To its credit (of which there is little), Windows can handle most things these days just fine without externally obtained drivers. Gradually improving since 7 onwards. The only sore spots really are proper gfx drivers and printers. 10 and beyond will also gracefully handle being drive-swapped into completely different hardware.

If it’s a reinstall, activation is automatic for OEM licences.

Step 4, yes, what a shitshow. Way too many hoops and hurdles to go through just to get a functional OS without the bloat and guff.

Rock on :)

Confirmed issue, just gave it a test.

Adding the uBlock Origin extension to Tor Browser will resolve it and make the links proper again.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/

Working fine for me on Mullvad.

I’ve got it covered :) - whole duplicate set of hardware & drive image. Recapped the board last year & replaced PSU too.

I won’t touch the DOS software it uses to actually run the plant, the lads can have at that.

Design/machine people are a wholly different breed of user…

CS1.6, beige boxes, CRTs and sweat. A different time.

I am yet to see load bearing cat in person. Plenty time yet though!

When you tug the unusually weighted cable and you hear metal scraping in the wall 10 metres away 😬

Hope it wasn’t too much of an arse to fish out. Or did you let sleeping switches lie? :)

What rack, haha.

Stuffed in a corner, under a load of other crap, in a warren of dust bunnies. Main rack is in an adjacent office.

This one must be about 15 at least. Pre-dates me and I’ve been there for 13. Still functional so I’m at loathe to just sling it. Not fond of doing drops in such wonderful weather, in a building that is basically a dusty hot tin can. Wanted to do it properly though.

Just happy that on this side it’s my direct employer and only one site. I’ll have to do some more digging - I’m certain we have kit around even more legacy than this. The CNC lathe PC is y2k compliant…

It’s going straight in the “if you’re looking in here, you must be desperate” spares cupboard.

It was fast enough up until today even!

Factory setting (says it all really).

A CAD PC and a standard client used by the QC guy.

Server 08 isn’t a distant memory here though 😬

We shoulder-surfed a tech back in the 90s when he was getting us set up. Thus, the “HAHA FREE” dialup connection was born.

Gave years of service to our old beige box.

Whatever way you go for setting up the systems themselves, I’ve found dwservice.net to be perfect for accessing systems with only a browser.

The host component is Mac, Windows and Linux compatible. The clients need only an account at DW. Hosts tied to your own account can be shared with others.

Depending on host OS, you get screen, terminal and fire transfer access. Sessions are logged if you need to review who’s accessed what.

Free. Donation optional.

I condensed down from a power hungry tower server to a couple of thinkstations and a nas. Much nicer on the power.

🧠 + a few slapdash notes in a password manager. It’s very organic, very human.

Occasionally leads to situations like this.

On Dell server hardware with the right cards/licensing, you can remove the need for physical access to the server to input an FDE password by leaning on iDRAC. This provides access to the console remotely during the boot process (and thereafter).

Alternatives exist that supposedly do the same thing, but I’ve never had to try them. Airconsole, pikvm, blikvm etc.

You can keep this interface unexposed by using wireguard to dial in when you’re away, as per your original thinking. Just make sure the endpoint isn’t on the server you’re rebooting…

I love those little Lenovo boxes, also recommend.

Proxmox has also been good for me - great for just quickly spinning something up to play with before committing.