God I hate windows.
The guy had put in AVG & CCleaner from somewhere it kept opening window after window - couldn’t do squat. So I msconfig’d to start just basic
Of course when rebooted, his PIN no longer worked and he’s what’s a MSoft account…
Reboot w a stick, won’t let me (netuser /add) as it oartially boots into his acct.
So looks like backup files and fresh install - hope he remembers his other passwords!
Grrrrr discover my big USB backup drive has left the planet entirely and the little one decided to fail so I had to reconfigure my USB-NVME one from ext4… 8:00 pm, now I csn get started…
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My daughter has a perfectly good Dell laptop with 16 GB RAM that had Windows 10 on it. When I was in PG I put Ubuntu 24.04 on it(Winders 10 expiring in October). I went into the BIOS to disable secure boot and of course Bitlocker kicks in preventing the unit to boot up. I hate Bitlocker. I enabled legacy boot and was able to get around it to install Ubuntu. I also hate Windows.
You can run Windows 11 on it no problem. Just back up any important files and wipe it from scratch. Use Rufus to create a Windows 11 USB that ignores requirements, etc.
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I’ll try that when I’m in town again in October if she wants Winders again. Thanks! 
OMG that guy’s PC reported it didn’t meet Win 11 CPU specs with a 7th gen i5…
the guy said no to Linux as he’s too old to learn a new OS. He’s gonna do some learnin’ whether he wants to or not with 11…
Yeah, those specs mean nothing. Rufus can override it.
I have Windows 11 running on stuff that’s 15 years old.
Meanwhile, this is how my morning’s going:
Just a load average of 903. No big deal.
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Alright. I did some digging and rufus seems straight forward enought.
Very cool! Is there any chance that M$ will play the a$$hole card and say: “Hey you’re not running Win 11 on approved hardware so we’re going to stop sending you updates.”
Yup. But it’s not because of the hardware. It’s because older versions of Windows 11 are just not getting updates, so you need to install a newer version when it prompts you.
There’s been 4 major versions of Windows 11 already. And the first two, 21H2 and 22H2, aren’t receiving updates. So it prompts you to install a newer version. No big deal. But if it’s older hardware, you just need to download the newer ISO and do the Rufus thing again. You can do an upgrade install.
Once it’s installed, it doesn’t care about hardware.
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Rufus pushed that nonsense out of the way. Unfortunately had to do a clean install to make it so. Got his docs. pix. etc,
Any idea how to pull the passwords/bookmarks out of appdata? I couldn’t run Win10 to export them from Edge.
Sad how no one backs things up or remembers their passwords. Two calls today driving to PG, where phone magically required passwords out of the blue.
So I tried the supposed trick of using ms-cxh: localonly on a brand new Asus all in one. As soon as I pressed enter it instantly rebooted and fired up to a Defaultuser0 login with no known password. No chance to add a user at all. Was stuck in that loop until I did a total reset.
They didn’t want me to use my Rufus stick and risk losing their valuable OEM junkware.
Didn’t know what their MS account was or what it was but they called their daughter at work and she had stored the old fool’s info on her phone.
Where’d the Mail icon go from the taskbar? Hunted it down and fired it up and yet another loop that said the account already existed but wouldn’t load his mail. Had to show him outlook.com webmail for the hotmail account he’s used since about 1999.
Doing it as a freebie for seniors. When I realized I’d been there 6 hours explaining Google was a search engine and the browsers were Edge and Firefox, as I was about to leave they insisted I take $100 for transferring all their files and web passwords, spending so much time with them, the last thing they asked was to show them again how to get to Google so they could use the Internet…
They also went Starlink and I could not believe their new machine was as slow loading as their old machine was. It speed tested 650K to 2.5 Mb… he’d just put the dish outside, no one told him you had to aim it.
Pulling my hair out, I told him there’s an iPhone app (no one told me!) and showed him it on my iPhone. I didn’t do anything other than open it to show him and when I’d loaded all the stuff off the external ba-ding, the page snapped up and speedtest was over 250 Mb
BTW the mail kept failing with a Onedrive full mssg and an endless MANAGE - BUY MORE loop. Had to use File Explorer, go to Onedrive and delete stuff one screen at a time for hours.
Of course One Drive, Copilot, Teams, Macafee are trashed now, Notifications offed and Privacy all No.
So I’m driving to PG the next day and realize I didn’t set up his printer! I spent 1/2 hour showing him how to clean the heads so he could print a medical form before I even began backing up and installing his own printer. No call, so his daughter must’ve come over and figured out that ADD PRINTER that old people can’t find.
OMG I tell you it was difficult to not to just buy that Macbook in PG and come home and Frisbee my i7 Win11 laptop.
Speaking about Starlink, I was in an online war with a local gamer kid. I was simply trying to say $150 a month was too damn much for most people to pay and that despite how he’d heard the dish was free, I dared him to go to Bestbuy or Costco and just grab one off the pile listed at $499 and walk out the door with it.
He insisted cable was shit because once it was out all day (a logging truck took out the fibre outside PG) and he “only” got 600Mb downloads on his Gig plan. 600 isn’t good enough, eh?
Now in ALL the speed tests I’ve even done on ppl’s Starlink I’ve seen about 250 kicking up to 300Mb reported. Anyone actually get better than that?
I have no regrets at all buying the 15 inch macbook air for my wife. She loves it. I’m completely done with M$. She’s using her mac and I use Linux. When one of my Linux units goes I’ll replace it with a mac.
I need to have a PC in order to fix everyone elses.
No one else is both capable and honest enough.
Just got an old Toughbook to work on today. Funny how I can go ten days with no calls, then get 3 emergencies the minute I head out for one, or three calls every other Sunday.
I remember how when I had the shop someone would come in Monday all mad as they’d been calling all long weekend and nobody answered. And one irate guy who sat parked right in front of the sign with the store hours furious because he’d been waiting there since 7 am.
I’ll look at the Toughbook tomorrow, sounds like either a stuck key or failing spinner drive.
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We need someone like you here on the North Coast.
Holy F***
Another day w 3 same old shit. Wrong passwords, MS and mail accounts and think I can fix them without leaving their chopped off finger or knowing what recovery method.
Then a sane one transfer stuff to new computer… the old one is a fairly new HP i3… slower than the 2nd coming.
The phones gone off every time I tried to pee and yet another everything’s frozen and it’s time for dinner days.
And unlike Rupert or Terrace not a damn place open at suppertime with food, not even takeout. Mr Noodles or PB&J like I was 21 back in college! (lie - there were no Mr Noodles then. It was KD on the space heater…)
Why is it all my own devices work flawlessly for decades, the only troubles are my fat fingers on different size keyboards?
I’m farting around with Void Linux again. I really like this non-systemd distro. It’s very light and fast with a built-from-scratch package manager. Here’s a nice installation guide if you ever want to spin up a VM or bare metal install. https://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/void/quickinst.htm
saw this the other day:
Set up another new PC - the start ms-cxh:localonly trick worked this time! Playing with an old Toughbook too: the damn USBs are recessed and you can’t seat a USB stick in there.Found an old USB hub with a connection that will…
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OMG I have no good 3.5" spinners left in the bin!
Really don’t want to waste an SSD this old thing is going to be a giveaway.
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Have a recovered 256 SSD, that’s only worth about $20. I’ll throw that in and use the old TB as a data drive.
One more to donate to the Men’s Shed yard sale this summer. Have some others, another refurbed desktop and a few old laptops with Linux they might get $10 each for.