Back in January Microsoft encrypted all my hard drives without saying anything. I was playing around with a dual boot yesterday and somehow aggravated Secureboot. So my C: panicked and required a 40 character key to unlock.

Your key is backed up to the Microsoft account associated with your install. Which is considerate to the hackers. (and saved me from a re-install) But if you’ve got an unactivated copy, local account, or don’t know your M$ account credentials, your boned.

Control Panel > System Security > Bitlocker Encryption.

BTW, I was aware that M$ was doing this and even made fun of the effected users. Karma.

  • Fluffy Kitty CatEnglish
    12•10 days ago

    I had an Intel Chromebox that I ran galliumOS on. The problem is locked bootloaders which should be illegal

    • Eugene V. Debs' GhostEnglish
      4•9 days ago

      If my Chromebook could run Linux or even pure Android, I’d probably use it way more often. But it being a locked down distro with android bolted on is useless to me.

      • I can’t really do anything major on it that I can on a cheap laptop
      • I can’t really use it for the same games or programs on Android, as the form factor really gets in the way, even in tablet mode.

      It feels like the worst of both worlds. It’s fine for people who use a laptop/OS as a bootloader to a web browser, its not fine for weirdos like me.

      • Fluffy Kitty CatEnglish
        4•9 days ago

        Funny thing is that a cheap netbook has stats that would be fine for anything we did in the 90’s maybe even some games too

        • Eugene V. Debs' GhostEnglish
          2•9 days ago

          The Chromebook I have, is overall fine. It runs ChromeOS pretty well, and most web pages don’t make me beg for more RAM or CPU. ChromeOS does a fine job, to the point I wonder if I ran Arch or something on it, it’s a crapshoot.

          I think most laptops these days, even the cheap ones, are probably fine when you run a light OS on em. I’ve used computers that were 10 years old and ran most things decently well.

        • Eugene V. Debs' GhostEnglish
          1•8 days ago

          I tried, doesn’t work. There’s no documentation for my laptop or its board codename. I briefly got it to consider an Arch Linux ARM ISO but it just looped an error code on boot until you turned it off.

    • @KeenFlame@feddit.nu
      2•9 days ago

      I have never bought a device I could not own completely and flash the rom with what I want. Except once I had iPhone 3 but it was easily jail broken, but I still feel dirty. How can someone think they own and control something I bought? There is something fundamentally wrong with that and I agree it should be illegal

      • Fluffy Kitty CatEnglish
        2•8 days ago

        Agreed. It’s unacceptable that things have gotten this.had. we need to fight back