Designed for maintenance?

Topic

New Reply

BEN’S WORKSHOP By Ben Myers Continued advances in computer technology have had a positive effect on the gear we use — faster, less power-hungry, light
[See the full post at: Designed for maintenance?]

6 users thanked author for this post.

Norio, sgtaylor50, WSGeo, DLivesInTexas, fisher75, lmacri

Reply | Quote

Replies

Designed for maintenance? Ask Louis Rossmann.

The power supply of HP machines. The power supply wasn’t big enough to accommodate a Geforce RTX card, so I bought an off-the-shelf power supply, like I’ve done many times before. That was a surprise when I opened the HP machine. What weird connector does this HP machine have?? That’s no ATX. Grumble. Got me an adapter cable. It worked, but when started, the machine BIOS reported it could not measure the power supply fan speed. Press key to continue. Sigh. Had to get me another adapter cable that tricked the BIOS into thinking the fan speed was ok.

Reply | Quote

Yes, the name brand computers with proprietary power connectors are not designed for many upgrades, either. Thank you for pointing this out.  It never occurred to me because I’ve never tried it.

Good to know that an adapter cable might be found to permit use of the larger power supply required by high end graphics cards.  Still, I’d be concerned about the possibility of overloading the amperes supplied to the proprietary power connector.

Reply | Quote

Re: The HP laptop with an unknown login password.

It’s unclear whether you were referring to the Windows login password or the laptop’s system password that’s required before it attempts to boot the o/s. I’ve found that system passwords are often stored in NVRAM, not CMOS, so removing the battery has no effect in clearing the password. Without that password, the laptop is bricked.

You didn’t mention that if Bitlocker is not yet enabled, the hard drive is still encrypted (just like on Windows Home). Unless you completely disable Bitlocker (or in Home disable drive encryption), you’ll have a hard drive that can’t be removed and installed on another system or copied to a new hard drive from another system.

Reply | Quote

It was the password for the Windows account.  Unlike a local account password, it cannot be reset by any means. Anyway, it is the same password used to log into Microsoft.com, to look at the status of your subscriptions, etc.

Resetting a local password is easy with a password cracker, two of which are on a Hirens Windows PE USB stick.

However, if the computer has secure boot enabled, one is stuck, simply because booting from any external drive is blocked.

 

Reply | Quote

I still always set up my computers for my clients using local admin. And while I agree with your assessment, one of the problems is the amount of money one can charge to try to get a client out of one of these labyrinths that they’ve gotten themselves into, vs versus buying a new computer. It’s aggravating to spend 2 to 3 hours trying to solve a problem and either watching my hourly rate go down because it’s impossible to charge a client for three hours of struggling to get their windows machine back up and running, versus just telling him to buy a new machine and throw the old ones away which I don’t want to do. I usually end up eating my hourly rate as a favor to the environment, but I know myself and other IT consultants in the area have talked about this trade-off. We need to charge certain amount to keep our businesses going, but we really can’t charge clients the amount that they need to be charged for our expertise. while I understand that Microsoft and others are doing all they can to try to make these machines they’ve created more secure, one of their answers seems to be to make them disposable.

8 users thanked author for this post.

Cybertooth, Steve S., rbailin, Donny H, SkipH, Steve, DLivesInTexas, PKCano

Reply | Quote

Exactly what I do.  We’ve lived and learned.

Reply | Quote

“Of course, the computer was set up with Secure Boot enabled, so there was no way to simply reinstall Windows from a USB device. ”

“With Secure Boot enabled, a reinstallation of Windows, a repair install, or access to the main drive with a HiRens Windows PE simply cannot happen without extra effort — disassembly of a laptop to remove the battery or, more easily, removal of the three-volt CR2032 CMOS battery from a tower computer. Then wait a few minutes to be sure that the CMOS settings have lost their charge, and try again.”

Wait, what? Windows 11 requires Secure Boot in order to run. You can certainly install Windows 11 on a computer with Secure Boot enabled. Am I missing something?

Reply | Quote

I have disabled Secure Boot on my Acer Laptop, and it still boots into Windows 11 (or it did the last time I tried, which was a few months ago, I think). I had thought it was required too, so it was one of the first things I tried.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

1 user thanked author for this post.

David A

Reply | Quote

I wasn’t super specific – Secure Boot is required to install Windows 11, unless you use a workaround. The article seems to be saying the opposite – that Secure Boot needs to be disabled before Windows can be installed. That’s the part I’m questioning.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Ascaris

Reply | Quote

Again, here was the situation I faced.  Secure Boot was enabled so I could not do a fresh Windows 11 install using the ISO file on a USB flash stick.  Secure boot is secure. You cannot boot from any other device, only the one inside the computer.

The laptop started up asking for a PIN, so I knew that the account was a Microsoft account, not a local account.  The previous user of the computer did not provide my client with the login password. So it was impossible to log into the laptop, and use Settings->Windows Update->Recovery->Advanced Startup to access the UEFI firmware and enable secure boot.

I said all this in a different forum response, but I think it is stated much more clearly here.

Reply | Quote

Yes, Windows 11 runs just fine with Secure Boot disabled. One has to do some doomsday thinking and wonder whether Microsoft will eliminat that possibility in the near future.

1 user thanked author for this post.

David A

Reply | Quote

Nice! I guess I was confused because Windows 11 requires the PC to be Secure Boot capable (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11-and-secure-boot-a8ff1202-c0d9-42f5-940f-843abef64fad) I thought it also had to be enabled. But you’re right. It doesn’t.

Reply | Quote

Windows 11 does not require Secure Boot to run.  However, whether bought in a store or online, when a new computer is first powered up and set up, Windows enables Secure Boot and BitLocker as default.  If one does not want secure boot, disable it via Settings->Windows Update->Recovery->Advanced Startup.

On the other hand, if one is installing Windows 11 from scratch from a USB stick containing the Win 11 ISO image, Secure Boot needs to be disabled.  I do this regularly, upgrading SSD capacity, for example.

The HP laptop I worked on had Secure Boot enabled and no way to log into its Microsoft account, i.e. employee left company and did not reveal password.

Reply | Quote

Ben Myers wrote:

On the other hand, if one is installing Windows 11 from scratch from a USB stick containing the Win 11 ISO image, Secure Boot needs to be disabled.

This was wrong when you said it four weeks ago, and again two weeks ago, and it’s still wrong now.

Saying that Bitlocker is enabled by default is also far too much of a sweeping generalization. Device encryption is becoming the default with future versions.

1 user thanked author for this post.

David A

Reply | Quote

I was going to say- I do fresh installs of Windows 11 from a USB all the time and never disable Secure Boot.

1 user thanked author for this post.

b

Reply | Quote

If you are doing a fresh install onto a brand new SSD which will become the C: drive, the UEFI firmware simply boots from the only bootable device available, the USB stick with the Windows ISO.

My situation was very different.  The laptop already had Windows 11 installed, so Secure Boot worked as it is supposed to, allowing me to boot only from the SSD inside. It was a perfect Catch-22.  Can’t log into the system to go through the steps to get into the UEFI firmware to disable secure boot.

Reply | Quote

See my detailed response to another posting.  The condition I encountered with Windows 11 already installed, is different than installing on a brand new unformatted SSD.

Reply | Quote

True.  Windows 11 Home pushes BitLocker when the owner takes a computer out of the box and starts it up for the first time, running through the second part of the installation process. Not so for other versions of Windows 11.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Cybertooth

Reply | Quote

Windows 11 does not absolutely require Secure Boot to be enabled for it to boot up and run otherwise normally. My laptop runs fine with Windows 11 and Secure Boot disabled.

What you were missing, David A, is that I was attempting to install Windows 11, not onto a brand new unformatted SSD, but onto an SSD that already had Windows 11 installed.  Secure Boot can tell the difference.

Reply | Quote

Hi Ben,

I just grabbed a spare Windows 11 computer, which was setup with a local account. Making sure Secure Boot was enabled in UEFI Firmware, I proceeded to boot to a USB drive made with the Windows 11 Media Creation Tool. No Secure Boot errors were encountered. I then deleted the data on the drive and installed Windows.

I’m thinking maybe the confusion comes from differences in how we’re accessing the UEFI Firmware? You mentioned going to  Settings->Windows Update->Recovery->Advanced Startup (on my computer running Windows 11 23H2, I see Advanced Startup under System->Recovery). To do so you certainly would need the password of the computer to login to Windows. But you can also access the UEFI Firmware during startup by tapping a key as the computer starts up. On my Lenovo, if I tap F1 repeatedly as my computer starts to boot up, I can get into the UEFI Firmware and change the boot order to boot to the USB drive first. Alternatively, I can tap F12 to access a boot menu, and select the USB drive as the boot device. Other manufacturers may use other keys (I’ve seen Esc, Enter, F1, F10, F12, Delete, etc.), but the correct key can usually been found through a web search. All of this works with Secure Boot enabled.

Perhaps the issue is also with Hiren’s BootCD? This is just conjecture on my part, as I haven’t used it. What I can say is that I never experienced Secure Boot errors using USB drives formatted with Microsoft’s Media Creation Tool.

It’s probably a big ask, but I wonder if you tried my method – use a USB key made with the media creation tool (https://www.microsoft.com/software-download/windows11) and use the boot key on startup to select the USB drive – if you would run into any issues. Why don’t you try it? If I’m right and it works, it could save you many future headaches.

2 users thanked author for this post.

rbailin, b

Reply | Quote

Regarding cold shutdowns of computers — it’s important to remember that for Windows, the default setting for “shutdown” is actually “hibernate”, and if you’re going through the Start menu, the only way of doing a true shutdown is via “restart”, and where that’s a momentary shutdown that’s a part of of restarting a computer.

Unfortunately, that kind of handling doesn’t really help if you need to do a true, cold power-off shutdown, whether for doing something like moving a computer, removing the system battery, or opening the case to work inside.

There are a couple of work-arounds:

1. Working in text from CMD, PowerShell or Windows Terminal, the Shutdown command has a number of useful options, of halting and restarting a computer.  (There is enough here that it might be worth Ben dedicating an article to this topic).  “Shutdown /S” is what is needed for removing all power to the computer.
2. In the Windows Control Panel (Power Options -> System Settings), in the dialog for Power and Sleep buttons, it is possible change the options offered by the Windows Start button.  If you enable “Hibernate”, then then that shows up in the Power menu, where use of “Shutdown” is a true shutdown, and the function of hibernation that is normally assigned to “Shutdown” is then available to selected as “Hibernate”.

It’s been a long time since I’ve played with the more extended options available in the shutdown command, but there are one or two switches there that allow for checking to see how long it’s been since the last true shutdown, what state the computer was in (e.g., shutdown or hibernate) when Windows was last started.  When I was playing with this, I was able to confirm that the default “shutdown” is actually hibernate, and by changing those settings, that allows for a true shutdown that is requested by the user, without having to resort to manual entry of the shutdown command (with the correct switches)

1 user thanked author for this post.

Cybertooth

Reply | Quote

I have put a Shutdown icon on the desktop of each of my computers, and computers of others to make for an easy and clean complete shutdown.

Reply | Quote

Since at least Win 7, I’ve found it easier to guarantee a true shutdown by going to Control Panel –> Power Options –> System Settings (a/k/a “Choose what the power buttons do”), enable “Change settings that are currently unavailable” and then uncheck “Turn on fast startup”.

The few seconds you may save bypassing the boot hardware inventory check is outweighed by knowing your hard disk will not be corrupted if you move it to another system, or if other system components are replaced.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Cybertooth

Reply | Quote

Ben Myers wrote:

Shutdown icon on the desktop of each of my computers

I do the same thing.  This is the shutdown command string I use.  Full shutdown, not hibernation.

C:\Windows\System32\shutdown.exe /s /f /t 0

Suggestions for improvement welcome.

Desktop Asus TUF X299 Mark 1, CPU: Intel Core i7-7820X Skylake-X 8-Core 3.6 GHz, RAM: 32GB, GPU: Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti 4GB. Display: Four 27" 1080p screens 2 over 2 quad.

Reply | Quote

Ben Myers wrote:

I have put a Shutdown icon on the desktop of each of my computers, and computers of others to make for an easy and clean complete shutdown.

I also use a shortcut to fully shutdown my PC’s (using the same command as @TechTango) but also have shortcuts for:

Restart — C:\WINDOWS\system32\shutdown.exe /r /t 00

Recovery mode — C:\Windows\System32\shutdown.exe /r /o /f /t 0

BIOS mode — C:\Windows\System32\shutdown.exe /r /fw /t 0

3 users thanked author for this post.

TechTango, RetiredGeek, Cybertooth

Reply | Quote

n0ads wrote:

BIOS mode — C:\Windows\System32\shutdown.exe /r /fw /t 0

That was an extremely interesting idea. I have an old Lenovo laptop that came with Windows 7. While troubleshooting a totally unrelated (software) issue, I temporarily replaced the Windows SSD with a Linux SSD. When that project was done, I put the Windows SSD back in the laptop… and now the computer boots into Network Boot and I can’t get into the BIOS at all to change it. I can hit F12 to enter a “Startup menu” where Ubuntu is the first listing (even though it’s no longer physically present), but I can’t edit that menu to change the boot order or to get rid of the no longer needed Ubuntu listing.

I was excited that the shutdown.exe line quoted above might enable me finally to get into the BIOS, but when I tried it in cmd.exe, I got an error saying that this laptop’s firmware doesn’t support that command. So this is a long-winded way of saying that the /fw switch doesn’t seem to be universal, and instead depends on the make/model of computer.

 

Keep Running Windows 7 Safely for Years to Come  
Make Windows 10 look and work like Windows 7

Reply | Quote