1746
It's the moment of truth: I have an OTG cable and have just booted up the other old tablet…
First OTG cable (from pack of three, obviously…) - does not charge through it, but works to connect USB device to tablet. Not good.
Second cable - same again.
Third cable - same shit.
Weird. I would have thought it would allow a USB device to connect OR charge, but to not charge AT ALL through the OTG cable is an unexpected behaviour.
That tablet can consider itself binned-off.
2127
BushNAS seemed ok, and works well for the most part… but I should have known it was too good to be true. After some time, and for no apparent reason, it just completely forgets the WiFi network. This means no sharing, and no remote desktop. I have to manually go to the tablet and restart it for the network to appear again. This is exactly as much use as a computer I need to turn on everytime I want to do any backing-up. This functionality has always been available and doesn't achieve the main purpose I set out to achieve at the start of this document.
Arse.
I have another tablet, also running Windows 10, which could serve the same purpose. Its limitation is USB: it only had a single microUSB socket for charging OR OTG connection. I've ordered a splitter cable, similar to one I used years ago for this purpose on a mobile phone, but I'm not holding out much hope as old forum posts I've found suggest these tablets can't charge & connect to other USB devices at the same time. It seems it is indeed charging OR OTG.
We'll see what happens when the cable arrives.
To do:
Test T60 again for comic reading.
Install Win10 IoT on old desktop
Deraid HDDs
Copy data from 5tb
Setup up network shares for all folders
Setup remote desktop
Test access from HP
Check power consumption
Check remote control range
WoL?
Use HP Stream as NAS…??
Attempt to block internet access
Bitlocker ext drive on Win10 and try on Win11 and vice-versa.
1812
The BushNAS project continues!
A mixed bag today. I began despondent and it took me a long time to get around to doing anything. As it turns out, the day went alright in the end.
No touchscreen, but that wasn’t expected, and the sound doesn’t work, probably due to a driver issue, but I don’t think I’ll need sound for this tablet’s intended use.
The big problem was the Bush tablet kept randomly powering off, which is such a massive flaw in a NAS. At first I thought there was a fundamental issue that would utterly derail the project and was about to give up on it and drag an old laptop off sale on eBay and back into service.
Not so fast, depressed person! Perhaps it’s just your defeatism talking.
Having used a Raspberry Pi or two for more than five minutes, perhaps my brain was subconsciously tuned to find a possible solution: the power. Checking the back of the tablet, it asked for an input of 5V 2.5A, whereas the PSU I was using was 2.1A. THERE’S YOUR PROBLEM. Tried a 2.4A supply: also powered off. Right, will a 3A supply suffice? It needed hacking a bit to solder on a micro USB connector instead of its barrel jack, but… it seems to work! Managed to do quite a few things and it didn’t power off.
Then there was a palaver with Gpedit: I needed to use it to get rid of the utterly pointless pre-password splash screen (imagine the collective amount of time wasted by millions of people having to dismiss that screen hundreds of times…)
I tried the process once, but the power situation arose during it and the system powered off. After that was sorted and everything was stable, I couldn't access Gpedit:
“Failed to open the group policy object. you might not have the appropriate rights.”
What??
A googling revealed this:
But when I followed the file path it suggested, it wasn't there. More googling led me here:
https://community.spiceworks.com/t/how-to-gain-access-to-gpedit-msc/670989
…and I felt like a right muppet because it was just that the folder I was looking for was hidden and I hadn't thought to check that. Amateur.
So, onto the NASing.
I used this page:
https://pureinfotech.com/setup-network-file-sharing-windows-10/
And followed the instructions for “using basic settings” which sounds right up my pathway.
And… it just worked. I was able to share a folder and have it appear on another computer on the network straightaway, which was VERY surprising, as a lot of my experience trying to do the same thing was much more difficult. For this to work over WiFi is a nice bonus.
Now, I’ll just find a suitable place for the BushNAS to live, along with the external HDD case. That’s connected to the tablet via a USB hub (funnily enough, the one that was formerly powered by the 3A PSU) and it’s all USB 2.0, but this NAS is about accessibility rather than speed.
A surprisingly successful day.
2004
Finally getting around to sorting a centralised NAS… in the cheapest way possible! An old Bush-branded tablet running Windows 10 connected to a 2TB drive in an external case. Gotta start somewhere.
In the interests of future-proofing, I'm working on moving all my machines to IoT for its super-longterm support.
The Big Box is done, as is one of the T410s. Hit a snag when trying it on the Bush tablet as it's 32-bit only, so had to make a new installation disk with an older version of Enterprise that is 32-bit. Hopefully I can convert it to IoT with the amazing [redacted] script program.
Using Driverpack solutions 16 to install some drivers, especially the WiFi. Frozen completely part way through this process, so did a hard reset.
Back in Windows, tried activation script without internet, just out of interest; no dice.
So Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC is activated, but because I had to install the older 32-bit version, the method on the [redacted] website to convert to IoT doesn't work, so no IoT for me. Oh well, LTSC is still better than the old Education version I was using.
Just for posterity, to convert LTSC onto IoT in future (e.g. after changing language), these are the keys:
Windows 10:
[redacted]
Windows 11:
[redacted]
Haven't tried Driverpack solutions again; it got me as far as having WiFi & Bluetooth so now I'm just going to trust to Windows update to install drivers. It would be weird if the touchscreen suddenly worked after all this; it never worked in windows 10 before.
Should I try installing Windows 11 on it…? Is there a 32-bit version?
(A few moments later.)
No, there is no 32-bit version of Windows 11, so the 2019 version of 32-bit Win10 LTSC with support until 2027 is the absolute latest version that will run on this Bush tablet. After that… Well, I just better get saving up for a proper NAS in the next three years!
2012
I was weak, and bought another mini PC… I nearly bought a different one, but in the end went for an identical model to the last one, for cross-compatibility & familiarity. It’s called a Trigkey Green G4 and offers a crazy amount of processing power for around £160.
It’s all part of, bizarrely, actually simplifying my computing life. I’ve sold four out of five Raspberry Pis, the WacMacWiniMini is gone, as is a crappy old Acer Aspire One, and three more old laptops are for sale on eBay, though noöne seems to be buying those. I’ll just lower the prices until they go. Getting all those machines ready for sale was a saga in itself, but not one I documented here, as there was A LOT. The only useful thing I remember was when trying to get into the BIOS on the HP laptop, I needed to have an external keyboard plugged in to press the key to get BIOS or boot menu. That’s by design, for some reason, which is just zarking stupid.
ANYWAY
The point of this mini PC is to have its guts removed and those guts placed into an also-gutted original Playstation chassis to be used as a retrogames emulator.. This was a project I started more than a decade ago; it was to be a Sonyberry Pistation (a name I was very proud of coining at the time) with a Raspberry Pi in the Playstation case. Having resolved to not faff around with Pis or Linux anymore, I’m just going to use a Windows PC. It will be far easier.
Well, it should be easier…
Windows 11 has a lot of annoying features which will have to be worked-around, or gotten used to, just like when I made the migration to Windows 10; it was painful, but I dealt with it.
One annoyance with Windows 11 is that older versions didn’t allow for Taskbar icons to remain uncombined and to show labels; this ‘feature’ (which should be default) didn’t appear until later versions when people, rightly, complained about it.
Well, these mini PCs come with an older version of Win11 (21H2) which DOESN’T have the taskbar options, so Windows needs updating to the latest version. I remember this happening on the first Trigkey I bought, months back, and posted on Reddit about it at the time, where people told me to update (even though Windows claimed it was up-to-date):
https://www.reddit.com/r/WindowsHelp/comments/1fgvz9y/missing_taskbar_behaviors_are_driving_me_mad/
I must have got it to work then (didn’t I…?) but this little PC just kept claiming it was up-to-date when it blatantly sodding wasn’t.
Back to Reddit.
I followed a link in one of the replies to Microsoft’s Windows 11 installation page:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows11/
Which seems like a dumbass way to go about getting updates.
Anyway, I went with the first option: download the Installation Assistant, cos I couldn’t be bothered to download the media and make a bootable USB. So lazy.
I began the procedure, and it ERRRRED with Error 0x8007007f. Back to Reddit? Yup:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/q1jisz/anyone_else_seeing_error_0x8007007f_when_trying/
It seems the consensus on a solution is to run the Assistant as admin, which shouldn’t be necessary, but hey, this is still easier than Linux!
IN OTHER NEWS
I’m rethinking the striped drive I made on the old massive box computer; I think I’ll unstripe it and just spread the backed-up data across the drives manually. It seems if something goes wrong with just one of the striped drives, all data is lost across all of them because they’re all in one volume: one dead disk = a whole dead volume.
Stupid sign-in options: something on this page worked:
1551
Downsizing: that’s what’s going on. I have far too many devices, many of them decrepit, so it’s time to get rid.
Some of what I've been doing is trying to do is stay on WIndows 10. I'm not sure of the legitimacy of the techniques for this upon which I've stumbled, but the links & videos aren't taken down, so how illegal can it be...? If you're interested, look for a video by ArronGAMEZ entitled How To Stay On Windows 10 Until 2032. Not the capitalisation I would have chosen, but the method seems sound.
In other news:
Windows 11 context menu made good:
https://captivateteacher.com/articles/windows10-context-menu-windows11
Windows 11 for normal PCs:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/1czhpg6/comment/l5hkice/
Mini PC Windows 11 reïnstall:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MiniPCs/comments/1bwln7l/problem_malware_in_a_nipogi_chinese_minipc_which/
Some settings for Windows 11:
https://www.davidleonard.london/2024/02/09/lets-finish-setting-up-your-device/
1608
The reason for disabling automatic updates, as detailed in the previous entry, is to do with installing Windows 10 on a mid-2010 Mac Mini (+ Windows = WhackWinnie), which is a process I’ve gone through AT LEAST four times now. Windows 10 installs fine, but upon updating and restart, there’s no display output. My workaround was initially to disable ALL updates, as above, but I paid more attention on one of the installs and noticed it seemed (logically) that it was when the Nvidia driver updater that the system Belgiumed-out.
So, another install later: I allowed updates, but then went into Devices and disabled the Nvidia driver. The display seems fine using whatever driver Windows uses when that is disabled, and the system works fine upon restarting. All other updates install fine.
Someone else seems to have suffered the same issues:
I’ve come across this “Bootcamp” thing, which seems to be some Apple affair for dual-booting. I ignored it all and utterly wiped any trace of Apple off the harddrive, for better or worse, wisely or wrongly. The only tricky thing has been when trying to access the boot menu: this seems to require a wired USB keyboard, and holding Alt upon power-on.
Windows seems to be running ok, though there’s no way of getting sound out of the machine; not via HDMI or the headphone jack. That’s a setback.
We’ll come back to the WhackWhinnie a little later on (if I remember…)
1830
Duckstation:
PS3 wireless controllers:
https://www.reddit.com/r/PS3/comments/nwi796/how_to_dual_shock_3_on_windows_10_wirelessly_and/
Duskstation has been a great success! Honestly, it’s been a surprising success considering how, as usually detailed here, nothing really works…
I’ve been able to install it on my regular Win10 PC (no Linux or Whack Whinnie nonsense going on) and jumped through A LOT of hoops to get controllers working. Unintuitively, wired controllers (OG PS controllers connected via USB adaptors) have been a bit of a flop, especially for two-player, but wireless PS3 controllers connected via USB (and A LOT of ancillary programs) have worked GREAT and even worked for two-player!
I’ve had a truly joyous time playing Nuclear Strike (there are various aspects of the game controls which gel with my mind, somehow) and Crash Bandicoot was a big hit. I want to have another go at playing through the Oddworld games, and see if the James Bond games live up to Goldeneye…
ANYWAY…
Here’s some of the previous crap I put myself through when trying to get the MacMini to work:
Next time: Retropie, MacMinux, DuckStation on WhackWhinnie
1159
https://ds3-tool.en.softonic.com/ fail
https://www.reddit.com/r/PS3/comments/nwi796/how_to_dual_shock_3_on_windows_10_wirelessly_and/
ALTHOUGH! The following link is dead:
https://vigem.org/projects/DsHidMini/DS4-Mode-User-Guide/
A brief aside about automatic updates:
“I understand you had problems with Windows updates, sorry about that.
Updates are released with improvements, security fixes or news, so it is always recommended to keep your computer up to date.
In this case as you want to pause the updates once and for all, follow the procedures below.
1. Press Windows+R, type services.msc and click OK;
2. Scroll down the page to find the Windows Update service;
3. Right-click on the service and select Properties;
4. Click the stop button;
5. In Startup Type change to disabled and click OK;
6. Restart your computer. “
How helpful of them.
1053
https://www.sevenforums.com/installation-setup/321097-how-install-windows-7-uefi-mode-usb.html
https://iboysoft.com/howto/the-selected-disk-is-not-a-fixed-mbr-disk.html
Diskpart says: “The disk you specified is not MBR formatted.” when trying to format GPT?
Just Format MBR first… then Format GPT. What a dipshit system.
1258
In other news, having grown tired of repeatedly slamming my fingers in a drawer, I thought I’d do something comparably joyful and have a go at some Linux shit again. What the zark for, I have no idea.
After the PiHole failure, I resolved to get rid off all my Pi kit.
SLIGHT TANGENT
Just adding a load of links here, in case I ever get desperate and/or bored and/or desperately bored:
https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroArch/comments/7jq3s5/confused_where_to_put_psx_bios_ubuntu/
https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/pvv534/raspberry_pi_4_lakka_emulation_guide/
https://www.lakka.tv/get/linux/rpi/install/first-boot/games/
https://www.lakka.tv/doc/Accessing-Lakka-filesystem/
https://forums.libretro.com/t/roms-bios-where-to-place/2573/3
https://www.sevenforums.com/installation-setup/321097-how-install-windows-7-uefi-mode-usb.html (this didn’t seem to work for making a drive that would boot on the WacWini)
https://iboysoft.com/howto/the-selected-disk-is-not-a-fixed-mbr-disk.html
https://www.emu-land.net/en/consoles/psx/emuls/windows
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=rerun+duckstation+wizard
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=raspberry+pi+show+processor
1044
The backup saga continues. Perhaps I’m suffering from a virtual form of my IRL hoarding: data hoarding…
On the old, huge, Fractal-cased PC, it was time for some changes. Like in the HP AIO, I’m un-RAIDing the three drives in there to increase capacity.
First I made sure that any data on there was backed-up to the ‘Definitive’ external drive. I then accidentally deleted not only the stuff I had checked, but a whole copy of my personal generic data. This was a good lesson in why a back-up is necessary: accidentally deleting data has to be one of the most common causes of data loss…
Hoping the gone-data was still on the other PC (the other old desktop), I proceeded to restart and use CTRL-I to unRAID the three 1TB drives. Weirdly, after this, the computer failed to boot, despite the boot drive being an utterly separate 128GB SSD; it would just go into BIOS each time, like there was no boot device. I tried unplugging the three formerly-RAID drives, but no beans. Well, looks like we’re reinstalling Windows today too…
Actually, booting to BIOS was useful because it showed me that I’d not seated one of the RAM sticks properly.
In other news, this week I’ve tried to do a poor-person’s NAS by simply attaching a USB drive to the USB port on the internet router. It didn’t work, and it seems EE have disabled that functionality on their new “Smart” Hub “Plus”.
The next day I tried to set up Pi-Hole. This also didn’t work, again because EE have removed features from the hub, this time the DNS settings.
On top of that, they sent me an email saying the broadband bill was overdue; where the zark did my previous Direct Debit disappear to? Why didn’t they mention it wouldn’t carry over?
And don’t get me started on the incompetence demonstrated by the “engineer” who came over to install the fibre connection…
Unimpressed with EE at the moment.
UPDATE October 2025: just a theory after rereading these posts, but could the reason for the old desktop not booting be that I had more than one harddrive (crucially: three of them RAIDed to act as one drive) connected when installing Windows? This might have done that weird thing where the installation puts a random Windows partition on a drive other than the ‘main’ one (the one you’re intending to install on). Then, when I removed the RAID from the drives, that “important” partition went up the wazhoo, taking the ability to boot with it. Just a theory, that I have no evidence for, but you never know…
1820
As part of the mahoosive project that is organising & rationalising all the data I've hoarded over the years, I have decided to un-RAID the two 465gb drives in the HP AIO. I made them into a single RAID drive for redundancy and perceived safety of data, but have since learnt that this is not the best way to back-up data. Sure, it's better than no back-up, but if the computer catches fire, all the data is still gone.
I'm going to try to be more disciplined with external hardrives, make a PiNAS (with absolutely no RAIDing; see above…) and have it backed-up off-site too.
So, after reïnstalling Windows 10 (it's deffo Pro this time) and backing up the data from the RAID, I restarted and pressed CTRL-I to enter the RAID utility, which is extremely simple to use. It warned about losing all data from the drives, which was fine, and I went ahead and separated them.
Back in windows, the drive was still showing up, and still had all the data on! Weird. Though one of the drives was ‘offline’. I deleted the volume from the online drive, and when I turned the second drive ‘online’ it appeared in File Mangler with all the data on! Good to know the system works.
Anyway, with their volumes deleted, I'm having a go at making a Stripped Volume. This will re-join the drives together, but in an utterly different way: they'll have their capacity added together to make one larger volume which will appear to Windows as a single drive. This’ll simplify storage. Hope it works!
The computer gave me some sound shit after the new windows went in, which I remember it doing before. I've got it connected to another monitor via DisplayPort, and then the speaker is connected to the jack in that monitor. Trouble is, sound drops for a fraction of second every so often, which is quite annoying. Someone on Reddit suggested increasing the sound quality, which sounded like bollocks, and didn't work. I went to Updates and clicked Optional Updates to update the drivers for a couple of likely-looking devices (Dell monitor & AMD audio). Seems ok for now, but we'll see.
1252
The computer I have with the oldest installation of windows (i.e. the one it's been the longest since I've reïnstalled Windows on) is the HP AIO. It's a good machine, with some quirks, as all computers have, especially as they age.
This one, like all Windows machines, has suddenly decided it needs Microsoft's copilot on it, which is a waste of everyone's time, so I looked up how to disable copilot. It's fairly straightforward in Group policy editor, so I attempted to run gpedit.msc on the computer… and…
It's not on there. WTF?
This is weird, so I check what version of windows I've got: Windows 10 HOME??? How the fuck is it the Home edition? Surely, surely, Shirley I installed Pro on there, all those years ago. Right…?
Anyway, I tried a Reddit\majorgeeks workaround for getting gpedit to work on Home, but (predictably for me), it didn't work, so I guess it's about time to reïnstall Windows.
Just in case it all goes to shit and the Pro license key doesn't work any more, I thought I should image the current setup using Macrium Reflect.
At first I tried doing it onto a 500gb disk, but it turns out the 500gb system SSD is bigger than the 500gb HDD I'm trying to clone it to.
Next, tried a 1tb HDD: still fails; same weird error.
Tried the same 1tb HDD but used fdisk and diskpart to completely get rid of all partitions before commencing the clone: still failed. Macrium is dog shit.
I'll just image it for now and hope for the best.
A few hours later…
Shitting Macrium couldn't even manage that simple task; why do persist in using it…?
A little googling later led me to a Reddit post suggesting DiskGenius. Downloaded it, ran it, cloned the system disk to a slightly smaller HDD and it worked fine (despite spitting out an error at the end about the boot not working). Tried booting from it and I think it worked, but because it was an identical clone of the SSD, I'm not sure where I was running windows from. I'll try it again later.
Anyway, it was time to reïnstall Windows, so I booted from the old multiboot USB and went down the familiar road, until…
I did the usual thing of deleting all the partitions on the target disk, but when I clicked next to begin the installation, it gave me error 0x80300024. Never seen that before…
A little googling later led me to a golden Reddit post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/156rrmo/fix_for_0x80300024_for_windows_install_with/
I simply went into the BIOS and moved the target drive to be first in the boot order, booted back up with the USB and tried again. It worked! Amazing.
0954
The Dell laptop has been having a problem when it gets moved… which is definitely an issue for a laptop.
It will randomly BSOD and restart when moved; but is stable when, well, stable. It seems to be a flexing issue.
Looking online, the only problem I found which comes close is someone saying the battery has bulged on some of this model and cracked the motherboard, which sounds plausible.
Time to open it up.
Battery looks fine and there's no obvious damage, although a teeny crack on the motherboard would be impossible to spot.
There IS an issue though: the m.2 SSD has a bolt holding it down, but the screw head wasn't actually over the m.2 board, meaning the board was floating. Seems to me that this would certainly cause an issue when the laptop is moved. I reïnstalled the boot with a washer under the head to hold the board down properly.
…but then:
Trying to boot the laptop gave me some blinking LED error code to do with memory. I tried reseating the RAM: same; tried it in the other RAM slot: slightly different error code.
I'd reseated the RAM when poking around inside initially and wondered if I'd static-killed it…
Spent some time trying to find the anti-static wrist strap which I know I have somewhere.
With that on and connected to an earth pin, I tried the RAM in the new Trigkey mini PC (only other machine that takes DDR4) and it worked fine, which was a relief, but meant something was wrong with the laptop.
It had been giving me a low battery warning, so I tried unplugging the battery and booting from mains power: worked fine. Phew!
Battery seems to be charging ok.
Waited while it did some Windows updating, then tried picked it up by all the corners and flexing it a bit: the kinda stuff that would make it BSOD before…
Seems ok! Hopefully the problem was just a loose hard drive.
It still gets really hot and the fan blows like jet a engine, but I'll live with that! ...even if it means I can't ever actually use it on my lap unless I want to melt my shorts onto my legs.
