New Dell computer

[Cornell]

I think that if Cliff pushes the 'Windows' key (bottom row of keys on the keyboard) then clicks 'Power' on the bottom row, near his name, it will show several choices- power off, sleep, hibernate, or restart. No need to push the physical power button on the case of the computer until he wants to restart it. Selecting 'Power Off' on screen will shut it down correctly.

Good luck to you both!

Jim

Yeah -- I thought about this too. But for someone who is having some cognitive issues a "new way" of shutting down might be a tall order. Especially since we are trained to turn things on / off with a switch or button.

 

[Passepartout]

Yeah -- I thought about this too. But for someone who is having some cognitive issues a "new way" of shutting down might be a tall order. Especially since we are trained to turn things on / off with a switch or button.

Yep. They might find it convenient to have the in-house technical support. It helps keep seniors online. That is the only 'community many have as sand runs out of their hourglass.

 

[Brett]

I use a Dell laptop with no problems but admittedly rarely turn it completely off - I just "sign out" using the mouse and it's easy to sign in again by touching any key and then entering the password/PIN

 

[Kozman]

I had a Dell desktop that would not start up if an external hard drive was attached. I had to attach them after boot up. I recently bought a Dell high end laptop that works great. However I ordered a 1tb hard drive and got a 250gb both times. I returned the first one and they proceeded to send me another 250gb! Their option was a refund. I liked the laptop and just gave up and kept it. Make sure to check the specs upon arrival when buying Dell.

 

[isisdave]

Why would you "power down" a laptop? Just close the lid. It goes into sleep mode, draws almost no power, and starts up MUCH faster when you open it up again.

When you "power up" a computer, every single piece of software in it says "oh, I must be the ONLY PROGRAM in this entire computer. I'd better look to see if there's a CRITICAL UPDATE to your diet management program since I last looked ... 18 hours ago" I call this "arrogant programming" -- these things could figure out a way to do this one at a time (and there is a startup delay possibility in Windows) but they don't.

 

[isisdave]

I had a Dell desktop that would not start up if an external hard drive was attached. I had to attach them after boot up. I recently bought a Dell high end laptop that works great. However I ordered a 1tb hard drive and got a 250gb both times. I returned the first one and they proceeded to send me another 250gb! Their option was a refund. I liked the laptop and just gave up and kept it. Make sure to check the specs upon arrival when buying Dell.

This is most likely because your BIOS is set to load from a USB device first. This permits booting from a recovery copy of the OS on a thumb drive, but it's annoying otherwise. You can change it in your BIOS settings, and if you ever need to boot from USB you can override with the Boot Menu or just change it back.

 

[clifffaith]

Why would you "power down" a laptop? Just close the lid. It goes into sleep mode, draws almost no power, and starts up MUCH faster when you open it up .

Yeah, it should be so easy!

 

[wackymother]

So 90 minutes later, the computer is “dead”. I’d left it open and logged into eBay. Cliff has been at his desk working puzzles on paper. No wiggling the mouse, hitting escape or the space bar makes the computer come alive. We are about to go play Mexican Train so no sense doing the hokey pokey until he is ready to use it again.

Oof. How's it looking today?

 

[clifffaith]

Oof. How's it looking today?

Same same. Trekking to the electronics store tomorrow. At least get to stop by with pizza for my home bound mom. And I know a stop at my favorite bakery will help too.

 

[wackymother]

Same same. Trekking to the electronics store tomorrow. At least get to stop by with pizza for my home bound mom. And I know a stop at my favorite bakery will help too.

Good luck. It sounds like it has problems.

 

[clifffaith]

Good luck. It sounds like it has problems.

We are at store now. Of course it started right up!

 

[clifffaith]

He showed us how to shut it down from the menu (totally a new concept, I always just walked away from my dearly departed iPad, and Cliff just closed his old computer). Then he put a short cut in so pushing the button at night will turn it off. Closing lid apparently is OK to go away for a few hours, but at night he wants us to “shut down”. Also my quick click of the on button should be a 2 second click. My favorite cookies from the bakery stop ALMOST make the trip worthwhile.

 

[Brett]

He showed us how to shut it down from the menu (totally a new concept, I always just walked away from my dearly departed iPad, and Cliff just closed his old computer). Then he put a short cut in so pushing the button at night will turn it off. Closing lid apparently is OK to go away for a few hours, but at night he wants us to “shut down”. Also my quick click of the on button should be a 2 second click. My favorite cookies from the bakery stop ALMOST make the trip worthwhile.

good!
I shut down my Dell laptop from the menu and pressing any key brings up the PIN/password screen

 

[clifffaith]

Well we are home and it turned on after a two second push and then maybe four more counts before the Dell logo came up, all before plugging it in. So far so good, so infuriating to have had it be wonky on us! Another handful of cookies will help, I’m sure!

 

[simpsontruckdriver]

Another handful of cookies will help, I’m sure!

 

[clifffaith]

NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!’
About quarter of ten last night I was doing laundry while he was at the computer. I hear “La da di da” music and said “did your computer just restart itself?” Yes. Did you mean to have it restart? No. Next thing I know he says it is rejecting his PIN over and over. I kept my distance and encouraged him to go to bed.

He’s still asleep so I checked on it. Originally it also said to copy a six character string of numbers and letters. I did that, then I get what’s in the photo. I’ve done my old hold the button 20 seconds start several times and can’t get past this screen. I hit the windows key just for the hell of it, and nothing. We appear to be worse off than before.

 

[jp10558]

NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!’
About quarter of ten last night I was doing laundry while he was at the computer. I hear “La da di da” music and said “did your computer just restart itself?” Yes. Did you mean to have it restart? No. Next thing I know he says it is rejecting his PIN over and over. I kept my distance and encouraged him to go to bed.

He’s still asleep so I checked on it. Originally it also said to copy a six character string of numbers and letters. I did that, then I get what’s in the photo. I’ve done my old hold the button 20 seconds start several times and can’t get past this screen. I hit the windows key just for the hell of it, and nothing. We appear to be worse off than before.
View attachment 94870

That's just not knowing the correct PIN. IDK, I always use a password, but also don't use Windows 11. However, newer Windows will install updates and reboot when Microsoft feels like it - you can be in the middle of typing something and it'll just restart for updates. The fact that you had an update fail to install and it did a rollback up this thread says to me you're probably having OS corruption issues, or at least going to need some pretty technical people to fix a stuck update (maybe).

TBH the constant changes for no observable benefit and problems with updates in Windows 10 made me (at home) switch over to CENTOS7 back in 2015. Of course, this year I had to update that to Alma9 and for the first time ever, I've had Linux have random issues with updates thanks to the new dnf "fuzzy" dependencies. Flatpacks also only update (for some reason) on reboot automatically, so now even with an Enterprise focused OS I still have to do more manual things than I had to do in the old systems.

I maintain this is all because they are "fixing" things that aren't broken instead of fixing the broken things. Much of it in Windows AND Linux is "faster boots" except almost no one is doing boot timers, or booting more than once a day if things aren't otherwise broken. So if it takes 10 minutes to start in the morning - time for coffee right? If it takes an hour in the middle of the night for updates - does anyone actually care? Yet so many things get changed and weirdly broken so they can claim a 5 second boot time - I assume to compete with phones, but those don't actually shut down - they're always running so it's more comparable to waking up the monitor / screen than a boot process. And that was near instant back in 1995 IIRC so ... yea.

Windows 11 is very different from Windows XP/7 and the "good old days". I almost think someone should see (This may be enterprise only so don't quote me on it being available in the Home OS) if they can turn on the old style synchronous sequential boot process and disable all "Fast Boot". In your case I probably would actually see if they can also disable sleep and hibernate - they're already having you shut down, and otherwise you want it on anyway. So getting rid of the chances of weird stuff happening in the multiple sleep states or switching to hibernate may help also.

Also in your case - does the laptop have any biometrics you could replace the PIN with? Fingerprint reader or FaceID? Maybe buy a USB fingerprint reader? I figure swiping a finger would be "immune" to forgetting, unlike a PIN.

 

[DrQ]

NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!’
About quarter of ten last night I was doing laundry while he was at the computer. I hear “La da di da” music and said “did your computer just restart itself?” Yes. Did you mean to have it restart? ...

However, newer Windows will install updates and reboot when Microsoft feels like it - you can be in the middle of typing something and it'll just restart for updates.

Microsoft generally releases updates on the second Tuesday of every month (Microsoft Tuesday). The exceptions would be an emergency security patch for a zero day vulnerability. Most Microsoft Tuesday patches are OS patches which require a reboot. You can set Windows to or not to automatically download and install patches.

 

[jp10558]

Microsoft generally releases updates on the second Tuesday of every month (Microsoft Tuesday). The exceptions would be an emergency security patch for a zero day vulnerability. Most Microsoft Tuesday patches are OS patches which require a reboot. You can set Windows to or not to automatically download and install patches.

I'm pretty sure Windows 10 and later Home editions you cannot tell it to not automatically download and install patches. They are forced. Maybe with hacking the registry, but MS is even overriding Enterprise Group Policy in some situations.

 

[DrQ]

I'm pretty sure Windows 10 and later Home editions you cannot tell it to not automatically download and install patches. They are forced. Maybe with hacking the registry, but MS is even overriding Enterprise Group Policy in some situations.

You can't override Enterprise Group Policies, but those will not be in place in a personal or "Home" edition of the O/S

It does look like they have removed the option to only update on demand, you can now only pause updates for a maximum of 5 weeks.

 

[clifffaith]

Resident Tech (RezTec) came by this morning after we were done with today’s morning pastry activity (5th year anniversary of old folks home opening so there are events all day). First words out of his mouth were “Tuesday night update” followed by deciding that the NumLock key probably was the root of Cliff’s issues. He fussed around, got it to restart and then reset his pin (luckily to the same number because of Cliff’s cognitive issues). The NumLock apparently was turning itself off and when Cliff would type without watching he was over and over entering blanks which caused the “too many attempts” issue. Chuck has now added a chime noise to the NumLock as well as setting it to default to ON when the computer turns on so we don’t have to be too dependent on Cliff watching for the “black dots” that indicate a password/pin is being typed. Back in business again!

 

[dioxide45]

I beleive Microsoft had to release a Windows update due to a WiFi vulnerability issue.

 

[Brett]

Resident Tech (RezTec) came by this morning after we were done with today’s morning pastry activity (5th year anniversary of old folks home opening so there are events all day). First words out of his mouth were “Tuesday night update” followed by deciding that the NumLock key probably was the root of Cliff’s issues. He fussed around, got it to restart and then reset his pin (luckily to the same number because of Cliff’s cognitive issues). The NumLock apparently was turning itself off and when Cliff would type without watching he was over and over entering blanks which caused the “too many attempts” issue. Chuck has now added a chime noise to the NumLock as well as setting it to default to ON when the computer turns on so we don’t have to be too dependent on Cliff watching for the “black dots” that indicate a password/pin is being typed. Back in business again!

It's good to have a "resident tech" in the old folks home

 

[clifffaith]

It's good to have a "resident tech" in the old folks home

There are five or so men who seem to have infinite patience. We went through a six week period a year ago where Cliff would get into the electronics housed in the guest closet and unplug routers and other things when his old computer was acting up. Suddenly I wouldn’t have Netflix because he was pulling plugs that “weren’t needed”. Cost me $160 and three visits from plant ops to get us up and running. By then a RezTec guy and I had figured out Cliff was actually disconnecting things. I had to take photos so I could plug stuff back in without incurring more service calls or imposing on RezTec yet again. After about a month of tearing my hair out because I could not keep him from pulling plugs, knock on wood he seems to have forgotten about the closet electronics.

 

[susieq]

So glad you managed to get things fixed, and that you figured out what was going on. So sorry that you have to go through this though..................