Fix NETWORK_FAILED error in Chrome

Graphic cards are essential to our computers but from time to time in the race to make better GPU and to grab a large portion of the market bad drivers get released and can create really unwanted and unpleasant experiences, from Windows freezes to the black screen of death, to AMD driver Windows crashing down and many more. This article will cover basic troubleshooting with AMD drivers and offer you solutions on how to fix them.

1. Rollback the previous version of the driver.

   Installing the new driver version is the reason for this particular error, so naturally rolling back the previous version which was stable and did not cause issues will solve the problem. To roll back the previous version of drivers follow the next steps: Open Start menu and click on settings, go to system and choose Apps and features Find: AMD Catalyst Install Manager, right-click on it, and choose to uninstall Go to AMD official website and download the previous driver version, install it on your computer Turn off automatic driver updates and reboot your system

2. Reinstall the driver

   Sometimes it is not a bug in the released driver, it is a corruption of files because of file transfer or any other specific reason. The reinstalling driver will fix an issue if this is the case. To reinstall the driver Press ⊞ WINDOWS + X and choose Device Manager Expand Display adapters, right-click on AMD device and choose to uninstall Go to the official AMD website, download the latest driver and install it Reboot your system

3. Disable browser extensions

   Some users have reported that error occurs only when they are watching videos online, if this is your case, go to your browser options and disable extensions to see if this will remove the problem.

4. Remove Lucid Virty MVP

   If by any chance have this relic installed on your system, go to Applications and remove it. It is an old program shipped with old drivers and it is usually present in your Windows that was upgraded from 8.1 to 10. Uninstall it and see if this fixes your issue.

5. Clean your graphic card

   Sometimes this error can happen due to excessive dust on your GPU, if you have the expertise, clean it or take it somewhere to be cleaned.

The Photos app in Windows 10 is the default photo viewer. However, there are times when it might encounter some problems while you use it. One of these problems in the Photos app reported recently is where users try to export or share the images and videos from the app but weren’t successful in doing so. This can be really quite a hassle in opening images on your computer, especially since the Photos app is the default photo viewer in Windows 10 and if you don’t have any other photo viewer app installed. This kind of problem in the Photos app can be noticed when you try to use the “Remix” function for both photos and videos. In other words, this problem can occur with just pictures, videos, as well as a combination of both. So if you are trying to watch a video using this app, then you wouldn’t be able to play it. In such a case, the only thing you can hear is the audio but you wouldn’t see anything except for a hazy purple screen that has not export or share option. There are several possible causes for this problem and it could be fixed by updating the display driver/graphics driver or disabling the hardware-accelerated video encoding. You could also try updating or resetting or reinstalling the Photos app. For more details, follow each one of the suggestions provided below.

Option 1 – Try to update the Graphics driver

You can try to update your Graphics card driver using the Device Manager in your computer to resolve the blank dialog boxes problem or you can also go directly to the website of your graphics card manufacturers like NVIDIA, Intel, or AMD and go to the section called Drivers then check if there’s a new available update – if there is, download and install it. To update your Graphics driver via Device Manager, refer to these steps:

• First, boot your computer into Safe Mode.
• After that, tap the Win + R keys to launch Run.
• Type in msc into the box and tap Enter or click OK to open the Device Manager.
• After that, a list of device drivers will be displayed. From there, look for the Display Adapters and click on them.
• After that, right-click on each entry under the Display Adapters and select the “Uninstall Device” option from the menu.
• Now restart your computer.
• After restarting your computer, go to the Settings app and Check for Updates in the Windows Update section.

Option 2 – Try disabling the hardware-accelerated video encoding

The next thing you can do to fix the problem is to disable the hardware-accelerated video encoding in your computer. To do that, follow these steps:

• Open the Photos app and click on the visible three dots located in the upper right corner of the app and then select Settings.
• From there, you should see the version number of the app in the “About this app” section. So if your app is version 2018.18071.****0.0 or greater, you should see the Video section which has a toggle button.
• Turn that toggle button off to disable hardware-accelerated video encoding in the Photos app. This should fix the problem, if not, simply follow the next given options below.

Option 3 – Try to update the Microsoft Photos app

• Open the Microsoft Store and click on the three horizontal dots for the menu located on the top right portion of the window to see the options.
• Next, select Downloads and updates and then click the Get updates button in the top right. This will install any pending updates for all the apps including the Microsoft Photos app using the Microsoft Store.

Option 4 – Try resetting the Photos app

• To get started in resetting the Photos app, open the Windows 10 Settings.
• Then go to Apps > Apps & features.
• After that, scroll down until you see the Photos app option – click on it and open its Advanced options.
• From there, you will see the Reset button, click on it and click and then click on it once more to confirm.

Note: The process may take a couple of minutes to complete. Once it’s done, open the pictures again using the Photos app.

Option 5 – Try reinstalling the Photos app

If none of the options given above worked, then you might want to consider reinstalling the Photos app. Unlike what most users think, it isn’t really that hard reinstalling preinstalled apps as you have the Windows PowerShell for that. To use this program in reinstalling the Photos app, follow these steps:

• Open the Windows PowerShell program with admin privileges and key in the following command:

Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted

• After that, execute this second command to re-register and reinstall the Microsoft Photos app.

Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)AppXManifest.xml"}

Note: In the command given, do not forget to replace the “PackageFullName” with the actual package name for the Photos app. After executing the command, it will uninstall the Photos app from your computer so you need to install it again from the Windows Store by simply looking for it. Once you found it, just click on install to start the installation process.

A lot of users prefer to use Microsoft OneDrive when it comes down to cloud storage as it does not only come with the seal of approval from Microsoft but it’s also primarily good and better compared to other cloud storage services. However, that doesn’t mean that OneDrive isn’t without any issues. For one, you might encounter an issue where the OneDrive thumbnails do not show in File Explorer in Windows 10. If you are currently experiencing this problem, read on as this post will help you fix it. As you know, you can add OneDrive to your Windows 10 computer and have all the files locally synchronize to the cloud and so on. This means that whatever is available in the cloud will be seen on your computer. It is smooth and definitely saves you a lot of time which is why a lot of users prefer to use it. So if you suddenly not see any thumbnails in OneDrive, then that would be a problem. You are actually not the only one having this problem as there are other users who reported getting the same issue recently about the picture thumbnails that no longer show up in the OneDrive folders in the File Explorer. At the time of writing, it isn’t clear yet what the cause of the issue really is. Even so, there are still potential fixes you can check out to resolve it, and the sooner you do it, the better as this can be a major problem. To get started, refer to the instructions given below.

Option 1 – Try to disable Files on Demand

The first thing you can do to fix the problem is to disable the Files on Demand. This is what you have to do to get things under control.

• First, right-click on the OneDrive icon located in the taskbar and go-to of OneDrive.
• After that, click on More and Settings. This will open a new window where you have to click on the Settings tab and uncheck the “Files on Demand” service.
• Once done, restart your computer and check if you can now see the thumbnails in the OneDrive folder. However, if it didn’t work, then proceed to the next given option below.

Option 2 – Try to change the icon view

The next thing you can do to fix the problem is to change the icon view. It is possible that the problem might have something to do with the size of the icons than anything else. So you have to change the icon view and to do that, follow these steps:

• First, open Control Panel in Windows 10.
• Next, in the search box, type “folder” and then click on the File Explorer Options.
• From there, click on the View tab and uncheck the “Always show icons” option, and make sure that showing thumbnails is active.
• Now go back to Control Panel and type “system” in the search box. This will open a new window where you have to select the “View advanced system settings” option.
• Then under the Performance section, click on Settings and click on the option that allows you to show the thumbnails instead of icons.

Being in the Microsoft Windows insider program will let you get a hands-on new Windows 11, but some people just want Windows 11 without being in the insider program. Well, people beware! It was detected that some groups have been releasing fake Windows 11 installers with malware into them. There’s one malicious file called 86307_windows 11 builds 21996.1 x64 + activator.exe. Based on the filename, one might guess that it includes Windows 11 build 21996.1, and on top of that, there’s something in it that will automatically activate Windows for you. It comes in at 1.75GB, so for some people, that might seem reasonable. It starts out looking like a normal installer, and then there’s a second installer that calls itself a download manager. If you accept the nonsense agreement that’s included, you get a bunch of malware. This is just one example of malicious installers running amok internet, but there are more of them with different software placed inside. Malware can be anything from adware to a Trojan virus. The adware usually isn’t super dangerous. It’s just malware that’s meant to inject your PC with advertisements. Viruses can be more of an issue, and they can be harder to get rid of if your machine is infected. Windows Defender does a good job of getting rid of this stuff. The only problem is that if you’re downloading Windows 11 from shady sources, you’re probably already set to click through the dozen or so warnings that pop up telling you not to install it. The solution will be to get Windows from a trusted source of roll inside the insider program and get it from Microsoft directly.

If you have been stuck on allocating disk space on steam you know how annoying this error could be. Here you are, with your new game eager to play it and relax a little and all of the sudden steam gets stuck on allocating disc space. Luckily this error is fixable, follow provided guide to fix the error and continue with installing the game.

1. Restart computer

   An old age solution of turning it off and turning it back on but in this case, it works 90% of the time.

2. Run Steam as administrator

   Allocating disk space when done by a third-party application can be a task that requires privileges higher than the normal user. Find the steam executable file in the installation folder, right-click on it and run it as an administrator

3. Clear Steam cache

   Launch Steam in admin mode. Once in the client, click on Steam at the top left corner of the screen. From the drop-down box, click on Settings. Once in the Settings, navigate to the Downloads tab. Click the Clear Download Cache option. Click OK on the prompt to confirm your action. Wait for the process to complete. When done, save changes and exit the client.

4. Change download server

   Launch Steam client in admin mode. Once in the client, click on Steam at the top left corner of the screen. From the drop-down box, click on Settings. Once in the Settings, navigate to the Downloads tab. Click the drop-down menu under the Download Region. Choose a different server to download from. Exit the Steam client.

5. Refresh installation files

   • Kill a Steam process in Task Manager.
   • Navigate to your Steam folder
   • Inside the Steam folder, select everything except the steamapps folder and the Steam.exe executable file.
   • Tap the Delete key on your keyboard.

6. Turn off firewall

   Firewall can prevent steam and cut access to system operations, disable firewall to fix this issue.

7. Stop overclocking

   If you have overclocked your PC, you can simply reverse the change. The steps you will need to take depends on the overclocking software. Launch the software and look for the option to stop the overclocking. Once done, restart your computer, rerun the game installation.

As you know, “JPEG” is one of the commonly used formats for image files which is a compression of digital images. It is one of the topmost used file formats by mobile phones and digital cameras and usually achieves a 10:1 compression with little visible loss in the quality of the image. There are tons of cases as of late, most particularly after the latest Windows 10 update where users were not able to open JPEG files on their PCs. Every time they try to open any JPEG file, they either get an error or nothing happens at all. This issue could be due to the default handler application for JPEG applications not being set or there could be some third-party image viewer not working properly. To fix this issue with JPEG files, refer to the troubleshooting options below.

Option 1 – Try to change the file type association

You need to check if the file type association of the JPEG files are correctly set or not since there are tons of third party programs that change the file type association automatically to themselves without your permission the instant they are installed and so if any of these third-party programs are broken, then naturally, your JPEG files won’t really open. That’s why you can try changing the setting to the default photo viewer instead of the third-party one. To do so, follow the steps below.

• Tap the Win + R keys to open the Run dialog box.
• Then type in “control panel” in the field and hit Enter to open the Control Panel.
• After opening Control Panel, click on the Programs category and select the “Default Programs” option from the menu.
• Next, select the second option “Associate a file type or protocol with a program” and then select the “Choose default apps by file type” option.
• After that, click on the .jpg file extension and choose the option from the pop-up.
• Now restart your PC to refresh all your programs and then see if it has fixed the problem or not.

Option 2 – Try to update your computer

Microsoft frequently releases updates to target bugs and improve users’ experience. And this particular error where JPEG files won’t open is already acknowledged by Microsoft so you need to make sure that your Windows 10 PC is updated to the latest released update and that there are no pending updates.

• Tap the Win + S keys to open Search and then type in “update” in the field and open the system setting from the search results.
• After that, check for updates and then download and install them if needed.
• Now restart your PC once the update is done and check if you can now open JPEG files.

Option 3 – Try to reset the Photos app via Settings

Resetting the Photos app could also help you in fixing the problem. Note that this option will reset all the configurations and your data associated with your Photos and makes the application go into a state when you first started using it and that this option will fix any discrepancies that your application might be experiencing right now.

• Tap the Win + S keys to open the search bar.
• Then type in “settings” in the field to open the Settings application.
• After opening Settings, click the “Apps” category.
• From there, a list of applications installed on your computer will appear.
• Navigate through these applications until you find the Photos app and then click on the Advanced options.
• Afterward, click the Reset button that appears on the next screen. Then a new pop-up comes up and will warn you that all the preferences, as well as sign-in information, will be lost. Click on “Reset” anyway to proceed in resetting the Photos app.
• Restart your PC once the reset is done.

Option 4 – Try to reinstall the Photos app

Before you start using other third-party image viewers just yet, you can try to reinstall the Photos app first. Thus, if there is something wrong with it, it will instantly get fixed right after it reinstalls. Just take note that this option requires administrative privileges so you need to be logged in as an administrator.

• The first thing you have to do is tap the Windows + S keys and type in “PowerShell”.
• Next, right-click on the file and click on the “Run as administrator” option from the context menu.
• Once PowerShell is opened, execute this command: get-appxpackage *Microsoft.Windows.Photos* | remove-appxpackage
• The command you just entered will remove the Photos app. After the process is done, go to the Microsoft Store and look for Microsoft Photos then download and install it again.

Windows 11 has brought some bad reviews for its inability to change the taskbar location to the screen. Luckily we can still hide it if needed. In order to hide the taskbar from the screen follow these simple instructions:

1. Right-click the taskbar itself and select “Taskbar Settings” in the tiny menu that pops up or open Windows Settings and navigate to Personalization > Taskbar
2. Click on Taskbar Behaviors
3. Check the box next to Automatically hide the Taskbar
4. Close settings

As soon as you click on the box to hide the taskbar Windows 11 will apply your settings and hide the taskbar, you will get one line at the very bottom of the screen indicating that the taskbar is still present, just hidden. When you reach the bottom of your screen with the mouse it will pop up and be visible again, just like in all Windows so far.

If you are following the latest gaming trends and spend a lot of time on social media, watching streams, etc. you might be under impression that gaming as a hobby is very expensive. If you plan to play the latest games on a very large screen in their highest setting that might be true but if you do not care about that you can still play games and spend much less money on them.

That being said we are here to share with you some tips and tactics on how to play good games with minimum money spent.

Do not buy games the moment when they are released

Buying a game on its launch date is maybe the worst and most expensive thing you can do. Games have their highest price on launch day but sadly with the current state of the industry, they are in their worst state as well. Games eventually became better over time after patches are released but so does their price drops after the hype has calmed down. So if you really must have some specific game on its launch day, go for it but know that by doing so you are getting the worst version of the game for its higher price.

Wishlist games and wait for the sale

All services today have a wishlist, very good and money-saving tactic is to wishlist interesting titles and wait for them to be on the sale. Services will usually have the option of sending you an email once your wishlist titles are on sale so you will be notified once they do. A good tactic as well is to wait for large sales like for example summer, winter, easter sales, or many other seasonal ones.

Get free games

Some online stores are offering free games from time to time and some are always offering some titles as gifts in order to get customers to their platform. EPIC has become famous for gifting some great titles over the past years completely for free and there are a lot of free-to-play games on each platform that you can play.

Get second-hand PC

Having a new computer is great but if your budget is tight you might consider getting your PC as a second hand instead of the new one. Hardcore games will switch components more frequently than your typical users and usually the components will be sold cheaper and be more affordable.

Play games on some older devices in general

Many games today are available on many platforms not only just on your typical PC. Same titles are available on your mobile phones, tablets, and even on your Android TV. Many titles will not even require the latest technology or monster of a computer in order to run them. You can also lower game settings and play many games on lower hardware if you do not mind not having top graphics settings.

Play over the cloud streaming

If you are very tight on budget but want to enjoy new games in their full glory there is always the option to play games via a cloud streaming service, it is not exactly a mega cheap option since it has a monthly fee but it is cheaper than some high-end gaming computer. If you combine this with the game pass you can enjoy the latest games with high-quality settings and pay it on a monthly basis.

As you know, Windows 10 is equipped with a Mobile Hotspot feature that allows users to share the existing internet connections to other devices over Wi-Fi. However, one of the downsides to this feature is that it does not stay on if there are no devices connected to it for over five minutes. In other words, if there are no devices connected to the mobile hotspot for five minutes, it will turn off automatically. Thus, if you want the mobile hotspot to stay turned on, then you’ve come to the right place as this post will walk you through how to stop the Mobile Hotspot from turning off in Windows 10. There are two scenarios tackled in this post wherein the Mobile Hotspot feature turns off automatically and where the hotspot disables when there is no internet connection. To remedy these scenarios, you can try turning off the power saving feature or use a PowerShell command to change the “PeerlessTimeoutEnabled” settings or increase the Mobile Hotspot idle timeout settings. You could also increase the timeout period when a cellular connection is not available or disable the Wi-Fi and network adapter power management options. For detailed instructions, refer to each one of the given options below.

Option 1 – Try turning off the power saving feature

The first solution you can check out is to turn off the power-saving feature. To do so, follow these steps:

• Open the Settings app and go to Network & Internet and from there, click on the Mobile Hotspot option.
• Next, toggle the “Share my Internet connection with other devices” option.
• After that, toggle the “When no devices are connected, automatically turn off mobile hotspot” option.

Option 2 – Execute a command in PowerShell

The next option you can try to keep the mobile hotspot turned on is through a command in PowerShell. To get started, follow these steps:

• Tap the Win + X keys and select the “Windows PowerShell (Admin)” option.
• Next, execute the following command to make sure that the Mobile Hotspot stays on even when no devices are connected to it:

powershell -windowstyle hidden -command "Start-Process cmd -ArgumentList '/s,/c,net stop "icssvc" & REG ADD "HKLMSYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesicssvcSettings" /V PeerlessTimeoutEnabled /T REG_DWORD /D 0 /F & net start "icssvc"' -Verb runAs"

• After the command is executed, here is what the script is doing in the background:
  • It stops the Mobile Hotspot service (icssvc).
  • It navigates to this registry path (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesicssvcSettings) and creates a DWORD key named “PeerlessTimeoutEnabled” which has a value of 0.

• It then restarts the Mobile Hotspot Service (icssvc).

Option 3 – Try increasing the Mobile Hotspot idle timeout settings

Another option you can try is to increase the idle timeout settings of the mobile hotspot. In case you don’t know, the default timeout when there’s no active connection is about five minutes. So if you don’t want to keep it on always but want to keep it on longer than five minutes, then this option is for you. All you have to do is change the same key (PeerlessTimeout) as mentioned above, at a different location. In fact, you can change it to a maximum of 120 minutes. To give this a try, follow these steps:

• Tap the Win + R keys to open the Run dialog box and type “Regedit” in the field and then tap Enter to open the Registry Editor.
• Next, navigate to this registry path: HKLMSystemControlSet001ServicesICSSVCSettingsPeerlessTimeout
• From there, change its value to anywhere between 1 up to 120.
• Once done, exit the Registry Editor and restart your computer.

Option 4 – Try increasing the timeout period when a cellular connection is not available

There are many times when you want to connect devices so it becomes part of the network. And as pointed out, the Mobile Hotspot turns off automatically when there is no internet or mobile data but when you use a registry setting, you can change any value between 1 and 60 inclusive.

• Tap the Win + R keys to open the Run dialog box and type “Regedit” in the field and then tap Enter to open the Registry Editor.
• Next, navigate to this registry path: HKLMSystemControlSet001ServicesICSSVCSettingsPublicConnectionTimeout
• From there, set the value of the “Timeout” key between 1 and 60.
• After that, close the Registry Editor and restart your PC.

Option 5 – Try to disable the Wi-Fi and Network adapter in Power Management options

As you know, the Wi-Fi adapter and the network devices have properties that will turn off when on battery and when it’s not used for a long time so you can try to disable these options.

• Tap the Win + X + M keys to open the Device Manager.
• Next, expand the list of Network devices and select the Wi-Fi adapter.
• After that, go to the Power Management tab and make sure that anything related to power saving should be turned off. This will ensure that none of the network devices will turn off the Mobile Hotspot or trigger anything that will do that.

The Windows 10 operating system comes with a user-friendly interface as well as better security features compared to its previous versions. One of these new features is the “Recently Opened Files” feature which displays all the files you’ve opened recently in File Explorer. Although it might seem useful, some users see this as a privacy concern especially if there are other users that use the same computer. If you are one of these users, read on as this post will guide you on how you can disable the “Recently Opened Files” feature in Windows 10. There are three ways you can disable the “Recently Opened Files” feature. You can manually clear the recent files, or disable the feature via Control Panel. You can also do it using the Group Policy Editor.

Option 1 – Manually clear the recent files

The first thing you can do is to clear the recent files manually. Since the information about the recently opened files is stored in the form of cached data, you can locate this data and delete it manually, from time to time. To do that, follow these steps:

• Tap the Win + R keys to open the Run utility and copy this address in the field: %AppData%MicrosoftWindowsRecent
• Next, tap the Ctrl + A keys to select all the items and then tap the Shift + Delete keys simultaneously.
• After that, a prompt will appear where you have to click on Yes. This will delete all the recently opened files in the File Explorer the next time you open it.

Option 2 – Disable the feature via Control Panel

The next option you can try to disable the feature is via Control Panel. Refer to these steps to do so:

• First, click on the Start Menu button and select the Settings icon.
• After that, click on Personalization and then on Start located on the left pane.
• Next, scroll down until you see the “Show recently opened items” in Jump Lists on the Start or the Taskbar and click on it and then toggle it off.

Option 3 – Disable the feature using the Group Policy Editor

If you are using the Windows 10 Pro version, then you have access to edit the functions in the Group Policy. The Group Policy function has the option that can disable all the default services of Windows 10. Note that in this step, you will permanently disable the “Recently Opened Files” feature. So before you proceed, make sure that you really want to disable this feature permanently and not in the meantime.

• Tap the Win + R keys to open the Run dialog box and type “gpedit.msc” in the field and click OK or tap Enter to open the Group Policy Editor.
• Next, on the left side pane, click on the “User Configuration” option and then click the “Administrative Templates” option.
• After that, select the “Start Menu and Taskbar” option and select the “Don’t keep the history of recently opened documents” option in the right pane.
• Now double click on this option and check the “Enabled” option and then click on Apply and OK buttons to save the changes made.