"I need a new laptop....."

'Windows, password is "password", Defender turned off.'

Save any essential documents, and format the hard disk and reinstall windows.

That's what i've just declared without being too pissy.

If it's an old hard drive, swap with a new SSD and put the old one in a USB caddy to get all documents and use a future backup drive.

Yerrbut - how does he do the equivalent to the user?

A friend of mine used to provide software for property management. He had some problems with users who just unplugged the PC in order to plug in the kettle and make a cup of tea.

I've often attributed the erratic nature of the news server that everybody in this thread (so far) is using to somebody in the Eternal September office doing exactly that.

Nick

Save any essential documents, and format the hard disk and reinstall Linux

You have forgotten to mention car body filler.

what's wrong with that

not everyone has "secret" information on their PC

I do get annoyed with places that insist on strong passwords where they are not needed

I personally don't give a toss if someone logs onto my "oyster" card history and can see where I've been, so why force me to protect it when I don't want to?

(It doesn't have auto-top up set up, so there's no link to a credit card in my data)

do you mean laptop or desktop?

when there's an easy way to do that I might do so

until then ....

We've stuff for work that will only run on Windows.

But otherwise i'm almost entirely Linux.

Google for make Ubuntu bootable pendrive (it's a couple of downloads and then largely automated), make a bootable pendrive, plug it in, reboot.

I promise that after you've become familiar with it, you'll never look back.

Pop a DVD into the drive and just press a few keys. Linux is installed 'real quick'. I gave up on trying to get Windows whatever to recognise printers and bluetooth dongles and just let Linux do it all for me.

Sometimes they are needed. I'll say no more.

No need even to ask if the user has software that will only run under Windows?

We have three Windows machines. One for what little work I still do. One for SWMBO who works full time. One for the workshop, mainly to run the chip programmer and to interface to the scope/fn generator/multimeter/PSU.

The other eight machines are all FreeBSD, which is where the work and serving is done.

When I installed Ubuntu and Linux Mint on different HDDs for a spare PC, I was impressed at how the installation automatically found and configured my network printer. I didn't have to tell it to do an IP scan to look for network-connected printers, or to tell it what model my printer was: it just quietly found and set it up, even to the extent of setting the default to double-sided printing because it had deduced that my printer had that feature. I think I may have had to choose the printer driver for my Raspberry Pi 3, but the Pi 4 just found it; that's for Raspbian/Raspberry PiOS (the latter is a real mouthful: I'm not sure why they stopped using "Raspbian").

Recently I opened up a freind's laptop to install more memory. I could have stuffed a cushion with the amount of dust and fluff I found around the fan and heat-sink fins :)