I had dial-up through my Mom’s work’s VPN at the time and couldn’t even sign in to Steam with it, so I had to use an AOL 30-day trial just to be able to play the game.
When both the trial and Steam’s Offline mode timing ran out, I had sufficient motivation to learn how to crack WEP so I could borrow the neighbor’s WiFi
Steam
Windows Centric
You do realize what platform/company we’re talking about, right?
Tons of great suggestions already shared, but I’d like to add one I haven’t seen yet.
Wilderness Survival / Bushcraft School
They exist in nearly every corner of the world. There will be tons to learn from instructors and other students alike, since that sort of program tends to attract other outdoor enthusiasts who may already have experience with basic camping and backpacking.
Many will offer overnight programs where you camp out in a safe environment while practicing skills that can save your life if things go really wrong, not to mention that they’re fundamentally rewarding.
The new version of this is coming across a reddit post where it seems like OP replies “Thanks, that worked!” to “In protest of Reddit’s API changes, I have removed my comment history. Fuck u/Spez”
You should, it’s quite powerful and can work in tandem with both DMDE and UFS Explorer!
Power cycling the drive reboots and reinitializes it. I’ve mostly seen it with SSDs - you get a few dozen MB worth of reads before it drops out, unplugging and reconnecting a SATA power connector that many times would be real tedious so you automate it with a relay.
I own a repair shop and use USB to SATA adapters all the time. Sector scans, imaging/cloning, and booting live environments.
It has less to do with the medium and more to do with the quality of your chosen adapter.
I have one of the adapter you pictured, ordered it to test it out because it was comparatively low cost. Did not order more.
I have about a dozen of the Sabrent adapters and they see daily use.
USB can actually be ideal in some data recovery scenarios. HDDSuperClone / OpenSuperClone support a relay mode that turns a disk off and back on to regain access after they drop out, and that is reliant on a USB connection.
Vibration is a pretty big one
I don’t understand why you were downvoted for asking this question. I’ve literally watched techs cause this damage by trying to open the lid with the back cover screws removed.
Most laptops have at least one screw on each side that goes through both the back cover and the hinge. If the hinge is normally affixed with 3 screws and you open the lid with one missing, each mount is taking on that extra stress.
Best practice is to reinstall those screws before opening the lid with the back cover removed.
Discord has evolved from more or less being a series of chatrooms (like IRC) to having “threads” that work a lot like how a forum would typically be used.
In the repair community, a lot of conversation about component level repair has moved to Discord channels. Sites like badcaps.net or the Rossmann group forums have comparatively low usage. Nested away in Discord, this information doesn’t show up in search engine results and can’t be archived by web crawlers. When a Discord server is deleted or made private, that information is forever lost.
Working in IT Support, the fact that Outlook refers to webmail and two distinct email clients makes understanding user’s problems a nightmare.
useless
pre-7th gen i5’s
I’ve got systems with second and third gen i5s that are handling Windows 10 just fine, seems like what the school really needs is some SSDs.
Linux would definitely run better, so that’s worth it too.
If this school is heavily embedded im the Google ecosystem, ChromeOS Flex is an option. FydeOS is similar but without the Google Account requirement.
Not to mention data recovery
Interesting timing, these practices are about to be super illegal under Oregon’s SB1596 right to repair bill that just passed
If you’re at that point of not trusting a company, the best practice would be to avoid using their devices or connecting them to your network.
There are plenty of other ways to track and identify users, a company could conceivably bake whatever the hell they want into the operating system and doesn’t need to rely on you creating an account with them to achieve that objective.
I used the term “unhealthy paranoia” due to the logical fallacy that is at play.
Then don’t?
If you still want to use Windows and use their encryption solution, manually enable Bitlocker and store the recovery key yourself.
There are also third party encryption options.
There are dozens of more probable scenarios that could have the same outcome. Mitigation is as simple as keeping at least one backup, a recommendation as old as home computing.
Ironically, the problem you describe most commonly applies to systems with Intel Optane storage technology, so it’s hardly even a Microsoft Issue.
Hi, repair shop owner here.
Automatic Bitlocker encryption has been a thing since TPM 2.0 devices hit the market in 2018.
If a device is UEFI, Secure Boot is enabled, TPM 2.0 is present, and the user signs in with a Microsoft Account , then the disk is encrypted and the recovery key is saved to that Microsoft Account.
If those conditions aren’t met, automatic encryption doesn’t happen.
As long as they know their Microsoft Account Identifier, users can easily get to that key through the first search engine result for “bitlocker recovery key”: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/finding-your-bitlocker-recovery-key-in-windows-6b71ad27-0b89-ea08-f143-056f5ab347d6
We don’t really have a hard time with it - if a user provides their login PIN, a short terminal command will let us grab a copy of their key before BIOS updates or battery disconnects.
I have had very few cases where folks suffered data loss because of Bitlocker. Most of them were HP Laptops that used Intel Optane accelerated SSDs - encrypting what is effectively a software RAID0 is a recipe for disaster.
The other few had an unhealthy paranoia where they were reluctant to share anything about themselves with Microsoft, yet still decided to use a Microsoft operating system. While setting up the computer, they created a new Outlook.com email (instead of using their primary email), made up a random birthday, and did not fill in any recovery options like a phone number or secondary email. With the password (and sometimes even email) forgotten, they created a situation where they could not prove the online account was theirs and therefore could not get to the recovery key that had been backed up.
I do think that Microsoft should have this as an opt-in feature during the out of box experience, which is how Apple has it set up for Filevault and how most Linux distributions are set up. Ultimately, most users will still mash “next’ through the process and later blame the computer.
I have had quite a few clients have their laptops stolen after car breakins. Their biggest stressor was the possibility of thieves having access to the data on those machines, and the fact that we knew their systems were encrypted with Bitlocker brought them a lot of relief.
The automatic encryption and subsequent backup both took place because you were using a Microsoft Account
At least the mod didn’t break as a result, had me worried for a second there.