Ugh so I turned on my PC laptop this morning

[Danfango]

I have a PC laptop to run some old software (SCPI/LXI test automation stuff that doesn't work on Macs). It's a fairly respectable old Thinkpad T470 which I bought new when it came out and is in good hardware condition. It's an i5 with 12Gb of RAM and 512GB SSD. I made some serious complaints about my corporate provided Dell 5550 in another thread and threatened to kill windows in another thread so here we go...

This is what I was greeted with

1. Firstly the battery was flat. It was left charged about a month ago. It fired up, enough to start loading windows which was running an update in apparently (I shut it down properly last time so no idea why that was happening).
2. So I dig in the drawer, get the charger out and plug it in.
3. Despite getting to the charger and plugging it in before it dies, after 2 minutes it shuts down.
4. So I turn it on again.
5. Wait 5 minutes for windows updates to run, which fail and it shuts itself down again.
6. So I turn it on again
7. After waiting approximately 10 minutes, it eventually gets to the login.
8. Log in.
9. Wait about a minute.
10. Greeted with a large notification banner telling me that there's a new laser printer it installed drivers for. Which I did about 6 months ago. What does it want? A reward for telling me that? A pat on the head? Hell no.
11. Closed that and was greeted with "There's a problem with your Microsoft account". Oh here we go. Dismissed that as I don't care today.
12. Then greeted with "Onedrive isn't signed in". Double here we go. My MS account is absolutely fine as I'm logged into it on another machine and haven't changed anything for months on it.
13. After getting through all that, the start menu doesn't work. Literally it's sitting there updating apps, slowly during which nothing works. The fan is on 100% and it's just sitting there doing bugger all. Excel won't even open.
14. After 10 minutes it starts responding. So I plug in my NI USB-GPIB adapter.
15. Windows does sad face blue screen
16. Reboot it. Reinstall the NI drivers.
17. Second attempt. Ah it works now.

So to run a single SCPI command via a USB GPIB adapter to a bit of test gear has taken me over an hour of which 95% of that was waste.

Ugh.

 

[The_Interloper]

There do seem to be more "wasting time" elements to Windows. System updates, driver updates etc; the OS just getting in the way, basically. But macOS isn't perfect either and the hardware is expensive and unupgradeable, so...rock and a hard place.

 

[Danfango]

At this point battles like that actually dent my income measurably over time so I’m at a huge net gain avoiding them and paying through the nose for hardware.

 

[mi7chy]

Faulty battery causes cascading issues. Why not just replace the battery?

 

[MBAir2010]

i plugged in a MacBook air since dec 9th and everything worked even without a battery.
my Dell XPS 938- needs to b plugged in now or the battery drains even while shut down, which is weird.
too bad mountain lion and snow leopard were not supported by  anymore.

 

[Conutz]

I have a PC laptop to run some old software (SCPI/LXI test automation stuff that doesn't work on Macs).

Won’t it run on a VM? I’ve developed and run apps for NI devices under a Fusion VM.

 

[Danfango]

Faulty battery causes cascading issues. Why not just replace the battery?

The battery is only about 9 months old. It's fine. The battery did not cause the issues.

Won’t it run on a VM? I’ve developed and run apps for NI devices under a Fusion VM.

It probably will work fine but my MBA is the absolute bottom end one which doesn't have enough RAM to run the whole stack on it and I have no idea if x86-64 virtualization works on M1s yet. I also don't want to pollute it with that junk as the kit I am supporting is being disposed of in Q2.

Really the pain in the ass is the DUT actually has a standard USB serial controller in it but they changed the device IDs on it to a custom one which requires you to futz with the device ID plists on a mac. That means the kernel won't load the driver because it is no longer signed after that point. The whole damn thing could probably be replaced with a 50 line python script talking directly to the device node then.

At the end of the day I'm being paid by the hour for this one so perhaps windows is better there 🤔

 

[mi7chy]

i plugged in a MacBook air since dec 9th and everything worked even without a battery.

But with reduced performance on older devices plus magsafe coming loose without battery is risking data loss. Mid 2015 Macbook can't run on AC without battery.

 

[MBAir2010]

But with reduced performance on older devices plus magsafe coming loose without battery is risking data loss. Mid 2015 Macbook can't run on AC without battery.

this MacBook air was from 2010 and there was no new data or anything being processed, just to see if the 2 ssd drives still functioned. i think i spent 6 minutes on both OSx.

 

[nickdalzell1]

OP, your situation is akin to how the first hour of work is spent--booting or more correctly, rebooting the work PC we use for Office as well as email, OnDemand, parts lookup, etc.

It's always frozen first thing in the morning, mainly because the boss only believes in Internet Explorer and blacklisted every other browser. She also has 'fake' security/antivirus software taking up all the CPU cores so the tower is so hot you literally can't touch it, fans are always running full hilt, and performance is akin to an i486/33 running Windows 98.

Each morning it's just dead, the monitors have shut down and say 'no signal, monitor is working check cable', PC refuses to respond, and we just pull the plug and plug it back in. In about half an hour (I'm serious) the login appears, which has no password (lovely, boss lady!) and then wait another half hour to have it load everything including garbage in the background, have to find out which of the 100 desktop shortcuts is I.E., re-login to the CCTV's intranet portal, oops! the PC just BSoD'd! Ok, another hour wasted, ok now everything works. DON'T TOUCH IT!!!

Every. Freaking. Morning.

 

[Danfango]

Holy crap. That’s awful. I think I’d probably go postal if I had to use that.

 

[nickdalzell1]

I try my hardest never to use it. But sadly I have to for parts lookups at times. Or for diagnostic software needs. It's not a badly specced system: it has an AMD A10 and 16GB RAM and a 2TB HDD. But she's a victim of the 1990s mentality where Internet Explorer is the only browser to use (doesn't help that our entire CCTV Intranet depends on it) and she fell victim to fake antivirus/cleaner software ala Cheetah Mobile (CCleaner to name one). I tell her constantly that when it gets its auto update to Windows 11 (only a matter of time now) IE will be gone, nothing you can do about it. She refuses to believe me. Tell her a ton about how that fake software is only harming the system but she retorts 'the guy who sold us the CCTV and our internet said to use it'. and there's nothing I can do except try to avoid using it. Her daughter who is slowly taking over the business brings her MacBook Pro to use since she hates that thing as much as I do. She can't use the CCTV though because Apple got smart and cut ties to Internet Explorer in like 2001 or something.

She also doesn't believe in air conditioning (I'm dead serious) so all kinds of odd things happen soon as the building gets upwards of 98 degrees F, such as the internet up and shutting down completely, the PC BSoDing or hard freezing, us going hours without a way to monitor the CCTV system, inability to keep up with business email (that's another thing--she still clings to Yahoo! Mail). Since the phone system relies on DSL (another oudated tech since you can't even BUY a DSL modem these days!) whenever the internet drops out, we can't receive phone calls.

Add all that to the reality that she never heard of Adblock. I don't understand how anyone tolerates using any web browser without adblock.

 

[decafjava]

@nickdalzell1 what a frustrating situation to be in, even worse that your boss doesn't listen to your advice. Let us know what happens once the Windows 11 update happens...

 

[nickdalzell1]

Oh believe me I will. It will not be a fun day when the building I work out of has to be ripped apart to replace the outdated camera system that's for sure! (It's hardwired)

She doesn't listen to my advice as I'm only a mechanic (despite being quite adept at IT) and she paid some contractor who claims to be the 'Super Computer Guy' to do all the work and only listens to him. He's a moron who thinks it's OK to blacklist every browser except IE, and installs fake security suites owned by Cheetah Mobile. The area I work in also is a sad ripoff of Green Acres. You know that show starring Eddie Albert, Pat Butram, and Eva Gabor? The idiots who were in that show's universe (Hooterville?) That's pretty much an accurate depiction of our area, with the exception of the train.