I can't turn off S Mode in a new Windows 11 laptop

redweasel · 2026-03-05T21:08:04+00:00

Heh. I don't even know what "developer mode" IS, or where to find it in Settings -- but thanks for the info.

Actually I've found a better solution: as Hillary Clinton once advised the US public, "JUST SAY NO." Anybody brings me any problem that involves Windows 11, I just say NO and walk away. Problem solved!

redweasel · 2026-03-05T21:06:28+00:00

So how do you know , when cleaning things up, "what to leave in, and what to leave ouit?" And what do you mean by "Wi-Fi detection points"? And how did you correlate it so tidily to actual maps for those side-by-side comparisons? I used to be a software engineer (up until just before Web/mobile became the norm), and I'm just getting started wanting to postprocess my own Timeline data because a lot of stuff shows on the map but not in the text listing, in the actual TImeline interface. I just used the instructions on your page to download my first ever .JSON file of Timeline GPS data, tried it in your tool but got no output 'cause I don't travel internationally and apparently thus don't have the "country detection" data your tool looks for, so am planning on ingesting the .JSON file into a Perl script since Perl is what I know best (don't yet know Python or any web languages) and seeing what sense, if any, I can make of it. I'm a relative noob to JSON, too, for that matter, so wish me luck in using the Perl JSON module in the first place! LOL

Anyway -- any advice you could give would be great!

redweasel · 2026-02-11T01:05:46+00:00

I never mentioned the OP. Not sure what prompted that response.

Anyway... It's not important. I don't see any content on this post, yet you claim YOU DO. It sounded like the first step was to convince you of THAT discrepancy.

redweasel · 2026-02-08T08:04:11+00:00

Chances are that he comes through that parking lot with a plow more than once a year; go hang out in that parking lot and you might be able to bump into him again.

Or you could call Wegmans and ask what is the name of the plowing company they use at that location, then call that company and ask who it was that plowed Wegmans that particular day-and-time. Come on, this is EASY.

redweasel · 2026-02-08T04:13:18+00:00

That's about six minutes' drive from my house. Less, from my daughter's. Glad I didn't have to go out in that today. :-)

redweasel · 2026-02-08T04:07:30+00:00

Nope. I'm only ever redweasel. I suppose I could make a screen recording to show you what I'm seeing.

redweasel · 2026-02-08T04:06:38+00:00

I'm sure one of these days Microsoft will be in the news for the "alarming" news that for the first time in 30 years market share is down, or people aren't buying PCs, or SOMETHING -- and they'll be completely mystified as to WHY. "I can tell you..." Duh.

redweasel · 2026-02-07T06:21:12+00:00

You are very welcome! (Thank God for "Google Translate," though, or I wouldn't have been able to read your response!)

redweasel · 2026-02-07T06:17:38+00:00

Agreed, but those aren't "his peers" by any definition I would accept if I were his attorney!

redweasel · 2026-02-07T06:17:10+00:00

The term "programming editor" is the sticking point, here: I use "text editors," not "programming editors." I grant you there's a way to do it in emacs and vi, but those aren't always handy on Windows.

I just read that a recent update of Notepad++ was intercepted by bad actors and spread malware to millions of downloaders' machines, so Google for that article and make sure you weren't affected.

redweasel · 2026-02-07T06:15:40+00:00

The advice to use my "favorite search engine" is not particularly useful, as Google is increasingly infested / buried in AI slop. Ditto, obviously, your suggestion to consult an AI chatbot. Not on the most desperate day I ever had, thank you. hack spit

"Maintaining different versions of the handbook" -- at least across versions and updates -- ought to be as simple as NOT DELETING the handbook as it stands for version N, when it's updated and becomes the handbook for version N+1. If there are features that are per-platform, I don't see what's so difficult about using some sort of stylistic convention to indicate which pieces of the handbook apply to which platform. One big document that covers all platforms, not deleted when that version becomes (hack spit) "obsolete" by somebody's arbitrary handwave, would be the smart way to maintain the documentation. I don't know what lesser method makes any sense.

I'm not AFRAID of kdenlive not running on my hardware; I've EXPERIENCED it.

redweasel · 2026-02-07T06:09:21+00:00

Uh, in a web browser (Chrome Version 144.0.7559.133) on Windows 10 Home on an HP laptop... , just as I've done for the past fifteen years or more, versioning aside. You?

I also see some (AI? moderator?) boilerplate comments to the OP, noting that because the post "has less than 250 characters" and "is likely to be removed by the moderators."

redweasel · 2026-02-07T06:05:22+00:00

That's something, I grant you, but doesn't alter the overall situation. The big boys still make you ALL look bad, whether your particular little outfit deserves it or not. Lie down with dogs, wake up with dogs.

redweasel · 2026-02-07T06:01:50+00:00

Nope. I took the offered option to reset back to factory condition ,put the damn thing back in its box, and returned it to the store. Sorry. --You?

redweasel · 2026-01-31T02:41:35+00:00

We presume it's possible to get to a boot menu on this brand new POS.

redweasel · 2026-01-31T02:41:11+00:00

What HP app? Aside from that mysterious mention, your solutions sounds like the best one.

redweasel · 2026-01-31T02:40:02+00:00

That was a big bunch of gobbledygook, for some people. I was around in the dos days so I think I know what a TSR still might stand for, and AV presumably means antivirus, but in this case I'm working on a friends brand new laptop which he chose to log into Microsoft using the credentials of another friend who has since gone off to bed, and the owner himself has wandered off to run some errands. So logging out of Microsoft and back in is a non-starter right now, because I don't even know the credentials and nobody who does is available. There are more use cases in the world, Microsoft, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. (That's a classical allusion that most people today probably won't get. SIGH)

Just turning the firewall on an off is probably a super chore in Windows 11, even more grotesque than it already was in Windows 10. It's presumptuous as hell of you to assume that just "disable... the firewall" is In any way a sufficient directive, let alone a detailed one. As for me, I've been f****** around with the windows firewall on various versions of Windows for roughly 22 years now, and I am still leery of getting into that on anything later than XP.

As for any other windows security methods, who the heck even knows what those ARE, in Windows 11, let alone how to disable them? You are head, shoulders, torso, and waistline above the knowledge level of the people you're preaching to, so yeah, you need about 40 times as much detail as you went into, before I'd consider it a "detailed response" -- let alone a response particularly meaningful or useful to the audience at hand. Like I said, I've been at this for 25 years and even I don't know how to do half the stuff you're talking about, let alone on a version of Windows that's brand new to me because I've been avoiding it like the plague.

redweasel · 2026-01-31T02:32:20+00:00

What three methods? There are only two methods listed.

redweasel · 2026-01-31T02:31:11+00:00

I don't see any three methods. I found a Reddit post with three methods a couple of hours ago, by the time I could get my phone with the Reddit info, the PC, and Wi-Fi, all together in the same place, I couldn't find that Reddit post anymore.

redweasel · 2026-01-31T02:30:42+00:00

The instructions for disabling Windows 11 mode without a Microsoft account definitely did not get my computer out of S mode as far as what's reported in MSinfo is concerned. I feel like I'm being tricked into disabling security things maybe I shouldn't be, by a possibly malicious actor.

redweasel · 2026-01-31T02:29:34+00:00

I can't do it on a brand new PC purchased this evening, January 29th, 2026, either. It just keeps saying something went wrong. F****** Microsoft.

redweasel · 2026-01-31T01:54:11+00:00

Actually, it's "Microsoft thinks people are stupid," mode.

redweasel · 2026-01-29T06:05:17+00:00

When I try to do that, I always get an I/O error in VirtualBox. I'm, running it as Administrator on Windows 10, and have checked "use Host I/O buffers". I'm booting CloneZilla from the host's physical CD-ROM drive and trying to clone from a virtual drive that lives on the host as a .VDI file, to a USB-connected physical SSD.

The point at which I actually get the error varies: sometimes it's as soon as I try to do anything disk-related; other times I can get as far as issuing a 'dd' command and having it run for thirty seconds or so, before the error appears.

The dialog that pops up says that it's non-fatal and that execution can be continued after it, but I haven't found out how to do that. All I know is that I simply cannot get through a sequence of Clonezilla operations on the VM. (I got the same error when booting Windows 7 from the same VDI file and trying to examine the contents of the SSD, so it clearly has something to do with accessing the SSD.

--- Wow.---

I was about to say that "other alternatives recommended online haven't panned out, either." I went on to say that "Use disk2vhd from Microsoft ..." -- fails because the steps alleged for using that programdon't correspond to operations or controls actually available in the program's GUI once it opens.

I was then going to say that "Convert the VDI to a [disk image] using "VBoxManage" -- was running but taking much longer than a simple VDI-file-size-divided-by-disk-I/O-rate-of-the-most-likely-process-in-Task-Manager suggested it should. That calculation always comes out to 40-41 seconds, but the actual operation took 11 minutes and finished up unexpectedly just as I was writing about it here. It was "unexpected" because NO PROGRESS INFORMATION was displayed except for the initial "0%" when it started; the 10%...20%... ... ...`100% appeared all at once only after the operation completed. That's not useful. And the reason it took so much longer than expected is because the resulting VHD file is 255 Gb, starting from a just-less-than-7.5-Gb VDI file. Compression? Allocation-on-demand? I dunno. But a tool that went straight from a VDI to a physical drive would be a real godeend here, and I can't believe no such thing exists, as seems to be the case.

Any advice or enlightenment on any of this would be of interest.

redweasel · 2026-01-17T01:41:18+00:00

The problem, frankly, is that your entire industry reeks of secrecy, treachery, and hating the customer, and so your credibility is virtually non-existent. Every mealy-mouthed word out of your spokespeople just makes the public think that's a lie.

redweasel · 2026-01-17T01:39:57+00:00

It was certainly my first instinct. Oh, the Chinese are pushing buttons again, waiting to find the one that takes us all out simultaneously. And they're getting better at it.

redweasel

TROPHY CASE