Windows messed up

Years ago I ran a browser with lots of tabs & much more on win 98 with 32M ram, 200MHz cpu and an old HDD for swap. By picking the right software it ran fine (other than the usual 98 instability). If you can't get decent performance from 3G & 2GHz you're just running the wrong software.

Is it possible to drop win 10 or some linux onto the hdd without using external media, such that it will install from its own hdd? That's an approach I've not done before. Or could I use an external usb hdd while there's no OS on the internal hdd?

At this point, the present win 10 install seems too problematic to try to repair. (Even if fixed it would leave problems.)

HTML and the web, started in the "CERN era", where the web wasn't used for tracking people, and the protocol was there to share information with the user. Naturally, this does not take a lot of horsepower. No Javascript back then. Just straight HTML.

The web is laden with unnecessary detail now. The browsers are a joke (a case study in "badness").

You can do a Repair Install on Win10, by using an ISO file (3.5GB or so) and mounting the ISO as a virtual optical drive (right-click the ISO and select "Mount" from the menu -- Windows 11 makes this more convoluted). Then running "Setup.exe" from the top level of the mount. Repair Install does not clean up enough for your usage. AV remnants galore. But that is an example of "not needing physical media".

There is also "Reset" option.

The question with that stuff, is "does it work this week".

If you download Windows (even using your decrepit installation presently running on the machine), you can store the 3.5GB of installer on a USB2 stick. MediaCreationTool.exe is offered when you download Windows from a sufficiently modern Windows machine, and it offers to make DVD, USB stick, or just save to ISO. Offer a USB stick, where you don't care about the fileset currently on the stick. Win10 comes in 32 bit and 64 bit versions, and you have to decide at some point, which one you want.

C:\Program Files # 32 bit version only has the one Program Files

C:\Program Files # If there are two Program File folders, then C:\Program Files (x86) # it's the 64 bit version currently on C:

Blowing away "free Win10 offering" and installing a clean one, is not that hard to do. Since the license key is stored in the cloud, you don't even need Magic Jelly Bean and write down the key.

If you need to keep personal files and programs, that can be a lot harder to manage. But "nuke and pave" does not take a lot of planning. Making a backup of the decrepit but still minimally working image currently on there, would be in case it's the only computer you've got.

If you wanted the key (even the 3V66T bogus key), you could try Nirsoft ProduKey, but ProduKey also doubles as a check that the AV is working, as Microsoft has arbitrarily classed that as "Hackerware", as if hackerware is a bad thing :-)

If your AV is working, then doing a download from the bottom of this page, will likely result in it being quarantined or deleted. A third-party AV likely won't be that harsh (as it is not a virus, it just annoys Microsoft is all).

Wiping the current install out fully & linux are the only options I'm looking at for now. Not interested in preserving any of the garbage now on it.

I don't have usb sticks, but have plenty of usb interfaces + hdds (no laptop hdds tho). The laptop hdd partitioning leaves half the disk unallocated, so want to fix that really. Whether Mint 19 can do that without messing it up I don't know.

Tell me if this would fly... If linux will do it I could add a small partition for the win 10 download, and replace the current OS partition with a bigger one using all remaining available space. Wipe the present win partition clean & boot up from the small partition. Presumably win 10 will handle the change of which partition is bootable?

Thank you

Then use the Windows Media Creation Tool to make a bootable USB stick, from that remove the existing partitions and let it install, it'll find the machine in MS's database and activate the old Win10 licence, job done.

Push the boat out, get a 32GB USB3 for a fiver ...

or a tenner if, despite Amazon's practices, you don't have Prime. May be cheaper options locally - e.g. at ASDA.

Repair from media usually works OK unless the system is very badly corrupted. It won't fix "don't know the admin password" or have access to the email account of the previous admin though.

My faith in such cloud based systems is somewhat lacking - particularly if the OP no longer knows the password for the former admin account on the machine. I don't believe the Mickeysoft servers will play unless you log in with your MS account credentials first. He needs to rescue the magic authenitcation code before he trashes anything.

And it would be a lot safer to bitwise copy what is there now onto a USB stick are a backup in case the going gets really sticky.

You probably should invest in some then. They are perfect for using as installation media on machines that today lack a CD/DVD drive.

Do you have Win10 and a product key available?

You need zero knowledge of any previous accounts or password, you don't have to have a microsoft account, nothing needs to remain on the hard drive, the installer gathers data (MAC address, serial numbers etc) from the hardware and this is what the microsoft servers recognise for activation ... it works ... if anything it's generous, rather than restrictive.

I've never done it this way, but gave it a try.

What do we know ?

We know that the Windows 10 installer is (roughly) four stages.

The ISO (virtual DVD) portion of the install is only necessary for the first stage. The other three stages are "self igniting" and use the boot info placed during first install. If the ISO were to get erased during the last three stages, that will not kill the procedure.

In the root of C: are a couple work folders with $ as the first character. Installation materials are sometimes staged there. That could be where the ISO contents are copied for this install to work.

By watching what it was doing (you can do that from Task Manager), it's possible it is decompressing install.wim from E:\sources, but re-compressing it into one of the $ folders. A giant waste of time!

Since it's a clean install, it does not matter about release numbers of Windows. But you can use release numbers to prove it's been paved over. (Check "winver" command after run completes.)

The install looks like it can roll back. Initially I thought it might be an all or nothing, but if it runs into trouble, it just might return the machine to decrepit state (but that could take a couple hours to do). You need a *lot* of patience with this stuff!

Administrator Powershell or Command Prompt:

fsutil behavior set disablecompression 1

Do that before kickoff of the Clean Install procedure, and that will avoid some of the unnecessary compression into that $ folder. You don't have a lot of CPU to waste on such frippery. Since you claim to have a HDD, there's probably plenty of storage on C: (like 320GB say), to not have to worry a bit about install size.

It's tablets, where the decision is hard to make about compression issues, as tablets are always low on storage.

I did my test in a constrained space, as I was using a virtual machine for test. I suspect the storage phase will top out at around 35GB or so (not finished yet).

Sometimes the installer will whine about storage and tell you what the "recommended" storage size is, but not in this case. Only if you pinch it way too tight, is it going to whine. Double the current C: fill (ignoring user files) is usually enough. Mine started at about 17GB of system files. It uses a bit of space for pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys .

Runtime was about 57 minutes. That's with me putting pedal to the metal on my setup.

Look to lower left for "Offline Account" and "Limited Experience", while you are selecting the "local account" installation option. If you want to add an MSA (Microsoft Account), that can be done later, with less disruption.

Paul

I think you are conflating a couple of unrelated things here... there

Once you have a working and activated Win 10 install on a machine (windows will report it as "Windows is activated with a digital license"), then that machine will forever more automatically reactivate with win 10.

You need no serial number, no ms account, no admin passwords etc. Every time that hardware signature turns up looking to activate, the MS activation servers will allow it because it is already known and recorded in their database as having a legit license.

Hence you can safely blow away a current working or non working install, and it will reload and re-activate.

See here for more details:

I wiped the disc, couldn't get mint 19.1 mate to install on the laptop so installed it onto the hdd in a totally different machine, figuring I could then repair or reinstall once the hdd was back in the laptop. Lappie boots up, but has no bottom bar and no windows button function is visible on screen. Poking around revealed no way to get it to do anything more than create/edit a text file.

I think the first problem is the screen resolution. The logo that should be central is over on the right. The screen setup is odd, I won't bore you but I'd need to set the resolution manually but it's not playing ball on that. Any ideas how to move forward from here?

Win 10 needs a minimum screen resolution of 800x600 to work properly. I would expect even the most basic VGA driver should support that.

So how did you get to here? i.e. was this running setup from a USB drive or from a DVD? If so that ought to pick a useable screen mode.

If you are stuck in the "Out of the Box Experience" (OOBE) (the list of dumb questions windows asks after first install to try and get you to sign up for a MS account etc), then you can bail out of that at any point into so called "Audit Mode"[1] by hitting CTRL + S*IT + F3. That will dump you at the windows desktop logged in using a default administrator account. You can now install software and drivers etc.

I think the O/P has gone the nuke and use Linux route, rather than nuke and re-install Windows? Does the person who will be using it get a say?

yup on re-reading I think you are right - it was the mention of "no windows button" that threw me :-)

In all the excitement, we still don't have any details on the machine.

The laptop panels can use LVDS to send the digital image to the panel. This makes the cable thin, that snakes through the hinge.

A consequence of not using HDMI, DP, DVI, VGA to the panel, is no Plug and Play info. The Plug and Play must be "faked" by the platform.

If you replace a 1366x768 panel with a 1920x1080 panel, the image shifts to one corner of the screen. A 1366x768 area of the screen lights up, the rest is black. To correct that, requires that the "faking info" be changed. That's an example of a problem which would be evident both in Windows or in Linux Mint.

The "xrandr" command could give you some info. Of course, you're not able to run much of anything at the moment. Crafting an actual working "xrandr" command is not easy. On my laptop, the output is labeled as "LVDS" for the panel. This example might not have been a laptop, since there is no LVDS mentioned.

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 3200 x 1080, maximum 8192 x 8192 VGA-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) HDMI-1 connected primary 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 531mm x 299mm 1920x1080 59.93 + 60.00* 50.00 59.94 1920x1080i 60.00 50.00 59.94 1680x1050 59.88

control-alt F1 Text terminal number 1 control-alt F2 Text terminal number 2 control-alt F3 Text terminal number 3 control-alt F4 Text terminal number 4 control-alt F5 Text terminal number 5 control-alt F6 Text terminal number 6 control-alt F7 Return to display manager screen

Open a text terminal, and use xrandr there, to gather evidence.

While in text terminal, "sudo shutdown now" to shut down the laptop.

If a machine only reports 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, the machine is in VESA mode. No graphics driver has loaded.

The command "inxi -G" can tell you something about the graphics at the moment, what driver has loaded, but it doesn't tell you how to fix anything. On Mint, the command would already be present. On some other Debian, it would be something like

sudo apt install inxi # type "y" for yes

inxi -G # graphics info

While you can edit the boot command line, and enter a "nomodeset" to avoid KMS... that's not really going to help you long term.

If you were in the right place, you'd see "quiet splash", and replace those with "nomodeset vga=792". I actually got something like that working the other day. Or I would not have bothered mentioning it. Normally that would not work, the vga= part.

These are VGA charts I acquired long ago. Should be irrelevant in 2022, but just the other day one of these worked. You can see what I'm trying to do with the 792. Give you enough screen so you can see a bar at the bottom. There is no point commanding larger screen values, as when in VESA mode, 1024x768 is typically the best you can do.

VGA Resolution and Color Depth reference Chart: Depth 800x600 1024x768 1152x864 1280x1024 1600x1200

Colors bits 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1152x864 1280x1024 1600x1200 256 8 vga=769 vga=771 vga=773 vga=353 vga=775 vga=796 32000 ? vga=784 vga=787 vga=790 vga= ? vga=793 vga= ? 65000 16 vga=785 vga=788 vga=791 vga=355 vga=794 vga=798 16.7M 24 vga=786 vga=789 vga=792 vga=795 vga=799

It's past my pay scale now, to figure out the entire puzzle remotely. Xorg and Wayland are part of the picture. VESA, GOP, NVIdia, AMD, Intel and so on, are part of the picture. There are innumerable layers and stupid stuff to deal with. Sometimes, no command results in the screen lighting during the boot sequence (limiting the ability to gather evidence). In the old days, it was harder for the OS to hobble the screen completely.

Paul

Yeah I've put Mint 19.1 mate on it. And no, they don't.

Tell me what details you want :)

xrandr & inxi data: Vga1 connected 1280x1024+1280+0

The external monitor is a 2007 dell E198fpf, specs: 1280x1024.

There are 2 monitors connected, the internal one is borked & the owner is not interested in paying to replace it. So her old backup monitor is plugged in, but inbuilt one is still running albeit unintelligible and of wider screen shape.

A command line command to reinstall might be all I need.

On a laptop, there is usually an Fkey that cycles through monitor modes.

Main monitor External monitor Span Clone ... sequence repeats

However, when I ran Mint on the laptop, the Fkey did not work for the monitor. Only F3 "Airplane Mode" worked to change the hardware state to Wifi off.

Now, when I booted with the external monitor connected, for some reason it made the external monitor the primary. (Which is certainly a good choice for making adjustments, if the bricks happen to fall the right way.)

But what are the odds of it doing that for you ?

If the keyboard function for this would work, this would be no problem at all dealing with a dead screen. (Mirror mode would insure both screens had the same image, and the scrambled screen could be ignored.)

But as long as you have to do something weird or kooky, I don't see this ending well.

Maybe xrandr can turn off a monitor, if you can see the screen while opening a text terminal. I doubt the text terminal is clever in any way, and is likely to try to appear on the primary (scrambled?) monitor.

xrandr # dump the output to make # sure you have the identifiers # in hand

xrandr --output VGA1 --same-as LVDS # xrandr is always a cranky piece # of crap, so expect "resistance".

Then go to "All" "Display" and select the correct resolution to make VGA1 native resolution.

No, I do not see "reinstalling" as solving this. It's going to sniff hardware, and do the same damn thing a second time.

There are a number of reasons for a screen to be scrambled.

It could have been dropped. Damaging the glass or the matrix drivers or something.

But a popular way to wreck something, is mess up the thin cable carrying the LVDS signals. I'm sure a new cable is just as hard to find as a new screen :-)

And the laptop probably does not care what you do to the panel. Because there is no PNP on panels, it might not even notice when the LVDS cable is disconnected. If it had PNP, I could tell you to unplug the panel, to make the external monitor the guy in the driver seat.

Paul