Dell Optiplex 3010 Desktop PC - Intel Core i3-3220 3.1GHz 8GB 250GB DVD Windows 10 Professional (Renewed) |
I was hoping to use my cell phone to connect to the internet. Everyone says it's easy, just swipe and tap, but swipe and tap as I might I never found any indication that my cell phone had any idea what I was talking about. Even the Tracfone FAQ says it's easy. Finally called up the Tracfone chat-bot and it tells me that Tracfone does not support 'tethering', which is what this is called.
Verizon Global Modem USB730L |
Fine, abandon the cheapskate method and look around for another phone that will support this and found Verizon's dedicated cell phone UBS modem. Kind of expensive at $250, but it looks like it should be plug and play. I'm tired of fooling with this, so I bite the bullet and buy one and get my wife to add the $20 a month line charge to her account. I plug in the UBS modem and bingo! I'm connected to the great and glorious internet.
Command line program to retrieve Windows Product Key retrieved nothing. |
Windows Product Key retrieved by Visual Basic program |
Now maybe I can do something about this Activate Windows message that is constantly on the screen. Seems like I shouldn't need to do anything, but I don't want this thing to die on me (which it might do at any time. Seems like I read a warning message that it was going to stop working in 30 days if I didn't shape up.) So I go poking around looking for the product key. I found some instructions here, and they sort of worked, but the code they delivered wasn't acceptable to the great and benevolent Gates.
Official (?) Windows Product Sticker |
So I took a picture of the official Microsoft hologram and tried that product key. It didn't work either.
I supposed I should contact Microsoft support and track down this problem, but that seems like another exercise in fultility.
I just stepped away from the computer for a bit and when I came back it had lost it's connection to the internet. This happens whenever I am away for more than, uhm, I don't know how long. Restarting the computer solves this problem. There might be another way to fix it, but this works, and I don't have to crawl into another rathole to find the answer. And the Activate Windows watermark has disappeared, so maybe we're copasetic. Naw, that couldn't be.
Since I am a dedicated Linux user, you may wonder why I didn't install Linux on this machine. Well, I've already done that a couple of times and I don't relish doing it again. It takes time and has a bunch of pitfalls for the unwary. For what I am doing here, Windows should be adequate, and it's already installed.
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