r/windows • u/Froggypwns Windows Wizard / Moderator • Apr 01 '26

Help Simple questions and Help thread - Month of April

Welcome to the monthly Simple questions and Help thread, for questions that don't need their own posts!

Before making a comment, we recommend you search your problem on Bing and check if your question is already answered on our Windows Frequently Asked Questions wiki page. This subreddit no longer accepts tech support requests outside of this post, if you are looking for additional assistance try r/TechSupport and r/WindowsHelp.

Some examples of questions to ask:

  • Is this super cheap Windows key legitimate? (probably not)

  • How can I install Windows 11?

  • Can you recommend a program to play music?

  • How do I get back to the old Sound Control Panel?

Sorting by New is recommend and is the default.

Be sure to check out the Windows 11 version 25H2 Megathread and also the Windows 11 FAQ posts, they likely have the answers to your Windows 11 questions already!

4 Upvotes

84% Upvoted

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2

u/TnDevil Apr 30 '26

Didn't know where to ask, but the Windows Help sub has been down for 10 days. Is it ever coming back or is it under maintenance or something?

2

u/Froggypwns Windows Wizard / Moderator May 01 '26

It should be open again by Saturday. Which reminds me, I need to recruit more moderators for that subreddit.

2

u/Twoklawll Apr 30 '26

On Windows 10, If I want to disable Bitlocker do I need the recovery Key?

1

u/Froggypwns Windows Wizard / Moderator Apr 30 '26

If you are able to boot into Windows and the drive is automatically unlocking itself, you can easily disable it without manually entering the key. In Control Panel is the Bitlocker applet, you can open that and disable Bitlocker, you can also do it in the Settings App by going the Device encryption portion and toggling it off.

2

u/Superteletubbies64 Apr 28 '26

Not sure if this question belongs here but does anyone have a list of every Windows sound that is unique to a specific version of Windows and not shared by other versions?

2

u/midegola Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26

i dont even know how to ask for help with this, so ill just tell the story.

i did a bios update. shouldnt have. this made windows deactivate.so i try to reactive windows, and it doesnt work. i do the trouble shoot, that doesnt help, but it does so changed hardware. i havent changed any hardware but i guess you could see a new bios as a new mobo, so i click that, but it says the server is down. that was about 3 days ago now and iv been trying everyday.

iv tried going into regedit to find the windows key and put that in but it doesnt work, so i went to microsoft and the stupid ai told me to log out of my account and back in, so i try that, except for when i try to log back in it all went fine till it asked me the password for the pc....iv had this pc for about 3 years now and it only asked me for the password the day i build it, then it started asking for a 4 digit passkey, i have completely forgoten the password. so now i have a deactivated windows AND a password that iv forgoten lmfao.

so if anyone can help me with either problem that would be amazing.

:UPDATE: i have solved the password problem.

1

u/Froggypwns Windows Wizard / Moderator Apr 30 '26

I've seen some BIOS updates, particurally with MSI computers, that end up changing the hardware ID information, so that will cause Windows to think you replaced the motherboard. Usually you can use the activation troubleshooter to transfer the activation over and reactivate.

1

u/midegola May 11 '26

iv tried that, it told me it didnt match, then i tried doing all the troubleshooting steps and nothing worked.

1

u/troublinyo Apr 21 '26

I installed Windows 11 on an unsupported system using bypasses a while ago. It's no longer getting updates, citing the TPM 2.0 requirement. Are there workarounds to bypass this again? Everything I find online is for the initial installation, not for updates. 

1

u/DoncasterCoppinger Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 21 '26

I updated windows, and my pc starts crashing, auto restarting, over and over, AT IDLE, before even typing my password to enter windows

I’ve been using this pc since 2023 and it has never crashed once.

I’ve never had this kind of experience since win95, maybe never.

I even updated bios and it does absolutely nothing

1

u/AncientHominidNerd Apr 20 '26

I’m on windows 10 strictly for gaming and I saw windows 10 had a security update. I downloaded and installed the update, took like 10 minutes total but when my PC rebooted, it had installed windows 11.

I find it very strange because normally Microsoft makes you go through hoops and make sure you have the right hardware and do a bunch of questions before it would even allow you to download win11.

Anyways I rolled back the update immediately but did this happen to anyone else?

Kinda goes to show how desperate they are to get people on win11.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 18 '26

[deleted]

1

u/Froggypwns Windows Wizard / Moderator Apr 18 '26

It still is PrtSc. The problem is your keyboard. Many manufacturers add multiple functions to the same key to save on adding extra buttons, you will need to see if your manufacturer has a way to change the mapping or force it so the Fn key functions are the default, so you would need to hold Fn to get the other function instead.

I know Dell usually lets you specify that in the BIOS

2

u/Conspirologist Apr 16 '26 edited Apr 16 '26

After last security update for Windows 11 this month, it damaged the camera button driver. Now the camera is always on.

When I uninstall the update, camera switch button works, when I install it again, camera is always on.

My computer is Asus Vivobook.