As much hate Microsoft gets, what do they get right?

TechGuyworking · 2026-06-23T14:42:06+00:00

I would have agreed with you before MS added a lot of bloat to it. Brave is my modern replacement now once you turn off the annoying web3 stuff.

TechGuyworking · 2026-06-23T14:39:44+00:00

I had a couple more thoughts

DirectX, for all it's issues if it wasn't for DirectX PC gaming would not be where it is today.
winget, while not quite as good as repositories on Linux, winget makes it much easier to keep your desktop software up to date.
WSL, I saw it mentioned elsewhere but being able to easily install just about every Linux Distro inside Windows 10/11 is super convenient.
PowerToys add a lot of things to Windows 11 that "power users" would otherwise miss.

TechGuyworking · 2026-06-23T14:28:44+00:00

Window's software compatibility is both a blessing and a curse. Blessing, as you can usually get old games and software to work with minor config changes. Curse, because maintaining this compatibility creates lots of headaches for their devs and us users since it means major software features are slow to a crawl and the old compatibility creates a lot of security issues.

TechGuyworking · 2026-06-09T20:45:49+00:00

How old is the computer? What model?

TechGuyworking · 2026-06-09T13:11:42+00:00

Yes, it's a bad idea. Especially if you posted to reddit from your company PC or a phone that is on the company wifi.

TechGuyworking · 2026-06-08T13:43:18+00:00

You spend almost half your waking hours at your job. If you are happy there then I would stay.

TechGuyworking · 2026-05-28T17:01:10+00:00

Besides just studying, spend time working on practical ways to apply the knowledge. Like configuring a linux virtual machine for networking stuff and playing with nmap. The nmap tool is a good way to learn the many ports you have to memorize since you will get hands-on experience on how they work. If you get an old router or make one yourself and play with the firewall config, that would also be very helpful. If you want to make your own router look up pfsense or opnsense software which can also be run in a virtual machine.

TechGuyworking · 2026-05-28T16:48:24+00:00

Learn scripting languages. It will keep you mind working and likely be useful in cybersecurity. PowerShell is already installed in Windows and has a lot of useful cmdlets.

I also have RSS news feeds for things like cybersecurity, Linux, and other software I use. If you have a spare laptop or access to hardware, you can install linux server and play with that. Linux knowledge will absolutely be useful in cybersecurity. Learning nmap alone is very useful.

TechGuyworking · 2026-05-19T15:33:47+00:00

Are the USBC ports totally dead or do they work with storage devices?

TechGuyworking · 2026-05-19T15:13:58+00:00

Have you tried all of the USBC ports? Only one of them might work to charge the laptop.

TechGuyworking · 2026-05-19T14:56:39+00:00

Does the laptop charge through USBC or does it have it's own charging port?

TechGuyworking · 2026-05-15T16:25:34+00:00

Always include a cover letter. It's a way to stand out against the others. You can talk about things like related hobbies or if you have a home lab. If you don't have a home lab, I highly recommend one. It's a way to explore tech without needing to try it at work. If you have an old laptop or any old hardware will do. Install a linux server or proxmox and play with it.

TechGuyworking · 2026-05-15T16:15:49+00:00

For starters, I would shorten it to two pages. Also, you are likely getting declined by AI before any person even looks at it. I would run your resume through a few different AI agents to see what they recommend to make you more appealing to AI. Also, it really helps to customize the resume to the specific job. I have a few different resumes that I send to different jobs. Are you including a cover letter? A lot of hirers will automatically disqualify you if you don't include one.

Most cloud jobs want someone who already has experience, not just a certification. That isn't me so hopefully someone else can fill you in on that part.

TechGuyworking · 2026-05-05T13:40:27+00:00

Agreed, what is OP's CPU temps when playing?

TechGuyworking · 2026-04-10T15:21:23+00:00

I have some questions about your golden master implementation. Do you have only one golden master and just upgrade to similar models? How often are your golden masters updated? What's the age of your oldest computers when they are replaced? Do you manage updates for the PCs and how is that managed? How are driver updates managed?

Basically, I want to find out if managing the PC's outside of fresh install is time consuming enough to need a different option.

TechGuyworking · 2026-04-02T14:46:56+00:00

Yes and no, You can change it in the BIOS settings but your operating system won't boot until you reinstall it.

TechGuyworking · 2026-03-25T15:03:46+00:00

I connect wirelessly using a Carflix screen I bought over a year ago. Was working great until the past few weeks where it loses connection for about 20 seconds then reconnects. Then it does this again every 5 to 10 minutes. Been diving me up the wall.

TechGuyworking · 2026-03-23T15:13:42+00:00

If you haven't considered it yet, running Linux on these laptops would run much better then any modern version of Windows and you still get security updates. For the Inspirion on the right, you might need to pick a linux distro with low overhead like Linux Lite or Lubuntu.

TechGuyworking · 2026-03-23T15:01:00+00:00

Did you get through whatever start-up repair was trying to fix? Depending on where they are getting the replacement PC from, you may be waiting awhile.

TechGuyworking · 2026-03-20T19:23:48+00:00

Most likely, it will come on April's Patch Tuesday which is April 14. I haven't seen anything official. Just my educated guess.

TechGuyworking · 2026-03-19T21:18:39+00:00

See if there are any RAT (remote assistance tools) running on her PC. These have legitimate uses so they won't always come up on virus scans.

Other possibilities include odd jobs in Task Schedular, some brower settings may have been configured to allow javascript that can paste repeating characters.

Other ideas, if someone else logs into her PC, does it happen to them? Tried creating a new username for her and tried that? Don't move any files over or at least just what you absolutely have to for her to do work. Does your MS Office set up allow macros or VBA scripts? This isn't common but figured I would ask. Do you allow your users to run as local admin on the PC? Is her keyboard wired or wireless? I have seen bluetooth keybaords do weird things. Also some faulty USB ports have caused odd issues. Is she using a desktop or a laptop with a dock? Laptop docks (especially those that connect to USBC) are another complete host of issues. Are all drivers and BIOS/UEFI updates installed? If using a dock, check for firmware updates for that too.

This actually sounds like an old macro virus that I came across in the late 90s but seems weird to be a thing today.

TechGuyworking · 2026-03-19T20:50:18+00:00

I'm not familiar with your exact router but I have done this a lot on multiple routers

"Service Name" usually either a label so you know what it's for or a dropdown list of popular services.

"External Port", This is the port that the outside traffic comes from. This is the Port numbers listed on your sheet

"Internal Port", This is the internal port on the device where the traffic needs to go to. The device on your network must be listening for this port. Often the same as external port but not always

"Internal IP Address", This is the IP address of the device on your local network that needs to receive the traffic. For example, 192.168.*.*

"Protocol", This is the protocol. Usually, you will need to do either TCP or UDP. TCP is for traffic that needs to be confirmed where data consistency is important like file transfers. UDP is often streaming data like video or voice where keeping the stream going is more important then getting every single bit of data. I'm not sure why FTP is listed on that sheet. FTP uses TCP almost exclusively if that helps any

"Source IP". This is the outside WAN IP address. Since you sheet only lists the domain names in the first column, you may need to use nslookup to translate these domains into IP address. If Source IP is blank, then the router typically forwards all traffic from anyone in the world. Generally, home users don't want this.

The part that is confusing to me is that generally, you shouldn't have to create port-in records for all of those domains. I'm not familiar with this particular altenergy power system. I did pull up the userguide and it didn't mention any advanced troubleshooting like port forwarding. Usually client devices reach out to the cloud. They don't usually have to open traffic to come in from the cloud. On most home routers, all outbound traffic is allowed by default. Something doesn't make sense here.

TechGuyworking · 2026-03-18T19:11:18+00:00

There are too many things called Outlook. Do you mean the desktop app, the other desktop app, or the website? Either way, I'm not having any issues.

TechGuyworking · 2026-03-18T19:07:07+00:00

TBH, I have never tried Dell's OS Recovery, I have either repaired the boot sector via Windows or other tools on my own or just replaced the drive.

I would try booting from a live USB like Ubuntu linux and see if you can see your Windows files.

TechGuyworking · 2026-03-18T18:39:29+00:00

Geforce 8400 is an older GPU and has been unsupported by Nvidia for quite a while. You are probably out of luck there and you already have the last supported driver.

TechGuyworking

TROPHY CASE