Microsoft Surface Linux Follow Up

I recently posted a video about my Microsoft Surface which was locked by mastercard 4 years after I purchased it from a reputable IT device recycler on ebay. I installed Linux out of frustration but the situation has changed. I'm stunned by the response to this video and had to make a follow up.

[Arithium]

Hi Matt, as I had mentioned in the email, the freeze was done in absolute which is baked into the BIOS and is common in corporate devices. This device was eWasted before I joined Mastercard, but I can ensure you were far more thorough now with removing the laptops from absolute before they are picked up by our vendor. Hopefully this provides clarity on what a device freeze is in case anyone else runs into this situation.

[Rdmn]

The fact that the eBay seller helped resolve a recent issue from a device sold 4 years ago is amazing on its own. I prefer to check if Computrace is enabled or not on the device as otherwise it's a brick in my eyes. I mean sure, it doesn't matter to me as I daily drive Linux but, what if I need to install Windows for a quick moment on a second partition? That's where the issue stems.

[danieltrip]

Glad to hear the lock has been lifted! This seems to be a really big problem (with lots of managed iPads in particular). Shame this leads to so many legitimately-acquired but unusable devices on the second hand market.

[NumNum]

I think you should include the seller's link somewhere, I'm interested to looks through their stuff and keep them in mind for any future purchases if this is the kind of customer service they provide.

[justintolentino]

My company does this too - we have a Mobile Device Manager (MDM) for iOS devices and Lenovo / HP laptops. Someone must have done a bulk import of previously purchased serial numbers for this to happen YEARS later. Glad to hear you got it resolved.

[bokexd]

"I reinstalled XP so many times that I remember the product key" Me too.

[Sporipherous]

Nice to see that some small patches of integrity still exist although the time consumed dealing with this hassle is reprehensible.

[mathesonstep]

Glad to see you got things figured out

[Hiram]

I've started watching your cycling videos which are great.

[FintMC]

"thank you for your negative comments" is a phrase you never expect to hear on youtube haha

[jttf]

Your video was quite the talk internally ;-)

[warthunder]

Glad to hear the follow up but it was an interesting experience. I've done the same with old macs that are icloud locked or management locked machines which you can tend to get really cheap. If you decide to do more linux great, if not that's also fine. I enjoyed the story nonetheless.

[exzld]

A happy ending. So IS it finally cleared? I forget. Also the other video when I clicked, my imagination was more conspiratorial in nature thinking of some 1984 scenario. Honestly glad that wasnt the case. Happy for you! Cheers

[georgechertkov]

Your Ubuntu won't dual boot because you need to install Windows first, then Ubuntu. Windows Boot Manager always formats efi partition responsible for dual-booting, simply saying

[jasontemple]

I'd be interested in more content around devices that can be remotely disabled. It will be coming to cars in thr USA soon!

[almac]

Ive refurbished tons of laptops and a majority of what you find are from resellers that buy up decommissioned or abandoned hardware from companies and bulk sell them. A few will have security locks like computrace nothing you can do its the job of the admin at the company to take care of that but because of laziness they just dump it as is. At that point its a paper weight and all you can do is dump it or try and part it out.

[lukedavis]

Oldee HP printers are just bulletproof, even their older inkjets are pretty good, grandma has a 1990s Deskjet, still going strong!

[PCUSE]

Glad your issue was resolved. Whether the device was stolen or not, you were the victim here-of corporate stupidity. I once bought a laptop in a thrift store that did a similar thing and after some attempts to alleviate the problem, I just trashed it. I am not about to spend money to ship a laptop to someone who says it is theirs and hires a big corporation to hound innocents.

[ericmoeller]

matt it seems like you know just as much as i do with computers do not try to install wine its a app that allows you to run windows apps on Linux wine is a nightmare i tried to install a few years ago and you have to tell wine where your USB ports are so wine can utilize them then about a month ago i tried to install again and the terminal say that the app did install successfully but when i typed the directory in the command prompt to open and it says that command doesn't exist or app isnt installed but the wine config command works it will bring up the settings for wine Linux is just a complete nightmare to use

[DissociatedWomenIncorporated]

I wonder how Haiku OS would run on this…