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GeneralRe: Alas, now Emma Peel Pin
Greg Utas10-Sep-20 12:03
professionalGreg Utas10-Sep-20 12:03 
GeneralRe: Alas, now Emma Peel Pin
Kent Sharkey10-Sep-20 13:36
staffKent Sharkey10-Sep-20 13:36 
GeneralRe: Alas, now Emma Peel Pin
Greg Utas10-Sep-20 14:27
professionalGreg Utas10-Sep-20 14:27 
GeneralRe: Alas, now Emma Peel Pin
Super Lloyd10-Sep-20 19:05
Super Lloyd10-Sep-20 19:05 
GeneralRe: Alas, now Emma Peel Pin
Majerus10-Sep-20 19:49
Majerus10-Sep-20 19:49 
GeneralRe: Alas, now Emma Peel Pin
5teveH10-Sep-20 21:17
5teveH10-Sep-20 21:17 
GeneralRe: Alas, now Emma Peel Pin
W Balboos, GHB11-Sep-20 2:00
W Balboos, GHB11-Sep-20 2:00 
GeneralWhen do you cut your losses? Pin
dandy7210-Sep-20 6:19
dandy7210-Sep-20 6:19 
Someone brought me an old laptop to "clean up" because she wants to give it to a 3-year old grandchild, to keep her away from her "good" laptop. It's old, it's slow, there was nothing I was asked to salvage, so I figured the quickest way to get there was to blow everything away and just let a clean install of Windows take over the entire disk after deleting it all.

The first attempt to install went just fine. Then I let Windows 7 get and install any and all updates it could find. This is what the system came with, and even though I realize it's out of support, yada-yada, I figured it would probably be the best thing to reinstall on it. Anything newer would be even slower, not to mention no guarantee that any proprietary driver might not be available or work with 8/8.1/10/whatever else. At some point some update failed, and it spent countless hours rolling everything back. Next time around I told it to only install a subset of them, and do it all in smaller chunks (that generally seems to work better in my experience since, at this point in time, Win7 tries to get and install hundreds of updates...which might be just too much for it to try to handle all at once).

At some point it decided to run System Repair (not System Restore) on every startup, even though it could never find/fix any problem. I figured I'd try a different hard drive - I have plenty of spares I don't mind giving away. Long story short, I'm back in the same situation; System Repair comes up on its own on every reboot and, if I can eventually reach the login screen, the subsequent reboot starts the whole thing all over again.

While I'm ready to say the first hard drive's just gone way past its useful life (the manufacturing date printed on it says 2007), I have a harder time saying the same about the second, and I know I last used it to test various Linux distributions in another laptop and never had a problem with it.

I'm not sure if some unrelated hardware problem could manifest itself in this way. But I'm running out of patience and not quite willing to try a third hard drive, if only for the sake of trying.

Again, it's just an old laptop to be given to a 3-year old, so honestly, I've probably spent way more time on this than anyone ought to. I think this is gonna be one of those rare times I just tell her to trash it.

I had no point and no question. Just a semi-rant, I guess...
GeneralRe: When do you cut your losses? Pin
F-ES Sitecore10-Sep-20 6:27
professionalF-ES Sitecore10-Sep-20 6:27 
GeneralRe: When do you cut your losses? Pin
Richard MacCutchan10-Sep-20 6:40
mveRichard MacCutchan10-Sep-20 6:40 
GeneralRe: When do you cut your losses? Pin
dandy7210-Sep-20 6:51
dandy7210-Sep-20 6:51 
GeneralRe: When do you cut your losses? Pin
Jörgen Andersson10-Sep-20 9:23
professionalJörgen Andersson10-Sep-20 9:23 
GeneralRe: When do you cut your losses? Pin
dandy7210-Sep-20 10:49
dandy7210-Sep-20 10:49 
GeneralRe: When do you cut your losses? Pin
Kirk 1038982111-Sep-20 12:06
Kirk 1038982111-Sep-20 12:06 
GeneralRe: When do you cut your losses? Pin
vaghelabhavesh16-Sep-20 2:17
vaghelabhavesh16-Sep-20 2:17 
GeneralRe: When do you cut your losses? PinPopular
PIEBALDconsult10-Sep-20 6:33
mvePIEBALDconsult10-Sep-20 6:33 
GeneralRe: When do you cut your losses? Pin
dandy7210-Sep-20 6:56
dandy7210-Sep-20 6:56 
GeneralRe: When do you cut your losses? Pin
PIEBALDconsult10-Sep-20 7:17
mvePIEBALDconsult10-Sep-20 7:17 
GeneralRe: When do you cut your losses? Pin
5teveH10-Sep-20 6:51
5teveH10-Sep-20 6:51 
GeneralRe: When do you cut your losses? Pin
dandy7210-Sep-20 6:53
dandy7210-Sep-20 6:53 
GeneralRe: When do you cut your losses? Pin
Peter Adam12-Sep-20 21:27
professionalPeter Adam12-Sep-20 21:27 
GeneralRe: When do you cut your losses? Pin
5teveH13-Sep-20 5:02
5teveH13-Sep-20 5:02 
GeneralRe: When do you cut your losses? Pin
Peter Adam13-Sep-20 5:10
professionalPeter Adam13-Sep-20 5:10 
GeneralRe: When do you cut your losses? Pin
DerekT-P10-Sep-20 7:15
professionalDerekT-P10-Sep-20 7:15 
GeneralRe: When do you cut your losses? Pin
MKJCP11-Sep-20 2:40
MKJCP11-Sep-20 2:40 

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