Posted on 12/11/2013 10:43:36 AM PST by R. Scott
My old laptop died and I had to buy a new one. Unfortunately it had Windows 8. It had no word processor and I had to buy the Office Suite and an external CD drive. Total cost? Near $1000! Now the problem. Word has no spell check, no dictionary. Any one know how I can get them? The internet was no help.
Please post more info. I have a couple of machines that failed at one point or another and have yet to find a way to get the latest install discs for them despite having searched several times. At least, from a source that I can be certain would supply a non- malware guaranteed version.
I think if you look a bit more you can find an old one with a decent search engine. My case, I just bought an inexpensive second machine since I needed a spare anyway with the OS included and did it that way. Had to drop down to XP Home instead of XP pro, but got a working version out of it.
Ok. so from what I understand.
If you have bot a machine, you can transfer the OS to another without having to pay for it “AGAIN”.
I’m no expert.
But I know it can be done. Legally.
Laptops are notorious for their heat sensitivity. I would take it to a professional shop and have them open it up and blow out all the old dust and things from the insides and then thoroughly clean off the cpu heatsink-fan and replace if necessary. A visual inspection will show any other problems that might have developed.
Download a live Linux distro and boot up from that instead if possible. Since everything runs off of the disc, it will not touch your system files and you might be a whole lot happier using that instead.
As a matter of pride and economics, I will NOT pay someone to fix this POS.
Go on amazon and look for a replacement battery. I found a very good one for my old Lenovo, relatively inexpensive and has given me good service.
The keyboard on it died also, so, I also us a USB, but, I am thinking of getting a replacement keyboard. It still works great, got it running Windows 7 now.
As for Vista, it will not work well without 2 gig of memory. I have had 2 gig in all of my vista computers with good service. No complaints at all. I really like Vista. Found it to be very stable with at least 2 gig of memory.
Going back to the Linux discussion, have any of you guys tried Koppix on a flash drive? I have had that working quite well in the past. When the hard drive died in the before mentioned Lenovo, I ran it first off of Koppix on a CD then on a flash drive. It was a great stop gap.
Not a problem. The vast majority of exploits have pretty much always been found by the 'nix crowd and patches posted as fast as possible, while MS has traditionally been reluctant to even admit any issues exist, with the few critical ones being quietly fixed at the next 'update' instead.
I think it was only a couple of years ago that there were over thirty different exploits discovered on the 'doze OS within a single week, and while the 'nix coders worked night and day to work out and issue patches, I believe MS only publicly issued some belated patches totaling less than ten in all, and never acknowledged any others -since the exploits were deemed 'non-critical' and the fixes were already out there. Why sully the name when you do not have to?
The housing fan is usually not the same as the cpu fan, unless the company is really, really skimping on the product. Your problem sounds heat-related, but leaking capacitors could be at fault as well. If a separate, verified power supply and new battery do not solve your problems (and actually, even if they do) considering the age of the machine you should still have a professional go through it.
Unfortunately, this particular machine is the controller for a small CNC mill (Roland MDX-40), whose dedicated software requires Windows to run. I had it running from a Dell laptop, whose screen died. If I knew then what I know now about W8, I would have paid to have the screen replaced.
Bump
Try the Wine...
I had gotten used to my new laptop with Windows 8, but then I installed Windows 8.1, which doesn’t work as well for accessing my work email from home...can I un-install & go back to Windows 8? (Thank you to anyone who can advise!)
I’ve started using Audacity for audio stock submissions to encode them and light editing. I use a good mic and have some background in production/engineering from public TV land so I don’t need most of the bells and whistles.
It is a really great program and I like it better than the old Adobe Audition.
Wish I had the time to invest, but don't. I played with Linux and Wine a few years back for home and wasn't overly impressed. Perhaps things have improved since. Wonder if the Roland software has ever been tested or run under Wine.
What I'd really like to find is a good tutorial on Linux CNC. The Roland MDX-40A will run standard G-Code in addition to its proprietary software, but Roland gives zip info about how to make that happen, even under Windows.
“will not be issuing any patches for it, should an exploit be found.”
Yikes. Please translate your sentence into redneck farmgirl language. I enjoy my primitive XP, but you imply that I am living too close to the edge.
Yikes. Please translate your sentence into redneck farmgirl language. I enjoy my primitive XP, but you imply that I am living too close to the edge.
Let's say some previously undiscovered security hole is found in Windows XP that can be exploited remotely. Microsoft is not going to fix it via Windows Update. No more patches will come down through Windows Update.
Is it a big deal? Maybe, maybe not. Depends on whether anything is found and how severe/exploitable.
From a usage point of view, Windows 7 is similar to XP, so there is not a big learning curve. Windows 8 is a different story.
That might help if the exploit is in the third-party browser you are using (Firefox or Chrome) but no one can post a patch for Windows XP itself other than Microsoft.
That is messed up. I do not know of a single laptop I have ever worked on that was not designed to work without the batt in place. They ALL work on 110 ONLY. I would be HIGHLY suspicious that your power supply is not creating enough juice... check the voltage at the output end.
Did I mention that I HATE VISTA ?
*shrugs* I never had a problem with Vista - Under the hood, there is very little difference between Vista and Seven. I like Seven a bit better, no doubt, but I have no complaint against Vista - My main Test Bench is still running Vista, and it runs like a top.
I’ve taken the battery out and cleaned the contacts.
Not meaningful, really, as the machine is approaching old age, and I would suspect the batt has, or is close to reaching it's limit. Especially if it was never allowed to cycle.
Heat and power is my gut [...]
Heat doesn't make a lot of sense - overheating will make it sluggish and freeze, not PowerOff. Memory would likely make it BSOD and reboot... Sudden Death is almost invariably power, providing the fans are turning...
[...] but the OS seems to be complicating my efforts to find a solution.
Then boot it into bios and see how long it runs there... Buy a cheap used drive and load DOS on it, and see how it runs that... Linux Live CDs too...
Rule number one is necessarily to prove the hardware. I always do that from outside of the native OS BECAUSE it aids in the process of elimination once I get into software diagnoses. SO the OS is not in the way at all. In your case, I would have had the hdd and dvd drive out already... anything at all that can be eliminated would be out of the box just to prove that they aren't the problem... If it is still busted without the BATT, KB, MOUSE, ATAPI, and SATA/IDE, then all of those things are *not* the primary problem. Just sayin...
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