For those Who Care to Play: Acros SOOC + RAF

In article , Bill W
wrote:

It's almost exactly like ransomware, except that a lot of Googling
came up with a fix. About 10 commands (bootrec & diskpart commands)
typed into the command line - really about 60 seconds if you type
fast, and it's fixed. The ridiculous part is that the Windows
install/recovery files (Media creation files) come out differently
depending on whether you choose to write them to a USB drive, or to a
DVD. Some tools are missing in the USB version, and a couple of the
commands fail, the critical one being bcdboot.

welcome to windows.

One of the last things I said to them was, " I guess this is why
people move to Apple". It might be a couple of years, but next time I
think I need something new, I will be looking at them for the first
time.

macs don't care if they're booted from internal or external drive,
whether it's usb, firewire, thunderbolt or sata. as long as the system
on the drive is compatible with the mac, it will boot, without any
changes necessary. they can even boot and install macos over the
internet to a blank hard drive.

there is also a recovery partition, which is automatically installed
(and is used for more than just recovery), so you don't actually need a
separate emergency boot disk.

All stuff I didn't know, but that points to the usual stumbling block
- I'd have to learn a new system. I'm old...

meanwhile, you're futzing with fixing windows rather than actually
doing useful stuff with the computer...