Breathing some life into a laptop

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aferris2

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Thanks @RoubaixCube I've pretty well sorted this, but I have learned quite a few things along the way.

On your specific points, I haven't seen a MSATA port, so I don't think this is an option. Will have another look though. The motherboard is limited to 16GB ram, but that should be more than enough.

Things learnt in no particular order:
  • If you have a digital license then logging in to a Microsoft account is very useful because that stores the windows license key in the account. Result is that it doesn't seem to matter how many times you swap disks in the computer.
  • Buy a disk caddy so you can still get stuff off the old disk.
  • Make sure you have all the serial numbers, account passwords, key files, and other things needed for all of the apps you want to keep using. I had one app that uses a license file which was emailed to me when I first got this PC (2013). Wouldn't have been too much of a problem if it just stored the file on the disk somewhere, but this just set up some registry keys and the only source remaining was a very very old email.
  • Write down and save somewhere secure all of the custom tweaks to any apps (eg Firefox, chrome, thunderbird). I have all the profiles on the data partition, but you have to know how to make the fresh installs of these apps use these instead of the standard profiles.
  • Use the media creation tool to create the instalation "disk". You can copy this to DVD but I discovered the DVD's I had weren't big enough. Better to copy to a blank USB key. This needs to be at least 8GB. I had a 128GB key and this was formatted down to 32GB so that I could boot from that.
  • Make sure you know where to get all the apps you want to retain. Not usually too much of a problem if you have a physical disk, but most things are downloaded now.
  • I keep all my data on a separate partition so only needed to clone the whole partition onto the new disk and hook up the apps. This is much easier than copying lots of folders individually (and windows copying is S L O W)
  • Get as big a disk as you can without spending a silly amount of money. 1TB disks are well under £100, but probably avoid unbranded disks for peace of mind. I did see what claimed to be a 2TB SSD for about £60 new. Its either a real bargain or not what you're expecting. I've gone for a 2TB WD blue for £175.
  • Cloning an existing disk is usually much quicker than building up a clean install, but be aware that any faults on the original disk can make the cloning process fail. On another PC I was using macrium reflect to clone the disk and this found a bad sector or something about 2 hours into the copy and it just stopped. WD have a dedicated app on their support pages that gives the option to skip over the bad sectors. I never did find out what the failure was, but it doesn't seem to have affected anything.
  • Check you have all your logins, passwords, and other stuff saved somewhere that doesn't rely on your installed applications. Can you remember all the email server settings for example? Use a password manager and keep the file safe somewhere, preferably somewhere that is accessible via your phone or tablet. There are lots of options. I use keypass with the file stored on Google drive so any changes or additions are available to all my devices.
  • Keep archived copies of things like backup profiles so you don't need to re-create these on the new install. I've got about 10 that manage all of my backups and it's much easier to copy these back rather than figure out paths, logins, ftp settings etc. etc.
  • Keep a note of all tweaks made to windows to aid privacy, performance, and stuff you don't want or need. I haven't got a touch screen or microphone so this stuff is just extra baggage that's no use to me.
There's probably a heap of other stuff, but that will do for now.
 
nice list, one of the reasons I've held back from replacing an old laptop is cuz the current one,

HP G60 Notebook model VM085UA#ABA Pentium dual core CPU 2.10 GHZ Windows 7 Home Premium

is working as designed & I have an old version of photoshop that I like very much (7.0). regardless if anyone cares to point out anything obvious to them:

HP Folio 9470M $343

Acer Aspire 5 A515-55-75NC, 10th Gen Intel Core i7-1065G7 $700

Dell Latitude 14 7000 Series E7470 Ultrabook, Intel Core i7-6600U, 8 GB DDR4, 256 GB SSD, Windows 10 Pro (Renewed)

HP EliteBook 840 G3 Laptop - Intel Core i7-6600U 256GB SSD, 8GB DDR4 RAM, Windows 10 Pro (Renewed) $480

Acer Aspire 5 Slim Laptop, 8th Gen Intel Core i5-8265U, 8GB DDR4, 256GB SSD, Windows 10 Home $640

DELL Latitude E6440 Core i7-4600M 2.9GHz, 8GB Ram, 256GB SSD, DVDRW, Windows 10 Pro 64bit (Renewed) $390
 
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aferris2

Guru
Location
Up over
@rockyroller I haven't looked at new machines for a long time but it usually comes down to the extras that decide it for me. What's the keyboard like? How many USB ports? Screen size? Graphics chip? There are probably more...

Most of these laptops are i7 which is fairly high spec. I would prefer more RAM and bigger disk to be honest. I started off on this laptop with 8 GB ram and 500GB HDD. This was fine with win7 for a long time then things like Firefox started to get greedy and I was regularly running with 7GB ram "in use" according to task manager. When this happens, windows swaps things to disk and that's when things really start to slow down. Gradually the disk starts to fill up with various bits of garbage and it's increasingly difficult to remove this (winxsx(?) and .NET especially), plus there's gradual creep into the registry as well.
Whether you can use the old photoshop on a new PC comes down to having the install media (disk or installer) and whether the licence is transferable. I've only used it at work where we had transferable lincenses from a local server. I tend to use GIMP for personal use.
 
This was fine with win7 for a long time then things like Firefox started to get greedy and I was regularly running with 7GB ram "in use" according to task manager
Not windows or Firefox, something else. Or my laptop would have ground to a halt years back. It didn't and doesn't use much if any swap space, with 4GB of ram. But I'll agree one thing: put in as much RAM as you can fit, it never hurts.
 
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aferris2

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Not windows or Firefox, something else. Or my laptop would have ground to a halt years back. It didn't and doesn't use much if any swap space, with 4GB of ram. But I'll agree one thing: put in as much RAM as you can fit, it never hurts.
Possibly, but I have noticed that firefox does use a lot of RAM especially if you have many windows/tabs open at the same time. Overall though, I agree - get as much RAM as you can (fit/afford)
 
especially if you have many windows/tabs open
Does anyone really do this, usefully I mean? Max half a dozen windows/ tabs, surely? If you really need to do that, a laptop is not the machine for you, but a desktop with 32 or 64GB of RAM. Laptops cannot handle this unless they can also handle that much RAM, which is rare.
Any browser with a lot of tabs open will do the same, doubt it's just Firefox. Beyond lots of tabs, you may have a program with a memory leak.
Having a good graphics subsystem helps too, if you're doing graphics-intensive stuff, again something which few laptops except the most expensive gaming laptops have on board.
 
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aferris2

Guru
Location
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Does anyone really do this, usefully I mean? Max half a dozen windows/ tabs, surely? If you really need to do that, a laptop is not the machine for you, but a desktop with 32 or 64GB of RAM. Laptops cannot handle this unless they can also handle that much RAM, which is rare.
Any browser with a lot of tabs open will do the same, doubt it's just Firefox. Beyond lots of tabs, you may have a program with a memory leak.
Having a good graphics subsystem helps too, if you're doing graphics-intensive stuff, again something which few laptops except the most expensive gaming laptops have on board.
Ummmm. Yes.
Easily 20 tabs open in firefox spread across 5 or 6 different windows.
Email, Couple of IDE's, CAD package, PDF viewer, WAMP, eclipse, excel, word, help files, logic analyser, oscilloscope, some music ...
The laptop does pretty well with 2 monitors. Prefer a laptop though because its smaller and doesn't lose everything when we have a power cut.
I'm a busy lad (sometimes)!
 
As a point of reference, my current Lenovo laptop has the following spec:

1618708735128.png

The machine came with a 128GB SSD, and no upgrades to this. Takes less than 30 secs to fully load. Around 2 years old now I think, Windows defender takes care of all maintenance tasks and security. It struggles with video rendering, but no surprise there, everything else works fine. I deliberately bought cheap and low spec with a view to replacing after 3 years or so. Of course everyone's intended usage and expectations vary a lot. Anyways, as I said, just for reference.
 
Ummmm. Yes.
Easily 20 tabs open in firefox spread across 5 or 6 different windows.
Email, Couple of IDE's, CAD package, PDF viewer, WAMP, eclipse, excel, word, help files, logic analyser, oscilloscope, some music ...
The laptop does pretty well with 2 monitors. Prefer a laptop though because its smaller and doesn't lose everything when we have a power cut.
I'm a busy lad (sometimes)!
Fair enough, I wouldn't be able to keep track of all that. I'd rather open and close things as I went along, but if you need it, then you need it! And you can always get a UPS if you need to avoid power cuts with desktops. As mentioned, I don't use mine heavily for anything!
 
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LeetleGreyCells

Un rouleur infatigable
A while ago I was given a laptop 'for parts' as it was deemed no longer any good. It was extremely slow to do anything and took over 20 minutes to load from switching it on cold.

Well, after a little fettling, swapping the HDD for SSD and installing a fresh copy of Win10 and apps, etc., plus ensuring the correct drivers loaded, I had got it to 1 minute 30 seconds starting, but it was bugging me. I was sure it could start faster so I've been messing about with it today. Now I have the laptop going from fully off to on in 14 seconds. Every button press or app open is instant.

Not bad for a 10 year old laptop.

That'll do me :becool:
 

LeetleGreyCells

Un rouleur infatigable
Seems I’m back to more work on computers...

Looks like something in my desktop PC has died. It switches on for two seconds, fans spin then off again and repeat. Tried resetting CMOS, removing and re-adding RAM / graphics card / etc., etc. Cleaned everything. Started to lose my temper, so packed it away last night, and will try again later today.
 
Seems I’m back to more work on computers...

Looks like something in my desktop PC has died. It switches on for two seconds, fans spin then off again and repeat. Tried resetting CMOS, removing and re-adding RAM / graphics card / etc., etc. Cleaned everything. Started to lose my temper, so packed it away last night, and will try again later today.
Power unit going down, sounds like...
 

LeetleGreyCells

Un rouleur infatigable
Power unit going down, sounds like...
It's either the PSU, the motherboard or the RAM. I'm doubtful it's the PSU as it keeps trying to power up. Cheapest option to test is the RAM, but I don't have any spare for testing so I've ordered a stick which should come on Thursday.

EDIT: It's not a CMOS battery needed as I've put a new battery in.
 
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