New Laptop

sounds like the ribbon cable may have worn spot and intermittently grounding/shorting...

There is not a ribbon cable that I could see - it is either inside the chassis, or there is not really a cable at all. Either way, the laptop has been running perfectly since I reseated the harddrive.

Laptop is still running good. I even let it run a "stress test" for an hour or so to make sure it doesn't have any cooling problems. After that I removed the DVD drive and replaced it with the old hard drive from our other laptop. It is a 500gb 5400 rpm drive, nothing wrong with it - I just upgraded the other machine to a solid state drive. Now we have plenty of space, and in the event that I have to re-install windows, all of our files will be on a separate drive.

Rob R. wrote: ↑

Sun. Jan. 06, 2019 8:25 am

I just upgraded the other machine to a solid state drive.

Was it the operating system disk you upgraded to solid state? If so, what were the steps?

Yes. It was basically plug and play. I had to remove the battery and a cover plate to access the hard drive. Once installed I made sure it was properly detected in the BIOS, and did a fresh installation of Windows.

If you are wondering how to access the hard drive on a specific model, search YouTube - there are a lot of tutorials on there.

I have found this site online that offers Windows for a bargain-basement price. Does anyone know if the site is legitimate, and how do they do it for those prices?

https://digitalproductkey.com/windows-7-home-prem ... emium.html

Also, has anyone upgraded from HDD to SSD without reinstalling Windows? Supposedly there is free software that will clone the mechanical disk to the SSD, including copying the operating system and all data. Then you just plug the SSD in place of the HDD and everything works as if nothing had happened (but faster).

This is a computer with Windows 7 already on it? You only need an install disc, any install disc that is same version. Mine is Pro so I can't even offer you copy of it.

You can download the files from MS but you need a key and it won't work with OEM key. It's bit ridiculous because if you can download the file it will install fine with OEM key. There is trick to get by the Win10 ISO page if you do not have a key but it doesn't work on this one. I can't suggest anything specific but there is plenty of sites with information how to get it. Just make sure you are downloading from MS.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows7

https://www.howtogeek.com/186775/how-to-download- ... a-legally/
About 3/4 way down the page start here and use this tool...
This side linked to the digital river site originally...
Now it will do the same on Microsoft site...

Download Any Windows or Office ISO Using a Free Third-Party Tool

Microsoft used to make all these ISOs available through a site called Digital River, but it doesn’t anymore. Instead, they’re stored on its TechBench site. The ISOs can be hard to find, though, and for versions of Windows other than the most current, the site tries really hard to push you into using the Media Creation Tool instead. Enter the Microsoft Windows and Office ISO Download Tool. This free utility provides a simple interface that lets you select the version of Windows you want, then downloads an ISO for that version straight from Microsoft’s download servers. This includes various builds of the Windows 10 Insider Preview. You can also use the tool to download ISOs for certain versions of Microsoft Office.

First, head over to HeiDoc.net and grab the Microsoft Windows and Office ISO Download Tool. It’s free and it’s a portable tool, so there’s no installation. Just launch the executable file. In the main window, choose the version of Windows or Office you’d like to download.

To be clear this is not illegal, OEM key is only good for the original computer it was installed on or more specifically that motherboard. It's only when you change the motherboard it won't activate, changing the HDD or other peripherals should not prevent it from activating. If this was retail key it could be reinstalled on any machine but you'd have to discontinue use of the other machine. MS does not support OEM installs so they do not allow the download easily, They try and force you to get the disc from original manufacture but that can be expensive. Computers usually have recovery partition on HDD that can be copied to disc/USB stick that contains full install of Windows and other programs that it shipped with but I don't know if that will work on new HDD. You can try it but that sucks because you end up with all the bloat.

There is trick to get by the Win10 ISO page if you do not have a key but it doesn't work on this one.

To elaborate on this in case anyone comes across it you only need to use a Mac or you can switch the user agent in browser to iphone/ipad on Windows machine. User agent is sent with browser request, if you are using Firefox the website knows you are using Firefox. How you switch this depends on browser but typically there is an extension available.

Richard S. wrote: ↑

Thu. Jan. 31, 2019 11:20 pm

This is a computer with Windows 7 already on it?

I should have been more specific. This is an old desktop computer that sees only light duty browsing the Internet, and I back up my laptop to it over the LAN. The old computer is running Vista, which is no longer updated and where more and more programs aren't supported. Vista came pre-installed on the machine, from Dell. My idea was to replace Vista with either Windows 7 or 10, which would be great if I could do it for a mere $29 or $39 that the web site offers. I might at the same time replace the HDD with SSD, for hopefully a little boost in speed.
https://digitalproductkey.com/windows-7-home-prem ... emium.html

On the other hand, Newegg offers refurbished desktops for $200-300, newer than mine, with SSD and with Windows 10 already installed. That might be the path of least resistance.

New drives are SATA3, that machine will only have SATA2. They are backwards compatible and you might see slight bumps especially for read/write operations that do not require CPU processing but you really need SATA3 to take full advantage that you would see in new computer. The other issue is bottlenecks such as the CPU that were typically under-powered on most Vista machines. Loading a program into RAM may be faster but it's irrelevant if the CPU can't process it that fast.

If it's that old honestly I wouldn't bother putting money into it. Have you considered installing Linux? At the very least you won't have any security issues because of lack of updates.

Update on the HP EliteBook 8470P - the hard drive died! I have never heard of a solid state drive dying, but this one did. Came home and went to power on the laptop and was greeted with "no bootable image found" displayed on the screen. Removed the hard drive and plugged it into my desktop to see if I could access it...nope, nothing. Thankfully we recently started using a cloud backup service, so nothing was lost - and the 500gb disk I added a second drive a year ago could be re-purposed as the primary drive. I did a fresh install of Win 10 and everything seems to be running good, although I notice it is not as snappy as it was with the solid state drive.

Yep...
The solid state 2.5 inch and newer M.2 drives fail...
And when the fail it is absolute...
Running imaging software is the best option...
All the new computer builds will have it mandatory in my shop...
Plus cloud backup/ransomware protection of the data...

There was a time a few years back where the M.2 hd sockets on the system bds where flakey. I work on these systems dailey. None of the manufacturers would confirm this, but the newer system bds the M.2 hd sockets where quite snug when installing the drive. I do not see the drives dropping status like they used to. We would just lightly press on the drive and their status would come back, just like a reseat.

asus m4n75td motherboard, asus phenom2x955 4core 3.2 cpu, 8 gb ram, nivida G-Force graphics card.corsair 850W power. creative labs sound card, its an sli board but only put one video card in. Built it ? 11 years ago, OS win 7 pro home oem. only issue i had was RAM... had one set in was okay for a year, but started to give issues, bought different brand same spec no issues again. Never upgraded BIOS. SATA2 inside. NoSSD drives , WD 1.2T installled
Been looking at newer AMD CPU"S Ryzen 7 amd4 sockets and their MB's to build another. building one verses what components cost today...... pretty much break even either way. Buy built choices of OS. Nothing wrong with board/cpu. functions very well. Never used it as a gaming board.
I know from building this one it has to be component match very well to even get it to boot up without os installed. I would have to get a newer case, this one is atx format, but after 2 or 3 rebuilds in needs to be replaced.