2 Laptops Not Working, recycle/repair?

Balarrr Didiarr

I have an old HP Pavilion laptop and a newer Dell Inspiron that no longer work. They take an age to boot up and very slow to access anything (a lot of the time they don't at all). I think it's hard drive but have no technical experience so can't be sure. Don't want to spend huge money in repairing but at same time don't want to recycle if it's something easily fixed. Is there a way to get a computer assessed before spend to see if worthwhile paying for repair?

FSL

Create a bootable usb with a linux distro on it and boot from the USB. If it works fine and can access the hard drive, then the hard drive is working and the cpu and graphics are working so the problem is with the amount of junk on the harddrive and the number of bloatware/spyware processes starting up at boot time and consuming the resources.

Dale Parish

Reinstall windows and drivers if you don't mind loosing the data.
You'll be amazed.

riclad

Make a boot cd live cd mint cd ,see
http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=67 fits on 1 cdr.use free program imgburn tio burn iso to a cd.
You may have a virus that slows down loading ,or the hd drive is nearly full,
windows likes about 5gig free space ,to work effeciently.
you can run mint os from cd, takes about 6 mins to load up from cd, you can click install mint , installs to hardrive.it ,ll make bootup menu, startup,choose windows , or linux mint,it has webrowser ,music player built in to cd.
If you reinstall to c/ windows ,its unlikely you,ll lose data, Use do not format hardrive option.during install process.

demanufactured

All they need is a fresh install of windows and they'll be like new again.

GreenWolfe

riclad wrote: »

Make a boot cd live cd mint cd ,see
http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=67 fits on 1 cdr.use free program imgburn tio burn iso to a cd.
You may have a virus that slows down loading ,or the hd drive is nearly full,
windows likes about 5gig free space ,to work effeciently.
you can run mint os from cd, takes about 6 mins to load up from cd, you can click install mint , installs to hardrive.it ,ll make bootup menu, startup,choose windows , or linux mint,it has webrowser ,music player built in to cd.
If you reinstall to c/ windows ,its unlikely you,ll lose data, Use do not format hardrive option.during install process.

Why do you insist on recommending software that isn't supported anymore?

RodgersLFC

Slowness issues in the situation you've described are 99% caused by spyware and junk that you've accumulated over the years of using the machines. If you're not bothered with the data on the machines, do a clean reinstall of the OS. You wont believe the difference it will make to the speed of the machine. Unless you have a hardware issue, they'll be pretty much back to the performance level on the day that you bought them.

If you want to retain the information make sure you back it up to another machine, then do your clean reinstall.

maringo

Dealing with my old pc I copied any stuff I wanted to keep off onto cds

Then I did a format c:/sys {leaves the pc clean with just the system files) and re-installed my windows software leaving out a lot of the bloatware. Worked ok on the old pc and left it usable again but is probably not the most up-to-date way to bring the pc back to original functionality. My first computer had no hard disk only floppies so I'm probably a bit rusty !

RodgersLFC

maringo wrote: »

Dealing with my old pc I copied any stuff I wanted to keep off onto cds

Then I did a format c:/sys {leaves the pc clean with just the system files) and re-installed my windows software leaving out a lot of the bloatware. Worked ok on the old pc and left it usable again but is probably not the most up-to-date way to bring the pc back to original functionality. My first computer had no hard disk only floppies so I'm probably a bit rusty !

Thats some vintage stuff right there the modern Windows operating systems have a repair console that you can access via booting from CD - allows you to upgrade or repair/reinstall. Dead easy

maringo

Yep. Ancient like meself ! Win 98. But use the macbook mostly now - gave the old pc away once i had it sorted.
Vista drove me mad have to say.

GreenWolfe

Balarrr Didiarr wrote: »

I have an old HP Pavilion laptop and a newer Dell Inspiron that no longer work.

As well as the suggested Windows reinstall, can the HP Pavilion take any more RAM? Enter the exact model into the crucial.eu Memory Advisor and you'll know what to buy if you decide to upgrade.

Balarrr Didiarr

EarthlyPangaea wrote: »

As well as the suggested Windows reinstall, can the HP Pavilion take any more RAM? Enter the exact model into the crucial.eu Memory Advisor and you'll know what to buy if you decide to upgrade.

Thanks to everyone for help, haven't had a chance to try suggestions yet but should this week. Thanks again!

cgarrad

http://lubuntu.net/

better for older computers, a lighter operating system.

BostonB

Give us the model number and we'll know if its worth fixing.

RodgersLFC

cgarrad wrote: »

http://lubuntu.net/

better for older computers, a lighter operating system.

Just put this onto an old Inspiron 1300 that I've had for 8 years or so, it runs like a dream. Really nice OS, prefer it to the Ubuntu platform for some reason. It just seems more straightforward and less clunky. Thanks again!