obsidian1200

Eh, days come and go in waves for those kinds of people. In general, there's always people claiming that they're already doing something at home, like today I had someone insisting they were using a VGA-to-HDMI cable on monitors. When I showed him what HDMI looked like, he asked me "what's that?" and realized he was using DVI.
 
Then I had a couple trying to convince me that the hard drive capacity was the RAM and vice versa. That's a double-sided coin, because how awesome would 2TBs of RAM be? Not as awesome as having 8GB hard drives o.x
 
On the bright side, working this new job has helped me figure out to dumb things way down for people. Analogies work wonders.

Fair enough. Although, you could always go with a Mac Mini, get an external blu-ray drive, and install Plex on it. Just an idea.
 
Good luck with finding one that fits your needs. I looked a while back for one, similar situation to you except with relatives instead of coworkers, but I ended up just converting everything to solve the problem.

The other day, one of my bosses decided to lecture me as to why expensive HDMI cables are better than inexpensive ones. I just smiled and nodded, because trying to tackle the amount of BS was just too daunting for me

I like MakeMKV for ripping just the movie from the disk. It gives you a nice .mkv file to work with, and skips things like unskippible menus and that junk. DVD ripping functionality is free, but blu-ray requires a license (though the developer gives free license keys while the program is in beta).
 
However, this method gives you a 1:1 copy, which means the file sizes from this program are really high for the content quality. I usually re-encode the .mkv with handbrake, since you don't lose any perceivable quality.

While I can't imagine users would be too pleased with forced installs of software they don't intend to use (I'm looking at you, 3D Builder app), I do have to congratulate Microsoft on the possibility of forcing Windows 7 users to actually install the important updates. As a computer technician, nothing is more frustrating than going to a clients house only to find out they "know they should be doing updates but <insert excuse for not installing them here>."

If I remember correctly you can setup a server to distribute Windows updates on a Domain. I would think IT departments would do this. They make the updates available after they have been tested. At least that was what I remember learning. This was back during my Windows Server 2003 course. Server 2008 just came out about that time. LOL. I feel old. 

Agreed...
Does anyone else notice that the fans don't seem to line up well with the heatsinks?

Because it's pretty much exactly like console exclusives, they want to sell their hardware so need exclusive software to make it more compelling.

Hah! Poor people problems!
 

It's ok, let them continue to fight this. Let them continue to use Chrome, Android, Chromebook, Firefox, Windows XP/Vista/7 and 8, all thinking they are private, safe and secure from "the government", when they all collect telemetry data enabled by default, and in the case of all Google product, actually tracks its users, collects interest, get to know them, to sell and make money on. And let them think Google makes its Billions via magic.
 
We all know that the 'Government' has a secret mass facility, with staff monitoring each citizen, in fact, 1 staff per citizen, including 1 staff to monitor that staff, where on those staff, you have another person monitoring them, and so on. It makes no logical sense in terms of population count, but that is because the country is run by lizard aliens, and suppresses our understanding with clouds. Electricity, computers, all that is lizard technology, a master plan by the New World Order with the joint partnership with Illuminati group to slowly create this "computer", which is really a spying technology. YouTube, Facebook and websites, are traps to get people to be in front of their computer to be monitored. Malware and viruses are just tests by aliens to execuse experimental test to make sure that we try and solve the problem, to highlight how glued we are with those "computers" (spying devices).
 
They started this with the invention of the phone. You think they stop listening when your home phone is hanged up? Foools!!! It always listens to you. Smartphone is another spying technology by the Lizards, and the "radio frequencies", are nothing more than suppressors to not be able to see the lizards.
 
Here is a video showing how I am right:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2mjs_gdMAI
It's on YouTube, with Microsoft Text to speech, so it must be true.

It shouldn't, but why risk it? I'd disconnect the 2nd drive from the system prior to doing the restore just to be safe.

For the small amount extra, I'd rather go with the Dell P2415Q. Way better stand and IPS panel. 

It should be either
Del key
F8 key
or F2 key
 
Probably Del key, just keep tapping it when you start your computer

Absolutely. Process of elimination. Find a slot that works for sure and run all your sticks of ram through it to isolate any bad sticks.  Then check the other slots with your known good ram.  Tedious, but thorough.

1. dead slot
2. dead stick of ram

That's a rare case (I've only seen it a small handful of times in my work experience), but a good point. Given OP's current dilemma with windows BSODing due to an inaccessible boot device (which was occuring prior to unplugging the secondary drive), I'd say that's more reason to redo the windows install from scratch without additional drives plugged in so the BCD and bootmgr files will all be loaded into their proper place on the SSD. Then, once that's done, removing any unneeded boot files from the secondary drive can be done within Windows.

More than likely they meant Office 365, I hear people confuse Windows with Office far too often in consumer retail spaces. 
 
Edit: whoops, didn't mean to necro the thread. My bad.

First of all, if you can install 64-bit Windows on a system, it's not a 32-bit system. Actual 32-bit CPUs cannot run 64-bit code, you'll get an error message. It seems very unlikely you're still using 32-bit hardware, as it would have to be a Pentium 4 or older.
 
Secondly, as far as I know your Windows license is good for both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows. If the disk you bought is for the 64-bit version, you can still download the 32-bit version from the Microsoft website and install it with the product key you already have. You do have to pay attention to whether you're getting the Home or Pro version.

Many universities have a Microsoft 'Dreamspark' account, through which you can download any Microsoft Software (including OS') free.
(To support students and research etc)
 
Try to find out if yours has one

Download the Jack Sparrow edition of Witcher 3, and pre-order Doom 4.

Easy way to pirate!

ddos it with the command 
 
c:/ ipfonig /flusdns c:/ ping 192.168.0.1 -t ddos  

@Midnitewarrior4 while that sucks for your grandparents, a competent repair shop will pretty much NEVER sell you a random motherboard off ebay, unless you provide the part yourself and sign a non-liability agreement that basically says you can't blame them if the repairs don't work, since the board might be DOA.
 
The reason why is because the parts they get from their suppliers come with warranties and RMA processes, in case of DOA equipment.
 
Also, the high cost of the motherboard replacement could be:
1. They replaced with the same model of OEM motherboards. I use to do repairs at Staples (EasyTech), and OUR price for them was often over $200 or more, before we even take our cut of profit. OEM motherboards are stupidly expensive if you buy them through official channels.
2. The cost of labor - remember, a skilled technician isn't cheap. While a motherboard swap on a desktop isn't terribly complicated (Nothing like a Laptop board swap), it's still time consuming enough that the labor can start to get a bit pricey.
 
Sure, your grandparents should have came to you, but meh, they probably just wanted to get it fixed asap.

Great, let's hope this release doesn't suffer from the weapon durability issue that plagued Dark Souls 2 while running at 60fps...

The Pyra is still a thing, I've actually been thinking of picking one up for myself. https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/