A timeline of bringing the new build online. May 27 – May 30, 2026.
The new build, paid for and waiting at the shop:
To carry over from the old Z390 box: RTX 2080 Ti (Gaming OC), 500GB WD Blue SN500 NVMe, 1TB SSD, 4TB Seagate BarraCuda HDD.
Removing the 2080 Ti from the Z390 AORUS MASTER. The Ultra Durable metal PCIe slot latch is stiff and refuses to release without persuasion. Card stored in anti-static bag + bubble wrap + silica gel (the local humidity does not forgive).
A local PC shop. New build is already assembled; shop is going to:
The shop has already routed cables. Slight concern about M.2 slots being under the GPU heatsink, requiring re-disassembly. Their problem.
New machine alive. Windows 11 Pro running on Kioxia Gen5. Started actual work.
Something off about audio output — crackling / dropouts / unsteady sound. Exact symptom has faded from memory.
Installed LatencyMon to diagnose. Verdict: buffer underruns / high DPC latency in the driver stack. Some kernel-mode driver was holding execution time longer than the audio buffer window could absorb, starving the audio pipeline. Usual suspects on a fresh Windows install with brand-new hardware: Wi-Fi, NVIDIA display, USB controller, or storage driver — any one of them can hog DPC time if it's a green build of the driver.
Specific fix has also faded. Either it self-resolved after later driver updates, got worked around by tweaking audio buffer / power settings, or just stopped registering once the rest of the system caught fire a few hours later. Filing under "things that mostly worked themselves out before the real disaster arrived."
Picked Maple Mono NL NF CN for CJK + Nerd Font icons + no programming ligatures. Designed a statusline config for Claude Code.
In the middle of working:
Win key → no response.This is the original sin. The hard power-off triggered everything below.
Boot comes back into a profile that looks default. Wallpaper gone, settings gone, Start menu empty. Windows asks to sign out and back in. Same thing happens. And again.
Welcome to a temporary profile loop, with the real C:\Users\winuser folder intact but unmounted.
Event Viewer findings:
Pulled the SID from HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList: S-1-5-21-[redacted]-1001. State value: 0x8000 (the "load error" flag). ProfileImagePath correct (C:\Users\winuser).
Attempted fixes that did not work:
State back to 0.bak entries.bak to take over the main SIDreg load + reg unload of NTUSER.DATReplacement attempts that were silently blocked:
move C:\Users\Default\NTUSER.DAT C:\Users\winuser\NTUSER.DAT → "cannot find file" (Win11 rename-protection on registry hive files — the real error is ACCESS_DENIED, mapped to a misleading message)copy overwrite → "Access is denied" (ACL lock, even as Administrator)ntuser.dat.LOG2 is 0 bytes (corrupt transaction log)fsutil reparsepoint query on Known Folders:
Desktop, Documents, Pictures → NOT reparse pointsC:\Users\winuser\OneDrive → IS a reparse point, tag 0x9000701a = IO_REPARSE_TAG_CLOUD_7 = OneDrive Files On-Demand placeholderNot pure hive corruption. The Microsoft account + OneDrive integration chain is failing during profile init — some service in that startup sequence (credential sync, OneDrive client init, cloud sync state check) is timing out, the User Profile Service falls back to temp, and no amount of hive-level surgery fixes a service-init chain problem.
Single-point fixes are dead. Real options:
C:\Users\winuser → G:\备份\winuser. 13.9GB. The 0x80070780 errors during copy turned out to be OneDrive cloud-only placeholders (0 bytes locally). Skipped them, no real data lost.
powercfg /h offDisables hibernation entirely, nukes hiberfil.sys, kills Win11's hybrid shutdown. From now on every restart is a clean cold boot.
The diagnostic evidence all pointed at the [redacted] Microsoft account specifically (the SID, the OneDrive reparse, the ProfileList corruption all sit on one account). A new local account should bypass the entire MS-account / OneDrive init chain.
net user localadmin <pwd> /add
net localgroup Administrators localadmin /addAccount created as localadmin → C:\Users\localadmin. First login → fresh profile loaded successfully. Confirmed account-specific. The system is salvageable without a reinstall.
taskkill /f /im OneDrive.exe
reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\OneDrive" /v DisableFileSyncNGSC /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
winget uninstall "Microsoft OneDrive"localadmin inherits the machine-level policy. No more OneDrive force-managing Known Folders. No more cloud sync in the profile init chain.
C:\Program Files) → visible to localadmin, no reinstall needed.C:\Users\winuser\AppData\Local\Programs — Cursor, Discord, Spotify, Notion, Telegram, VS Code Electron, etc.) → invisible to localadmin, must reinstall. Accepted.ChrisTitusTech WinUtil:
iwr -useb https://christitus.com/win | iexEnabled: OneDrive removal, Telemetry disable, Recall disable, Bing Search disable, Right-Click classic layout, Windows AI disable, Teredo, File Extensions visible, Hidden Files visible, Mouse Acceleration disable, Recommendations disable, Ultimate Performance profile.
Skipped: IPv6 disable (Surfshark needs it), Date-UTC, Edge remove.
Followed up with O&O ShutUp10++.
irm https://claude.ai/install.ps1 | iexv2.1.152 at C:\Users\localadmin\.local\bin\claude.exe. PATH fixed at User scope + session.
irm https://chatgpt.com/codex/install.ps1 | iexSame .local\bin, PATH already set, Rust binary (no Node dependency).
From the old drive (now mounted as F:, the old C:\Users\legacy):
xcopy "F:\Users\legacy\.claude" "C:\Users\localadmin\.claude" /E /H /C /I /Y
xcopy "F:\Users\legacy\.codex" "C:\Users\localadmin\.codex" /E /H /C /I /Y
copy "F:\Users\legacy\.claude.json" "C:\Users\localadmin\.claude.json"Config history preserved.
shutdown /r → PC powers on (fans, LEDs), monitor stays black. BIOS-initiated reboot (Save Changes and Reboot) → works fine.
Diagnosis: not the GPU, not the BIOS — it's the Windows shutdown sequence. Some driver isn't releasing during graceful shutdown, the reboot completes inconsistently, and on the next boot the display handshake fails. BIOS reboot bypasses OS shutdown entirely, so it works.
Workaround (current):
shutdown /s /f /t 0 # cold-shutdown, manual power-on
shutdown /r /fw /f /t 0 # firmware reboot pathReal fix pending — Event Viewer → System log at shutdown time → identify the hanging driver (probable suspects: NVIDIA, AMD chipset, USB controller, storage). Not done yet.
Steam download showing ~800 "Mbps", expected ~80. The Steam UI now defaults to Mbps (megabit) instead of MB/s (megabyte). Same speed, different unit. Resolved by understanding that ÷8 gets you back to MB/s. 101 MB/s = line saturated. Kioxia Gen5 is not the bottleneck for an 800Mbps line.
Set the 5070 as primary in NVIDIA control settings. The 2080 Ti is still at the shop being cleaned and repasted; will install as secondary card when it comes back.
ERR_GFX_D3D_DEFERRED_MEM — Out of memory, immediately on launch. Cannot get into the game to change settings.
Root cause: RDR2 defaults to native display resolution (49-inch likely 5120×1440 DQHD) + fullscreen + Ultra + DirectX 12. That combination tries to allocate >12GB VRAM at startup. 5070 has 12GB. OOM. Game dies before showing a menu.
The Graphics API choice matters: DX12 in RDR2 is notoriously unstable for deferred memory allocation. Vulkan is more efficient and more stable. But you can't switch APIs from outside the game.
Fix path (in progress):
Route 1 — Steam launch parameters force window + low resolution:
-windowed -width 1920 -height 1080Enters at 1080p windowed, low VRAM pressure, you get in. Then switch Graphics API → Vulkan, set Window Mode → Borderless Windowed, set resolution → 1080p or 1440p as preferred.
Route 2 (if RGL intercepts launch params): drop Windows desktop resolution to 1080p → delete system.xml to clear the recorded DQHD config → launch RDR2 → fresh detect at 1080p → enter → set Vulkan + Borderless + target resolution in-game → exit → restore desktop resolution. RDR2 keeps its own window resolution independent of desktop.
Status: awaiting result.
C:\Users\winuser, purge TEMP.* folders, clear ProfileList SID entriesrobocopy mirror of .claude / .codex / .claude.json to G:\ so config survives the next profile catastropheCold boots only.