author=Intheswamp #20
My buddy has nothing, no docs, photos, etc., nothing, that he wants to save. I think there are two problems. The first one is he needs to start from scratch, wiping the drive clean. Secondly, he needs to move away from Win8/8.1, either downgrade to Win7 or upgrade to Win10.
I checked for overheating. He's kind of a neat-freak and has the laptop sitting on a piece of cloth but it seems to be getting plenty of air, no dustbunnies in the rabbit holes. The bottom of the case seemed a little warmer than ambient, definitely not hot. Running a hardware stress test is something I haven't done and I see that Dell has some available both online and off. I'll probably see my buddy this week and we might try that one of those tests.
On a side note, I recovered a Win7 desktop for my oldest granddaughter today. An old system that her parents had basically junked out. She's a bright kid and had tried to get it working. I picked up a WiFi dongle from eBay, used F8 and went into "Repair". Chose not save anything. Hours later I had Win7 installed, Service Pack 1 installed with all updates and rolling along with a virus scanner installed along with a few programs. It was running, and should continue, to run great. Amazing what a difference it is working on a Win7 machine and a Win8 machine!!!! Give me the Win7 anytime!!!
Laptops should always sit on a hard surface with some airspace (on their 'feet' or small blocks, whatever). That 'piece of cloth' can't be good.
Some models are so notorious for overheating that there is a whole class of 'laptop cooler bases' you can buy; they are basically stands with fans.
There are apps that will give you various internal system readings, temperatures included. There are probably 2-3 temp sensors inside, plus most disks have them.
The absolute best program to do this is called "
Speccy", from Piriform , free version available. It examines in great detail about everything there is to know about a machine's hardware and software (its' 'specs').
Piriform has several other most excellent utility programs (free versions available).
www.piriform.comSounds like you did a 'manufacturers hidden partition' recovery of your grandaughters 'old' machine, not a clean install from DVD.
Your buddies Dell should have the procedure for reverting to the original 'factory' OS documented (assuming that it is still intact), online if he doesn't have a manual.
This 'factory' reset does not involve wiping the hard drive (as such-- a total one), it reloads the original OS from the backup/hidden drive partition (Speccy will also show an analysis of the hard drive(s), among many other things showing the partitions).
Once Win 8.1 is reloaded an up or downgrade should be possible to 10 or 7.
I strongly recommend Win 10 in this (his) case.
Win 10 is inherently far more secure, will update and protect itself automatically, comes with a competent firewall and A/V built in, and is much more stable. Especially for a casual user.
Win 10 can be easily configured with an interface that looks like Win 7 (the traditional/classic look and feel) instead of that stupid "Metro" one that 8 defaults to (8 also can be made to have a classic look).
I also recommend the (free version) Comodo CIS A/V-firewall-lots of otherstuff program. And run (free) MalWareBytes every week at least.
Plus everybody should be using the Opera browser almost exclusively (on all of your devices, systems, OS's--from Win to Android/Apple/Linux/etc).
Opera is simply the best, most secure, most full-featured browser there is (Opera has been around a long time, it has pioneered many of our modern browser features).
www.opera.comMS Edge is the default Win 10 browser, it's secure and OK, but is slow, hangs, clumsy, and 'spies' on you. Leave it as the default, but actively use Opera.
Wouldn't touch Google Chrome with a ten foot usb stick.
Look all of these up on Wikipedia for more info and verification.