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Windows-tangential question: A family member has a laptop running Windows 11 and it has a shattered but functional screen. They are going to drop it off at Geek Squad or local PC repair place to have the screen replaced. Are there any precautionary measures they can take in Windows 11 to protect their files/data residing on the laptop, in case a PC tech snoops around? Or should I backup their files, delete, then do a fresh install of Windows before dropping it off? I've never had to turn in a laptop for repair so I'm not sure what the standard procedure is.
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Nov 26, 2022 03:54
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Hughmoris posted:Windows-tangential question: You could just pull the ssd/nvme. A computer doesn't need one to boot and verify that the screen works. If they replace with the same thing, once you put the drive back in Windows probably won't make any fuss about it, though it might install new Monitor Drivers if there is a version change. Could also enable a password/pin for Windows Boot as the simple method, because depending on the laptop model, getting it apart to pull the drive could be just a few screws or screws, tabs, keyboard, ribbon cable and the like. If it has it you could even enable a BIOS password.
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Nov 26, 2022 04:24
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Hughmoris posted:Are there any precautionary measures they can take in Windows 11 to protect their files/data residing on the laptop, in case a PC tech snoops around? Or should I backup their files, delete, then do a fresh install of Windows before dropping it off? Funny enough someone just did a study on this: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/11/half-of-computer-repairs-result-in-snooping-of-sensitive-data-study-finds/ If the drive isn't encrypted your only good options to prevent someone looking at your stuff are pulling the drive, formatting, or encrypting the sensitive data. Someone can always boot from an external USB stick. And as that article found many places demand the password for booting the PC.
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Nov 26, 2022 04:52
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Klyith posted:Funny enough someone just did a study on this: Yeeeesh. I'm not going to attempt pulling the drive. I'll see if I can back up her stuff on an external drive and wipe before dropping it off. I think that article confirms what a lot of IT workers (and probably non-IT) suspect about dropping off devices for repair.
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Nov 26, 2022 05:26
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You could set up a guest account and give it access to basically nothing on the system, that might be sufficient?
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Nov 26, 2022 13:58
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Doctor_Fruitbat posted:You could set up a guest account and give it access to basically nothing on the system, that might be sufficient? Against a couple minutes of casual poke-around by a mildly curious tech who finishes repairing the system and boots it up, maybe. Against anyone who wants to snoop on your poo poo, no. Again if someone has a boot stick they can see anything on your hard drive that isn't encrypted. If the system was set up with bitlocker whole-disk encryption, I think this might work. Bitlocker protects the drive, and then windows access permissions protect the other user's personal folders from a guest user. But it'd depend on how bitlocker was set up. I actually don't know an easy solution for this problem for non-technical users!
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Nov 26, 2022 14:45
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I access documents and pics folders on almost every computer I deal with, the reason is I need to look and see wtf has been going on. Most people have some viruses/malware in the download folder, along with oh say downloaded tax forms and whatever. It's similar to having a tradesman fix something in your house. They have to actually go into the house.
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Nov 26, 2022 16:24
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redeyes posted:I access documents and pics folders on almost every computer I deal with, the reason is I need to look and see wtf has been going on. Most people have some viruses/malware in the download folder, along with oh say downloaded tax forms and whatever. It's similar to having a tradesman fix something in your house. They have to actually go into the house. Well you sound like a lovely tech then. You don't need to look at people's poo poo to run a virus scan. And a customer getting a broken laptop screen replaced doesn't need a virus scan or to inspect anything in the OS. The only reason to ever open a customer's personal documents or pictures is data recovery, and even then you only need to look at the most top-level sample to make sure you have stuff intact. Otherwise there is no reason to open documents or look at a pictures folder. Put some sample word documents and pictures on a usb stick or something if you need to verify that a customer's software is working. A tradesman has to come into the house to fix the plumbing in the kitchen. They don't need to go up into the bedroom or look through the dresser drawers.
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Nov 26, 2022 16:45
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Hughmoris posted:Yeeeesh. I'm not going to attempt pulling the drive. I'll see if I can back up her stuff on an external drive and wipe before dropping it off. I think that article confirms what a lot of IT workers (and probably non-IT) suspect about dropping off devices for repair. I didn't mean to scare you off of pulling the drive. A number of modern laptops have gotten a lot friendlier to open. That said, if it is a cheap low-end model, they tend to still be in the "we're annoying to open and you might break a tab, oh there are also 3 hidden screws" boat. Really the best way to protect the data from someone snooping at it would be for it to not be there. So backup the drive (I'd image the thing and back up that image to something), wipe it, and send it along. They do not need windows installed to see if the new screen works. If you really want or you think they might bitch, take 15 minutes and toss windows on it. Straight pulling the drive, whether you put a spare in just to have Windows on it or not, would be the quickest way I'd bet. No having to wait for an image to be made and then copied.
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Nov 26, 2022 17:28
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Klyith posted:Well you sound like a lovely tech then. You don't need to look at people's poo poo to run a virus scan. And a customer getting a broken laptop screen replaced doesn't need a virus scan or to inspect anything in the OS. Read what I wrote again. Kthx.
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Nov 26, 2022 22:24
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When I did computer service I did my best to not open any documents or pictures on a machine I was working on, not just because I respect privacy but because I was traumatized enough by the poo poo people would put as their desktop background and there was no way I wanted to subject myself to other horrors they might have on their computer. I did generally get their passwords or blow out their existing passwords just to be able to install new drivers, security software, run long-overdue updates, and that kind of thing.
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Nov 26, 2022 22:38
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redeyes posted:I access documents and pics folders on almost … Some of you missing a key word here.
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Nov 27, 2022 00:36
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CaptainSarcastic posted:When I did computer service I did my best to not open any documents or pictures on a machine I was working on, not just because I respect privacy but because I was traumatized enough by the poo poo people would put as their desktop background and there was no way I wanted to subject myself to other horrors they might have on their computer. I did generally get their passwords or blow out their existing passwords just to be able to install new drivers, security software, run long-overdue updates, and that kind of thing. We had to get our boss to intervene with the lady who wouldn't change her  miscarried harlequin fetus wallpaper.
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Nov 27, 2022 00:40
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Heran Bago posted:We had to get our boss to intervene with the lady who wouldn't change her Oof. Worst I had was a brothel owner whose wallpaper was him and his Malaysian wife sig heiling.
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Nov 27, 2022 01:12
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Kalman posted:Some of you missing a key word here. I don't get the purpose of the reply in that case. Yes a PC tech may need to boot up windows and log in to your account to fix some problems. No duh. That's not what anyone here was talking about. In that article where researchers found that techs were snooping, they were running a windows logging tool that recorded in detail what the techs did. It wasn't just "access" to run a virus scan or whatever. They were opening & viewing, sometimes copying, people's private files. That's not ok. CaptainSarcastic posted:I was traumatized enough by the poo poo people would put as their desktop background and there was no way I wanted to subject myself to other horrors they might have on their computer. Lol. Way back I did IT for college students, and the number of times I had to turn off the desktop background or whatever when I had people's PCs in my office... Jesus christ, if you want hardcore porn as your desktop go for it, but maybe turn it off before you give your PC to a stranger. The funniest one was that a guy who brought in his PC because it was constantly crashing. I get the thing set up while working on 2 things at once, and it starts showing a NSFW tits & rear end screensaver that I have to disable. Do the usual, run various software, try to make it crash, nothing. Clean bill of health, give it back. He brings it back, says it's still crashing all the time. I am now looking for weird hardware problems, can't find anything wrong. So I set the thing to just idle for a while because it supposedly crashes even when he's not using it. I again turn off the T&A screensaver. Nothing happens. Hmmmm. I turn the T&A screensaver back on and put a folder over the monitor to hide it. Half an hour later I look behind the folder and it's bluescreened. vvv edit: I had to turn poo poo like that off because I worked on a college campus in a mixed non-IT office. There were other staff who might need to talk to me at any time, porn on desktops wasn't an option. Klyith fucked around with this message at 02:22 on Nov 27, 2022 |
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Nov 27, 2022 01:50
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I honestly didn't care that much about whatever hardcore they had on their screens due to having previously worked at a place where we would tubgirl and goatse and thewillpower.org and lemonparty and calamari each regularly, mainly while the victim as stuck on a support call, but my workshop was viewable by the public and I didn't really need any more German scat porn or aggressive gay BDSM stuff seared into my brain. One time there was a folder which kind of suggested it was CSAM stuff and I struggled with the ethics of finding out for sure and reporting it to the cops versus the privacy violation of digging into a private folder that could be benign, not to mention the chance of seeing poo poo I really didn't want to see. I mean, my job was to fix what they had screwed up, not go all detective on everyone's machine. I still feel iffy on that one, like whether I made the right ethical choice, but that's just the kind of thing that led me to trying to just not be aware of private material on laptops. I'd access the least amount of content possible in order to perform the service or repair I needed to accomplish, and just hope that somebody didn't give my something with mycrimes.txt sitting front and center. One thing I had to a lot in those days was to remove the 9000 toolbars they had managed to install in their browsers, and uninstall the malware-laden custom cursors my customers seemed so fond of cramming into their machines.
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Nov 27, 2022 02:14
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I knew a guy in college whose laptop had a lock screen with an anime schoolgirl succubus. When you logged in, a chipmunk-like voice said something in Japanese that I was told translated to "welcome back, master." I heard it was seen in that state by IT at least once.
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Nov 27, 2022 03:51
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Please dont bring your PC to best buy for repair, the store who's slogan should be "Where people who know nothing about tech get ripped off or employed" Screen replacements are pretty easy for laptops.
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Nov 27, 2022 03:58
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Couple of weeks ago the CEO's assistant gave me an assortment of old external drives, looking for an archive of his family photos. First one I checked was nothing but celebrity nudes from the iCloud hack years ago.
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Nov 27, 2022 04:20
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codo27 posted:Please dont bring your PC to best buy for repair, the store who's slogan should be "Where people who know nothing about tech get ripped off or employed" I think they have gotten better now, but back in those days I had a customer bring in a desktop that had a "new" HDD installed at Best Buy that wasn't working right. I tear the machine open and it's a clearly used proprietary drive from a different manufacturer than the PC the customer had. Like an HP-branded HDD put in a Dell. The drive was obviously not new, was failing, and they had lied to the customer about the work done. The jumpers might have been set wrong, too, but my memory is hazier on that point. I think I wrote this stuff out for them to take it back and demand the original contracted work be done.
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Nov 27, 2022 06:40
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Considering there's plenty of tools like True-/VeraCrypt and such, why people don't hide their porn collections (of whatever nature) out of principle in an encrypted container, I don't understand. VHDX and Bitlocker is even built into Windows and it's dynamically expanding. Back when I still responded to support requests from friends and acquaintances, exactly no one did anything like that. And yeah, at some point I had to squint at things, since it often involved going with a wire brush over the disk contents while maintaining "important" data. (Hell, these containers even improve portability of data by a lot, since it seems so important.)
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Nov 27, 2022 10:59
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CaptainSarcastic posted:I think they have gotten better now, but back in those days I had a customer bring in a desktop that had a "new" HDD installed at Best Buy that wasn't working right. I tear the machine open and it's a clearly used proprietary drive from a different manufacturer than the PC the customer had. Like an HP-branded HDD put in a Dell. The drive was obviously not new, was failing, and they had lied to the customer about the work done. The jumpers might have been set wrong, too, but my memory is hazier on that point. I think I wrote this stuff out for them to take it back and demand the original contracted work be done. I regret to inform you that best buy has not gotten better. I still occasionally see stories of people who have been charged $100 for best buy to look at their PC and say nah to even very simple repairs, or people who have had botched repairs by them.
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Nov 27, 2022 14:00
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barnold posted:I've enabled my AMD fTPM and it does show up in Windows as 2.0, but I still don't pass the PC Health check. I think it's because my system has the CSM compatibility on and isn't booting in UEFI mode. But if I toggle UEFI Only in my BIOS, my PC doesn't boot to Windows and only boots back into the BIOS. I'm guessing I hosed this up and installed Windows in non-UEFI mode back when I built this rig so the machine doesn't know where the UEFI partition is but I don't really know how to fix it. Any ideas? Boot to the recovery environment, so hold shift while doing a restart. In recovery run the command prompt and try and convert the drive via mbr2gpt /convert
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Nov 27, 2022 16:41
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Combat Pretzel posted:Considering there's plenty of tools like True-/VeraCrypt and such, why people don't hide their porn collections (of whatever nature) out of principle in an encrypted container, I don't understand. VHDX and Bitlocker is even built into Windows and it's dynamically expanding. Back when I still responded to support requests from friends and acquaintances, exactly no one did anything like that. And yeah, at some point I had to squint at things, since it often involved going with a wire brush over the disk contents while maintaining "important" data. (Hell, these containers even improve portability of data by a lot, since it seems so important.) I can't speak for anyone else, but my porn lives in a subfolder in my user folder titled "porn" because I'm not a teenager anymore scared mom will find the stash. I don't use repair services, but if I did anyone who went snooping would get stricken blind like they deserve. Blue Footed Booby fucked around with this message at 17:23 on Nov 27, 2022 |
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Nov 27, 2022 17:16
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So I just found out windows 11 just sets every folder to read only when my emulators and roms would just not run even when running it as administrator.. goddamnt. Fixed it on one end by changing the permissions on d drive where the install is, but now when game saves or does any other state that changes documents in the user/documents/'game name' folder it crashes.
ughhhh fucked around with this message at 02:58 on Nov 28, 2022 |
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Nov 28, 2022 02:51
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You need to open the security center, you ought to be getting notifications about system file access being blocked. You can allow it there. Blame the 95% of users out there that ain't know poo poo and need this to protect them from themselves.
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Nov 28, 2022 13:59
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Yeah that sounds like an antivirus/cryptolocker heuristic kicking in and blocking access.
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Nov 28, 2022 14:14
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  (loving finally, because that's one habit I can't get rid of.)
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Nov 29, 2022 22:25
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redeyes posted:Boot to the recovery environment, so hold shift while doing a restart. In recovery run the command prompt and try and convert the drive via mbr2gpt /convert i appreciate the effort but i solved this issue approximately 1 year and 5 months ago, which would be shortly after i originally made that post
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Nov 30, 2022 00:25
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\m/
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Nov 30, 2022 00:46
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Is anyone noticing random applications getting 'stuck' or just closing by themselves on 22H2? Im experiencing it on a few of my computers.
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Nov 30, 2022 16:17
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No apps get stuck, but the taskbar seems to fall asleep every now and then and doesn't launch apps, including the start menu and those little mini-control-menus like volume.
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Dec 1, 2022 07:30
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Combat Pretzel posted:
I normally use the keyboard shortcut but if that's not possible on like a touchscreen or I just have the mouse for whatever reason, that's the easiest way to do it. Pretty mind-boggling that they "simplified" the context menu on the most prominent UI element to the point of uselessness.
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Dec 1, 2022 08:37
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Combat Pretzel posted:
killer app confirmed (I have also been cursing Microsoft every time I right click on the taskbar and have to try again with the start button) e: Doccykins posted:Mildly irritating that you can't just right click anywhere on the taskbar to get a menu with task manager anymore, you have to right click on the Windows icon to get the Win+X menu. Just a headsup for anyone else who has to reprogram their muscle memory whilst computer janitoring
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Dec 1, 2022 19:49
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Blue Footed Booby posted:I can't speak for anyone else, but my porn lives in a subfolder in my user folder titled "porn" because I'm not a teenager anymore scared mom will find the stash. I don't use repair services, but if I did anyone who went snooping would get stricken blind like they deserve. You chump. Mine goes under "notporn" which should fool anyone. Also for all the tech schlubs who feel the need to look through actual files for viruses by hand, please don't fib. When I work on older friends or relatives machines or phones I make very sure not to know anything I don't need to know because that could actually make me liable should anything go wrong later with phishing and identity theft and lawd knows they know it's common. Hardware replacement shouldn't require any knowledge and liability and data recovery and the like should come with standard caveats to change all passwords after the fact. Setting up a new machine means the new password is written on a sticky note that says u/n: Bob p/w: changeme! with explicit instructions. In any possible instance do not learn their passwords or view their files. Peep not through keyholes. But enjoy your time at the Geek Squad working your way up to the Stereo Hut.
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Dec 2, 2022 03:29
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BaldDwarfOnPCP posted:When I work on older friends or relatives machines or phones I make very sure not to know anything I don't need to know because that could actually make me liable should anything go wrong later with phishing and identity theft WTF? How does that work? Do you often get blamed for phishing and identity theft?
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Dec 2, 2022 06:10
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CaptainSarcastic posted:WTF? How does that work? Do you often get blamed for phishing and identity theft? What, me, no? But a lot of times people don't know how it happens so in order to protect myself I work with them and let them know what I'm doing and what they need to do. What not to tell others. Questions I don't ask and remind them not to answer to relative strangers. I do this as charity to family friends because I am one of those sickos who likes helping out old people with tech problems but I don't want it coming back on me. It's the appearance of guilt. If I know their PII and don't tell them what they need to do to protect themselves against well, the helpful people at microsort who call them on the phone how do I know they won't lash out at me? Basically I want to know as little as possible, ask them to enter passwords while I look away, etc. I really like that iPads and phones use biometrics and would like to be more helpful about teaching 2FA as well but there is only so much you can do. e: some of them get frustrated easily even when it's just teaching them to sort their photo albums and whatnot and you have to know when to give up
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Dec 2, 2022 06:28
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wtf is this I updated windows, and now my task manager looks like this. I have windows set to dark mode but apps set to light mode. task manager used to launch in light mode, but it seems a recent update changed that (but only for task manager; every other windows app is still in light mode) But also, is this really how the dark mode is even supposed to look? it's terrible
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Dec 2, 2022 15:43
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the text is supposed to be all white in dark mode, i guess microsoft never tested what happens if you mix dark windows with light apps
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Dec 2, 2022 15:50
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Is "dark mode but apps set to light mode" even something you can do by default? Edit: It is.
Criss-cross fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Dec 2, 2022 |
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Dec 2, 2022 22:23
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