Solved Can't get a daily Shutdown working in Task Scheduler...

geogat said:

I had navigated to "Settings > System > Activation" and that point showed "Activated."

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If it says that it is activated with a digital licence that means that MS have activated your installation of Windows & stored a record of that activation on their servers.
In other words, MS have registered your hardware [mainly the motherboard but also some other bits & pieces] as running a genuine copy of Windows.
And if you ever run a Clean install of Windows on that computer you will not need to enter any product key, you can skip straight through the dialog that asks for one & the new installation will get activated when you next go online.

geogat said:

I'm thinking the notice "Activated" applied to 'warranty,'

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No, activation has nothing to do with anything apart from registering your Windows with MS.
I wrote about warranty info in another paragraph.

geogat said:

I did not realize that the original problem, where it did not go into sleep, indicated a hardware problem

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It might be as simple as the correct driver not having been installed.
If normal Windows Power options have been set and it won't sleep then the misbehaviour is in the hardware.
It's possible that some conflicting piece of software is interfering with the behaviour of the hardware.
It should never be in such a state upon delivery.
Since the supplier has refused to address the problem then your only recourse is to apply for a full refund.


Denis

Greetings again. I was battling with HP late into the night yesterday, trying to get answer to simple question: What is the year & month of manufacture of the HP laptop I bought. It is boldly advertised as 2023 on Amazon, but for some reason I got suspicious after reading an HP page stating the S/N reveals the year & month of manufacture. Well, I kept reading the S/N and coming up with 2022 and that freaked me out. After three chat agents, all dancing around the question and refusing to answer it, I finally got the info: 5/5/2022. From their own records. That sunk the ship right there. With the odd problems you've tried so hard to help me with, the seller who refuses to provide any help at all, and then the issue of false advertising, I was done. I'm going to chew Amazon a new one over this and then it gets reset and back in the box.

I learned good things from you Denis. Thank you!

I think you have made the right decision.


I think that it would now not be rude to explain how I would have avoided the problem by limiting the Amazon products I consider.
- I search by product description as we all do.
- I re-search with 4 stars or above set.
- For anything expensive or that requires ongoing support, I re-search [Amazon UK] with the Free delivery with Amazon / Amazon prime set at the top of the search pane. I don't see this option with Amazon.com but that might be because it detects that I'm connecting from abroad. I don't mind if the seller is an Amazon marketplace seller as long as it is shown as coming from Amazon [they assume many or all of the responsibilities of a retailer for such 'Fulfilled by Amazon' sales].
- For anything expensive or that requires ongoing support, I search outside Amazon for the brand name and check that they do provide whatever support is appropriate for that product. If I cannot find the brand's own website & support descriptions then that tells me support is non-existent.
- From the remaining search results, I only click on product links that show that there have been at least 100 reviews. A British consumer group investigated fake reviews and found that up to 100 fake reviews can often be bought for any individual product so I just chose my 100 limit to be above that.
- On each product page, I immediately click on the number of reviews [shown at the top] to see the distribution of stars in reviews. If 10% or more of customers have posted 1 star or 2 star reviews then I close that product page. If one in ten people have gone as far as bothering to report such an awful product then I have no wish to offer myself up as another victim.
- I set the reviews sequence to latest first then skim over the first page of reviews to check that there are no obvious fake reviews.
- I regard what's left as my initial shortlist.
I hope this has not sounded too pretentious.


All the best,
Denis

Thank you. You are a wonderful educator! I've bookmarked this post so I can come back to the links and the many good tips you've given. Cheers!