So, I’ve been writing a 175k word One Piece fanfic for about 6 months. Most of my writing is done on a 10 year-old laptop I dug out of the closet while I wait for my kid to finish sports practice. Today, the hard-drive died. (Thankfully I have a cloud backup.)
Now, without a laptop, I have nothing to continue working on. I can’t afford a new laptop. Just glad I didn’t lose all my work.
If it’s just the hard drive and you have a screwdriver on hand, SATA SSDs are extremely cheap. You can get 256GB in the US for $20-$25.
Or of the laptop has a serious hardware fault and is beyond repair, then pick up a keyboard from a thrift shop for a couple of bucks and type on your phone.
Or if it is just for the purpose of using a word processor, then any ancient laptop can be picked up on Facebook marketplace. I can see plenty of decent options listed in my area for <£50 (I appreciate this may be a lot to spend for some though).
This is the answer here. If OP has any techy friends they should tell them. I have a dozen HDDs and SSDs and RAM of varying sizes lying around. Most of them even work.
I tend to canabalize parts as computers pass through my hands. I frequently upgrade family member’s laptops for them. They buy the parts and I provide the labor of cloning windows and putting in the parts. Often the brand new (but smaller) ram/ssd are unwanted.
It’s the OS license that’s the main problem.
Meh just install Linux and carry on with libreoffice. Ubuntu is easy and free
There’s a non-zero chance the license is stored on the motherboard of the laptop (ie, embedded in BIOS).
It’s nearly certain. OEM activation has been stored on the motherboard since XP. XP-7 required a matching OEM cert (easily found online), while 8+ have a unique license in the BIOS. For these, you just reinstall the OS, skip the key during setup, and let it connect afterwards for all of the updates and whatnot.
Now, licenses to other apps, such as Word, are not so simple.
Powershell
irm https://get.activated.win/ | iexThat should be fine. I haven’t had to do it but everywhere I’ve seen says it’s tied to your hardware and it should be fine when you reinstall windows. Though with a dead laptop I’m not sure if you’re able to get a USB with the bootable media.
Your license is tied to the laptop.
Windows should remember the BIOS and activate fine, I think. And as posted below, you can extract they key if that doesn’t work.
You can get the install medium on a USB stick from Microsoft for free.
There’s probably a sticker with the license code on the laptop somewhere.
I know I’m summoning a horde, but even a new HDD needs an OS and I’m not a Linux person. Not sure I can find the license for Windows 10, because this old brick won’t take 11.
It’s super easy to activate Windows for free, and Microsoft doesn’t care: https://massgrave.dev/.
If you were logged in with your Microsoft account before, that should also restore your real previous activation.
Seconding that massgrave is legit. I remember that I was nervous when I first installed Windows through this method, but I used it for years, across multiple different devices and never had any problems
You don’t even have to feel bad about it either! As Microsoft once said, Windows 10 is the last windows operating system. Sounds like you already owned that, so you’re good.
I’ve even contacted MS support before telling them I wasn’t going to buy windows 11 as I paid for 10 and they said that was the last version. They gave me a new key no questions asked.
I thought 10 keys worked for 11 anyway. I’m pretty sure you can still use 7 keys if you try hard enough
Just install Win10 anyway. Only caveat of not activating is youre stuck with the default wallpaper
Are you able to physically replace the HDD (preferably with an SSD)? If so, you can use the (Win10) Media Creation Tool to create a USB installer.
When it prompts for a key, just skip it. If you have an OEM mass activation laptop (i.e. anything from a major brand), it’ll activate automatically after. If, for whatever reason it still doesn’t activate, you’ll have a nag screen telling you to activate. It won’t significantly limit what you do.
Horde here. If you get any Linux OS with KDE plasma as desktop it’ll feel pretty much the same as Windows, if you’re not a computer person you’ll likely not even notice the difference. Install the KDE version of EndeavorOS for example. Horde end
[X] doubt
Linux - if all you need is to write in a word processor Linux is easy. If you want to custom everything it’s harder. Browsing or writing text should be easy.
You can also just not activate it. There’s nothing stopping you from using the computer with the water mark. It’s not like XP which was super picky and would legit lock you out. Vista + just makes it kinda ugly but it works.
128GB are even cheaper, some in the $10 USD range.
If all you do is web browsing and word processing, that’s more than enough.