• LoneWolf

    LoneWolf

    @lonewolf

    Viewing 15 replies - 16 through 30 (of 114 total)
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    • in reply to: Getting stuck on an old wives tale #2579024

      Ah, the days of shaking 450MB-1.2GB IDE hard drives to temporarily resolve “stiction” long enough to rescue their data off with Binary Resarch Ghost (Symantec didn’t always own it) 1.x off a boot floppy. I remember it. The place I worked also froze a few of those horrible Quantum Bigfoot drives (Making a 5.25″ drive to lower platter density yet retain capacity and save cost is a horrible idea when it turns out you need a much stronger motor and still can’t spin the drive fast enough for any performance), with varying levels of success.

      Aside from those early days, my most recent failures have been awhile ago, largely because I’m only using hard disks now on my NAS at home (whose HGST 6TB enterprise drives are still chugging away). My last knowns were Seagate Cheetah server drives in the mid-twenty-teens (one model was notoriously unreliable, and often in servers that were poorly cooled which compounded it) so bad I created a script to identify client Dell servers that had them so we could proactively monitor and replace, and also Seagate SATA drives (1.5TB) that I used in my HP Mediasmart EX490 Windows Home Server I used in the late twenty-tens, which also had a design flaw. I’ve had a few first-gen 6TB WD Reds fail too, but like the previous drives, I had RAID, monitoring and scheduled consistency checking/data scrubbing to alert me, and a backup.

      I don’t use hard drives in desktop systems any more, as SSDs from 512GB even up to 4TB are quite reasonably priced, and even if they have a fixed lifespan, I’ve had increased reliability and consistency. I kind of look forward to the day when I can build a NAS out of storage-grade SSDs for a reasonable price.

      We are SysAdmins.
      We walk in the wiring closets no others will enter.
      We stand on the bridge, and no malware may pass.
      We engage in support, we do not retreat.
      We live for the LAN.
      We die for the LAN.

    • in reply to: A dozen problems with privacy #2577710

      Problem #12: Can you think of a company you would trust with your name, date of birth, passport, driver’s license, and Social Security number?

      Yes. Apple.

      “Trust” is an ambiguous word here.

      Do I store my information in an iPhone? Yes.

      Did I enable hardened iCloud with end-to-end encryption and encrypted storage where Apple claims they cannot access my data and I’d better have an emergency contact for unlocking purposes? Also yes.

      Storing information on my iPhone, using Wallet, or other applications that have some of my information is not the same as me trusting Apple, who (like everyone I should be clear) is vulnerable both to security exploits, but may also use my data (when they have access to it) for analytical purposes that make them money. Certainly some of that data might be anonymized, and plenty of it regulated, but I would call my trust here highly subjective.

      We are SysAdmins.
      We walk in the wiring closets no others will enter.
      We stand on the bridge, and no malware may pass.
      We engage in support, we do not retreat.
      We live for the LAN.
      We die for the LAN.

    • in reply to: A dozen problems with privacy #2577709

      Until the fines for privacy violations are within sight of the profits made for the violations themselves, fines are just the cost of doing business for a corporation.

      I hate being cynical. And I’m a staunch privacy advocate. However, in the United States I believe the Church Committee hearings were the start of showing how little privacy we have from government, and those were in 1975, soon to be fifty years ago.

      https://www.brookings.edu/articles/40-years-ago-church-committee-investigated-americans-spying-on-americans/

      And as for corporations, the EU actually has some teeth in its laws, but in the United States, corporations with the money or influence to keep politicians happy, in power, and well-fed mean we both have little/no privacy, or it’s very easy to sign our right to it away without being fully aware…and any efforts to maintain what we do have, establish new rights to it, or roll back rights these politicians gave up (for the average voter after a lobbyist encouraged it in one way or another) are glacially slow to the point where it’s a question of whether that fight will prevail. I would love this to be untrue. But until fines can erase a quarter of profits on a repeatable basis if necessary, or penalties become criminal rather than civil, I believe a fine is just money into a government coffer between a corporation and one of multiple three-letter agencies acting as a tax collector.

      We are SysAdmins.
      We walk in the wiring closets no others will enter.
      We stand on the bridge, and no malware may pass.
      We engage in support, we do not retreat.
      We live for the LAN.
      We die for the LAN.

    • in reply to: Are you seeing multiple reboots? #2574174

      Yes.

      I have seen as many as three reboots (the first patch reboot, followed by one or sometimes two more) during Windows patching.  This has borne true for Windows 11 22H2, Server 2012 R2, and Server 2016.

      We are SysAdmins.
      We walk in the wiring closets no others will enter.
      We stand on the bridge, and no malware may pass.
      We engage in support, we do not retreat.
      We live for the LAN.
      We die for the LAN.

    • in reply to: A computer museum near you is closing soon #2572555

      I wanted to collect older PC history (older being relative, but I’m an elder geek by many’s definition these days) and I had to think -what did many computer companies have that could be a consistent type of memorabilia across decades?

      The answer came to me looking through eBay: lapel pins.  From the mainframe era and longer, into the 90s and early 2000s, many companies had lapel pins.  So far, I have the following:

      Data General

      Siemens Nixdorf

      Remington-UNIVAC

      Cray Research

      HoneyWell (tie tack)

      NCR

      Philips PC

      NeXT

      U.S. Robotics

      Aldus (Pagemaker and PhotoStyler software)

      WordPerfect (v6 for DOS)

      Commodore/Amiga

      IBM (ThinkPad era)

      Sun Microsystems

      SGI (Silicon Graphics)

      Zenith Data Systems

      Seagate (rare HDD-pin I got from Bulgaria)

      Atari

      Toshiba

      AMD

      Microsoft (Excel early 90’s and Windows 3.1)

      IBM PC DOS 5.0

      Wang

      Keydata

      AT&T Networks

      ATI Technologies

      Kaypro

      IBM PowerPC

      Texas Instruments

      Apple (Mac Classic)

      Novell Netware

      Banyan VINES

      IBM OS/2

      Intel

      Hewlett Packard

      Digital Equipment Coroporation

      Borland (dBase and Quattro Pro)

      Compaq

      AST

      Scalable Linux Systems (had to have Tux)

      I have an Osborne sticker; couldn’t find a pin from the era. I just like keeping them as a remembrance of a time when technology seemed like a true frontier. There was so much going on. I miss my early days of tech far more than I enjoy the current ones.

      We are SysAdmins.
      We walk in the wiring closets no others will enter.
      We stand on the bridge, and no malware may pass.
      We engage in support, we do not retreat.
      We live for the LAN.
      We die for the LAN.

    • in reply to: What to do before your phone is stolen #2543188

      I have a Samsung.  At home, awake, my phone is on my desk.  When I’m sleeping, it’s charging on my nightstand.  Any other time it’s in my back pocket unless I’m making a call.  I’ve been using cell phones for ~25 years, and have never lost one.

      It’s kinda like my truck keys; they are either in the ignition while I’m driving, or in my right front pocket.  I’ve been driving over 63 years and have never lost a set of car keys.  My house keys are separate from my ignition keys, and are either in my hand unlocking the door, or in my left front pocket.  I’ve never lost a set of house keys.

      There’s no setup involved, other than forming the habits.

      That’s a great thing, until someone mugs you, or the unexpected happens that you can’t control.

      In my case, I was standing in the way (being a larger human) of someone smaller than me to prevent them from suffering injury at the hands of someone at least as large as me. When pushed, I fell. My phone fell out of my pocket, and before I could get to it, someone else on the same street scooped it up and ran.

      Not everything in life is predictable. I’m glad that apparently you have never suffered something unpredictable. However, should you, none of your habits will save you, unless one of them includes a documented backup and restore procedure for your phone’s data, and any account names/numbers, passwords, secret questions, and so on.

      I have had cell phones since 1998 (my first Motorola StarTAC!) Up until this year, I have never had a problem. I’ve never damaged one, I’ve never lost one, be it Nextel, Palm, Blackberry, Android, or iPhone (had them all). And then I had an event that was completely out of my hands, and the first thing happened. So that’s 25 years for me; right up until the end of January. Ensuring everything is backed up, regardless of good habits is still useful.

      We are SysAdmins.
      We walk in the wiring closets no others will enter.
      We stand on the bridge, and no malware may pass.
      We engage in support, we do not retreat.
      We live for the LAN.
      We die for the LAN.

      6 users thanked author for this post.
    • in reply to: My encounter with Verizon #2543175

      It is our practice to not to use our internet service provider’s modems / routers.

      By purchasing our own we save on the “monthly rental charge” and can plug in a backup unit immediately if we run into a problem.

      In the 800 Mbps modem category, in addition to their own equipment, our ISP has approved 46 modems manufactured by:

      • Arris,
      • ASUS,
      • Hitron Technologies,
      • HUMAX,
      • Linksys,
      • Motorola,
      • Netgear,
      • TP-Link, and
      • Zoom Telephonics.

      To protect privacy, all of our workstations, printers, and televisions are hard wired while we us WiFi for our internet radios.

      I do the same. In fact, I tend to buy the dumbest device that will serve as only a modem (and support the throughput I need). I don’t trust my ISP to do my routing duties the same way I can nor to do wireless well, so I’d rather get a modem I can put into bridge mode, then hook up a router to do my wireless and wired things. So my modem is an Arris SB8200 which fits almost everyone’s compatibility lists. And because it has no wireless, xFinity can’t hand out my bandwidth as a wireless hotspot either.

      If I was recommending to a regular user, I’d probably recommend a midlevel ASUS router that lists lifetime AiProtection as one of its features; this is like getting a poor-man’s firewall in that it will usually have gateway antivirus, reputational-defense, optional internet filtering, and basically the things a more expensive business-oriented UTM (Unified Threat Management) router-firewall does. They’ll also more likely have better wireless than any ISP’s router. And for an enthusiast, you can set up a VPN so you can connect back securely into your network from the outside, which is also a great way at having a protected connection if you’re connected to an insecure hotspot somewhere else (e.g., a coffee shop or airport) , as your traffic will be encrypted. You can also set the DNS servers to be secure ones from somewhere like CloudFlare or Quad9 so the ISP and others aren’t snooping your traffic, and some of these also offer a base level of malware protection by blocking known bad sites.

      In my case, I have a Fortigate firewall and a Ubiquiti WiFi6 access point, but that’s also because I work in tech and often have access to expensive equipment for less or because I have certifications that put me in a special access program for them so I can keep educated on them. This is overkill in 90% of all cases or requires more configuration than most everyday people, (thus I don’t recommend it). But I’ll never be a fan of recommending people use only the modem the ISP gave them.

      We are SysAdmins.
      We walk in the wiring closets no others will enter.
      We stand on the bridge, and no malware may pass.
      We engage in support, we do not retreat.
      We live for the LAN.
      We die for the LAN.

      3 users thanked author for this post.
    • in reply to: What to do before your phone is stolen #2541487

      I had to do this myself six weeks ago. Having a password vault with all of my passwords, a full iCloud backup, and a helpful (and sympathetic) Apple Store employee really helped me get back on track when my iPhone was stolen. I also had FindMy enabled and was able to set a Lost Message and a command to lock and wipe the old phone.

      As mentioned, I’d not 2FA app and anything to do with it are  securely backed up in a way that can be easily restored. Just having passwords isn’t enough if all of them (as they should be whenever possible) are linked to two-factor codes you can’t get access too. Most of mine were, but not all; fortunately, I had easy access to help to get the ones I didn’t have reset. I am now periodically testing my ability to recover my 2FA in the event something goes awry.

      We are SysAdmins.
      We walk in the wiring closets no others will enter.
      We stand on the bridge, and no malware may pass.
      We engage in support, we do not retreat.
      We live for the LAN.
      We die for the LAN.

      1 user thanked author for this post.
    • in reply to: How to fix File Explorer folder views in Windows 10 and 11 #2536763

      The thing I continue to be irritated by in Windows 10 and 11 is that “randomly” (I say that because it could be Windows patching or other things that reset it), my grouping settings revert to default.

      I don’t *want* my Downloads folder to be grouped; I set it to “Group By: (None)” because I switch sort by name or by date quite regularly depending on what I need. Having things sorted by Microsoft’s opinion of what a home user wants doesn’t match the things I do every day in IT. No matter how many times I reset this the way I want, it eventually reverts on both.

      As for Windows 11, it has gone from “extreme dislike” to “meh” to “it’s getting better” for me. I still tend to run it only on systems where Thread Director is useful, or there’s extra security (11th-gen Intel/AMD Zen3 CPUs and later), but the annoyances are growing smaller over time. Explorer no longer seems to crash every time I unzip a file to a OneDrive folder, for example (something that has never happened for me in Win10, but has taken a year and a half to resolve in Windows 11).

      We are SysAdmins.
      We walk in the wiring closets no others will enter.
      We stand on the bridge, and no malware may pass.
      We engage in support, we do not retreat.
      We live for the LAN.
      We die for the LAN.

    • in reply to: Is technology a good gift for Christmas? #2505206

      I give technology in specific cases:

      • The person asked for it on their list
      • The person is known to be technically savvy and has expressed interest in a technology niche (example: I give a streaming device because they’re getting into cutting their cable)
      • The person has an expressed desire to explore and grow beyond just being a technology user and actually explore it and appears to have what it takes to learn

      After that, yes, I don’t give it. Better to match what they expressed an actual desire for.

      We are SysAdmins.
      We walk in the wiring closets no others will enter.
      We stand on the bridge, and no malware may pass.
      We engage in support, we do not retreat.
      We live for the LAN.
      We die for the LAN.

    • in reply to: Randy’s remedies: Oops! — I called the scam number #2505199

      Question: If the world has gotten stupid, then by the transitive property of mathematics (if a = b, and b = c, then a = c), don’t the people who have fallen for the scam = the world, and thus…

      I’ll get my coat.

      We are SysAdmins.
      We walk in the wiring closets no others will enter.
      We stand on the bridge, and no malware may pass.
      We engage in support, we do not retreat.
      We live for the LAN.
      We die for the LAN.

    • in reply to: Does an old personal computer become useless? #2498441

      Oh, my!  Couldn’t you have replaced the flaky motherboard?

      Finding something that fit the application would have been a difficult go; there were some proprietary ISA expansion boards and connectors. Also, due to the machine’s age, I just couldn’t make guarantees. With that in mind, and the fact that it was outside of my organization’s wheelhouse, we recommended they attempt to contact the original builder of the machine.

      We are SysAdmins.
      We walk in the wiring closets no others will enter.
      We stand on the bridge, and no malware may pass.
      We engage in support, we do not retreat.
      We live for the LAN.
      We die for the LAN.

    • in reply to: Does an old personal computer become useless? #2497984

      I only stopped using my IBM Model M when I needed the Windows key more (Cherry MX Browns aren’t as good, but they are quieter in an office environment, moreso with rubber o-rings to stop them bottoming out).  These days, my favorite obsolete x86 hardware is ThinkPads; some of the best systems ever made.

      I got called out in 2016 for a desperate customer who explained the computer in their box-cutting/folding machine wasn’t working. Unsure we could help, I arrived, and opened the service cover on the side to find an ISA 80486DX2-66MHz motherboard, with 16MB of RAM in 30-pin SIMMS. The machine booted from a single DOS floppy (no storage) and loaded a simple program into RAM for the box measurements. But it wasn’t booting and displayed the lovely “ONBOARD_PARITY_ERROR SYSTEM HALTED” message.

      I was the oldest tech in the office and the only one who had seen vintage 1992-93 hardware. I procured some new 30-pin SIMMS, and got the system running for another two years before the mainboard started producing the same error whether the memory was good or not; I told them they were out of luck this time around.

      We are SysAdmins.
      We walk in the wiring closets no others will enter.
      We stand on the bridge, and no malware may pass.
      We engage in support, we do not retreat.
      We live for the LAN.
      We die for the LAN.

    • in reply to: Master patch list updated for out of band #2493559

      Funny that health message center mentions version 22H2, yet the KB article doesn’t

      Windows Update Catalog mentions 22H2 too, so I’d take it at its word.

      The patch is singular though and lists as working with versions 1903 and onward.

      We are SysAdmins.
      We walk in the wiring closets no others will enter.
      We stand on the bridge, and no malware may pass.
      We engage in support, we do not retreat.
      We live for the LAN.
      We die for the LAN.

    • Note that if you had Windows 10 21H2, and used the optional Windows update (as opposed to an ISO upgrade), the upgrade to 22H2 takes very little time. This leads me to believe the upgrade is very incremental unless you are several feature releases behind.

      I’m testing with an ISO upgrade right now on one system. That is taking far longer. It appears to be going over the entire OS.

      I have the target version set to 21H2 on all of the systems I manage, so they shouldn’t upgrade until it’s time. That said, I think it will be fairly quickly based on my above thoughts, unless there’s a show-stopper bug in the next 72 hours.

      We are SysAdmins.
      We walk in the wiring closets no others will enter.
      We stand on the bridge, and no malware may pass.
      We engage in support, we do not retreat.
      We live for the LAN.
      We die for the LAN.

      1 user thanked author for this post.
    Viewing 15 replies - 16 through 30 (of 114 total)