So I saw my first ever laptop that I purchased sitting against the wall where my desk used to be. I had the though to get it working again, but couldn't remember what was wrong with it. I know the battery is toast, but what else was bad? So I grabbed it and took it into the office.
I plugged it into the charger and removed the battery and this is one of those computers that automatically turns on when you plug it in for some reason. It is a Windows XP machine from Gateway with a 4:3 screen lmao. You want to talk about taking me back, this is old skewl.
Well, even though I had a power light, it would not power on. I was thinking that maybe the screen cable was broke so I decided to hook it up to the monitor I have in the 'server room' to see if it was outputting anything, and nope. I had already removed and reseated the RAM, Wireless card and HDD. And the HDD is an old IDE lappy drive spinning 4200rpm (if I remember correctly, slow as hell lmao). Well, it still was not turning on.
So in reality I had nothing to lose, so a little percussive maintenance to the bottom of the computer and BOOM, it powered on! HELL YEA!!!
First order of business, remove McAfee and Norton which were always on these old computers and are useless. I had already put the tuning software for my car on this computer and that is what I was going to use this computer for. So it is a clean install, but still has bloatware on it. Now that is all gone and it is installing updates. For those that don't know, XP is EOL and there are no more updates lmao. But it is downloading something lol.
I also need to find a way to get the wireless to start working. I know my router can do the G standard (yea, this lappy is that old! lmao) but for now I had to connect up an ethernet cable to it which is located next to the BUILT IN 56K MODEM!!!! Yea, this thing is so old it has a modem built in. I would try it, but I don't have a phone line in this house lmao.
So it is trying to repair the wireless card, I'm typing this (yes, I'm on the XP lappy right now) in Chrome and I have a few other windows open and this thing is getting HOT lol. It was not made for this kind of work hahaha.
I will post more when I have it working properly. I plan on this being my computer out in the garage since it is the ONLY computer that I have that can run C.A.T.S. which is my tuning software for my car. I can run it in compatibility mode, but that introduces other issues with pulling and uploading files to an old computer in my car. One bad file and that computer is bricked, so I would rather just use an XP machine. And yes, I have other copies of XP that I could put on another, newer, computer but I would rather do it on this computer. Bring back the old days!!!
