Resurrecting the old Laptop

Undisclosed · Post by **Undisclosed** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 4:34 pm

Well....I read an article in popular sciences about resurrecting older sluggish laptops. I want to to this to my moms old one, its not that old, but kinda old. I kind of understand the whole downloading knoppix linux onto a cd (any other suggestions), clearing out the old computer and booting from cd, but if anyone knows any better more detail instructions it would be appreciated. The second issue and that the laptop is used for printing results using special software for track meets. If I put linux on the laptop it wont be able to use that software. Any ideas there?

teraflop122 · Post by **teraflop122** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 4:39 pm

Why don't you just wipe the hard drive and reinstall Windows?

Post by **Gamelver** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 4:48 pm

because linux is so much better!!

um, yeah, that's what he's doing, except with Linux, I believe. I did that with my old PC, since it was full of crap and ran like crap, too

.

I remember with Fedora Core 2 it asked if I wanted to wipe the hard drive and install Linux....er, I think that's what happened anyway

.

Post by **bicostp** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 4:49 pm

Teraflop's right. If you have the original install CDs it is best to format the hard drive, check it for errors, and install a fresh copy of XP.

If you do not have the install CDs, but you want Windows, you should uninstall everything you do not want, run anti-spyware and anti-virus software, error-check, defragment, and clean it up. (I'll work on an HTML page which will serve basically as a tutorial on refurbishing Windows and saving old machines.)

If you don't mind Linux, download the Knoppix ISO, burn it, and try it out. The CD has a couple gigs' worth of compressed programs, ranging from the useful (OpenOffice for example) to the plain silly (Xeyes, BB, Tea Timer...) It's a great way to get some experience with moden desktop Linux. If you like what you see but want to try a more common build, Download SUSE 10 (5 cd images) or 9.1 (one CD image), depending on the amount of hard drive space the machine has. I recommend you download and install SuSE 9.1, mainly because it is a more common system than a Knoppix HD installation, and therefore you'll find more information on workign with and tweaking it. There are a lot of distributions avalible at http://www.linuxiso.org

EDIT: Here is the page with mroe detailed information
http://bicostp.googlepages.com/resurrectyouroldlaptop
(I didn't feel like using FrontPage

)

Undisclosed · Post by **Undisclosed** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 5:13 pm

I do not have the original windows cds because this was a school laptop that was set to be networked witht he school and the tech dept. set it up...im sure i can get a cd from a friend, but what should i run, i think xp (as a newer os) might be so big and sluggish for it.

Harshboy · Post by **Harshboy** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 7:05 pm

If you use Linux, install PCLinux OS. Why? Because it rocks. It's very cool, and has many tools for almost anything

It has a sweet look to it too. If you want something better, go with Ubuntu. By far one of the best Linux distros out there. You can even install both if ya want

Heres a skined version of Ubuntu to show how flexable it is:

You can read more on my website (Link available in my sig)

That is my own skin, edited from many Mac skins. There are plenty of Windows skins too. Ubuntu will allow you to do many things! I recommend it if you don't want PCLinux OS (I love PCLinux OS, it's way better)

Undisclosed · Post by **Undisclosed** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 7:31 pm

Whats the smallest/efficient windows os.

Harshboy · Post by **Harshboy** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 7:38 pm

98 SE

teraflop122 · Post by **teraflop122** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 10:14 pm

I concur with Harshboy.

It's also easy to come by in school computer classrooms and etc.

sniper_spike · Post by **sniper_spike** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 6:14 am

Though not exactly easy to copy if that's what your saying... Most school computers have the main contents of C:\ (or whatever the drive may be) locked.

Dark Savant0 · Post by **Dark Savant0** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 1:10 pm

Ummm, you could install any linux variant (a good one for older hardware is DSL, which is knoppix based, but doesn't allow you to install stuff off the bat), and then try and run your software in WINE, a windows emulator.

blackbox_dev · Post by **blackbox_dev** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 1:14 pm

I'm typing this on Windows Me right now. It's pretty good and effecient, but they took out some good features that were in Windows 98 (real mode DOS for example). If you don't mind that, go with Me. It comes with some stuff Windows XP has too, like Movie Maker and such.

daguuy · Post by **daguuy** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 1:27 pm

my cousin used to use ME. it made his computer go really slow and crash a lot. then he installed windows 2000 and it runs much better. i have an old laptop that i tried to instal DSL on but it didn't work. are there any other small versions of linux?

paul4990 · Post by **paul4990** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 1:35 pm

how about DBL (DAMN BIG LINUUXY)

blackbox_dev · Post by **blackbox_dev** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 3:50 pm

Slackware can be installed in as little as 120mb.