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It never seems to be the people who have actually used the mouse complaining about the port location.

A brief 1-2 minute charge nets you hours of use, it’s really not a big deal.

Can’t actually buy MacOS, you have to buy their hardware. For the time being connecting with an Apple Account is still fully optional.

I’m pretty sure those ads also have to meet certain criteria though.

Using ABP, I’ve never had a popup ad, full page ad, auto-playing video, or other intrusive form of advertisement. The “acceptable ads” have been quiet and out of the way in what would otherwise be empty space.

With the understanding that some websites and content creators are entirely reliant on ad revenue, I prefer to have those filtered down to those that don’t provide a burdensome experience.

I will say that having a new tab open with a solicitation for a donation / “premium” every single update (so almost daily) is irritating and they better knock that shit off if they don’t want to alienate users.

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.

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.

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

Pretty clear you either haven’t read the bill or grossly misunderstood it. What you describe is not proposed legislation - it’s the current reality that individuals and independent repair shops already live with.

The 2024 variant of the bill isn’t actually publicly available online, but here’s last year’s WIP text:

https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2023R1/Downloads/MeasureDocument/SB542

You wrote:

manufacturers have to share repair manuals, tools, and parts ONLY with ASPs under “fair and reasonable terms”.

Line 23 of the bill says:

(2)(a) An original equipment manufacturer shall make available to an owner or an independent repair provider on fair and reasonable terms any documentation, tool, part or other device or implement that the original equipment manufacturer makes available to an authorized service provider for the purpose of diagnosing, maintaining, repairing or updating consumer electronic equipment that the original equipment manufacturer makes or sells and that is sold or used in this state.

[…] “journalist” that hasn’t read the bill otherwise they would know that it’s NOT right to repair […]

Have you read the bill?

Awesome breakdown and troubleshooting so far!

I wonder if the previous owner removed the battery because of this issue in the first place.

The fact that the flickering is full-width bands that don’t appear in screenshots indicates to me that this is a signal issue to or through the display.

An important variable to pay attention to and experiment with is the display’s refresh rate. It’s possible that is what is changing with and without the battery, though you most likely would have noticed if that were the case.

Since the problem varies based on battery presence, it would be appropriate to source a replacement battery - especially if you purchased a cheap aftermarket battery. The real deal for your system is available for $80USD from Parts People compared to $20-$40USD for low quality Amazon junk.

After the battery, my main suspicion is a fault on the mainboard leaking voltage from the battery circuit and affecting the display signals. Even without the infrequency of the problem that would be tricky to isolate and remedy.

Overall, this screams hardware issue and I don’t believe you will find a software trace of it. The problem is not visible in screenshots, so the software environment does not know that it exists.

A software approach to a hardware problem is an exercise in futility.

Test your memory with Memtest86

Test your disks too. badblocks is a Linux utility. I like the Victoria and HDDScan Windows programs because they’re less pass/fail in their reporting - you can see that a disk is degraded even if all of the sectors technically respond.

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