[ SECRET POST #2078 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2078 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 73 secrets from Secret Submission Post #297.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 2 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Free Geek is one organization in my city that has "volunteer for computers" program - 24 hours for an Intel Pentium IV (CPU), 1GB RAM desktops pre-loaded with the newest version of Ubuntu. Or, build 5 Pentium IV computers and build the 6th Pentium IV for yourself. The computers are several generations out of date but they are good enough to surf the net, listen to music, watch DVDs and load OpenOffice (free, open source word processing program, though I prefer LibreOffice). Free Geek in different cities share a similar goal and method of operations but their exact operation details might be different. The Free Geek near you might offer computers of different specs or require different hours. They should also be a good source of technology-related resources in your area.

If you're looking at really old machines, make sure the CPU clocks at least 1GHz. Anything less will be very slow even with Windows XP installed.

Also, you mentioned upthread that the laptop overheats easily. Do you dust the laptop regularly with a gas duster/compressed air? The computer might stay on a bit longer if it can run a little cooler.

"IS there's a way to check for corruption besides the normal chkdsk way?"

Yes. Do you or your friends have a spare 2.5" hard drive enclosure or a hard drive port? You should* be able to take the hard drive out of the laptop, put it in the enclosure/port, and access it as a removable hard drive (like a portable or storage disk) with another computer and run chkdsk on it. Chkdsk might get stuck 3% in and the disk might start clicking but chkdsk itself shouldn't crash.

You can try running chkdsk under the Ubuntu live drive too, if the live drive can detect the laptop's hard drive.

*Laptops are even more notorious for their specially-designed/proprietary hardware and software than brand-specific desktops. If the hard drive does not have a standard SATA and power socket, it probably can't be read with the usual, store-bought enclosures/drive ports.

"Is there's a way to reverse any potential corruption or damage to my machine, at least enough so that i have a laptop that at least turns on normally?"

IIRC, there is no way to un-corrupt a hard drive but you might be able to recover enough data to make it run better. Based on what I remember, chkdsk scans the disk for errors and if it finds any, it marks the bad sectors as "areas to not use" and, if this option is selected, attempts to recover data from the bad sectors to sectors that aren't bad. The recovered data may be incomplete (a bad sector means difficulty in/inability to reading and writing the sector of disk) which is not good news, and there is no guarantee the sector the info is recovered to will not become bad later as well.