I promise that this will be a long and detailed post. For those who just want to learn how to repair old laptops, scroll down to the first image.
People who know me know that I like to repair stuff at home, to save costs and make full use of every resource. An example is a low spec netbook running Windows XP that I configured to control and synchronise hardware to do cutting edge research work.
Today, I will show you how an old gaming laptop (Asus G51J) can be revived, when one of the hard disks died. The problem happened when I was installing something on that laptop. Somehow it stopped responding. Windows restore did not work. I suspected that it was a hard drive issue. So it was kept in a bag inside a cabinet for many months to collect dust. Fortunately, I did my "homework" whenever I changed any system configuration. Somewhere in 2014, I wanted to try GPU programming using CUDA on this machine. So I downloaded and installed OpenSuse on this laptop. As this laptop came with 2 hard drives inside, it was "clean" to install Linux (OpenSuse) components on the second drive (500GB), while leaving around half the space for Windows backup (around 250GB in this case). This installation method made it really easy to remove the Linux installation, as putting Windows and Linux on the same physical drive may pose issues later with bootloader removal, if you don't wish to keep the Linux system.
Here is the original configuration after I installed OpenSuse:
After installing OpenSuse, I made a backup of the Windows 7 installation on Disk 2. This was the part that saved this laptop.
The laptop looks like this on the outside:
The machine refused to boot no matter what I did. Since I had 2 operating systems, I decided to go into the BIOS settings at startup, to use the second drive to boot. As expected, I got into OpenSuse successfully. However, I wanted to keep the OEM Windows 7 in this case, and disk 1 made scratching sounds while I tried to boot from that drive.
So I opened up the back, carefully, in order not to mess up the screws or lose them. There are many to remove. This is how it looks like under the hood. Remove the 4 screws, place them safely in a container somewhere, then slide gently to remove the hard disk mount. This means disk 1 has been removed. Bye Windows 7. I weep for you. Stupid Seagate hard disk, the only brand of hard disk where the reader scratches the physical disk like a DJ.
There are 4 screws on the sides of this mount. Remove the 4 screws on the mount, then install a new hard disk on the mount. Now, install the new disk 1 back into the machine, slide into place and put the screws back where they were.
You can skip method 1 and go to method 2 if you have a system image on disk 2
Now, I'm a bit more careful not to lose the lifeline (OpenSuse) here, so I removed disk 2 as you can see in the photo below:
Okay. If you were as conscientious as I was, you would have created a repair disc using the DVD/Bluray drive when you first bought the laptop. This is how it looks like (made in 2010):
Pop this into the DVD/Bluray drive, with ONLY an empty disk 1 installed, of course. The default boot sequence will load the repair disc, and attempt to restore the OEM Windows 7. If you see the following screen, good for you, there is a chance you can get Windows 7 back.
Choose keyboard:
In this case, there wasn't any system, as seen below, since I have only a new hard disk inside (see below).
After you press "Next", the repair disc will attempt to find a system image that you can use. In my case, an error message popped up since there wasn't any. So I chose to use system image (the backup I created used 4 DVDs). Follow the instructions to insert the final disc (DVD 4 in my case), then click "Retry". It will try to restore the operating system using the DVDs.
Then the following showed up and I clicked "Next"
And "Next" for the following window as well
Click "Finish" for the following
And "Yes" for the following
Now, be a good boy and follow the instructions below, switch to disc 1
Now we wait as we stare at the progress bar below:
The DVD drive made a lot of funny noises after I inserted disc 1. Of course it failed. So I put hard disk 2 back where it was, and hope that there exists a working system image. It would have worked if my DVDs weren't damaged.
METHOD 2: System image on hard disk 2
Okay. If you were as conscientious as I was, you would have created a repair disc using the DVD/Bluray drive when you first bought the laptop. This is how it looks like (made in 2010):
Pop this into the DVD/Bluray drive, with both the new disk (1) and the old disk 2 containing a system image installed in the laptop. The default boot sequence will load the repair disc, and attempt to restore the OEM Windows 7. If you see the following screen, good for you, there is a chance you can get Windows 7 back.
Choose keyboard:
In this case, there wasn't any system, as seen below, since I have only a new hard disk inside (see below).
After you press "Next", the repair disc will attempt to find a system image that you can use. In my case, it found a system image on hard disk 2, on E drive (fortunately!). Click "Next"
When you see the following screen, click "Finish"
Next, wait patiently for a few hours while that progress bar moves really slowly (see below)
Around a few hours later...zzz...
And finally, after a grand total of around 4 to 5 hours,
Tada! I got my 10 year old laptop working again! Only cost me 100 dollars for the new hard drive (2TB). If you like this article, and want to find out how you can fix hardware at home, leave me a question, so I can help you where possible.
Of course, after restoring the system on this super old gaming laptop that is still pretty fast now, I created a system image, stored one copy on the new disk 1 inside, and made a copy of both the old and new system images on an external hard drive, just in case. If you keep copies of original systems somewhere safe, there is a chance you can do the same and restore old laptops the way I did.
Thanks for reading. Keep a lookout on this blog if you are interested in random life hacks, games and other random topics of interest.
