This is my story about a new computer, well new to me anyway. A friend of mine passed away and willed me his HP computer and electronics stuff. Over many years he was a source of help, thoughtfulness and inspiration on my electronic issues.
I received my old Dell Inspiration 518 Computer December 31, 2008. Today is June 9, 2018 making the computer almost 10 years old. Over the years the DVD drive failed and was replaced and the power supply failed and was replaced. The computer came with Vista operating system and over the years Microsoft has allowed free upgrades to its present Windows 10. When upgrading to Windows 10 my old sound driver was not accepted by Microsoft so I lost all audio for six months. In the meantime I loaded Linux Mint free operating system where the sound card worked fine. I really did not mind using Linux at all. Eventually I found a sound driver that I could use with Windows 10 so all functioned well once again.
My friend’s HP computer was purchased 6 years ago and is faster with 8 MB of installed memory compared to my old computer with just 4 MB. Also the hard drive is 1 TB which double the memory of my old computer. My old computer is almost full with pictures and home movies.
I did not know my friends Windows password so I entered the Safe Mode on his computer by depressing and holding the Shift key while restarting the computer. From this mode I selected the Reset option and the computer returns to the initial build configuration however retaining the upgrades including Windows 10. I then selected a new password. All the personnel files go away and any software added since purchase time go away. I then transferred all my personnel files, (documents, pictures, videos and music) to this computer. Then I went on-line and installed all my software programs I like, all free. ( Fotosizer, Audacity, InfranView, Movie Maker, Apache Open Office, Notepad++ and EML Viewer) I have an old disk of Works 9.0 from 2013 that I also installed. Works was a $10 program from Microsoft that was a fine alternate of Microsoft Office. No bells and whistles just simple word processing, spreadsheet and stuff. Very easy to use but not as powerful for sure. Since I use hotmail all email looks exactly the same along with face book. All my web sites show up in my favorites list. In the end all works normal except this computer is a lot faster. My old monitor and keyboard I continue to use as they are bigger and better.
Now to operate this new configuration for awhile and then maybe Reset my old computer for use by someone else.
(And this is the first item I have completed on this computer.)
