Act 1 — The Audit
A routine Windows 11 user/group audit. Clean, methodical. Groups listed, docker removed, Codex sandbox accounts identified. Everything was going well.
“Your system is actually in solid shape. The audit is essentially done.”
Famous last words.
Act 2 — The Reboot That Started It All
After a clean audit session, voidrun rebooted and was met with a password rejection screen. The password — which was not forgotten — simply stopped working.
“password was NOT forgotten here!”
Act 3 — The Diagnosis Spiral
First theory — Windows Hello desync. Wrong.
Second theory — forest\ domain auth scope switching. Plausible but unconfirmed.
Third theory — Swedish keyboard layout mismatch in WinRE. Good theory, still wrong.
“I have reseted, reinstalled online, I still cant login……..”
A full cloud download reset with keep files. Still locked out. The situation had escalated far beyond a simple audit cleanup.
Act 4 — The Attempts
| Attempt | Result |
|---|---|
net user voidrun in WinRE | Failed silently |
| Enable Administrator | Never appeared on login screen |
| Create RecoveryAdmin | “The workstation service has not been started” |
| Blank password | Rejected |
| Cloud reset keep files | Wiped voidrun from SAM entirely |
“I have done all this.”
Act 5 — The Turning Point
After exhausting every Windows-native recovery option, one offhand comment changed everything:
“I can still dual boot into Linux but I want to play games that only works on windows…. :)”
WAIT. You have Linux.
Arch. chntpw installed in seconds. SAM file located at /run/media/user/sys. The unlock worked. Administrator enabled. Rebooted into Windows. Inside at last.
Act 6 — The Phantom Installer
Then things got weird.
Instead of a login screen, Windows began installing itself again from scratch — a full reset spinning up uninvited. Bizarre enough on its own. But then:
A Razer installer appeared BEFORE Windows 11 had even finished installing.
Not after setup. Not after first login. Before. As if something baked into the system had triggered it during OOBE. Tools were quickly installed via winget, everything configured, reboot initiated.
Act 7 — The Network Dies
On reboot — no internet. Gone. Completely.
- Adapter reset — nothing.
- Phone tethering — nothing.
- Every network fix attempted — nothing.
Act 8 — The Reset That Lied
Another reset. This time explicitly: keep files AND apps.
Razer installer appeared again mid-installation — same as before, same eerie timing.
Booted in. Files present. Apps? Gone. All of them. Windows had kept the files and silently ignored the apps entirely, as if the option had never been selected.
Act 9 — The Current State
The machine is running. Everything is set up again. But now there is one rule:
“I am scared to reboot my PC.”
What This Suggests
The Razer installer appearing pre-OOBE is the most alarming detail. That points to one of two things:
| Theory | Implication |
|---|---|
| Razer Synapse baked into a recovery partition | Manufacturer bloatware triggering from a hidden partition |
| Something persistent in the EFI partition | Survives all resets, executes before OS |
The network dying post-reset and the apps vanishing despite “keep apps” both suggest the reset is pulling from a corrupted or incomplete recovery image — not a clean Windows state.
The Real Fix
“I want to play games that only work on Windows.”
I’ll get there. But the recovery partition cannot be trusted anymore.