abadideaJun 16
well this is the scariest thing my work computer has ever done. I didn’t even know it was structurally possible for popup windows to appear over the Windows Update screen
Show threadabadideaJun 16

to my genuine but relieved surprise, it still booted after this.

what's truly mystifying, however, is how the Dell firmware manages to have two or three ⚠️Critical⚠️ bios updates a week. I understand neither where they're all coming from nor how Dell sustains such a rapid release cycle of high-risk firmware patches long-term.

Show threadNull Pointer Exception

@0xabad1dea ooooo Dell firmware story time.

Back when I worked IT we had an hardware refresh cycle which involved issuing out a bunch of brand new Dell all in ones. Part way through this cycle though the network started to choke, networking spent a LOT of time trying to debug what the hell was bringing down the network, while we continued to roll out the AIOs to the different workspaces.

Jun 16 at 12:48pmWeb
Show threadNull Pointer Exception6d ago
@0xabad1dea Well, part way through this refresh cycle Dell released a firmware update. Turns out there was a bug in their wake on lan feature where, when the AIOs were put into sleep mode, they'd start pinging EVERY device on the network looking for a wakeup call. We had rolled out hundreds of these AIOs that were now DDOSing our own network due to this bug.
Show threadNull Pointer Exception6d ago
@0xabad1dea and this was before Dell had any sort of auto updater for their firmware, so to fix this issue we all got issued USB sticks with the updated BIOS on it and had to go back out and manually update every single AIO that was previously issued.