Fun with Windows

Dell Optiplex 3010 Desktop PC - Intel Core i3-3220 3.1GHz 8GB 250GB DVD Windows 10 Professional (Renewed)

I bought a refurbished Dell PC to use at the new house. We don't absolutely need it, but it makes it handy for looking for materials, watching how-to videos on YouTube, and getting directions to our next Tuesday lunch location. Yes, I could use my smart phone for all this, but I like having a large screen and a full size keyboard.

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.