- Aug 25, 2001
- 56,453
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I got a call yesterday, someone in my apt. complex, a nice older woman, with a laptop that she hasn't used in "years", that wants it working.
I went over right away, brought a 240GB Kingston SSD, a screwdriver, flashlight, and a USB stick with Win10 64-bit on it.
Well, it had either Windows 7 or Vista on it, hard to tell since it would only boot to recovery mode, and not actually recover. (Bad HDD, maybe? I just assumed so.) It had a Windows Vista sticker on it.
I tried booting the Win10 USB, using both the boot menu and the BIOS setup boot order, but it seemingly refused to boot it.
So I pulled the SATA 2.5" HDD, and installed the 240GB SSD, and it still wouldn't take the USB drive with Win10. (It was a Dell laptop.)
So I went back home to my "lab", found a brand-new USB stick, and made a fresh Win10 USB drive.
That, along with the blank SSD, eventually managed to boot. I installed Win10 64-bit.
To make a long story short, this person had been paying for internet as part of a triple-play, for like years, and was paying for fairly decent speeds, and they had never used it!
So, this being cable, it was never "activated". So when I finally got the wifi on the laptop to connect to their cable gateway device, I could only access the ISP's pages, and not Google or anywhere else on the internet like the Browser's OEM start page.
I tried to go through the online activation, but the person couldn't remember their details, so I tried calling, and their phone queue was full.
The person apologized for this task requiring so much effort (getting their laptop fixed up, and trying to get on the internet). They were like, "if it's this much trouble, can't I just leave this laptop here and ignore it then?".
I felt really bad, because I wanted to show this (older person) the internet, and at least, some of the online shopping sites, like walmart.com, jcpenney.com, etc.
I tried to return the money for the work, but they were insistent that I keep the money, since I had worked on it for over an hour (including walking back to my place to make another USB stick).
I left them, telling them if they ever got the inclination to connect to the internet, to contact me during what would be non-peak hours for their ISP, so that we could get through, and activate internet on their account.
I was a little frustrated, leaving them with an incomplete solution. I told them that they could take their laptop to McDonald's, Starbuck's, and Dunkin's, and use their free wifi, if they needed to.
But the battery was shot from sitting so long, that after I plugged it in, and ran it for a while, then the BIOS started booting and saying "unrecognized battery". I don't know if one of their younger relatives had picked up a replacement battery for them some time in the past, or if the battery was just run down and / or damaged beyond recognition of the laptop's BIOS.
So if they took the laptop anywhere, they would need the cord.
I went over right away, brought a 240GB Kingston SSD, a screwdriver, flashlight, and a USB stick with Win10 64-bit on it.
Well, it had either Windows 7 or Vista on it, hard to tell since it would only boot to recovery mode, and not actually recover. (Bad HDD, maybe? I just assumed so.) It had a Windows Vista sticker on it.
I tried booting the Win10 USB, using both the boot menu and the BIOS setup boot order, but it seemingly refused to boot it.
So I pulled the SATA 2.5" HDD, and installed the 240GB SSD, and it still wouldn't take the USB drive with Win10. (It was a Dell laptop.)
So I went back home to my "lab", found a brand-new USB stick, and made a fresh Win10 USB drive.
That, along with the blank SSD, eventually managed to boot. I installed Win10 64-bit.
To make a long story short, this person had been paying for internet as part of a triple-play, for like years, and was paying for fairly decent speeds, and they had never used it!
So, this being cable, it was never "activated". So when I finally got the wifi on the laptop to connect to their cable gateway device, I could only access the ISP's pages, and not Google or anywhere else on the internet like the Browser's OEM start page.
I tried to go through the online activation, but the person couldn't remember their details, so I tried calling, and their phone queue was full.
The person apologized for this task requiring so much effort (getting their laptop fixed up, and trying to get on the internet). They were like, "if it's this much trouble, can't I just leave this laptop here and ignore it then?".
I felt really bad, because I wanted to show this (older person) the internet, and at least, some of the online shopping sites, like walmart.com, jcpenney.com, etc.
I tried to return the money for the work, but they were insistent that I keep the money, since I had worked on it for over an hour (including walking back to my place to make another USB stick).
I left them, telling them if they ever got the inclination to connect to the internet, to contact me during what would be non-peak hours for their ISP, so that we could get through, and activate internet on their account.
I was a little frustrated, leaving them with an incomplete solution. I told them that they could take their laptop to McDonald's, Starbuck's, and Dunkin's, and use their free wifi, if they needed to.
But the battery was shot from sitting so long, that after I plugged it in, and ran it for a while, then the BIOS started booting and saying "unrecognized battery". I don't know if one of their younger relatives had picked up a replacement battery for them some time in the past, or if the battery was just run down and / or damaged beyond recognition of the laptop's BIOS.
So if they took the laptop anywhere, they would need the cord.
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