The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

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  • Troubles in PC Land

    So this happened:

    Dell Optiplex - SSD failure
    Dell Optiplex – SSD failure

    As far as I can tell, the Crucial M5500 SSD in that PC (an off-lease Dell Optiplex 760) stopped being a SATA hard drive, although it seems to work OK when jammed in a USB adapter.

    So I picked up a new-to-me Optiplex 9020 with Windows 8.1 on an SSD, shrank the partition, tried to install Xubuntu 18.04, fat-fingered the UEFI password dance, reinstalled Windows from the SSD’s recovery partition, and got this display after a while (clicky for more dots):

    Dell Optiplex - recovery disk stall
    Dell Optiplex – recovery disk stall

    After letting it stew in its own juices during supper, I forced it off (pushed the power button until it died), restarted, got through the UEFI dance, and it now seems All Good. I made recovery DVDs (remember DVDs?), both before and after the fumbled Xubuntu installation, but didn’t need them.

    I expect we’ll never boot Windows 8.1 again, but it’s there Just In Case.