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.
OK, so I’ve got this HP Pavilion, dv7-1245dx, laptop.
Vista
AMD turion-X2 64
It hasn’t run for a year now.
My first issues happened about a year after I bought it, when the keyboard/touchpad died and I resigned myself to using a USB keyboard and mouse.
I understand the heat issues and try to maintain proper ventilation etc..
Currently, if I try to start the machine it may or may not boot up. It can take anywhere from 2 minutes to two hours.
Sometimes it comes up and just dies within a few minutes. Sometimes I can get a hour or so of web browsing or multimedia and it dies. No blue screen, just shuts off.
I’ve somewhat given up on this machine but just now I’ve fired it up.
It would be really great if I could get this thing running and was reliable.
I’d be happy to put another OS on it, but I’m not sure how I would go about that.
Help ?
Actually, I feel my own pain. do you happen to know if a later version of outlook would work, and would be able to send and receive calendars with earlier versions?
Get Windows 7. You won’t regret it. It’s rock solid. Vista is 7’s “challenged” older sibling.
Yeah, take it back for a refund and go buy a biz class Dell Latitude E5x30, E5x40, E6x30, or E6x40 refurb with Windows 7 x64 Pro:
http://www.dell.com/us/dfb/p/latitude-laptops.aspx?c=us&cs=28&l=en&s=dfb&~ck=mn
If you go the E5xxx route, spend the extra $70.00 for the extra two years of warranty.
4-6 GB RAM
320 or bigger 7400 rpm HD
intel i5 processor
webcam if you need one and can find a refurb with it.
Get a Hotmail account and use the online FREE version of Word, Excel and Powerpoint.
You can save items in your 7 gig Skydrive.
Several years ago, Microsoft was giving away free 25 gig cloud drives, but, cut back. I have 4 hotmail accounts for such reasons.
Between Microsoft’s and Google’s Clouds I have over 100 gig of cloud storage. Then there is Amazon, Box and Dropbox.
Open Office and Lib Office are good choices too, but, they take up room on your hard disk. Could be an issue if you don’t have a big hard disk (also might not be). You can get the USB version of Open Office from sourceforge.com I keep a copy in my pocket just in case.
You can’t have too much free stuff. Just be careful what you share.
Unfortunately, I have a computer at work that runs W8. I would PAY money to be able to revert to W7, but HP doesn't offer that possibility. And yes, W8 "is" that bad.
Right now, I am trying to upgrade that machine to 8.1 (thus far unsuccessfully) in hopes that some of the changes move at least slightly in an acceptable direction. NOTHING about Windows 8 is in the least attractive if you need to get real work done.
Fortunately, that machine is NOT my main desktop, which has W7.
Yup...need more info. It’s hard to believe it didn’t have an optical drive of some sort. CD??? Should be a DVD at least.
This is all speculation until we know what kind of machine and what software, if any, was bundled.
Thanks,
I just need a “product key”.
I’m not going to pay for something that should have worked in the first place.
I haven’t used Windows in long enough to know.
I have a 2007. It was a Ferrari back then, 3G Ram, vid card, etc. It struggles with some things now (Like gaming). But it does still run Firefox. I'll upgrade when FR won't run on it anymore. (LOL - This may be my last computer ever).
Vista
There's your problem... :-)
I would either try reloading Vista (back up your files that you want to keep first and make sure you have the installs and keys of any other software you have installed), or get Windows 7 and load that.
Additionally, HP's web site has a utility that checks your system to see if it has the latest drivers available for your hardware, and lets you easily download them. It's worth running that and make sure you have the updated drivers and firmware.
Putting another OS on it would be the easy part. It sounds like it might be overheating though. If you keep turning it on and it overheats over and over, you will damage internal components eventually.
Has the fan totally died? can you hear it whirring? Is it clogged? Can you blow a can of air in it or vacuum out stuff (better be off first)? I have had to do that myself when I noticed my fan wasn’t moving. I turned mine over and found the fan, I used a toothpick or something slim to move it around and make sure it could spin freely.
Have you installed Linux? When the Windows clogs up or the HDD dies, Linux is the way to go.
Haven’t seen a Bob dialog for a while. That really goes back a ways.
Likely it was an "ultrabook" - they are thin and light, but no room for an optical drive. I have a HP ultrabook (from HP's enterprise line of laptops, not the consumer stuff in Best Buy) and it has no optical drive. It's a sweet laptop, and I have not missed the optical drive at all. Everything I need I can get via wifi and our network or the web.
I agree, but since MS is end-of-life'ing XP, at some point it will become dangerous to use the web, since MS will not be issuing any patches for it, should an exploit be found.
If you have blank CD’s or a USB with 4 gb you can make a live disc of Linux (Ubuntu or MINT) and use it without even installing to the hard drive to see if you like it.
We have an old Toshiba with a corrupted copy of Windows something, probably an “illegal copy” that keeps demanding to be updated, which would render it useless of course.
I am going to get around to installing Linux on it eventually. It might be destined for my nephew and there are versions of Linux catered to kids too.
I don’t know where you’re shopping, but even Staples has some pretty snappy looking Intel i5 laptops running Win 8 for under $600. There’s plenty of places where you could probably do better, such as newegg.com.
If its not the fan I dunno.
Making a live version of Ubuntu is as easy as downloading the iso (disk image) and burning it to a CD-R. It doesn’t have to be done on the damaged computer either.
http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop
12.04 is the long term support version, sounds like you would need the 32-bit version. Not that I know of course.
MS is ending support for XP because it actually doesn’t need support.
It works.
I will have to trust Firefox.
It’s going to be really hard for me to give up my XP.
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