Shannon Chou

Huh thats actually a great idea, thanks!

I would say it definitely is time for a new laptop if it's an ATI GPU  
They don't even exist anymore.
They were bought out in 2006. Branding phased out in 2010 so that laptop has to be at least 8 years old.
Definitely time for a new one either way.

Not necessarily true. Mining is as much about balancing energy costs and prolonging the life of hardware as it is actually mining coins. Example:
 
If I leave my card at 100% power, power limit maxed, voltage cranked to 11, sure I'm mining at the peak potential for that card--but I'm also drawing enough electricity to light up Detroit for a week. If I leave my card at stock voltage, dial in a stable OC, then set it to a power limit of 70, sure, I'm mining 20% less coin, but I'm spending 30% less on electricity, so I actually come out ahead. People who've actually researched mining before attempting it will also tell you that you should put a temperature limit of somewhere between 65-68 on your card. Above 70C for extended periods of time and you start risking component failures, anything under 60C and you're not working hard enough. A big part of the economics of mining is reselling cards down the line, and if your card dies from nuking it with four million volts and temperatures in line with the surface of the sun, that's hard to do.
 
I would more or less trust a GPU from someone selling it out of a mining rig, assuming I was confident they were being honest with me about how long it had been in use, the temperatures it was operating at, the fan speeds it was maintaining and whether or not any voltage manipulation was done. Someone who tells you that the card is from a mining rig is going to know all that, and they're probably going to be honest about it. The real risk is from gamers who "experiment" with mining in their main rig when they're not gaming on it. For one, that rig almost certainly does not have enough airflow to support mining. Two, because they didn't research it at all, they probably did just max out the voltage, set the highest overclock they could and Leeroy it. Three, they are going to lie to you.
 
Easy way to weed those people out? Ask questions. What games did they play with it? What resolution and detail settings? What kind of FPS did they get? Do they know the Firestrike score? Everyone's going to lie if you ask about overclocking, so don't even bother. They probably can't answer all of your questions, but if someone selling a high-end card can't at least name the games they played with it, the resolution they played at and the FPS they typically pulled down on at least one of those games, walk away. Likewise, if the questions are in writing and the answers they give are pulled from Tom's Hardware, walk away. Those are the people trying to push off a burnt-out card on you.

Very much so. I mined the living crap out of my GTX 1070 and my 6GB GTX 1060 for about three solid months, until prices of Zcash dropped to where it just didn't make sense to continue. The cards sat at 100% load in a HAF 932 case with the side panel removed, only going offline once when I shut down the computer for about 3 minutes to pull some RAM. The 1070 ran at 66-68C with the fan at 70%. The 1060 ran at 59-60C with the fan at 45% (seriously, I could not get that thing to break 60). Today, the 1060 is back in an HTPC where it pushes 4K video and occasionally plays a game or two, and the 1070 is back in my main rig. No problems with either, and after running full speed for three months, they both still achieve stable 24/7 overclocks at their pre-mining levels.
 
It's not that you mine, it's how you mine.

Windows will usually detect and install the most recent signed WHQL driver for your graphics card. As manikyath said above this may not be the most up to date driver for your particular graphics card. Whether or not you need the latest driver depends on whether or not you play any games or use applications for which the driver has specific optimisations. The driver that Windows installs is typically several iterations behind the chipset manufacturers 'current' version (but should be reliable).
 
Provided the Windows installer/Windows Update can find a working internet connection it will pull down usable drivers for most things. Component specific drivers from the manufacturers may provide/enable more features. Having said that it's still not a bad idea to have downloaded essential drivers onto a USB stick or something just in case there are problems.

Pickup a programming language. Instead of screaming at your screen because you didn't get the skin you wanted you'll be screaming at your screen because after hours of work your application refuses to compile.

Check the ram placement

How big is your hibernation.sys file? Thats one to keep space locked. Also use WinDirSat or similar to better find folders that are causing issues.