Recent content by xpd.co.nz

If not planning on keeping anything on the drive, then Id remove it and connect to a different machine and wipe/partition it from there.

Remove casing, insert parts into desktop case. :D Seriously though, whats mentioned above is about all you can do. If the laptop is still under any sort of warranty, you could bring it up with the supplier and see they're willing to take a look and let them replace the paste.

I honestly wouldnt bother spending funds on a system that old, surprised its still running TBH. Save your money and pick up a second hand/ex-lease Dell unit. Youve said yourself it wont take over 2GB RAM which is one usual way of speeding things up. Overclocking a laptop like that is generally...

Sounds like to me the current run of sound chips on motherboards will be perfectly adequate for your friends use - he is probably thinking back to the days of the cheap mono speakers generating beeps :-p I havent bothered with a dedicated sound card in years and never experienced "mobile phone...

Could be the system is locked down to only the old drive, or if its not BIOS, could be the "new" drive already contains an OS which has something like Bitlocker enabled. Is the drive brand new or just a replacement from existing stock ? Was/is the laptop a corporate sourced one ?