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southern MN | Relative/friend bought a new computer, wanted me to set it up.
I stopped over last night, the previous night when they got it home they couldn't help themselves and turned it on and went through enough steps to activate Dropbox, etc, etc, but then stopped 'before they got too far....'
Yea gee thanks, well now you got some crud on the machine you will never use but will always ask me about....
So we go to set things up, and getting near the end it's doing a huge download of new stuff to install, and - the power goes off, blinks in a spectacular way.
The laptop continues working, but the router shuts down.
The laptop is of course very confused - in the middle of a huge update...
Man I'm worried the computer is gonna be really damaged being inert used in such a critical phase.
My relatives are not computer literate and hop I can still enter a few important favorites in the browser for tge. Yet?
I'm hoping we don't have to totally erase the computer and start with a total fresh install - or worse.
After wanting me to set up the printer yet, and noticing the printer is not on, thry look around a bit and see of the two lamps in another room, one lamp is slowly flickering on and off, and other lights seem dull, and some items are not powered.....
Man I couldn't get out of there fast enough. I -think- their computer is all right, but not sure where the update status is. They have no idea how close a disaster that was to a new machine doing heavy updates at the time.
Anyhow, for a dead computer, what is actually dead? What caused it to die?
Bad power spikes or lightening and forget it, I wouldn't want any of the old pieces around, they get stressed so bad, they tend to come up with problems real soon, in months not years....
Die from old age, well a new machine, new hard drive is going to be so much faster for not much difference in price. It used to pay to tinker with parts, but any more..... It is fun, not profitable to fix up an old machine.
We keep advancing from old hardware, connectors, ways of communicating between parts, that it is real hard to maintain a 5 year old machine with new stuff - the new stuff is changing so much to fit in with the old.
If you want stuff off the old hard drive, or want to use it as a second drive, the rest mentioned some good ways to do that.
Check out the costs of replacing mother boards, etc, and the reason for the computer to die, before going too far down the path of new parts in an old machine.
Paul | |
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Hard drive
