old laptap - revived

[Hans Manhave]

After cleaning up some junk I uncovered a Compaq laptop V6000 or something like that.  I had held onto it because it was not in pieces, did not need a new power recepticle etc.  It did have one nasty habit: the BSOD indicating hard drive problems.  I believe it came with WinXP.  A new WinXP install didn't improve anything.  There were very few CMOS/BIOS settings to modify.  Unplugging the wireless board appeared to remove the BSOD but also made the machine mostly useless.  Installing different Linux distros was a good learning exercise but didn't help much either.  For a while Windows 7 appeared to work on it, but it was a very short while.  After I found it in the heap this time, I put a WinME on it.  That worked except it didn't have drivers for anything.  In final attempt, before letting it continue to the trash heap, I put Windows 8.1 on it.  And, as I believe they say in the original movie The King and I, "a miracle occurred".  The unit has stayed working.  A 32 bit Win81, and just 1 GB or RAM, but it does work and sees everything on the network and operates with decent speed.  I was a bit disappointed that Win81 (enterprise) doesn't come with any interesting games, not even the standard card games or mines.  Just downloadable XBox stuff I don't need.  Finally learned how to sign on 8.1 without a MS account.  Not sure if I missed that in 8.0 or if it is new in 8.1.  So much for this little story.  Just hate to throw stuff out that still has hope for some remaining usefulness.

[DebAmstutz]

Interesting story, Hans!