holy fucking shit!!!!!!!!!!
I've had this in my drafts to finish writing up for a few weeks but today I made another discovery that has pushed me to finally write it up lol.
My PC had a few hiccups over the past couple of years. Nothing so serious that I was truly concerned (at first) but, annoyances, to be sure. ("PC? Weren't you talking about a TV??" you might be thinking to yourself. Yes. I'll get there. Oh, will I ever get there.)
For a long time, the most serious hiccup with my PC was being unable to open Display Settings on my PC. I had to use Nvidia control panel to make adjustments. Whatever. Didn't affect my ability to work or anything. I had just updated to Windows 11 so I thought maybe something went wrong in the update. So I did another install (which meant I had to re-install a ton of music plugin stuff on my computer which takes ages given all the stuff I use.)
The fresh install still didn't fix it. So I simply ignored it for the better part of 2 years.
Over time, so slowly I didn't really clock them as being related, other things started to fail.
I have a Komplete Kontrol S88 midi Keyboard that interfaces with Kontakt and Komplete Kontrol in my DAW. I can use the keyboard to adjust settings or select instruments without having to look at my computer screen. At some point last year this stopped working. I could still use it to input midi, and I was afraid I'd have to do a fresh install of all the Native Instruments stuff I use, so I kept putting off trying to fix it until I had less going on with work. It worked, just not as well as it should!
Then, Task manager started to hang in weird ways. It wouldn't close unless I forced it closed with ProcExp. Whatever! Computers are weird!
I had trouble getting video capture cards to connect when I considered streaming Splatoon. Whatever! I'm not a streamer, I should probably use that energy on something else.
But then, in March, I had some things fail that, turns out, are pretty necessary to using the computer.
I was trying to get remote desktop to work on my tablet so I could work in the living room closer to my cat, Grendel, who was still very much in mourning for his best friend (<3 Guts). Grendel is at his happiest when he's napping on the couch next to a human. So I thought, hey, I could do some stuff in remote desktop mode! It wasn't something I used very often because it doesn't play super nice with audio, it'd been probably over a year since I last used it, but I knew it had worked and had been easy to set up.
Well. It refused to connect despite appearing as an option on my tablet. And as I was trying to troubleshoot this problem...
My task bars on my PC disappeared! If I moused over the spot they should have been I got the loading circle. And my monitors would jitter!
System settings were nowhere to be found. To navigate I had to open Task Manager (which if you recall was already acting strange and sluggish for the past year) in order to open the command panel, which I'd then use to launch programs. Or, attempt to. If I tried to open the system settings, my PC spat out "Uhhh what's "Settings"? We ain't got settings" (in command I got "C:\Windows\System32>start ms-settings: Access is denied." despite being in admin mode)
SO I started to panic a wee bit. It's not a great time for me to possibly need a new PC! Plus, it works great when it works.
I manually backed up everything important from my main PC drive (as I could not access the windows backup program because it lived in settings!!!!!!!!) and downloaded the Windows 11 installer to a drive in case I needed to completely wipe my computer and start fresh.
In a last ditch effort, I tried updating my Nvidia GeForce graphics driver and restarted.
Lo and behold, my taskbars came back and I could access settings again! Huzzah!
This lasted for 6 days. And then the taskbars disappeared AGAIN along with Settings.
At least by now I'd become somewhat comfortable using command to get around, so I was less panicked than I was in round 1. I at least knew the computer wouldn't crash and delete all my shit suddenly (plus I had my backups that were up-to-date).
I asked my friends if they'd ever heard of anything like this, and Cohost's own @vogon helped me poke around some additional graphics driver stuff in case updating to the new Nvidia program that's in beta would solve my issue. This felt super promising when I went into safe mode and saw taskbars. So, I did the update, and, as before, when I updated, the taskbars came back! But there were gone again almost immediately. My screen literally started flickering and they vanished. It was so fucking bizarre.
I turned to google once more, hoping that somehow, as useless as google is these days, maybe I'd find what I needed to fix my damn computer!
Somehow, against all odds, I found it. I happened to use the exact right string in my search to pull up some reddit threads. The first one didn't have anything useful, but a few results down I spotted "no taskbar and task manager freezes" holy moly!!!
At first glance however, there wasn't anything useful. But then I spotted some collapsed comments at the bottom of the thread. I knew more than likely they just had comments like "sucks bro" or "this is why i use linux :/" But I expanded them and inside was a link to a Microsoft forum post. I kept my expectations in check and clicked on the link. What I saw had my nearly vibrating in my seat.
Narayan B
Nov 16, 2023, 12:20 AM
So I finally solved it!
Source of the problem: an Android TV (HiSense model) connected to my network. Yes. A TV caused this issue.
HISENSE? LIKE THE SAME BRAND OF TV I HAVE HAD SINCE 2020???
I followed the instructions. I deleted keys generated by our TV for 5 straight minutes. 5 Minutes of like 200BPM clicking. I restarted. Everything worked again. I laughed so hard I cried. I felt like I'd solved a murder. The main suspect was the PC but the culprit was the TV in the other room. And he almost got away with it!!! If I had spent a few days carrying out a clean install and re-installing all my work stuff, my problem would have come back. If I had taken the PC out back and shot it and replaced it with a fancy new computer, the problem would have come back.
Because the problem was never the PC. The Problem was my Hisense TV in the next room.
Once I carried this out, I was able to open display settings for the first time (outside of safe mode) in 2 years. When I deleted the keys, my Task Manager started behaving normally again. I turned around and saw that my keyboard was once again displaying the VST controls on its screen. The fancy midi keyboard was back at full functionality. I was able to connect my CRT as a display again using the HDMI -> RCA converters I'd assumed had stopped working (nope! they still worked, they always worked!)
Which brings me to today. Almost a month later everything still works. So, I decided to see if remote desktop would magically work again. The answer is: Yes. Yes, in fact, my TV was the reason my remote desktop connection had failed the month before.
So here I am, sitting on my couch with my tablet and bluetooth keeb and mouse, writing this post in remote desktop mode so I could attach screenshots of this saga to my post without sitting at my PC. Grendel is snoring beside me as I write.
As a treat for reading this far, please enjoy two screenshots of my friends reacting to the solution of my great mystery.
adding: the TV in question, in case you're curious: Hisense 50Q8G- 50" Smart 4K ULED™ Android TV with Quantum Dot Technology (Canada Model)
