OT: Reviving an old Windows 7 laptop

[Andy Burns]

It would be OK with MS-DOS or FreeDOS on it, for anything else just scrap it ...

[The Natural Philosopher]

And that is the kicker. Unless it will take more RAM, its not worth keeping

[Jonathan]

We have a Windows 10 desktop that was running very slow. Took it into our local experts who told me that MS had changed W10 so it ran slowly with a traditional hard disk. Their swap for a solid state disk has made all the difference on a 8-10 year old machine. It now runs fast. We basically use Office and e-mail, so it's not under a lot of pressure.

Jonathan

[Ottavio Caruso]

Just load one of these live Linux distros and do a stress test on the laptop. It will tell you where the problem is. I had an old Thinkpad whose BIOS based troubleshooting tool didn't pick up any faults, but stress testing it, it turned out it had a faulty RAM slot.

I used to use SystemRescueCD back in my day, but it looks a bit dead now. Still useful, though.

[Animal]

There's no better qualification than that! 'Please insert swapfile disc' :)

The beast is P4 2.something GHz, no cpu problem there. RAM is the big one. Years ago I put stuff like puppylinux antix etc on 128 RAM & 400MHz for people. But I'm completely out of that area of knowledge now. I guess I should pick one at random & try it. It won't connect to the net much. I gather there are win specific hardware laptops, no clue if this is one of them. Would be bad to delete xp & find it won't work ok on linux. Q4os Slax & an old version of puppy look possible.

[Animal]

Years ago I used a very old backup machine occasionally, while waiting for pc repair. 486 with 24M RAM. Even that got online, with dotty 256 colour graphics. Machines with a few hundred MHz can behave acceptably.

[Animal]

fwiw I've found discs on usb to be very unreliable.

[Paul]

But this would presumably only be connected during cloning, and would go back to native interface when used inside the machine.

And that would be smart cloning, where only the clusters with user data get transferred, and the white space on the disk drive is not cloned. If you have a 1TB partition with 20GB of data, the smart cloning operation will do 20GB of writes. Which makes the cloning seem considerably faster. It's not like using "dd" to clone, which would suck (as it transfers the entire 1TB). While you can make up a script, and many invocations of dd to copy a drive, you have to be a level 39 wizard to do that correctly.

The secret sauce in whole disk cloning, is not the cloning of partitions, but the reproduction of MBR, boot track, 2xGPT tables and so on. Occasionally a method is not capable of copying the backup GPT table, which is very annoying.

This is how you put back the duplicate GPT table, once you discover you didn't manage to capture that part. If the duplicate GPT table is missing, the error messages that result, make no sense at all. At first. If the software you're using is "weak sauce", and you attempt to change the size of the disk, this is a time where the duplicate GPT goes missing (oops). I learned about this, just the other day, while doing a P2V clone (making a virtualbox out of a physical disk on the other machine).

sudo gdisk /dev/sda r recovery menu d duplicate primary GPT to backup GPT w do the writes to the end of the disk then quit

Paul

[Paul]

You could clone with this. I did a quick check with wget.exe and it is still there. It started to download.

Name: reflect_setup_free_x64.exe Size: 115,719,576 bytes (110 MiB) SHA1: B6724C7B6F5AF146406FAAA78F845A6C281D67D8

You can also make media (USB stick or CD or ISOfile) for offline cloning (Win not running). Since running it the "normal" way uses VSS, it's every bit as good. You make emergency media for... emergencies.

[Picture] "Download original" for best resolution. If frame is blank, right-click and select "Reload"

Some of the SSD companies, also provide cloning software. This could be Acronis TIH used for cloning and brand-locked to a particular brand of drive. This can be a rather large package. Even Macrium is large, if you make emergency media a certain way. The smallest download for Macrium, is to just install something like the above in Win10, not make emergency media, then clone to the externally-supported disk drive.

*******

Installing Win10 fresh, means re-installing whatever software you had in the original setup. You also have to move your email database over and so on.

Paul

[Clive Arthur]

<snip>

Ah yes, that rang a bell, I used Macrium Reflect for two PCs with success. It was a recent version, but did allow disk cloning for free.

[John Rumm]

One slight limitation is that it does not allow resizing on the fly during the clone, but other than that works well. It can also image drives or partitions to a file, which can be handy.

[Tricky Dicky]

Update:

Managed to complete the update but what a PITA it was. I bought a Crucial SSD and went with their version of Acronis to do the upgrade. Several times the cloning fell over and the process stalled. On one occasion when I did get the cloning to complete Windows would open only as far as the blue screen for the recovery process but each time it was incapable of completing a repair and at one point looked like I would have to do a Windows reinstall. At one point I got to a stage where plugging the SSD into the USB 3 port gave the bing bong on connection but the drive never appeared in file manager.

Finally decided to try alternative cloning software, Macrium but it could not see the SSD drive. Went back to Acronis and it could see the drive. Decided to wipe the drive and see if I could start from new despite Acronis stalling at the end it seemed to be wiped. Macrium could see the drive but I was unable to allocate it as the destination drive. Back to Acronis started the cloning and this time it completed and then Eureka swapped out the drive and everything was working again but this time much faster. Yippee!

I may be wrong but I suspect the original drive was so clapped out that it may have been the problem for all the failures but I would be interested in any theories about why. There is only one minor issue which if push comes to shove I can live with. Previously after the Toshiba splash screen Windows started to load slowly but immediately. After all the disk swapping I seem to be getting a BIOS message something about PXE-ROM, finally DHCP with a rotating curser for a few moments before loading Windows. It is not a long delay but if I could get it back to how Windows opened before I would be pleased.

Richard

[Paul]

On Windows, this is pretty handy for non-destructive testing. The paid version supports both read and write.

hdtune 2.55

[ Picture ]

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Western Digital Data LifeGuard (DLGDIAG) -- Allows running Smart Short test of drive health -- Some companies provide such tools for their drives. -- This particular one may be out-of-support, but still downloadable.

SeatoolsWindowsInstaller.exe -- Seagate offers Seatools.

Toshiba ??? -- Some companies have a tradition of "thin support", but you can Google for it.

One of the purposes of these vendor-specific tests, is for the generation of "magical RMA return codes". When a drive is within the warranty period, one of these utilities may deliver a hex code, which can be submitted with a request for RMA authorization. And this "proves" to the company, that you have an action-able warranty claim.

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On Linux

bullwinkle@CRUISE:~$ sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdb [sudo] password for bullwinkle:

smartctl 7.2 2020-12-30 r5155 [x86_64-linux-5.15.0-76-generic] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-20, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke,

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION === Model Family: Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 Device Model: ST3500418AS Serial Number: 9VMXTYXZ LU WWN Device Id: 5 000c50 02da64ae5 Firmware Version: CC46 User Capacity: 500,107,862,016 bytes [500 GB] Sector Size: 512 bytes logical/physical Rotation Rate: 7200 rpm Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show] ATA Version is: ATA8-ACS T13/1699-D revision 4 SATA Version is: SATA 2.6, 3.0 Gb/s Local Time is: Sat Aug 5 13:12:45 2023 EDT ...

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION === SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

It tends to pass drives, that aren't in the best of shape, but that is the nature of SMART short and long tests.

The HDTune benchmark curve (look for "flat spots") is one of the more sensitive tests of overall health.

Even though the above drive has 400 listed reallocations out of maybe 3500, it is not showing appreciably in the transfer curve. I've had other drives, where the smart table showed nothing at all of concern, where there was a 50GB wide, 5MB/sec section in the benchmark curve, which is "guaranteed drive retirement". Because death/dataloss is imminent. When all the errors are concentrated in one "wear patch", this is a damage pattern that SMART is not good at. It can entirely miss the 50GB section and the impact it is having.

The all-green bad block scan in HDTune, tells me a clone operation should proceed OK, even if a bit slowly.

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Linux gddrescue can be used to clone sick drives. You can use multiple passes of gddrescue, trying and trying to copy "bad bits".

Whereas a lot of Windows utilities, only attempt to copy the occupied clusters, and if there are errors in "white space", they don't matter. But the problem with the Windows utilities, if there is even one "CRC error" during cloning, the damn software stops and will not continue.

Then, the less desirable "total surface copy" must be done, with the likes of gddrescue package.

Paul

[John Rumm]

Yup if the HDD was on its last legs you may have trouble cloning it. Alternatively your USB adaptor may not have been totally happy on your USB chipset - or any number of other possibilities. Using different ports etc can sometimes help.

It sounds like while messing about with the BIOS settings you have managed to turn on the option to boot from LAN - it may have been on before but so low down the boot priority that you never saw it because it always found the bootable HDD before it got that far. So check the boot order in the BIOS.

[Tricky Dicky]

Thanks John, I kind of came to the same conclusion as messages popped up saying network boot file not found. I only went into BIOS once and as far as I was concerned I never altered anything but I suppose it can accidentally be done. I did manage to get into the Boot Order menu but it was showing the SSD drive as the primary drive. I will look again, carefully, in BIOS to see if network boot has been enabled but once again I am having trouble getting into BIOS as the message is not appearing with the splash screen and without it furious pressing of F1 does nothing.

Richard

[The Natural Philosopher]

Getting into the Bios on many consumer class devices is deliberately obfuscated to prevent this sort of thing happening :-(

I wish you luck. I have had to randomly change BIOS things in order to get a particular machine to run Linux.

'Secure boot' and UEFI.. who knows WTF they are?

[Tricky Dicky]

TNP, as a Linux user you are probably not interested in Windows but for the benefit of other users I have found if you go into windows settings and into the repair menu and then shut down on restart when the Toshiba splash screen comes up so does the menu for BIOS and Boot Menu. Do not why it only happens shutting down this way but every time I did it the menu came up.

Anyway as John said it was trying a network boot prioritising the SSD drive solved the issue. Oddly in the boot menu it was already set to the SSD and when I was in BIOS previously I never changed any settings at least not to my knowledge. I am pleased that everything is back to normal but soooooo much faster. Thanks all for help suggestions and solutions.

Richard

[The Natural Philosopher]

It is not unknown for random bits in silicon to change under fiddling. A transient can erase a flash cell. As can a thunderstorm. DAMHIKT. And random bits can cause strange results. Once in the days of floppy disks I wrote some medical software. To reduce storage each bit had a meaning.

To test it I used a random number generator and was delighted when it reported that I had a dislocation of the testicles...

[Jeff Gaines]

Did you take something for that?

[Paul]

Before declaring the invention of a magnetic monopole in your computer room, verify that you tried F2 and also <fn> F2. On some machines, they do things differently, and the colours of the keyboard may be indicating that <fn> or FunctionKey must be pressed down, while you repeatedly hammer the F-key desired.

Something else, is on Dells, the BIOS will appear "mad/crazy" because what Dell did was they made their desktops "RAID Ready". This means the disk drive can be declared to be part of a RAID pair. They only want the user to enable enough SATA ports to prepare for RAID-ready, as if all the users are salivating at the prospect of a RAID mirror. Yet the machines don't ship with the extra drive, to clone and make the mirror. This means the machine preferences, is silently tuned for a kind of user that simply does not use the computer.

You can be sitting there, changing settings on the bloody machine, and "nothing makes sense". Yet, unknown to you, the machine has a plan, and even if the second drive never makes an appearance inside the machine, the machine is restricting what you can do, as if "RAID config" is going to happen "any minute now".

They don't even provide the second plastic tray, for the drive that would make the RAID-pair !!!

So when a machine appears to "be bananas", that is actually "expected behavior" by the BIOS designer. Rather than a random number generator, the behaviors are actually traceable to "design intent". And they're so thick, all the models they make have carefully been coded to exactly the same "intent". So even if the BIOS needs to be custom coded, the "bananas behavior" is carefully copied into each model.

It's possible they've stopped doing this... :-/ But I'm not going back to check.

Sometimes, if you Google the model number, you can pick up traces of people all fighting with the BIOS in the same way, and wishing to smash something with a brick. That's when it starts to occur to you "hmmm, there IS an evil plan here". The behavior is not random, and there is a plan.

This is one reason I build my own computers from parts, because retail motherboards are hardly ever bios-coded in such a stupid manner.

Paul