-2022-kb5016616-os-builds-19042-1889-19043-1889-and-19044-1889-67412989-3b5f-4443-89b4-f743382ab970

alternatively just trying to install the latest published stand alone SSU might reset something without the whole stopping services / deleting files / praying thing.. this could help if your system has dropped way behind on updates.

https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/en-us/vulnerability/ADV990001

Just in case might be worth checking the drive with crystaldiskinfo as localising a large update to install could fall foul of a drive media issue which Windows “fixes” later..

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windbg

What about just typing winver in the run box? The machine I’m using has pro and getting the file from the other is a bother, but basically google the OS build. I’d be surprised if it changed home to pro – it reflects more the updates on the system.

 

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Razz

Totally aside. I had similar issues with something I set up. It was fouled up as the ISP supplied router was checking for firmware twice a day (which I couldn’t change at all) which entailed a brief drop of connection and a reset, which was enough to cause the whole thing so fail. It was also not as regular as you might hope so gave a nice random failure.. though it seemed to not do it if there was enough traffic through the router, which is one thing you can arrange with the Windows update “active hours”!

 

Or just pick a nice long word (or three words) and capitalise and substitute suited letters for a symbol “alternative” (for example, might become @, U becomes ^ etc..) on an arbitrary pattern (so for more passwords, you change the word or the pattern)

So, for example, you could start with banality and derive B@n@L1ty.

Maybe you could use the same password in similar lower security areas with differing patterns, as hackers would have fun writing something to add “looks like” or “sounds like” substitutes on a dictionary hack and to then try all the patterns.. though I guess someone has probably done it but it slows the attack down a fair bit I suspect.

The take away there is pick an uncommon word or phrase to start with.. and maybe do something like remove or replace the spaces in a phrase with ascending numbers or something if you’re ever going to use it on a keyboard in public, to make it harder to shoulder surf (the spacebar usually makes a nice loud clack so you might as well advertise that character is a space if you’re using a library.)

Longer passwords are patently better but are can be fun to type- something with too many $s and at symbols in close succession can mean you take longer to type it, making shoulder surfing easier.. Be aware some remote support people might be able to see your password also (so they can check it’s really you by asking for the fifth character for example), so tempting as it is to make your banking password “T1ghTw@d$” it might not be the best choice..

 

 

 

 

Is it this one or is there another to dig out?

https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/cve-2022-3430-cve-2022-34303-cve-2022-34301-and-kb5012170/

seems to be “separate” at MS catalogue, and is apparently a problem for specific software.. not the world in general.

 

Crazy but simple suggestion (but it worked several versions back)

create a new user account.

reboot, log that account in and let it finish the out of box stuff.

log the new user account out

reboot (from the power button on the login screen)

Try the problem account again… regardless of the effect, the new user account can then be removed.

Just thought of another one (given most Intel based kit gives you the option to monitor various fans) – could malware “tune” the CPU load to cause the CPU cooler (in well characterised OEM models at least) to emit a note suitable to disrupt the drive whilst exercising the drive suitably to maximise the likelihood of failure, so they don’t have to encrypt your drive.. just upload your data and produce the ransom note and wait for the drive to pack up.. or maybe it’s just a way of selling some newer machines as at that age they’d likely be Windows 7.

Just points more to this not being a concern for the PC user. SCADA implementations maybe more so due to the environments some are installed in..

Is it a significant number of days from April 1st or something?

Or perhaps that tech is still in use in very old aircraft which only just escaped the problem with telephony frequencies.. like nobody would notice that specific track being played loudly in a strange area of the aircraft, like the loo, hold, or under a specific seat..

These are sensible people, there must be some reason they came out with this CVE, so maybe in due course that will come out as well!

It could be the heat, literally.

When it’s “blank” shine a torch on what should be a “Light” area of the screen (an intense LED beam torch is better..) and see if there’s an image lurking in the gloom. If there is then its plausible the LED supply has overheated  and shut off (as LEDs don’t last long if you run them at elevated temperatures.).

The other give away would be if you can turn down the actual backlight intensity in the menu and compensate by increasing brightness(rather than just changing the brightness, which largely works on the TFT matrix) the fault should be less prevalent.

That said if you dig in the menu the Dell monitors have a test facility, though it’s a fair button mash to get it working – it’s in the manual. Failure in that rules out all the interfaces and the PC..

 

 

 

Would wonder if the problem is poor power management somewhere. If you plug in a USB flash and it works, if you leave it until the PC sleeps (or maybe make it sleep if the power settings don’t) do the USB devices still work as expected when it wakes?

Then again it would be pretty unusual for USB3 to not work with USB selective suspend but its possible another driver on your system is affecting the situation, so maybe you could just turn that off temporarily (in the power settings) and see if anything changes..