A thread for boring computer questions.

you can still get security updates

I'm in more or less the same situation, but not done a win10 install yet. Read that it's still possible to update 7 -> 10, but unsure how legit this claim is - could be that I'm left with unregistered as well.
If I try tonight and all goes wrong it will be full linux build time. It's my secondary pc so not that bothered, as long as i can run java minecraft on it and some rudimentary paint packages meh.

question from someone very ignorant and dumb about IT/network stuff in general:

when i'm at home on my personal laptop i can log into my work email via outlook.office.com, which requires duo verification. not installing anything, just using the website. what kind of access is this giving my employer if any? are they able to see traffic/data usage or any sort of activity while i'm logged in?

i wasn't spooked by this until i realized i can open and edit docs (in chrome) that are hosted on the work network, which hasn't come up until recently (for obvious reasons)

no local access if that is all you’re doing. there’s no web browser permission to allow traffic spying without permission, file access is sandboxed

unless they have other shit or a truly heinous browser extension installed, which outlook doesn’t do, they have your actions in email and other office bits

that is to say, they have as much access as ilxor

nice, ty!

I've got a UTF-8 text file with smart quotes and such created on MacOS. cat and vim see it fine. I sftp it over to a FreeBSD machine. "file" reports it as UTF-8, but cat shows all the extended characters like so: <80><90><70>. And vim thinks it's latin1, shows extended characters as gibberish, and throws up when I try to force utf-8.

hexdump gives the same bytes for the file on both systems. If I sftp it back to MacOS, it displays fine.

I just ...

Is your locale set to UTF8 on the FreeBSD machine?

That is, if your LC_CTYPE environment variable is not set to a locale with UTF-8 in it, none of those behaviors would entirely surprise me.

oohhhhhhh

that worked, thank you

yw!

lol character encoding

have just bought a new laptop after my 10yr old one basically became unusable and since it is brand new i feel i should adopt good practices from the get-go. i am however mostly clueless, beyond extensions on firefox: what are the things i really need to do? anyone have recommendations or a good website listing essentials?

i recently bought a brand new Dell to replace my old 2012 Windows 7 Asus. It's proved nothing but useless since I got it out the box. I get intermittent lagging/freezing whihc happens every few minutes. File Explorer menus often take several seconds to load up when being accessed from my external HD, even if there are only a few files in the folder. When I'm using Serato, the wave animations are juddery and hard to look at. Never had anything like this with my old laptop which is significantly lower spec.

I've tried to get Dell to help me but all they've done is run a few stress tests and asked me to try it on Safe Mode for a day (as if I've got loads of time on my hands to do this).

It's been a few weeks and I've spent most of my free time trying to diagnose issues and work out whether the problem is to do with the computer, whether it's down to external devices, following online optimisation guides (a lot of the settings and options in these guides appear to have been hidden by Dell in my version of Windows), and now I'm at the end of my tether.

I've asked Dell if they would be able to refund me, and they've said I'm past my cooling period. I'm sure I can argue that much of the cooling period has involved me trying to fix the problems inherent since unboxing the machine, but I would really rather just get to the root of the issue.

Anyone else experienced this kind of thing before I start kicking off properly at them?

Sounds like some rogue process running in the background , have you checked task manager ?

What model/specs? And have you had any success updating drivers w Dell Update?

dear lord, I've been trying to pair two brand spanking new Lenovo tablets via bluetooth (for work reasons) and I'm losing my mind

With bluetooth enabled on both devices, I can see them show up on each others' devices list. I can select the device, see a pairing prompt, and "pair" them. The device is then listed as currently paired. but then, if I browse away from that screen for any reason, the device is no longer listed. I can find the device on the "previously paired" list, but the Connect button does nothing. My only option is to "forget" the device and try again. No dice, every time, after many resets of both devices

The behavior is exactly the same on both tablets. When I pair my Android phone to either of the tablets, the device stays in the phone's "currently paired" list, but they're...clearly not paired. so it's an issue on the tablet end for sure.

attempted a factory reset on one of the tablets to see if it changed its behavior. It did not.

anyone seen this sort of behavior before?

What are you pairing them for? File transfers or something?

I have to test / collect screenshots for an app for work that has some features you can only use with paired devices.

Maybe update the Bluetooth drivers

Bloody ell.

This isn't a question as such, but maybe there's something someone could suggest.

The inadequately refurbed laptop I got a few years ago has been pretty good. However the BIOS has password set and I don't know it. Today I wanted to change some settings so in order to wipe the CMOS memory and clear the password I tried disconnecting the coin cell battery.

Left the battery disconnected for a while, screwed it back together and... Windows now won't boot. It gets a short way, brief blue screen with some error I can't read and then back to the boot menu. And the password is still there.

I was able to run the diagnostics and the hardware mostly seems OK although it did complain about the LCD cable. The display works as well as it ever did. It's a Dell Latitude E5420 running Win 7 Pro.

Need to get hold of a Windows boot disk maybe. Not good timing and I really didn't fancy having to buy another computer right now.

Snap a picture of the blue screen and post it, these days I basically troubleshoot Windows BSoD’a for a living

Thanks, Stevie.

That was another fun challenge - I had to film it to catch the single frame as it flashes up. Guess I'll have a look at the HD connections next.

https://imgur.com/a/CSwUrUe

I would say maybe

1) try unseating and reseating the CMOS battery again after like 10 min

2) update BIOS, I think a lot of times you can get a BIOS updater that can be run on like a bootable USB stick? But you’d need a separate computer to do this

I'll try those things.

Booting from USB will depend on the boot mode which obviously I can't change. Actually j can't get back into the BIOS setup at the moment for some reason.

I've a suspicion that the BIOS did lose settings including those pertaining to the HD mode (hence the error) but not the password which seems to be more persistent. Which could mean this machine is a write-off as it's unlikely I'll be able get any help from Dell and it doesn't seem worth delving into the shady world of backstreet BIOS password pedlers.

1234
Welcome
Password
trustno1

in all seriousness, have you tried "Dell"?

When you press "unlock" on the BIOS does it show you a system number?

If you try typing it in here, it may be able to generate your default/master BIOS password for you:
https://bios-pw.org/

(I recall doing this for a work Dell laptop at one point, though am not 100% sure it's the same website, but a few other sites seem to vouch for it. Good luck!)

By "does it show you a system number" I mean that the blurb in the password entry box may list a "system number" in approximately the same format as the Dell examples on that page.

(Seems to be the serial number which may be on a sticker on the underside of the laptop plus 4 extra hex digits, not sure where they come from.)

Woohoo!

That site delivered. Thanks so much. I did a little dance.

Changed the SATA mode and the BSOD went away.

Glad you got in and even more glad the BSOD went away!

(Be careful because Win7 is end of life and won't be getting many security updates - but you probably already knew that..)

Yes.

That machine has actually never been online or connected to a network since I got it.

I started looking at the local free ads and see I can get plentiful desktop units that would be a step up in terms of CPU with Windows 10 installed for about £60-£100 so that's exciting.