Going from Dial-up to WIFI

JCitron · Jan 17, 2021

Like I said if you could drive... My sister drove one of those until a few years ago. They go forever! I'm 80 miles from you in the opposite direction near the New Hampshire border. I thought you could get a wrist strap there for $2.99, but it's not necessary if you discharge the power supply and then touch the metal frame in the PC.

I agree your best bet is to replace the same-size drive. Formatting may not be necessary, my gut feeling says no, because you are putting the same sectors on the new drive as the old one and no partitioning is necessary. I've done this using Partition Wizard and other programs such as the one that comes with the Seagate and Western Digital drives. I don't know if the CD comes with the drives any longer, but that made things a whole lot easier. Put in the new drive on another port in the computer. Put in the CD and choose options and let the program do its thing. When done, open things up and pull out the old drive after making sure the new one was the boot drive. It's a lot easier than what I typed.

AnalogOldguy · Jan 17, 2021

The strap was 7.99 at Best Buy (which didn't have them). At Staples it looks like the same strap, but it is $14 something.

I've been looking at 1TB drives on Newegg , and in the opinions, it looks like there is always something wrong... On the Seagates, it has a low power sleep mode and has to spin-up a lot. I get the idea that it is slow as an operating system disk. OK for storage

On the WD Blacks, ( WD1003 FZEX), there are complaints that it is noisy. And a lot of people complain about both brands of drives "dead on arrival". I would hate to get involved in something like that.

Another thing about the reviews, often they are talking about a different drive, 4TB or higher..

I feel like trying this "ok" 1TB drive sitting right next to me.

I'm going to first take a look at the BIOS in my computer, naturally it gives the HP kind pf choices (like restoring to factory conditions. I want to see if it has the DVD drive as a boot up. I would hate to get stuck at the DVD booting and have to shut the computer off with the power switch.

(Also, the windows image, has two partitions in it, the OS and the HP restore to original). Best wishes to you all !! And Thanks !!

AnalogOldguy · Jan 18, 2021

I'm going to start working on the hard drive problem in the near future, and I mean it!

Most likely I'll try to to install the used, but good drive, using the Windows 7 System Repair boot disk.

I've got all your information about the grounding, and the techniques and the various commercial disk tools. And the hard drives.

I used to do a bunch of installing on my gaming computer. motherboard, hard drives, memory, video cards, sound card. Partitioning, formatting but with the different old tools (but I do remember using MiniTool) for making a partition larger.

But the last time was probably 5 years ago. I have lost a little off my "fast ball" as I keep adding up the years!

The biggest worry I have now is messing up my Gateway (they call it) and thus my connection with Comcast. Ah, the telephone modem, it's gonna be gone but not forgotten...

I'll report back when I get it right! Thanks to all.

AnalogOldguy · Jan 23, 2021

OK, it is done!

Hello again!

The good used 1TB hard drive is in, and working very well. I brought the image in using the Windows bootable repair disc. It sure seemed slow to me, 3/4 of an hour to install the C: partition,(it had 823 GB free out of 918). And 15 minutes for the HP factory restore partition.(1.31 free of 13.2)

I'll bet that most of the commercial disk cloners are faster than that! It also gave a choice about which image I wanted to use.. (I never read any documentation that it could do this).

I downloaded the Seagate DiskWizard, as John mentioned here, and will perhaps try it the next time. I went to a hardware store and bought some alligator clips and made my own grounding strap with old lamp wire.

For the power-down, I decided to just turn off the power strip, where everything except the modem-router was plugged in. Then I pushed the computer's power button, to discharge it. Nothing exciting happened, no fans spinning a little.

I learned about the gateway just sitting there doing its' thing, waiting for the computer to be turned on.That's what I was worried about the most.

What was a little strange, after I rebooted the computer, it needed to install a SATA driver.At first it asked where the driver was... Then luckily,in a quick second, I think it went to Windows and got it.

I am now sick of all the ads and videos that pop up on fast internet. I know that the host file method works, but isn't it only on Microsoft browsers? I put the Ublock Origin extension into my Firefox, but it sometimes has to be turned off for certain sites.

Now that I have that Seagate usb backup drive, I might try that Windows 7 Backup as I think RHK mentioned!

Learning to live with things, thanks fellas.

johnwhelan · Jan 24, 2021

AnalogOldguy said:
OK, it is done!

Hello again!

The good used 1TB hard drive is in, and working very well. I brought the image in using the Windows bootable repair disc. It sure seemed slow to me, 3/4 of an hour to install the C: partition,(it had 823 GB free out of 918). And 15 minutes for the HP factory restore partition.(1.31 free of 13.2)

I'll bet that most of the commercial disk cloners are faster than that! It also gave a choice about which image I wanted to use.. (I never read any documentation that it could do this).

I downloaded the Seagate DiskWizard, as John mentioned here, and will perhaps try it the next time. I went to a hardware store and bought some alligator clips and made my own grounding strap with old lamp wire.

For the power-down, I decided to just turn off the power strip, where everything except the modem-router was plugged in. Then I pushed the computer's power button, to discharge it. Nothing exciting happened, no fans spinning a little.

I learned about the gateway just sitting there doing its' thing, waiting for the computer to be turned on.That's what I was worried about the most.

What was a little strange, after I rebooted the computer, it needed to install a SATA driver.At first it asked where the driver was... Then luckily,in a quick second, I think it went to Windows and got it.

I am now sick of all the ads and videos that pop up on fast internet. I know that the host file method works, but isn't it only on Microsoft browsers? I put the Ublock Origin extension into my Firefox, but it sometimes has to be turned off for certain sites.

Now that I have that Seagate usb backup drive, I might try that Windows 7 Backup as I think RHK mentioned!

Learning to live with things, thanks fellas.

I firefox and noScript plugin or is it an addon. That combination seems to work not too badly.

Glad it is all working for you.

Cheerio John
[h=1][/h]

Going from Dial-up to WIFI

JCitron

Trainzing since 12-2003

AnalogOldguy

Member

AnalogOldguy

Member

AnalogOldguy

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johnwhelan

Well-known member

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