PC fettling and repairs thread

[DRM]

Many thanks, I’ll order from Replace Base in the morning. Next, the standard (5400mAh) or high capacity (6400mAh) battery? Decisions, decisions!

If it was me I’d go with the higher capacity, my MacBook Pro is the 15” version, mid 2010, it’s got an SSD, and 8 GB RAM, fair flies, if you’re going to fit an SSD just be aware that the old hard drive cables can be a bit fragile, if you get a white screen with a file symbol, with a ? In the middle it means the hdd ribbon cable is kaput, but replace base sell replacements for a few pounds and it’s dead easy to download the iOS from apple
https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac-recovery-mode-3674052/

 

[Proto]

If it was me I’d go with the higher capacity, my MacBook Pro is the 15” version, mid 2010, it’s got an SSD, and 8 GB RAM, fair flies, if you’re going to fit an SSD just be aware that the old hard drive cables can be a bit fragile, if you get a white screen with a file symbol, with a ? In the middle it means the hdd ribbon cable is kaput, but replace base sell replacements for a few pounds and it’s dead easy to download the iOS from apple
https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac-recovery-mode-3674052/

Thanks again. I’ll let you know how I get on.

 

[DCBassman]

Laptop is doing most duties just fine at the moment, while we refurnish the lounge, just hope there's somewhere left for the Mac Pro, or that will have to go too!

Back to using the SFF desktop, and the Mac Pro fits nicely into the refurbished room. Next job: build one good Apple Magic keyboard out of three for use with the Windows machine.

 

[Proto]

Daughter picked up a battery from Replace Base in Bristol this morning. High capacity version out of stock so had to settle for the 5400mAh battery.
Tomorrow, Amazon should be delivering a Crucial MX500 1TB SSD drive (the 500GB was out of stock), plus 8GB RAM upgrade. Wish me luck!

 

[Andy_R]

Hmm... I might try putting Linux on a diddy laptop donated to me by a mate. One of those old Asus EEEPCs.

It is running Win 7 and is SLOW. I'd be interested to see if it is usable for anything with Linux on it.

Mind you, I already have Linux on my old Dell and I don't use that...

Any ideas for dedicated use of underpowered devices? It seems a shame to recycle working tech but what is it good for!

Linux Mint...just put it on son's old Asus Win 7 laptop. Whilst it's not the fastest in the world it's now ok for surfing, boots up reasonably quickly, and works well with Libre Office.

 

[icowden]

Well windows 11 is going to cost folk. It would appear if I want Windows 11 on juniors PC I’ll need to buy a new motherboard and CPU . It’s quite old but plenty serviceable. It’s on i5 6600, so ok but lacks the tech specs for Windows 11. Eldest son PC which is not that old , just built upgraded this year also fails the Windows 11 specs test ! His is an AMD Ryzen thing as well.
What have MS done !!!??

Check in the BIOS. Quite often the healthcheck fails because things are not switched on - for example secure boot. My setup fails as I have it on legacy mode to boot from my SSD rather than full secure UEFI (for example).

 

[DCBassman]

Christmas fettling: some time back, I'd given my younger son a Dell Studio 1535 laptop for backup/shopping/Dungeon & Dragons, but eventually the screen bcklight failed. Supplied him with another dead 1535 to swap lids, but he never got around to doing it. So it all came back to me a couple of days before Christmas. Lids swapped, function restored. Then, as Christmas present, I find he's given me an iFixit Pro toolkit. Amazing! Can attempt fixes on almost any gadget with this, pics later.

 

[ColinJ]

My mouse has been driving me mad recently because its scroller wheel was very erratic. It would scroll the page in the desired direction but then the page would suddenly scroll or jump to a random new position.

I looked up all sorts of suggestions, reinstalling drivers, whatever... No joy.

Then I saw someone suggesting that the problem is often caused by dust getting into the optical sensor of the scroller wheel. I just held the mouse up to my mouth and blew very hard down the side of the wheel a couple of times. That seemed to make a big improvement so I did it another few times. I have been using the mouse for a couple of minutes since then and so far, so good. Recently it wouldn't work reliably for more than a couple of seconds.

If you have that problem with your mouse, give it a go and report your findings below.

NB Make sure that your mouth is very dry when you do this - you don't want to accidentally spit into the mouse! Ideally, use a blast from compressed air can.

 

[cyberknight]

just dug an old pc out of the loft must be getting on for 15+ years old so it will be fun seeing if i can get it working

 

[HMS_Dave]

just dug an old pc out of the loft must be getting on for 15+ years old so it will be fun seeing if i can get it working

There is definitely a market for retro PC's, especially if it has a dedicated graphics card in it. Won't be worth a great deal of money, but it would be worth getting it working and selling it if nothing else.

 

[mpemburn]

I’m a fan of a different manner of fettling: virtual machines. Since I have the week off (and that doesn’t stop me from bein’ a geek), I downloaded the latest version of Ubuntu (21.x) onto my MacBook, and booted a VirtualBox instance from it. My goal is to have an alternative software development environment, and I was (finally!) successful at installing Laravel Valet+ to run nginx under SSL (https)!

Tomorrow (through the clouds of hangover), I plan to install Visual Studio Code, GitHub desktop, MySQL Workbench, and clone in my main software project. Oh what fun!

 

[DaveReading]

just dug an old pc out of the loft must be getting on for 15+ years old so it will be fun seeing if i can get it working

I have a PC in the garage that has been running more or less continuously since 1999.

 

[cyberknight]

I have a PC in the garage that has been running more or less continuously since 1999.

mayb e its not that bad , i know its an early dual core i upgraded to a max of 2 gig ram , it had a weird raid 0 ( i think) even though it had 1 HDD which i think was failing but dont quote me .i used to be a computer geek but kids and cycling got in the way

 

[cyberknight]

update
i got it to boot after removing of the ram modules as it kaput and stopping boot , thats about s good as it got as i got a number of BSOD doing memory dumps.
tried to run ubuntu disk but every disk was rejected by the laptop including win install disks , being spat out and asking for a valid disk.boot order was disk 1st and it would still ignore the disk drive although it shows the drive as avaible.

TBH not sure its worth pursuing as i could probably pick up a second hand laptop with more power for what it would cost just to get it on its knees

 

[DCBassman]

Are you trying to run x64 installs on a 32-bit machine? If it's Core Duo, 32bit, Core 2 Duo, 64bit. Not sure about AMD stuff...