Old laptop working after 24+ hrs of fiddling

That's great that the old guy is still in service.

Fizz wrote:
... slow by modern standards but it works.

Now that it is stable, do a backup ! Write down he license number.

Find a "retail distribution" of your version of Windows. Feel free to over write he factory backup partition. You may have to manually install some drivers. Getting rid of "bloatware" makes a big difference.

Install a SSD ! You will be amazed at how fast it will runs.

theoldwizard1 wrote:

Fizz wrote:
... slow by modern standards but it works.

Now that it is stable, do a backup ! Write down he license number.

Find a "retail distribution" of your version of Windows. Feel free to over write he factory backup partition. You may have to manually install some drivers. Getting rid of "bloatware" makes a big difference.

Install a SSD ! You will be amazed at how fast it will runs.

Thanks but too much bother.
All bloatware is gone, temp, recycle etc all cleaned out.
It is what it is.

Backup any files you need and recycle it. It will never be remotely trustworthy from here out.

I wish my 30 month old HP would do that. It has failed a second time. The first was under warranty and they replaced the Optonic and HDD. It recently crashed again. It behaved like the HDD was in trouble, so I loaded a new OS on another that I had a popped it in....

Still no joy.

I took it to a local shop that does HP repairs. They had it for a week and told me that the device on the main board that does the port management had died. A new main board and installation is different cost from a new laptop by only lunch at a fast food place.

I don't think I'm buying another HP anything.

Matt

I have had them all slowly wither and die: HP, Dell, ASUS, Sony.
So I switched sides, to the evil Apples. I grudgingly admit it is much more reliable.

I just gave away my three year old MacBook Pro to my grandson. I hated that thing! It only had two "C" ports on each side and that was all. Had a heck of a time trying to move pictures from my phone to the computer, never did figure out the file system after almost 45 years with a PC, too many things are limited to that machine, and finally the thing locked up on me twice and I had to take it to a pro to get it running again.
I ended up restoring it to factory new condition and giving it away to by grandson. Hope he has better luck than I did.

I replaced it with an MSI gaming laptop that, so far, seems to be of excellent quality and is very fast and fun to use. It gets excellent reviews so I hope it will last for a few years.

I also have two other laptops that I put Linux "Mint" on and they are working well even though they are completely out of date and would be considered junk by most.
I use one of them all the time in the trailer out in the woods and my phone as the hotspot. Works for me.:)
Barney

Lately two of my W10 PCs have been running 100% disk utilization. I got one of them back to normal by going back to the previous checkpoint; still working on the second. Takes many minutes to respond to a ketstroke.

These PCs are 10 or more years old but there's no reason to get rid of them. Not until W11 becomes mandatory because they probably won't work with W11. Maybe them I'll replace them. OR run Linux.

At least neither of our heavy hitters have displayed this problem. The PC I'm using right now is 12 years old. Still good for everyday activities but I'm noticing it's slow for some simulations.

Fizz wrote:

theoldwizard1 wrote:

Fizz wrote:
... slow by modern standards but it works.

Now that it is stable, do a backup ! Write down he license number.

Find a "retail distribution" of your version of Windows. Feel free to over write he factory backup partition. You may have to manually install some drivers. Getting rid of "bloatware" makes a big difference.

Install a SSD ! You will be amazed at how fast it will runs.

Thanks but too much bother.
All bloatware is gone, temp, recycle etc all cleaned out.
It is what it is.

Also install as much RAM as the motherboard will take. You will be amazed at how much better the PC performs.

lryrob9301 wrote:

Fizz wrote:

theoldwizard1 wrote:

Fizz wrote:
... slow by modern standards but it works.

Now that it is stable, do a backup ! Write down he license number.

Find a "retail distribution" of your version of Windows. Feel free to over write he factory backup partition. You may have to manually install some drivers. Getting rid of "bloatware" makes a big difference.

Install a SSD ! You will be amazed at how fast it will runs.

Thanks but too much bother.
All bloatware is gone, temp, recycle etc all cleaned out.
It is what it is.

Also install as much RAM as the motherboard will take. You will be amazed at how much better the PC performs.

Ram and performance depends on the OS "Bit level" and if the MB BIOS can accept more Ram. Some older MBs may only give you 2GB to 4GB of Ram and or have limited slots.

32Bit OS versions (and yes it is very possible that one may have a 32bit OS on older hardware in Win7, Win8, Win10) can only access and use 3.2GB of the RAM, installing anything above that does absolutely nothing except wast your money.

64 bit OS can access and use memory above 3.2GB and if you have 4GB of RAM, it will most likely benefit SOME by adding in additional memory..

SSD drives can make a nice improvement but on real old hardware memory and SSD will have very limited benefits.