(Vanity) My laptop died, need cheap OS

geronl

[GeronL]

My Toshiba Satellite L305 has crapped out. It did not come with the reinstallation disk. I can get a new hard drive but I need an O/S. It is too old to run Windows 7, which I can't really afford.

Does anyone know where I can buy a Windows Vista Home Premium (or sumtin') disk or product key for a good price?

[GeronL]

It's sad thinking of all the stuff I just lost too. Vids, pics, programs, word files of stories etc

[brivette]

I have old Vista discs you can have.

[dinodino]

Linux is free.

[AFreeBird]

Linux is free and should run just fine on your old hardware.

[ChuckHam]

Is there a license sticker on the laptop with the registration code? If so, you can do a google search and download a legit image of the appropriate version of windows. I believe digital river might be the host.

[oh8eleven]

need cheap OS
Ubuntu (Linux) - free is better than cheap.

[ShadowAce]

[ciaocotc]

If it worth the expense to you - you can generally recover most data even from a crashed hard drive.

[cynwoody]

Download Ubuntu. Burn the image to a CD. Boot the laptop from the CD. Install to hard drive.

[GeronL]

darn, I also lost Microsoft Office 2007 and a video editing program. That hurts.

[Charles Martel]

I'd suggest a new drive and Linux Mint or Ubuntu. Depends on how much Windows-specific work you do with the machine, I guess.

Regardless of the OS you choose, I'd try putting the damaged drive into a cheap USB drive enclosure and then attempt to access it and retrieve some files. Hiren's Boot Disk version 10.6 on CD should have the disk and file recovery tools you need.

[proxy_user]

No backups, eh?

I always use separate partitions for OS and data. You can just back up the data partition. You can even reinstall the OS without touching the data, if the disk is physically good.

[GeronL]

nope. If I had saved everything, I would be able to reinstall with the old product key, right? dang.

[proxy_user]

Yes, that often works. Usually the boot record or the OS is corrupt, but the data is fine. I have pulled a lot of data off of damaged hard drives, just mounting them as secondaries.

[GeronL]

I would still need a valid product key, how would I go about getting one from someone who upgraded to 7 or something?

[Dick Bachert]

BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP.

External hard drives are cheap as dirt now.

[GeronL]

Nope, that’s the thing. I am pretty broke.

[GeronL]

Good idea

[GeronL]

disk is fried