That Busted Laptop Works!

I owned a small Compaq Presario notebook computer for about three and a half years before the poor thing fizzled to an agonizing death. It ran Windows Vista, which *might* explain its short life-span, but I can’t say for sure. I mean, three years just isn’t a very long life for a computer, and I was extremely disappointed when it failed to consistently start.

I wondered if Vista was just too much for the machine. I wondered if I abused the machine with over-use. Whatever the reason, my hard drive wasn’t working and I wasn’t very happy about its demise. Luckily, I found a way to salvage it for something useful — saving me from having to throw $400 down the drain.

Welcome Windows Automated Installation Kit

The first thing I did was research my options: Throw it away? Replace the hardware? Get it professionally repaired? I honestly didn’t want to spend any more money so I ultimately looked for no-cost solutions. That’s when I found out about WindowsPE (inside the Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK)). WindowsPE is a scaled down version of Windows small enough to run on a USB drive.

Since I had an extra USB drive laying around, I decided to give it a try.

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I found a website that explained how to prepare a notebook computer for USB booting — a requirement for creating an alternative Windows environment on a busted Windows machine. After following the site’s instructions, I downloaded and installed WindowsPE on my USB drive using a separate computer. According to the site’s explanation, my busted notebook would  load up and run a low-scaled version of Windows as long as my new ‘Window-fied’ USB drive was plugged into one of the notebook’s USB ports.

So I tried it…

And it worked!

It looked a little weird… but the thing loaded.

My notebook finally started. It looked a little weird… but the dang thing loaded. The only thing I saw at first was a command prompt window. I could type ‘notepad’ and notepad would load. I could type ‘regedit’ and the Windows Registry would load. It was awesome. But this isn’t the normal Windows registry.

Through this setup, the full-scaled version of Windows isn’t recognized and I can’t find it anywhere on this thing. The registry that loaded instead belonged to a whole new system. In fact, I now have 2 drives: An “X” drive and a “C” drive. The “C” drive isn’t the same one I originally owned and the “X” drive lists all the files installed on the USB. I simply don’t have access to my original files or to all the nifty programs that come with the full-scaled version of windows.

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That’s okay, because I discovered portable programs will work even on this scaled-down notebook. Portable programs are software programs designed to operate from USB drives, and you might be surprised at what’s portable. At this very moment, I’m typing this article from a portable version of OpenOffice.

Yes, I am running OpenOffice from a single USB drive that also happens to run Windows. That means I can use what was once thought to be a condemned machine, for all sorts of things. I can create, edit, and save word processing documents, multimedia presentations, spreadsheets, and even databases. Who Da’ thunk!?

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