bindydad123

Because Nvidia

Find new old stock or find a Dell OEM vista disc

Just looking at it at stores and reading upon it on the internet, I feel like the Aspire 5 is a decent all rounder

Like 10, 8.1 doesn't need a key. Just need to modify bootable USB. Only limitations are lack of personalisation, water mark and a 'pop up' after logging in.

warranty?

AMD Turion™II X2 are dammn beasts. These rocks. Even 11 years on, they perform better than 2014 Intel Atom's and can run full 64 bit Windows 8.1 no problem. Just need to disable some animations. An SSD would be better but a bit unnecessary. Best bit, Windows 8.1 is free from microsoft.com and can be installed with a bootable USB. No disc required.

Aspire 5

Aspire 5

Well, I'm very partial to Dell. However, I'm ok with anything but Asus.

Is there an AMD equivalent to Intel's i5-8300H?

If the your ProBook uses an older revision of SATA e.g. SATA 3 Gb/s, then a SSD will be bottlenecked. But a bottenecked SSD will still be faster than a HDD.

if not mistaken, you'll need to format the USB as MBR

Dell XPS Convertible

If it's an old device (6 years and older), I suggest legacy for BIOS and MBR for rufus. Prehaps you could format the HDD with another computer.

I suggest sourcing a Dell OEM XP disc and proceed from there. Dell OEM discs are typically pre-activated.