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I’ve not been able to do a complete reset on my buggy MSI yet, but it’s been helpfully encouraging me by suddenly dropping support for the whole Start Menu. It doesn’t open anymore at all. The Windows key has also lost several of its features like bringing up a native emoji picker in any text field (Win + .).

I found an online article suggesting 9 ways of fixing this known issue that pops in year in year out according to the Microsoft community forums, but none of the first 7 worked, and the last two consist in reinstalling Windows and resetting the computer to factory settings. 😰

♲ @hypolite@friendica.mrpetovan.com: I finally caught it in the act!

I've complained before about my laptop frequently rebooting on its own friendica.mrpetovan.com/displa…, usually at night. I initially thought it was for Windows Updates, but the increased frequency has made me doubt this.

This time I caught it rebooting on its own during the day after a blue screen of death too fast for me to see the error code. I went to the Windows Event Log and I saw an error logged after the reboot but nothing specific at the time of the crash itself. It generated a dump I can't open by myself, which is a poor hint at what might be the problem.

The laptop seller offered me to repair the computer at their facility, but for that I first need to save my data on an external storage as I last transferred my data directly from my old computer to the new. I know I had some 2.5" drives stashed somewhere in my house so I ordered an enclosure.

However, I'm not able to find the drives anymore so I'll have to order an actual drive since I now have an empty enclosure, which will delay the troubleshooting process further.

Stay tuned for the next episode of my modern computer woes!