Computer Hope
Hardware => Hardware => Topic started by: richardf77 on June 25, 2013, 06:41:04 AM
-
Not sure if this is the right place to post this, but here goes. I have been given a 'dead' asus laptop (HDD failure) that i would like to repair/refurbish by replacing the HDD. I feel confident enough to do this and see it as a cheaper way of getting a laptop than buying a new one. Replacing the hardware seem easy enough and poses no fears for me - i have in fact already had the machine open and removed the old drive. What i am concerned and need advice/help on is what happens once i have installed a new HDD, How do i go about installing an operating system and basicaly getting the new HDD talking to the rest of the machine? I have A set of windows vista and 7 recovery disks which i am told should install windows onto a new HDD as well as reinstalling onto the old one. I am also thinking of using this opportunity to ditch windows and try a LINUX based OS. I have install discs for several of these.
The other problem i have is that i am not sure if the optical drive on themachine is working properly so may have to load the OS using a USB connection (flash drive or external HDD). How would i install windows using this method? (LINUX OSs no problem).
Can anyone help or advise me with this. Phlease ask if you need more info. Thanks
-
Does the laptop have a valid Windows key? If so, you can grab the official ISO from here (http://www.w7forums.com/official-windows-7-sp1-iso-image-downloads-t12325.html). This is better than using the Windows restore disk as it's a clean installation, no added rubbish, and it won't rely on anything else (some restore disks still rely on a recovery partition on the HDD which of course will be missing). You can then burn this to a disk to install, or put it on a USB drive as linked below.
To create a USB drive which you can boot and install Windows 7 from, you can follow this guide (http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-install-windows-7vista-from-usb-drive-detailed-100-working-guide/) - there's a link at the bottom for an alternative method which is easier, and uses the ISO file which you can download from my earlier link.
All you should need to do is boot from the install media, whether that's DVD or USB, and install the OS - it's as easy as that, no other setup should be required.
If you install more than one OS, you will need to install the oldest first - so if you install Vista and Windows 7, install Vista first, and partition the hard drive appropriately before beginning, then install Windows 7 afterwards. I'm not overly familiar with Linux as it's been a while since I've installed or used any distributions, but I believe Linux should be installed afterwards as its bootloader can handle Windows as well as Linux, whereas the Windows bootloader only handles Windows.
-
Begin
Let me make a general observation. At one time I felt very confident about repairing computers myself. However, when it came to laptops, I was not as successful. There are so many variations and laptop design that it's quite easy to make a mistake and damage something. However, replacing the hard drive in the laptop is not a major chore.
Based on my own experience, this is what I generally recommend for anybody that wants to work on a dead laptop.
First of all find out what the computer is worth and replacement parts and make a judgment. You may also find a perfectly good used computer of the same make and model with a warranty that sells for less than the cost of the parts. Do the math. Let me say that again, do the math. In my opinion you could buy a used or refurbished laptop from a vendor that will offer you at least a 90 day warranty on the computer. If it doesn't break in 90 days, it probably would last even a year. The computer you have probably has some value as parts. You may find a buyer this willing to buy your computer and pay you for the parts. That will offset your cost of buying a used refurbished computer. I am estimating that you end up saving more money by buying the refurbished computer and then selling the parts of the old computer.
My reasoning for this is us as follows: the people who do refurbishing do it in such a large scale that they have the advantages that you and I don't have. They have access to equipment, they have access to suppliers, and they have on hand trained technicians that have already done this before. They can refurbish the computer and sell it for profit for less than what you can. In my humble opinion.
I have purchased refurbished computers on eBay and all of the computers I have bought over eBay did work and were as described by the vendor. Now some of the other things I have bought on eBay were not always that well represented, but the ones that sell refurbished computers usually are straight dealers and they will not sell you junk.
So that is my recommendation. Go find the same make and model on eBay, locate a vendor with a reputation, and buy from him. Then try to sell the parts you have. There are some people that will buy the parts off of eBay thinking that they can repair a computer themselves. People who are just as confident as you are. But you have an advantage, you consulted with other people and got their opinion and you know better now.
Note to moderator: I did this on speech recognition, and if there are some really bad mistakes, please correct the mistakes.
Microphone off.
-
Thanks.
To 'Geek-9pm'. Your post confuses me. if replacing the HDD and installing windows is as straightforward as Calum says in his post, why would i need to go through all the business of sourcing a 2nd hand laptop and then selling my current one for parts? While i appreciate the help it does sound a lot more time consuming and potentialy costly than just repairing my current machine. At the end of the day if really got suck with repairing my machine i could always take it to a repair shop and let an expert take a look at it
-
If I were you I would ignore the bulk of it...replacing the HDD and installing the operating system is very straightforward. Perhaps if you were proposing to replace the motherboard, LCD, inverter and other parts, I might agree - as it stands, just go ahead with your original plan because it makes perfect sense.
-
If I were you I would ignore the bulk of it...replacing the HDD and installing the operating system is very straightforward. Perhaps if you were proposing to replace the motherboard, LCD, inverter and other parts, I might agree - as it stands, just go ahead with your original plan because it makes perfect sense.
Thanks Calum
Agreed. Apart form the HDD (and perhaps the Optical Drive) there is nothing else apparently wrong with the machine. Seems wrong to discard it it putting it right would be a straightforward job. Wouldnt even consider trying to replace motherboards, chipsets etc if they were U/S.
-
Exactly, the cost and effort involved is minimal and the parts are also easily transferable in the future should anything else go wrong, so you could always salvage them as you know they're working and relatively new.
-
One more thing. I have downloaded the ISO file for windows 7 x64. Do i have to do anything special to the extracted data when i put it onto dvd or usb stick or just copy it over as it is? Thanks
-
Follow this guide (http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-create-bootable-windows-7-usb-to-install-windows-7-from-usb-flash-drive-using-windows-7-dvdusb-tool/) to create a bootable USB drive from the ISO, or if you want a bootable DVD, just burn it as an image (you can do this natively in Windows 7, other versions of Windows you may need a program to do this such as Imgburn).
-
Re: replacement hdd, what make would you recommend. The laptop had a Seagate drive and I was going for a like for like replacement, but on reflection and after reading some negative reviews on Amazon, have decided to go for another make. But which one?
Any ideas?
-
I've used a lot, and I mean a LOT, of Seagate drives, no problems. I've used a fair few Samsungs, in fact that's all I've used for my own PCs for some years, again no problems. I had a lot of problems with Western Digital, hence my nickname for them "Western Difficult". In practice, WD now own Hitachi and Seagate own Samsung. Hitachi drives are still made by Hitachi, most Samsung drives are now made by Seagate and just rebranded.
In other words, pick your poison, there's very little to differentiate them nowadays. If I may make a suggestion though - if you don't need the space, consider a small SSD, it would really pep up the laptop and keep it feeling fast and fresh.
-
New HDD found and ordered. Went for Seagate in the end. Got 500GB one for around £40 on Amazon UK. Just waiting for it to arrove now.
Set up a USB stick with the Windows 7 ISO and put it into the machine (HDD removed) and switched on. Went straight into windows based setup/installer screens rather than DOS based setup screens. Not sure if this was because no HDD was installed and it will revert to DOS when the new drive is put in or whether this means reinstalling windows on a new HDD will be even easier than expected. I am hoping the latter is the case!!
Looked into SSDs and while i like the idea, was put off by cost per GB. Would have only got 32GB for the same price as i paid for 500GB with a conventional HDD. Might try one as a secondary drive sometime though. For now i want the storage space.
-
Set up a USB stick with the Windows 7 ISO and put it into the machine (HDD removed) and switched on. Went straight into windows based setup/installer screens rather than DOS based setup screens. Not sure if this was because no HDD was installed and it will revert to DOS when the new drive is put in or whether this means reinstalling windows on a new HDD will be even easier than expected. I am hoping the latter is the case!!
Windows Vista and newer don't use the old-style installer interface, like XP does right at the start - where it's all "press F8 to agree" and "c to create partition" etc/. It's all a much nicer UI and you can use the mouse to manage partitions beforehand. It's much more streamlines than before, it'll still reboot as required but whereas with say XP you had the loading stage, then select a partition to install on, then it'd copy files, then reboot into a slightly nicer UI and do the install - with Windows 7 for example it will load to the stage where you select the partition, then do everything it needs to do, reboot, and you'll be in Windows just doing the final settings like setting a workgroup if needed, activation, and so forth.
Looked into SSDs and while i like the idea, was put off by cost per GB. Would have only got 32GB for the same price as i paid for 500GB with a conventional HDD. Might try one as a secondary drive sometime though. For now i want the storage space.
Ah, you should've said you were in the UK, I could've sorted you a decent size one for the price of the HDD ;) understood though, if you need 500GB of space then a HDD makes more sense. I tend to find I only use 30-40GB at the very most for my system drive anyway, no matter how big my primary storage device is, so I've managed on a 16GB SSD before now.
-
Feeling frustrated. New HDD not expected to be delivered until 28th July. Expected it sooner. Want to get on with things.
-
Feeling frustrated. New HDD not expected to be delivered until 28th July. Expected it sooner. Want to get on with things.
Ouch, that's quite the delay. Where did you buy the drive from?
-
Ouch, that's quite the delay. Where did you buy the drive from?
Amazon UK, but apparently via a German supplier/wholesaler, something that wasn't clear when I ordered it. Thankfully though that was very conservative estimate since the drive arrived in the post this morning!
When I opened the package there was a sticker on the wrapping around the actual drive saying only to be opened in a static free environment/work area. I know static can damage hdds but how can I achieve this in a home environment?
After that it should be all systems go for install!
-
Ah, well, glad to hear it arrived quite quickly in the end.
That warning is standard on almost all parts shipped in an anti static bag. Don't worry too much about it, if you're worried then don't open it somewhere likely to generate static (i.e. on the carpet while shuffling about in slippers) and you can always ground yourself by touching a grounded metal surface, such as the back of a radiator or an unpainted part of a computer case while the PSU is plugged in and thus grounding it, before you open up the package.
-
Have now fitted the new HDD, went OK. problems have started as soon as i turned the machine on. it seems to have detected the new hdd OK but i cant seem to boot from the USB stick i want to install windows from. All i get is a Boot Manager screen on start up telling me windows cant load because of hard ware changes (ie new HDD) and to installation/recovery media and reboot. When this screen appears i put the usb stick into the machine and tell it to reboot and the same screen message reappears. I made sure the boot priorities were set to boot from removable media first, then optical then HDD but this has made no difference, it still goes straight to the empty new HDD on start up.
I have also tried bootable recovery discs made when the OS was last installed on the old HDD, as well as recovery disc made when the machine was purchased (installation discs not supplied with the machine) all to no avail (although i suspect a problem with the optical drive).
The Boot manager screen gives the error code 0xc000000e, which means nothing to me but will to those in the know i am sure.
I am surprised and confused that the machine will not boot from the USB stick now that the new HDD is installed. It worked fine when there was no HDD in the machine!
Have i missed something? Should something have been done to the new HDD before fitting it into the PC, like formatting or configuring in some way so that the PC would recognise it?
Please help. I am starting to get the feeling i am wasting my time and money here.
-
If the hard drive is new and blank, you shouldn't get that message at all. Hit the boot menu key - F9 on most HPs, can be F8, F10, F12, etc...depends on the laptop. Asus is usually F8 or Escape, it'll be on the splash screen. Select removable media or USB HDD from there, does that help at all? I know you're already set the boot priority but it's worth a try. There should be no configuration necessary for the hard drive.
-
Problems all sorted out now and windows 7 installed on the new HDD fine. Had to reinstall the ISO files onto the USB stick to get it to work. I apparently hadnt done it right the first time (files extracted direct from download file to stick rather than extracted to other PC and copied over).
Instalation took longer than nessesary, ran the installer 3 times thinking each time that the installation had failed, instead i discovered i needed to remove the usb stick after the first reboot otherwise the pc would boot again from the stick and ask to start the installation process all over again. Once over that problem all was fine. Didnt get the option to partition as i thought, either that or i missed it (see other thread).
The only problem i still have is that the optical drive still wont work. Unless anyone can can shed some light onthe problem and/or fix it it looks like i will either have to do without or replace it (internal or external options). FYI the optical drive will open and try to run the disc but then give up. Drive not recognised in 'My Computer'. Shows drive but not any disk in it.
-
Try reseating the optical drive just to make sure it's making a good connection - if you're tried that, or it doesn't help, the drive's probably had it. A new drive, either internal or external, is cheap enough, anyway.
Glad to hear you have it all installed and sorted now though.
-
PC up and running, havent sorted the optical drive yet. Only issue is that the fan seems to run a lot more than before. Could this be anything to do with the new hdd (which is relatively quiet when running) or could i just be over working the processor. It has occured to me that since the PC hasnt been used for some time while due to the kaput HDD, the processor isnt powerful enough to do the job its now asked to do by up to date webpages, applications etc. Its only about 3 years old but i guess the way tech moves on thats long enough.
That said i have a desktop of the same age that still performs very well with what it is asked to do.
-
Glad to hear it worked out well for you.
Shall we mark this as solved?
BTW:
Do you feel that nit was worth the effort?
Was it fun?
Would you do it again?
Thanks for sharing. :)
-
It could just need a good clean out with a can of compressed air, if the fan's spinning up more than it used to. However, websites now do tend to use a lot more CPU-heavy animation etc than even a few years ago, so it's equally possible that things are just more demanding than last time you used it, and thus it's getting worked a little harder. if the laptop is performing OK, I wouldn't worry :)
-
Glad to hear it worked out well for you.
Shall we mark this as solved?
BTW:
Do you feel that nit was worth the effort?
Was it fun?
Would you do it again?
Thanks for sharing. :)
!
Yes on all counts. Learnt a lot about the workings of a laptop PC and installing windows. Would do it again.