Posted on 09/05/2012 9:02:46 AM PDT by GeronL
my BIL was “being nice” and took it to Geek Squad. Now I wish I have tried some of this stuff first.
I wish I would have thought of this before my BIL took it to Geek Squad
I lost my hard drive recently too...I called the company who made the hard drive and even though it was past warranty, tney know their product was a dud and sent my hard drive to be recovered at their expense. Also, they sent me a new HD so my laptop was functional again. Then...they told me I had already paid for the OS and to call the company who made your computer and give them the express service code on the bottom of the computer, telling them the computer didn’t come with a reinstall disc...they said if the company tries to sell you a reinstall disc to tell them “I’ve already paid for the OS when I purchased the computer. I need the disc so I can reinstall after a HD failure.” The reason they don’t give you a disc is because the recovery is “partitioned” on the HD...but that doesn’t help if it’s the HD that fails.
I did that and they express mailed it to me...I had the discs for the reinstall of the OS and the drivers and utilities in 2 days
If your laptop ran vista, it will run windows 7, only better. Check to see if your laptop processor has a 64 bit instruction set, if it does, you can run windows 7 64 bit and increase your RAM memory to 4 gigs. 32 bit will only address 3 gigs of memory total, though it can use rediboost and swap page file virtual memory back and forth via a thumb
drive.
Linux.
You can even download OpenOffice for free. It looks anx feels like like Office from 98.
Except it doesn't have an interactive calendar. :(
Get it back if you can.
Here's one experience I had with them.
Laptop screen fizzled out. It was under warranty with one month to go, so no charge. They sent it to HP and I waited four weeks to get it back.
Two months later the screen cracked but now out of warranty. I argued the point that since it was a new screen a different warranty applied to the screen. No dice. They wanted to charge me over $400 to fix. They even strongly suggested I buy a new laptop.
Took it to a guy up the road from me. Cost me $107 total with sales tax. NJ Sales tax is %7. Guy told me the reason the screen cracked was because the two adjusting screws in the upper left was over tightened. Took a week.
The a$$hole Geeks usually deal only in software issues, not hardware.
>>>The cheapest thing I’ve always found was an OEM copy of the OS from NEWEGG.<<<<
I second that. NEWEGG is topshelf, great prices and super fast delivery.
My computer was 2 years out of warranty and the company still recovered...who is the maker of your HD?
2)Toshiba will send you the reinstall disk, or you might find them on craigslist for a few bucks.
3)If your machine can run XP or Vista, it can run 7.
4)You would be surprised how many people don't run their disk utillities on a laptop because they are scheduled to do so automatically....BUT THE LAPTOP MUST BE ON AT THE SCHEDULED TIME!!
Chances are you could use a bootable floppy, a USB cable, or an adapter to a desktop, then run chkdsk and then defrag and get your drive to boot again.
5)Ditch the Geek Squad. Didn't you see the big bust a few months ago?(Major theft ring using them to case houses.)Plus, their advice isn't very good.
good idea.
I’ll have to borrow one of those USB harddrive enclosure things
I have no idea what brand the HD is, it is from a Toshiba Satellite is all I can say
I will definitely use Open Office. Too bad I didn’t keep the box, came with a 2 user license and all.
If the hard drive is still good then there are ways to “extract” keys from the drive. You would get a “utility” cd like “Hiren” or maybe others that are popular with techs.
Here is an example of using Hiren to retrieve a Windows key:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gL93-jk5VqE
Your laptop would have to power on and the drive would have to be good for this to work. Otherwise if the laptop motherboard or power supply is dead and it wont power on at all then you could remove the drive and plug it into another computer and boot off the Hiren cd to retrieve your keys.
One of the other things i’ve had to do that you may is visit a bittorrent site to get a hold of an OS cd to use and then if the cd image you get embeds a key in its installer you just change the key to yours later as needed using a key changer utility. All this stuff can be learned by good web searches and reading.
If the logo is WD, let me know...I will give you some extra info that could help you with your data or at least with a replacement HD...find out if the lable is blue and white...with the WD logo..that will make a difference!
If I can get the OEM key, that’s pretty much it, right? All I’d need is any kind of copy of the OS after that right?
This is the first time I’ve ever heard someone expressing a desire for Vista.
+1 on Ubuntu Linux. I have been running it flawlessly on a (very) old Dell C400 laptop for years. In fact, I just upgraded to their latest LTS (long-term support) release 12.04.1 over the weekend.
You can also use Firefox with it, as well as the LibreOffice suite(new version of OpenOffice - Microsoft Office equivalent).
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