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Cardinal sins of computing

jpr62902

Jeanclaude Spam Banhammer
SUPER Site Supporter
I committed 2 of 'em, and now my penance is gonna be high.

First, I didn't make recovery discs when I got my new laptop 1.5 years ago.

Then, I didn't do any hard drive backups.

So guess what?

Yup. The hard drive took a dump. It just goes, "Click, click, click," and my laptop tells me that it's unable to find a bootable device. Well, f*ck.:hammer:

So I'm thinking I can buy another hard drive and OS at a cost of about $200 and I'll have a fresh new computer without any of that crapware they put on PC's nowadays.

Will this work, or am I looking at a lot of headaches tracking down drivers for the LAN or display or touchpad, etc. What say ye, technowizards?
 

Doc

Bottoms Up
Staff member
GOLD Site Supporter
Some of the drivers might be tricky to find / get right, but still that is your best route. Also check www.tigerdirect.com they might have laptops on sale for around that 200 price point. also, once you have a bootable drive you might be able to view data on your crashed drive. A local pc repair shop might be able to do it all cheaper and save you some grief.
 

jwstewar

Active member
If you are buying a hard drive take a look at Newegg. They blow Tiger's prices away. Then since you are buying hardware, you are a system builder, you can buy an System Builder version of Windows (It is the same as retail) except it is only about half the price.

I would bet most things will work with the base install of Windows and what doesn't WindowsUpdate will probably fix. Then if that doesn't work, most manufacturers (Toshiba, Dell, HP, Sony, Lenovo, Mac) have a place that you can enter the model number or the service tag and it will take you to a screen that has all the appropriate drivers for that particular machine. It really isn't that bad or painful at all.

Just as an option should you choose to, if you just want a system "restore" you can contact the manufacture and get the restore CDs. Usually about $25 - $50 and it will have everything including the version of Windows the machine came with. Downside, like you said, it will have all of the crap that was originally installed with it.
 

grizzer

New member
A ssd hdd and new os is cheap and may work. The os wants internet access on install & will find and install generic drivers that probably work. I know Lenovo has a built-in "whitelist" of approved parts it will play nice with.

I just replaced my laptop hdd with a ssd and a new battery. The battery was down to 20-30 mins and the thing squealed on startup a couple of weeks ago prompting the new ssd. Now mine is older with a ccfl 16:10 tall screen which are no longer available but good for documents. The new battery is a larger 12 cell giving me 4 hrs runtime.

I used Acronis software for the transfer.

My desktop crapped out last fall (was cmd not found) & I thought it was the hdd. I simply unplugged it as I was traveling a bunch & simply plugged the monitor & wireless kybd/mouse into the laptop.

For the desktop I bought a Samsung 840 series 256gb and installed w8 from scratch. Had to call Microsoft for the medialess office download again - couldn't find the right download place.

Anyways the Samsung comes with software called magician & is really slick - highly recommended.

Making a boot disk from a jump drive is easy & a bigger jump can hold the entire os to repair an internal faulty drive my desktop had corrupted software likely caused by converting 2003 excel to the new stuff crash. The hdd is fine.

I went to an advanced microcenter tech seminar for troubleshooting w8 & it's all graphical no more dos command line access. repair vs restore (wiping files) would have fixed the desktop. live & learn.
 

OhioTC18

Gone But Not Forgotten
GOLD Site Supporter
One of our laptops here had the screen or backlight crap out on it. I got a couple of estimates to fix it. Before I pay $300 for a screen to be replaced, I'll replace the whole damn thing.
I ordered a 15.6" HP straight from their website.
15.6" LED Display
500GB HDD
4MB RAM
2.4Ghz Intel processor
Windows 7 (Yes Windows 7)

Got it for $499. Got it delivered yesterday and set it all up today.
 

jpr62902

Jeanclaude Spam Banhammer
SUPER Site Supporter
These are some good pointers, guys. Thank you!

I'm staying local to get my hardware and OS -- there's a Microcenter about 10 miles away and I want to be able to take stuff back if needed. I want to try this just because I'm curious, and to have a pristine (i.e.: no proprietary crapware), new(ish) computer is a very enticing notion to me.

Further pointers certainly are welcome, and I'll post updates on my progress with this.

Another question: what's a good USB to 2.5" SATA data connector, so I can try to harvest data from my HDD in hospice?
 

OhioTC18

Gone But Not Forgotten
GOLD Site Supporter
I've used a XION 3.5" HDD USB enclosure with a 2.5" adapter. Worked well for my needs. The adapter is because a 3.5" HDD has a 40 pin connector and the 2.5" has a 44 pin connector. But what I have may not work with a SATA configuration. I think mine was IDE.
 

Adillo303

Diesel Truck Fan
GOLD Site Supporter
Just my two cents. You will be spending the cost of a new laptop in parts and your time to obtain a good working year and a half old laptop which will be less capable and probably slower that a new one. In addition, you will still have several older parts that can still fail as well and cost you more cash.

Do yourself a favor, get a new machine, delete the junk you don't want and take backups.

Another question: what's a good USB to 2.5" SATA data connector, so I can try to harvest data from my HDD in hospice?

You can get an USB enclosure, mount your laptop drive in it and "maybe" read some or all of the contents of the drive.
 

jpr62902

Jeanclaude Spam Banhammer
SUPER Site Supporter
All valid points, Andy. Part of me likes the challenge, and another part of me really wants that crapware free laptop!!:smile:
 

grizzer

New member
Microcenter had a bin of 2.5" hdd adapter boxes with a usb cable for I think was $4.99. I've had one laying around at the farm so did not need another. It now contains the old laptop hitachi drive.

A 32gb 3.0 usb (brown) at the checkout counter will hold W8.1 update full backup and it's fast.

A SSD really wakes up an older pc. My old dual core intel with vista updated to W7 is now almost instant response. I don't care about speed on the laptop mainly due to limited bandwidth on DSL. You do need ACHI on the motherboard to run a SSD. Windows turns off cache & other stuff a mechanical drives needs.

Buying a new laptop also requires extra power bricks and a new bag because the new ones are rectangular not square.

So I opted for noodling a $25 Ebay battery and Kingston $67.99 120 GB SSD at microcenter. Like the underwear ad says no pinch, no stink, no sweat. Took less than an hour.
 

Adillo303

Diesel Truck Fan
GOLD Site Supporter
JPR - You can have both. Make your "challenge" removing all the installed programs you don't want and reap the benefit of powerful hardware.
 

Catavenger

New member
SUPER Site Supporter
Some computers have the operating system backed up behind a partition.
This Lenovo laptop I that I use the most has a recessed button that is next to the button used to turn the laptop on. Pushing that starts a restoration process. I really messed it up once and had to use this. It took several hours but I got it running normally.
Look online chances are there are instructions on how to restore your computer from a partition. Worth a look anyway.
 

Galvatron

Spock and Galvatron < one and the same
Pending on what O/S you are planning to use i do know windows 7 and 8 pulls the drivers automatically so you should not have any major issues.
 

jpr62902

Jeanclaude Spam Banhammer
SUPER Site Supporter
Some computers have the operating system backed up behind a partition.
This Lenovo laptop I that I use the most has a recessed button that is next to the button used to turn the laptop on. Pushing that starts a restoration process. I really messed it up once and had to use this. It took several hours but I got it running normally.
Look online chances are there are instructions on how to restore your computer from a partition. Worth a look anyway.

Yup. That's my computer too. Except the partition with the system restore is on the hard drive that died.:shitHitFan:
 

grizzer

New member
I dunno if buying a cheap laptop is worth it. Under $5-600 is cheapy consumer grade or last years bottom end business class. Stepping up to $8-1.2k gets you a full 1920x1080 HD screen and backlit keyboards but watch for ULV cpu's with choked down performance and limited battery life. Then $1.5-3K gets the kitchen sink but the thermal dissipation issues have not been solved leading to throttling turbo speeds and no turbo cpu on battery power at all. You pays but don't gets.

Buying something actually new like the Samsung TabPro 8.4 android is a apple mini Ipad eater and still fits in pants pocket.

Or now that Asus is likely dropped from the next Google Nexus tablet release, they can complete their dual android/windows tablet.
 

jpr62902

Jeanclaude Spam Banhammer
SUPER Site Supporter
I've had pretty good luck with my low priced Acers until this hard drive issue. Plus, they aren't as loaded down with crapware as HP's or Toshibas.

Can't go the tablet route because I need a full function PC. And when I do get a tablet, it'll have a Windows OS.
 

Dargo

Like a bad penny...
GOLD Site Supporter
Do Windows based machines not come with the option of "no-crapware" (or whatever they call it) as an option for like $75 more? I know when I bought my little Kindle Fire HDX I paid extra to get it without all the adware etc. that normally comes on their machines.
 

jpr62902

Jeanclaude Spam Banhammer
SUPER Site Supporter
So far so good. Slapped that new 1TB HDD into the laptop and fired it up with the Windows 8.1 DVD in the ROM. Set up my email with Window Live Essentials, and imported the account profiles from my external HDD. Now I'm installing 44 updates .... Ugh.

Meh. At least I can drink beer while I stare at that stoopit green progress bar .....
 

Adillo303

Diesel Truck Fan
GOLD Site Supporter
Sorry that this is late to the party, hopefully, it will help others. The link below will tell you where to get bootable .iso files for every win 7 version.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...snt-seem/4789ffda-14d7-419c-92cf-662b56ef408c

Then, go get Rufus for free.

http://rufus.akeo.ie

Rufus will take that .iso and make a bootable usb drive. This really speeds loading the O/S. Voila!!!! You have crap free system. You will need your product key. You also end up with ready to go win 7 install media, alkyl for the cost a flash drive (What, about 4 bucks).

Hope this helps someone.
 

Adillo303

Diesel Truck Fan
GOLD Site Supporter
They down, one to go. Just finished putting Windows 8.1 on my big laptop. I have both desktops done all that I left is the little laptop.

Looking forward to having them all there.
 

Doc

Bottoms Up
Staff member
GOLD Site Supporter
you loaded Win8 on purpose? :eek: What's up with that, are you a convert?
 

Adillo303

Diesel Truck Fan
GOLD Site Supporter
It's like this Doc. As you know, I fix 'em for a living. I have fought every new O/S Since WIN 95. Invariably, a customer will buy the new O/S and I get to set up the system. Then, I get to look like a jerk while I learn how it works in front of a customer, who then wants a rake off on the bill, because, they don't want to pay for my training. When win 8 came out, there was a backdoor where you could get it for fourteen bucks. I switched all my systems. Then I learned it on my own time. While the UI is definitely different, I removed all the tiles that I don't use and shrunk it down to just what was on my desktop. It's not really all that bad. In fact, it is faster than win 7. Enter win 8.1. Now I can start up with a desktop. Load power 8 and you don't need the tiles any more.

I ride this till win 9 comes along and I probably will get win 9 for free. Not too shabby for fourteen bucks. And, there is no new development coming out for win 7.
 

jpr62902

Jeanclaude Spam Banhammer
SUPER Site Supporter
Pretty much done now. It was a little finicky at times, but worth the effort, especially for the cost of only about $180.

You now what's fun? Having your PC password protected, then installing a driver that disables your keyboard.:hammer: At least now I know how to access the virtual keyboard.:clap: But y'all were right. Windows 8.1 does a have a good stable of drivers to gitcha up and runnin lickety split. Thanks all!

The bad news is the old hard drive is toast. At least I didn't lose TOO much data.:smile:
 

Doc

Bottoms Up
Staff member
GOLD Site Supporter
So that drive was only 1 1/2 yr old? And it's toast? Damn. Did you power the laptop on and off a lot or leave it running all the time? Weird for a drive to fail that soon. There are places that can recover data from bad hard drives. Cost varies depending on how hard it is to get to the data.
 

jpr62902

Jeanclaude Spam Banhammer
SUPER Site Supporter
So that drive was only 1 1/2 yr old? And it's toast? Damn. Did you power the laptop on and off a lot or leave it running all the time? Weird for a drive to fail that soon. There are places that can recover data from bad hard drives. Cost varies depending on how hard it is to get to the data.

I've never had a HDD fail before, so maybe this is just my first lemon. Thankfully I didn't lose much. Everything I hear about data recovery is that it's expensive. I can just do without the lost data for now. Maybe some day a data recovery person will owe me a big favor and I can cash in then ....
 

Adillo303

Diesel Truck Fan
GOLD Site Supporter
JPR - Get yourself an USB to SATA enclosure. Should be about $20. Poop that drive in it and plug it into a USB port on your laptop. You might just read a lot of data.

Doc - I am seeing a lot of hard drive failures that i did not see before. Quality seems to be down.
 

bczoom

Super Moderator
Staff member
GOLD Site Supporter
Poop that drive in it and plug it into a USB port on your laptop. You might just read a lot of data.
I disagree. Never poop in/on your drive! You can read a lot in the "library" room but never do something like that to a USB.

Don't ask how I know :ermm:
 

jpr62902

Jeanclaude Spam Banhammer
SUPER Site Supporter
JPR - Get yourself an USB to SATA enclosure. Should be about $20. Poop that drive in it and plug it into a USB port on your laptop. You might just read a lot of data.

Doc - I am seeing a lot of hard drive failures that i did not see before. Quality seems to be down.

BTDT. All I got was click, click, click.

I disagree. Never poop in/on your drive! You can read a lot in the "library" room but never do something like that to a USB.

Don't ask how I know :ermm:

To be clear, it was the drive that took the dump, not me. It was a Toshiba drive, btw.
 
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