My broken laptop is currently booting...

[Renée]

(First: I had no idea where to put this so pls move if wrong forum)
Anyway! So my laptop completely crapped out on me 5 years ago. Yet... I just plugged in a windows usb and it's somehow... installing to an HDD that showed no volumes when connected to my desktop via an external bay? What.

The CPU was fried after I kinda sorta maybe thought distributed computing would be a good idea on an Athlon X2 with 3gigs of DDR2. So I put it away and forgot about it for 5 years. Now here I am, waiting for a W7 installation to finish.

I had it plugged in for a couple hours before attempting this and the battery light indicated it was fully charged (although with a severely depleted capacity, I presume). Now I wait...

[lol1290]

Wut r the specs of ur laptop?

[Renée]

Athlon X2, 3gigs DDR2, some radeon integrated graphics I assume, 250gig HDD (which is supposed to be broken). I've made it to the desktop but I can't download anything because IE is giving me certificate errors EVERYWHERE. Also it's running extremely hot. If I ever manage to download anything, I'll check the temps. Might have to go with my original plan (Ubuntu live USB) if that would lower the temps at all

 

Edit: Woot, Chrome's downloading (certificate error was an easy fix, just had to time travel back to 2015 from 2009, which is a sad compromise tbh). I still have NO IDEA WHY THIS IS WORKING

[Renée]

Wow. I'm amazed. I'm typing this in Chrome on the laptop. Everything's working fine. Speccy shows normal temps, peaking at 71 and getting as low as 59 while generally idle. The keyboard feels FANTASTIC and the volume wheel works fine (which is one of the main reasons why I wanted to restore this fossil). Speakers work great, probably better than the HP I got when this one died (which also recently died, lol). Media buttons work fine while in VLC, but only the mute button works once you're out of focus. Same thing happens with my G510s keyboard so I'm not too concerned. I'll try iTunes next because my keyboard's media buttons work great with it

[Renée]

Temperatures are climbing a bit, currently at 76, but it's... manageable. Also the HDD is exposed except for the antistatic bag sitting under it. I lost the cover years ago. I activated windows using my desktop's product key. I don't even have room on my desk for this 17.3" monster, but the best way I can describe the current situation is "manageable". Let's hope it stays that way indefinitely.

Edit: Unplugged it and the battery is certainly bad, but not an instant failure. Losing about a percent per minute, maybe less.