I have inherited my wife's old laptop and it has serious problems.

[Alobar]

Her old Win 10 machine (a Toshiba Satellite with a Gen 5 Intel, 8gb ram and 1tb drive) slowly got slower and slower until it would take an hour just to boot up. I had hoped it was just a full drive, leaving no room for a swap file but after deleting many GB's of files, the speed didn't get faster. I tried getting it to run several times on safe mode but no dice.

As a last resort I used the Toshiba maintenance program to wipe the hard drive, so now there is no operating system. I am now wondering if this computer is worth investing the $100 for a new copy of Win 10, or will it crawl like it did before? In other words, was the problem before hardware or software?

I really only have one reason for a laptop, that being to play music to my system out in the remote shop using JRiver. I wonder if I could get Linux running on it, just to determine if the hardware is okay first? I could use JRiver for Linux I suppose but I don't think the libraries in one can transfer to the other OS.

Any suggestions? Thanks!

 

[Luckyorleans]

An option is to find a low cost full copy of Win 7 online and install that for what you need. You can also install a Linux flavour to check out the hardware performance.

 

[chodad]

Get another computer.

 

[restorer-john]

Download and install a copy of Win10 and run it for a while, if you like the speed of the machine (I can virtually guarantee it will be like new again), pay for the license.

People really have no idea about computers, they dispose of them because they 'think' they get slower- they don't. A clean OS install will blow you away, especially as compared to the crapware install it probably came with when new.

 

[KingBubba]

Most computers come with restore disc that should include the operating system. Recheck your discs from Toshiba and see if it has a full restore setup.

 

[blhagstrom]

Download and install a copy of Win10 and run it for a while, if you like the speed of the machine (I can virtually guarantee it will be like new again), pay for the license.

People really have no idea about computers, they dispose of them because they 'think' they get slower- they don't. A clean OS install will blow you away, especially as compared to the crapware install it probably came with when new.

So true.

I pick $100 specials from my recycler that are fairly recent. Drop Win 7 on them, get the wireless and NIC going, get online and hit upgrade about a dozen times.

Got 3 junkers running, 2 with 10 and one still on 7 because my wife didn’t want 10.

I got a cute red touch screen from Walmart for Christmas for her running 10. Dropped Chome on it, set up her favorite shortcuts and she’s good now.

Hnmmm, where did that 7 box go?
Time to let it upgrade and get 10 on it.
Another kiosk laptop in the house would be handy. Maybe a garage system.

 

[Alobar]

Thanks for the opinions and ideas. Having never installed an OS before to a machine with a blank drive, what are the options for loading win 10 or even Linux for that matter onto this machine? The win 10 options from amazon that come on DVD are a little spendy for not knowing the hardware condition. What's the cheapest way to get an OS on this machine considering it only has a black screen with a blinking cursor? If it checks out hardware wise I would then be happy to spring the $100 for a license copy of Windows 10.

 

[dr*audio]

Linux is simple to install. You can download Linux Mint for free. Then you put it on a thumb drive and make it into a bootable installation "disk." There are instructions online for doing this. You need a free piece of software to do it. You can run Linux off the thumb drive to try it out and see if it fixes the problem, then install it. Linux Mint is similar in look and functions to Windows so it is easy to get used to. Mint comes with most of the programs you will need.

 

[knockbill]

Easiest thing to try, Restore/Recovery disc,,, should be installed in the computer...

 

[gadget73]

yeah, see what discs came with the machine, or use the recovery option that re-installs the operating system that it came with. Depends on the specific setup, some things have the recovery part on the hard drive already and you have to boot into that menu to make it go. It might give you Windows 7 or 8, but there should be a license sticker on the machine somewhere with the key code. My Dell has it hidden under the battery.

 

[MKF83]

If it was a legit install of windows 10 all you have to do is create a windows 10 install media usb stick. It is free and easy on Microsoft website.
Just make sure you install the same version that was on the computer before. Windows 10 pro, home, etc. It will active online however Microsoft stores the registration data. I believe it is tied to the motherboard or processor id info.
While you are at it, replace that slow platter drive with an SSD. It will extend the useful life of "slow" laptops for years.

 

[Alobar]

Great ideas! Thanks! My wife says no dvds came, or she doesn't remember where. Also I had tried going back to a saved point in time but it said there were no saved points. Anyway now with no OS on it, even the partitions are gone I am wondering if I need to format the drive. I don't think the utility that wiped out the drive took it that far but I'm in unfamiliar territory here..

 

[EngineerNate]

If it was a legit install of windows 10 all you have to do is create a windows 10 install media usb stick. It is free and easy on Microsoft website.
Just make sure you install the same version that was on the computer before. Windows 10 pro, home, etc. It will active online however Microsoft stores the registration data. I believe it is tied to the motherboard or processor id info.
While you are at it, replace that slow platter drive with an SSD. It will extend the useful life of "slow" laptops for years.

This is the correct answer. Instead of license keys, OEM installs of Win10 use a hardware "fingerprint" that MS can identify on their end when you reinstall. I've reinstalled on my machines multiple times and have never had an issue with licensing. It's quite nice because on machines that come with OEM licenses you can download the USB installer directly from MS and reinstall clean and it will still recognize the machine and give you a valid license, so your install is free of all the OEM garbage that would normally have come on the OEM restore disk.

If it has a spinny hard drive, the biggest thing you can do to improve it's performance is to drop an SSD in it. Usually a very easy procedure. I dropped an extra stick of memory and an SSD into my wife's $400 asus from 8 years ago and aside from the battery, it runs as good as new and with the SSD is plenty snappy for day to day use. She wants a new laptop but that's primarily motivated by the fact that even the replacement batteries we've been able to find under $150 only give her 1-2 hours of battery life on average.

 

[50nstillhifi]

My wife uses a Toshiba.. using Win10 as well. These laptops were a great buy for the features.. but a real pain to upgrade or use standard windows operations for just about anything.. IMO.

However, when using "her stuff"..I go the way of Chrome.. using compatible apps for just about all programs, and the OS works great.. and seems to like it (if OS as such have personalities ).

Interestingly.. since the unit was purchased through BBuy.. the Geek crew seemed to want to fix any Toshiba issues with a hard drive make over. A wee bit of a problem if you have committed everything to your hard drive. Of course, there solution is to have you access the cloud.. I don't even trust clouds over my head !

So good luck, and the LINUX sounds good as well.. just never used it.

 

[EngineerNate]

I trust Dropbox a lot more than I trust any single hard drive in my computer. They've got backups of backups of backups. Hell, I backup my backups to the cloud.

 

[FONSguy]

Perhaps add in a fan control software to keep it more cool when running.

 

[eizner23]

Speed issue could've been: crap software loading at startup, crap services loading at startup. Or bad hard drive sectors or bad Ram chip.

That laptop has good hardware specs, it's worth restoring. First find an IT or nerd to scan Hdd for bad sectors, read write errors and the ram for faults. If clean then pursue an OEM version of windows, you have a license key already, see sticker under laptop.
Or go here to download windows 10 image from Microsoft's site https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10ISO
You can write the .iso to 8gb USB drive, then boot to the usb drive!

 

[illinoisteve]

You could get a DVD of a Linux version from the osdisc.com site. I use Zorin Linux version 11, but there might be a more recent version. It has a windows 7ish looking interface and just works.

This computer used to have Win8, but the installation crapped out before I could update to 10. I don't miss windows. And there was hardly any learning curve to go to this linux version.

 

[petehall347]

download and burn a linux live disc . then see how it is and also look at partitions on the hard drive by running the "disks" application .
if no win 10 backup there try linux for real on the hard drive .it will be much faster when installed on the hard drive .

 

[Alobar]

I would have liked to have gotten this computer into safe mode and ran some diagnostics on the hard drive and ram chips but the half dozen times I tried, it couldn't manage it and just crawled. It literally took a half hour to reboot, sometimes the mouse wouldn't work after (no pointer) or sometimes just the mouse pad was dead but I could get it going with a corded mouse. Then when I tried getting into settings, it would just hang for a long time, probably a half hour, then a menu would show. Click on a selection, another half hour.

Does this sound like software? I kinda thought when I first got my hands on it the thing was packed with tmp files and the swap file had shrunk to nothing, but that wasn't the problem. I have read about some Intel chips that had problems but I don't know if this is one of them. Even if it was, I would have thought it would have simply quit altogether, but computers I only know enough to be dangerous!

Anyway I am leaning towards getting a download of win10 from MS and loading it on with a memory stick. If she goes then I can get the thing registered. But Linux Zorin version illinoisteve mentioned sounds interesting.

Eventually having a Win 10 machine would probably be the best as I have some Windows based CAD software that I would like to be able to use out in the workshop, and JRiver,s library supposedly won't transfer well from my Win10 version I use now in the house to a Linux version of JRiver..