i bought one of these cute little MiniPCs a while back. Great price, and came with Windows 10, not that I wanted it. Installed Ubuntu and used it happily. It was still able to boot windows from the GRUB menu. I figured I might need it one day. I’m not sure what came over me, but today I decided to take a few minutes, boot Windows and do an update. What could go wrong?

First it wouldn’t boot. Somehow related to the dreaded UEFI security. I suppose stopping you from booting up is the ultimate in secure computing. I searched for a fix on-line and found several. All seemed dodgy or complex and none seems to have any explanation for what was actually wrong. I’m found a way to force a Windows boot via the BIOS. Good enough for me.

Updates were slow. Like really slow. In my boredom I noticed the clock was off by several hours. I guess I hadn’t set the time zone. Without thinking I set the correct time zone. Big mistake. Suddenly all bets were off. Some things worked, others didn’t. I decided to reboot, hoping for a return to sanity. Now I’m unable to even power down. I guess I have time. I’ll wait the bastards out. And to think I used to do this for a living.