Hacker News Reader

Comment by dvratil | Hacker News Reader

Reminds me when about ten years ago, working in an all-Linux company there was an issue with some Lenovo docking stations. I don't recall anymore what the issue was exactly, just that something wouldn't work properly when you plugged in a laptop with Linux. The problem was solved by a firmware upgrade, but upgrading the docking station firmware was possible only from Windows. So there was this one poor person in IT who had to install Windows on a spare laptop and then everyone would bring their docking station to them to upgrade the firmware...

View on HN

That reminds me of an internal hard disk I had several years ago. I think it was a Seagate, but it might have been Western Digital. This was a retail drive bought at BestBuy, and the box specifically said that it worked with Windows, MacOS, and Linux, although it noted that their fancy add-on software only worked under Windows. No problem for me, because I didn't need the fancy add-on software.

A year later the drive developed some bad sectors. It was still under warranty so qualified for a free replacement. All I needed to do was get an RMA number and ship the drive to them.

But to get an RMA number you had to run their diagnostic software which, if it decided the drive really did have a problem, would issue the RMA number.

That diagnostic software was Windows only.

I ended up temporarily moving the drive to my Windows gaming box to run the diagnostic. I'm not sure what would have happened if I had been a purely MacOS and Linux household.

>I'm not sure what would have happened if I had been a purely MacOS and Linux household.

Passthrough to a VM, though I suppose the Windows license could be an issue.

You can download 180 day trials of Windows server from Microsoft, no license needed.

I don't know if this is changed with Window 11 but 10 and earlier let you go a while between installation and entering a license key, at least for the consumer editions, so licensing should not be a problem.

The big issue with a VM approach in this specific case was that this was before Macs switched to Intel processors. My Mac was had PowerPC.

A VM might have worked on my Linux machine, although my recollection is that back then (early 2000s) VM passthrough was not very sophisticated. I remember trying Windows VMs for a few firmware things that involved proprietary vendor commands and finding that it was hit and miss.

Actually, since Win 10 you can run the OS indefinitely without a license. It just doesn't allow you to customize stuff like the wallpaper etc.

Ref: https://www.howtogeek.com/244678/you-dont-need-a-product-key...

You can run Windows 7 indefinitely without a license, too.

You get a nag every now and then, and the desktop background keeps resetting to black. Can't remember if there's a watermark as well (10 has a watermark).

I had myself a hearty laugh recently when I was in Vegas and the casino elevator wall screen panels had the ACTIVATE WINDOWS banner overlaid on the videos.

I see pre built PCs come with free demo version of win11. They expect you to crack it yourself.

Microsoft stopped giving a shit about piracy from consumers. Its a far cry from the days when windows cost €300.

With all the ads they shove in your face you'd think they'd just make the OS free at this point.

Yeah my Ryzen CPU came with a free game but the only way to submit the form was to run some Windows tool.

I had to get the state consumer fraud bureau involved before AMD would honor their promotion.

Hah, I still remember that promo. Even on Windows, the tool was super flaky and often did not detect the hardware.

It's fair if the game is only for Windows

Not really, I beat it using Lutris on Linux.

I had same problem with failed Seagate HDD. They were asking me to use their Windows-only app to diagnose the problem.

I tried to explain that I use it with a NAS and I cannot install Windows on it just to do such diagnostics test. No luck to convince the support and I had to hack some pieces of old hardware together just to run that tool. Funny enough the tool was able to tell only something like "the drive is broken". I had a much more detailed report from NAS though, with details from SMART but that was not accepted. Basically they didn't believe me and asked for a confirmation from their tool, like it's more trustworthy.

Of course I'm not going to buy any Seagate after such experience.

I recently RMAd a Seagate Exos (their series designed for enterprise / data centers) recently and didn't have to run any tool or provide any details. I was using this one for my home NAS.

There may be a difference here between the consumer drives and the enterprise drives, or maybe they changed the system to not require it in any case now.

It was IronWolf Pro. I guess it's a business drive, but not an enterprise drive.

I was not an enterprise or even a business customer anyway, so they had that procedure. The process may change since that moment, I just checked it was in 2019. Maybe I should give them another try

I can't blame them. I'd imagine tons of people try to replace perfectly fine drives - "I can't find my spreadsheet so drive is bad" "Windows updates were slow so drive is bad" "I bricked my drive trying to install Linux on a NAS" etc etc.

At least those first two scenarios don't sound like people who'd think to provide SMART test data.

Windows shouldn't be a requirement for getting a faulty product replaced.

Hah, I know that pain. I'm optimistic about the future though. I recently installed Ubuntu on my new work laptop and soon after it offered to update the firmware of my Dell docking station. I was pleasantly surprised to see that.

Indeed things have improved massively in the past years. I think LVFS played a big role in that.

Windows PE/To Go has been a thing for a while now, it's a shame you can only make bootable Windows USB disks using the enterprise editions. Though Macrium Reflect (and possibly others) will let you make a USB "recovery disk" that might run the firmware update programs you'd like to run.

edit: Windows PE won't do .msi, but .exe should work: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufactur...

> it's a shame you can only make bootable Windows USB disks using the enterprise editions

I remember in the Windows XP era, there was a third-party piece of software called BartPE.

With BartPE you could create a preinstalled environment with WinXP Home even.

Here is a page someone wrote with some details about BartPE: http://www.optimizingpc.com/miscellaneous/manual_bartpe.html

Wikipedia:

> As with Windows Preinstallation Environment, BartPE operates by loading system registry files into RAM, and not writing any registry changes back to boot media. Thus, neither operating system requires an operational hard drive or network access. This also allows them to be run from non-writable media such as a CD-ROM.

> […]. The Bart PE Builder application interprets and condenses files from a Windows setup CD to create the BartPE installation. It can built from a Windows XP Pro or Home Edition CD, or from a preinstalled Windows XP version (without a CD).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BartPE

Yeah, I remember this, seems like Microsoft copied a good idea.

BartPE was inspired by what Microsoft had already done.

From the http://www.optimizingpc.com/miscellaneous/manual_bartpe.html page linked above:

> WinPE (Microsoft's tool Windows Preinstallation Environment) is used by system builders to install and configure the Windows operating system on new computers. WinPE is commercial software and only available for system builders. Bart Lagerweij saw the advantages of this tool and decided to develop his own PE, named BartPE.

I didn't know WinPE was that old. https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/...

I think WAIK also runs on other editions. But it's not a nice click UI.

Ah, that sounds like the level of Linux "support" that I'm used to from major manufacturers.

I ran into that on my T470s. The last ThinkPad I've owned and likely will own, for a variety of reasons. I used to be a die-hard Thinkpad guy.

In my case, I was the only one in the company with a Thinkpad, so my process for upgrading the docking station firmware was:

"dd" off my drive to another box. "dd" on the copy of the disc I had saved when I got the computer. Boot it and set it up. Run all the updates. "dd" my drive image back onto the box.

The company I'm at now prefers buying Dell, but I had special requested that Thinkpad. It was kind of disappointing. It had two batteries, which made it slim, but sometimes one of them would be flaky. But not reliably flaky, so sometimes it'd just power off, but most of the time both batteries reported tons of life. And the docking station was basically useless (don't remember the issues, I just never was able to get a satisfactory docking experience from it). It had the ultra high res screen and that was nice.

This, except I always buy a new SSD for my own use, then just swap the factory drive back when needed.

> Reminds me when about ten years ago ... but upgrading the docking station firmware was possible only from Windows.

For me, it was less than 10 days ago. The battery on my Thinkpad X1 (that has 5 years onsite warranty) stopped charging. I run Debian, and had got rid of the Windows partition entirely. They demanded a battery report from Windows. It took a long time, but I was able to convince them the report from their extended battery test in the BIOS saying the battery had failed sufficed, and the battery was replaced.

The new battery lasted about 1 month, then it developed the same fault. Same story - after a day worth of arguing, they agreed to replace the battery.

That battery lasted 3 days, then developed the same fault. The story went the same way, right up until they said they fix it by replacing the battery to which I responded "I don't think that's a good idea". (By this time I had developed suspicion the USB-C chipset was somehow killing the battery.) The next step was to replace the motherboard until I filed a Windows battery report. No amount of pleading "hey, you have a report from your own BIOS saying the battery is faulty, it doesn't charge while in the BIOS when no OS is running, and it should charge while off when _nothing_ is running - what possible influence could Windows have on this" worked.

They sent a link me what they said was a "live Windows" USB recovery drive. It was a Windows program. I was able to run it Windows in an kvm instance. It wasn't "live Windows" of course - it was a "wipe SSD with a fresh install of Windows" USB. Not being keen on wiping all my work and risking a backup not working, I bought a new SSD, and let it wipe that. It took about a wasted day (I'm a contractor) to install Windows, let it upgrade itself, and then install the latest Lenovo drivers for everything (which they insisted on), then run the battery report. During the time the laptop started freezing - but it turned out unplugging the 4K USB-C Philips monitor fixed that, adding more evidence to my theory the USB-C interface was on the way out.

The motherboard is scheduled to be replaced today. I'm betting they won't bring a battery and replace the one the USB-C chipset has killed. They go to all this trouble to provide good diagnostics in the firmware, and then don't train their staff to use it. I'm sometimes gob smacked by just how much time these companies cost themselves.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com