What to do with my laptop??

[JudgeRob]

So... I have a laptop:
Lenovo T410 2010 bios
Intel i5 M540  2.53Ghz
4GB ram
SSD harddrive

HHD failed.  Won't boot.  The windows key was refurbished so Microsoft won't send me a Windows 7 64-bit installation disc. The repair disc won't fix the HHD.  So no Windows.

What can I do with this brick?  It would be cool to put it in something like a cab or a mini-pin.  Will anything work on a free OS like Linux?  Or SteamOS?

I grabbed a copy of Pac-Man Museum and if it would work through SteamOS or some other way, I might make a Pac-Man Battle Royale cab with it. 

Any other ideas?   

[Thenasty]

i'll give you $25.00 shipped to nj ?

[JudgeRob]

Thanks, but I'll find some kind of job it can do.  Just exploring creative options.

[Malenko]

hook up the old HD to another computer, load the registry, pull the win7 key out of the hive. Download a windows 7 installation disc (its perfectly legal to do so) , and reinstall the OS with your key.

[big10p]

hook up the old HD to another computer, load the registry, pull the win7 key out of the hive. Download a windows 7 installation disc (its perfectly legal to do so) , and reinstall the OS with your key.

The HDD has failed, so he can't hook it up to anything... presumably.

[DrakeTungsten]

If you don't settle on something Spider-man related, I'm going to be slightly disappointed.

[Malenko]

hook up the old HD to another computer, load the registry, pull the win7 key out of the hive. Download a windows 7 installation disc (its perfectly legal to do so) , and reinstall the OS with your key.

The HDD has failed, so he can't hook it up to anything... presumably.

He speaks of installing another OS on it, so I assumed the windows install is borked not the drive itself.

[big10p]

hook up the old HD to another computer, load the registry, pull the win7 key out of the hive. Download a windows 7 installation disc (its perfectly legal to do so) , and reinstall the OS with your key.

The HDD has failed, so he can't hook it up to anything... presumably.

He speaks of installing another OS on it, so I assumed the windows install is borked not the drive itself.

I assumed he was talking about installing an OS on a new HDD.

[jdbailey1206]

SSD died?  Seems odd.  I would bet my money that something on the motherboard puked.  Did you try and test the SSD separate from the laptop?

[thomas_surles]

So... I have a laptop:
Lenovo T410 2010 bios
Intel i5 M540  2.53Ghz
4GB ram
SSD harddrive

HHD failed.  Won't boot.  The windows key was refurbished so Microsoft won't send me a Windows 7 64-bit installation disc. The repair disc won't fix the HHD.  So no Windows.

What can I do with this brick?  It would be cool to put it in something like a cab or a mini-pin.  Will anything work on a free OS like Linux?  Or SteamOS?

I grabbed a copy of Pac-Man Museum and if it would work through SteamOS or some other way, I might make a Pac-Man Battle Royale cab with it. 

Any other ideas?

Can I share a windows 7 key for a computer I upgraded? Or is that breaking any rules?

[JDFan]

 The windows key was refurbished so Microsoft won't send me a Windows 7 64-bit installation disc.
Any other ideas?

Download the windows disk from another source -

Below is a link to a good article that details downloading a win7 image from other sources - including torrent links and instructions to use them- and also includes the MD5/SHA-1 checksums so you can verify they are untampered with !

SO as long as you have the product key on the system and just need the install files that should work.

https://www.pcsteps.com/45-download-windows-7-iso-legally-free-digital-river/

[JudgeRob]

Sorry for the confusion.  Yes, the SSD seems to still work.  I can access everything on it from another PC.  It's over my head, but apparently this can happen with Lenovo laptops.  Like Malenko said, something with Windows and the SSD gets borked, but know one really knows why. 

I assumed if I had an install disk I could reinstall Windows.  I just wasn't hot on paying MS for Windows twice. 

hook up the old HD to another computer, load the registry, pull the win7 key out of the hive. Download a windows 7 installation disc (its perfectly legal to do so) , and reinstall the OS with your key.

Would this be the same as the key on the sticker?  I still have the sticker keys.  They're just refurbished keys so for some dumb reason MS doesn't think they're good enough to let me download Windows from them.  I'm sort of assuming they would still work on a fresh install, but I don't know...

[JDFan]

Would this be the same as the key on the sticker?  I still have the sticker keys.  They're just refurbished keys so for some dumb reason MS doesn't think they're good enough to let me download Windows from them.  I'm sort of assuming they would still work on a fresh install, but I don't know...

Yes - He was thinking you did not have the needed windows key not the install image/disk.

Read through the article I linked it shows you several ways to get a copy of the windows install disk that you need without having to pay anything -- there are several sites that backed them up prior to Digital River (Microsofts official online distributor) taking them offline when Microsoft decided they wanted them taken down. The torrents for them are still live and working ( I just downloaded the torrent link for the win7 pro 64 bit iso and opened it in utorrent and it loads and starts connecting to peers almost immediately so is still live ! ) and you can verify the images are the same ones you used to be able to download from digital river so are safe to use - just be sure to download the version that you have the key for and it will work fine.

[Malenko]

I assumed he was talking about installing an OS on a new HDD.

I see where you're coming from , but anytime I see a tech question on here I flash back to my days of working help desk tickets and how to read between the lines



@JudgeRob

JD has it right, if you have the keys you don't need to bother mounting the drive in a another computer. Just download the ISO for the version of windows you have and reinstall. When people see the word torrent most assume something illegal. Downloading a copy of the software you already bought and using it with a legitimate license key is 100% legal.  The site he linked to should be all the help you need.

[big10p]

I assumed he was talking about installing an OS on a new HDD.

I see where you're coming from , but anytime I see a tech question on here I flash back to my days of working help desk tickets and how to read between the lines



@JudgeRob

JD has it right, if you have the keys you don't need to bother mounting the drive in a another computer. Just download the ISO for the version of windows you have and reinstall. When people see the word torrent most assume something illegal. Downloading a copy of the software you already bought and using it with a legitimate license key is 100% legal.  The site he linked to should be all the help you need.

Yeah, I've done my fair share of working on a corporate help desk. Never again... I hope! 

[BadMouth]

You may end up having to call in to finish the activation.  It's all automated and not a big deal.
After you enter the code given, take a picture of your screen before hitting next.
The same code will work on the same computer next time if you need to reinstall.

Although not needed in this case, I've used a program called magical jellybean to retrieve product keys.
My friend had a hand me down WIN 7 PC from his father, but didn't know the password and there was no product key sticker.
I was able to retrieved the key by attaching the HD to my PC and using magical jellybean, then was able to do a fresh install of Windows.

[jdbailey1206]

Although not needed in this case, I've used a program called magical jellybean to retrieve product keys.

This worked well for me.  The program BadMouth is referencing is this.  If you have no way to hook up to another computer I would recommend going to Micro Center and either getting an enclosure or cable to connect to a different computer.

[JudgeRob]

Awesome, thanks guys.  It's been forever since I needed a torrent.  What is the current popular client?  I think the last one I tried was uTorrent...

[big10p]

I still use uTorrent, on the rare occasion I need to torrent something. Seems to work well for me.

[JDFan]

Awesome, thanks guys.  It's been forever since I needed a torrent.  What is the current popular client?  I think the last one I tried was uTorrent...

utorrent still works in most cases ( though it has problems with the full MAMe roms torrent because of the number of small files ) but for this is works fine another popular one is qbittorrent

[JudgeRob]

You guys rock!  Thanks for the links.  I had to do a really weird workaround.  For some reason I couldn't boot directly from the install disk.  The screen would just go black.  I used the recovery disk to pull up a command prompt, guessed the letter of the DVD drive and launched setup.exe and it worked! 

Now I remember what a PITA it is to do a fresh install with no drivers for anything! 

But it's installing Windows updates as we speak.  Looks good so far. 

[DeLuSioNal29]

I used to use uTorrent but the updates seemed spammy so I moved over to qTorrent and never looked back.  It functions exactly the same.

Also, have you considered upgrading to Windows 10?  You can get an activation key for $14.  Here's a good video with a guy explaining how it works. 

DeL

[Mr. Peabody]

I used to use uTorrent but the updates seemed spammy so I moved over to qTorrent and never looked back.  It functions exactly the same.

DeL

The interface isn't the same, and is c l oggier. But it is recommended.

[JudgeRob]

Also, have you considered upgrading to Windows 10?  You can get an activation key for $14.  Here's a good video with a guy explaining how it works. 

Thanks, I'll check it out!  I thought it would be over a hundred to upgrade.  It might be perfect for a test install of software.  I was thinking of upgrading my MAME cab to some much higher specs and I could use the laptop to get everything in order before making the switch to Windows 10...

[1500points]

I have a crappy old slow laptop that wouldn't take a windows redeux.
So nephew put Ubuntu on it.
I just used it to edit an sd card for a rPi game image.  Nice being able to see the contents of the sd card in Linux form, as if it were windows.

Was going to give it away to a kid to disassemble for fun, but decided to keep it for the linux access.