Microsoft Asked To Compensate After Windows 10 Update Bricked PCs (www.bgr.in) 178
Microsoft has been asked to pay compensation to customers who suffered malfunctions on their PCs when upgrading to Windows 10. Several customers have complained in the past one year about issues such as their computer upgrading to Windows 10 without their consent, and high-data usage due to automatic downloads of Windows 10 installation files in the background. The consumer watchdog has told Microsoft to "honor consumers' rights" and compensate those who have faced issues because of Windows 10. From a report:"Many people are having issues with Windows 10 and we believe Microsoft should be doing more to fix the problem," said Alex Neill, director of policy at Which? Of 2,500 people surveyed, who had upgraded to Windows 10, more than 12 percent said they ended up rolling back to their previous version of the operating system. More than half stated that this was because the upgrade had adversely affected their PC. "We rely heavily on our computers to carry out daily activities so, when they stop working, it is frustrating and stressful," Alex Neill, Director of Campaigns and Policy, was quoted as saying.
Microsoft Spokesman here... (Score:2, Funny)
On behalf of Microsoft, I sincerely apologize for your inconveniences and troubles. In return, please accept a free upgrade to Windows 10.
Re:Microsoft Spokesman here... (Score:5, Funny)
On behalf of Microsoft, I sincerely apologize for your inconveniences and troubles.
In return, please accept a free upgrade to Windows 10, and a free Wells Fargo banking card.
(FTFY)
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On behalf of Microsoft, I sincerely apologize for your inconveniences and troubles.
In return, please accept a free upgrade to Windows 10, and a free Wells Fargo banking card.
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And a free Yahoo! account [slashdot.org].
Bricked? (Score:3)
I haven't heard of Win10 bricking any computer. If it can be restored from a backup, it's not bricked. If you can only use it as a door stop, then it's bricked. If you don't have a backup to restore from, you just might be a brick.
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The misuse of the term 'bricked' is annoying. But the trend of misusing it in Slashdot headlines is downright frustrating.
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For the average user, if it doesn't boot after the upgrade it's bricked. They don't have install media for their original OS, or a full backup.
Sure, it can be recovered if they pay someone, but that's almost always the case unless the device melted into slag or something.
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BRICKED == fucked
can be fixed != BRICKED
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What does qualify as bricking in your case? Blowing the mobo apparently doesn't, since you can order another and install it.
numbers game (Score:2)
so microsoft's "installed" numbers should atleast be reduced by 12%?
Bricked (Score:2)
I don't think you know what the term "bricked" means. If these computers were truly bricked then Microsoft would be buying everyone new UEFI BIOS chips.
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You know, words and expressions can have more than one set definition.
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I am more interested (Score:2)
in how much they're going to compensate businesses that go offline every time there's a major update. Older versions of Windows Updates used BITS, which was, by default, limited to four concurrent connections. Win 10 uses some bastardized "embrace and extend" crap that opens, literally - I have counted - four hundred or more concurrent connections, eating up 100% of all available bandwidth, and knocking everything else on your network offline. And since this has been going on for months, with people complai
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You're one of the Microsoft lawyers, aren't you?
Re:Already compensated (Score:5, Insightful)
The consumers were already compensated. They received a FREE upgrade to Windows 10
Yeah but many (most?) users didn't want this upgrade, even for free.
Re:Already compensated (Score:4, Funny)
Okay, I'm fine with giving people kiddie porn, atomic waste, and poisoned water, but giving people Windows phones? Doesn't that fall under the "cruel and unusual" clause or something??
Re:Already compensated (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm hinting sarcasm, but sometimes it's hard to tell on the interwebs, so just in case you're serious...
The consumers were already compensated. They received a FREE upgrade to Windows 10, the most powerful and secure windows Ever, a 119.99 value!
Businesses that lost revenue due to shady Windows 10 upgrade practices should most definitely be compensated for said lost revenue.
Consumers could decline the upgrade, or if already upgraded, pay for a new copy of Windows 7 with selective downgrade rights.
Or ya know.. Microsoft could just stop aggressive malware tactics that forced Windows 10 onto their customers. You have to be out of your mind if you think it's fair to make a consumer pay for a windows 7 license that THEY ALREADY HAD in order to use it again.
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Businesses that lost revenue due to shady Windows 10 upgrade practices should most definitely be compensated for said lost revenue.
I think not. They should be given the finger and a lecture about control and reliance on a critical piece of infrastructure for their office.
No seriously if your computer caused you lost production and you didn't have the facility to quickly and easily get production up without some major rigmarole then you should have learn't your lesson and not be compensated for stupidity.
I wasn't worried about the Windows 10 upgrade on any of my machines. Why? Because I could right now put a bullet through their HDDs an
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but I'm talking about businesses like mom n pop business shops e.g. small medical practices.
So? You're saying mom n pop stores should put the weight of their entire family fortune on a PC? Even they should learn some basic risk.
As for dedicated IT reps, what the heck are you talking about. You don't need a team of IT critical person to help you keep your mom n pop store running. You also don't need a team of dedicated IT gurus to get people to not put critical machinery on the internet. You don't need a team of IT people to ensure that you have a backup working machine offline. You practically don
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Ever actually dealt with a business?
There's lots of things that go wrong in a store. A mom&pop grocery store could be in real trouble if the refrigeration fails, for example. This doesn't mean they need to have an expert on that on payroll. Perhaps they have the system inspected annually, and know who they can call for repairs. What they don't expect is someone sneaking in to vandalize the equipment, particularly the guy who is supposed to be inspecting it.
You're talking about malware that runs
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Ever actually dealt with a business?
Yes I provided IT support to several. All of them were setup with redundancy and backups that mitigated the kinds of disasters we're talking about, and they were paying me school student side job rates for it.
There's lots of things that go wrong in a store.
A refrigeration system doesn't shutdown an entire store, but only spoils a few select products. If you're business depends entirely on refrigeration you'd be putting a bit of effort into that too.
I didn't say Windows 10 isn't malware. I just said companies don't deserve compensation for not having a cr
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What I'm saying is that they don't have daily in-house IT support
If you need daily in house support then you're doing it wrong.
And I'm pretty damn sure "many 15 year olds" are NOT perfectly capable of setting up a small business.
You don't sound old enough to be repeating the comments of our fathers. Though the iPhone generation may actually be the first to be less technically minded than their parents. I know a lot of people who had A+ / MCSE and one even with some Cisco certification before they left highschool. One guy didn't even leave highschool, he just walked off the graduation podium and into the system admin chair. Don't assume that technically minded nerds aren'
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If they don't like Microsoft's business practices, then they should stop using Microsoft products. Otherwise, they should shut up and stop complaining.
That seems a weak argument when we're talking about people who did try to decline the update to Windows 10 but wound up getting it anyway.
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They didn't decline to use Windows in the first place. Windows Update is an integral part of the OS, and the only way to get security updates, so of course they can also use it to sneak in stuff you don't want. MS never made any promises not to do so, or to give you the freedom to pick and choose what you want; it's possible to selectively apply updates if you go to a lot of extra trouble (though now they're bundling them to make this harder), but that's not the default option. Again, if you don't like t
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They didn't decline to use Windows in the first place.
What does that have to do with the price of fish? Obviously no-one purchasing Windows 7 back in 2010 knew what the situation would be today, nor did they necessarily give any consent to anything Microsoft today might do unless it was clearly part of their contract of sale. For that matter, someone who purchased a new PC with Windows 7 installed last week presumably wasn't expecting or asking for that PC to be "upgraded" immediately to Windows 10 instead. (You did realise that Windows 7 PCs are just about st
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Windows 7 came out long after their anti-trust trial where their abusive business practices were brought to light. They've been behaving badly for decades. Everyone has had more than enough time to figure this out and stop doing business with them.
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Where in the anti-trust trial was the part about deceiving users into installing a completely different operating system from the one they thought they were getting, even if they actively didn't want it? Either I missed that minor detail, or you're just making stuff up to support a poor attempt at trolling.
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I'm not making anything up. No, the anti-trust trial wasn't about that specific issue at all, but it's irrelevant. The anti-trust trial proved that the government is completely unwilling to rein in Microsoft's behavior, which they have a 30+ year history of (remember "DOS isn't done 'til Lotus won't run"?). So if you want to sit around and whine about how bad MS is, go ahead, but it isn't productive and it's annoying. The only rational solution, if you don't like the way they're treating you, is to vote
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So if you want to sit around and whine about how bad MS is, go ahead, but it isn't productive and it's annoying.
Strange that you're still posting in this discussion if you find it so annoying. Also strange that you seem to equate everyone's comments here with mere whining, when at least the people I've been reading and debating with seem to be more interested in talking about actions that might usefully be taken in the real world.
The only rational solution, if you don't like the way they're treating you, is to vote with your feet.
Well, no, we could also raise awareness of the issues to put pressure on them to change their behaviour, and if that doesn't work, we could take legal action on various grounds, which is cus
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You're not going to get that competition you talk about by threatening to sue a monopolist and simultaneously refusing to actually try out any other vendors. You can't force a company to meet your standards unless you can get a court verdict against them, and that's already been tried with Microsoft and it failed.
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You can't force a company to meet your standards unless you can get a court verdict against them, and that's already been tried with Microsoft and it failed.
Erm... Say what? For one thing, Microsoft has lost some of the biggest lawsuits and been subject to some of the most severe penalties in the modern corporate tech sector. For another thing, the issues around their direction with Windows 10 haven't been litigated yet, and the kind of consumer advocacy we're discussing in this very thread is often how that process starts.
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Say what? For one thing, Microsoft has lost some of the biggest lawsuits and been subject to some of the most severe penalties in the modern corporate tech sector.
Citation needed. This sounds like something out of an alternative universe.
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Microsoft have been fined roughly $2B in Europe for various antitrust-related violations, as well as ultimately being forced to change their software. As far as I'm aware, they are still the recipient of the largest fine of that nature in history.
In the US, at one stage a court even ruled that Microsoft should be broken up because of the nature of their software bundling arrangements, though that was subsequently overturned on appeal.
Numerous sources can be yours for the price of entering "Microsoft antitru
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I remember the antitrust trial of the 90s well. Yes, the judge said they should be broken up. The Bush took office and the whole matter was dropped. Nothing happened to them. Nothing's ever happened to them in the US.
The only place they've had any trouble is over in Europe. That means they can do whatever they want to American customers, they just have to watch themselves in the EU market. It's not at all unusual for companies to have different products for different markets and treat customers in dif
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Well, since this entire discussion is about advocacy by a European consumer rights group, Microsoft having previous trouble to the tune of billions of dollars in fines in Europe is relevant, no?
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They've, indeed, "already experienced anti-trust lawsuits". That let them know how serious the penalties were likely to be (i.e., you need to start bribing government officials...of course that's not officially called bribing, it's called making campaign contributions, lobbying, etc., but bribery is what it is by any usage except the strongly "gammed" legal definitions).
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Why isn't it appropriate? What are you or anyone else going to do about it? Maybe take them to court, and they'll get a tiny slap on the wrist like what happened with their infamous anti-trust case. Did you completely forget about that? As soon as Bush took office, the government just dropped it and there was no actual punishment.
If you're dumb enough to keep doing business with a company that behaves this way, that has behaved this way for decades (that case was back in 1999!), and apparently even the
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My lack of empathy comes from the fact that Microsoft has a history spanning 3-4 decades of being a predatory monopolist, so anyone doing business with them has had more than enough warning. No, they can't "just simply port to Linux or Mac" in a short time, but they should have made the correct decision before, which was to avoid using Windows if at all possible. Now they're stuck and they're sufferent the consequences for it, and I'm glad.
They didn't purchase licenses for Windows 10, they purchased licen
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Many businesses rely on software that runs on Windows and nowhere else. Many have communication needs that basically require Microsoft Office. Moving away from MS is not necessarily something a business can do and survive. A business has to make decisions that work for them.
The upgrade may not have been technically forced, but it wasn't necessarily consensual. MS used trickery and misdirection to downgrade people from 7 and 8.1 to 10. If Microsoft was directed by a court to show actual consent for m
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but not everyone is as knowledgeable as you are about their history.
Anyone who works in IT should be roughly as knowledgeable.
it would be refreshing to see more businesses see MS for what they are and do their damnedest to get away from them, but a majority of small businesses either don't care enough, or don't have the resources to make that decision.
But it's not just resource-strapped small businesses, it's medium-size and big businesses too, and governments of all sizes as well. They're all on the MS ba
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It's satire.
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AIDS and other STD's are free too -- doesn't mean I want them.
> Consumers could decline the upgrade,
Except _they_ couldn't if they had Automatic Updates turned on. It became a mandatory upgrade [google.com]
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hehe Windows 10 *is* a computer version of an STD, as in a CTD (Computer Transmitted Disease).. Soooooo flippin' glad I've been MS-free since 2010, even though before that, I used/supported that crap for close to 20 years.. (shudders)
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Come over here and you'll get a FREE kick to your gonads. Hell, make it two, I'm in a generous mood.
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Brilliant trolling, you have loads of people frothing at the mouth right now, lol.
Re:Who's Which? (Score:4, Informative)
Which? is a well known (in the UK) consumer advocacy magazine that does product comparisons. It's better for "vendor X sucks for warranty repair on their washing machine".
It's newsworthy in the sense that the BBC has a technology site and they have to put some stuff there. /. is a different issue.
Why one would take a report from an Indian site and run it on
Re:Who's Which? (Score:5, Interesting)
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I fail to see the problem. Your business got extra work and revenue thanks to the idiot treasurer selecting this vendor that has a long track record of shoddy products and poor customer service.
And yet somehow Microsoft did not get the message, or simply didn't care to check with all OEM databases for compatibility.
Why should they bother? If someone gets burned by their shoddy work, like your treasurer, what are they going to do about it? Are they going to switch to another vendor? Didn't think so. Mic
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Based on my experience, it seems the Win10 readiness tool only checks for CPU speed, memory, and free storage space. Every machine on which I ran the analyzer has told me it's compatible with Windows10, only to find out after the update, half the hardware on the machine doesn't work.
Oh, and the tool never tells you when programs are incompatible with Win10. I had a system where 11 applications were automatically uninstalled from the machine, with no prior warning, and I was informed that they were removed
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"so the fresh installation comes with none of the bloatware"
Let me fix that for you:
"so the fresh installation comes with none of the spyware"
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It's a British organization, they are polite. They "ask" you "politely" to appear in court, which is not much different from your ass being hauled to the bench in the US, but it has a nicer ring to it.
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True, but don't underestimate the power of Which?. They have a high profile, and when these guys speak, the media pays attention. This could bring an ugly issue for Microsoft to much wider public and therefore political awareness than any number of geeks calling Microsoft out for it in their geeky online forums.
Also, it's not token compensation Microsoft has to worry about in this situation, even though such compensation might wind up outweighing any near-future benefits from the big GWX campaign financiall
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Let's play devil's advocate.
The unauthorized access was easy to avoid - turn off updates. Microsoft will argue that all those popups informed users that Windows 10 was an update, and like any other update, if you didn't turn updates off, that's your problem.If the repeated prompts were that much of a pain, a quick search shows what to do.
They will also argue that the maximum liability is set at $5 for the original OS, and Windows 10 is just an OS update, so the liability terms haven't changed.
Which?, or
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Given the number of documented malware-like tricks (deceptive buttons, hidden options, X that means "accept", disguised and misrepresented patches, unable to disable without additional software etc.) The should have jst turned updates off argument won't stick.
As for the eula $5 limit... doesn't wash and isn't legal in a good chunk of the world as it can't trump the consumer rights laws especially when the product is actually retail priced around 25x that value.
Finally while people say "Which? is just a cons
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The people in charge don't care. If their own computer craps out, they are so used to this being normal behaviour, same as everyone else. Malware, surfing porn, whatever, they just figure it's normal and get someone to fix it, or they buy another one. If the peons have anything at all potentially embarrassing on their computer and are using Windows 10, just the rumours of what the telemetry reports back to the mother ship will make them keep their mouths shut and just re-install rather than risk their compu
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The unauthorized access was easy to avoid - turn off updates.
If the user didn't intend to authorise it, there's a strong argument that is was unauthorised. If the user actively attempted to avoid it, for example by cancelling out of dialogs in a way that would normally cause no further action to be taken, that's a very strong argument that it was unauthorised.
The burden of proof would fall on Microsoft to show that it was authorised, but a lot of the arguments they might try to make would be easily undermined at this point by direct and obvious comparisons with techn
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Re:Where do I line up? (Score:5, Interesting)
Worst of all, that still didn't stop some PC's finding a way around it. The whole Windows 10 upgrade was like a virus trying to find a way to download itself. Unfortunately I can't move him to Linux like I did my facility since he would need a competent IT guy there (Even though half his work is done through a putty console, yeah) and the current IT guy there is barely competent in anything Windows.
That wasn't the only woes I've seen. I've seen a multi-million dollar bottling machine grind to a halt because of the Windows 10 upgrade (To my amusement in front of me) and I've seen a CNC machine just stop working requiring a complete software overhaul because of the Windows 10 upgrade (Which wasn't so amusing because I needed the parts). Perhaps it's the manufacturers and the owners fault for using/requesting Windows in the first place (I've made my agreements force manufacturers to use Linux, or no deal, I don't know why people are afraid of doing this), but Microsoft should definitely be liable for this.
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Perhaps it's the manufacturers and the owners fault for using/requesting Windows in the first place
Exactly.
but Microsoft should definitely be liable for this.
No, it shouldn't. If you're dumb enough to design an obviously-defective software product into your mega-$$$ industrial machine, then *you* should be liable. The makers of these machines should be liable for this, not MS. They've been building windows into these machines for a couple decades now, stupidly, and they need to suffer the consequences.
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would you blame MS or the avionics company?
I would blame myself and hope that I would get fired for giving a critical system uncontrolled access to the internet. Windows is an OS. It runs everything from critical equipment to toys. Linux likewise. Both of them show similar failure modes here. Windows is used in tens of thousands of production facilities in the world, if not more and the vast majority hum along quite nicely without someone doing something as stupid as giving the computer access to the internet.
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Actually I have been and I do digital security for many. Interestingly Siemens does most definitely NOT market PLCs connected directly to the internet. That requires ignoring their installation guidelines which clearly require their approved firewalls and machine to receive one way traffic on the far end of it. Similarly most vendors follow a multi-tiered network architecture which most definitely does not include any direct connection to the internet. And remember just because you see a modem doesn't mean
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Doesn't stop these companies from using it. Beckhoff PLC's are all Windows mini PC's. There's quite a bit of Windows based equipment being sold into mission critical applications, you'd be quite surprised.
My home-built CNC machine doesn't have this problem; it runs on Debian.
That's great, fun for the garage or little hobbies. But major CNC manufacturers all mostly
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I'd like to see these companies get sued by their customers for making unreliable machines; using Windows was their own choice, and should fall on them.
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So what you're saying is that the companies being victimized should have kept their knees together?
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Well if Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy asks you out on a date, do you accept?
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No, you are completely wrong here.
First off, Windows is marketed as a business tool, and MS has spent millions in advertising to convince the business world that Windows is reliable and well supported.
Yes, and they lied. GM and Chrysler have been trying to tell me their cars are reliable for decades, and they lied too. Caveat emptor.
Mission critical safety applications, where there is risk of great bodily harm or death
You've never heard of factory machines killing people or hacking their limbs off? It's
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Production critical equipment has unfettered internet access and this causes problems? Colour me surprised.
In the mean time we have 10s of thousands of Windows 7 PCs from office workers to factory controlling, SCADA, and any number of other services including one that plays internet radio in the office gym. Non of them attempted to install anything because our IT administrators have a clue.
Maybe Windows 10 was a good thing, as it finally brought to attention the frailty of a company's dependence on a comput
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Unless when his video card CATOD it weakened the power supply (overheated the voltage regulators, pulled excessive current, etc.) and it was just dying a slow death after that.
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The PSU is very well-isolated. Even the crappy P4 PSUs that came stock with many systems and only had one 6-pin PCI-E power plug for the GPUs of then (7000+ series nVidia) had diodes and capacitor decoupling in the PSU. No, the PSU was very unlikely to have been killed by the GPU.
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You do know what a diode is, right? You do know those are on every rail of even the utterly crappiest of PSUs, right? You do know that since pretty much the 80s the PSU is rather well-isolated from the rest of the system as far as electrical feedback and reverse voltage goes, right?
Do you even have any electrical experience? I've got a bare PSU mounted to a board right now powering a motherboard, again mounted bare to the same plank. De-shrouded GPU, etc. I bet you're the kind of person that hasn't ever tur
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i am just looking for 3.50
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God Damn Loch Ness Monsta! I Ain't givin' you no Tree Fidy!
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I want my $2!
Signed, an earlier reference from an even better era of entertainment.
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mmmm 67 camaro
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Many would say "Windows 10 bricked this or that" when in reality it did no such thing and they are just cavemen who dislike change.
No, I can say it actually did brick the inlaw's machine.... Of course it was an old pile of garbage that was on it's last legs, but it sure stopped working when my mother in law accidently hit that "Install Windows 10" button after I told her not to.. Don't know if the disk drive, mother board or what couldn't take the strain of an install, but the hardware was toast when I went to re-install 7.
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I think the shit-storm that is Windows 10 has done more for Linux than any other thing... I used/supported MS products for close to 20 years in my working career but when I retired in 2010, I decided I was done with MS, and since I am retired, I have become the defacto "tech support" for my church and neighbor, and if I had the business acumen to start a business, I believe I could make a profitable go of moving disgruntled Windows users over to Linux. Since Windows started shipping, I've done over 20 frien
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You are right. A bricked device is unrecoverable and no longer works.
However, I see many use the term in a lighter sense, when they mean that the device was functioning but after action XXX it no longer works. Thus, to them, the device is now "bricked". Of course in most cases it is then possible to reinstall the OS, or restore from a backup, or rollback the upgrade.
One can truly "brick" devices via a failed firmware upgrade or bios update, rendering the motherboard useless. Another problem I read about r
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By that definition, no computer is ever bricked. You can always get one back to working by replacing components as necessary, possibly including the motherboard, and making a fresh OS install. I'd happily use "bricked" to describe one that was completely useless and required component-level replacement or wiping the disk.
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I agree with you, that's exactly what "bricked" should mean. And with regards to a PC, and assuming no component failure, pretty much means a corrupted BIOS.
I was only hi-lighting the more common usage that I'm seeing online: not endorsing it.
Unfortunately language is rather fluid, so no matter what you think a word/term means, the wider society ultimately gets to decide.
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Wipe the main drive after backing up, put a bootable Windows installer onto a SATA drive and boot off off that. No BIOS settings changes needed.
Did you even try to boot it without a main drive?
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Only if you didn't recommend that they have someone local do manual recovery of the files. Telling people to wipe their own drives is unconscionable if you don't make them aware of the alternatives.
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Did you at least ask if they had their recovery key? That would make it possible.
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It can't boot from USB for cloning?
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You don't have to unlock the drive before cloning it. You can unlock it later - or from another PC. The important thing is that there is an opportunity to make a backup.
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No, that's specifically what the recovery key is for. Your password won't work on another computer, because of TPM - but the recovery key is intended for situations like this.
See: System Recovery [microsoft.com] details here.
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It's been going downhill since 2k. Win2k was maybe the best Windows OS ever. XP already had a few unsightly tidbits that I couldn't really warm up to, and ever since it's been one reduction of usability after another, culminating in the clusterfuck Win10 is.
Just today I had another "big" update that not only turned a few things back on, but reinstalled some of the things I got rid of after a lengthy struggle (and of course tacked them to my quicklaunch and shortcut bar, since I SURELY cannot live without th
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hehe I can hear it now... "My computer was RAPED by Microsoft...."....
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hehe I can hear it now... "My computer was RAPED by Microsoft...."....
Hey, if virus is now a valid term when talking about computers, computer rape could easily catch on and enter the geekly vocabulary (if you can manage to fight off the Butthurt Brigade who would instantly pitch a primadona bitch fit.)
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The lingo already has adopted a lot of violent terms. Computers can crash or bomb, while remaining physically intact. They can perform illegal operations that aren't against Federal or state law. You kill processes, which aren't actually living things. "Rape" would fit in..
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Check your BIOS settings for "Fast Boot" and turn it off.
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Did the other person really agree to the contract, or were they tricked into doing something that implies assent?