OT: Reviving an old Windows 7 laptop

[Tricky Dicky]

I have a Toshiba 775 laptop which came originally with Windows 7 installed but has been upgraded to Windows 10. It has been running very slow for sometime taking ages to open apps and there seems constant HD activity which I think is the real problem having tried all the usual attempts to improve running. We have replaced it with a Dell G5 running Windows 11 having taken off everything of use off the old Toshiba I am looking at trying to revive it for use in a computer control situation.

The question is how? My first thought is to replace the HD with a SSD. Of course this means how do I reinstall Windows 10. Incidentally the Windows

10 installation was an OEM upgrade and I think I have a memory stick with a backup of the download. The last time I ever installed an OS from scratch we were still using floppy disks. The PC is not compatible for a Windows 11 Installation which I had considered.

Looking into the issue of reviving the Toshiba which has an Core i5 - 2410M 2.3Ghz processor and 6GB RAM which when I did the upgrade fell well in to the specifications for Windows 10. Since then I have come across a more comprehensive list of compatible processors and mine is not listed. Bizarrely it is not even listed as Windows 7 compatible!

So the question is am I wasting my time? Is there going to be licensing issues installing the OEM version on another HD? What is going to be the best way to do the installation?

I know we have a lot of Linux fans on here but that is not going to happen.

Richard

[Theo]

Go here:

Create a fresh installer USB stick with Windows 10.

(there are guides on how to hack the Windows 11 installer to run on 'unsupported' machines if you want that, and generally it works fine. Whether you do want it is up to you)

Plug the USB into the machine once you've fitted the SSD. Tell BIOS to boot from it (may happen automatically) - depends on the laptop but try pressing F2, F6, F10, F12, Delete on powerup to get a boot menu. Follow the prompts to install Windows.

That's it really.

Not sure what happened there

If the machine already has a Windows licence, a reinstall on the same should re-authorise after it's chatted to Microsoft. You might use a tool to show the Windows product key and write it down, in case the new install asks for it. The link above has details.

That machine would likely work fine with Linux. Just sayin'. :-)

Theo

[Jeff Gaines]

There shouldn't be issues as the key will be logged at MSFT next to the identifier of the laptop, from my experience changing/adding hard drives doesn't cause an issue. Download an up to date iso from MSFT using the media creation tool in the hope it won't require so many updates.

[Chris Green]

It's happened! :-)

[Tricky Dicky]

Not looked at that link yet but will it be a problem that it is an OEM version and I was under the impression was that MS was not really interested in supporting such installations and referring users back to the original supplier?

Richard

[Theo]

No, it doesn't matter these days. Microsoft basically doesn't care about charging end users for Windows any more, they're only really bothered about charging OEMs to preinstall it. So it's possible to install it on anything. You can skip the licence entry step. It may bleat about lack of a licence but will work fine. If needs be you can type in your key - even a Win7 key works.

An OEM install is even easier as the key is burnt into the BIOS so you don't need to type it in. (not sure if your laptop generation is new enough for that). But since the machine is already running Windows Microsoft should already know about it and activate it automatically.

Theo

[The Natural Philosopher]

Your loss.

[Mark]

you can install win 11 with "Rufus" on that laptop which will work fine or download and use "Tiny windows" 10 or 11

[Andrew]

I had no problem upgrading the 2014 HP AIO PC that I bought in a charity shop. It originally had Win8 and had been upgraded to Win 10 in

2020. I replaced the 1 Gigabyte HD with a smaller SSD and a fresh install using the media creation tool. I didn't even need to tell it to use the SSD, it just got on with it.

[Animal]

I am also tasked with getting an old xp laptop going. Fast cpu but single core. A miserable 192M ram. It's going, but slow as a snail. According to win there's no 3rd party apps to uninstall. What can I do to sort it? And what flavour of linux is good for that? I'll keep xp if it works ok, but it's far too slow now.

[David Wade]

Look for an SSD with cloning software, then you can just clone the disk. You will need a USB adaptor for the USB.

usually the key for W10 is saved on the Microsoft web site

Are you sure you are not checking the W11 list. I think every I5 is W10 compatible.

No, and if you have the Windows/7 key it will work with W10 from the MS web site.

Dave

[Theo]

I used to have one of those - Compaq N200 ultra-lightweight with 192MB of soldered RAM. Windows 2000 was better than XP, but even that struggled. (I think it may have originally come with WinME but the less said about that...)

Putting Linux on that today, RAM is going to be a problem, but also the 32 bit Pentium 3 CPU. No mainstream Linux is going to run - you may get a basic Debian running but would need to pick your desktop environment very carefully.

some suggestions, although most are beyond your RAM budget.

Putting an SSD in it (via a SATA to IDE adapter if necessary) will help a great deal.

I'm not sure what you can do with it today - modern web browsing is going to be beyond it. Unless you have some very limited app to use it for, probably best case is to use it for remote desktop to another machine with more RAM.

Theo (who got back in the day got Netscape running in X+Linux on a 386 with floppies and 4MB RAM...)

[John Rumm]

Yup, this...

SSD is the single biggest and easiest upgrade for a system of this vintage.

I would not both. Just clone the existing disk to the SSD and the replace the spinning rust with the SSD clone.

You can download win 10 from MS these days - the "media creation tool". It can either make a DVD boot disk, or a bootable USB thumb drive. It can also do an in place upgrade on an older system running win 7 or 8.

It will still work. 8 GB or ram would be nice, but 6GB is workable if not running too many applications at once.

Licensing is easy - once win 10 has been run on the platform it will be activated with a digital license. You will then always be able to put it back on the same machine without any hassle. If doing a clean install, just skip typing in a serial number at install time - just make sure to choose the right version to install (so install pro if you have a pro license, and home if you have home etc).

Win10 has windows subsystem for Linux... Although that probably needs a CPU that can enable virtualisation - so that might preclude a 2nd gen i5.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Essentially to run a browser in a linux setup needs around 1GB RAM minimum and 2GB for choice.

Machines with less that are not upgradeable are really beyond gainful employment

I have run on 512M RAM but it was emergency use only

[Brian Gaff]

No it should work. However, I have a windows 10 machine here and it is mega slow on batteries, but reasonable on mains. What you need is to clone the current system onto an ssd that will fit the beast. Its done a lot as I had it done on my desktop, and although it states Win 10 needs at least 8 gigs, it will work on less. One thing though, since its not been used for a long time you will be finding its downloading lots of new stuff and judging it might have to wait for several days while bits get installed and updated using multiple re starts and during this, particularly if its a rotating disc, it will be almost unusable speed wise. That was why this here lenovo seemed so slow for three days while it caught up. I think the very last 10 feature update is probably now out and only security updates will be out till it expires in

2025. I like windows 7, and do still run it, but the problems start when big pieces of software start not supporting it due to the compiler no longer assembling code that can run on it. Brian

[Paul]

But any time a version upgrade comes in, that copy of Windows will fail to be able to upgrade. The OS will accept Patch Tuesday in that state, but anything which "checks the OS version thoroughly" will think something is wrong with it.

You can also install Windows 11 on a Windows 11 capable platform, then move the disk drive over to the Windows 11 InCapable machine, and the same thing happens. Windows 11 will adapt to the conditions it finds, and shut off features which won't work. But as soon as you try to upgrade the Version, it'll check for a TPM and not find one.

You can:

Install 21H2 with Rufus. Then Repair Install 22H2 with a Rufus stick. Do the same thing when 23H2 is released. But if you expect the "Windows Update method" of 23H2 to install, it should not work.

Rufus works for W11 TPM bypass, but expect issues with "continuity". Any time the Rufus installer is not used, and the Microsoft installer for a Version is used, there will be a problem.

Paul

[Clive Arthur]

<snip>

I did this on a couple of PCs recently and it was easy to clone the HDD to an SSD plugged via an adaptor into a USB slot and then install the cloned SSD.

I can't remember the software used, I uninstalled it afterwards, but loads of stuff on the web about doing it. No need for any reinstallation of anything, the PCs appear just the same with everything just how it was only quicker.

[wasbit]

Cloning your current hard drive to an SSD is one choice but that will depend on your capability. I would suggest the safer route is to download the Windows 10 media tool to a usb drive -

an SSD drive & swap it for the current hard drive. Install Windows (which should self activate). If things do go wrong (highly unlikely) you have your original hard drive with a working Windows to fall back on. You will probably find that Windows with a clean install will feel a lot faster (once it has updated itself).

[Tricky Dicky]

I have decided to go the clone route which seems the the most straight forward and the only additional cost being. £7 cable. if it fails then I still have the HDD to try alternative methods.

I have ordered a USB to SATA cable and a 1Tb drive which should be more than adequate for my intentions. It will be £50 well spent if it revives the laptop. Incidentally the current Windows 10 version is 22H2.

Richard

[Joe]

It is also, of course, unsafe to use on the Internet as it has been out of support for, I think, nine years now.

I'd think it is slow because XP originally needed 256MB to work comfortably, then after an update some years later it suddenly needed at least 512MB.

All the old Debian Linux versions are downloadable, and one can be found to run on this machine, but it would have the same out-of-support risks as XP and won't run modern software. At best, you could make a non-networked machine for teaching purposes, with spreadsheet, word processing etc.

Sadly, something with 192MB of RAM is unlikely to even be able to address the size of RAM needed for anything in current support and able to use modern software.