I'll be buying a new computer...

[zedd151]

Update, I have started the cleaning of the second of those two computers. Once that is finished, I will use that one while cleaning up the other.

I finished cleaning up the one of the boxes.
Disassembled the heatsink from the cpu, cleaned off the original paste and put new thermal paste on.
Got a fair amount of dust and other debris out of the power supply and cabinet and cleaned all the fans in the box.
Put everything back together, but it still runs pretty much as it had originally.. (Sluggish performance, very hot under considerable CPU load).
I will still clean up the second box another time. Considering its age, it still performs well enough to use on a daily basis. But still not considered high performance.

     
   to StrykerX

[zedd151]

I may not be buying a laptop after all. My sister gave me her old (not real old) laptop. I will be reformatting the HD after converting it to MBR (GPT, yuck), install  windows 7 on it(originally came with win 10 from factory) and will be testing it and checking the specs etc. later today. I don't expect spectacular performance out of it, my sister is very frugal - but it will give me portable computing options, at least. 

[zedd151]

I looked up the specs...
my new (used) laptop specs
AMD A8-6410 Quad-Core 2.000 GHZ, 8 GB ram, 750 GB Mechanical HD...
Good sized screen too, 17.3"

The HD is 750 GB but Windows explorer only shows 698 GB... but bigger than the drives i currently have.
I plan on putting a 240 or 320 GB drive in the laptop, and keeping the larger drive for backups and other external storage.

We've got storms going through our area again, power going in and out. Will have to wait to play with the laptop. I'd hate to be in the middle of setting it up and have the power go out. The battery apparently doesn't hold a charge.
It's a recent enough laptop that replacement batteries may still be available.

Edit: Made a mistake, definitely not an SSD...whoops another negative.

[daydreamer]

I seen solution with car charger ,charging from a spare car battery below in a computer board on wheels ,so it can be moved around

[zedd151]

from a spare car battery below in a computer board on wheels ,so it can be moved around

Not exactly portable then.  If I can't physically carry it about (for any great distance), it won't work. 

[zedd151]

Windows 7 drivers are now being installed on the laptop. The Windows 7 install went okay, without any trouble. I had to download wireless driver before anything else. Windows 7 didn't recognise the wireless card. 

Using a third party tool (DriverMax Pro) to install the drivers btw, a lot easier than installing them manually one by one, especially when you need more than a couple drivers. But it still takes a while...

[zedd151]

Not going very well regarding the win 7 drivers. 
I might just have to put windows 10 back on this thing. 
Anyway, I am going to do a clean reinstall of win 7 first, and only install what is needed (drivers that is) for the laptop to run acceptably.

The problem with reinstalling windows 10 back on it, is that I DID NOT BACK UP THE DRIVERS that were otherwise working for win 10!(       ) before I wiped the hard drive. I really thought that they wouldn't be needed anymore.

Well, realistically this laptop was on its way out anyway. My sister had replaced the monitor herself (if that's what it's called on a laptop) and broke some things in the process, including the mountings for both hinges, and overtorquing some screws to the point there is nothing for them to grab onto.  The DVD burner no longer works, as well as one of the only 2 USB jacks - so therefor after using my USB mouse, no way to connect anything else. 

I'll still try to get it up and running so I have a computer I can use on the back porch. If I have to reinstall Windows 10, so be it. I just hope it won't be a major hassle to get the correct drivers for it. I already had some issues with the Windows 7 drivers... supposedly were for this model, but now I am seriously doubting that, as a few of them installed but Device manager shows that they are not being used. So much for that driver software mentioned above. (It has done well for me in the past though)

A brand new laptop may yet still be on the horizon for me. If anything else, I got a 750 GB HDD, 2 4 GB sticks of ram, out of this one. Possibly even the wireless card. Well, my sister can't complain - she DID say she doesn't need it anymore. But I know that she will still complain that "I broke it!". Which of course is mostly true, neverminding what she herself had broken.

[StrykerX]

I looked up the specs...
my new (used) laptop specs
AMD A8-6410 Quad-Core 2.000 GHZ, 8 GB ram, 750 GB Mechanical HD...
Good sized screen too, 17.3"

The HD is 750 GB but Windows explorer only shows 698 GB... but bigger than the drives i currently have.
I plan on putting a 240 or 320 GB drive in the laptop, and keeping the larger drive for backups and other external storage.

We've got storms going through our area again, power going in and out. Will have to wait to play with the laptop. I'd hate to be in the middle of setting it up and have the power go out. The battery apparently doesn't hold a charge.
It's a recent enough laptop that replacement batteries may still be available.

Edit: Made a mistake, definitely not an SSD...whoops another negative.

The loss is normal in terms of HDD/SSD. My 2TB drive reports 1.81TB space.

[zedd151]

The loss is normal in terms of HDD/SSD. My 2TB drive reports 1.81TB space.

I think its more a marketing gimmick than anything else...

But anyways, I reinstalled 7 and am just using the 'stock' windows 7 drivers, for all but the wireless card. That one they did'nt have a compatible driver for. Everything else works okay.

The display is brighter, and less contrast than I would like though.
Also, no apparent way to disable the touchpad. Not in the bios, or disabling it by driver settings. I found a few tips while googling... I'll check those out shortly.

[NoCforMe]

I will be reformatting the HD after converting it to MBR (GPT, yuck)

Really, "yuck"?
Maybe you should reconsider this.

[zedd151]

I found out how to disable the touchpad!  Seems there are many different ways to do that, depending on the specific make and model. (one size does not fit all)
Posting from my back porch on the laptop. Now I don't have to run inside when I need to switch from my ipad to my computer, for downloads, to post code, etc.

Reintalling "missing" drivers one-by-one. S far everything is going well this time. There were a couple of drivers that were unsigned, I believe was causing the issues the first time around. I have disabled that (checking if drivers are signed). You would think that 'DriverMax' would have taken care of that issue.

Sill missing 4 drivers. I believe those are Toshiba specific for the extra button functionality, etc. Also, NVidia drivers were not installed - it just updated the standard VGA drivers. Will investigate further at another time.

[zedd151]

So far the laptop is working okay, even with the 'missing' drivers. It boots faster than my desktop, in spite of otherwise mediocre performance.

[NoCforMe]

So how much speed do you need, really? I mean if all you're doing is editing and compiling programs, not calculating pi to 180 billion places, what does it matter?

I have to laugh at some of the speed-obsessiveness on display around here ...

[daydreamer]

I can write code and test run on 15 MHz cpu on my TI calculator
It's more kinda computers equivalent of dragster competition fun,but with only few MHz cpu,without hardware accelerated graphics it was necessary speed up
But if you work with 8bit cpu embedded it's good to know how to optimize it
But low size asm code keeps this site bandwidth tiny

The real problem is when you install new PC game with lots of GB or latest tb Microsoft flight Simulator on old PC

[zedd151]

I have decided to keep the laptop in storage for now. It would take x amount of time to both move it onto the porch and set it up, mouse, power cord (battery won't hold a charge), etc.  Too much of a hassle for the short duration that I would use it out there. It's way too hot on the porch, to stay there with a hot laptop chugging away for any length of time. (Louisiana weather) And with the dust in the wind here, I cannot leave it out there for very long either.

So I'll just have to tap away on my iPad while I am out there for now.