Hi all,

I am having trouble with my Asus ROG Flow gaming laptop. (Windows 11)

A few weeks ago I had an issue with the srtTrail.txt and tried resolving it through sfc scans and repairs, etc etc. eventually I couldn’t get it out of safe mode without restoring it to factory.

Recently I have noticed issues where all of my shortcuts to screenshots, games etc on my desktop will not open. I can’t even open the file explorer. The screen goes black for a second, and the desktop refreshes and just goes back to normal.

I’m not super tech savvy, so any insight on this issue would help a lot. I’ve looked online and tried all the tips to no avail.

Thank you

Sounds like your os is corrupted and or your hard drive that has your os is corrupted.

Would downloading windows again from the cloud resolve a corrupted OS?

I’m leaning toward bad hard drive because I’ve tried resetting today multiple times and even clearing all personal files etc and it keep saying undoing changes and it failed.

First thing I would do is make sure your hard drive is fully installled correctly if you can access it. Then yeah try reinstalling windows… perhaps reformatting the hard drive as well… lol.

Be sure to create back ups of any important files first as reformatting a hard drive will delete everything on it.

This post was edited by UsEr_SeLeCtEd on Nov 15 2025 04:47pm

I ended up uninstalling the last windows update I had and it seemed to fix it. This was also after about an hour on chatgpt doing powershell cmds without knowing what the hell they were.

SFC don't really work, to know why see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAmzGPrz-T0&t=292s

It is well known that Windows 11 other than 23H2, 24H2 25H2 don't do well with games (Too many videos on YouTube).

I have a ROG PC. It had corruption issues, replaced the M.2 Drives and it stopped.